What Competitive Intelligence Does Sales Want?

Sales (and companies in general) thrives on winning business. By putting an emphasis on winning, this implies that a sale is a competitive endeavor where there is often a winner and loser. And winning every contest is not an easy task. It takes skill, effort and an understanding of the game and its players.

Losing, on the other hand, is not very difficult at all. Every sales rep has a story about the time they didn’t prepare, research the opportunity, understand the competition or work hard enough to make the right value equation. The small amount of time that went into that opportunity was lost from the beginning. There was almost no chance of winning the business and the token efforts may have been less valuable than avoiding the situation altogether.

Sales professionals have spoken to us at Primary Intelligence, telling us exactly what they want at different stages of the sales cycle. The information is very enlightening. Most people would guess that “price” and “competitor’s price” would be on the list. They would be right. However, they’re not as high on the list as you might think.

When it comes to competitive intelligence, sales people want to know the following:

Before the sale

Which companies have needs I can fulfill?

What are the primary pain-points that I can use?

How will the competitors approach the same opportunity?

What advantages do I have over the competition?

What advantages do I have over the prospect’s in-house efforts?

Does this client have the ability to pay the price I’ll have to charge?

During the sale

Which competitors am I likely to see in this deal?

What are those competitors saying about their product/service/solution?

What are those competitors saying about my product/service/solution?

How do buyers make decisions (which people have to be involved?)

Which of my features is likely to be perceived as “must have” over the competition?

What price is the competition offering?

How can I be seen as the expert in this deal?

After the sale

What did I/we do to earn this business?

Where there any trouble spots that nearly cost us the business?

(If lost) Where did we fail to communicate value?

(If lost) Which competitor won and what terms did they use?

If I wanted to re-engage, what would it take to win back the business?

How can I win this type of deal in the future?

In the future, should I avoid this type of company in favor of others? (Is there something about this type of prospect that makes them less productive?)

Recommendation: Listen to the sales leaders and ground-level sales people and design your competitive intelligence program to accommodate their needs. You might find that your program changes away from scraping websites and reading 10-Ks to actively conducting 1st person research with your marketplace, either with Win Loss, Market Needs, Target Prospecting, Post-implementation and the like.

In other words, your traditional competitive intelligence program that is built to support corporate objectives may not match up at all with what the sales people are looking for. However, considering that sales is the lifeline of your business, it might be wise to give them a little love and help them win more business. In the end, this is part of what makes top companies great.

Now is the time for sales reps and managers to speak up and tell everyone what they want. If I have missed something, please post a comment in this blog, send me an email (cdalley@primary-intel.com) or call me (801-838-9600 x5050)

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 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.

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 Competitive Performance Comparisons

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

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

Company
Financial Viability
Industry experience
Reputation
Company Size

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Recommendations

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

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

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

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

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

Sales Cycle Length – What Does Competitive Intelligence Tell You?

In a recent study we conducted for a regional medical plan provider, Primary Intelligence evaluated a large number of recent won and lost sales opportunities. These opportunities represented accounts in which the regional provider had competed directly against a competitor for new business.

The opportunities broke out as 50% wins and 50% losses for our client. However, this is not necessarily representative of the actual win rate for this client. This ratio was created in order to populate predictive analytics algorithms used by Primary Intelligence to help companies increase their win rates.

Outside of the predictive analytics, Primary Intelligence also attempts to glean additional information about the sales cycle. In today’s post, we’ll look at the sales cycle length and determine if anything can be learned.

Primary Intelligence interviewed the decision-makers within the prospects’ companies. The people that talked to Primary Intelligence were those that played a prominent role in the evaluation and decision to purchase from our client or competitor. In every one of these cases, the prospect purchased health care solutions, whether from our client or the competition.

The respondents were asked about the amount of time required to make a decision, from initial needs requirements to contract. In this case, The decision time for respondents selecting Regional Medical’s* plans is very short, with 87.5 percent making their decision to purchase Regional Medical within two months (see chart 6). If the prospect chooses a competitor’s solution, that decision is made within the same time frame 75 percent of the time.

(*Company name changed to provide anonymity)

A couple of lessons can be learned:

1- For this client, get out of most every opportunity that lasts longer than 3 months. Very few opportunities are won after 3 months.
2- Sales management should watch the sales rep’s pipelines. If the sales rep is holding on to opportunities too long, they are not working the most productive leads.
3- On average, the longer the opportunity lasts, the higher the likelihood that the competition will win.

