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.

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 - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Intelligence - Competitive Positioning

Especially in B2B sales, most companies that sell products, services or solutions have to compete against other vendors to gain a new client. Everyone in the deal works to differentiate themselves. Not only do you need to know how to position your product in the prospect’s company. You should also know how to anticipate the messages provided by competitive vendors in order to give your efforts the best chance. In your sales opportunities, how well are you able to identify what the competition says to position itself specifically against you?

Benefits
Differentiation: the first step in avoiding the curse of commoditization. Your company seeks to demonstrate value propositions that help move price further down the decision chain, but that’s not all. Proper positioning of your company and offering provide an advantage over the competition. Just remember that each of your competitors has the same goal. Knowing how each competitor positions itself against you reveals strategic direction, differentiation, and their perception of the current “hot buttons.”

Marketing
Gauge the effectiveness of your message versus the competition’s. Watch for changes in their positioning over time while monitoring the effectiveness of your value proposition. Understanding how your prospects react to your message and that of the competition provides an immediate tactical advantage.

Sales
What is the word on the street about you and the competition? With intelligence geared toward revealing the positioning of your competition, you gain the upper hand. Use this knowledge to beat the competition to the punch and steal their thunder. Know how to weaken their position before they arrive to the opportunity.

Recommendations

1. Use primary research methods to communicate with prospects
2. Prospects may not think like marketers or business intelligence specialists. Make sure to ask specific questions
3. “When [competitor] demonstrated its [feature], what did it say to justify the ROI?”
4. “What kind of emphasis did [competitor] put on its new [solution]?”
5. Engage Primary Intelligence to work with recent prospects to uncover the real message. A third-party vendor can usually approach this topic more easily than your company.

Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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)

Competitive Intelligence: Analytics Show You How to Sell More

If your company uses market information to make decisions, you are almost certain to be familiar with the “Of these items, how important was…” or “Which of these would you consider to be first, second and third most important?” These questions result in a measurement of stated importance, or those things that are easily identified and verbalized as important.

While these data are easy to generate and generally seem reasonable at face value, there is evidence to show that decisions based solely on stated importance are subject to important limitations. Those areas of your company’s performance that are identified as most important often do not correlate well, if at all, with purchase decisions. Which means that your company can act on those performance areas identified as most important and yet, no measurable improvement be made from those efforts. In most companies, that is defined as poor ROI or “a waste of money.”

For example, through your research, you may identify a performance area with a relatively low performance score and might initially trigger discussion regarding ways to improve the performance. However, you wouldn’t want to do much about it if it had a low correlation to overall increases in market share. For instance, let’s consider this principle in a Win Loss setting. Suppose we had created an interview and included the measurement of professionalism of a sales force against a prospect’s likelihood of choosing a vendor. Whether the performance rating against the competition was positive or negative, it would be difficult for an executive to understand the impact that professionalism actually has on the company’s sales win ratio. It would be impossible to know how much a change in performance would affect that win ratio. If it turns out that the correlation to the sales win rate is high, the decision to put emphasis on increasing professionalism would be very easy and relatively risk-free. If the correlation were low, resources could be assigned to improve other parts of the sales process.

There is much evidence to indicate that responses on importance scales can be affected by other factors that distort the accuracy of the response, for example the need to please, social demands, cognitive dissonance, and generic importance, among others. In the entertainment industry, for example, television viewers using such scales will continually rate the value of news and information above sex or escapism. However, would anyone wish to predict, based upon these data, whether the ratings of the program Seinfeld will be lower than those of The PBS News Hour? Thus, there is a much deeper level of insight to be gained from deriving the information from the respondents’ answers rather than taking them at face value.

The quadrant below shows how actual data from our win loss studies has plotted on stated importance and derived importance:

Legend
• Stated importance is plotted on the Y-axis; it represents the average importance rating given by respondents for each influencer’s characteristic or attribute.
• Derived importance is plotted on the X-axis; it is obtained by assessing the company’s performance in each influencer and determining (through proprietary modeling techniques) the impact that each influencer had on the sales outcome. The higher the derived importance, the more impact that influencer has on the overall sales win ratio.

• Upper left quadrant—“Declared important”: This quadrant consists of items that are stated to be important, but which ultimately have little correlation to a respondent’s decision-making process.
• Upper right quadrant—“Key influencers”: This quadrant reflects attributes that the respondent both states as being important and which prove to be highly influential at a derived level.
• Lower right quadrant—“Hidden opportunities”: This quadrant consists of attributes that the respondent cannot readily identify at a stated level, but which do impact overall satisfaction at a derived level.
• Lower left quadrant—“Limited impact”: Attributes in this quadrant have both low stated importance and little influence on overall satisfaction.

