Announcements : Sales

It's Leap Year - How Do You Plan Spending Your Extra Selling Day?

janderson — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:03:00 GMT

Between work in the office and work on the road, there are far too many things we sales professionals just can't seem to fit in our busy schedules. In fact, in the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, only 25 percent of respondents agreed that they have enough sales and support people to achieve their revenue objectives. This is a good indication that we are working harder (but not exactly smarter) and that we may be letting some vital activities slip through the cracks.

In celebration of leap year, spend February 29 to catch up on something that frequently gets put off or forgotten the other 365 days of the year.

Prospecting—Feed Your Funnel
As sales professionals, we can never spend enough time feeding our funnel. Too often, we become so consumed by focusing on the opportunities that are about to close, we neglect to make sure we will have a healthy funnel in the next quarter. On February 29, take the time to prospect and feed your funnel. This will ensure that you have a steady flow of opportunities instead of a feast-famine cycle. Look for new opportunities with prospective companies that match the profile of your current clients, additional business from existing clients, and referrals.

Call a Client—With a Valid Business Reason of Course
One way to ensure you are always in line with your customers is to discuss their challenges and goals with them. Since your customer's world is in perpetual flux, it is crucial to reconnect on a regular basis. On February 29, call a client—but make sure you do it with a Valid Business Reason (VBR). In Conceptual Selling®, we introduce the following criteria to define a VBR:

The reason impacts the client's concept of what they want to accomplish, fix, or avoid
The reason sets the call as a high priority for the client
The reason answers the question, "what's in it for me?" for the client
The reason is clear, concise and complete (try thinking about how you would state it in a voice mail to a prospect)

Listen to an example of a well-crafted VBR in this audio download.

Self Development
A common activity that is commonly pushed aside when we get busy is self development. On February 29, commit some time to focus on your development as a sales professional. There are many ways to do this:

Browse the Miller Heiman Knowledge Center for assets that capture your current opportunities and challenges.
Read a book. We recommend The New Conceptual Selling® as a good read to bring you back to the basics.
Catch up on a Sales Performance Tip you've been meaning to read.
Contact a Miller Heiman sales expert to discuss any road blocks you are facing in your professional endeavors. We are always happy to listen to your challenges, and we would love to help you find a solution.

Now that we've provided you with ideas to spend your extra selling day, there is no excuse for letting February 29 go to waste. Make sure you take advantage of this day to catch up on some regretfully neglected activities. After all, February 29 only comes around once every four years.

Miller Heiman Sales Performance Tip - Building Credibility with New Clients

janderson — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 14:56:00 GMT

Building Credibility with New Clients

Whether you are new to sales or have moved into a new sales position, a new job is an opportunity for you to make changes, learn new skills, and open new avenues of business.

If you inherit clients when you change jobs, it's important to start building your credibility and begin prospecting for new opportunities to stay in and get ahead of the game.

When you inherit clients, you're working with accounts that have an impression set by another person. As a first step, you should learn what the shoes look like that you are about to fill. What did the client find most valuable about the previous relationship and where are the areas to improve?

Your reputation can be your best asset with new accounts. It may be best to send a few emails to colleagues to see who may be familiar with the contacts within your new account. Don't be shy about mentioning shared contacts in your initial communications; use the common ground to establish a basis for conversation. By doing so, you provide your new account with a way of verifying your credentials and they, in turn, will feel more comfortable with doing business with you. Not to mention, the transferred credibility can help the client view you as a trusted advisor.

Your introductory letters or emails to the contacts allow you to begin establishing your credibility with the key players and will help you pick up where the other person left off. This helps make the transition easier with the client while earning respect for both you and your company.

Once you have introduced yourself, schedule a time, via phone or in person, to discuss their concept. Inherited accounts come with inherited information, but the information may not always be complete or accurate. By openly seeking a discovery conversation centered on their concept, you show them that your interest in helping them reach their goals is genuine and you have an opportunity to learn their way of thinking first hand.

