SALES FORCE AUTOMATION [1]

 

Managing the Sales Force
Traits of Successful Salespeople
•Enthusiasm •Patience •Initiative •Self-Confidence •Job Commitment •Customer Orientation •Independent	•Self-Motivated •Excellent Listeners •Friendly •Persistent •Attentive •Honest	•Internally Motivated •Relationship Oriented •Disciplined •Hardworking •Team Players

Sales-force automation
Sales-force automation (SFA) was the original form of CRM. It applies technology to the management of a company’s selling activities. The selling process can be decomposed into a number of stages such as lead generation, lead qualification, needs identification, development of specifications, proposal generation, proposal presentation, handling objections and closing the sale. Sales-force automation software can be configured so that is modelled on the selling process of any industry or organization.
 

Sales-force automation software enables companies automatically to record leads and track opportunities as they progress through the sales pipeline towards closure. Intelligent applications of SFA are based on comprehensive customer data made available in a timely fashion to salespeople through various media such as desktops, laptop and handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and cell-phones. Sales-force automation software has several capabilities, including opportunity management, contact management, proposal generation and product configuration.
 

Opportunity management lets users identify and progress opportunities to sell from lead status through to closure and beyond, into after sales support. Opportunity management software usually contains lead management and sales forecasting applications. Lead management applications enable users to qualify leads and direct them, perhaps automatically, to the appropriate salesperson. Sales forecasting applications generally use transactional histories and salesperson estimates to produce estimates of future sales.
 

Contact management lets users manage their communications programme with customers. Customer databases are developed in which contact histories are recorded. Contact management applications often have features such as automatic customer dialling, the salesperson’s personal calendar and e-mail functionality. For example, it is usually possible to build e-mail templates in Microsoft Outlook that can be customized with individual customers’ details before delivery. Templates can be built that thank a client for an order, or to present a quotation. Salesforce automation is grounded on the right customer information being made available to the right sales team members and/or customers at the right point of time. In multiperson decision-making units, it is important to identify which people need what information. Companies should try to get the right information to the right person (see Case 1.1).

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Case 1.1
Sales-force automation at Roche
Roche is one of the world’s leading research-based healthcare organizations, active in the discovery, development and manufacture of pharmaceuticals and diagnostic systems. The organization has traditionally been product-centric and quite poor in the area of customer management. Roche’s customers are medical practitioners prescribing products to patients.
Customer information was previously collected through several mutually exclusive sources, ranging from personal visits to handwritten correspondence, and not integrated into a database or central filing system, giving incomplete views of the customer. Roche identified the need to adopt a more customer-centric approach to understand their customers better, to improve services offered to them and to increase sales effectiveness.
Roche implemented a sales force automation system where all data and interactions with customers are stored in a central database which can be accessed throughout the organization.
This has resulted in Roche being able to create customer profiles, segment customers, and
communicate with existing and potential customers. Since its implementation Roche has been
more successful in identifying, winning and retaining customers.

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Proposal generation applications allow the salesperson to automate the production of proposals for customers. The salesperson enters details such as product codes, volumes, customer name and delivery requirements, and the software automatically generates a priced quotation that takes into account the customer’s relational status. Casual customers can generally expect to pay more than strategically significant customers.
 

Product configuration software allows salespeople automatically to design and price customized solutions to customer problems. Configurators are useful when the product is particularly complex, such as IT solutions. Configurators are based on an ‘if . . . then’ rules structure. The general case of this rule is ‘If X is chosen, then Y is required or prohibited or legitimated or unaffected.’ For example, if the customer chooses a particular feature (say, a particular hard drive for a computer), then this rules out certain other choices or related features that are technologically incompatible or too costly or complex to manufacture
 

The technology side of SFA is normally accompanied by an effort to improve and standardize the selling process. This involves the implementation of a sales methodology. Sales methodologies allow sales team members and management to adopt a standardized view of the sales cycle, and a common language for discussion of sales issues. Many methodologies have been developed over the years, including SPIN (Fig. 1.3), Target Account Selling (TAS), RADAR10 and Strategic Selling.
 

Some companies face particularly complex selling tasks. This is especially true of mission-critical multimillion dollar sales such as the sales of defence systems to national governments. Here, a team of people from the supply side will sell to a team from the government/customer side over a long period, possibly several years. There will be a large number of contact episodes to understand, develop and deliver to very demanding customer specifications. It is clearly essential to track carefully the status of the opportunity and manage contacts in the most effective and efficient way. Even where the selling context is significantly less complex, SFA still holds out the promise of better contact and opportunity management.

How Sales Teams should use CRM   From CRM Magazine February 2006)

Making Sense Of Sales  Software to improve your sales process may finally be ready for prime time.  From BusinessWeek.com, spring 2006

11 Ways to Ensure CRM Success   Consultants were  asked to list some common CRM mistakes, and to then advise readers on how to avoid them.
by Colin Beasty   From CRM Magazine December 2005

Barriers to CRM Success  Tech obstacles to CRM success can be considerable, but others include process and people concerns--read here about two companies' experiences.  by Colin Beasty From CRM Magazine May 2006

100 Proven CRM Ideas, Part 1 ...successful and disastrous: 90 bright ideas for your CRM strategy and 10 dim ones to avoid. Edited by David Myron  From CRM Magazine June 2005

From CRM to the Customer-Centric Enterprise

Sales Force Automation and Sales Technology   From KnowThis

 

	Always Be Closing (how salespeople use mobile technology) Mobile Enterprise
	Turning Sales Into Science (technologies for the sales force) Inc Magazine
	Pointing to Profits (technologies to improve selling) CRM Magazine
	Making Sense of Sales (CRM for small business) BusinessWeek
	How Sales Teams Should Use CRM destination CRM
	Is SFA Back in Style? CRM Daily

Turning Sales Into Science

It's a question almost as old as commerce itself: Is selling an art or a science? For years, technology companies have been trying to transform the former into the latter. And for years, the results have largely been disappointing.

From: Inc. Magazine, December 2006 | By: Alex Salkever

Think of those days as Sales 1.0. We're now in the era of Sales 2.0. Your bottom line may never be the same.

Remember the bad old days of sales-oriented technology? Customer relationship management systems that cost a fortune to install and crashed easily. Downloadable lists of sales leads filled with old or bogus data. E-mail marketing tools that targeted the wrong consumers. And on and on.

Fortunately, software firms that target small companies with sales tools have been getting smarter and smarter. Following pioneers such as Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) and NetSuite, a new generation of companies is offering easy-to-use, cheap (indeed, often free) technology that can supercharge the performance of your sales force--with minimal training and virtually none of the heavy-duty installation associated with the CRM systems of the past. With lead-generation and networking services, e-mail marketing products, relationship managing tools, and other bells and whistles, it's now possible to turn a sales operation into a gleaming high-tech machine. Here's a quick tutorial on some of the new tools and a nine-step guide to launching your sales force into the future.

1. Build a bigger Rolodex

The Products
Jigsaw, Ziggs, ZoomInfo, Spoke

How They Work
It's said that a salesperson is only as good as his or her Rolodex. Fortunately, it's now easy to have a much, much bigger Rolodex. There are a number of websites that invite businesspeople to upload and share their contacts with one another. The most popular is probably Jigsaw, which boasts 4.3 million contacts from professionals in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Subscribers can pay $25 per month to download 25 new contacts; you also can upload contacts from your own Rolodex in exchange for Jigsaw points, which can be accumulated and used for more downloads. Once you're signed up, most contacts come with direct phone lines and e-mail addresses; if a contact turns out to have bad information, Jigsaw awards points to users who report the problem and docks the user who uploaded the info. Two other online services, Ziggs and ZoomInfo, allow users to pay to download contacts or add their own profile. ZoomInfo also provides sales data and listings of competitors within industries, a neat tool.

