Get Ready, Because Here We Come — An Overview of Preparing for Formal Sales Presentations Put bluntly, preparation is the first and most important element in winning more business. Without preparation, one can almost predict that you will fail. Let’s look at one quick example: a highly successful managing director at an investment bank attributes his success to his detailed preparation. He tells his team members that they literally should know "what they (the client) had for breakfast." Being prepared means doing your homework and learning all you can about your potential client. Being prepared means being thoroughly grounded in your ideas and your formal or draft proposal. Being prepared means knowing more than just what is on each page of a document. Preparing means learning enough to know what you are talking about. Preparing means finding out: What does your client need? How and by whom will the decision be made at the client company? What types of presentations do the client company decision makers prefer? What are their preferences for sales presentations: proposals, slides, technical details, focus on the big picture? Who will be at the meeting, and what can you find out about them? Even if they are not decision makers, they will be asked for their opinion. If any people show up at the meeting that you did not know where coming, get their names and find out about them as soon as the meeting is over. What is your idea, product, or your service? What is your competition? What do you want to achieve? What measurable objective will you have reached to let you know you have reached your goals? To the degree possible, quantify the objective. How will you reach your goals? What is your overall strategy? What are your tactics for carrying out your strategy? What are your fallback positions for each potential issue?  Whom do you want to bring with you from your company? Who else will work on the project preparation and follow-up? Who has to sign off on any contracts? What are the logistics? Where and when will the meeting take place? When does the formal proposal get submitted to the client? How much time do you have to prepare? How long will you have to present your proposal to the client? What written material do you need for the presentation? Did you need to send a proposal to the client before the meeting? Even if you only need to send one in after the meeting, it will be useful to have a draft ready beforehand. This gives you a document to edit with the results of the meeting and send back to the client relatively quickly. Writing the proposal also gives you a disciplined way of organizing your thoughts on the project. Being prepared means you know your client and what your client needs. You know what your company can offer and can place it in context of what the client needs and of the general market for what you and the client do. You know your main idea or project and your measurable objectives to represent the ideas or products. You have determined your strategy for meeting the objectives and the tactics for carrying out the strategy. You have found what your competitors are doing and how you might deal with whatever they are doing. But you also know to avoid the temptation to pay too much attention to your competitors at the possible risk of not paying enough attention to your own work. The client wants a good reason to hire you, not a reason not to hire the other guy. Your team is set, and you know whose approval, or support, you will need within your company. You are prepared to be flexible. You have fallback positions ready for the major issues. You know that nothing ever goes exactly as planned. Being prepared means being willing to spend the time to become prepared, far more than the hour or two the presentation lasts. Think of a Major League Baseball relief pitcher. How many hours does it take a relief pitcher, even one as good as the recently retired Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, to get ready for the fifteen minutes he pitches in a game? ————————————— Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post Get Ready, Because Here We Come — An Overview of Preparing for Formal Sales Presentations appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Learning about Your Prospect — A Deep Dive for High-value Presentations Successful business presentations are the result of careful preparation. So… do your homework. Preparing for a business presentation starts with knowing what the client needs. This is not just asking the client what he or he wants, though that is a very good place to start. Clients today demand relevant insights tailored to their needs. Your homework will let you understand your client’s needs and objectives and let you present the right ideas in the right way. For motivation, just remember that your service or your product can probably be matched by a competitor. Looking into client needs lets you put what you offer into relevant context and lets the client know you care enough to find a way to meet their needs. For example, a client may be looking for enterprise software. Find out why. Do they just want to improve current productivity? Do they have specific new functions in mind? Or, do they want something that can easily be upgraded in the future? You can tell the client how your solution would benefit them right now or in the future. You can also come up with some logical ideas on future uses for the client. How to find the information is up to you. You can even ask your client for suggestions as to whom you can talk within the company. Most clients will appreciate that you are making the effort to understand them and what they need. Just so I don’t forget to mention it, ask within your company for any information someone might have. Additionally, check out the comprehensive list we published in a previous article "Sales Call Preparation: The Ultimate Checklist to Cover your Bases." Once you understand the client’s strategy, goals, needs, and decision-making process, you will be able to develop and position your product in ways that make sense for the client. Questions to ask your client, and to check in with your other sources, include several general types: Decision-making questions — Organizational questions to find out who makes decisions and how they are made. Relationship questions — Ask "How am I doing?" and "How are my competitors doing?" to find out where things stand. Operational questions — Technical questions of how, how many, where, and why. Problem questions — Questions to identify what obstacles the client is facing. Situation questions — What is the client doing? Strategy questions — Big-picture, tomorrow questions to find out where the client is and where the client is going. Interpersonal questions — Questions to get to know/understand your client. Need questions — Questions to find out what is not working and what needs to be fixed. Keep in mind that all clients have two need levels: business needs, related to organizational and product needs, and nonbusiness