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.

A Really Cool Competitive Intelligence Presentation We Made Recently…

A couple of weeks ago, RoxAnne Loosle (Pronounced Loose-LEE, in case you want to give her a call at 801-838-9600 x5052) presented Win Loss findings to one of our clients. In this case, we targeted our intelligence efforts at two specific competitors, gathering data and creating analysis based on recent sales interactions and opportunities (won and lost) by our client.

Due to the confidential nature of our interactions with our clients, I can’t share specific information from the presentation. However, I will share some overall concepts that were brought to light in the presentation that would be considered “hidden gems.”

Our client found that they were leading their competitor consistently in the following areas:

Industry experience (Company Driver)

Technology reputation (Company Driver)

Stability (Company Driver)

References (Sales Team Driver)

Product knowledge (Sales Team Driver)

Areas of weakness were identified as:

Ability to customize (Product Driver)

Purchase cost (Product Driver)

Service cost (Product Driver)

Understanding these performance comparisons is so very important to our clients and their ability to grow market share. Not only were we able to show where the strengths and weaknesses exist today, we also provided specific feedback on those specific points to show why the scores were lower (in comparison with the competitors) and how they could be most effectively brought online.

In addition, we spent time showing our client:

The sales stage where they are eliminated as a vendor in the purchase process when they lose.

A comparison of their overall solution cost compared with the competition

Key marketing activities that influenced the sale

The intelligence we provided has direct relevance to the marketing, sales and product leaders. They left the call, graciously thanking us for the report and 20+ slides of data and recommendation.

It’s fun to share our findings with clients. In some cases, our findings are eye-opening. In others, we affirm information or sentiments based on unrelated efforts. Either way, there is satisfaction in being part of strategic and tactical initiatives that build company momentum.

If you want to chat about these kinds of results, reach out. I enjoy a chance to hear from different people. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050) And, if you want to talk to someone that knows what she’s doing, RoxAnne is always happy to talk about the work she can do.

Why Do Sales Teams LOSE? – Clients Think “Price” Rather than “Value” (6-10)

As mentioned, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.


6. Let the customer think in terms of “price,” rather than “value.”

The number one reason for not selecting a supplier was price, which in and of itself is not particularly surprising. When examined in relationship to the criteria of “value offered,” however, an intriguing pattern emerges. Price, on its own, had a significant negative gap score, meaning that price was mentioned more often when discussing reasons why a supplier wasn’t selected. Value, on the other hand, had a positive gap score; in fact, value was only mentioned when respondents explained why a supplier was selected. In other words, when eliminating a supplier, respondents thought in terms of price. If the respondent thought in terms of value, they were more likely to select the supplier in question. This corroborates the ongoing movement in strategic account management to create value for customers.

As some of the previous examples in this article illustrate, customers were often willing to ignore the strict price of offerings if they were able to see the overall value of the partnership. Customers make decisions based on the value that can be created for the enterprise. A focus on price indicates that the customer is unsure of how the offering will create value—how it will solve a compelling need or produce a desired result. Customers who are unsure about how the product will do either of these are more likely to think in terms of price than in terms of value.

Of course, whether or not a customer thinks in terms of price or value was not entirely dependent upon the whims of the customers themselves. SAMs who do not construct a strategy based upon showing the overall value of the partnership (whether through ROI, added value or other means) do themselves a disservice, and seriously handicap their ability to develop successful accounts.

Why Do Sales Teams Win? – Think Relationship (2-10)

As mentioned, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?” Each of these points were taken from a library of thousands of win loss sales debriefs and compiled into performance rankings.

2. Focus on the relationship, not the sale.

The heart of strategic account management is developing a strong connection between your company and the customer. By definition, a strategic account is designed to be a long-lasting partnership that is mutually beneficial to both parties. The importance of this relationship can be measured in terms of repeat purchases and customer loyalty. The data confirms the importance of a good relationship: prior experience with a supplier was the second most often cited reason for selection and was mentioned significantly more often in cases where the company was selected as the winning supplier.