Other services are taking the kinds of lists traditionally offered by Hoover's and InfoUSA (NASDAQ:IUSA) and putting them on a dose of steroids. Spoke takes big lists from providers like InfoUSA, enhances them by combining these lists with Web search data and user-validated list data, and adds it all together to create better lists. Spoke also makes it easy to slice and dice them by industry, geography, company, or revenue level. Ziggs is free; ZoomInfo is free for basic service, but advanced searches can cost as much as $12,000 a year.

Case In Point
As the director of inside sales at Bay Area e-mail security provider PostX, John Fales has long used the Web to prospect sales leads. But using Google can be time-consuming and cumbersome. And the lists provided by major providers were often filled with incomplete or outdated information. Then Fales heard about Jigsaw. The service made it a cinch to find multiple decision makers inside large companies and organizations. Fales says use of Jigsaw has sliced more than 50 percent off the PostX sales cycle. "We've been able to get into accounts very quickly as well as find a variety of potential players in a position to buy the product through the service," he says. "It's been consistently helpful. It would be very difficult to go back to the old way."

2. Network more efficiently

The Products
LinkedIn, Ryze, BranchIt, CompanyClick

How They Work
The kids have MySpace and Facebook, and it's hard not to be envious. In a matter of hours online, they're building vast networks of connections--the kinds of networks that take businesspeople years of mixers and rubber-chicken dinners to create.

Unless you're selling something like video games or skateboarding gear, you're probably not going to have much luck marketing on MySpace. Fortunately, a number of social networking services geared toward small business have emerged. They promise to change the way we network forever. Palo Alto, California-based LinkedIn, for example, is often described as MySpace for businesspeople. You won't find videos, MP3s, or other flashy media on the site's bare-bones profile pages. What you will find are resumés, people's professional affiliations, special interests--and lots of them. LinkedIn has nearly eight million registered users from more than 100 countries spanning 130 separate industries, including thousands of top executives.

LinkedIn users build connections by asking friends and business associates who are already LinkedIn members to join their networks. You also can solicit others to join; indeed, a downloadable toolbar that runs in Microsoft Outlook makes inviting people to join your network a two-click affair. Once you've joined, it's easy to search for specific types of users--say, a network manager at a large company or a record producer in Los Angeles. The catch is that you can connect only with someone who is within three degrees of separation--in other words, a friend of a friend of a friend--and it must be done by asking a direct connection to pass on your message via an introduction. Contacting those you're not connected with can be done, but only for a fee. Memberships range from free to $200 a month. Other business-oriented social networking services, such as Ryze and CompanyClick, work in a similar fashion--though neither boasts as big a network as LinkedIn's.

Meanwhile, other new and intriguing sales tools figure out ways to harness the collective network of an entire company. So-called relationship mining software made by San Francisco-based BranchIt, for example, combs through all of the correspondences and files on a corporate network to create a map of each employee's external relationships--allowing individual salespeople to tap into the collective knowledge of their organizations.

Case In Point
Roy de Souza, CEO of Zedo, an online advertising company in San Francisco, was surfing through his LinkedIn network, which has 271 direct connections, when he noticed that one of his friends knew the COO of BitTorrent, a company that makes software that allows Internet users to download software, videos, and music faster. Zedo sent a lunch invitation to the COO through LinkedIn via his friend. "I only wanted to have lunch and talk about the company. He told me to talk to their head of advertising technology, as they were shopping for ad servers," says Souza. "We signed a contract a few weeks later." De Souza loves the way LinkedIn can essentially take cold calls and warm them up through shared friends and shared background information.

3. Find better sales leads

The Product
Spoke

How It Works
In years past, marketers approached lists of sales leads with extreme wariness. They'd take a deep breath and pray that the data was decent. Spoke removes at least some of the faith from the equation. The company takes existing list data and checks it against online information, even going so far as to send e-mails to individuals on lists asking them to validate their information. It then maps relationships between list leads and salespeople in a manner similar to what LinkedIn does, and allows users to search by such criteria as industry, location, and revenue. Checked against multiple sources of data, these new lists eliminate a lot of bad information. Spoke is free if you're willing to share your own data; otherwise it runs about $50 a month. It's not perfect. But it's far more likely than old-school lists of leads to contain sales gems.

Case In Point
Scott B. Marsh, vice president of sales at recruiting software company SonicRecruit, based in Emeryville, California, has never been a big fan of lead lists; in fact, after wasting hours trying to contact people who'd long since changed jobs, he'd sworn off them entirely.

Nonetheless, earlier this year, Marsh decided to try Spoke, which boasts 32 million personal profiles culled from nearly a million companies worldwide. Almost immediately the service began paying off, saving Marsh and his sales team precious time. He estimates that since his sales force started using Spoke, it has sliced a full 25 percent off the time required to find the right contact in a company. "I can't remember what it was like before we used it," he says.

4. Make the buyers come to you

The Products
Leads.com, Ingenio, eStara

How They Work
For businesses that primarily serve local customers, the promise of the Internet has long been tantalizing. However, the inability of search engines to match up customer queries with truly local ads has made collecting sales leads online difficult. That has begun to change, as Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), MSN, and AOL (NYSE:TWX) have ramped up their local search functions. Indeed, online local advertising is poised to jump 53 percent, to $2 billion in 2007, according to Web research shop eMarketer.com. Meanwhile, a number of start-ups targeting local advertisers are providing new vehicles for local online advertising.

Leads.com, for example, converts a customer's online queries into e-mails that are sent directly to an advertiser's in box. Then there are pay-to-call services such as eStara and Ingenio, which convert online ads into phone calls by posting a toll-free number in a Web ad. Clients are charged a certain amount per call, and, unlike with typical phone calls, businesses can track the origins of each lead--and, as a result, the efficacy of the ad campaign. Prices vary, depending on the nature of the campaign, ranging from $2 to as much as $30 per call. But studies suggest that it's worth the expense: According to one survey, pay-to-call has been found to have lead conversion rates three to five times higher than traditional Web text ads.

Case In Point
In January 2006, Kevin Couser, the CEO of Couser Supply, a construction supplies company in Woodlawn, Maryland, got an e-mail on his BlackBerry from a hotel engineer at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C. The hotel, which was undergoing a renovation, was looking for someone to supply ceiling tiles. The engineer, it turned out, had found Couser Supply through an advertisement on the Web at Google's local pages--an ad placed for him by Leads.com. The Hyatt account ended up bringing in $23,000. And such results are hardly unusual.

Couser sets a fixed monthly online ad budget, picks keywords, and Leads.com does the rest, bidding on keyword auctions and plotting the most cost-effective balance of keywords and placements. Couser gets 40 to 50 sales requests a week, many delivered directly to his e-mail account. In fact, he now gets so much business online that he's pretty much stopped buying print ads. While he's spending a lot more for marketing--nearly $3,800 a month, or 20 percent more than in the past--he's getting a far greater return on his investment. The company's revenue has grown from $1.9 million in 2004 to more than $4 million in 2006. Says Couser, "When people go on the Internet locally they've already decided to buy. They are just looking for somewhere to buy it."

5. Focus on your best prospects

The Products
Eloqua, ExactTarget, VerticalResponse

How They Work
All sales leads are not created equal. The challenge is identifying the promising ones and giving them top priority. In the past, this involved syncing sales data with often pricey demographic information, a service that was well beyond the reach of most small businesses. But in a Sales 2.0 world, that's no longer the case. Software from companies like Eloqua and ExactTarget lets marketers sift through data contained in, say, an online sweepstakes entry, to more easily identify likely buyers. The software ranks your leads, based on a complex analysis of e-mail addresses, the tenor of a response, and other factors. That makes it easier to focus subsequent campaigns on better targets.

Case In Point Bella Pictures, a San Francisco-based wedding photography service that matches photographers with brides and grooms nationwide, was looking to beef up its customer database. So in conjunction with popular wedding sites the Knot and the Wedding Channel, the company launched a sweepstakes giving away photography services. Bella Pictures assumed interest would be heavy. But the company's sales staff found itself overwhelmed with nearly 5,000 entries a month. It was nearly impossible to keep up, let alone separate the strong leads from the weaker ones.