Working with inherited accounts can seem daunting, especially to new sales professionals. With a little preparation and research, however, you can hit the ground running in your new role and begin prospecting those new accounts immediately.

Boost Win-rates Through Better Deal Management

janderson — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 20:37:00 GMT

Miller Heimen Sale Performance Tips:

The deal in your pipeline was huge and considerable time and resources were devoted to bring it to close – yet it fizzled out and fell through in the end. To make matters worse, this seems to be a trend, and everyone from the sales rep to the executive suite wants to know why.

Large deals create high-impact revenue as well as long-term relationships that can generate additional sales down the road. Understanding how to improve win-rates on large deals is an investment that pays off through more deals closed, additional sales down the road, and fewer wasted resources on deals with low potential.

According to our research, 51 percent of top-performing sales organizations continually utilize a disciplined process to evaluate all large deals, compared to all others at only 39 percent. The difference between the two groups demonstrates the value of taking a structured approach to deal management to impact win-rates.

The Big Picture
When you're working hard to close a large deal, it's easy to get bogged down in the details and miss seeing the forest for the trees. The value of applying a disciplined process to deal management is its ability to give you a better, more objective view of the bigger picture.

Through disciplined deal management, you use a consistent process based on specific criteria to gauge when an opportunity is on-track to close, rather than basing your estimation on gut-feel and chance. Using a consistent process also allows you to more easily discuss the necessary activities for closing a sale with team members.

Consistent use of a disciplined process allows you to:

Evaluate the depth and quality of the information you've gathered
Determine the true position of the opportunity within the sales cycle
Plan the most effective use of time and resources to ensure closing
Build a solid case for securing additional resources as needed
Know if the opportunity is worth a continued investment of time and corporate resources

Knowing when to stop investing in a deal can be difficult without having a pre-determined set of criteria. As each month passes making calls, arranging meetings, and coordinating elements of a solution, calling it quits becomes a more difficult decision to make.

According to our research, we've found that top-performing sales organizations are 97 percent more likely to have an established procedure to know when to stop investing in large deals. Effective deal management gives you the perspective needed to know when to make that call.

The key to impacting win-rates within your sales organization lies in understanding the essential activities that keep the sales cycle moving toward close. Through the use of a consistent, disciplined process for planning, evaluating, and managing your opportunities, you gain insight into the activities that have the greatest impact on your win-rates and the knowledge to make improvements to increase your success in the future.

Create a Competitive Edge: Differentiate

janderson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:45:00 GMT

Best of Miller Heiman Sales Performance Tips

Create a Competitive Edge: Differentiate

Introduction

The value of differentiation cannot be overemphasized. A successful differentiation strategy can help you overcome price competition and sell on value.

In this issue, we feature tips that provide actionable advice for differentiating yourself to meet the needs and motivations of your prospects.

Part 1. Differentiate Yourself: Real World Advice. Customers are finding it more difficult than ever to tell the difference between you and your competition. As industries become increasingly commoditized, competitors simply look more and more the same.

Part 2. Using the customer... to set goals! It may be a matter of semantics but the way you state your goals – by thinking with your customer’s mind – helps you achieve more than if you express your goals with an outsider’s perspective.

Part 3. Competition? What competition? There’s nothing wrong with knowing your competitors personally. In fact, any information you can gather about the sales situation, from whatever source, can be a benefit to you in solidifying your position. But focusing on it might lead you to neglect other information that would be far more valuable in drafting an effective position

Part 1. Differentiate Yourself: Real World Advice

Customers are finding it more difficult than ever to tell the difference between you and your competition. As industries are increasingly commoditized, competitors simply look more and more the same.

Miller Heiman’s Sales Performance Tips subscribers share their own real-world strategies for standing apart from their competition. Here’s what they have to say:

Meet with the Key Buying Influences

In complex selling situations, there are multiple decision makers and influencers. If you’re not meeting with all the key people, you can bet your competition is.

Faisal Salman of HydroAire recommends meeting with each of the key buying influences in the sale as well as the ultimate decision maker, or Economic Buyer. This way you are able to understand what each person wants in the sale so you can show him or her how your solution will add the most value.

