Sales Intelligence and Competitive Performance Comparisons

It is no secret that your competition wants the sales as badly as you do. Sometimes, they may want a particular account even more than you. They are going to put forth their best effort, just as you would expect your team to do the same.

In the end, the prospect has to decipher substance from fluff and make a decision. What are the factors in play? Nearly everything. Whether conscious or subconscious, the prospect is evaluating dozens of dimensions of combinations of influencers and decision-making drivers. These might include:

Company
Financial Viability
Industry experience
Reputation
Company Size

Product
Overall solution cost
Ease of use
Scalability
Solution flexibility
Complete solution set
Functionality
Integration
Turnaround time

Sales
Demonstration
Existing Relationship
Integrity
Product knowledge
Responsiveness
Sales relationship (relationship with the sales team)
Presentation
Professionalism
Understanding needs (grasp of business)


The prospect is spending a ton of time evaluating your performance and that of the competitors in each of these dimensions, again, whether or not they recognize it consciously.

How well are you able to identify the prospects’ perception of your company and the competition in each of the following performance areas?

Benefits
A great company is one that is willing to accept the brutal facts. Individually or in aggregate, how does your company perform versus the competition in the most essential performance areas? The answers to these questions, coupled with analytics to show the areas of greatest impact and highest ROI, will provide your company with sustainable competitive advantages.

Marketing
You can’t improve that which you don’t measure. Convert your reports of competitive strengths and weaknesses from anecdotal to reliable measurements. Predictive analytics provide the illumination necessary to make the best use of the data.

Sales
Measurements of sales performance will provide quantitative data to sales management. Future training will be focused more directly on the current problems and identified strengths can be emphasized. Most importantly, the performance of the “eagles” can be measured and, with proper help, broadcasted to lower performing sales professionals.

Recommendations

Measure your performance scores and competitive gaps over time to track changes in competitive advantage.

Employ analytics to determine areas of highest impact on your future market share.

Create lists to measure company, solution, and sales performance.

Primary Intelligence offers both win loss and account retention services to measure your company’s performance in high-impact areas.

…not to mention predictive analytics that add ROI projections to all of these measurements.

Sales Intelligence - What Problem are You Expected to Solve?

As a sales professional, your solution is only as valuable as the problem it solves. In a given opportunity, how well are you personally able to identify the business need that prompted them to shop for a new or replacement coverage plan?

Benefits
Addressing the cores needs and values of potential clients has a direct impact on sales success. It’s one thing for a client to face a choice between a group of competitors and quite another if one of the options is presented with an understanding of her core needs. This approach gives sales people a definite competitive advantage.

Marketing
Individually or in aggregate, do you understand what the prospect wants? Marketing organizations that do their homework on this point outperform those that don’t by presenting a solution that helps to define the need.

Sales
The sales organization tends to live squarely in the middle of understanding needs. Sales organizations that don’t practice this part of their craft flounder, failing to understand the need before attempting to provide a “square peg in round hole” solution. Understanding why similar companies decided to evaluate vendors helps sales professionals with context for future discussions.

Recommendations

Use post-decision interviews with recent opportunities that entered the pipeline to understand what your prospects want and what they are not receiving.

Using the same audience, find out why they include BCBS on their initial vendor list. What are the signals that BCBS send that create a general level of interest in the marketplace.

Be cautious of relying too heavily on sales professionals, agents or brokers for this information. Their attention is usually focused more on the middle and endgame than these initial sales stages.

If you can't consistently answer this question about all of your accounts, consider Win Loss Analysis from Primary Intelligence to create a consistent flow of information. Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Do You Ask Your Sales Reps Why They Lose? Why?

A typical practice in sales organization is the post-sale debrief or "post mortem." This may occur in many different ways, ranging from a small questionnaire that is administered through the SFA when an opportunity is marked as a win or loss. Or, it may occur in person, between sales rep and manager.

But, why are you asking the sales rep why the client decided for or against the proposed solution? The sales rep wasn’t a decision-maker; only a facilitator. The decision-maker is sitting in the prospect’s office, with a head filled with the details that created a favorable/negative outcome based on your sales efforts.

In my experience, the only real opinion that matters is the one from the person that signed the check.

I’m not saying that sales reps don’t know anything. On the contrary, they know what they did and how they perceived the reaction to their presentations, responsiveness, relationship building, etc… But, that’s not enough for a department to make the most effective, consistent improvements.

