success
Sales Success for the Individual Contributor
Let’s start with two of my favorite personal quotes:
“Luck is what happens when Preparation meets Opportunity.” – Seneca, Roman Philosopher.
“Become the person who would attract the results you seek.” – Jim Cathcart, Author of “Relationship Selling”
Why are those quotes important? Because they point out that you are responsible for your own success.
Great companies with great products or services and great management teams make it much easier to be successful, but anyone who is prepared, curious, focused, motivated, and has a system they follow can succeed anywhere.
My experience has shown the following to be true:
- You are unlikely to succeed without preparation and understanding of your prospects, their customers, and their competition. This understanding provides the foundation for asking relevant questions to understand the real need and effectively qualify a deal in or out.
- Most sales occur because a Product or Service solves real and immediate business problems or ties into strategic business initiatives.
- Your early goals should be to get the meeting, have real discussions, understand problems from your prospect’s perspective (including the terminology they use to describe those problems), and help them describe what success “looks like to them” and why that matters (logically and emotionally). At this stage, you are learning and positioning, not selling.
- Deal qualification is an essential skill that lets you focus your time and effort where you are most likely to succeed. The faster you can “qualify out” a prospect that is not a good fit, the better it is for you and that prospect. Eternal optimism is not a plan for filling your pipeline.
- If you have a supporting team, ensure that everyone understands the situation, their role and contribution to success, and what you want them to focus on. Never assume that things will just fall into place on their own.
- Have a repeatable process to track activities, measure progress, and identify the best next steps. Remember, “To measure is to know.” (Lord Kelvin)
- The sale is not over until your new Customer is happy. Become their internal advocate within your organization, and you will earn the customer’s trust, loyalty, and repeat business.
Ideally, your Sales Leadership Team has defined a Sales Strategy and created a couple of repeatable Sales Plays and compelling supporting materials such as Success Stories, Case Studies, ROI and TCO charts, brief but targeted Demos, and realistic Product Comparison information for internal use. These become the foundation for repeatable and scalable success.
But if that is missing, collaborate with your peers, seek guidance from your leadership, and get creative. Remember, you are ultimately responsible for your success, so don’t allow things to become excuses or a crutch. In the words of the Buddha, “There are three solutions to every problem: Accept it, Change it, or Leave it.”
To help ensure success, you will need to follow a Sales Methodology. Here is a link to a good high-level overview from Spotio.com. I’ve used several, and each has pros and cons. None of them effectively addresses the successful progression from:
- Initiation, Understanding, and Qualification.
- Defining a compelling Solution and successfully positioning it against the competition.
- Closing the Sale is an area in which many salespeople fall short.
The sales methodology that I personally believe is one of the easiest to use and most effective is MEDDIC. It is a Deal Qualification process, which is more encompassing than a simple Lead Qualification approach. The biggest blind spot is that it fails to address these four key areas:
- Influencers within a buyer’s organization. Knowing who these people are and what their biases are will let you direct resources to each and, ideally, take a multi-threaded approach for each deal.
- Incumbents and the sentiment towards those vendors and their products. This is key to avoiding wasted time on an opportunity you’re unlikely to win.
- Related/Adjacent needs. Tying success to multiple areas provides leverage and increases the value of your solution.
- Timeline/Urgency. This allows you to work backward from milestone dates for efforts like typical lead times for Legal and Purchasing, Integration Testing, QA/QC, Training and Documentation, etc.
Being prepared, creating a common vision of success based on the outcome rather than the approach, being responsive, and developing relationships and trust based on knowledge and a desire to help are easy ways to differentiate yourself from many lesser salespeople. Invest in your skills, set aggressive goals, and always hold yourself accountable for success.
Do this, and you will become part of the 20% of any sales team that ‘moves the dial.’