Help the Customer Understand Their Needs

Sometimes, customers are so inundated with their own daily issues that their real needs are often shortsighted. At times they can’t see out of the box to identify what they really need. The salesperson who can shine the light on this will stand out.

Bertie Stevenson of Red Eye International recommends identifying what the prospect is trying to achieve in the sale, why they need a change, and what wasn’t working before. Then highlight how your company meets those needs.

Kory Harman tells us she develops a pre-call strategy focusing on everything she knows about a person before she even picks up the phone or walks in the room. She recommends finding this information on the company website in the management bios section.

Don’t Forget the Personal Win

Most salespeople understand the importance of tying their solution to a prospect’s business objectives. But what about the personal wins? Find out what the decision makers want to gain personally and professionally, and highlight how your solution will achieve it.

Gerard Byrne of Roche Diagnostics tells us he uncovers his customer’s personal and professional goals so he is able to tie those goals to his solution and set himself apart from the competition. He says, "Customers today are looking for sales professionals to understand their business while providing the right solution to address their personal and professional needs."

We couldn’t agree more. At Miller Heiman, we speak with customers every day, and we undertake extensive research on the subject. When buyers are evaluating several proposals, it is often impossible to differentiate one proposal from the next. They tell us the effectiveness of the salesperson, not the proposal, is what buyers remember most.

What makes a salesperson effective? David Pearson, Miller Heiman Vice President of Channel Operations says, "You must understand your customer better than anyone else. In the eyes of the customer, you must be viewed a business consultant, not a transactional vendor."

Part 2. Using the customer... to set goals!

Read the following two Goals closely.

Goal: To provide the client greater quality control reliability by replacing their patchwork in-house system with our unified system approach.

Goal: To be seen by the Aerospace Division as the company that brought them greater reliability by upgrading their patchwork in-house system with our unified systems approach.

At first glance, these two goals appear to be virtually identical. They certainly seem to convey the same objectives. But there are differences, substantial ones that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Even though the differences in wording between the two are "minor," there is a critical shift in perspective, moving the focus subtly away from the seller’s contribution to the way the customer would see that contribution. The value-added "reliability" was important, sure. But improved positioning doesn’t come from "reliability" in the abstract. It comes from the customer’s perception of this supplier as the provider of that business result.

Semantics? Don’t believe it. We’ve worked with hundreds of Fortune 500 revenue leaders. Many of them accuse us of playing with words when we insist on the "Be seen as" phrase that is included in the second goal -- until they realize how this "merely semantic" device helps them see themselves as the account is seeing them. And how such "thinking with the customer’s mind" provides leverage in the account that you can never achieve with the more typical "outside" perspective.

Here are further examples of qualitative long-term Goals stated from the account’s point of view:

1. Be known as the firm that helped this account break into the competitive West Coast market.

2. Be seen as providing the best follow-up service of any company in our industry.

3. Have the account recognize our expertise as the provider of unique solutions to his banking problems.

4. Be seen as delivering more than we promise.

Notice two things about these sample Goals. First, although none of them gets down to measurable nuts and bolts, none of them is vague either. When we say that true goals are qualitative, we don’t mean they’re wishy-washy or abstract. In the examples given here, there are clearly defined business elements: "service," "West Coast market," "banking problems." Goals should define specific ends that relate to your business, your customer’s business, and your relationships.

Second, notice that the companies’ end results all relate to the customer’s biggest end result – the bottom line. Each of your Goals should fulfill the implied promise to help the customer run his or her business better. It should help the customer reduce costs, boost sales revenue, improve productivity, or raise profit. A Goal that doesn’t do one of these things -- either directly or indirectly -- is probably not a Goal worth pursuing.

We realize that’s a pretty strong statement. It’s also a very good guideline. If you can’t show a positive impact on your customer’s costs, sales, revenues, productivity, or profits, why would he or she want to do business with you?

Part 3. Competition? What competition?

Be aware of the competition; never obsess about it.

