Lead Nurturing and Prospecting emails that Make Me Scratch My Head and Go Hmmm…. It seems I hit a nerve with my blog post Is Email on Life Support as a Sales Effectiveness Tool. It has become one of our most popular, and it continues to generate conversation and discussion on social media. As sales and marketing professionals, we have seen the declining effectiveness of email for prospecting, lead generation, and lead nurturing. Yet, it remains a necessary tool in our arsenal. As SVP of marketing at Richardson, I get my fair share of sales calls, and I receive quite a number of lead nurturing and  follow-up emails after I download a white paper or article. I don’t always open the emails, or spend much time with them if I do click to open, because I usually only want the download. But if something interesting catches my eye, I read on. The lesson here for marketers is the need to target and engage prospects from the get-go, starting with the email "Subject" line, then quickly leading into the right message and value statement. Here are a few real-life examples of lead nurturing and prospecting emails I received that didn’t deserve to be opened, but once read, just had me scratching my head and saying "Hmmmm…. " "I found you through Google search engine. Did you see my last email? I am writing you today to remind you about our SEO capabilities." Really? You found us through a search engine and you want to sell me on your search engine capabilities?  Hmmmm…. "I’m hoping to talk with you about doing some telemarketing for Richardson Group.  I know your business is complex, but we can actually do it better than you and at a much lower cost than your internal team can." So let me get this straight. Your team of untrained professionals is going to be able to sell Richardson’s complex services over the phone better than our own team? Hmmmm…. "I have sent you a couple of emails but have not heard back from you. I wanted to call you to follow up but you seem to be on the "Do Not Call" list. Would it be OK to call you? No, it’s not OK, that’s why I’m on the list. Now what do you say? Hmmmm…. "Hi James, is there 10 minutes we could have a call in the coming weeks?" I know we are all trying to cut the amount of text down, but this was the entire email. I have no idea who he was or what he wanted. Hmmmm….. "Hi {first name}, I sent you an email but I did not receive a response from you. I’m curious if you have read my previous email and want to take this initiative further. Dear Salesperson First Name - I have no real idea who your company is or what they provide. How well did you really prepare for this prospecting email? Hmmmm…. "Hi, Follow up on my last email, just wanted check with you if you got a chance to review my lasts email. Huh… I have to respond to this person? Please make sure you proofread your emails. Hmmmm…. "I am sorry to bother you, but would you mind referring me to the person in charge of your sales training? We are a leading sales training company and would like to train your team. Thanks for the help and have a great day! I am sorry, but do you know Richardson? Did you research us at all? Look us up on LinkedIn? Anything? I actually received a call from this person as well. He was very surprised when I told him what Richardson does. Hmmmm…. I have been in this industry a long time. Because of this, I tend to hold sales professionals to a higher standard than most when it comes to communicating, prospecting, and lead nurturing. I may be a harsh judge, but I rank 70%-80% of the emails I receive as below average in sales effectiveness. While marketing automation products provide the tools for mass communication, they’re not smart enough to make sure those communications are effective or even well written. It’s up to you to target the appropriate prospect, develop a message that delivers value and insight, write an email that engages the reader, proofread that email for any mistakes, and test the technology to make sure it works as intended. Don’t treat prospecting and lead nurturing as just a box to check in your strategic marketing plan. You need a well thought-out process if you have any hopes of making a good impression on the prospect and driving action. You may not receive a response the first few times, but if you’ve done your homework and have the right combination of target/message/value/timing, you just might begin to see your own email inbox fill with responses. Need to Jump Start Your Next Sales Meeting? Add a Richardson Selling with Insights® Workshop. Click here to find out how! The post Lead Nurturing and Prospecting emails that Make Me Scratch My Head and Go Hmmm…. appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Connecting Dots in the Sales Performance Ecosystem We’ve written a few times about the Sales Performance Ecosystem.  It can be a daunting concept.  While many people can relate to what’s included, either the sections or individual elements, how to actually intertwine and align the elements (or "connect the dots") is often less clear. Today, we’d like to share how to connect a few of the dots that will help you align your sales methodology to your buyers, for better sales results. The Beginning of Wisdom is the Definition of Terms Let’s start by briefly defining some elements: Win/Loss Analysis:  According to MarketingProfs, win/loss analysis is a process for differentiating why one sales effort wins and others fall short of the mark, and the intent of the analysis is to adjust go-to-market strategies and tactics. We’ve written about it multiple times: http://blogs.richardson.com/tag/win-loss-review-process/ Customer Experience Management: Gartner sums it up pretty well in their definition: "the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy." Buyer Personas: According to Tony Zambito, Buyer personas are "research-based archetypal (modeled) representations of who buyers are, what they are trying to accomplish, what goals drive their behavior, how they think, how they buy, and why they make buying decisions."  (He’s since added the criteria of where they buy as well as when they decide to buy.) Sales Messaging: Michael Cannon of the Silver Bullet Group has written that sales messaging is "the stated reasons you give prospects to buy and to buy from your firm." I’ve also described it as saying the right thing to the right prospect in the right way at the right time. Social Selling: I’m not a big fan of this term (it’s a misnomer, to me), but everybody’s using it. I like Jim Brodo’s recent definition… "Using social media in the sales process to drive leads, build relationships, and accelerate revenue." Selling with Insights: Richardson’s Selling with Insights® is a customized sales training program that teaches the advanced preparation techniques and dialogue skills needed to effectively present insights to generate interest, create and shape opportunities, influence thinking, add more value, differentiate your solution, and build credibility as a trusted business partner. Connecting the Dots Now, let’s look at how these elements can weave together to create a tight, aligned connection between your buyers and how you sell to them (aka, resolve their issues). Win/Loss Analysis helps you understand why buyers chose you, or didn’t.  