While some of these cases of repeat sales were due to organizational inertia, or the unwillingness to change suppliers because it was prohibitively difficult or expensive, many of the comments made by respondents indicated that the repeat business was due to the relationship that had developed between the supplier and the customer. The liaison between the two, of course, was the account manager, and those who made it their job to keep in constant communication had the edge over those who only communicated during new opportunities for sales. As one respondent explained, it was important that the SAM cared about all aspects of the relationship:

“[Company 1]’s support is awesome. We have nothing but wonderful comments for the sales representative. I e-mail or call anybody and it always gets back to the sales representative and I get a call from him to make sure it was all done correctly. It gives me peace of mind.”

One aspect of the respondent’s descriptions of their relationships with suppliers that stood out was the importance of the relationship during difficult times. For example, one respondent explained why her company had created lasting relationships with two suppliers:

“We had built up a very good relationship with both agencies over the years. We have been through a couple of years of tough economic times. Both of these agencies have stuck with us. They have been through good times with us, and will stick around for the next round of good times in the near future. It would be very difficult for any other agencies to take our business away from those two.”

By maintaining the relationship, even when the customer was not be able to give as much business to the supplier as it had in the past, the SAMs were able to create a strong bond that makes it difficult for competitors to win future business opportunities with the customer. The main point of these examples is that corporations do not buy from corporations; people buy from people. As the face of the company, all the interactions with account managers, from the first meeting to the last, set the tone for the entire business relationship.

Why Do Sales Teams Win Deals? Reason 1of 10

Over the next few posts, I’m going to present reasons why companies win and lose sales deals. These reasons were outlined by Ron Sathoff, a colleague of mine, in a great article for SAMA magazine called “Five Ways to Bolster Your Strategic Account Strategy, and Five Ways to Sabotage it.” (The article is available for download HERE)

This article was written to help answer the ultimate sales question, “How can we win a lot more deals?” In order to find the answer, Ron started by addressing the questions, “Why do we win and why do we lose?”

Let’s get started.

By way of background, as part of our win loss interviews, respondents were asked for the primary reasons why they did or did not select the supplier. Ron coded and tabulated the open-ended responses, analyzing them for performance gaps, or areas where a response was more prevalent in one situation (selection or elimination) than in the other. This was done in order to determine which criteria had the largest impact for selection or elimination. The criteria with the largest gaps are presented in the table below. Positive gaps indicate that a criterion was mentioned more often as a reason for selection, and a negative gap indicates that a criterion was mentioned more often as a reason for elimination.

For example, industry usage had a positive gap of 2.8%. This indicates that respondents were slightly more likely to mention product features as a reason for selection than they were as a reason for not selecting a supplier. The largest gaps indicate where there are opportunities to stand out in areas that are most noticed by the customer, as well as areas where doing the wrong thing will have a significant impact on your chance for success.

1. Let your product speak for itself.

A product’s features and functionality had the largest positive gap, indicating that respondents were much more likely to mention product features positively, and that product features were more likely to have a positive influence than a negative one. It is therefore advantageous to point out a product’s strengths to a potential customer

Specific features of a product are especially important because the customer will often be concerned about the product’s ability to meet the precise needs of multiple users and locations, as well as the product’s ability to integrate with other systems already in place. It is therefore vital that customers are not only informed about the product’s specifications, but that they have also been shown how those specifications are translated to the reality of the company’s business needs.

One way that Strategic Account Managers (SAMs) have accomplished this is through the use of product-oriented presentations and demonstrations. When used in conjunction with technical materials, these demonstrations helped to make the product features and functionality more comprehensible, and showed that the SAM was not overstating the product’s capabilities. Most importantly, they helped to make the customer feel more comfortable that the product would meet their needs and that their staff would have the ability to use it effectively. For example, one respondent explained that the evaluation team was not confident about its first choice of product until the SAM could organize a demonstration of features and functionality for them:

“We had a demonstration, and that reassured me that we were making the right decision. For one thing, the whole layout of the computer screens was superior. There were just a lot of little things. It reassured me that we were making the right decision.”

By allaying any fears the customer may have had about the product, the SAM in this situation helped boost the customer’s confidence in both the sale and the business relationship. Customers today actively seek solutions that can create value for the organization in the shortest period of time. As a result, account managers need to do whatever they can to prove that their offering will work in the actual usage situation.