needs, related to their personal goals/emotional requirements. Your objective should be to learn something about both, for all clients in the decision-making unit. To get at their personal needs, find out: what are their business orientations? What are their backgrounds? What stake in the deal does each have? Why? Who has an ax to grind? What role will each play? What are the attitudes, preferences, and points of view of each player? What does each player know about the product being presented? What are their points of view? What are their areas of expertise? What are their personal interests/politics/sensitivities? What are their buying criteria? How do they like to be sold to? What are their preferences for sales presentations: proposals, slides, technical details, the big picture? Determining the needs of the client, and the decision-making structure within the client’s company, should give you most of the information you need. But remember to be flexible and determine fallback positions. Some of the information you found might change quickly. Now, you can get your own act in order, so to speak. What is your main idea? What solution will you present to the client? What is your ultimate objective? To the degree possible, quantify the objective — not just sell a lot of widgets, but rather, sell 10,000 widgets per year. Determine your strategy to meet the objective and tactics to carry out the strategy. Find out what your competitors are doing and how you might deal with this. Pick your team for the presentation. Being prepared means you know your client and what your client needs. You know what your company can offer and can place it in context of what the client needs and the general market for what you and the client do. Being prepared means being willing to spend far more time preparing than the hour or two the presentation will last. ————————————— Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post Learning about Your Prospect — A Deep Dive for High-value Presentations appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

14 Adversarial Negotiation Tactics and High-impact Countermeasures to Save Your Hide Adversarial negotiators work through manipulation. These buyers use a range of pressure tactics to defeat you and get what they want. Fortunately, adversarial negotiators are easy to spot if you know what to look for. Once you recognize their tactics, they quickly lose power. Below are some common adversarial negotiation tactics you might encounter in the course of closing a sale along with some brief countermeasures. Adversarial Negotiation Tactics 1.         False Deadlines: Pressuring you to agree to terms before you are ready. Solution: Don’t allow yourself or the sales process to be rushed. If you’re forced to fast-forward through demonstrations and explanations, you could be accused of glossing over important details later on. Be prepared, and test the reality of the deadlines with questions. Remember that everything (including time) is negotiable. 2.         Delaying a decision and ignoring deadlines: This is designed to create anxiety and pressure you to make concessions. Makes you wonder, do they really want to buy? Is this a priority, or are they just fishing? Solution: Determine what’s causing the delay. Perhaps other projects have gotten in the way. Politely remind them that your time is also important. Probe initial deadlines and what may have changed. Do not feel pressured to make concessions due to the buyer’s (lack of) movement. Protect yourself (C.Y.A.!) by documenting your communications, being sure to note deadlines and key steps in any voice mails or e-mails left for the client, as well as the consequences from any delays. 3.         Starting over in the middle of negotiations: Reversing progress to keep and gain position. Solution: If one term is to be changed, reopen all the terms. Fair is fair, and both seller and buyer should feel like winners. 4.         Surprises: Bringing up new issues when you think everything has been settled. Solution: It could be an oversight that something wasn’t brought up sooner, but it could also be a sign of other problems to come. Do not handle the issue there and then. Call time, or table it until you are prepared. Remember the old commercial tagline: "Never let them see you sweat." Turn the tables on them to delay your reaction or response. 5.         Demanding price up front: Asking you for an estimated price or ballpark and then holding you to the lower figure. Solution: Say that you want to provide pricing information, but ask for data so that you can give specific, accurate pricing. Begin the trading process — give information to get information. You might also provide general high-, medium-, and lower-priced options before you know what’s to be included in the sale and committing to a price. 6.         Negotiating the future: Using a possible later deal as a bargaining deal for the current deal. Solution: Get specifics from the client in writing; in effect, make the future deal a formal part of the current deal. If something seems too good to be true, assume that it is. What you do on this deal will set parameters for the next one. Yes, perhaps a concession now could yield a larger opportunity down the road, but get authorization from your sales manager before committing. 7.         Creating an uncomfortable environment: Trying to gain an unfair advantage by methods such as sunlight in your eyes, hot room, long hours, no food or break, and changes in negotiators. Solution: If this is done intentionally, then that’s pretty low and speaks to the type of person you’re dealing with. Confer with your team to verify that it’s not just you feeling under the weather. Ask to change the environment (turn down the temperature, adjust the seating, move rooms, or whatever is needed). Don’t be afraid to call for a break or reschedule the meeting. 8.         Suddenly losing interest: Making you think you will lose the deal in an attempt to gain better terms. Solution: Don’t panic. Ask what changed, and recognize that it may be a tactic. Use emotional muscle, and be patient. Don’t nag, but stay in regular contact, and document your communications, key milestones and decisions, and consequences for the sale if delays persist. 9.         Outnumbering you: Attempts intimidation through a large contingent of buyers in the meeting without letting you know before the meeting. Solution: Ask for clarification of attendees’ roles in advance of the sales meeting. If the sale will affect other functions or areas of the business, it is logical that the buyer may want to include his colleagues in the sales meetings. If the sale or delivery is large or complex, consider expanding your sales team accordingly — match numbers with numbers. However, if you find yourself being bullied during the meeting, hold your ground, and schedule a follow-up meeting when you can return with reinforcements! 10.       