In addition to giving you great data to understand buyer needs, buying process, decision criteria, how you can better interact with them, and more, it also provides insight into the Customer Experience - or at least their experience during the buying process and perhaps - depending on when you interview them - during the implementation of your solution.  This isn’t the entire experience, but it’s important to understand. You can use what you learn to feed and fortify your Buyer Personas. It can help you document roles and archetypes, and more importantly, the challenges they face, impacts of those challenges, and the resulting needs. As with Win/Loss Analysis, this is only a slice of building personas, but critical for this focus. Knowing what challenges your various buyers face (issues, impacts and needs) and all the things listed above in the definition of Buyer Persona, including the "customer experience" they want to have, can help you build appropriate sales messaging for each persona, each set of challenges, and the capabilities that address them. If your Win/Loss Analysis interviews are structured to gather feedback from various stages of the buying process, you may be able to develop messaging for various stages. If you have R&D, research, special expertise or experience, or case studies, you can develop insights to support and strengthen your messaging. The information available through social media sites and the internet allows you to find your clients, Buyer Personas, and others like your current ideal clients. You can set up alerts for trigger events, watch interactions for challenges you can resolve, and research specific prospects or clients through various means. Social channels like LinkedIn (don’t forget Groups), Twitter, Google+ (don’t forget Communities) Facebook, SlideShare, YouTube and blogs (yours, theirs, and blogs your target buyers follow) allow you to create awareness and credibility (content marketing), share information, connect, and forge relationships, leading to offline connections and real dialogue.  Social dashboards and especially integration with your CRM can make this all more convenient than ever before. Last and possibly most powerful in this series of connected dots, selling with insights can empower you to sew a lot of this together.  Our Insight Blueprint links your buyer’s Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts and Needs (COIN) to your Capabilities that resolve them - connected by insightful data or information. Our Insight Message model and accompanying worksheet, allows you to take these inputs and personalize them for a specific buyer’s situation. If you target this messaging to specific personas, and organize it by the stages of the buying/selling process, you can create a library of sample messaging that can be personalized for increased impact and used whenever appropriate. Connecting Enough Dots = Sales Transformation This is just one of many examples of how elements of the Sales Performance Ecosystem fit together.  It takes planning, prioritization, and time, but piece by piece, you can align all the elements of the ecosystem to support your clients, their needs and buying process, and your sales force that serves them. But be careful… if you do that, you just might transform your sales force (and your business), in the process! ———————————————————————————————————————- Richardson’s Selling with Insights - Learn More! Buyer behavior has changed, selling behavior hasn’t. Provide your sales team advanced preparation techniques and dialogue skills to add more value, build credibility, and differentiate your solution! Click here to learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights® training solutions. The post Connecting Dots in the Sales Performance Ecosystem appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Learning and Development Leaders: Welcome to Your New Job in Sales Sales?  Learning and development professionals… in Sales?  Perhaps frightening to some, but there’s some truth to it. While it’s tempting to defer to the hyperbole that "we’re all in sales," meaning that we all represent our companies and are responsible for growing them, that’s not what I mean.  I’m also not just referring to those in sales training roles. I’m talking about the "Dan Pink" version of "we’re all in sales," from his book "To Sell is Human," meaning, that we’re constantly selling ideas and influencing, persuading, and convincing others (especially our colleagues and organizational leaders), to do what we think is best. (We diverge from Pink’s opinion somewhat, because unless you’re a sales professional with a quota, a pipeline, and likely a good portion of your income at risk based on your performance, it is NOT the same, but Pink is certainly correct that many of the dialogue, communication, and influence skills are the same.) That said, I don’t need to tell you that improving organizational results isn’t easy.  I’m sure you’re also painfully aware that training alone rarely gets that job done.  For years now, thought leaders, performance advocates, and organizations like ASTD and ISPI have been guiding our profession away from a "butts in seats" and "smile sheet" mentality, toward a true human performance improvement orientation.  And I think it’s fair to note that since not everyone has taken that journey with us, yet, that some selling and influence skills could be valuable. A Gap Analysis… on Us If we conducted a Force Field Analysis on this transition from training to performance, I believe we would find two primary restraining forces, holding us back. A remaining gap of awareness and skills among those in our profession, to execute true performance interventions. The difficult job of convincing organizational leaders to do the right thing, or the actions that we know will produce the best results… front-end or gap analysis, clear problem-definition and problem-solving, solution analysis and selection, and initiative execution with change leadership and management.  "Training" people is so much easier. We could debate why the first is still an issue and perhaps that’s fodder for a future post. But today, let’s focus on the second. Are you selling your ideas as effectively as possible? Are you effectively influencing your organization leaders and peers? Or do you need to improve your skills? In the remainder of this series, I’ll offer some things to consider, from a few of our sales training programs, that will help you in selling your ideas. Are You a Training Order-taker or a Training Sales Pro? Let’s start with considering Consultative Selling Skills. The Framework:  The concepts of opening a call or meeting, questioning to understand needs, presenting solutions that will meet the needs, and gaining agreement on next steps is alive and well. People will often have concerns or objections to our ideas, and you will have more success if you can identify potential obstacles, objections or concerns, avoid them if possible, or at least have a plan to address and resolve concerns, if you can’t avoid them. These concepts apply whether you are selling enterprise software, insurance, or ideas. Dialogue and Diagnosis:  Non-sales pros often think selling occurs during the presentation of solutions. While there is some truth in that, because there is an element of influence or persuasion involved in selling (choose MY solution, rather than THAT one), the real influence begins with a deeper understanding of the situation (and with the other person’s realization that you really want to understand and help them). The situation includes background information, challenges faced, possible opportunities, the potential impacts of not taking action or maintaining the status quo, risks of taking the wrong action, or possible gains from taking the right action. These result in the core needs and wants or the desired outcomes.  