Competitive Intelligence Newsletter: Double Your Money: Win Back Lost Sales…

In this week’s cover story, Mike Brose talks about the double benefit of winning back accounts that were never yours. And, don’t forget to download our recent webinar: Three Benefits of Win Loss You Can’t Ignore

Cover Story
Double Your Money: Win Back Lost Sales with Intelligence
By Mike Brose, Primary Intelligence
Too often, companies are willing to wave "goodbye" to lost prospects, hoping that, "Someday, they'll give us another shot." In essence, the effort that was put into selling is dismissed. Rare is the company that has a formal win back program. But these companies have learned very clearly just how profitable those programs can be... (For more, click here)

BlogCentral
Why is Competitive Intelligence Not Effective?
In short, does your company make changes to increase revenues and profitability based on your intelligence efforts? Based on our experience, if you are like most companies, the effect of your intelligence efforts are minimized and, often, substantially... (For more, click here)

The A-List
iLinc Wins Pfizer Contract with Mixture of Technology, Content and Customer Focus
Originally Published in December 2004.
Executives at Pfizer's Global Learning and Development Group wanted to upgrade its training and assessment tools for its pharmaceutical sales personnel. The three short-list vendors were required to submit proposals, which were evaluated by DeLosa and a team of Pfizer personnel from strategic services and healthcare systems training. Although the proposals were intended to be the main element of the evaluation process... (For more, click here)

Another Endorsement for Win Loss Analysis

One of our clients in the Blue Cross Blue Shield network was kind enough to provide an assessment of the success of their win loss program, which they have outsourced to Primary Intelligence:

“The real value of the Primary Intelligence System to us, is their uncanny ability to drill through Producers directly to Group Leaders and Group Decision makers and engage them at a level denied to us over and over again.

At that level, Primary Intelligence uncovered the truth, the real drivers of decisions on healthcare, and gave us the opportunity to address those directly the following year.

We won back 7 of the 30 losses the previous year and those wins were driven by knowing the truth.” - Senior Healthcare Intelligence Analyst

If you are considering a win loss program, you might consider the following:

How much more successful would your company be at selling new deals if you really knew why you win and lose?

How much revenue would you gain if your company could win back 23% of lost sales within 12-24 months?

What would the ROI be if you were able to create a more solid “win” and increase the likelihood that your current client base would stay with you longer?

These are the results that Primary Intelligence delivers daily. If you are missing out, let’s chat.

You can join our webinar tomorrow (2PM ET, Regiester HERE) or we can talk. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence and Win Back Campaigns

There is always an element of uncertainty in the purchase decision. Prospects are always concerned that they are being sold a bill of goods rather than a real solution. Of course, there are many processes in place to evaluate competing vendors and their products, but it is difficult to be 100% certain until the product, service, or solution is completely installed and integrated with all of the other processes in the company.

You know this is true. A certain percentage of your clients wonder why they chose you. Sometimes, it takes Herculean efforts to keep new clients happy until they can realize the potential of your offering.

If this happens to you, it must also happen to your competitors. And within that reality resides the opportunity.

New prospects can be very tender, having not yet built up a loyalty toward their new vendor. It is during this time that they may be most susceptible to a renewed sales effort from your company. At the least, you should procure as much feedback as possible to understand how you can compete more effectively next time around with the same company. After a lost sales attempt, how capable are you of knowing your chances of reacquiring that prospect in the near future?

Benefits
A large percentage of buyers surveyed who recently dismissed a key supplier reported choosing another supplier that offered basically the same product or service. This finding indicates that the lost account’s needs have not changed and can still be filled by the dismissed supplier.

Importantly, buyers also report their dismissed suppliers do not even attempt to win them back. Only 25% reported the dismissed supplier offered an apology and only 14% of buyers said dismissed suppliers adopted a keep-in-touch strategy with them.



Marketing
Proper post-decision systems will reveal whether a “prospect that got away” is content with its new vendor. While most prospects make the “right decision” for their company, a surprisingly large group are either disenchanted or outright disgusted with their new vendor. With this in mind, identifying these companies while the sales relationship has not yet cooled may provide greater opportunities once the existing contract ends.

Sales
Provide a sales professional with a list of companies that would likely defect from their current vendor and you’ll have a friend for life. After all, your sales organization already has a relationship with the prospect and probably made it to the final cut. If your company can assure the prospect that you were all set to deliver on the sales promises, the sales success rate increases.