Playing dumb: Attempts to get you to back down by feigning a lack of awareness, expectations, or assumptions. Solution: Do not allow the buyer’s "not knowing" to impact your thinking or terms. You should not have to alter the deal or make sacrifices due to your client’s lack of knowledge or attention. But you’re the expert, so it is incumbent that you clearly and thoroughly spell out each step along with pricing, timing, delivery, etc., to avoid any misunderstanding. 11.       Using past experience against you: Trying to make you feel guilty or less confident in an attempt to tip the scales in his or her favor. Solution: Acknowledge past situations, such as customer loyalty or delivery-gone-bad, but keep your eye on the ball and stay in the present. You shouldn’t feel as though you owe the client anything. See through any such emotion by thinking of how you would explain a discounted or padded sale to your boss. If you can’t easily justify it, then move on. If it’s a reasonable request, offer to check with your boss, but make no promises. 12.       Using silence: Pressures you to concede — the first to talk after the price or a demand is on the table is the first to fold. Solution: Keep quiet! The first to speak is the first to fold! Be silent after you state your price. Don’t stammer on, making excuses or explaining this or that — you’ll only be feeding them ammunition that can be used against you. Silence is also a weapon you can use. 13.       The "Broken Record:" Wearing you down by repeatedly barraging you with demands, concerns, budgets, limitations, or expectations. Solution: Be a "broken record" yourself and ask questions. If you don’t receive a satisfactory answer, ask again until you’re comfortable. Call them out by acknowledging that, "You’re obviously concerned about xyz, yet you still haven’t answered my question. I’m trying to help you, but you either don’t know or don’t want to tell me the answer. Let’s resolve this so we can move on." 14.       Using the "Nibble:" Trying to get last-minute concessions. Solution: Do not let down your guard at the end of the negotiation when you think you have a deal. Don’t let that feeling of elation that the deal is done make you agree to a concession no matter how small it may seem. Ask yourself: "What does it do to my profitability and future deals?" Many of these issues, and others that might arise, can be managed through clear communication and by documenting the sale and negotiation process. Both sales reps and buyers should operate under the assumption that they are building a long-term vendor relationship and not just making a one-time transaction. When making a purchase of any kind on any scale, both seller and buyer should feel confident in the deal. When something goes awry, it might be unintentional and easily explained — see my opening paragraph — but it could also signal larger problems to come down the road. Your bottom line is to be willing to walk away and let the client know it. ————————————— Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post 14 Adversarial Negotiation Tactics and High-impact Countermeasures to Save Your Hide appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

How Long Does it Take to Break an Old Sales Habit and Develop a New One? In his book Outliers: The Story of Success, author Malcolm Gladwell famously purported the notion that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to truly master something. He cited The Beatles’ early days of non-stop rehearsal and touring as an example. In business circles, there are very few versions of The Beatles. These ranks are largely filled out by investors and innovators (think Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs). We more commonly relate to sports figures and their stories of ascent. How many drives and putts did Tiger Woods make growing up? How many hours did Michael Jordan spend taking shots and practicing lay-ups and dunks? How many swings of the bat did Hank Aaron take on his way to dethroning Babe Ruth as the home run king? Some have questioned the accuracy of the claim; but whether it takes 7,000 or 10,000 hours, the point is that effort, repetition, and dedication over time cannot be denied as necessary ingredients for success. As the book title notes, however, these are extreme instances — the outliers of success. For most other roles and capacities, "good enough" is more acceptable than being at the absolute top of their field. So what about the masses? Consider a standard bell curve of achievers: the leading edge (top ~15%) are doing well on their own — tamper with them at your peril as for those lagging behind (bottom 15%), they need serious help, which could include letting them go or finding roles that might better suit their talents the middle 70% is where the majority of your people are, which means that’s where your biggest opportunity (or challenge) lies Many sales organizations fail in their attempts to effectively move the middle of their sales rep ranks, which is holding them back from achieving their potential. Here’s why. The Problem: Two-day Training Events ≠ 10,000 Hours of Skills Mastery Too many sales leaders and training managers are mired in the old way of thinking that two-day sales training events are enough. Sorry, but that’s no longer true (if it ever was). It’s great that you’ve set aside time and budget to bring your reps together. Event-based training might work in the moment, but it’s not effective for lasting behavioral change. You’ve assembled your reps to teach them new skills or concepts to enhance or replace what they’re already doing. Perhaps you’re focused on better closing, negotiating, or prospecting. Maybe you’re selling something new to the same buyers or trying to break into new markets with the same offering. But the bottom line is, you want your people to do something different as a result. Here comes the hard question … How long does it actually take for someone to learn, remember, recall, and flawlessly execute new skills and behaviors until they are essentially habits? The answer is somewhere between Gladwell’s 10,000 hours and the 16 hours your sales reps are likely to spend in a hotel conference room for training. There’s a lot at stake. Few companies are guilty of overtraining their employees and sales reps. Most don’t devote enough time and effort, which undermines their original objective of changing behaviors. The longer it takes for you to move your middle, the longer it will take for you to achieve your business and sales goals. In the meantime, you’ve reduced the ROI on your training, and your competitors might be doing it better. Supporting Research: How Long Does It Take to Form a Habit? Training events and programs are useful to teach new skills, but it’s unreasonable to expect participants to walk away with engrained, muscle memory-driven habits to replace the old ones. Just how long does that take? In the research article "How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world" published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in July 20091, the authors examined this very subject. The authors note that "… there is consensus that habits are acquired through incremental strengthening of the association between a situation (cue) and an action, i.e. repetition of a behavior in a consistent context progressively increases the automaticity with which the behaviour is performed when the situation is encountered (Verplanken, 2006;Wood & Neal, 2007). ‘Automaticity’ is evidenced by the behaviour displaying some or all of the following features: efficiency, lack of awareness, unintentionality and uncontrollability (Bargh, 1994)." "Automaticity" is the goal in which your sales reps can do what you expect of them without prompting. The challenge is getting your reps to react like Pavlov’s Dog without the need to refer to a manual or use a hybrid of old habits as a crutch for not having mastered the new. In following a group of individuals trying to form new habits, the researchers found that "performing the behaviour more consistently was associated with better model fit. The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time. Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process. With repetition of a behaviour in a consistent context, automaticity increases following an asymptotic curve which can be modelled at the individual level." You can read more about the study to dive into the details, but the range of time (from 2.5 weeks to more than 8 months!) is alarming and should give sales leaders and training managers pause when setting expectations for their training goals. Here are the major takeaways: It’s not impossible. The good news is that you can teach your sales reps new skills, techniques, and behaviors. It takes time. Are your expectations realistic as for what you hope your reps to adopt and practice following the sales training? Will it happen within a week of the event? Probably not. Knowing that forming habits takes time, what should you do to foster them? We’ll answer that question in an upcoming blog post! ————————————— Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. Citation: 1How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world PHILLIPPA LALLY*, CORNELIA H. M. VAN JAARSVELD, HENRY W. W. POTTS AND JANE WARDLE University College London, London, UK European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40, 998-1009 (2010) Published online 16 July 2009 in Wiley Online Library http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674/abstract     The post How Long Does it Take to Break an Old Sales Habit and Develop a New One? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Don’t Let Your Written Proposal Torpedo Your Deal What I am about to say may be an example of life being unfair. Obviously, a poorly prepared written proposal could cost you a deal. However, the most expertly prepared, well-written, catchy-reading proposal brings no guarantee of winning. To make things worse yet, an overly slick proposal might be a turn off. Let me give an example of the third possibility, because I know that calling something "too good" sounds illogical. Take, for example, the redevelopment of a low-income housing project. Residents of the project will be represented on the committee making project decisions. Is an expensively produced proposal likely to impress them? Or, will it more likely send a message that you can’t related to them? Someone who kept in mind the human element could be more likely to win. The reasoning behind my "unfair" opening, and the example, is simple. Despite the almost geometrical expansion of technology in the past decade or two, people like to be able to relate to the people with whom they do business. They want to know that you can do the job. They want to know that you can provide the quality product, service, or solution they need. However, with the good chance that someone else can also do so, relating to the potential client and making them want to work with you may well make the difference between making the sale and getting a polite rejection. However, a good quality and appropriately targeted written proposal can be vital. In a complex sale with many decision makers, your proposal will be one of the key reference documents that outlines your qualifications and approach to delivering your solution. It provides strong backup evidence of your company’s ability to do the job. It also provides structure to organize your thoughts, a kind of written report of the careful research and analysis you have done on the company. In most cases, the client will be reading the formal proposal after the meeting. A well-prepared proposal can reinforce the impression you left with your good presentation. A good proposal will be a lasting document the client uses to help inform their decision. The proposal needs to be able to stand on its own even though it will likely not be used on its own. A badly prepared proposal will add a jarring element, likely convincing the client that all you can really do is put on a good presentation. So, what do you put in the written proposal? Introductory sections or what book publishers call "front of the book." This includes a cover and/or title page, depending on proposal length. The title page mentions your company and the name of the target client. If possible, include logos for both. Include a brief executive summary but without giving a price. Include a table of contents, which can also serve as a written agenda for the presentation. Use page numbers, or section tabs, or both. Page numbers can be eliminated, or numbered in each section, if you feel it likely or valuable to insert last-minute information. State the client’s objectives. What do they want to achieve, and how do they want to do this? Use their words, which the client should be happy to provide you. State how you can meet the client’s objectives. Describe your idea. Go into more detail on how you will meet their objectives. Present your financial analysis and cost justification. Tell how your ideas will benefit the client financially. Use tables and graphs, when appropriate. This is a summary section, so include any more detailed information in an appendix. Do not include your price at this point. Reinforce your company’s "value-add." Why should the client work with your company over competitor companies? Provide your pricing structure. Tie your price to the value provided. Summarize your proposal in three or four key points. Include an appendix, if appropriate. Your idea is to convince the client that you can respond to their needs. So, if they call for a set format different from the one above, follow their format. At the risk of stating the obvious, take some care in how the proposal looks. Professionally bound proposals can have the same content as something e-mailed, but spending some effort on making the proposal look nice gets you off to a good start. Be aware of how your client might use the proposal. For example, he or she might print the proposal on a black and white printer. So, at the very least, think of how your copies will look in black and white. Bring copies for each person expected