Now, one caveat is in order here. Some performance areas may be ranked high in stated importance, but will be low in derived importance. This doesn’t mean that a company can cut back efforts in the areas of stated importance. They still have an effect on the sales process. When an attribute has a high stated importance, the data are saying that this is a performance area that can’t be neglected without adversely altering the win loss ratio, but significant improvement may not provide actual gains in the win loss ratio.

In the end, using the most sophisticated analytics tools to determine the key influencers will eventually provide the greatest strategic decision-making ability for your company. In so many cases, this approach has improved company performance so much more than “gut feeling,” reactive competitive intelligence programs, and stated importance measurements.

This is where Primary Intelligence makes its living; providing powerful predictive analytics to our clients in order to grow their market share. Perhaps, we should discuss how this might work for you. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales Reps and Management: Should You Listen to Your Prospects?

Listen, listen, listen. Is there a more basic sales skill? If you don’t understand your prospect, how can you possibly solve their need?

Of course, you can’t stop listening. If you turn off the voice of your prospect, you are committing sales suicide. Not very productive in my book.

But, is the voice of your prospect telling you everything you need to know? Practitioners of analytics would tell you, “No.” In fact, there are many examples of people saying one thing, but feeling another. In research, the following example illustrates this point:

“There is much evidence to indicate that responses on importance scales can be affected by other factors that distort the accuracy of the response, i.e., the need to please, social demands, cognitive dissonance, and generic importance among others. In the entertainment industry, for example, television viewers using such scales will continually rate the value of news and information above sex or escapism. However, would anyone wish to predict, based upon these data, whether the ratings of the program Seinfeld will be lower than those of The PBS News Hour? Thus, there is a much deeper level of insight to be gained from deriving the information from the respondents’ answers rather than taking them at face value."

So, how does this apply to sales? Perhaps in the one-to-one relationship building, listening directly to the client is the only avenue for information. But, when the collective voices of your clients speak, take a little time to couple their actions with their words to determine your sales performance areas that really matter.

The quadrant below shows how actual data from our win loss studies has plotted on stated importance and derived importance:

Legend
• Stated importance is plotted on the Y-axis; it represents the average importance rating given by respondents for each influencer’s characteristic or attribute.
• Derived importance is plotted on the X-axis; it is obtained by assessing the company’s performance in each influencer and determining (through proprietary modeling techniques) the impact that each influencer had on the sales outcome. The higher the derived importance, the more impact that influencer has on the overall sales win ratio.

• Upper left quadrant—“Declared important”: This quadrant consists of items that are stated to be important, but which ultimately have little correlation to a respondent’s decision-making process.
• Upper right quadrant—“Key influencers”: This quadrant reflects attributes that the respondent both states as being important and which prove to be highly influential at a derived level.
• Lower right quadrant—“Hidden opportunities”: This quadrant consists of attributes that the respondent cannot readily identify at a stated level, but which do impact overall satisfaction at a derived level.
• Lower left quadrant—“Limited impact”: Attributes in this quadrant have both low stated importance and little influence on overall satisfaction.

Now, one caveat is in order here. Some performance areas may be ranked high in stated importance, but will be low in derived importance. This doesn’t mean that a company can cut back efforts in the areas of stated importance. They still have an effect on the sales process. When an attribute has a high stated importance, the data are saying that this is a performance area that can’t be neglected without adversely altering the win loss ratio, but significant improvement may not provide actual gains in the win loss ratio.

In the end, using the most sophisticated analytics tools to determine the key influencers will eventually provide the greatest strategic decision-making ability for your company. In so many cases, this approach has improved company performance so much more than “gut feeling,” reactive competitive intelligence programs, and stated importance measurements.

This is where Primary Intelligence makes its living; providing powerful predictive analytics to our clients in order to grow their market share. Perhaps, we should discuss how this might work for you. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Use Competitive Intelligence to Determine Positioning in Sales and Marketing

In a standard win loss project, one of the exercises we at Primary Intelligence perform during the interview process is to allow the respondent (a recent decision-maker that evaluated our client) rank the top three company, product and sales performance areas. The result is often a chart that looks like the one below:

Quickly, our client was able to see how to rework the sales message to be more effective. They changed their talk from customization and implementation to technology, functionality and integration. They used those topics to build the value proposition and outmaneuver the competition on cost.

It should be noted that, in this case, our client was one of the higher-end vendors. If they addressed price in the first sentence, they rarely made it to value.

Interestingly, Technology was rarely rated as the #1 criteria, but it was the second most mentioned criteria in the list overall.

Do you have this kind of visibility into your sales and marketing messages? If not, let’s do a couple of post-sales analyses free for you. Give me a call and let’s set something up. (Chris, 801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

Should You Always be Closing?