The chart presented above shows a very short sales cycle. Many of our clients in various industries are more likely to see data over a 6 month or 12 month sales cycle (or even longer in some cases).

The actual sales cycle length is irrelevant. The fact is that you need to know the sweet spots of your sales cycle timeline. There is no guarantee that all prospects will behave like the peaks and valleys in the chart above, but it is important to note when decisions are made and where you should push harder and when you should pull back.

If sales is a numbers game (and it is), learning to maximize the odds in your favor is one of the most efficient ways of making your sales efforts more effective.

If you need a view into this kind of data, let me know. I can help. (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)

Industry-leading Companies Use Analytics to Beat the Competition

From a study/paper/book by Thomas H. Davenport called “Competing on Analytics”, an excerpt of the subject matter provides an idea of the ways that analytics and intelligence are being used in business processes, including the sales process:

“Companies questing for killer apps generally focus all their firepower on the one area that promises to create the greatest competitive advantage. But a new breed of organization has upped the stakes: Amazon, Harrah's, Capital One, and the Boston Red Sox have all dominated their fields by deploying industrial-strength analytics across a wide variety of activities. At a time when firms in many industries offer similar products and use comparable technologies, business processes are among the few remaining points of differentiation--and analytics competitors wring every last drop of value from those processes. Employees hired for their expertise with numbers or trained to recognize their importance are armed with the best evidence and the best quantitative tools. As a result, they make the best decisions.” (Buy the report here)

In sales, these analytics can start with reports and dashboards in the SFA, but these simply scratch the surface. Much like the New England Patriots use world-class analytics to predict the behavior of the competition in thousands of scenarios, sales management can increase their chances of being effective by studying dozens of variables that lead to success.

These variables range from optimal employee personality, competitor value propositions, client needs over time and current level of sales skills. And, of course, there are so many variables in-between.

What kind of power would you have at your disposal if you could say, “In light of the fact that our prospect is evaluating us against competitor x, we need to say these things, structure the deal like this and enlist the help of these three sales professionals to close this deal. If we do these things, we’ll increase our odds by 47%”?

It is possible to do this, but this level of analytics does not usually seem of interest to most people in the sales management role. While there is an element of mystics art to successful selling, selling is a process and a process can be optimized. And since sales lives in a continually changing world, that optimization has to be conducted continually.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Competitive Intelligence - A Quantitative Evaluation of Your Sales Team's Performance

Every sales manager uses a grading system of some type for individual sales reps and the collective sales team. One of the most interesting measurements we have found is based on feedback from outside the organization. At Primary Intelligence, we let the prospects tell you how you are doing as a company. If the measurements are gathered consistently from enough sales opportunities, we have the ability to show you the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team in up to 30 different performance areas.

The table below shows a sample report from an actual client. The measurements are based on 30 opportunities where our client won and 30 where the prospect chose a competing vendor. (Click on the image below to enlarge)


It is important to note that these measurements are most effective for planning changes to tactics. Strategic insight would be better displayed through Primary Intelligence’s predictive analytics. You can email me about the analytics or read back through some older posts for more info.

Anyway, when reviewing scores like those above, the positives are your current competitive strengths and the negatives represent your overall weaknesses.

As a VP of sales, I would use this competitive/sales intelligence to show that overall, we need to emphasize our industry experience. I would also recommend that the company implement a program that helps sales reps understand the business of their prospects. These are both fairly simple to solve, require very little money, and have nothing to do with price.

Primary Intelligence could also bring some training to the table to develop the improvement plans and increase sales team effectiveness in these two areas of sales performance weakness.

Do you know what your prospects think of your performance? Maybe, it is time to ask. We can help you. We’ll show you how to do it and we’ll provide an end-to-end solution if you need one. I can give you details (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Sales / Competitive Intelligence – Know Thy Enemy

Anecdotally, you know who the competitors are around you. You have a pretty good idea of how often you run up against certain vendors. But, unless you actually quantify the landscape, you run the risk of being surprised by up-and-comers.

One of the things that we do at Primary Intelligence is help our clients identify their competition landscape. Over time, we show how the landscape is changing and how competitive situations may evolve into the future.

For example, in the case of a heath insurance provider, we collected data from their recent won and lost sales opportunities. Below, you’ll see a table of data, with all vendors’ names changed to provide confidentiality:


While our client expected to see National Health Coverage most of the time, they were surprised at the prevalence of Squirrels Health Plans. In the previous round of intelligence, we found that Squirrels was encountered in approximately 20% of the sales opportunities. The fact that this percentage had increased to 64% indicated a very big change in the competitive landscape.