to attend, plus a few extras. Try not to distribute it when the meeting starts because people will be inclined to at least glance through it. Good or bad, the proposal will be a distraction from what you are saying. If you find it appropriate to give out the proposal during the meeting, walk the audience through it. Don’t read from it. Use attractive visuals, easy enough to do with a laptop, for anything you have to show the audience. Keep in mind that PowerPoint slides are not intended to be a teleprompter. Discuss details not on the slides. (Also, be careful not to accidently project something personal verbally or on the screen.) Find out beforehand audience preferences for charts and tables, and follow them while creating the materials. Use the same professionalism you did with the written proposal in preparing any visuals. Bring copies of the visuals to have something to leave with the audience in case you need to revise the proposal — or in case technology is not available to project your presentation. Prepare for all possible scenarios! I might also suggest "just in case" free-standing copies of the executive proposal to leave the audience something if you want to rewrite parts of the proposal. To summarize: The written proposal is a valuable tool that sells on your behalf. Know your audience, and prepare it as well and as professionally as necessary. Be mindful of how you incorporate your proposal into your overall sales presentation.   Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post Don’t Let Your Written Proposal Torpedo Your Deal appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Understanding Group Dynamics to Prevent a Sales Presentation Nightmare A group of people is more than just many single persons. You have to be aware of this basic reality. Group dynamics can be quite complex. Look at set theory, studying the characteristics and interrelationships of groups. I am sure you remember this from basic math class. When you are talking with one person, you either convince the person or do not. When talking with as few as two people, you can convince them both, neither, or either one. One of them can convince the other to support you or to oppose you. The more people, the more complicated things can get. The combinations, and complications, grow geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16) rather than arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4). Group dynamics can affect the behavior of crowds for good or for bad. People influence each other. A reality of business is the idea of the "stakeholder." One person may have final authority to make decisions in a company, but that person will always have others concerned with the decision. At the very least, the CFO will have input on any decision that requires spending money. Your goal is to get the company to spend money. The trend in companies is to have all of the major internal stakeholders attend group sales presentations. But why is there this trend toward selling to a group? The philosophy of group participation as a way to improve the quality of decision making has been growing in popularity for decades. This has been motivated by the increasing desire to reduce the risk associated with big-ticket purchasing and to get more buy in from people who have to carry out the decision once made. There is still a good chance that only one person will make the final decision — and it is your job to find out which one — but all who attend the meeting, and others, will have an input into the decision. They will have even more of an input because they will have attended the meeting, heard the same things the decision maker heard, and can speak from the same frame of reference. Your sales presentation has to appeal to all those at the meeting. You have to be able to successfully deal with any questions they may have by covering the question in your presentation, by directly responding to questions when they are asked, or by finding the answer and getting back to them after the meeting. You have to answer everyone with the same courtesy, comprehensiveness, and accuracy you give questions from the boss, who will hear your answer as well as get the other people’s input. Despite group selling changing the dynamics, the basic purpose of selling has not changed and must be kept in mind. All clients still have unmet objectives and are all still looking for ways to meet their objectives. Client objectives always include personal, as well as business, objectives. Your job is to find some way of determining these objectives. Your contact person at the client’s office should be able to provide some answers. He or she should not object to answering these questions. The contact has a stake in you putting on a good sales presentation and finding ways to meet the company’s needs. The contact will realize that giving you this information will help him or her and the company — as well as you. One way to help deal with the reality of many client voices is to bring one or two co-workers with you, primarily to observe while you are presenting. You can compare their impressions to your own when the meeting ends. Again, it should not bother the clients that you are trying to get more information. They will assume, accurately, that you are not cheating but are just making it easier for your company to meet client needs. Selling to a group, let me repeat, still has the same goal as selling to one person. You are there to convince the group that you and your company can meet the needs and agendas of them and their company. The difference is that you are dealing with a more complex series of interrelationships — the clients with each other as well as with you. Your homework is harder, but the problem of how to focus your appeal is still quite manageable. —————————————————- Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post Understanding Group Dynamics to Prevent a Sales Presentation Nightmare appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Advice on Rapid Growth and Enterprise Sales Success from SAVO CEO, Mark O’Connell Mark O’Connell is the President and CEO of SAVO, a fast-growth enterprise SaaS company and a strategic alliance partner of Richardson. SAVO’s technology solutions improve productivity and performance of sales organizations and salespeople. Mark has led SAVO since the fall of 2010. He graciously shares his perspective on growing a company that ranked among Deloitte’s 2013 Fast 500™ list of fastest-growing companies in North America. Dario: Why has the technology industry so strongly embraced the cloud? Mark: The move to the cloud is driven by customer preference. Our clients focus on building a business and don’t want to divert resources to managing complex, custom software and infrastructure. Cloud-based software is highly sophisticated and the cost of ownership is relatively low due in large part to the subscription model. Cloud customers are essentially renting cloud-based products. It doesn’t require a big capital outlay and upgrades, such as security and bug fixes, are handled for you. The simplicity, flexibility, and investment are dramatically different than buying on-premise software. The next 10 years will see the vast majority of software in the world moving to a secure cloud. SAVO invested in transitioning to the cloud four years ago, which has allowed us to capitalize on the transformation in the market, and, most importantly, deliver our solutions in a manner that best supports our customers’ ability to succeed. Dario: How is selling SaaS software different from selling on-premise software? Mark: Combined with the increased availability of information, the SaaS software sales process is now almost entirely in the buyer’s hands.   