Usually there is a deeper need, and you can get to it by using The Five Whys or having an authentic dialogue about why addressing an issue in really important. Real differentiation often occurs in understanding the situation better than anyone else (especially root causes), because this leads to better solutions that will most effectively address the issue.  So, you achieve real differentiation through real understanding, which you can only reach through authentic and transparent dialogue, investigation and analysis. Don’t Just React - Test Reality:  Think about the number of times you’ve been asked by well-meaning internal clients to create training, when additional training really isn’t the solution to the problem. It’s an interesting conundrum in our profession that people come to us with a solution in mind and say "do this" or "we have a training issue."  If you want to address the real issues, rather than spin wheels, you need to get people to step back with you and have a dialogue and investigate and define the real problem, to determine the best solution. Build Dialogue Muscle:  In additional to the standard selling framework above, this also involves the finesse of the Six Critical Skills.  These communication skills support your ability to connect with others and lead an effective dialogue. -       Positioning:  Positioning is presenting information persuasively throughout the sales call.  Positioning helps to differentiate products and services by using words to shape a client’s perceptions and encouraging clients to listen and remember. -       Listening:  Listening is the ability to concentrate on meaning.  There are three levels of listening: zoned out (not involved at all), efficient (engaged but thinking about other things), and effective (fully engaged).  Listening at the highest level fosters effective client dialogue. -       Questioning:  Salespeople who really understand their client needs have a competitive edge.  How well they question determines how strong the competitive edge is.  When questions are well structured they are powerful. Questions give the data to position products and services to meet the client’s needs.  When good questions are asked, salespeople demonstrate commitment to meeting the client’s needs. Salespeople who can ask questions in a way that encourages a client to open up have a competitive edge.  Knowing how to get clients to talk about their needs in-depth is critical in sales.  Prefacing is a skill that can help you do that. -       Relating:  Relating is the manner in which sales professionals interact with a client to make personal and business connections.  Although most salespeople feel that they are already strong at relating, it is one of the toughest skills to truly master, and strong relating skills can help differentiate someone from competitors. -       Presence:  Strong presence is essential because it can give credibility to or undermine any message a sales person wants to convey.  In many ways, it may be the most important skill because if there is a disconnect between what the sales person’s presence conveys and what he or she says, credibility is lost. -       Checking:  Checking is asking open-ended questions to elicit feedback from the client on what the sales person has just said.  By checking for client agreement and understanding key times, sales professionals can keep the dialogue on track and interactive. Try It, You’ll Like It! We’ll continue this post in the near future, when we’ll share more concepts from our training programs (in this multiple part series, we’ll cover Consultative Negotiations, Trusted Advisor, and Selling with Insights®), which all learning and development leaders can use to further develop your skills to influence others and sell your ideas. Until then, evaluate yourself realistically against the concepts shared here, to see if something might help.  I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts either now or in the future - especially whether any of the ideas helped improve your influence skills.   The post Learning and Development Leaders: Welcome to Your New Job in Sales - Part 1 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Landing New Logos: Small Improvements to Make a Big Difference in 2014 How many new logo accounts do you need to land in 2014, how much will you to invest to achieve your objectives, and what can you do to get more bang for your buck? Landing new logo accounts is essential to the health of any business. As hard as we try to maximize the potential of existing accounts, there will be some natural attrition over time as personnel and priorities change. New logos help build your base of accounts to expand, and landing new logos is an indicator of your relevance in the market and your ability to compete. However, landing new logos is expensive, slow and time consuming. It typically cost three to five times more to land a new logo than to grow an existing account, and the sales cycle for a new logo is typically several months. This eats into profitability and productivity. New logo acquisition is difficult and uncomfortable, and without focus and accountability, many sales reps push new business development to the bottom of their priority list. You need a game plan for new logo acquisition to get the right level of focus, activity and accountability in your organization. Need some help thinking this through? Start by downloading our New Logo Revenue Planner, and follow the simple instructions to model the number of new logos you need and the investment required to land them. The planner also helps you set goals, model variables, and understand the dynamics that impact new logo acquisition. Below, I offer some advice for improving the variables that impact new logo acquisition most significantly. Expected Contribution from Existing Accounts Finding the right mix of revenue from new vs. existing accounts is an important first step in developing your plan. Start by looking back historically at how much of your revenue comes from new vs. existing accounts. Then, ask yourself if you need that mix to change. As I mentioned earlier, selling into new accounts is typically more expensive and slower than selling into existing accounts, so your mix will impact the cost of sales and profitability. However, maybe you’ve fully penetrated your account base and growth requires getting more accounts. Or, maybe you have too much business concentrated in too few accounts, and the risk of losing an account could put your entire business in jeopardy. The optimal mix is really dependent on your specific strategy, but your decision should be informed by what is realistic and achievable given where you are and where you need to go. Average New Logo Deal Size Increasing the average deal size for a new logo sale will reduce the number of new logos you need to acquire and the investment required to achieve your new logo revenue goals. However, increasing the average deal size comes with its risks, as you are asking someone who doesn’t know you or maybe even trust you to make a larger commitment