Sales Operations People Are My Heroes

Over the past few weeks, I have spent a lot of (high quality) time speaking with our clients to understand how they use Win Loss intelligence to power their Competitive Intelligence programs and enhance their sales efforts.

It turns out that those companies that have the most effective systems that marry up sales, marketing, competitive intelligence and sales intelligence also have a very strong champion or a great team in the Sales Operations or Sales Training department.

In other words, these companies are selling more effectively than their competitors because they know how to collect the right kind of information, interpret it correctly and give the sales team marching orders based on those observations.

We work with many companies that run their Win Loss program out of Marketing, Analyst, or even Sales Leadership positions. However, in most cases, there are obstacles to making the most of the intelligence programs. I’ll describe some of my observations below:

Marketing – The marketing team generally seems interested in brand, value proposition, marketing messages and measuring the results of their other marketing efforts. To them, Win Loss is a part of a voice of the customer program (which isn’t a bad thing at all) or a one-time project to measure. But, I find that most of these marketers don’t pass along information to the sales group. In some cases, they don’t know how to make the information palatable to sales. Surprisingly, many of the marketers don’t think that sales would be interested.

Sales – Sales leaders do a better job of evangelizing their Win Loss programs to the sale reps, but they don’t usually spread the intelligence around to anyone else, which is a shame. There is so much quality information in a Win Loss program for so many departments that pigeon-holing the information in one department for one purpose marginalizes the value significantly.

Analysts – These groups can be proactive about the distribution of the competitive intelligence in Win Loss. However, analysts seem to be too far away from the corporate decision-makers to be able to give the intelligence a strong voice.

While sales operations may be different from company to company, talking to them made me think that they stand the best chance of bridging the sales/marketing gap. These people can think like sales and understands what the reps need. However, they also seem to have a mind for information and can interpret research results in a way that sales will understand.

Even better, the sales operations people are likely to be able to act on this information and take it to the next level of action. They can see where sales may need additional training and prescribe it. They may see that a marketing idea is not working and help to correct that. They can listen to the needs of sales, understand what marketing can do and facilitate the necessary transactions.

So, if you are wondering how to make an intelligence program (Competitive, Sales or Market) work more effectively in sales, make sure you have the Sales Operations people on board. This is likely the best step you can take to ensure success.

How Does Walmart Affect Your B2B Sales Opportunity?

So, you are selling a multi-million dollar health care plan covering nearly 100,000 lives and right in the middle of things, Wal-Mart throws a wrench in the works.

How can that be? Wal-Mart doesn’t sell health insurance. But, still Wal-Mart becomes the pivotal factor in a sales loss for Vision Care:

Primary Intelligence: What were the primary reasons you did not select Vision Care?
Vision Care: “We were impressed with Vision Care’s overall solution and bid, but it just did not provide that much in addition to what we had with the incumbent, FocusCare. The costs and plans were very close, but we did not really see anything in the Vision Care plan or the Vision Care pricing that would compel us to make a move.

We weren’t unhappy with FocusCare. One thing that was a bit of a concern with Vision Care was one of the major vendors that our employees use, Wal-Mart, was not in the Vision Care network. If our employees don't get much of a break, but have to change their provider, that costs the company.”

Everything else being nearly equal, Vision Care loses because it doesn’t have the right providers in its network. All other value propositions were met and the rates were competitive.

If Vision Care wants to be a serious contender, selling to multi-billion dollar enterprises, this information has to be pushed up to the executive boardroom immediately. This feedback, delivered in a timely fashion, will make a huge difference in the future.

What are you doing to consistently collect sales intelligence? How far does this information travel within your organization?