New Perspectives on Changing Business Ecosystems
One of the many changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sea change in thoughts and goals around Supply Chain Management (SCM). Existing SCM systems were upended in mere months as procuring raw materials and components became challenging, manufacturing shifted to meet new, unanticipated needs, and logistics challenges arose from health-related staffing issues, safe working distances, and limited shipping options and availability. In short, things are a mess!
Foundational business changes will require modern approaches to Change Management. Change is not easy – especially at scale – so having ongoing support from the top down and providing incentives to motivate the right behaviors, actions, and outcomes will be especially critical to the success of those initiatives. And remember, “What gets measured gets managed,” so focusing on the aspects of business and change that matter will become more important.
Business Intelligence systems will be especially important for Descriptive Analysis. Machine Learning will likely play a larger role as organizations seek a more comprehensive understanding of patterns and work toward accurate Predictive Analysis. And, of course, Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning / Neural Networks capabilities will accelerate, filling several gaps, including the need for enhanced Prescriptive Analysis. Technology will provide many of the insights business leaders need to make the best decisions in the shortest time, while accounting for the complexity of cost/benefits/risk/competing efforts.
This is also the right time to consider upgrading to a collaborative, agile business ecosystem that can expand and adapt quickly and cost-effectively to whatever comes next. Click on this link to see more of the benefits of this type of model.
Whether you like it or not, change is coming. So, why not take a proactive posture to help ensure this change has a positive impact and meets your company’s or organization’s objectives?
Changes like this are all-encompassing, so it helps to start with the mindset, “Win together, lose together.” In general, having all areas of an organization moving in lockstep toward a common goal is ideal. Critical junctures like these are what require change and drive success.
Innovation, Optimization, and Business Continuity
Originally posted on LinkedIn.com/in/chipn
Recently I read that the U.S. is experiencing a significant jump in unemployment claims. Much of that is understandable given the recent decline in many businesses, concerns about how long this crisis may last, and the need for business owners and executives to protect ongoing viability. But, in the near future, business activity will resume, and it will be very important that businesses maintain a business pipeline and retain qualified staff to deliver their products and services.
Now could be the ideal time to challenge your team to focus on improving your business. Look at business processes and identify:
- What works well today? Can you identify what makes it work so well? Simplicity, automation, and a lack of friction are typical attributes of effective, efficient systems and processes that positively impact any business.
- What could be improved and why? Specific examples and real data will help quantify the impact and support prioritizing follow-up activities.
- What is missing today?
- Good ideas have likely been raised in the past, so why not revisit them?
- What are competitors or businesses in other segments doing that could be helpful?
- Brainstorm and consider something completely new that could help your business.
- Start a list, describe the needs and benefits, provide specific examples, and then estimate each idea’s potential impact and time to value.
- Take the ideas with the greatest promise and estimate the cost, people/skills needed, and other dependencies to see how they stack up.
Another option is to create or update Business Continuity Plans. Now is a perfect time – while everything is fresh in the minds of your team. This will help in the future, and you may also find several useful ideas for the coming weeks.
For example, do you have enough documentation for someone who isn’t an expert in your business to take over with a relatively short ramp-up time? How will you maintain quality and control of those processes? Are your plans stored in a repository that is accessible yet secure outside of your organization? Do you have the processes and tools to collect documentation and feedback on things that did not work as documented or could be improved? Are your Risk Management plans and mitigation procedures up to date and adequate?
Investing in your business during this slowdown could have many benefits, including maintaining employee morale, enhancing employee and customer loyalty, retaining employees and their expertise and skills, and increasing sustainability and long-term growth potential.
Could a New Channel Model Lead to Sales Amplification?
Over the years, I have helped successful companies and start-ups improve and strengthen their Channel and Strategic Alliances programs. The results have been good, but could they have been better? Keep reading to learn about the benefits of enhanced business ecosystems.
Most traditional channel models support Distributors, Resellers, OEMs, and ISVs. The business mainly flows upwards to the main vendor. If that vendor has popular, widely used products (think Microsoft and Oracle), partner business can be good because the demand stays consistent. But sales pipelines suffer when that is not the case.
