The Ultimate Predictor of Sales Success

Posted by Ron Snyder on Feb 1st, 2012 | no comments home title

In the movie, “Money Ball,” a young Yale graduate who has never played or managed baseball, comes up with a better measure to predict a team’s success. Rather than the traditional measures of batting average, home runs, hits, etc., he said the objective is to get on base more often. If you get on base more often, you will produce more runs and more runs will produce more wins. So, they managed to “on base percentage” and took the Oakland A’s to the American League playoffs spending much less money than other teams. Two years later, the Red Sox used this approach and won the World Series.

The “Advance” is the analogous measure in sales. An Advance occurs when a potential buyer commits to do something specific in a specific time frame that moves the sale forward. If you earn more Advances and progress through the sales process more readily, you will win more sales. So, the Advance is the key leading indicator of sales success.

It is important to create a clear picture of the stages in the sales process and the key milestones within each stage. Management’s role is to use this to help the sales team navigate from one stage to the next; achieving more Advances more efficiently.

To track progress, you can create reports that show:

Account, opportunity
Stage in the sales process
Most recent Advance
Length of time in current stage
Revenue produced
Revenue potential

By measuring how your team manages the process and where they get stock, you can glean powerful insights. For example:

Prospects to target and which to avoid
Products that your team is having trouble selling
“Stall points” in the sales process
Who gets stuck more often and why

With this understanding in place, you can identify what solutions are needed, such as: adopting clear target prospect criteria (i.e. by product line), improving territory and strategic account management/ planning, leveraging best practices, providing coaching, training and/or selling tools.

Take these 5 steps:

Identify the stages and milestones in your sales process.
Train your team on how to most efficiently and effectively progress from step to step.
Measure Advances achieved.
Identify the top issues constraining progress through the sales process.
Provide solutions (see the paragraph directly above).

Use this clear measure of progress (the Advance) to drive sales success!

7 Steps to Ensure Software Adoption (A Software Adoption Manifesto)

Posted by Ron Snyder on Jan 17th, 2012 | no comments home title

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy a new tool and not have to do anything else to have your team use it and produce dramatic improvement in performance? Unfortunately, members of the team are already busy and having them do anything different takes effort on their part and yours. Resistance within the organization- especially the user base- and poor management of the process are the two biggest reasons software implementations fail to produce their intended results.

However, the effort is well worth it as it can dramatically:

Increase sales
Improve predictability / forecast accuracy
Enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness
Drive team effectiveness

The following process helps people rapidly embrace the adoption of new tools and methods. Missing any of these steps slows progress and increases time and cost. Though this process largely sequential, some steps can occur in parallel.

1. CREATE URGENCY

Identify user needs and how you help them do their job faster, easier , better
Understand competing pressures area

Obstacles:

Dismissing the approach because, “we tried it before and it didn’t work”
Organizational arrogance
Complacency due to lack of visible crisis, low performance standards and insufficient feedback perpetuates clinging to the status quo
Thinking steps in this process can be skipped
Not clarifying how the tool solves the problem and improves results

2. GATHER SPONSORSHIP

Put together a leadership team with enough power to lead the change process
Ensure the sponsorship group works together toward a common objective

Obstacles:

Underestimating the challenges in engaging adoption and the importance of a strong, guiding coalition
Trust issues among members of the sponsorship team
Not addressing conflicting metrics, goals and agendas
Cultural issues, including arrogance and the “not invented here” syndrome

3. DEVELOP A VISION AND STRATEGY

Create a vision to guide the effort
Develop strategies for achieving the vision
Optional: establish a pilot group for testing and fine-tuning the approach
Establish clear metrics and how / when they will be measured

Obstacles:

Underestimating the importance of having and selling a clear vision and reason for the change… and the role it plays in helping to direct, align and inspire action
Failing to emphasize the value of individual and team learning for on-going success
Cultural issues, i.e. taking short cuts or insufficient focus on any one initiative

4. COMMUNICATE THE OBJECTIVE

Communicate the intended outcome and why you are excited about it
Use every vehicle possible to constantly communicate
Make sure sponsors and managers model the expected behavior

Obstacles:

Not clarifying what each person needs to do, the support they will get and how performance will be measured
Thinking you have communicated enough
The sponsorship / management teams don’t examine their actions / “walk-the talk”
Leadership loses enthusiasm for this project and moves on to the next new idea

5. ENSURE ACTION

Have people use the new tools
Remove obstacles that undermine adoption
Encourage and reward risk-taking and nontraditional approaches
Provide needed support and promote learning
Monitor progress and act quickly to improve adoption

Obstacles:

Allowing barriers and breakdowns to block use of new methods and tools
Failure to examine existing systems and create new ones that support the vision and eliminate those that don’t
Insufficient leadership engagement to generate broad based action
Resistance to change and fear of undesirable consequences

6. PUBLICIZE SHORT-TERM WINS

Measure performance and identify “wins”
Engage management to enable success of the new approach
Visibly recognize and reward people who achieved wins and made them possible

Obstacles:

Failing to focus on short-term wins
Lack of celebration, acknowledgement and rewards for those who achieve the wins
Without feedback, the team assumes no progress has been made

7. BROADEN ADOPTION AND CHANGE

Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
Use increased credibility to change systems and procedures that don’t support the change
Reinvigorate the process with new initiatives and change agents
Hire, promote, and develop people / leaders who can implement the needed changes

Obstacles:

Declaring victory too soon
Not leveraging the progress already made to broaden adoption
Failing to connect specific new behaviors and attitudes with improved performance
Lacking the necessary leadership and management capabilities

You need this kind of process to ensure you get your intended results from new software tools!

This was informed by John Kotter’s Leading Change.

Five Reasons you Need a New Plan

Posted by Ron Snyder on Dec 20th, 2011 | no comments home title

Here are the top 5 reasons you need a new territory/strategic account plan for the New Year. Without it, you will:
1. Miss important opportunities
2. Lose sales you could have won
3. Take longer to win business opportunities
4. Be forced to sell at a lower selling price and reduced profit margin
5. Waste time and resources

Why create a new plan? Things change! You need to take into account:
• Changes in the economy and regulatory environment
• Changes in your industry/geography/vertical market
• New products/new technology
• How to improve your approach
• Incorporating new skills and tools

Good planning enables you to maximize the results from your territory/strategic account. By adopting and implementing good planning and selling methods, one of my clients:
• Increased Bookings by 43%
• Boosted Margins by 10%
• Improved Market Share by 53%
• Increased Productivity per Salesperson by 50%
• Grew Win/Loss Ratio by 131%

Having a plan enables you to manage a great deal of complexity. This includes understanding the market, focusing on the customer problems you can solve, selecting your best solution, and managing the internal and partner resources necessary to meet your objectives. It enables you to make the best use of your time and resources by connecting strategy to key tasks.

Using the plan, you make sure the tasks get implemented the time frame required to win. Through it, you give appropriate attention to the critical path – the steps that have the most impact on producing the result on time. Without a plan, it is easy to omit a key element and dramatically compromise your results. Further, it enables you to respond effectively to quick changes in your territory and accounts.

The bottom line is that you need a good plan backed with persistent effort to maximize your results in your territory and win competitive business opportunities.