to you. This can be done through a few ways, such as premium pricing, upselling, bundling, and offering incentives for longer-term commitments. Trying to increase the average deal size might also increase the perception with your customer that you’re expensive. You don’t want them to succumb to "sticker shock" and get frightened off. You need to understand what’s important to your customer and offer them something of value that helps them achieve their objectives. You also need to understand what they expect to pay and just how much they’re willing to invest to achieve their objectives. They may have some real budgetary constraints, and you don’t want to price yourself out of the market. New Logo Opportunity Close Rate Close rates, especially in the context of new logos, are significantly impacted by your ability to qualify the opportunity and your pursuit strategy and process. However, if you can win a greater percentage of new logo opportunities, in theory, you will need fewer new logo opportunities to make your number. Pursuing business in a new account can be like shooting in the dark. When you’re on the outside looking in, there’s so much that you don’t know and can’t see. You don’t really know the nuances of their business, you don’t know the buying influences or the political dynamics, and you may not know the competition. Many sales reps get "happy ears" and spend too much time, energy, and resources on a deal that has a low chance of closing. You need to recognize the signals that indicate if the deal is a good fit for you and lose fast if it’s not. There’s no shame in losing if the deal isn’t the right fit for you to realistically win. Improving the close rate is best achieved by learning what has worked well for you in the past for similar opportunities and having the discipline to replicate the process. When you have a process, you can make better investment decisions, and you can more effectively coach to the process. New Logo Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate Here’s where sales and marketing really need to be on the same page. There is value in building brand, and marketers often build brand through campaigns that have broad appeal and drive as many responders to a campaign as possible. Publish a great report and everyone will want to download it — more responders means that a campaign was successful, right? Well, not necessarily. You can run a great awareness-building campaign that doesn’t drive a nickel’s worth of opportunity. Marketers need to create content and offers that are an indicator of a prospect’s willingness or need to buy what you sell. It’s the difference between Top of the Funnel (TOFU) content and offers and Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) content and offers. TOFU is great for awareness and brand building, and MOFU is great to separate the lookers from the buyers. A TOFU offer might be an awesome research study with some tips and tricks to improve individual performance. A MOFU offer might be a buyer’s guide that someone wouldn’t want unless they are really serious about buying. MOFU offers will drive a much higher lead-to-opportunity conversion rate than TOFU offers. If a MOFU offer meets a pre-determined "Ideal Customer Profile" and is acted on quickly, it will drive a better lead-to-opportunity conversion rate. Research by MIT indicates that lead follow-up diminishes significantly after two hours. Sales and marketing need a service-level agreement that specifies the time frame that a TOFU offer that meets the ICP criteria will be followed up by sales. In addition to timeliness, you need to consider quality and effort. Better preparation and more rigor will lead to better conversions. Conversion rates should be tracked for every sales rep. The quality of the conversation your sales rep has with a prospect matters and will make an impact. Cost Per New Logo Lead This really falls under the responsibility of marketers, especially if you invest in driving traffic to your website through search engine optimization and paid search programs, such as Google AdWords. Better targeting and messaging to prospects that meet your ideal customer profile will result in fewer "wasted" leads. Better calls to action, landing pages, and web forms will improve the conversion of traffic to leads. All of this drives down costs and drives up efficiency and productivity. There has been an explosion in the number of channels available for marketers to generate leads and opportunities. Depending on your target market, some of these channels might be better options than your current marketing mix. It is difficult to know for sure until you test it. One caveat here: it is very important to evaluate channels for quality as well as quantity. You can drive down cost per lead, but you can also drive down quality in the process. This will surface as a higher cost per opportunity. It is also very helpful to track cost per new logo opportunity as a check against cost per lead. Keep this in mind as you test and evaluate these different investment options. Download our free New Logo Revenue Planner As you can see, there are many factors to consider. All this said, get started by downloading our free New Logo Revenue Planner, and follow the simple instructions to model the number of new logos you need and the investment required to land them. You will see that making even small improvements across a few of these variables can make a big difference.   The post Landing New Logos: Small Improvements to Make a Big Difference in 2014 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Liar Liar - Take care when you hire! Many of our clients are in the final stages of wrapping-up their strategic planning for 2014 and setting their sights on execution. For most organizations, hitting growth targets will require hiring more sales people and replacing underperformers with those with the potential to hit the number. Hiring sales reps is time consuming and risky. According to Manpower’s Talent Shortage Survey, Sales Reps are the second hardest jobs to fill. This difficultly, and a sense of urgency to cover an open territory, might tempt your hiring managers to work around your process to expedite hiring. However, research published last year from Accu-Screen, Inc., ADP, and The Society of Human Resource Managers reveals some shocking statistics: 53% of resumes and job applications that contain falsifications; 46 % of employment, education and/or credential reference checks conducted revealed discrepancies between what the applicant provided and what the source reported; 78% of resumes are misleading 21% of resumes state fraudulent degrees 29% of resumes show altered employment dates 40% of applications have inflated salary claims 33% of resumes have inaccurate job descriptions Consulting firm Marquet International compiled this list of the top 10 lies. Stretching dates of employment. Inflating past accomplishments and skills. Enhancing titles and responsibilities. Exaggerating education and fabricating degrees. Unexplained gaps and periods of "self-employment." Omitting past employment. Faking credentials. Falsifying reasons for leaving prior employment. Providing fraudulent references. Misrepresenting a military record. How to make better hiring decisions Hiring is an important process, and with so much riding on your need and ability to make good hires, it is a process that