So Bella Pictures installed Eloqua Express, which is geared specifically to small companies. The software automatically filters each new entry through a rating system and ranks prospects on a scale of 1 to 100. In the 10 months since signing up with Eloqua, Bella Pictures has received about 40,000 sweepstakes entries. The software has enabled the company to screen out 35 percent instantly. "Typically, in marketing, people talk about sweepstakes and they say they give you lousy leads," says David Kreitzer, the company's director of inside sales. "We have found the opposite to be true--as long as you pick the right leads." At about $20,000 a year, Eloqua isn't cheap. But Kreitzer has no regrets. By focusing only on the strongest prospects, Bella Pictures has increased its number of face-to-face meetings some 75 percent. In addition to helping salespeople prioritize, the software led to valuable insights about the company's customers. Many respondents, for example, signed in from corporate e-mail accounts. Based on that information, the company is devising ways to target consumers in the workplace.

6. Warm up your cold calls

The Product
Before the Call

How It Works
So you've got your target list. Now it's time to start selling. Think a minute before you pick up the receiver. Do you know anything about the people you'll be calling? Do you know anything other than their phone numbers and job titles? The imperfect remedy for this vacuum of information has been a Google search. No longer. Services such as Before the Call automatically scour the Internet, data from providers like Hoover's and Factiva, and their own proprietary database for news articles. Before the Call can be integrated with CRM systems from Salesforce.com and Oracle OnDemand, making it easy to keep databases up-to-date and full of new and timely information. Before the Call charges about $75 to $125 per user per month.

Case In Point
Andrew Creach had a hot sales lead--and a problem. A sales manager at Intervoice (NASDAQ:INTV), a Dallas-based provider of call center software, Creach was targeting a major financial services company. But his contact there was only authorized to make decisions for one department. Intervoice's systems are expensive and designed to run call centers for entire companies. A quick Before the Call search helped. Creach learned how Intervoice could work elsewhere in the company; he also came away with some good contact information. He crafted a new pitch, designed to appeal to multiple decision makers. The result? A six-figure opportunity for Intervoice. "It was invaluable for navigating a company this big," Creach says. Indeed, Creach estimates that since subscribing to Before the Call about a year ago, Intervoice's sales team has become 20 to 30 percent more efficient.

7. Get more out of your salespeople

The Products
Landslide, ShareMethods

How They Work
Managers have long sought to manage their salespeople. And salespeople, being an independent lot, have tended to dismiss such efforts as meddling. Indeed, that's been a huge problem with CRM systems, which require salespeople to spend too much time entering data into cumbersome and crash-prone systems. But new so-called guided selling is now adaptable enough to automate and provide a flexible script for the sales process while making the lives of salespeople easier. These guided selling programs incorporate elements of traditional CRM and contact management but also add some new tricks to make the sales process run more smoothly--giving sales staffers what they need, when they need it, to close a deal. Key players include Landslide, which runs $100 per user per month, and ShareMethods, which costs $25 per user per month.

Case In Point
Peter Seiff is a vice president of sales at Aethon, a Pittsburgh-based vendor of robotic devices designed to push carts around hospitals. Needless to say, the decision to lease a robot to roam hospital corridors is not undertaken lightly. Closing a deal means convincing a range of people--the directors of nursing, food service, maintenance, and technology, not to mention the financial executives who sign the $1,500 monthly lease checks. And each group requires a different sales pitch and process.

So you've got your target list. Now it's time to start selling. Think a minute before you pick up the receiver. Do you know anything about the people you'll be calling?

That's where automation comes in. Seiff turned to a sales process management system from Landslide. The system allows Seiff to create sales scripts, white papers, graphics, and other sales tools that reps in the field can access when speaking to different kinds of decision makers. "If the vice president of nursing is so excited that she wants a sales guy to talk to the CFO right now, he can easily pull up the proper documents showing what a CFO would want to know," Seiff says. But the really interesting part: Seiff can track how different salespeople progress through the process and identify things they are doing wrong or right. "I can figure out what works and what doesn't far more quickly and help improve sales performance on the fly," says Seiff, who says Landslide has cut sales training time for new hires from seven weeks to three and reduced the typical sales cycle from six months to four. Seiff has done this while expanding the sales force from six reps to 20 within a year.

8. Hold your (potential) customer's hand

The Products
ExactTarget, Silverpop, Epsilon Interactive, Constant Contact

How They Work E-mail marketing often has meant building as big a list as possible and hitting the Send button. However, smart marketers have realized that campaigns work better if you can customize an e-mail pitch to fit a particular customer's needs, rather than cramming a single sales pitch down everyone's throat. These systems also boast sophisticated tracking and analytic capabilities, which help marketers develop a better sense of which triggers will cause potential customers to hit the Buy button.

Case In Point
Andrew Ritter is founder of Lactagen, a 38-day program designed to reduce lactose intolerance through the use of specialized nutritional supplements. It's a big market--an estimated 50 million Americans are moderately to severely lactose intolerant. But potential customers always seemed skeptical.

Last year, Ritter purchased new e-mail marketing from ExactTarget. The Web-based system allowed Lactagen's sales team to craft carefully orchestrated campaigns designed to address potential clients who are interested but want more information. First, the company asks people to fill out an online survey. Depending on the answers, Lactagen will send the appropriate promotional materials. "If it's been eight weeks since the initial contact, we know that it's time to follow up and see if he or she has any more questions," Ritter says. In fact, ExactTarget will send a specifically tailored e-mail automatically. "If they've already purchased the program and are on Day 20, when we know they need encouragement, ExactTarget sends an e-mail offering encouragement," Ritter adds. "It's a gradual program that fits this type of product."

Using ExactTarget, Ritter has cut his average customer sales cycle from 40 to 25 days. Sales have gone up by about 55 percent, while the employee head count has remained the same. ExactTarget also allows Ritter to monitor how small changes to offerings can boost sales. For example, he learned that offering discounts around holidays tended to work better, perhaps because potential customers were missing out on things they'd like to eat.

9. Turn new clients into repeat customers

The Products
Vontoo, VoiceShot

How They Work
If you've already won a client's trust, it ought to be relatively easy to sell him or her more stuff. Alas, in practice, the repeat sell can be tricky. How do you reapproach a client who already has written one big check? When is the best time to do so? While timely e-mails might work, a simple phone call is often more effective. Not that you can call all your customers, but now, for the first time, smaller businesses can afford to send automated phone messages to targeted clients. With these products (which cost about 10 cents a call), a salesperson or business owner calls a toll-free number and records a brief message with a sales pitch. The message is uploaded to the Internet and broadcast using a voice over Internet protocol system to anywhere from a dozen to thousands of customers.

Case In Point
Jerry Leath, owner of a Great Frame Up franchise in Douglasville, Georgia, had dozens of customers with unused store credits, credits they appeared to have forgotten about. Leath used Vontoo to turn those credits into a sales opportunity. He logged on to vontoo.com and recorded a single voice message reminding customers about their store credits. Vontoo simultaneously sent Leath's message to 90 customers he had culled from his store database. As a result of the reminder, a dozen customers came in with framing work, plunking down between $2,000 and $3,000 collectively. Although they all had coupons, most of them upgraded to higher-quality frames or molding, allowing Leath to maintain his margins. Total cost out of pocket to Leath was $9, or 10 cents a call, the flat rate that Vontoo charges for all calls under a minute. Says Leath: "If I had sent out a mailing, maybe two or three people would have come in."

Alex Salkever is a freelance writer based in Honolulu. He wrote about peer-to-peer lending in August.

Correction: We incorrectly listed Hoover's as one of the sources Before the Call uses to research sales contacts. Before the Call's partners include Factiva, IDExec, Google, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn, and Harte-Hanks.

Always Be Closing

The right mobile tools have become an intrinsic part of the ABCs of selling

By Lynnette Luna

Mobile CRM solutions are now on the radar screens of most sales organizations as a way to increase sales productivity. These organizations understand that access to vital customer information could mean the difference between a multi-million-dollar sale and no decision. But simply mobilizing existing sales information is no guarantee of more sales.

