The first thing that has to be said is that few companies have changed their sales approach in an appreciable way over the last few decades. Yet buyers are seeking to buy and not to be sold to for over a decade.

I still see sales trainings and managers telling their sales and to look at the sales cycle and behave in an way that is inward looking. Sales force automation (SFA) and customer relation management systems (CRM) haven’t really helped to convert the front-line in an outward looking mode and helping people to buy from them instead of being sold to.

I was pleasantly surprised to see one of the outcomes of the 2009 sales conference in Miami where the buying cycle emerged as the new standard for funnel management. I trust this to be a stimulus for all  the Perpetos customers bringing this into practice since 2005. But their is still a long way to go. It is indeed the best way to get subjectivity out of your funnel, yet it demands a mind-shift of the whole sales organisation and another way for management to coach and interact with their sales team. They all must learn to ask way more questions and ‘really’ try to understand what the customer is saying.

The principle is simple: Ask the customer questions which allows you to know the readiness to buy of each individual in the decision making unit (DMU), align them all so that they move through the buying cycle in a synchronised way and adapt your actions to it.

A couple of tips to improve your funnel management:

• Stop tracking and discussing sales steps and process. Start using readiness to buy phases based on reactions and answers to questions from each individual involved in the buying process. Ideally start using the Buying Clock. Using the time on the clock is an easy way for implementing a, consistent used, common language.
• Are we asking for and tracking the next step or are we engaging the sales rep to first decide on the next objective to facilitate the buying process on a project level before deciding what the next step should be, when and with whom? Do we track this in our funnel?
• Track the pain level of the customer by also knowing the impact of the challenges on the customer. Is their a compelling reason or an urgent need?
• Has your sales rep access to the decision maker? Is he continuously involved in the process and kept up to date by the sales rep?
• Is the go-live date the most important date we discuss with the customer? Is it a fixed date and why or can it easily be postponed?  Do we know and  are we tracking the go-live date?
• Has the customer actually confirmed your solution fit and did we postpone drafting the proposal until that moment?
• Split the weight % in 2 distinct ones: project%=what is the probability of the customer actually buying and win% = the probability of you winning the deal.
• Are you tracking the most important mandatory buying criteria and what is the perceived scoring of the customer compared to the competition? Do you discuss ways to influence these buying criteria?

Finally:

• Convert your weighted funnel in a scenario based funnel on which you coach the sales rep.
• Engage in vivid 1:1 discusions with sales to set a continuous improvement process in motion.

Your benefit and result: An accurate forecast with a highly improved visibility.

The most often used funnels nowadays are still based on subjective input from sales. It’s amazing to see how many managers are using such a funnel to predict revenue and use it as the basis for budget exercises.  This is the funnel that most people use yet it is a very outdated model. This type of funnel is an artificial invention taking the eye away from the prospect and puts the focus on sales actions.

The fact that doing something is putting the opportunity on a given point in the funnel is a totally wrong assumption. The thinking is flood. You can give company and product presentations, demo’s, send proposals even when asked, etc without achieving anything. The question is am I doing something which corresponds with the readiness to buy?

Here are the biggest funnel mistakes:

• input based on subjective sales rep input. The gut feeling of sales people in terms of funnel management are seldom correct because:
  • they are to closely involved to have an overall view
  • most sales are to much influenced by the opinion of their ’sponsor’ and/or last sales action
  • they have too little visibility on what’s happening at decision level
  • not enough, if at all, contact with the ‘real’ decision makers
• individual forecast building by using a percentage win-rate on each of the opportunities. Most funnels at sales rep level and even on corporate level have to little opportunities at the same stage with too much variation in size
• defined by selling activities: performing activities is not necessarily moving the opportunity closer to a decision
• lack of common definitions
• imposed as a reporting tool and not as a day to day self-coaching tool: The funnel will never be up to date or based on careful thinking if it is not in a format, and incorporated in the way of working, which influences the agenda and behavior of the sales rep
• tracking and reviews based on must win deals resulting in starved pipelines and pushing salespeople to do the right things at the wrong time.

Helping management and the VP sales to more accurately predict the revenue is to convert the funnel into a buying funnel which tracks the readiness to buy of the opportunity. This is even more true in more complex sales with quit an amount of people involved in the decision taking. Because each of the involved people have their own agenda and readiness to buy which must be synchronized in order to move the opportunity closer to a decision in the quickest way possible.

The mental stages a buyer is going through: These phases are universal and cultural independent.