There are some sales experts who advise that, in pitting yourself against a tough competitor, it’s smart to get to know that competitor personally. You should go out of your way to meet the rival company’s salespeople at exhibitions and trade shows, to play golf with them, to get into their heads on a one-to-one basis. Knowing your opposite numbers personally, they suggest, will help you deal more effectively with them in the field. It will defuse the mystery of why they’re a threat to your business, and it will enable you to use "inside information" in countering that threat.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing your competitors personally. In fact, any information you can gather about the sales situation, from whatever source, can be a benefit to you in solidifying your position. The problem with this approach is that it’s misdirected. It can easily turn the Strength of personal knowledge into a Red Flag indicating unidirectional thinking. When you spend all that energy getting to know your competitors personally, you’re very likely to end up with a selling approach that is inordinately focused on the information that they give you. Not only will that information be suspect (consider the source), but focusing on it might lead you to neglect other information that would be far more valuable in drafting an effective position.

For example, you could spend weekend after weekend schmoozing your opposite number George the Gadget Seller, only to discover, some months down the line, that the major customer that both of your companies are targeting has decided to replace its gadget system with widgets -- leaving the two of you equally out in the cold. The moral: picking the brains of the people who sell against you is even less valuable, eventually, than picking your own. The head that you need to get into is your customer’s.

If you think of yourself as focusing on the goal, training hard (through strategic analysis), and running the best race you know how to, you’ll have a good idea of what we believe competition is about. The point is to look straight ahead and offer the customer your best performance, not to be distracted by what’s going on in the next lane. As any competitive runner will tell you, one sure way to stumble is to look to your side.

These tips reference the principles learned in Miller Heiman’s Conceptual Selling® workshop. You may visit www.millerheiman.com/publications and subscribe to receive Sales Performance Tips each month via email. You may also call us at 877-678-0391 to discuss the results you want to improve, and we’ll recommend the workshop that will best address your immediate needs.

About Miller Heiman

Miller Heiman has been a thought leader and innovator in the sales arena for almost thirty years, helping clients worldwide win high-value complex deals, grow key accounts and build winning sales organizations.

The company is headquartered in Reno, Nevada and has offices around the world. More information can be obtained by visiting the company’s website at: www.millerheiman.com.

Miller Heiman Sales Tip of the Month

janderson — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 19:30:00 GMT

Another Reason to Treat Your Clients
Like Gold

It's in a salesperson's nature to get excited about closing new business. Scoring a new client is a reason to celebrate and raise your hand for some well-earned high fives.

But, when looking for revenue opportunities, sticking close to home can have its advantages. Who better do you know than your current accounts? You know their business issues, you know why they decided to do business with you in the first place, and you have established relationships.

When new leads - and oftentimes resources - are scarce, the ability to drive new revenue from existing clients can be a great way to help ensure success. Are you confident that you've already uncovered the full potential from your existing client base? There is likely a gold mine of opportunities waiting to be uncovered by pursuing your existing clients with the same enthusiasm as hunting down a new client.

Maintaining strong relationships with current accounts provides two key benefits:

You retain the existing business
You uncover new opportunities

This is not accomplished through just periodic check-ins or great customer service after the sale; it requires an ongoing commitment from you to continue to win the business. If your competitor was trying to get the client away from you, as they increasingly are when opportunities are scarce, what would your weaknesses be?

As it continues to get harder in the marketplace to differentiate by product offering, you must differentiate yourself by the way you sell and the unique value you can provide. A salesperson who can understand a client's business issues and help craft solutions that help the client succeed are valued and rewarded. Differentiate yourself through your ability to be a well-informed, trusted business resource. When you help your clients achieve their objectives, you'll still get your high fives.

Five Effective Negotiating Steps

janderson — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:07:00 GMT

Please enjoy the tip of the month from Miller Heiman.