Let’s talk about Primary Intelligence’s ability to provide feedback on all of your sales opportunities. Your prospects are waiting to tell you how to win next time. (801-838-9600 x5050 - Chris)

Sales Intelligence: Fixing the Pain Points with Value

It is said that a company makes a purchase decision for one of two reasons. Either, the company has a problem that is painful enough to be solved or the presented solution offers so much value that it would be foolish not to purchase. This is the most basic of sales. But, the problem that exists over time is that marketing believes it understands what the value proposition SHOULD be when, in fact, the prospect sees things in an entirely different light. In fact, the prospect could not care less what you think the value of your solution is. They are only concerned with how the solution will apply to their own problems within the workings of their own company.

Have you ever undertaken a 3rd-party evaluation of your value proposition and compared the findings with your current messages? How often are you able to identify the factors that were most important to the prospect in the decision-making process?
Benefits
At their root, businesses don’t make purchases (especially substantial purchases) without either having a strong pain that needs to be fixed or pursing a vision that will bring great benefit. The vendor that solves the problem most elegantly is likely to win the value proposition battle.


Marketing
While most marketing departments focus their message on the accepted value proposition, few of them look to recent sales successes to discover those specific nuggets that are making the difference for their company right now. It’s one thing to understand which messages play well among the marketplace. It’s another level completely to know what is tipping the prospects’ decisions in your favor.

Sales
With this intelligence, sales can bring pressure to bear directly on the pain points. Communication will revolve around the highest areas of value with peripheral differentiators being brought into play. The best sales professionals know how to communicate value. Now, you can provide more consistency.

Recommendations

Look to your current new client base and understand what caused them to choose you over the competition.

Interview those companies that chose the competition. Discover their perceptions of all value propositions in play and refine your message. Then, push it down to every sales professional in the organization

Consider the fact that Primary Intelligence generates more sale intelligence with measurable ROI.

And, if you have an thoughts along these lines, let's chat. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

The Stronger Company Loses?

In a recent evaluation, a prominent German automobile manufacturer evaluated two technology vendors for support services. They had an existing vendor, but intentionally execute shorter contracts to force themselves to re-evaluate relationships regularly.

When the client invited Right Tech, Corp to the table, they were excited to introduce new blood. Their current vendor had grown stale and they made the following observations:

“SoftCommerce needs to bring more innovation, new services, and new technologies into their services. They need more innovations… That was why we brought Right Tech, Corp in. We thought there would be more innovation on their side.”

Based on a side-by-side evaluation of the companies’ performance, It appeared that the incumbent might be in trouble. Right Tech, Corp, stacked up nicely with SoftCommerce and had significant advantages in Size, Technology Reputation and Future Direction.



But, Right Tech, Corp never had the chance to show their innovative ability. Tomorrow, we’ll review the solution performance for clues.

Do You Really Understand?

In sales, is there a more basic principle than listening to the client? And, yet, time, money and effort are wasted by ignoring the entire message and moving straight to the sales rep's agenda.

Which is a shame, because prospects usually know what they are looking for. Give them a chance and they will tell you.

Especially in B2B sales, the politics between evaluator and decision-maker are sensitive and must be accounted for. In the following example, Primary Intelligence interviewed a prospect to find out what happened in the deal. In this case, the sales rep didn't understand the deal:

Respondent: “Rapier Software was more interested, in my way of thinking, in selling a product than they were my needs. They were very elusive about a cost and then they wanted to meet with the city manager… So in order to sell us, they wanted to sell the payroll management, something for our risk management director and all sorts of things. It was really a total turn off. I was surprised the city manager didn’t get up and walk out. He was very glad that was the end our business with them.”

Primary Intelligence: “You rated Rapier a four (on a 1-10 scale) as far as understanding your business needs. What did they need to do to earn a higher rating or to show you their ability to understand your business needs?”

Respondent: “Well, I think it’s all the same thing. If they’re interested in my business needs, they need to focus on that and not the other departments. If they want my business, they need to give me what I need.”

You have been here before. What would you take away from this feedback? Was this the fault of the sales rep, or was this customer a poor fit from the start?

Let me know what you think.