Recommendations
Make a consistent effort to capitalize on spent sales efforts. A win-back program based on those sales opportunities that were almost yours may be a productive source of business in the near future.
Use a third-party vendor to consistently gather post-sales data and improve response rates.
Consider how unbiased feedback will provide realistic expectations for your company.

Sales Intelligence: Post-implementation Analysis and Client Loyalty

Your new client just finished an install of your product, service or solution. They are ramping up on understanding how to gain the ROI that was promised during the sales pitch.

Or, in a different company, they chose your competitor’s product. Your former prospect is trying to figure out what they have purchased and whether it will actually function as promised.

In either case, it is imperative that you gather feedback from the prospect to understand how they feel about their new vendor and the odds that they will stick with you or defect from the competitor. This type of loyalty information will help you understand where problem areas may exist with your current client base and with those of your competitors. In the end, if you can keep 10% more clients in the fold, your revenues and profitability have increased significantly. And, if you can steal away 10% more of your competitors’ defectors, you have gained market share at their expense.

So, after a lost sales attempt, how well could you say how pleased your former prospect is with their vendor selection?

Benefits
Post-implementation analysis will uncover discrepancies between your competitors’ sales messages and the reality of their solution. Arming your sales professionals with this knowledge will provide them with ammunition to direct the prospects’ questions during reference calls.



Marketing
Asking these questions of both your lost prospects and newly won clients will help solidify your position as an industry leader. With this intelligence, you will be able to identify and fix areas where your company falls short versus the client’s expectations. You will also be able to identify problem areas in the competition’s execution. Never underestimate the power of this type of intelligence.

Sales
While sales should not be a mudslinging contest, sales professionals are always on the lookout for information that will help destabilize the faith a prospect may have in a competitor. Sometimes, a prospect needs a little coaching on the types of questions to ask the competitor’s references. These tidbits can be a great benefit.

Recommendations

Be willing to listen to the feedback from your clients and prospects about your company’s ability to deliver according to the expectations set during the sales process

Develop an executive champion that will make improvements based on this feedback.

Review the objectivity of a Primary Intelligence Win Loss Analysis opportunity analysis and determine the relevance to current strategic objectives.

Sales Intelligence – Increase Market Share (Learn from Past Mistakes)

The sales world is an interesting place, especially in a complex sales environment. So much effort on the part of so many people comes together to accomplish the goal of selling a measure of value to a prospective company. In reality, the only thing a business can do is create revenue and profit. The services and products offered are the tools to accomplish the goal of the business entity.

But things don’t always work out as you would like. Prospects often zig when you expect them to zag. Sometimes, a lost sales opportunity looks like wasted time and expense. But, there is much more to a lost sale than lost time. There are lessons to be learned. Improvements in performance should be made. If mistakes caused the sales opportunity to die, those errors should be corrected. Otherwise, they will end up being very costly mistakes indeed.

Most companies perform some sort of sales debrief with the sales reps involved in the lost opportunity. That’s a start, I suppose. But, really? Shouldn’t you spend your time with the prospect, understanding your company’s performance from their point of view? After all, they have the money. Who cares what the sales reps say? The only perception that matters is that of the prospect. So, ask yourself, “How well would you be able to understand how to win a similar account in the future based on your experience in this recent opportunity?”

Benefits
Market share is built one account at a time. An increase in sales win rate today will equate to significant increases in market share in the near future. Great companies are those that learn from past experiences and translate them into future successes.


Marketing
Understanding those things that work most consistently in different industries and segments ultimately provides your company with the ability to execute more effectively. Would you rather be a company that follows best practices in your industry or that establishes them?

Sales
The least likely outcome of most sales losses is a thorough, honest debrief from the prospect. By the time most deals are done, the sales professional has moved on to the next opportunities and the prospect is unlikely to proactively reach out on their own to provide feedback on the sales performance. However, a consistent feedback program has the potential to show a sales professional how to be more effective next time around.

Recommendations

Make time to follow up on a large percentage of recent sales opportunities

Establish an expectation with sales management that these efforts will be distributed to the sales professionals

Review sample win loss opportunity profiles from Primary Intelligence to determine whether the intelligence is useful and packaged in a professional format.

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)

If You Were Dating Your Prospect, Would You Make it to First Base?

As a practitioner of sales intelligence consulting, we at Primary Intelligence have the opportunity to observe the mentality (individual and collective) of the sales professionals that work for our clients.