• execution of existing solution and not interested in any information or offering in that area
• executuion and interested: something triggered the person to want to know more about something
• Field of Tension: Starts with an admitted pain which evolves over time into an urgent need. This results in the decision to buy something
• Market Research: The prospect goes out to the market to search for potential solutions and vendors
• Hesitation: This phase starts when the prospect thinks to be convinced to buy what from whom. At his point the focus shifts from looking to the benefits and advantages of acquiring the solution to all what can go wrong after having bought.
• Implementation: This is the period during which the solution is being implemented.
• Execution: The solution is in full use until the cycle starts all over again.

Perpetos has converted these phases into a 24 hour buying clock™.

Some of the reported results you acquire by this system are:

• a true shift towards customer focused thinking and acting
• an objective pipeline with a much better accuracy
• improved internal communication based on the hours of the clock
• lower cost of sales (i.e. less multiple people meetings because sales and pre-sales exactly determine when their presence is needed)
• improved hit rate
• more balanced pipeline

Let my know your experiences!

Trying to create certainty by extrapolating a known past into a bright future has definitely proofed to create an illusion of predictability. Spreadsheet management as a way to do business planning has been a common practice for too long in too many companies.  Optimal functioning and productivity of people has long been linked to the wrong assumption that people need certainty. The difficulty to break the ’status quo’ within companies, and definitely the political world, has supported this way of thinking. People prefer the known discomfort over the unknown future.

Seneca once wrote: “The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.” Yet uncertainty is the only certainty.

It is my conviction and experience that people are not afraid of change but are afraid of the unknown personal impact of the change. Too many leaders and managers are trying to sell certainty to overcome this. Yet many studies have proven over and over again that people need a certain level of discomfort to to stimulate creativity, productivity and focus.

The reason for all of this is the fact that their is no such thing as rational decision making. Dan Ariely (author of Predictably irrational) wrote the following in a recent Harvard business review: ‘Your company has been operating on the premise that people (customers, employees, managers) make logical decisions. It’s time to abandon this assumption”

Creating an environment of  ‘balanced uncertainty’ is therefore the biggest challenge moving forward.

The following is key to success:

• Transparent communication whereas the truth can be said, problems and mistakes surfaced and discussed as soon as possible. Jim Collins already referred to this as facing the brutal facts;
• Building trust, thus building an environment where openness gets rewarded
• Avoid or get rid of a diluted corporate DNA
• Offering a realistic challenge in order to stimulate motivation, creativity and innovation
• and above all walk the talk 

Are you ready to maximize the potential of your people?

It’s amazing how time flies when I see how long it took to find the time to finalize the second part.

Yet it was worth waiting since I’ve been involved in 2 change projects at the same time where I could practice my previous blog and can deliver this post with 2 recent cases incorporated.

10 must do’s: (Part II, 6 -10):  post with must do’s 1-5

• Build an experience sharing platform: It’s amazing to see how much information and experience stays underutilized and leaves the company with former employees. An experience sharing platform, ideally, managed my marketing is pivotal to leverage, study and optimize the best practices. Sales-marketing alignment is the immediate result. The platform consists of a small set of sales-ready deliverables which are kept up to date per segment and key-contact in the buying process of prospects and customers. Regular sales meetings with best practice sharing and assisted by marketing are the starting point. Ask your sales to send a blackberry style email with the summary of meetings (especially on pains, challenges and capabilities) and make sure marketing has access to that information in order to keep the best practice up to date.
• Facilitate market ready innovation: The information gathered during the visits by marketing (see  post with must do’s 1-5) and aforementioned internal meetings will deliver a wealth of information to help inform and educate R&D and product management on market needs and what they should be capable of doing. I’m still surprised to see how R&D,  product- marketing and management are limited in their view and understanding of the market because sales is translating customer needs in features themselves leading to the battle of prioritizing development on the product roadmap. On the contrary of what they think at a first glance, R&D and product marketing/management will be able to be creative and innovative to an unprecedented level because they will understand the native customer environment.
• Educate your internal customers: Increase the value of the marketing department by playing a pivotal role in all communication from and to the market. Keep the following up to date:
  • win/loss reasons by calling key decision makers per deal yourself a couple of weeks after a decision has been taken. Assemble those winning and losing buying criteria per supplier;
  • best practice per segment and key-contact and use it as a base platform to streamline interdepartmental communication;
  • prioritised market pain/capability area’s for which the product should be upgraded.
  • This will enable you to monitor proposed product upgrades and new versions in terms of competitiveness and hit-rate thanks to a better coverage of market needs.
  • It will also enable you to focus your external market education to a group of prospects who are seeking your leadership.
• Implement a lead nurturing program: You main mission next to the management of the experience sharing platform deliverables and educating internal customers is to deliver ‘real’ sales ready leads. The only ROI based approach is to start communicating with your targeted market on a continuous basis with ‘role-based’ messaging. Meaning language adapted to the specific role in the company of each of the different contacts involved in the decision making process. also see: necessity of lead nurturing
• Measure and communicate: Make sure you can measure most if not all of the marketing activities. It will help you to communicate progress on all these area’s. Some of the mentioned points might be quit heavy change projects and thus will take time, patience and continuous improvement. This is the best way to ensure a large enough budget to accomplish all of the 10 must do’s.