should be optimized, trained to and followed. Your process should start by clarifying the different sales jobs you need to fill, and updating job descriptions and competencies to reflect the objectives you need people in the role to achieve. The hiring process should specify how you will go about advertising the position; recruit, screen and interview candidates; make your conditional offer of employment; conduct pre-employment your due diligence such as background and reference checks, as well as any other checks such as drug testing references; and ultimately, onboard successful candidates. Establishing a fair hiring process and following process should also protect you from hiring-related lawsuits. We encourage the use of valid, reliable and predictive pre-hire assessments to support your screening and decision making process. When used correctly, these assessments can reveal more and better information about a candidate than most hiring managers could uncover during the interview process. For example, pre-hire assessments can tell you the type of job a candidate is best suited and how they are best motivated.  This insight gives a hiring manager more focus and direction to dig deeper in an interview. For example, our TalentGauge™ assessment generates an interview guide to really help a hiring manager cover their bases. We can’t overstress the importance of using a reputable assessment that is both valid and reliable. Reliability determines how consistently a measurement of skill or knowledge yields similar results under varying conditions. If a measure has high reliability, it yields consistent results. Validity or face validity is defined as the degree to which the instrument measures what it’s supposed to measure. If an instrument is not reliable over time, it cannot be valid, as results can vary depending upon when it is administered. An instrument can be neither reliable nor valid, reliable and not valid or both reliable and valid. However, an instrument must be reliable in order to be valid. That’s a mouthful, but the bottom line is that creating your own assessment in SurveyMonkey or using an assessment, such as Meyers-Briggs, that cannot be validated for hiring can get you into a lot of trouble. There’s a very comprehensive guide to pre-hire assessments published by the US Department of Labor http://www.onetcenter.org/dl_files/empTestAsse.pdf. While a good hiring process and valid, reliable pre-hire assessments help make better hires, none of this happens without the involvement of people. While there is no set formula, the assessment results should be take into account with a candidate’s relevant experience and what you learn in the interview process. Interviewing is a skill that takes some training and a lot of practice to do well. CareerBuilder published a nice guide http://www.careerbuildercommunications.com/pdf/interviewing_ebook.pdf to give you an idea of what interview skills you need. A good hiring process with the right tools and skills will help you hire faster and with less risk. ——————————————————————————————————————   The post Liar Liar - Take care when you hire! appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Learning by Doing: the Magic Behind the Richardson Experience Salespeople and managers who go through a Richardson program often comment that it is different from any other training that they have ever experienced.  We pride ourselves in being experts in adult learning, in addition to being technical experts in sales process and dialogue.  For participants, it is a transformational experience in their careers.  Together we roll up our sleeves, work incredibly hard, get broken down (a bit) and put back together, and leave with a very different mindset and skill set than when they entered. Two key aspects of our success are the degree to which the program materials are customized to our client’s business and the incredible skill and expertise of our facilitators.  During training, our facilitators help participants build on, develop, and polish their current selling skills and strategies.  Because adults most effectively learn skills "by doing," we have structured the seminar with a learning by doing methodology; therefore, the training is interactive. We use role play and a special coaching process, which we call redirect, to provide "on-the-spot" feedback to participants.  Our training philosophy is based on the premise that the participants are not blank slates.  Participants come to the seminar with various levels of knowledge and experience in communications and selling.  Our goals are to build on that base and help them reach their next level of sales excellence. Our seminars are highly interactive for maximum impact.  The learning process is influenced by the Socratic approach of questioning and building on what people think and know.  It also models the consultative approach, as our facilitators use the very skills they teaching, such as questioning and checking. Our facilitators guide the dialogue and build the concepts by leveraging what the participants contribute.  Facilitators get input from the group and frame the learning by teaching the frameworks, models, skills, and key learning points. The seminar gives participants an environment in which they can gain insight into their current sales and communication approach through practice and feedback from facilitators and their peers and learn new skills and strategies. Role Plays, Redirect, and Feedback Skills Role plays are one of the most important elements in the seminar because they provide participants with an opportunity to practice applying the frameworks and skills and receive feedback on how they apply the skills and strategies. All of our role plays are fully customized as we know a one size fits all approach to sales training will not drive true behavior change. It is through the role plays that participants are learning by doing, translating concepts into action, and beginning to change behavior.  Because sales training cannot be held during actual sales situations, and because real clients usually cannot and should not be brought into the training, we simulate the sales experience through role play in the seminar room.  This is very much like the thinking behind scrimmaging for football teams, which provides a real-life practice session with coaching. A role play is the acting out of a sales situation.  It provides the participants the opportunity to: Practice Receive coaching from leaders Get feedback from peers Learn by observing colleagues in their role plays Full sales call role plays are based on cases, which go from the Opening to the Close. Focus role plays are based on exercises and zero in on one part of the framework or a critical skill.  For example, a focus role play can be centered around resolving an objection.  The focus role plays are much shorter and give participants an opportunity to work on a skill that they feel is important to them.  Strategy sessions are not conducted before focus role plays. Kinds of Role Plays We typically use two kinds of role plays: In Fishbowl role plays, the role play is observed by the full group.  The Salesperson and the Client role play the situation in front of the group, and the facilitator redirects and coaches.  At the end of the role play, the Observers give feedback to the Salesperson.  