In our experience, much time is spent trying to understand the company’s product, value proposition, sales strategy and competitive forces. And, this use of time is beneficial and productive.

However, knowing the prospects (individually and collectively) has proven to be the most important success indicator in successful selling of business solutions. You have to build a relationship, starting at acquaintances, moving through trusted friends and into a marriage of client/vendor.

How do relationships blossom? Think about how you have worked this question in your life. When you met a person with whom you wanted to become more intimately acquainted, did you spend time studying their house, friends, other available men/women in the area? Perhaps.

But, you probably spent more time listening to that person, understanding what is important to them, figuring out their point of view and matching those ideas with yours. And, the attention you paid to that person was probably rewarded with some form of reciprocation.

If you want prospects to let you into their world and take you seriously, CSO Insights offers a list of 10 questions that a prospect is asking of a vendor:

1. Do you know me?
2. Do we have a past?
3. Do you know my internal ecosystem?
4. Do you know my company?
5. Do you know my marketplace?
6. Do you know my competitors?
7. Do you have any special value-add?
8. Do you know why you are the best choice?
9. Do you know how I can justify the purchase?
10. Do you know what is changing as we work together?

I’ll guarantee you that the answers to these questions are much more meaningful than knowing who YOUR competitors are and tactics to sell against them.

Relationships really tend to take off when you start paying attention to the one in whom you are interested more than any external factor. It works in personal relationships. It works in business relationships. And, if you are planning a marriage of your company to theirs, you probably should spend the time and effort on the right things. External factors play a role, but you have to put the right amount of priority on everything.

Spend some time evaluating your ability to answer these questions about your key prospects. Think about how these answers might have changed over time for your key accounts. Are you more or less able to answer these questions now than you were 6 months ago?

And, if you have thoughts about these points, let me know. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Why Does Your Sales Team Lose Opportunities? Ask the Prospects.

In a recent study for a prominent software company, Primary Intelligence talked to companies that recently evaluated their enterprise offering, but selected a competing vendor. Below, you’ll find a list of the most common reasons why the other vendor was selected:


Notes to Consider
• Respondent companies were able to choose more than one reason
• Percentages don’t necessarily add to 100% due to an abbreviated list of most common responses
• A series of interviews with clients that did choose this vendor indicated many positives

So, let’s understand these data for what they really are. The prospective clients were evaluating this company’s offering. Most likely, they had a pain or other bothersome business issue that caused them to seek a solution. The prospects needed something other than status quo to move forward.

The prospect is likely to solve their problem with one that eliminates the pain or removes obstacles. If your offering causes as much or more pain than it solves. They aren’t going to buy. Likewise, if your offering is better than status quo, but more painful or problematic than the competition’s, you are going to end up on the outside looking in. These are fundamental value equations.

We can look first at the top reason: Price. You would expect price to rank near the top when interviewing losses. Most of the time, our experience shows that price is really a way of saying, “I didn’t see the value in the offering.” In other words, if the solutions does what it is expected, value increases and price is less of an issue. After dozens of thousands of opportunity reviews, I would guide the reader toward the top 3-5 reasons other than price. (I’ll let you read and interpret the chart as you will.)

“So what,” you might ask. “Neat data. What do I do about it?”

Do something about it. Coordinate this competitive intelligence between sales, marketing and product development to create an evaluation scenario that eliminates the most prominent reasons and increases the odds that the next prospect will form a favorable perception of your offering.

Why study something if you’re not going to use it for change?

I have more ideas on making the most out of competitive intelligence, sales intelligence, market intelligence. Let’s chat if you have a few minutes (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Can You Predict Your Future Win Rate? (Part 2 of 2)

In my last post, I said that a SWOT analysis leaves a strategic decision-maker with a problem. You may be able to identify some competitive weaknesses (compared with a specific competitor or in the marketplace in general), but you don’t have any way of gauging what would happen to your market share if the weaknesses were improved.

And, you can’t tell whether continuing to improve the strengths would provide a bigger competitive benefit to your company’s efforts.

So, if a competitive intelligence professional spends all of their time studying the market and the end results is a list of strengths and weaknesses (with no predictive analytics or direction), how much value does that person provide?

I guess that I should be clear that a SWOT analysis is not useless. There is tactical value in a SWOT. You can figure out what to say today with a SWOT, but you can’t make strategic decisions based on a SWOT. There is still too much guesswork.