The problem lies with the fact that not every sales agent is technology astute, or even enthusiastic about using new technology. In short, if a salesperson doesn't understand how to use a device or service, or finds them too cumbersome, they simply won't use them. As it turns out, the most successful applications within sales organizations aren't necessarily the most cutting-edge ones.

“People say, ‘We need to automate,' but you can't mess with the human element,” notes Paul Moore, senior product marketing manager with Fujitsu Computer Systems. “Organizations simply must find equipment and services that complement how their people already work. If they don't do it, there are problems.”

For instance, an insurance agent with American General Life and Accidental Insurance Company accustomed to using a pen paper for 30 years wasn't welcoming a small mobile device with a QWERTY keyboard. Instead, a Fujitsu Tablet PC with a Stylistic pen offered an easier transition to sales automation. (The same can be true for applications—moonlighting workers employed to set up displays in supermarkets, for example, need an application that gives step-by-step directions by clicking once on tabs, not an application that requires several clicks and more time fiddling with the device than constructing displays.)

Finding a solution that its sales reps would be happy with took a bit of trial and error for adidas America, a Portland, Ore., division of the globally famous producer of athletic footwear, clothing accessories and equipment. The main challenge was coming up with a solution that would enable sales reps to easily check inventory while sitting with a motivated customer.

“Adidas learned early the value of using mobile technology,” says Russ Hopcus, VP of sales. “The nature of the business that we compete in means we must have quick answers for our
customers or risk losing out to the competition.”

The cell phones that adidas sales reps had been using to call one of the company's 65 customer service representatives to check the warehouse for available inventory weren't cutting it. Customers were left waiting and listening in for an answer. And no one liked lugging around a laptop to access information from the company's Web-based inventory tracking solution. When customers saw a sales rep with a laptop, they knew they were in for a meeting that would take up too much of their time. In the end, sales associates wound up checking on product availability after the customer left and then calling them back later.

Tim Olligmueller, adidas' sales force automation manager, began to study his corporation's human element. Larger handhelds and smartphones were too much like laptops because they meant loading Web pages and required syncing with a computer to update email, calendars and contacts. He determined that sales reps were already happy using BlackBerry devices. Why not build a CRM application that leveraged the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution?

“I really feel the primary consideration is this: If it takes too many steps, the end users won't go through all of the steps to use it. So Web applications and loading Web pages just weren't going to cut it. By requesting information via a BlackBerry, you're not waiting for a screen to load,” said Olligmueller.

He decided to use the resouces adidas had in-house to develop the sales force and CRM application that would mobilize the company's Atlas2Go solution, an order entry and tracking system that formats information into a Sequel database and pushes it to the SAP system. He was able to download developer tools from the BlackBerry Web site, and his in-house developer used those resources to create the wireless application. The whole endeavor took two weeks and cost less than $10,000.

Olligmueller's mantra of “three clicks or less” means adidas sales reps have few choices within the application, and that is acceptable to them. Their primary goal is to check inventory, as well as suggest products to customers now that they know what exactly is in stock. The customer interaction is no longer, “Wait while I call in to see if we have this red shoe in stock.” It's “I see we don't have this red shoe on the wall. Would you like me to order it since we have it in stock?”
Hopcus said adidas has recorded a measurable increase in sales for both the company and its customers as a result of its mobile CRM application.

Sales reps can now also check the status of customers' pending orders and email the invoices directly from their BlackBerry devices, even attaching pictures of the product. The risk is dumping too much information into the solution that could overwhelm sales reps and require more than three clicks. To combat that, Olligmueller has added new capabilities one at a time; once sales reps adopt one capability he moves on to the next.

“We started with inventory and people loved that and adopted it, and then we started adding pictures,” Olligmueller said. “But we do it in bits because it gives me a way to be evergreen all the time. The sales reps look forward to coming to my presentations because they knew there is going to be something new.”

Olligmueller's advice to others is to start small. “Think of any table you have in your Sequel database and how that might benefit end users in a mobile environment. Restrain yourself from dumping too much information because you see the potential. Keep it relevant, and ask yourself, ‘Do we really need this information?'” Gauging Impact Yacov Wrocherinsky, founder and chief executive officer of Infinity Info Systems, a 20-year-old CRM consulting company, advises clients to look for areas of their business where mobile CRM solutions will have the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. “It took millions of dollars in the past to make this work, but today, for a
fraction, you can get a device and buy an application that people can use in all different situations. First you crawl, then you walk and then you run. You can always add more things to it later.”

This sentiment is echoed by Mike Chang, IT manager with Vancouver-based Suntech Optics, Canada's leading ready-to-wear eyewear company. “A lot of companies think they need a big SAP solution, but at the end of the day, they only need to leverage about 10 percent of the functionality,” he said. “They have to really study the key business drivers, and that is usually tracking inventory and sales.”

Suntech is a veteran in mobile CRM, since it was the first sunglass company in North America to give its sales force laptops in the 1990s. Laptops became necessary when the Canadian government introduced a new tax on goods and services, and Suntech needed to limit those taxes by automating the process. In 2005, Suntech decided to replace its legacy system with three goals in mind: to give its sales reps the advantage of making the order entry process faster; to extend corporate email; and to find a device that was light and efficient enough to handle presentations and store reviews.

Chang chose a sales automation application called EZRoute to increase sales efficiencies. The application required a mobile device platform, but Chang determined that PDA screens were too limiting and laptops would be too bulky. He needed a device capable of displaying route maps, product photos and multiple application windows. He eventually chose Fujitsu LifeBook P1510D Convertible Tablet PCs, which were big enough to display Suntech's sales templates but small enough to carry in a briefcase or handbag. It was also fully functional, so reps wouldn't have to go home and use a desktop to check their email.

“We could have spent less money on a PDA, but we weren't able to service our stores properly or make proper reports,” said Chang. “If you have to synchronize, that creates a lot more work.”
The application consists of just three menus, two sub-menus and the top 10 reports to access sales and customer history, inventories and receivables. “That's all we need,” said Chang.

Now sales reps can write up and send orders while in front of the customer. Sometimes orders can be packed and shipped the same day. But what's more impressive to Suntech's customers is its ability to provide a service record to them detailing how well Suntech is servicing their stores.

“We know where our reps are, and it ensures that we get to keep the account,” said Chang. “We are able to retain business, review our business better and give customers a running report. That's generating a lot of good publicity.”

Lynnette Luna is a freelance writer with more than 10 years of experience writing about the wireless telecom industry.

Mobile Workforce for Dummies        Our Server   Pages 76 This book examines the changing workplace and shows how new technologies and demands have coupled to create a workforce that is more mobile than at any time in the past. Organizations are now driven to discover new ways to increase responsiveness and productivity. Learn how developing a meaningful mobility strategy for your organization — one that embraces the technologies and meets the demands — can help you fulfill the needs of both your workers and clients. What Is Mobility? Mobility means providing universal access to the communication tools, information, and applications you rely on to be productive — regardless of where you are or what device you have access to at the time. The building blocks of unified communication are • Calling and conferencing management • Presence • Messaging management • Contact and information management • Personal efficiency management With these tools, you can access voice, e-mail, and fax messages from one mailbox; dial one number to reach associates, whether they are at the office or somewhere else; and enjoy the same communication features wherever you are working — on the road, at home, or in the office. Explore the possibilities at www.avaya.com (PDF, 3.1 MB)

Sales and Opportunity Intelligence
Working smarter, not harder.
by Umberto Milletti
Sunday, April 01, 2007
 

THE FUTURE SALES FORCE— A CONSULTATIVE APPROACH

Bob Kantin Salesproposals.com,  Michael J. Nick ROI4Sales, Tim Sullivan Sales Performance International

IN THE LAST FEW YEARS SOME ORGANIZATIONS HAVE FOUND THAT THEIR SALES PROCESSES HAVE BECOME MORE CHALLENGING WHILE THE PERFORMANCE OF SOME OF THEIR SALES PROFESSIONALS WHO WERE PAST STARS HAS DETERIORATED. SELLING COMPLEX PRODUCTS AND SERVICES, VERSUS SELLING COMMODITIES, HAS ALWAYS BEEN MORE DIFFICULT AND SALES PROFESSIONALS MUST HAVE DIFFERENT SKILL SETS,
AS ILLUSTRATED BELOW.