Turns out, Squirrels was starting to win a larger percentage of the deals than before, too. The competitive threat level was increasing faster than anecdotal information or analyst recommendations could keep track. Without this type of view into the landscape, our client was destined to miss critical competitive warnings until the situation progressed too far. As it turned out, Primary Intelligence was able to use this intelligence as a jumping-off point and find out:

Why Squirrels was appearing so often

What they were offering to get into the same kind of deals as our client

How to combat their value proposition effectively and maintain existing accounts while selling more productively against them

While I will admit that intuition, experience and gut-feelings are important parts of the sales process, wise companies combined those factors with hard intelligence to apply resources to the most productive markets; no reason to be surprised when reasonable options exist.

If you need an idea of how this would work in your company, leave me a post, call (801-838-9600 x5050) or send an email (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.

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)

Webinar: Does Your Sales Team Have Heart?

“The first sale has to occur in the sales rep’s heart.”

This statement has always been true, but often it is difficult to get an accurate measurement of your sales team’s attitudes and their level of confidence in your company, your products, your competition, and their own abilities.

Primary Intelligence would like to invite you to a Webinar explaining the Sales Confidence Index (SCI), a Web-based metric that can be used to analyze your sales team’s level of engagement and provide insight into the areas that will help you create and maintain a dedicated, confident, and effective sales force.

Through this presentation, Primary Intelligence will show you how you can use SCI to:

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

Date: Thursday, June 21
Time 2 PM EST (11 AM PST)
Duration: 1 Hour
Cost: Free

To register, click here: https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/727867237

Those that will most benefit from this discussion include:

• Sales VPs
• Sales Directors and Managers
• Regional sales leaders
• Business development leadersCEOs/CFOs/CSOs

What is Sales Intelligence?

Great question! Now, go sit down and stop thinking so much. You'll give yourself a headache.

Seriously, there have been many attempts to understand the line that delineates sales data from intelligence. Sales intelligence exists as a subset of competitive intelligence. It covers a broad array of potential information. And, there are a dozen different definitions. However, a recent report from CSO Insights indicates their feelings on the matter.

According to Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer, sales data is very common. It would include information such as company names, contacts, phone numbers, revenue and any other identifying pieces of information. Sales intelligence, on the other hand, adds to these items and shows sales reps how they can be better positioned, the value proposition that is most likely to resonate, how their clients like to buy and turn-offs that may shut down the sale.

The CSO Insights report describes the benefits of providing sales intelligence rather than data:

1- Get into the game more often
2- Get out of losing games earlier
3- Win the game more often

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

Primary Intelligence believes that sales intelligence can produce gains of 10%, 20% or more. Our clients believe this too. We go beyond sales data to show how companies can sell more effectively, distancing themselves from the competition, moving into new markets and creating new opportunities.

Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer are very smart guys. And, I am happy that their data supports our core focus: Helping sales people sell more.

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)

Getting to the Root of Your Sales Success (Win Loss Analysis)

Many companies want to know the best way to collect win loss information from their recent completed sales opportunities. While Primary Intelligence is happy to do this work for you, feel free to take away the following information and use it in your organization. These ideas (along with the past few posts) have provided information that should help anyone to successfully organize their first sales intelligence campaign:

Which accounts and how many accounts will be targeted for Win Loss analysis?
The accounts to be targeted for Win Loss review will be determined by you. Some companies choose to select specific key accounts for review, while most others elect to review a percentage of all their opportunities within a given time period.

Typically the number of accounts analyzed for a company in a given quarter range from a low of 10 to a high of 500. Ultimately the number selected should be based on your available budget or available resources for Win Loss and the goals you’re hoping to accomplish with this program.

How is the information collected?
For most Win Loss projects, the information is primarily collected via telephone interviews. We find this method to be the most effective. In some cases, a web-administered interview may be implemented, but the level of qualitative data ends up being almost nonexistent.

How many wins versus losses do we include?
Most companies use an equal number of wins and losses. The actual number of interviews will vary based on your specific project goals and your available data. While a few companies have chosen to focus on their losses, our experience has shown that it is very difficult to uncover best practices and seperate them from the weaknesses if you don't have quantitative proof of what is working well.