To be a successful sales rep in this industry, you have to be extremely buyer-focused. This means allocating more time to understanding client challenges, partnering with clients to shape the vision for the solution and articulating value throughout every step of the relationship - from the initial meeting to post-implementation touch points. The typical buyer for SaaS software leads a particular line of business, for example, a CFO or CMO, whereas, with on-premise software, sales reps were working with the CIO or an IT manager. The cadence, and substance, of conversations with a CMO will be very different from conversations with a CIO. Selling to the CIO required a high-level of technical knowledge because the infrastructure was such a big part of the total solution. To sell SaaS to a CMO, your sales reps must speak to his or her challenges, for example, empowering a marketing team to be successful, ensuring brand consistency, generating demand and enabling the sales team. Of course, IT will eventually enter the conversation, but only to "check the boxes" that IT owns, such as data, security and application availability. Today, SaaS salespeople are, and need to be, more attuned to industry pains affecting a client’s business rather than focusing on technology expertise. Clients expect reps to come to the table with a specific understanding of the client’s industry and business pains, not just a thorough understanding of the rep’s own product offerings. The B2B sales cycle is quickly beginning to resemble stages of a growing partnership rather than a strict seller/buyer exchange. The financial impact is also a major differentiator when comparing on-premise software to the SaaS experience. On-premise software typically requires a large upfront payment, and is treated as a capital expense. SaaS typically requires a much smaller upfront payment and is treated as an operating expense. While this can make selling SaaS a bit easier from a budget standpoint, it certainly does not negate the need for best-in-class sales rep. The financial impact extends to the way SaaS companies incentivize and support salespeople. On-premise software salespeople lived and died by an ability to land big deals, and, at times, this led to behavior that wasn’t fully aligned with the customers’ best interests. The sales rep would disappear with the signing of a contract, leaving any and all ROI up to the customer. So while SaaS companies aren’t going to turn away big deals, SaaS customers have the ability to start small, demonstrate ROI and scale up when ready. This creates a dynamic wherein the SaaS salesperson must be fully vested in their customer’s success beyond the initial purchase. Expanding the value of existing opportunities for all parties involved is incredibly important to running a profitable SaaS business. There is much tighter alignment throughout the customer lifecycle. Overall, both SaaS companies and customers benefit from the transition to the cloud. Buyers are given more power and support in realizing ROI from SaaS purchases; the subscription format of SaaS puts the impetus on the vendor to maintain the relationship and ensure the customer is successful. Instead of a smash and grab approach to the sales cycle, SaaS reps are encouraged to land and expand. This leads to behaviors conducive to customer success, and also creates a two-way line of communication that enables us, as a SaaS vendor, to incorporate customer feedback into our products. In this way, we grow together with our customers, instead of leaving clients to fend for themselves. Dario: Based on your experience as CEO of a cloud company, what nuggets of advice can you share with other cloud CEOs? Mark:​ First and foremost, always listen to your customers. Take time to understand their current business challenges and use your industry expertise to help them anticipate future challenges. The time you spend discussing your products should only go so far as to communicate how they solve the pain your client is currently experiencing, and demonstrating how you can deliver a sustainable and measurable solution. Secondly, I believe in agility and taking risks, and have found it to be one of the benefits to leading a cloud company. With software you have the ability to move quickly and course-correct if necessary. There’s no penalty for tapping the brakes to make sure something is just right. If you need to accelerate, then give it some gas. Take the risk and commit to what you think is going to be most valuable to your customers and they will reward you with loyalty. Finally, I would tell anybody in a leadership role at a fast-growing business to put a lot of focus on hiring great people that fit your culture and aligning yourself with great partners that complement your value proposition. At SAVO, we invest heavily in recruiting the best people and developing them. We work closely with partners, like Richardson, that share our culture and purpose. Together we are focused on bringing value to our customers and helping them succeed in growing and profiting. When we see our customers succeed using our solutions, and continue to give us business year after year, it drives home how fun and rewarding it can be building in the cloud. —————————————————- Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post SaaS Solution CEO Interview: Advice on Rapid Growth and Enterprise Sales Success from SAVO CEO, Mark O’Connell appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sustaining Sales Training Impact, An Interview with Gregg Kober, Richardson’s VP of Change Management Here at Richardson, we work closely with our clients on what to do not only during training, but also before and after to ensure that sales training sticks and delivers impact. I sat down with Gregg Kober, Richardson’s Vice President of Change Management, to discuss our sustainment framework. Gregg generously shares his expertise on the thinking and approach we take on sustaining sales training impact. Dario Priolo (DP):  What is a sustainment framework? Gregg Kober (GK):  Sustainment framework is the term for a way to maintain the learning effects of training once the training is over the trainees get back to their offices. DP:     How did the idea of the sustainment framework start? GK:     The impetus for the sustainment framework’s development as an articulated philosophy was in academic literature and in professional training industry literature. Their idea was the effective training is not "event based."  