COMMODITY-TRANSACTION SALE
• Simple product or service—perceived as a commodity by the buyer
• One or two calls—perhaps telemarketing
• One or two apparent decision makers
• Low risk
• Relationships less important—buyer views the sales professional as vendor
• Technique selling
• Price quote
• Price and availability more important

COMPLEX SALE
• Complicated product or service
• Multiple consultative calls, demonstrations, and
presentations—perhaps technical sales support
• Multiple decision makers—executive committee or board-level decision
• High risk
• Relationships very important—buyer may view the sales professional as a business consultant
• Value-based selling
• Proactive sales proposal or response to a Request
for Proposal (RFP)
• Return on investment (ROI) very important or required

Other factors in most complex sales also have contributed to process and performance problems:
• The economy—companies don’t have the funds to buy
• Changes in the buying process since the late 90’s—companies no longer buy products and services without first completing in-depth analyses
• Required value proposition—sellers must prove that their proposed products or services make or save money

Most companies recognize that the world and their buyers’ buying processes probably have changed forever. But, some companies haven’t recognized the need to make changes in their sales forces. They wonder if their sales professionals can’t sell like he did in the past. Perhaps many sales professionals don’t have the skills or tools needed. Here are some questions a company might ask to assess their sales situation.

Do our sales professionals . . .
• Follow a consultative sales process designed specifically for our unique products or services?
• Have the ability to calculate an ROI for our specific products or services that is accurate, unbiased, and plausible?
• Write customer-centric sales proposals that help buyers make informed buying decisions?

If the company uses a contact management or customer relationship management (CRM) system, it needs to ask one additional key question. Does our CRM or contact management system tie our consultative sales, ROI analysis, and proposal production processes together?

FOLLOWING A CONSULTATIVE SALES PROCESS
Sales professionals fall into two classifications: eagles and journeypeople. The majority of sales organizations are composed of journeypeople who rely on their knowledge of the company and its offerings in sales calls. journeypeople are most comfortable talking about their company’s capabilities. They make lots of statements about their products and services, in hopes that something will resonate with the buyer. In general, journeypeople see their job as a facilitator of transactions between their company and its customers.

While representing less than 20 percent of most sales teams, eagles produce the bulk of sales revenues—in some cases, more than 80 percent. What makes eagles so much more effective than journeypeople? Eagles focus on the customer and their business issues and have intelligent conversations about their customers’ challenges. In general, eagles see their job as capturing pertinent customer information, diagnosing customer issues, and then prescribing the most suitable solutions.

Customers view journeypeople as sales agents or vendors only. However, they view eagles as consultants, because they provide value in every meeting. Customers will buy from journeypeople if required, but in general, they buy a lot more from eagles—as much as four times more and they also like buying from them.

The good news is that journeypeople can be taught to behave more like eagles. The methods and techniques used by eagle sales professionals can be captured in a repeatable process. But, this process must be tailored to the unique products and services of each selling organization. Once established, the process can be taught to everyone in the sales team.

With a consistent sales process, journeypeople will know how to engage in consultative selling behavior on every call. They can have conversations designed to gather the information needed to diagnose the specific challenges of that customer. Then they can prescribe the most appropriate product or service to address that challenge and develop a supporting value proposition.

Most importantly, by following a consultative sales process, sales professionals will capture information that can be used to differentiate themselves from competitive alternatives. In other words, the sales professional can gain a competitive advantage by how they sell, and not just by what they sell. Specifically, eagle sales professionals excel in justifying the value of their proposed solutions and how they communicate that potential value to customers in their sales proposals. They can do this because they have diagnostic conversations with customers focused on the customer’s issues and challenges. They also can have sales tools and systems that integrate with and reinforce their company’s unique sales process.

With a consultative sales process, a sales team will produce better ROI analyses for its customers, and improved sales proposals that are customer-focused.
A consultative sales process is an essential first step in turning your sales team into a competitive advantage.

SELF ASSESSMENT: CONSULTATIVE SALES PROCESS
Take a moment and assess your current situation as it pertains to your sales process. The horizontal axis indicates your level of customization for your current sales tools. Did you hire a consultant to customize the training? Did you simply attend a public seminar? Do you have an ongoing program for training? The vertical axis indicates the commitment of your management team to the use and promotion of a sales process. Commitment includes financing, attending training, incorporating the vernacular into reports, etc. For example, if you currently use a hybrid of methodologies, no custom training, and no commitment from executive management, then you would likely fall into the box labeled “1”. Please take a moment and put an “X” in the box you feel best describes your current situation.

Score analysis
1. Your organization lacks adequate sales process customization and management commitment to really be a successful consultative selling candidate.

2. Although you are making strides in either commitment or customization, there is still a major lack of both to make much of an impact on the sales process.
3. You have gained momentum and have an opportunity to succeed. Pull it all together and identify what you need to create a complete customized sales process, or additional management support and commitment.
4. 3 and 4 are very similar in that you must be very careful where you put your “X.” If the X falls on the line between highly custom and half way up the management commitment line, you are on your way to a very successful career. If your 4 is halfway across the customization line, and on the line between low and high, you still have more to do to be successful. Be aware of silo projects when this occurs.
5. Excellent job! You are on you way to a very successful sales career. Remember that this is only one component to success, however.

USING AN ROI ANALYSIS SYSTEM
ROI and Value Justification are becoming “must-have” components in the selling equation. The ROI Insider on www.searchcio.com states that “more than 80 percent of IT buyers now rely on vendors to help them quantify the value proposition of solutions.” In fact, many CIOs now elevate the ability of a vendor to proactively justify their solutions to one of the top five most important selection criteria.

Several key concepts discussed below provide insight into using ROI Selling and Value Justification in the selling equation. These concepts also support the integrated processes proposition because companies don’t give their sales professionals ROI analysis tools they need.
1. The right questions for the right decision maker—Too often when a sales professional gets an opportunity to meet with a decision maker he doesn’t have a logical, relevant, and consistent set of questions to discuss. He may have gathered data that is inconsistent, irrelevant, or not pertinent. A sales professional should have questions and data that will enhance the conversation, not delay the opportunity. These questions should be an integral component of a consultative sales process and some of the buyer’s answers to critical, key performance questions belong in a customer-focused sales proposal.

2. The longer a sale takes, the less chance you have of winning the opportunity—Sales process research consistently shows that the longer a sale takes to close, the greater the risk of losing the sale to a competitor, or worse, to no decision. Using value justification and ROI helps reduce time to revenue because this financial information defines the buyer’s cost of delaying the decision or maintaining the status quo. A sales professional should be prepared to use these buyer costs in the consultative sales process and in the sales proposals.

3. Quality of ROI model separates winners from losers—An objective, substantive ROI analysis tool integrated into a consultative sales process is far more credible than a lightweight ROI marketing ploy. Using a value justification tool during the sale and a value assessment program after the sale creates a paradigm shift for the buyer—the seller is a business partner, not another vendor. Brian Sommer, VP at Aberdeen, told us once, “Everyone will figure out the spreadsheet ROI, but no one will put a post-contract program in place and measure the milestones.” It is critical to a successful sales team to follow up and measure the value delivered.

4. Documented decision making—Some products, especially intangibles like software, are subject to scope-creep after the sale. As one vendor put it, “The customer buys based on an 80% fit to their needs, and then quickly focuses on the 20% that they knew wasn’t there when they bought it.” A consistent selling method, a sales proposal that clearly defines the proposed software application and ROI model, and a value assessment measurement program after the sale can keep the buyer focused on the key requirements and benefits that originally drove the purchase decision. The bottom line: Happy customers and quality case studies for use on the next opportunity.