In a recent interview conducted with a current customer of our client, we found the following feedback about the ongoing relationship with the sales team:

“Each time they talk with a different person in my company, it always seems like they are trying to sell something else. You always get that sales aspect even though we've already passed that point. I would like them to be more personable and conversational, and deal with the reason we called the meeting. Let’s talk more about what we are trying to do as a company. If I don’t have any needs right now, don’t push me. When I do have a need, you’ll be the first one I call.”

While selling skills are always important, this example tells me that one must take care to be a trusted resource first, sales rep second.
Just a little lesson learned from feedback gathered

Does Salesforce Provide Useful Sales Intelligence?

The question is interesting to consider. Does Salesforce provide useful sales intelligence? Does salesforce provide useful competitive intelligence? What can a sales professional learn from their interaction with Salesforce.com that will help him sell more effectively today and tomorrow?

As a Salesforce client, each member of our sales department is in and out of SF.com constantly. As a small company, we have had very good success at maintaining high levels of cooperation and our SF.com database is full of data.

Just like anyone else, we can slice, dice, segment, sub-segment, identify, plan, track and forecast. And, we have looked in the AppExchange for solutions to make our usage more effective.

But, I don't feel like our SFA makes us more effective in our selling. I mean, SF.com is a tool that tracks a lot of stuff, but doesn't improve our selling efforts, discover new markets or understand the competitive landscape much better.

And, I'm not really that disappointed about the whole situation, since SF.com is meant to be a powerful organizer of data, but not much else.

I want a solution that tells me how I can win a higher percentage of the upcoming deals in my pipeline. I want to be able to see when competitors are picking up speed and when we are increasing our competitive strength. I want a system that tells me where groups of sales reps might benefit from specific training.

I want intelligence that can be used to increase the overall effectiveness of my company's sales effort. And I don't see that in SF.com.

Now, if you know us (Primary Intelligence), you probably can figure out how I solve my problems. However, I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas from you on how you answer these questions.

Let me know. Post a reply or contact me at 801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com. I would like to know what you think.

Why Do Your Clients Buy? Sales Intelligence Will Tell You

In the last post, I showed you reasons why a company’s prospects did not buy from our prospect. Today, I’ll show the top reasons they purchased from anyone at all.

Below, you will see a chart of the most often mentioned reasons for selecting a vendor. While price/cost is still high on the chart, in a B2B setting, a significantly higher percentage were more interested in the ability of the solution (in this case, a technology offering) to meet their needs.

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
• The above-mentioned responses include wins and losses for our prospect

If I am involved in sales in any way, how much more encouragement do I need to make sure that my sales reps LISTEN to the clients, ASK probing questions of the prospects about their needs and then MAP my solution to as many as possible?

Once I have taken that step, I would look for intelligence on my competitors. I want to know how they are mapping their solution to those same needs. I want to take the purchase decision away from cost and other factors and straight into solving their problems as elegantly as possible. If you are able to build an individual value proposition on the things that matter most, you are likely to do much more with your pipeline in short order.

BTW, the above-mentioned results are simple to gather. Ask your clients and lost prospects. They’ll be happy to tell you how your competition performed. And, if you would like a cleaner, more consistent and reliable set of data, look into a 3rd-party vendor. Odds are, your results will provide an ROI story of multiples over the expense.

And, as usual, I’ll throw in my shameless marketing plug. Primary Intelligence is ready to serve your needs. We have done more sales intelligence work than anyone else. We’ll evaluate your business, suggest a plan and follow up with recommendations, training and change management. If you need answers, give me a call (801-838-9600 x5050, cdalley@primary-intel.com)

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)

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.

Sales Intelligence, More than Ever

According to the CSO Insights report “Proactive Sales Intelligence: The New Requirements for Getting Into the Game,”

-The number of reps achieving quota is down
-Converting initial conversations into presentations is down
-Lead gen is tossing more leads in the hopper, but the conversion rate is dropping.

Why?

Buyers are bypassing the information stage of the game. Websites and available information are taking the initial stages upon themselves. The buying process has evolved. The buy cycle is starting much earlier than the sell cycle.

So, how does a company get into more sales opportunities and move them through to the presentation?

Turns out that sales intelligence may provide a benefit. According to CSO Insights:

“Firms that excel at Sales Intelligence not only get into the game more often
than their less-effective counterparts, they also win the game more often.” (Dickie, Jim and Barry Trailer, Proactive Sales Intelligence: The New Requirements for Getting Into the Game, CSO Insights (2007), page 3)

To demonstrate this point, CSO Insights found that the availability of Sales Intelligence seemed to measurably improve win rates of forecast deals:

Easy access to SI – 55.1% win rate
Limited access to SI – 49.2% win rate
Difficult/No access – 47.1%

If you do the math, sales reps can be substantially more effective across the board if Sales Intelligence is provided.

The report can be downloaded from CSO Insights here. Registration is required. The registration form can be accessed here.

If you would like more information, please let me know. I enjoy the chance to chat about these topics. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

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)

You Got a Check. Did You Really Win?