In traditional training you come to as session, perhaps even enjoy and think that is effective, and head back to work and find that it was not very effective at all  There are high rates of failure is transferring the new behavior back to the job.   Money invested in this type of training is usually not well invested. People get a false sense that training worked because people leave the training talking about how great it was: It was relevant.  Their company cares enough to invest in them. The training facilitator was fantastic. The food was wonderful.  They transmit this by giving the facilitator a good review, on an evaluation form usually filled out just as the training sessions end - which makes the facilitator and his or her department feel good. . Managers feel good, because they sent their people to training and invested in their development. They are now going to be able to do new and better things when they are back on the job.  Everyone is feeling good. DP:     Is it bad for employees and managers to feel good about their jobs? GK:     Not if the good feeling is based on accomplishment. A business is not in business to make people feel good.  A business is in business to produce results. This is where thing start to slip. "One and done" is not the way to produce last results. People who leave traditional training are going back to the same environment from which they came.  The chances of them using the new skills are low. They are going around and wondering why they should bother.  Do they really have the opportunity to use their new skills?    It takes an effort to do that.   Performances may drop off temporarily because they are not quite so confident they can do it right the first time out of the gate with a client. And so there is a lot of sliding back into old behavior. It is not that they did not learn what they should have in the class. More often than not, with good design and good facilitation, they did.  But they are just not using their new skills back on the job. And so the sustainment framework was about helping people to use things they learn back on the job. DP: Can you explain the three phases of behavior change in the sustainment framework? Start with the "define" phase? Can you also explain them for the organization as well as for the individual? GK:     What we are trying to do is tackle the three phases at both an organizational level and at an individual level. And so when we are defining - the first phase is define, the second phase is develop, and the third phase is sustain. What we are trying to do organizationally and individually at each level is something different to help move the needle, to help encourage behavioral change to take hold;  for people to adopt that new behavior. Organizationally, really what leaders are primarily charged with is effective communication about the nature and the need for change. There should be no one ever going to a sales training or a manager’s training who does not know why they are in the seats. Why are we taking two days out of our busy schedules to do this? Over and over, we work with organizations where people say I do not know why I am here in this training. I do not see how it connects with the bigger picture. So people have to be aware of why they are actually going to training. But beyond that, leaders are charged with making sure the changes in the environment support the behavior change. So that may be changes in process. That may be changes in who goes to training and how people are selected for training or how they are selected into their roles. It can also be about metrics and process. And a big part is how do the existing systems (and for most salesforces that is the CRM system) how do those reflect what is being learned in the training. Because if people do not see changes in their environment around them, they are much less likely to think the new skills and behaviors are going to help them. Leaders need to communicate. Then they need to alter the work environment enough to signal that we are really serious about you using these new skills. In the first phase, define. Individuals need to understand where their current skill gap is because we have to raise the awareness of an individual about where they stand relative to other people or where they stand relative to best practice. That makes them aware why the training is relevant, which can drive a desire to engage in the training. DP: Can you discuss the "develop" phase of training? GK:     This is the second phase, and traditionally where sales training has focused. At the individual level, the reasoning is pretty obvious — I need to go through training. I need to be engaged. I need to learn by doing because we want to have lots of practice and lots of relevant activity so that people feel like they can do these skills when they leave. From the organization’s point of view, besides what the employees are learning, development leaders and managers have to get that program and that event off the ground, which is a heavy lift. Organizationally, the best thing that leaders can do is just to give people uninterrupted time to actually engage in the training, to not have distractions go on during that period. So at the organizational level, it is pretty simple. It is just give people a safe bubble to be able to practice, fail, and then do better.  This bubble should come, to the degree possible, back at the "ranch," after the formal training is over. DP: What about the sustain phase? GK:  In the third phase, which is sustain, this is where we take a fully systematic point of view. There are things to do with the individual level certainly to have sustainment work, but there are also things that we need to do organizationally. And that is what the five steps to sustainment are about. Sustain is sometimes called, drive, in an effort to symbolize that training is designed to improve how a company moves forwards. Research we have done at Richardson, with Trainingindustry.com, shows that there really is a significant difference between those organizations that have managers and executives reporting that their organization is "effective" versus "not effective" in sustaining behavior change after training. DP: Does the allocation of training resources, not just the total amount, play a major role in the long term success of training? GK: One of the interesting things our study found was the allocation of resources. There was a fairly significant difference between how those were effective allocated their resources against those that were ineffective. What we found is that those who were effective at sustaining change, they were really looking at a budget allocation of about than 20 percent of their total project budget to be spend in the sustainment phase, compared to those organizations that were ineffectual. The ineffectual organizations, who