Can we get every account we win or lose to participate?
In some cases all opportunities targeted for review have participated, but in other projects it has proven impossible. The actual participation in every project varies based on a number of factors including, your sales relationship with the prospect, the amount of lapsed time since the decision was made, turnover and relocation of key persons in the accounts, types of questions asked, and the actual time to complete the interview.

Therefore, we have determined that a 50% response rate is a fair expectation. The final participation rate could be much higher or lower. The participation rate generally increases over time as your prospects and customers free up time on their schedule.

(And now, the plug for using Primary Intelligence...)

Why select Primary Intelligence to perform the Win Loss Analyses?
We understand the unique challenges faced by companies in today’s economy. Business as usual is no longer an option. Primary Intelligence solutions are based on structured, systematic, repeatable methodologies. Our extensive experience in performing Win Loss Analyses, execution ability and the quality of our work ensure the success of every program.

A few of our happy sales intelligence clients include companies such as Avaya, Microsoft, and Symantec among many others. The data collection methodologies and analytical tools used by Primary Intelligence provide a solid foundation upon which to conduct Win Loss Analyses in any industry. Additional references can be provided upon request.

We're here to help you be more successful. If you have any ideas, thoughts or a specific need, talk to me. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

Know Your Prospect and Sell More

Primary Intelligence has recently introduced a new product called Target Prospecting. Our goal is to provide our clients with the strongest chance to win business and outmaneuver the competition.

It’s the salesperson who has the clearest understanding of an opportunity who has the greatest advantage. Imagine speaking with a prospect, already knowing their specific needs and having a clear understanding of what it will take to win the sale – while your competition is still struggling to determine the best person to talk to.

The key issue brought to us by our Target Prospecting clients is simple: they have a list of potential customers they want to reach out to, but they don’t know anything about those prospects. Going to the Web and grabbing demographic information on the company may tell you whether or not they are in your “sweet spot,” but it doesn’t tell you anything about what they are looking to buy, how they make their decisions, or what their unique needs may be. Without this information, our clients’ sales teams were going in cold, wasting valuable time simply trying to get a sense of the opportunity, oftentimes finding out that it wasn’t even a good fit for their solutions.

Primary Intelligence’s Target Prospecting does all this initial groundwork for our clients. All they have to do is provide us with their “wish list” of prospects and, using our proprietary methodologies, we will conduct in-depth interviews with these potential customers to gain a better understanding of their plans, their needs, and what they are looking for in a product or provider.

With Primary Intelligence’s Target Prospecting, our clients now have the information they need to understand the opportunity as they enter it, and can address prospects’ unique needs. Specifically, from the prospect interview profiles, our clients learn:

• What features/functions are most important in the minds of their prospects
• When their prospects will be looking to buy
• The nuances of their prospects’ decision making processes
• Which competitors their prospects have used, and which ones they are considering
• The factors that might lead their prospects to change vendors
• The products and services their prospects are looking to implement

With the information they’ve gained, our clients have not only been able to qualify and prioritize their prospective customers; they have been able to strategize the way they approach individual prospects, giving them a much greater chance of winning these accounts.

Download a SAMPLE or talk to me. I can tell you more. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)

The Infinitely Small Nuances of Sales Meetings

In a recent sales opportunity interviewed by Primary Intelligence, we found that a point as small as the introduction process should not be discounted. (For more on this sales opportunity, please see my post from 5/9/2007

Do you have any comments regarding the vendors’ in-person presentations?
“They were very good. It was a very tough decision. The presentations when they came in here were just fine; when we went into their facilities, things were just set up differently.

“At Trilight, we went in and we sat and chatted, but we also walked around more and met the person that we would be working with in each area there. It was like a round robin tour. At Manifesto, we did do a tour of their facility, but all of the meeting basically took place in one room. We could ask questions of the experts and they would come and go. Sometimes when you're walking around it's hard to focus because there's so much going on.

“When we did the tour with Trilight, we knew where we were going, but I don't think we realized what was coming next. When we were at Manifesto, we had an agenda, and we went through it. In hindsight, Trilight’s way seems to be a little more efficient, with Tracy answering all the questions, but I think that's where the team got the feeling that Tracy had all the knowledge, not her team.”

The most important thing here is that Trilight had information that would have told them that a sit-down meeting would be more beneficial, but the value of that information was discounted to the point that they made the wrong decision. Ultimately, this mistake essentially cost them a very large bit of business.

If you want to know the right moves to make, you need to talk to Primary Intelligence. Helping sales teams sell more is what we do. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)