In last week’s post, I gave an example of a company that won a deal, but learned something very important about its pricing structure.

Below, I’m going to share a little more about the deal. After reviewing this information, tell me if you think this company is winning business or not.

“They don’t demonstrate their products. I have never met a representative from FlashNet* in person, and that has a lot to do with my rating. They have never shown up. They are definitely not getting the share of business that they could get because of it. I can guarantee it. “I’ll give you an example: we bought a 20 TB storage area network. 10 TB is currently installed, and were looking at upgrading it. They’re in the storage networking business, so they wouldn’t come see us; they were not even in the list of potential vendors because of that reason. It’s that simple.

“Lunch meetings do make business. They have never visited us. I’ll give you an example: I probably spend about $1 million to $2 million in Cisco equipment a year. Last year, I only spent about $60,000 with FlashNet; this year, I probably spent about $200,000 with them. For the last four years, they have only had a small portion of my overall Cisco business, and when you look at it from an enterprise perspective—for example, we just spent $20 million on a new clinical information system—out of $20 million, FlashNet received no money from that project. We have a budget of $30 million, and FlashNet received just $60,000 of that. It’s because they will not fly anybody out here.

“They don’t have a presence out here, and that’s unfortunate for them. They are a good vendor; it’s unfortunate that they will not come out to meet their customers.”

*Name changed to maintain confidentiality

The fact of the matter is that FlashNet got a check and sold some stuff, but they received less than 1% of the total budget and 0% of a project where they had a potentially strong solution. FlashNet is probably getting a little money just because it is an incumbent in some part of the client's business.

This is probably not a unique case. How many times is FlashNet losing because of a short-sighted decision not to travel and visit? There may be logistical reasons, but this client is located in a suburb of Portland, Oregon; hardly the backwaters of the B2B sales world. Last I checked, Portland has an airport and rental car services.

Do you think that FlashNet will make any changes to its processes based on the information above? I hope so. I hope this information goes to the executive level rather than being shelved with all of the other dusty reports. I’ll probably never know. But, if I were an exec, this is the kind of intelligence I would need.

I would stop high-fiving the sales guy for winning $60K and start asking questions about why we’re not taking $5M.

If you feel differently, or if I’m missing something, let me know (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

And, if you want this type of intelligence on your new customers and lost prospects, Primary Intelligence does this kind of stuff every day.

Tactical Sales Intelligence - Creating Competitive Advantages for Sales Teams

For a sales rep who deals in the tactical world, an objective measurement of strengths and weaknesses may be the difference between winning and losing a deal.

At Primary Intelligence we provide a view into the prospects’ perception of your sales efforts. We measure their perception of the sales team, company performance and product fit. These three areas are almost always considered in complex sales.

In a more transactional setting, we find that product and sales performance are the most important.

Recently, we completed a competitive intelligence analysis for a client and found that they had a number of competitive strengths. Their list of competitive weaknesses was relatively short, which was no surprise considering their prominent market position.


However, if there was an area of concern, it was in the performance of the sales team. There were a number of areas where, compared to the competition, their scores did not measure up.

Presentations, Subject Matter Knowledge and Understanding Business Requirements are all areas of some concern. The recommendation to the sales group was to improve the presentation style and delivery. Additionally, the sales team should spend a little more time practicing their listening and understanding skills. If they were to listen better to requirements, the presentations would probably improve as they became more targeted to the specific needs of the prospect.

Again, these are tactical improvements that need to be addressed right now to level the playing field. These are not strategic recommendations. For more insight on the data needed to make strategic plans at the executive level, see my other blog regarding impact-based competitive intelligence.

Do you see something in the data here that I’m missing? Let me know (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)

An Enchilada of Information

Once when I was young, my family was set to leave on a three week family vacation. In a last-ditch effort to clean out the fridge, my Mom (who never threw any food away in her life) emptied all of the leftovers into tortillas and served us the most interesting enchiladas ever created on earth.

Normally, I'm a pretty good eater and I'll try most anything, but the combination of ham, beans and beets (among other stuff) has created a wonderful story that has lasted for dozens of years now.

When thinking about all of the information available within your organization, how do you want to receive and digest the good bits? And, how do you let the supporting departments in your company know your tastes and dislikes? Or, did you decide long ago that you don't want information because there were too many beets falling out the end?

Start today by:

1. Making a list of the types of intelligence you wish you had
2. Figure out how you want to receive that information
3. Decide whether you prefer to interpret information yourself or engage a 3rd party that can provide expertise.

Then, sell this idea up the organization. Odds are, the information exists somewhere already. If you make your needs known, you may even receive the data in the requested format. (Those marketing guys are secretly hoping that someone will pull a report, dust it off and use the data.

If you want some ideas, give me a call (Chris, 801-838-9600 x5050)

www.primary-intel.com