So what? Replace the SWOT with Impact-based Competitive Intelligence. For instance, Primary Intelligence does this all the time. To determine competitive strengths and weaknesses, we:

1-Interview recent wins and losses where your company competed head-to-head with specific competitors.
2-Measure your competitive performance in 20-30 specific decision influencers
3-Determine strengths and weaknesses (Not the gap score in the table below. Positive gaps indicate weaknesses. Negative gaps indicate strengths)
4-Use predictive analytics to determine the influencers that, it improved, would result in the greatest increases in market share. (Impact column, explained below)

Impact identifies your expected improvement in market share. For instance, in this example (a real-world example taken from one of our clients), if you were to improve your company’s performance in Product Knowledge by one point (In other words, if you improved the 7.7 rating to an 8.7), you would expect your win rate and market share to increase by the impact score of 5.7% (at the 90% confidence level).

And, Product Knowledge is already a competitive strength. Overall, you outperform the competition by 5% in this area. The key may be to make this competitive advantage more consistent throughout the company.

In other words, there are influencers that would provide 2x, 3x and 4x the results of others if improvement were made in those specific areas. This could result in gains of millions or billions of unexpected dollars, based on some potentially simple improvements in the right areas.

This approach takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation. No espionage required. And, yet, the company makes the biggest gains in increasing its client base.

Now, this approach does not satisfy all Competitive Intelligence needs, but it sure does take the OPPORTUNITY column of the SWOT table to a completely different level.

I am happy to talk about this approach with you. Let me know what you think about how this would fit your organization. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Can You Predict Your Future Win Rate? (Part 1 of 2)

A very typical request we receive at Primary Intelligence is for a SWOT analysis. Our clients want to know the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats presented by a competitor or group of competitors in a marketplace.

Of course, this SWOT analysis has a place, but its value is more tactical than strategic. Sales guys should have access to a SWOT, but I don’t know that executives should make decisions based off of this kind of information.

The problem that I see with the SWOT analysis is the fact that a company will know where its current strengths and weaknesses may be, but doesn’t have any insight into the areas of change that will bring about the biggest improvement in win rates, market share and defeating the competition.

Below, you will see an example of a Strength/Weakness evaluation based on data from recent sales opportunities. Half of the data come from new business that was won and the other 50% come from opportunities that were lost to competitors: (click on the image to see a bigger version)

The data are sorted from biggest negative competitive gap (weakness) at the top to the biggest positive competitive gap (strength) at the bottom. The scores are based on a 1-10 scale where 1 is Poor and 10 is excellent.

If you were to make strategic changes in your company based on the data in this table, you would probably look at the weaknesses and evaluate the most effective ways to close the competitive gap.

But, would this make a difference? What would happen if you were to increase your performance in Overall Solution Cost or Understanding Needs by ten percent? (A 10% improvement would mean that you increase your score of 8.1 to 9.1) How much would your win rate increase? Would making improvements in your weaknesses correlate with a stronger competitive preference, or would you be pulling the wrong levers and pouring time and money down the drain?

Traditional intelligence looks at Strengths and Weaknesses
• Should you “fix” weaknesses or accentuate strengths?
• Strength/Weaknesses don’t always correlate with decision making.
• Where is your opportunity to increase win rates and market share?

In my experience, efforts to improve the biggest weaknesses rarely result in an overall improvement in market share and competitive sales wins. In other words, odds are good that most companies are wasting time and money by using SWOTs for strategic planning.

In my next post, I’ll show you a new way to prioritize your strategic plans, based on a more intelligent form of Competitive Intelligence and performance evaluation.

If you need more info on this topic, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050)

How Does Your Software Match Up with Client Needs?

In an evaluation of CRM/SFA vendors, we interviewed a company that needed more flexibility than its existing vendor could provide.

What was the compelling event that caused your organization to seek a
solution?
“It wasn’t a specific event. [Our current SFA vendor] does not allow us to perform necessary functions like categorize our customers by past purchases or by equipment they own that we’ve sold. It is unfriendly in allowing us to do campaigns. It is not possible to integrate it seamlessly with our ERP solution. It does not allow for workflows to be organized. That’s a small snippet, but it’s really a glorified contact management solution.”