Being an effective negotiator means overcoming two of your biggest challenges:

Finding the right balance of what to give and get in order to achieve a win-win
Making sure you receive critical information from your customer

Five Key Steps to Effective Negotiations

Identify the subjective interests in the sale.
Be very specific. Start by writing down your customer’s key motivators, interests and drivers. These are personal to the individual you are negotiating with… how will they win? You may not know all of them, but make some assumptions. You can confirm it later with your customer. Next to that, write down your own interests in the sale.
Define objective criteria.
What are the measurable results that your customer wants to get out of the sale? What are the results that you want? How compatible are these to each other?
Options and alternatives.
Consider what options are already on the table, and what the alternatives would be if the planned agreement didn’t happen. Analyze these because if the alternatives look enticing enough to the customer, they won’t be motivated to move ahead with you. Your job is to make the agreement so enticing that the alternatives aren’t an option for the customer.
Find out more from your customer.
You'll want to use the lists you created in Step 1 as a guide to developing the questions you'll ask your customer. These questions should aim to confirm or deny your hypotheses about where your customer is coming from. Many times, the objective criteria are more obvious, so you may want to focus on better understanding your customer's subjective interests. What personal gains or losses will they experience as a result of this agreement? As you discover more information, you can write this down next to the information you already know to have a more complete picture of both your customer's situation as well as your own.
Decide what information to give ahead of time.
Review the information from Steps 1-3. What information would be helpful to reveal to your customer? Which information should you not disclose? Most often, the subjective interests are the most compelling to share and the least threatening. This can also really help your customer understand your position so that you can achieve a solution that will benefit you as much as your customer.

Understanding the hidden motivators of your customer will enable you to really connect with what your customer wants to achieve. This information also enables you to develop additional options and solutions that will benefit the customer both personally and professionally.

Shot Down by a Gatekeeper

janderson — Tue, 22 May 2007 14:23:00 GMT

I found this article in the Miller Hyman website and thought it would be of value to our agents.

Enjoy and good luck,

Rick

Why didn't we see this coming? When a sure-fire sale goes down the drain because a gatekeeper shoots you down, you want to understand why, and your manager wants to know what happened. So, why do gatekeepers say no?

Who is the gatekeeper? Gatekeepers are people who can't say yes, only no – and usually do. Typically, the gatekeeper role is played by the "Technical Buyer".

In every sale, there are buying influences that must be considered, each with a different point of view and a different reason for considering your proposal. The Technical Buyer is one that can frequently derail your deal because the Technical Buyer's role as gatekeeper is to screen out.
Contrary to popular opinion, Technical Buyers don't say no because they're ornery. They throw blocks in your way because that's their job. It's their task to limit the field of sellers and to come up with a short list. They don't decide who wins, but they do decide who can play.

Technical Buyers make recommendations for how your solution meets specifications. Technical Buyers have various areas of expertise. Their expertise is their knowledge about the measurable and quantifiable aspects of your product, service or solution. Their expertise might be in the area of purchasing, finance, engineering, legal, planning, technology, government requirements, etc. They are concerned with issues such as

does it fit the budget?
is it compatible with existing systems?
is it compliant with standards, like ISO 9001?
does it meet government regulatory guidelines?

Technical buyers make judgments about the measurable and quantifiable aspects of your product or service based on how well it meets a variety of specifications.

For example, even when there's a match between your product or service and the need, a Technical Buyer, such as a purchasing agent, still can throw a wrench into the works by screening you out based on specifications – anything from price and delivery schedules to logistics and references. A personnel manager might block a sale because of a potentially harmful impact on morale. A government contracting officer could screen you out because of regulations. In each of these examples, a Technical Buyer can pull the plug on a sale that everyone else wants.

Before they shoot you down
In identifying the gate-keeping Technical Buyers before they shoot you down, you have to know that their principal focus – the reason they'll recommend you or show you the door – is the solution itself. Therefore, the better you know your solution and understand all the tests it might have to meet, the better your chances of "staying alive".

Tips for working with Technical Buyer gatekeepers
Technical buyers are looking for ways to provide value to their organizations – presenting solutions with heavy discounts, by forcing vendors to compete against each other over price. They're putting a lot more pressure on salespeople to substantiate ROI claims. The following tips can help you make the cut and move the sale forward.