When the Salesperson and Client role play in front of the room, everyone benefits from the coaching, but most importantly, redirect coaching given by the facilitator during the role play enriches the learning significantly.  This is a very powerful training methodology. In Peer role plays, the participants form teams of three and fill the following roles:  Salesperson, Client, and Observer coach.  All teams role play simultaneously.  After each role play, the participants rotate and switch roles so that each person plays the sales role. Cases and exercises are based on scenarios that have been fully customized to the client’s business and reflect their strategies, priorities, solutions, and issues. We also use drills ( customized as well).  Drills are a list of challenging issues which the facilitator presents to the group using a round robin process in order of seating. After each role play, our facilitators ask for volunteers to give feedback to the person in the Salesperson role based on notes they have taken on critique forms.  There is one critique form for the full sales cases, and there are special critique forms for each exercise. In the critique/feedback for the role play, to save time and to not overload the "Salesperson," we limit the feedback to about five participant observers, who will give feedback to the person in the role of the Salesperson by giving one strength and one area for improvement. All feedback is specific and based on an incident or particular example.  Our facilitators, as the coach, are the last observers to give feedback.  At the end of all feedback, the participant who played the role of Salesperson can comment on all the feedback he/she has gotten, i.e., what he/she agrees or disagrees with. Feedback is a "sacred" time, and we don’t permit participants to open up discussions while the role play participant is waiting for his/her feedback.  Each observer should simply give his/her own view without discussion or debate until after feedback is over.  Then, if there is a question, address it. Learning Points At the end of each role play feedback session or other activity, we summarize key learning/teaching points at the flip chart based on the teaching segments and other examples/issues from the role play itself.  We also address any elements from the framework or the critical skills relevant to the role play.  We wrap up each learning point by asking the question, "What can we take forward from this role play to increase our sales effectiveness?"  Our role is to check for and then summarize key learning points. Questioning as a Learning Technique As we ask questions, our goal is to stimulate discussion and thinking and then drive key learning points.  When we ask a question, we are not looking for the "right" answer, but we are doing three things: Getting participants to think so we can build on what they know Assessing the knowledge of the group Reinforcing, redirecting, introducing, or teaching the concepts of the program As we ask questions, often we will ask each question several times (two to three) to stimulate discussion.  If a participant’s response is truly on the mark, we reinforce it strongly; if participants all have bits and pieces of the answer, we tie it together; and if a participant is off the mark, we neutrally acknowledge.  Our role as facilitators is to use their input as the basis to build upon as we make key learning points. For example: Facilitator:  What do we mean by a Consultative approach to selling? Participant #1:  "Tailoring" what you say. Facilitator:  Great, tailoring what you say.  What else do you think of? Participant #2:  Understanding what the client needs. Facilitator:  Yes.  Being client-need focused. Facilitator:  Our experience shows that while it is very logical and common sense in sales to focus on needs, it is not common practice.  It can be challenging to focus on the client vs. the product in the heat of the sales moment.  (Then, the facilitator would transition to module on Sales Styles.) The facilitator’s role is not only to repeat what the group says but to shape the information and take it to the next level.  This Socratic method of teaching helps get buy-in, and it also fosters accelerated learning, lets us assess where the participants are, and helps us take participants to the next level.  A great teacher once said about reaching students:  "You go in their door and take them out yours."  That is the basis for interactive learning.     The post Learning by Doing: the Magic Behind the Richardson Experience appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson Sales Excellence Review Nominated for Top Sales Blog Richardson is honored to announce that we have been nominated for two Top Sales World Awards… and we need your vote!  The annual Top Sales & Marketing Awards contest recognizes "the heroes" of the sales and marketing space; to laud those companies and individuals who have gone that extra mile; who have been unafraid to challenge paradigms; who have had the courage to pioneer, when others remained wedded to the status quo.  This year Richardson was recognized in the following categories.  We would greatly appreciate it if you could take a few seconds to vote for us by clicking on the links below. Top Sales and Marketing Blog - Richardson’s Sales Excellence Review - Click here to vote Top Sales and Marketing Thought Leader -  Linda Richardson - Click here to vote Complimentary Webinar - Gamification and Mobile Reinforcement: Making Sales Training Sticky  Richardson and Qstream are offering a complimentary webinar to  introduce our groundbreaking technology from Harvard Medical School that helps sales reps remember complex processes and facts. This technology  leverages mobile and social gaming to drive adoption and motivation, and extends learning from weeks to years while maximizing your return on investment. Join us on Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at 1:00 PM EST for the latest webinar in Richardson’s eCoffeebreak series: Gamification and Mobile Reinforcement: Making Sales Training Sticky. Richardson and SAVO Partner to help Maximize Sales Training Investment Richardson has formed a partnership with SAVO Group, the market leader in sales enablement. The two companies are developing a Richardson configured edition of Sales Process Pro, a CRM-enabled tool that will maximize sales training investment and deal quality with a focus on continuous reinforcement and coaching at every stage of the sales cycle. SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition gives companies an edge by systematically reinforcing Richardson’s methodology and training, enabling a seller and holding them accountable for verifiable outcomes at each stage of an opportunity. Through integration with CRM and robust analytics, Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition also provides sales leaders with better forecast accuracy and real-time visibility into seller behavior and deal quality.  