When it came down to evaluating products, SellMore* was the better match for this company, even though SellMore’s solution was newer to the market and not as integrated with common ERP offerings as other, more seasoned competitors:

What were the primary reasons you did not select Salesmaster?
“I don’t like their interface. You have to go through too many windows, and Salesmaster is the opposite of SellMore. Our financial people really liked Salesmaster, and the reason is that in ERP—ERP is the financial software side—you do things one way because there are best practices in finance. On our side—marketing and sales and customer service—we do things in our own way. It’s completely unique to our company, and it has to be that way. Every six months or so, we’re making major changes. We have to have a flexible solution. Salesmaster is designed to be a static solution, and it’s very difficult to change. They say you can change anything, but you need a programmer. It’s also difficult to host—I need somebody who is an Salesmaster expert, and we don’t have one. We’d have to hire people for that, whereas I do have people who are experts in SQL Server, which is what SellMore runs on. I really didn’t like the interface because it was too cumbersome and difficult, and we had to teach our people to work around the software rather than getting the software to work around our people.”

What would you do if you were Salesmaster? How would this feedback change the way you identify your ideal prospects? How would you qualify leads? Does hearing this client perception of your solution change the way you approach the rest of the leads in your pipeline?

If you said “yes” to any of these questions, you are the kind of sales rep that effectively uses sales intelligence. And, that means that you are probably more effective than your counterparts.

Maybe, Primary Intelligence can take your sales intelligence initiatives to a higher level. Let’s chat and see if there is anything we can do to make your sales job easier. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)


* Company names changes to protect the identity of our clients and competing vendors.

How will Sales Intelligence make me more effective?

After all of the preliminaries are in process (introductions, relationship, etc…), you will have to answer the following questions in order to do business:

• Who is the prospect?
• What does the prospect value?
• How can we provide a solution?
• Is there a pain or problem that needs to be fixed?
• What can the competition do to solve that same problem or pain?
• Where does our company usually rate vs. the usual suspects… er… competitors?
• How does [company] like to buy?
• How have they approached other purchase like this in the past?
• What is [prospect]’s market like?
• Why are you the best choice? (If you don’t know now, you’ll find out later why you weren’t)
• Should you even be in this deal at all or would your time be better spent somewhere else?

All of these questions have very valuable answers. The answers may come from a number of sources, but they exist.

More importantly, sales is growing more sophisticated every day. Sales Operations, Sales Support and Marketing in some companies are pushing this information directly to the sales reps in “just-in-time” systems to ensure that sales teams run as effectively as possible.

How does your company approach the problem of trying to really, truly, deeply understand your prospects and current clients? If you are like 70-80% of the companies out there, you probably are just getting started at some level. In my estimation, only 5-10% of the businesses in the United States are what I would consider to be “cutting edge” in their practices. And their results are proof that their systems are working.

If you have a success story, let’s chat. I appreciate talking to advanced practitioners of Sales and Competitive Intelligence. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Do You Know Why You Win Sales Opportunities?

It is very common that companies approach us at Primary Intelligence requesting the answer to “why do we lose?”

At Primary Intelligence, we strongly recommend analyzing won sales opportunities with the same diligence as your losses. The benefits are too strong to ignore:

• Without win information , it is difficult to understand what you are doing right. How can you replicate your best practices if you don’t really know what they are?



• Good information on your wins will provide a story you can tell to other prospects in similar situations.



• You can increase your library of reference information with some detailed win information.



• Using the same interview guide, you can measure performance gaps between the wins and losses. Eventually, you will identify consistent weaknesses that can be addressed.



• With wins and losses, you can populate predictive analytics to create strategic plans.

In one of our recent wins, we were pleased to find that part of our selling cycle differentiated us from our competitor:

QAD recently chose to contract with Primary Intelligence for win loss and competitive intelligence service because of its familiarity and positive prior experience with the vendor. The Company also considered [a competitor], but Rod Sidrow, competitive strategy manager, said that there was not much of a sales cycle involved and that selecting Primary Intelligence was a straightforward choice. He recognized the strength of PI’s product, asserting that once he had seen what it had to offer, “[He] didn’t need to look any further.”

Part of what made Primary Intelligence’s offering so appealing was that Sidrow got to experience what the actual product would look like before making the purchase. Primary Intelligence offered him two free sample opportunities written specifically for his business to review, but Sidrow had trouble even obtaining a sample of [the competitor’s] past work.