Ted Matwijec of Rockwell Automation said it best, “Using ROI in the sales process has changed the paradigm between salesperson and vendor. We are now subject matter experts and can clearly articulate to our customers that we have their best interests at heart. ROI Selling has turned the vendor/customer relationship into a partnership relationship.” Sales professionals must be prepared to use value justification in the sales equation.

ROI Selling is a program that includes all of the concepts discussed. Each component is equally important to a successful selling campaign. Further, it is critical (1) to use Value Justification during the consultative sales process and sales proposal creation and (2) to assess the value delivered after the sale. Ignoring the need to provide sales professionals with an integrated ROI model may result in limited success.

USING AN AUTOMATED PROPOSAL PRODUCTION SYSTEM
Some companies don’t give their sales professionals the tools they need to write winning proposals. Often there are no defined content requirements, standards, or guidelines for writing sales proposals. Some sales professionals can write proposals without getting management review and approval. For many sales professionals proposal writing is a time-consuming, cut-and-paste task that often produces a document disconnected from the sales process. A low Proposal Close Ratio actually might more closely reflect a sales professional’s writing skills or poor use of a word processing system rather than his selling ability.

A company must ensure that its sales professionals write sales proposals that help buyers make informed buying decisions. Equally important, the company must ensure that its sales proposals:

• Are customer-centric

• Contain the pertinent customer information gathered during the consultative sales process, including the results of the ROI analysis

• Reflect the sales organization’s quality and branding standards

The bottom line is that a proposal doesn’t have to be good, just perfect! Perhaps one reason a sales professional can’t sell is because he can’t write that perfect proposal because he’s too busy being an eagle—maybe he’s not the best writer, or maybe he doesn’t have the time or inclination to take six to twelve hours of word processor system training, or maybe he isn’t getting any help from the company.

Implementing an automated proposal production system can fix a lot of the problems and provide significant benefits to the company and its sales professionals. An automated proposal production system:

• Allows the company to develop custom proposal models for each of its products or services to ensure content accuracy and consistency—factory-approved wording

• Reduces the time needed for sales professionals to write a winning proposal—they only have to input customer-specific information gathered during the consultative sales and ROI analysis processes

• Generates proposals that reflect the company’s quality and branding standards—no cut-and-paste or formatting tasks

• Provides management with information to monitor sales production activities and measure results

WHAT TYPE OF SALES PROPOSALS ARE YOU WRITING?
Check where your sales proposals and consultative selling process fit on this quadrant, which relates the:

• Amount your sales proposals are customized for your prospects

• Degree a sales professional integrates writing a sales proposal with the sales activities of your company’s consultative sales process

CONNECTING THE PROCESSES
When sales professionals integrate their consultative sales, ROI analysis, and proposal development processes, they find process connections—those buyer information areas where their selling, analyzing, and writing activities overlap. These process connections are in several main areas:

• General buyer information

• Business challenge information: ways to reduce or avoid costs or to increase revenues

• Product or service application: how the proposed product or service works in the buyer’s business

• Value Proposition: financial (ROI) and non-financial benefits the buyer receives from the product or service

• Implementation: how and when the product will be implemented and the buyer’s involvement in the project

A sales professional doesn’t passively accumulate process connections information throughout the sales cycle. Rather, he or she gathers process connections information as the result of proactive and consultative sales process activities. Some examples of how a sales person gathers process connections information include:

• Performing a search in Harris InfoSearch to capture some information needed to complete a custom precall planning worksheet in preparation for the first call to a prospect.

• Performing a website search to learn about the prospect’s company, products, customer base, etc.

• Completing prospect and ROI questionnaires further to understand the prospect’s unique situation, key pain indicators, and needs.

A sales professional also proactively uses process connections information throughout the sales cycle. For example, a sales professional will use process connections information to:

• Determine the customer’s system configuration requirements to price a system.

• Develop a ROI valuation to prove the proposed service’s value proposition

• Write a confirmation letter to confirm the prospect’s needs

• Write a sales proposal to provide the prospect with information on which it can base an informed buying decision.

The point is, to work effectively, a sales professional must systematically gather and use process connections information. Custom sales tools provide the instruments of this purpose.

PROCESS CONNECTIONS BELONG IN A CRM OR CONTACT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Putting process connections in a customer relationship management (CRM) or contact management system helps ensure that a company’s sales force sells consultatively because the process connections represent the customer information a sales professional must gather (and use) to sell a product or service. If this information is contained in fields on an “opportunity” screen in a CRM/contact management system, then these fields also can become sales process guides—they reinforce the organization’s consultative sales process.

If a company uses automated ROI analysis and sales proposal systems, then the process connections contained in its CRM/contact management system streamline the analysis and proposal production processes. Facilitating the ROI analysis and proposal generation requires interfacing the CRM/contact management system with these two systems. The interfaces pass the appropriate process connections needed to generate the customer-centric ROI analyses and sales proposals.

For example, to sell an automated payroll system, a sales professional certainly needs to know how many employees the prospective customer has. The CRM/contact management system, ROI analysis system, and a proposal model in an automated proposal system would contain matching [Number Employees] fields. More importantly, the sales professional also needs to gather other consultative information during the sales process needed to calculate the ROI and write a customer-centric proposal. This other customer information might include key performance indicators, improvement opportunities, application variables, customer-specific benefits, ROI calculations, and implementation variables—the process connections that represent matching fields in the
three systems.

The diagram below illustrates how the following four components interface and overlap:
• Consultative sales process
• ROI analysis system
• Automated sales proposal system
• CRM/contact management system

The process connections represent:
(1) the customer information overlap between the four components and (2) most of the matching fields in the CRM/contact management and the ROI analysis and proposal production systems. The Value Proposition for Integrating the Sales Process Components

THE VALUE PROPOSITION FOR INTEGRATING THE SALES PROCESS COMPONENTS
Integrating the four sales process components results in several benefits for a sales organization:

• Defining customer information requirements, the process connections, helps reinforce a consultative sales process

• Selling consultatively builds rapport and relationship with a prospective customer and also helps change perceptions—this organization’s sales professionals are more like eagles and less like journeymen

• Automating the ROI analysis process provides the buyer with the much-needed value proposition which can reduce the length of the sales process

• Automating the sales proposal development process reduces writing and production times and helps ensure the production of customer-centric, consistent, and quality sales proposals

• Leveraging a CRM or contact management system as the process connections repository brings structure, accountability, and focus to the sales, ROI analysis, and proposal production processes

• Integrating and automating the processes increases Proposal Close Ratios because sales professionals:
-Sell consultatively
-Gather and process the right customer information
-Produce accurate and plausible ROI analyses
- Develop customer-centric proposals that help customers make informed buying decisions

With access to and benefit of the four integrated process components, sales professionals will have the tools and skills to achieve spectacular results. They will be the eagles of the new millennium, better prepared to analyze, consult, differentiate, communicate, compete, and win.

Credits:
Michael J. Nick is President and founder of ROI4Sales and author of How to Build the Perfect ROI, ROI Selling, and co-author of Why Johnny Can’t Sell ... and What to Do About It (August 2006 release). Michael speaks on ROI and conducts several public workshops and seminars throughout the year. His expertise has extended internationally with companies like Rockwell Automation, Imation, Oracle, GEAC, S1 Corporation, and Great Plains Software. Michael has been featured in Selling Power, Sales and Marketing Magazine, and several online web sites like Netbriefings and Progress Business.

Bob Kantin is President of SalesProposals.com™ which provides sales proposal design, development, integration, and automation services. Bob has written several books on sales proposal design and integration including Sales Proposals Kit for Dummies. Bob is also co-author of Why Johnny Can’t Sell ... and What to Do About It (August 2006 release). SalesProposals.com™ offers Sales Document Builder, an Internet-based sales proposal and other sales document production and management system.