To Learn more, please contact Jim Brodo at Jim.Brodo@richardson.com ——————————————————————————————————————- Register Today for our upcoming Webinar! The post Update from Richardson appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Leading with Questions or Insights In Sales Calls: What’s the Right Strategy? Leveraging insights in sales calls is a very popular strategy in this age of the empowered customer. Our clients often ask us when in the sales conversation their sellers should lead with insight versus lead with questions. The simple answer to this question is, "It depends." I’ll provide some further guidance in this post, but I suggest you start by downloading our Sales Insight Call Strategy Checklist and share it with your sales reps. If you are up-skilling your sales team to sell with insight, there are a few important points to remember. First, sharing insight is only one aspect of a sales conversation. Even if you have the most profound, mind-blowing insight, you will still need to prepare for the call, open the call, ask needs-related and solution-related questions, resolve objections, secure commitment, and then follow up. Insight sharing is an important skill, but it is not the only skill you will need for a successful call. Second, understand the risk of sharing insight without careful thought and planning. The phrase "show up and throw up" used to apply to product pitching but has taken on a new life as sales reps try to jam in meaningless, irrelevant, self-serving grabbers. Nobody wants to be "that guy" who shows up, blows through his numbers play, and then gets shut down because his insight is superficial or irrelevant to the buyer. Preparation must also take into account what to do or what to say when a buyer pushes back on your insight. Resistance to new ideas is normal, and your sales reps need to be skilled to stay composed and work with the buyer to resolve the resistance. Finally, keep in mind that your sales reps will typically be planning a single call and that not every call will result in a closed sale. You need to know where you are in your sales process and the buyer’s buying process. Then, you need to set reasonable objectives for your call based on where you are today and how far you think you can go, and you need a strategy for how you’re going to get from point A to point B. Insights and questions usually both play a role in achieving your call objectives. All this said … Lead with questions when: You don’t have a sufficient understanding of your buyer’s business, You require further understanding about their situation or attitude, or You seek their confirmation (checking) before moving forward in the conversation. This includes: Drilling deeper when the buyer has self-diagnosed a need Understanding the buyer’s current thinking or point of view on an issue Developing ideas together with the buyer Checking that an issue leading to an insight is relevant Gaining the buyer’s perspective on an important aspect of the sale Developing opportunities resulting from insight sharing Lead with insight when: You have a high level of familiarity with the buyer, You want to seed new ideas, or You want to influence his or her thinking. This includes: Triggering new ideas Shaping the buyer’s current thinking Differentiating yourself from your competition Creating a sense of urgency Building your credibility Piquing your buyer’s curiosity Disrupting your buyer’s current mindset Overcoming bias or misconception Jim Ninivaggi of Sirius Decisions sums it up well: "B2B selling still comes down to a series of conversations. Early in the sales process, your sales reps need to be provocative; in the middle, your reps need to build and prove differentiated value; and late in the process, they often have to elevate their conversation to the senior-most executive levels." Better prepared and more informed buyers means your people need new skills to bring more value to a customer conversation. Our complimentary Sales Insight Call Strategy Checklist will help them better understand when to lead with insight versus lead with questions and make the maximum impact on buying influences. —————————————————————————————— The post Leading with Questions or Insights In Sales Calls: What’s the Right Strategy? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Mind the Gap! Five Gaps That Impact Sales Effectiveness and How to Fix Them (Part 1 of 2) This post is based on the white paper "The Five Failure Points of Today’s Selling System" by the SAVO Group. There’s not just one big gap that impacts your sales effectiveness. In fact, there are several gaps (or chasms, depending on the severity) that get in the way of achieving peak sales performance: How a buyer buys and how your sellers sell (often the biggest gap) Your marketers’ outputs and your salesforce’s needs How your organization trains and how much your sales reps retain and practice what they learn Revenue forecasts and how your salesforce actually delivers Failing to close these gaps prevents salesforces from achieving their optimal success. The most forward-thinking organizations address this situation by establishing a sales enablement strategy — a dynamic and long‐term initiative that provides the thinking and the tools to engage sales reps, sway buyers, and inform marketers. It’s all about smarter selling that transforms sales execution into a repeatable, results‐oriented process that ultimately creates optimal alignment between your salesforce and your customers’ buying processes. A good place to start closing the gaps and embark on the path to smarter selling is to examine the critical components of the selling system that are most prone to failure. We’ll start by looking at the first two in this post and will save the rest for Part 2. 1. The Lead Failure: Nurtured leads poorly handed off create low conversion rates Most Leads Languish: How many of your marketing-generated leads actually become sales? According to MarketingSherpa, 79% of leads aren’t nurtured through the sales handoff. If that’s true, then consider this related statement: only one in five leads are developed properly when handed off. Savvy Buyers: Consumers are "self-educating" on their perceived needs, wants, and solutions before they ever talk to you. The ease with which anyone can spend a few minutes to research a problem and possible providers (Lack of) Time: Sellers are spending nearly 20% of their time researching and generating leads. The Fix: Making it faster and easier for your salesforce to act The top-line fix is to create (and sustain) better alignment between sales and marketing. They need to work together to develop campaigns, including target buyers, key messages, timing, processes, and follow-ups, in order to prevent a misfire. It never looks good when a great marketing campaign completely fizzles because sales was out of the loop or when a sales rep hears about a campaign for the first time from a prospect. Sales reps need to think like their buyers and consider how someone might research their problem or need, solution, and potential vendors. This not only ensures that reps can anticipate questions and concerns from buyers, but also helps to identify information and promotion gaps to be filled by marketing. This requires an open channel of dialogue and feedback with marketing so that timely adjustments can be made. Of course, higher-quality leads always trump large volumes of duds. No one has time to waste nurturing a non-lead. Marketing should refine its processes to be able to parse out browsers from serious buyers. 