Sales Channel business is not the main source of revenue for most companies, but it can become the largest and most scalable revenue source for nearly any business. Just think about the money left on the table by not adopting a growth mindset and executing a new and better strategy.
In the summer of 2016, I attended the “Sage Summit” in Chicago. It was impressive to see the Sage Group’s efforts to build, strengthen, and protect their Customers and Channel Partners community. They tried to foster higher levels of collaboration between the various types of partners – implementation services, consulting, staff augmentation services, complementary product vendors, etc. They had created their own highly successful Business Ecosystem, which is an excellent proof point.
When designing a channel partner program, my focus has always been on balancing promoting and protecting partners’ business with ensuring end customers have the best possible experience (and some recourse when things do not work out as expected). I have used a variety of methods to accomplish those goals, including creating a systematic approach to seeding relationships between partners’ complementary offerings and facilitating even greater business activity.
Nearly a year ago, I began working with a management consultancy run by Robert Kim Wilson, whose business vision is based on his book, “They Will Be Giants.” Links for this book and other relevant resources are provided at the bottom of the post. Kim asserts that Entrepreneurs with a Purpose-Driven Business Ecosystem (PDBE) are more successful than those without one, and he provides examples to support his point. Having experienced Kim’s PDBE, I see how purpose fosters trust and collaboration.
As I did more research, I found that thought leaders in this space have increasingly focused on Business Ecosystems and Business Ecosystem Organizers (such as Sage in the earlier example). Those findings reinforced the PDBE approach, and external validation like this is always good.
From my perspective, it was just as important that this concept apply to businesses of any size – especially for small to midsize businesses. The fun part for me is exploring a specific business, analyzing what they do today, and quantifying the potential benefits of adopting this new strategy.
So, how does this new type of Business Ecosystem work?
- The Business Ecosystem Organizer expands the overall network, vets new “Business Ecopartners,” and provides a framework or infrastructure for the various Business Ecopartners to get to know one another, exchange ideas, and discuss opportunities.
- This can become an incredibly sustainable revenue source for companies willing to invest time to collaborate and share ideas in order to grow and support the Business Ecosystem.
- Business Ecopartners will have access to trusted resources to augment existing business and take on new, bigger projects by leveraging the available expertise.
- Suppose that you have products or services that work with commercial CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or SCM (Supply Chain Management), and have seen a growing demand for functionality that relies on highly specialized technologies like:
- Cryptocurrency support.
- Blockchain for financial transactions and things like traceability in your supply chain or IoT data.
- AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) to detect patterns and anomalies – such as fraud detection, Deep Learning/Neural Networks for image recognition or other complex pattern recognition.
- Graph databases to better understand a business and infer new ways to improve it.
- Knowledge Graph/Semantic databases to create deeper meaning and understanding with data from multiple sources – assisting in deeper understanding and Transfer Learning (which also has an AI tie-in).
- Building these practices in-house would not be practical or cost-effective for most businesses, so partnering becomes very attractive.
- This type of business relationship can also be very attractive to a Business Ecopartner because someone else handles prospecting, sales, billing, account management, etc.
- Suppose that you have products or services that work with commercial CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), or SCM (Supply Chain Management), and have seen a growing demand for functionality that relies on highly specialized technologies like:
- Other Business Ecopartners can leverage your products or services for their projects and engagements, expanding their addressable market and creating additional revenue sources for the other ecopartners.
- By actively participating in this network, any business can now compete on imagination and innovation – providing a more comprehensive solution that could become a major source of differentiation from their competitors.
Value realized from this New Business Ecosystem model:
- These new sources of business and talent can become a real competitive advantage for your business.
- This becomes the source for Sales Amplification because each business is, directly and indirectly, expanding its reach and growth potential.