Tim Sullivan is Director of Development at Sales Performance International, a global provider of sales and marketing best practice consulting, training, and tools. For more than two decades, Tim has been an analyst of what makes the best sales professionals effective, and his findings on sales and marketing practices have been published in Marketing Management, SellingPower, VARBusiness Online, and many other trade journals.
www.salesproposals.com
www.roi4sales.com
www.spisales.com

The Importance of Process in Effective Selling A Whitepaper from Entelegen

By Ian Hendry Director and co-founder Entelegen Ltd.

Introduction
Any successful business understands the importance of process. Take a look at any company that enjoys continued success and one can expect to see systems in place to manage cash flow, stock levels, customer service et cetera -- you would not rate the chances of survival of any organization that did NOT have such systems in place. Well defined processes underpin all good businesses, ensuring that established Best Practices are followed every time to keep the business running effectively.
But you do not always see such regimen deployed in winning new customers and repeat business through a systematic approach to sales.
So why are the sales teams of most organizations, which supply the oxygen -- an income stream -- that keeps the business alive, the last part of the company to adopt a process driven approach to ensure repeatable success?

Art versus science
Whereas running most departments can be likened to science in terms of the process applied, sales teams often purvey the image of being artisans, enjoying special skills and an innate ability to sell that few others share.
Every role needs someone with the right skills to do the job, be the role that of a brain surgeon, a teacher, an accounts clerk or a customer services assistant. Any individual has attributes that suit them to a particular job and sales people are no different.
So what makes some individuals consistently better sales people than others?
The answer is process.

The best sales people are consistently successful -- they strike gold time and time again. Anyone can sell -- we all do it all the time, be it our cars when we come to replace them or our own selves in job interviews. But career sales people understand what makes people buy, the processes they follow and the actions needed to ensure the purchase is made from them. They understand the buying process, and the selling process; and every time they engage with a customer, they trace that opportunity through an established process that increases their chances of ultimate success.

Some successful sales people have been self-taught, developing their own practices from experience; others have been “classically trained” in sales process by companies with their own established methodologies, such as Solution Selling, Hut Waite, Miller Heiman or Customer Centric Systems; and others have received sales coaching from highly experienced sales professionals, fully conversant in effective selling. Regardless of how the skills have been gained, success comes from knowing how the buying/selling process works and repeating it each time to ensure the repetition of positive results.

What makes up a process?
Successful processes are designed and applied to each aspect of a business to ensure the repetition of Best Practice. Often it may follow already established procedures that have been developed by the most successful sales people; it may include feedback from all customer-facing staff.

Seven steps to build your own sales process

􀂉 Identify the differences involved in the things you sell, e.g. do you need to follow a different process for product sales than for services sales? Is there a substantially different sales cycle for lower value items than there is for large projects? If so, then you may wish to map out several different processes and apply them appropriately;

􀂉 Can you bypass aspects of the sales process with repeat customers? When selling to a repeat customer, you may be able to skip over some of the early stage qualification and credibility building, because they already know you and you know them. For this, you can either build two processes, one shorter than the other; or allow a hop to the later stages of the process for those customers you are selling to again;

􀂉 Identify the key stages in the sale. These will be key proof or decision points in the customers buying cycle, plus key action points for your sales staff, e.g. shortlist to be decided, proposal to be presented, acceptance of proposal etc. These should make up the key stages in each process and prove that progress is being made with the customer;

􀂉 Attach expected timeline for each stage. If you have a good idea of the stages in a sale, you should also know how long each stage normally takes. Any sales that run over the normal time of completion for each stage probably have something going wrong with them and need attention;

􀂉 Allow for different results at each stage. Don’t assume once a stage is completed that the sale will then move on to the next logical stage -- if an opportunity needs re-qualification, because the customers goals have not been understood or because the project has grown in size, you will need to move back to a previous key stage to re-qualify before moving forward again. There could be any point at which backward or sideways steps are needed to keep on track;

􀂉 Include the post-sale stages you need to ensure you can collect payment. Many sales cycles/processes focus only on the stages up to winning an order. But a sale is not complete until the customer is satisfied and makes payment. Ensure that the final stages of the sale, such as implementation/delivery and a customer follow-up call, are included. This will ensure the sales person re-engages the customer, gathers feedback and allows them to start add on or follow up sales processes;

􀂉 Use a Sales Force Automation system that allows the sales process to be mapped in. This will help to ensure that your Best Practice processes are reinforced and used verbatim by your sales staff to see continued and repeatable success.

Tools to ensure repeatable success
With a sales team that understands an effective selling process, it is critical that the systems they use to drive their customer contact -- and report to their managers -- supports those winning processes. All too frequently a company will employ a successful sales person, or take its sales team through expensive methodology and process training, only to give them nothing more than the most basic business systems to try to put into practice what they have been taught. Unless the systems reinforce learned knowledge, the business can find itself unwittingly undoing the process driven approach, obstructing the successful flow of the sales process and causing sales people to get distracted with activities outside of the key events they need to follow to see success. Within no time, top performers can get rusty and pick up bad habits, compromising their performance.

A good example of this may be a sales person having nothing more than a basic contact management system for logging their customers; and prospects and Excel for producing forecasts and weekly reports on activity. These systems are not assisting the sales staff in managing their processes; just collecting stale data and producing management reports -- and neither of these directly contributes to that sales person’s success.

The key to ensuring that successful sales people can repeat their processes effectively to see repeatable success is a system that is not only capable of reinforcing process, but enables sales people to monitor their own progress through a customer’s buying/selling processes. Managers should be able to access reports directly, view information dashboards and manage exceptions directly, without the need to distract the sales staff with administrative tasks.
Sales force automation systems are nothing new, with the most sophisticated now also encompassing advanced Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities. The problem is, most solutions of this sort only acknowledge that there are STAGES in selling, not PROCESSES.

Choosing effective sales software
Any sales software solution should take what the greatest assets of a sales person are -- knowledge of the buying/selling process and ability to repeat Best Practice process effectively -- and enable those assets to be used most effectively.

Many sales software solutions, including sales force automation and CRM systems, seem to be rich with features, but focus on the “wrong” things, from a sales effectiveness perspective at least: they collect meaningless data on customers, that the sales team wastes time maintaining; and do not move with the sales people through established processes. As such, these systems often take too much time to keep up-to-date and offer no information on how a sales person got to where they are in the sales process with a customer, or where it goes next. Without this information, how can sales people be sure of their aims when they speak to customers? And without knowing what the aims of the call are, how can they -- or their sales managers -- be sure they have made progress?

The software systems that drive the greatest levels of sales effectiveness are those that allow the processes that have been learned to be mapped into the software itself. With this, the system not only becomes a “second skin” to the sales person, working as they do, but it ensures that all of the information retained is directly relevant to the performance of the sales person. Effective sales systems also help coach members of the sales team who may not have all the skills or experience of your best sales people, allowing those staff to follow the same processes in order to increase their chances of success.

Further, such use of a system of this sort by sales people to manage the progression of processes with customers means that the systems are always current, with much more information stored which is directly relevant to the opportunities being worked -- and all this is readily accessible through management reports. This means that forecasting information can be more accurate and up-to-date activity reports can be produced automatically. The instant availability of this information avoids time spent completing separate reports, returning hours each week back to the sales team to spend selling rather than performing administration.

Other things to consider for such systems are their ability for information to be easily shared: web-based systems are useful for allowing information to be updated across a distributed sales team, centrally stored and visible to management as well as the sales staff, but it your sales team is mobile and likely to be using the system away from the office (on customer site or between meetings) then they need an alternative to online access. Your sales staff will also need the system to work with Outlook, if they send and receive customer e-mails or synchronise their mobile phones or PDAs with Outlook to keep their address book up to date.

And finally, the system will need to be intuitive and provide direct value for the sales team. Good sales people do not do more than they need to win a sale -- this includes spending time learning new systems or updating information for other people’s use. Any sales system should work as the sales people work, including supporting their processes, or they will soon become redundant.