Identify success stories about companies who have successfully used your solutions, and be ready to share them.
Be familiar with specifics on how your solution has positively impacted customers.
Find an "internal coach" to help think through your position.
Work with the Technical Buyer to define and document the business case supporting your solution. Help them achieve the recognition they're after, while improving their internal sales effort.
Be cautious of Requests for Proposals (RFPs). Get in early and help develop the business case that supports your solution.

4 Essential Commitments

janderson — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:17:00 GMT

It happens to us all…an important client meeting with "less than desired" results.

With a little planning and a partnering process for the conversation you'll have with your prospect or client, you can replace that sinking feeling with the knowledge that you've advanced the deal in the sales cycle, or discovered where more work is needed to get past an obstacle.

Arlene Johnson, Miller Heiman sales consultant, shares her experience and offers her advice on how you can, with each conversation, reduce your sales cycles and grow your relationships by getting "buyer buy-in".

Are you prepared for the call?
Suppose you are getting ready for an important client conversation. With less than complete client knowledge, if not "target on", your discussion could produce a meeting outcome where buyer delay results in stalled sales cycles.

On the other hand, planning and using the Four Client Agreements defined below will help you gain the critical information needed to build customer-focused recommendations, move the sales cycle forward and distinguish you as a valuable solutions provider! Treat these agreements as gateways to the next step. If you don't get agreement at any point, you'll need to go back to the previous step.

Try asking for these Four Client Agreements on your next call.

1. The Client Agrees to discuss a Valid Business Reason (VBR).
Used at the beginning of each client phone call, meeting, or presentation. The VBR is a statement to discuss what might be important to the client's business situation. You've done your homework. You understand your client's business and business concerns. When the client agrees that you understand his issues, it promotes interest for an in-depth business discussion and reduces resistance to your well-planned questions!

Tip: The VBR is a value statement from their point of view. It's not about us, so you're not presenting your call objective or solution statement at this point in your conversation.

2. The Client agrees to your understanding of their needs and buying concepts.
Used to summarize and gain agreement on the client's key concepts (what they wish to fix, accomplish or avoid) and their solution image (what they think will address their issues) prior to making any recommendation. The more you understand about the client, the better you will be able to leverage your strengths, minimize your "red flags" where you need additional information or strategy. You are then positioned to overcome price or other obstacles thrown at you by others influencing the buying decision.

Tip: Planning good questions to gain critical information or verify assumptions is well worth the pre-call planning time…especially when on a joint call with a team member!

3. The Client Agrees to your recommendation or solution.
Used to gain agreement from the client that your unique strengths and recommendation fits hand in glove with the client's issues (which you have verified) and their image of the best solution. Gain this agreement prior to discussing which next step in the sales cycle would be most appropriate.

Tip: If there is not enough client information to make the recommendation statement truly customer-focused versus product focused, evidenced by quantifiable client benefit statements…stop, go back and ask more in-depth questions prior to asking for Minimum or Best Action Commitments.

4. The Client Agrees To Next Actions.
Used to gain agreement on the best or minimum action to be taken by you and the client as a result of the conversation. (For example: the client schedules with you the next meeting with additional buying influences; or the client agrees to participate in a demo.) These actions need to be appropriate to where you are in the sales cycle and to the business relationship. This ensures a partnering relationship and moves the sales cycle forward.

Tip: Appropriate Minimum Actions which you have requested, but the client has not agreed to could be a "red flag" for this key decision maker and this opportunity! You may have missing information or need to include strategy for another buying influence. To clear your "red flags", you will need to verify or add information or adjust your strategy.

Planning and conducting calls with the Four Client Agreements as your focus demonstrates to your clients that you understand and provide high value solutions that resolve their issues better than any competitive option. These agreements promote conversations with key buying influences that help mitigate issues and leverage the strengths of your solutions.

I Promise!

Arlene Johnson has over 25 years of experience in sales and executive sales management. She is an independent sales consultant of Miller Heiman.