2. The Process The Failure: Buyers and sellers are misaligned; lack of management visibility, team focus According to SAVO’s Maturity Benchmark, fewer than 10% of companies report that they’ve mapped their sales process to their customers’ buying cycles. That pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey approach to sales all but guarantees wasted time, effort, resources, and especially difficulty in closing the sale. Companies that fail to recognize the importance of getting in stride with their customers’ habits and timing are guilty of thinking (and acting) inside-out as opposed to outside-in. A common way that that scenario rears its ugly head is the disconnect between marketing materials and customer needs. In fact, the SAVO Maturity Benchmark has shown that 33% of new business losses could have been wins if the seller had been better informed. Sales reps shouldn’t have to bear the burden of trying to fit marketing’s square peg into the buyer’s round hole — that comes from leading with capabilities and strengths without specific regard to clients’ challenges and needs. The Fix: Better alignment to buyer’s cycle, capturing prescriptives for success The obvious fix would be to analyze your customers’ buying cycles and align to them. You are there to serve them, not the other way around. Both B2B and B2C consumers are aware of the vast amounts of data and information that are available about their individual and corporate preferences and buying habits. The quid pro quo is that companies will use that information to make every sale and opportunity appear as if it was tailor-made for each buyer. Otherwise, you appear inattentive, lazy, and out of touch, while a savvier sales rep can easily swoop in and look like a hero. Along with being more in tune with buying cycles, sales can give marketing better information regarding why clients are buying so that those insights can be used to drive future campaigns. Don’t assume that "you know better" or "we know what our customers want to hear" and instead take a fresh approach that is more about them than you. Alignment of Sales and Marketing Can Resolve Gaps The common thread among these gaps and fixes is the need for sales and marketing to be better aligned. When they’re combative or just out of sync, no one wins. When they collaborate, they can create a formidable team that will make both teams more effective and able to respond to client needs more confidently and at the right times. The next post on this topic will cover the remaining three critical components of the selling system that are most prone to failure: the meeting, the proposal, and the analysis. What’s your take? Has your sales organization experienced these gaps? How have you overcome them to make your teams more effective? Let us know in the comments below. To Download SAVO’s  full white paper, please click here The post Mind the Gap! Five Gaps That Impact Sales Effectiveness and How to Fix Them appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Leadership Do’s and Don’ts for Maximizing Sales Training ROI: Where do you Stand? In the movie "Father of the Bride," there is a memorable scene in which the father (George Banks), unsure where to stand during the bouquet throw, misses important moments at his daughter’s wedding. Similarly, many sales leaders confidently invest in sales training (the wedding) yet are uncertain about the role they should play (or where they should stand).  The purpose of this post is to share my perspective, as a facilitator and former sales leader, on three common mistakes to avoid and five best practices to leverage as a sales manager in supporting a successful workshop that will drive sales training ROI. THE DON’TS:  THREE COMMON MISTAKES Leaders who maximize sales training ROI don’t: I.          Hand off early:  once the training is scheduled, don’t move on to the next project, and don’t pass the ball to your colleagues in Learning & Development (L&D) to implement and to participants to learn and apply in the field.  II.          Limit your participation to opening comments:  After your opening comments, don’t leave the group for the day and assume your team will feel more comfortable without "the boss" looking over their shoulders. III.          Attend the workshop distracted:  Don’t attend the workshop without a defined role or you will be quickly consumed by other responsibilities, including calls and e-mails. While there is logic to each of the don’ts, they represent George Banks-like missed moments.  Even limiting our view to perceptions, consider the contrast between you, if absent or distracted, and your team — having committed time away from their markets and personal life and being asked to focus and move outside their comfort zone.  How does this contrast align with your intent and the importance of this training? THE DO’S:  FIVE BEST PRACTICES Beyond perceptions, what are the substantive ways that you can contribute to and maximize your impact on the sales training ROI — before, during, and after a class?  Here are five best practices that I see as a facilitator; I encourage you to consider how to employ some or all of them to drive excellent outcomes.  Do: Stay connected to the program design process:  Even the most capable and earnest L&D people have, at best, a second-hand understanding of the marketplace challenges your team faces daily.  Do check in throughout the development process.  You will ensure that the program and materials nail your business objectives and must-haves for your team to hit the goals you envision. Attend the workshop as an (active) observer:  Do take advantage of the opportunity to assess skill levels across your team, to emphasize or address key points that are raised in classroom discussions, and to share feedback.  In the process, you will also be able to model behaviors, such as staying present and avoiding distractions. Attend the program as a participant:  Yes, with your team!  This might sound frightening, even risky, but do consider going through this experience with them.  After the workshop, this will give you both the credibility and ability to model and coach to the principles covered in the workshop.  Besides, who among us has no room to sharpen his or her skills? Schedule and participate in a managers-only session (alternative to #3):  Do take the time to enable you and your peers or first-line managers to understand, model, and coach to the things your team will be learning in the program.  This will reduce any concerns you or your managers may have about going through the program side-by-side with your team. Plan for reinforcement:  Your people will come out of the workshop fired up to apply their new or refined skills.  Research shows that a habit takes an average of 66 days to form.  Do lock in workshop outcomes through planned and steady reinforcement in the weeks and months that follow.  Among your options, do consider some of the ways that Richardson supports teams after a workshop: Adoption and Sustainment (http://www.richardson.com/What-We-Do/Enablement-Adoption/) Continuous Learning (http://www.richardson.com/What-We-Do/Continuous-Learning/) So, the next time you decide to schedule training for your team, skillfully sidestep the three common mistakes, and leverage the five best practices above.  Be clear in your intent about the role you will play before, during, and after the workshop to maximize sales training ROI.  The actions you choose to take as a leader will send a powerful message and create a classroom culture that extends far beyond the dates and walls of a workshop. The post Leadership Do’s and Don’ts for Maximizing Sales Training ROI: Where do you Stand? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.