Top 10 tips to choose an effective sales system

􀂉 Allows PROCESSES to be followed, not just STAGES. Systems supporting only Stages have the user simply stating where they think they are in the sales cycle; process based systems will guide your sales team through each sale, ensuring that each stage is completed fully before passing them on to the next relevant stage;

􀂉 Enables your own sales process to be mapped. Any system should allow your own sales processes to be mapped and not force you to use generic processes which may not be applicable and don’t assist your sales staff;

􀂉 Can be easily customised. The solution should allow you to add your own fields to capture key information through qualification and progression of opportunities. It should also allow you to remove data fields that would only add to the administrative burden on sales staff;

􀂉 Provides adequate access to data off-line. Many solutions are web-based, but you won’t want to restrict your sales team to benefiting from the system only when they are internet connected. Ensuring the system has an off-line version will mean your sales people can use the software when away from the office or home without the need for internet access;

􀂉 Captures e-mail communication. In many companies, e-mail accounts for as much as 70% of customer correspondence during the sales cycle, so it is vital this is logged against the contacts and opportunities for each sale. Better still is a solution that captures correspondence from existing e-mail systems, such as Microsoft Outlook, rather than needing your sales team to use a proprietary e-mail system;

􀂉 Allows associated files and documents to be attached. Complex sales can involve many documents, produced by customers and your sales team. It is important these can be stored with all other records relating to the sale and accessible by anyone with customer record access;

􀂉 Presents a simple to read dashboard view of opportunities. With a large amount of relevant data in the system, it is vitally important that high level information can be easily accessed, giving a summary of opportunities, pipeline and performance, allowing managers to focus most effectively;

􀂉 Intuitive and “familiar” for the sales people to use. Good sales people do not do more than they need to win a sale -- this includes learning complex systems which do not aid their success. Ensure any system works with or works like systems they already understand;

􀂉 Produces forecast and activity information without any administrative overhead on sales people. With the sales team using the system to manage their sales effectively, all the information a manager needs to produce accurate forecasts should exist within an easy to view report. This “real world” view should need no further administrative work by the sales team, which should be focused on selling!

􀂉 Help is easily to hand. A systematic approach to selling causes you to rely on your computer systems for selling as much as you do for invoicing or stock control. So make sure that expert assistance is easily available in case of difficulty, both in configuration and operation.

Summary
Repeatable process, following established Best Practice, is a key factor in developing successful sales staff. Some sales people develop their own winning formulas, others learn it from established methodology practitioners or through sales training or coaching -- but once a business has sales people who understand buying/selling processes and the process they need to follow to make customers purchase, success can be repeated every time.
It is important that any organisation supports sales staff in the development and use of Best Practices process with effective sales systems, however. The company’s systems should ensure that those processes can be accurately mapped into the software, such that it works exactly as the successful sales people do -- it should not present obstacles to them which mean they deviate from what has been proven to achieve the greatest results.

With an understanding of why customers buy and a systematic approach to winning their business, underpinned by software systems that reinforce those processes, any business can see a significant increase in sales and reduction in sales times.

About the author
Ian Hendry is a director and co-founder of Entelegen. Ian has 20 years experience in the enterprise software industry and uses it to great effect advising clients on market entry and growth strategies. His record of success in European business expansion has been established through sales and channel development positions in specialist software companies covering markets such as P2P networking, host/legacy access, data replication, business intelligence, secure messaging and application security.
Entelegen is Ian's second start-up: his first company was ultimately acquired by a US-based e-business security software company during 2000 in order to strengthen its European presence. Ian was European Managing Director for the company until leaving to dedicate his time to Entelegen.

About Entelegen
En-tele-gen noun
The generation of a force which moves an organism to its final state of being [Latin en-, in; + Greek telos, progress; + suffix -gen, producer, from Greek -genes, born.]
Entelegen is Europe's leading provider of outsourced sales and market acceleration solutions to technology companies establishing or re-establishing an international market presence.
Entelegen partners with emerging or established companies to enable reduced risk entry to new markets or management of existing markets, expediting growth in revenues within a managed cost structure. Through its outsourcing services Entelegen provides instant access to teams of highly experienced and operationally strong sales, business development, marketing and technical staff, as well as prestigious offices and a business infrastructure -- all focused towards achieving revenue growth from Day One.
Entelegen’s founders are recognised leaders in the software, service, datacoms and telecoms industries and share in excess of 40 years of vendor experience, having held senior positions with a number of North American and European hardware and software companies, including Avaya, Lucent, Eicon and Entegrity Solutions. They have a proven track record in establishing new businesses and have assisted many organisations to penetrate and achieve successful sales growth throughout Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Their knowledge and leadership is supported by a team of highly experienced and equally professional individuals, all of whom have worked together successfully for many years and each of which has at least five years of experience in the IT industry; from sales and business development through to project management.
Entelegen lists as clients BlueTie, Eloqua, EMC, ESRI UK, Samsung SDS, Thales, Tripwire and VIA net.works, as well as several leading specialist software companies. Entelegen is also proud to be the first European partner, Premier UK Partner and Gold Partner for Salesnet, the leading provider of on-demand CRM for driving sales effectiveness from RightNow Technologies; and the first European reseller for ScoreSight Sales Pursuit software.
For more information, visit www.entelegen.com.

Automating Your Sales Processes and CRM Strategies

There's a lot of talk about using technology to automate your sales force and to help your business strategy for managing your customer relationships, or what is commonly known as Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. No doubt, technology can help any business become more efficient and effective. Purchasing technology alone will not, however, improve sales performance. It will only allow a poor sales rep to accomplish poor habits more quickly. Sales reps sell either by “Process” or by “Accident”. An accident happens when a sale comes along that is basically a surprise and wasn’t expected. A Sales Process, on the other hand, is a step-by-step procedure that is executed for each potential customer (prospect) in order to get her into a position to want to purchase your product or service from you.

Since accidents don’t happen often enough, we have to rely on processes to be successful. Therefore, a Sales Process needs to be defined and implemented so that each sales rep performs at their most effective level, thus increasing their success. A Sales Process defines the methodologies for which steps need to be taken, and repeated, to move the process along the sales path toward a purchase. It also includes the methods for qualifying a prospect, listening to the prospect’s needs, analyzing alternatives, and presenting the appropriate solutions so the prospect will want to purchase from you. Therefore, your should develop Sales Processes and methodologies, and provide ample Sales Training in order for your sales team to understand these new processes and methodologies, why they exist, how they will benefit them, and how to implement them.

Once you have your Sales Processes and CRM strategy defined, you can look toward technology as a tool to implement them. There are many sales automation, contact management, and CRM products available today. However, simply choosing the right product will not guarantee success. Remember that technology is used to deploy your Sales Process and CRM strategy, not drive them.

The right Sales Automation and CRM product should replicate your best sales practices. Thus, first understand what your best sales practices are. If you don’t have any best practices, or what you have is insufficient, then develop them first, then use technology to deploy and replicate them. By designing your product around your processes and successful methodologies, your weaker sales reps will become more successful, your stronger sales reps will become more efficient, and your new sales reps will have a reduced learning curve since they will have the pre-defined steps for success and a tool to make them more readily efficient.

Since there is a lot to consider in choosing a Sales Automation and CRM product, be sure to evaluate multiple vendors. Develop specs and provide them to the vendors to prove they can meet your criteria, now and in the future. The product you choose should grow and expand with your company and with your future plans. Thus, having a Sales Process and CRM strategy defined and documented at this stage will be critical so you know where you’ll want to be over time. An excellent product that can economically address your Sales Process requirements and help implement your CRM strategy, will not only handles the obvious functions such as; contact management, calendar events and scheduling, MS Word integration, and email management, but it also can run your marketing campaigns, handle your forecasting, share information with everyone in your business whether local or remote, and much more. It must, in effect, run your company's marketing and sales functions.

As with anything that is powerful and sophisticated, use specialists to help with the planning phases, the implementation, and the training. Their experience and expertise will prove invaluable to your success and you won't end up wasting a lot of time learning what experts already know, nor wind up down the wrong path or over your head.