Have fun implemeting the 10 rules to be a topnotch B2B marketer and keep me posted on experience and/or challenges.

I’ve seen some hardworking marketing people over the last few months trying about everything to get more qualified leads and have a better view on the market. Indeed 2 critical elements during a recession. These are extremely important KPI’s in order to improve the sales effectiveness.

Looking back on my days in the states and some best practices build over the course of time, I learned a number of lessons that I think contribute to being a successful B2B marketer. It asks for a lot of discipline and hard work but the result will be measurable ROI and appreciation from your colleagues

10 must do’s: (Part I, 1 – 5)

• Visit your customers: The best way to know your market is visiting customers and prospects. Research done by Micheal Treacy shows that “Watching what the customers actually do is more reliable than listening to what they say”. Don’t rely on market research. 
  • Talk to the users
  • Understand what problems they were faced with prior to be enabled by your solution
  • Be able to quantify the situation before and after
  • Write a half-page pain-based reference story in bullet format from the perspective of each impacted “role” in the company to be used by sales when they speak to these people.
• Segment the market based on your differentiation:you can read more on segmentation in a previous blogpost: Segmentation: increase the hit-rate and lower the cost of sales
• Educate the market: Building content deliverables such as white-papers, case studies, etc.. are the best tools in the quest to become top of mind. These deliverables should use the valuable information gathered during your prospect and customer visits. Don’t talk about your product/services or their benefits but rather explain a recognizable situation as is and a situation to be.
• Support Sales:One of your key roles is to facilitate sales’ ability to sell with the highest possible margin at the lowest possible cost of sales. Above mentioned deliverables are also key in helping your sales collegues to better understand their market. Work with them to build face2face best practices that work. You’re in the pivotal position to create and maintain an experience sharing platform.
• Study your competitors:Focus on their strengths not on their weaknesses and make sure you educate your internal and external customers on your differentiation not on your competitors. I see to many competitive reports and presentations leading to: ” We can do what they do and even better”. This makes your strategy to become defensive and positions you as a follower rather then a leader.

Don’t miss Part II, must-do’s 6-10 on “How to be a topnotch B2B marketer”

“One of the core challenges of turnaround leadership is how much to share the bad news. On one hand, you want people to understand the depth of the challenges and the need for dramatic action. If you share too little information, you risk creating a vicious cycle in which people cling to overly optimistic views, and so do too little too late. Then, as hopes repeatedly get dashed, the credibility of the leader can be rapidly and irretrievably damaged.
On the other hand, confidence is itself in a variable in the turnaround equation. If you tell people the full truth as you believe it to be, you risk generating a panic or an equally dangerous dynamic of denial. Either way, it can lead people to take actions that can easily reinforce the downward cycle. In business, for example, perceptions that the ship is going down unsurprisingly tend to trigger the departure of the best people.
So in many ways you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Welcome to the situation current facing our new President.”

This of course, is a far more serious situation then the one I described in my post. Yet I could conclude, based on the parallel, that it’s best to share the full truth on rather “operational” challenges.  It will stimulate change and create some kind of a burning platform that will fuel motivation and team spirit leading to focused actions.

Driving back from one of those, I  kept on asking myself why are some executives playing down on the brutal facts expressed by a direct report?  The one I just witnessed was a VP sales stating: “We will have to solve some serious internal challenges in order to make our numbers this year. The current economic situation will only be an excuse in our case because…” and he continued by briefly explaining why the company should hardly be affected by the situation and some internal issues which they have been unable to solve in the last couple of years.

His speech was followed by the CEO introducing the next speaker and at the same time down played the challenges by stating:  “During my decennia long tenure these problems have always been there so there is no need to be worried”.

What could be the reason and how to find the right balance?

Could this behaviour come from convictions such as:

• My people can’t handle the hard reality. That’s why I’m a CxO.
• They will be so worried that their performance will decrease.
• Boosting motivation is best achieved by good news and pep talk.
• They will think I’m a bad CxO.

I’d love to see some comments on this topic and maybe some idea’s on how to tackle such problems.