Sales and Marketing were both pleased to find that the sales tools and messages worked even better than anticipated. This type of feedback (along with hundreds of other data points) have helped move Primary Intelligence into a leadership position in Win Loss, Account Retention, Target Profiling and Customer Loyalty. With information from our wins, we understand what our clients value and how we can leverage our strengths to make the strongest sales case possible.

I recommend that losses be studied, lessons learned and corrective action taken. But, don’t ignore the wins. They can teach you just as much.

Let’s chat about this sometime. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sometimes, It Really is About Price

A few days ago, I said that “it isn’t really about price.” That is only partially true. I have never been in a position to buy a luxurious item “regardless of price.” (Maybe someday, but not yet.)

But, sometimes, it really is about price. If you are a completely commoditized product or service that anyone can provide at an equal level of quality, timeliness and satisfaction, it really is about price.

And, if this describes you, I am sorry. Get out and go find something fun to do.

Most every product and service in existence can differentiate itself one way or another. The trick is to find out which differentiation aspect will make the difference. Product, features, packaging, service level, people, timeliness, quality, brand recognition, reputation and many other value identifiers can be modified, tweaked or emphasized to show an advantage over the competition.

The trick is to figure out which one will matter.

CPG companies know. That’s why they can sell corn flakes and toothpaste at double the cost of generics and stay in business.

If they can figure it out and fight the battle on the store shelves, your product/technology/service/solution (ranging from hundreds of dollars to hundreds of millions) is ripe for differentiation.

Find out what the prospects value and give it to them. If you don’t, you’re in a race to the bottom on price. And, that’s a race you don’t want to win.

Good selling. Give me a call and let’s chat about identifying your value proposition. (801.838.9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Why are Sales People so Stupid (or are they)?

I recently read a blog posting from last year by Scott Santucci where he talks to marketers about their perception of sales people in general. It starts like this:

"Come on, admit it.

"It’s what you think, isn’t it?

"If I had a dollar for every time I heard “our sales people lack the skills
or ability to (insert any of the following: cross-sell, sell higher, sell to
value, get ahead of the RFP)” I would be a very rich person. But is this really
the problem?"

Then, he goes on to point out how sales people don't live in the simple world that many marketers might assume. Just trying to manage sales messaging and collateral can be much more complex than might be assumed at first:

"Assuming your company has 10 products that all can be sold by your sales force, lets try to determine how much information a sales person must process and manage on any given account they are pursing.

•10 products
•5 key value propositions for each product (50 different value propositions)
•Messages must be delivered to 5 different client stakeholders (250 different messages)
•Each value propositions has a set of 5 questions to uncover and they are different from stakeholder to stakeholder (the degree of difference is not important) – 1250 different messages
•Each value proposition has one competitive knockoff per competitor and you have 4 key competitors (50 different value propositions x 4 competitors = 200 +1250 = 1,450 different messages)
•Each product has a minimum of 5 different collateral pieces that exist about various aspects of the product (5 collateral pieces X 10 products = 50 different collateral pieces to locate, which equals 1,500 different information elements to manage)
•Each stakeholder has a set of 5 personal goals and 5 business goals that must be matched with their corresponding value propositions (5 personal goals + 5 business goals X 5 stakeholders = 50 unique goals + 1,500 information elements = 1,550 information elements.

"So, in this scenario, a salesperson is asked to manage over 1,500 different forms of information for each account they deal with."

So, what is the takeaway? Mr. Santucci suggests that marketing needs to better understand what the sales team is up against. Marketing should produce tools that will help simplify (rather than complicate) the sales process.

Personally, I think that marketing and sales need tighter integration. Put some marketing people in the sales department for a couple of weeks. Let them attempt to use the tools and messages that sound so good in marketing's ivory towers. When they return, they will probably have a better appreciation for the needed materials. They might also want to return occasionally to sales as a source of inspiration.

And, don't let the sales team off the hook. Let them spend a little time in marketing. Some cross-pollination and discussion will do them good, too.

In the end, both teams have to work hand in hand. It's all about selling. And, if anyone in sales or marketing forgets that, big obstacles are looming on the horizon.

Happy selling, and let me know what you think. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801.838.9600 x5050, www.primary-intel.com)