- The weighted (based on capabilities, capacity, responsiveness, and Ecopartner feedback) Business Ecopartner network model could lead to exponential business growth – a winning strategy for any business.
Next Steps
If this sounds interesting and you would like to discuss how it could look for your business, contact me to schedule an exploration call.
References:
- https://kimwilson5.wixsite.com/theywillbegiants/the-book
- https://www.bcg.com/publications/2019/emerging-art-ecosystem-management.aspx
- https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/8-dimensions-of-business-ecosystems/
- https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-myths-and-realities-of-business-ecosystems/
- https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/operations/articles/business-ecosystems.html
- https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-56/accenture-strategy-your-role-in-the-ecosystem.pdf
- https://www.bain.com/insights/shifting-from-assets-to-ecosystems-video/
- https://hbr.org/2019/09/in-the-ecosystem-economy-whats-your-strategy
The Value Created by a Strong Team
I participated in an amazing team-building exercise as a Board Member for the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Wisconsin. We were heading down a path that would lead to a decision on whether to invest $150M in a new addition. The CEO at the time, Jon Vice, wisely determined that each committee needed strong teams to thoroughly vet the idea from every possible perspective.
The process started with being given a book to read (“Now, Discover Your Strengths” by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D.) and then completing the “StrengthsFinder” assessment using a code provided in the book. The goal was to understand gaps in perception (how you view yourself vs. how others view you) so you could better understand your strengths and weaknesses. Then, teams were created with people having complementary skills to help eliminate weaknesses from the overall team perspective. The results were impressive.
Over my career, I have been involved in many team-building exercises and events – some of which provided useful insights. However, most failed to combine the findings meaningfully, provide useful context, or offer actionable recommendations. Key areas that were consistently omitted were Organizational Culture, Organizational Politics, and Leadership. Those three areas significantly impact value creation vis-à-vis team effectiveness and commitment.
When I ran my consulting company, we had a small core team of business and technology consultants and leveraged subcontractors and an outsourcing company to take on more concurrent projects, as well as larger, more complex ones. This approach worked for three reasons:
- We had developed a High-Performance Culture that was based on:
- Purpose: A common vision of success, understanding why that mattered, and understanding how that was defined and measured.
- Ownership: Taking responsibility for something and being accountable for the outcome. This included responsibility for the extended team of contractors. Standardized procedures helped ensure consistency and make it easier for each person to accept responsibility for “their team.”
- Trust: Everyone understood that to be effective and responsive, they needed to trust and support each other and trust each other’s judgment. If there was a concern, we focused on context and process improvements to understand what happened and implement changes based on lessons learned. We avoided personal attacks for the good of the entire team.
- Empowerment: Everyone understood that decision-making involves risk, while also recognizing that delaying an important decision could be costly and create more risk. Therefore, each member was responsible for making good decisions as needed and communicating changes to the rest of the team.
- Clear and Open Communication: The team was very transparent and honest. When an issue came up, they tried to resolve it with that person first, then escalated if they couldn’t reach an agreement and decided to seek the team’s consensus. Everything was out in the open and done in a constructive, collaborative spirit.
People who were not a good fit would quickly wash out, so our core team consisted of trusted experts. A friendly competition helped raise the bar for the entire team, but when needed, the other team members became a safety net for each other.
We were all focused on the same goal, and everyone realized the only way to succeed was to work together. Win or lose, we did it together. The strength of our team created tremendous value – internally and for our customers that we sustained for several years. That value included innovation, higher levels of productivity and profitability, and an extremely high success rate.
This approach can work at any level but is most effective when it starts at the top. When employees see their company leaders behaving this way, it provides a model and sets expectations for everyone under them. If there is dysfunction within an organization, it often starts at the top – by promoting or accepting behaviors that do not benefit the whole of the organization. With a strong and positive organizational culture, the value of strong teams is multiplied and becomes an incredible competitive advantage.