If you are serious about improving your company’s sales performance, reach out and consistently talk to the prospects, post-decision.

I have heard of some companies that interview both the prospect and sales rep. What do they find out? Mostly, that their sales reps don’t see the situation in the same way as the prospects. At worst, it’s a case of “He said, she said,” which doesn’t really solve much either.

Talk to your prospects and clients. They will be the most effective voice for helping you sell the deals in the pipeline. If you don’t have time, hire Primary Intelligence. This is what we do. You won’t find any other company that has conducted more post-sales interviews. We interpret data and create improvement programs. (Shameless plug, but that’s life)

I have some ideas about the types of performance-enhancing questions to ask. Also, I can help you see how to gather competitive intelligence at the same time. Let me know how I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Does Your Sales Team Have Heart?

Multiples studies have demonstrated that the most important sale has to be to the heart of your sales reps. If they believe in themselves, their sales environment, product, management and company, they have a much higher likelihood of succeeding. Likewise, if they lack confidence in any of these areas, there is a predictable, measurable direct effect on sales performance.

Primary Intelligence has created an online tool that identifies sales confidence in 6 performance areas and 3 dimensions. The tool measures feelings of efficacy, ability and knowledge and translates the scores of the sales force into areas where improvements should be made to make the biggest gains in sales performance.

On Thursday, June 28, Primary Intelligence will host a webinar demonstrating the Sales Confidence Index. For more information or to register, click here.

Through this presentation, Primary Intelligence will show:

• Pinpoint the most important confidence and attitude factors inyour sales force
• Measure and monitor your sales reps’ level of engagement
• Identify areas of risk and opportunity before they become critical issues in your sales channels
• Ascertain your sales channels’ knowledge and outlook about your competitors
• Develop better-informed strategies for improving sales and training programs
• Monitor the impact of company initiatives, programs and policies

Those that benefit include:

• Sales VPs
• Sales Directors and Managers
• Regional sales leaders
• Business Development leaders
• CEO/CFO/CSO

Why You Should Do Win Loss with Your Clients

Yesterday, I was interviewed by an intern who is studying at the University of Rochester. She was representing a company that wants to do win loss analysis in an effort to make itself more competitive “in the trenches.”

She told me that her client’s inclination was to simply use their CRM tool to administer and interview to the sales reps after they close a deal as a win or loss. The idea was that the company could ask the sales reps why they won or lost, compile some quick data and learn how to move forward. She wanted to know why our services at Primary Intelligence would provide extra value over the CRM system.

I was very happy to provide an answer.

Our experience at Primary Intelligence has shown us that the only perception that really matters is the one that evaluates the vendors and writes the checks. We have conducted dozens of thousands of post-purchase interviews, based on deal sizes from a thousand dollars up to hundreds of millions. The one thing that we have learned is that the customer is always right and that sales reps don't have the whole story, no matter how good the relationship is.

I’m not saying that the sales reps are full of hot air or that their perception is not valuable, but if you want to increase your win rate, market share and overall sales performance, you have to look to the opinions and perceptions of the prospects. And, there are limitations to their knowledge of a deal. Even if the rep knows everything about his interactions with the prospect, he likely doesn't know much at all about the competitions' pitch, value proposition or relationship with that same prospect.

Some of our clients have asked us to interview both the sales rep and the prospect. They want a 360 degree review of the sales opportunity. There is wisdom in this approach, but the exercise has to be approached very strategically.

In a couple of cases, our clients wanted to measure their performance on 1 to 10 scales. They asked the same questions of the prospects and sales reps. In the end, our client learned that the sales force has a different perspective than the prospect; individually and collectively.

Hardly earth shattering and fairly useless information.

Our smarter clients use a completely different tool called Sales Confidence Index to measure the engagement level and efficacy of the sales team. This is not done on a deal-by-deal basis, but rather is taken periodically as an overall measurement of the sales force.

The purpose of win loss is to:

a) Understand today’s performance in competitive sales situations
b) Leverage this information to create a plan for win rate improvement

And, the you can ask sales reps all day long any question you like, but you’ll never approach the effectiveness of a few expertly-administered interviews with your clients and prospects.

I’m here to talk about these ideas. Reach out and let me know how I can help (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)