Carpenter & Associates Blog

B2B sales can be tough, albeit rewarding work, so celebrate success when key milestones are achieved.

Celebrate successes that utilize your new sales strategy and plans, which you launched at your sales meeting. Nearly every successful sales organization is very effective at rewarding accomplishment of numerical goals  such as achieving sales quotas, selling new products and winning new customers in a new market segment. However, depending on the length of your customers’ buying process, that may be too late to wait. This is because waiting until the end of the year means you’re missing an opportunity to motivate now!  By motivating your sales force now, you can positively impact sales performance and achieve your goals, by implementing the new strategy.

There are many people who would be motivated by a mid-year celebration, including:

The Achiever: Salesperson that achieves the milestone. Of course offering a financial reward such as a bonus is almost always a good thing. Try focusing, however, on the recognition you should give to the achiever. Benefits to recognizing an achiever include maintaining a high level of motivation and retention.

Accountability of new sales behaviors is the key to successfully executing your sales strategy.

Most of us are skilled at keeping ourselves and others accountable for achieving numerical performance goals. Don’t forget, however, to keep yourself and your salespeople accountable for the new behaviors that are required to successfully implement the sales strategy launched at your annual sales meeting.

Role of sales manager

Expectations: Be clear and specific and provide examples of the sales behaviors you expect.

Report: Ask your salespeople to report on situations in which they've used the new sales behaviors.

Review: Review these reports periodically with your salespeople. I recommend reviewing several of the first reports. This is important for a couple of reasons, not least of which is that all salespeople know right away that you are following through on your expectations. Another reason is so that you can identify those people who are exhibiting the new sales behaviors and acknowledge them. This will also help you identify those salespeople who are not using the new sales behaviors and have a follow-up conversation with them.

Unlock your customer secrets by asking smarter questions.

Smarter questions are part of an effective Discovery process that is essentially an investigation. This assumes that you've already established trust with your customer. Want to know more about trust? Check out this blog post. 

As in any investigation, the investigator needs to ask the right questions in the right way, to the right people, in order to come to the proper conclusion.

So, the ability to interview well is a vital skill for any salesperson looking to make the most of the Discovery process. 

CUSTOMER

The customer is a large and growing registered broker/dealer and investment advisory subsidiary of one of the world’s largest financial services firms. They offer services and products available to individuals and small businesses including:

Annuities

Business, retirement, and estate planning

Financial planning

Mutual funds

BUSINESS SITUATION

The company’s senior management team faced many complex issues including increased competitive pressures.

They wanted to achieve several very important objectives including increasing share of wallet. 

A key to their sales strategy was developing special relationships with talented, capable financial professionals in their local communities. Sales associates were very good at selling a financial plan, but not good at selling the complete suite of services and products.

The company hires over 1,250 new financial planners every year. The company wanted to get salespeople up to speed more quickly so that timeframes to make sales would be reduced, and revenue generation would increase. In addition, they wanted all sales managers to actively coach salespeople by reinforcing the training once associates completed the program and to help associates implement the skills on the job. 

By helping your customer clearly define their success, as describe by a theme, you will be successful.

What Does the Prospect Want?

Once you and the prospect thoroughly understand the current situation , to fully identify the gap, you need to discuss where they want to be in the future. For instance, here are some areas that should be considered:

Changes – Under optimum conditions, what types of changes and improvements would the organization like to see?  What products or services would they like to be able to offer that they currently don't? What current lines would they like to expand or retire?  What cultural changes would they like to see adopted?

It’s all about increasing your share of wallet with your key accounts!

Customer

A leading manufacturer in the consumer and industrial paper and packaging products industry

Business Situation

They saw that they weren’t fully leveraging their business value in their relationships with key accounts. Their ability to expand their product mix and presence inside these accounts was hindered by the limited number of contact points at the senior leadership level. As a result, they wanted to focus the efforts of their elite group of Strategic Account Managers (SAMs) on expanding their business within existing key accounts, increasing relationships and more successfully connecting to their customers’ strategies. 

Help your customer and yourself-identify “the gap”, that space between what an organization currently has and what it wants.

As I've discussed previously, there are often problems and needs that are not readily obvious to the salesperson or the customer. But with an effective discovery process these hidden needs can be uncovered and addressed.

This post and the next will break down in more detail the two aspects of a customer's business that will help you, as a consultative salesperson, to establish your prospect's status quo and their desired outcome, therefore identifying the gap.

What Does the Prospect Already Have?

The first step in establishing the gap is to determine what the prospect brings to the table.  For instance, here are some areas that should be considered:

• The Current Situation – Where does the organization currently stand financially?  What products and services are they currently using?  What research and development efforts are being carried out, and what are the results?  What market competition are they currently facing and how are they faring in comparison to their competition?  Are they currently gaining or losing market share?  How is morale?  What is the current culture inside the organization?

Your stint as the VP of sales will be short if you don't create a learning culture!

Sales Management Point of View: Your success is totally dependent on your sales organization and on how fast and effectively your organization can present your best solution in a constantly changing, competitive environment. A learning culture can help your sales force present your best solution to every prospect every time.

Creating a learning culture is about “realigning company culture so there is something in it for everyone that’s key…just like what it will take for you to have a festive and enjoyable holiday season with your friends and family. Making that spirit endure over time with a workable plan is challenging in a company just as it is in a family, but essential to realize the value from the thinking and associated technologies.” Oliver Marks – ZDNET

The degree to which the sales organization’s culture supports change and the use of new strategies and plans has a significant impact on the successful implementation of the plans and, ultimately, increasing sales results.

The Discovery process, when handled properly as a mutual process, reveals clearly what problems face your prospect and what options exist for solving those problems. 

But it does more than that.

If the salesperson takes a consultative approach from the start, going into the Discovery process with no preconceived notions, it can actually let him see what would otherwise be invisible.

Hidden Needs

The Discovery process can reveal hidden needs the customer may not even realize exist.  Not that the salesperson fabricates needs that weren't actually there.  Rather, he helps the customer see what has been there all along.

Do yourself a favor: help your salespeople get better at discovery.

Do you know why your salespeople are failing and what you can do about it?

You know that discovery is most effective when it’s a mutual process: getting the customer involved from day one to make sure they are completely committed to the outcome because they helped shape the outcome.

What is the alternative to this scenario?

Failure