were not doing sustainment right, were only spending a little bit more than ten percent of their budget. This is the first blog post in a 2 part series on sustaining sales training impact. In our next article, Gregg explains our 5 Paths to Sustainment in greater depth. ——————————————— Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below. The post Sustaining Sales Training Impact appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why Sales Training Sustainment Fails and Five Steps to Improve Success: Part II of an interview with Gregg Kober This is the second part of an interview with Gregg Kober, Richardson’s Vice President of Change Management, to discuss our experience and point of view on sustaining the impact of sales training. Part 1 focused on the three phases of behavior change. In this article, Gregg explains why sales training sustainment fails, and our 5-Steps of Sustainment Framework. Dario: Why does sustainment fail? Gregg: There are a lot of reasons why sales training sustainment can fail. This failure potential is one of the reasons that learning and development leaders have been somewhat reluctant to take on the sustainment dilemma. Learning and development leaders typically do not have any kind of direct control over the systems, the processes, the metrics, the HR practices, and the management practices that people go back into and return to after training. Because of this lack of authority over those things, learning and development leaders are justly reluctant to be held responsible for making changes in areas where they do not have any authority. The best learning and development leaders that we work with or sales enablement leaders are using their influence in these other areas to corral HR, to corral technology, to corral management into making changes that compliment what is going on in the training. It requires a certain amount of courage on the learning and development or sales enablement leaders’ part because they are going outside of their expertise. It requires high ability to influence one’s peers and to help make things a priority that may not be a priority for these other people. But ultimately, help to sustain that behavior change afterwards. DP: What are the five steps to sustainment? GK: The five steps are: set expectations, retain knowledge, apply skills, align systems, prevent relapse. The steps to sustainment come out of research or review of the research literature on transfer of training so what successfully makes people go from what - take what they learned in a classroom or a virtual environment and apply it back on the job. There has been quite a bit of research done over the last 30 years on how that works. What the steps to sustainment seek to do is to codify those into some simple to remember principles so that you can apply this going forward. And at a high level, the steps are set expectations, retain knowledge, apply skills, align systems, and prevent relapse. DP: Can you go into the steps in more detail? GK: The first step is to set expectations. Most organizations have significant issues both for their sales leaders, their sales managers, and their salespeople. And so when people have to be taken out of the field for two days or three days’ worth of training, they are naturally coming back to a game of catch up. You can almost hear them. "Oh my gosh, I’ve got to respond to this client. I have so many emails to do. I had to reschedule some meetings. I got to get back on the road. I have got to fly. Yeah, the training was great. But now I am back in the real world. " This first step is about the organization helping people to focus and saying we know you are no longer in training. But we still need you to focus on the application of these skills and this is how we would like you to do it. And it is pretty clear, concise, and really incremental steps to get people started. Step number two, retain knowledge, is similar to when you buy a new car. The value of the car begins to deteriorate when you drive if off the dealership’s lot. The sane thing happens with learning. As soon as participants set foot outside of that classroom, the forgetting curve kicks in. The forgetting curve is a naturally occurring cognitive phenomenon that we all experience in our daily life. So people, when they leave training, find the forgetting curve kicking in. Things that they knew in the classroom start to be lost out in the real world because they are not being reinforced. Retaining knowledge is all about making sure that that forgetting curve does not become a major problem in people retaining all the good skills and knowledge that they have so that that - those skills and knowledge can serve as a foundation going forward for step number three. Step number three is to apply skills. It is important to retain the knowledge after you leave the training, but then you have to use that retained knowledge as a foundation for applying your skills back on the job. Using those skills back on the job really involves three things. One, identifying when the new skills and knowledge are appropriate, when to use them; two, actually using those skills and knowledge; and three, receiving constructive feedback. So that may be feedback as far as self-reflection on your own performance. It may be peer feedback. It may be feedback from your manager, both strengths and areas for improvement. Step number four is to align systems. This sustainment step is the heart of ensuring that people believe the required behavior changes are "real" and not a "flavor of the month." If people go through training but their work environment has not noticeably changed to support the new behaviors, people will think that the new behaviors are optional or, worse, that management is not really serious about changing behaviors. On the other hand, if people go through training and return to a work environment that is significantly different and better aligned to support the new behaviors, people will think "management is serious about this change." The fifth is probably the most important step, persisting in using those skills and knowledge. We all know that any time you try and do something new, you are not proficient at it the first time. So your performance is naturally going to drop. It is hard for highly skilled, highly experienced sales people and sales managers to see their performance drop. They get worried that they are doing something wrong by using the new skills; but they are not. It is the naturally occurring move toward conscience competence. And so what we need to do is have people persist in using the skills and knowledge so that they do become consciously competent and that they can move forward with the new skills and not worry about the short-term drop in performance. DP: How do you do that? GK: The way you do that is really about having a developmental coaching culture. This culture automatically assumes that a person is trying to do his or her best and that we all have strengths and areas for improvement. By focusing in a non-judgmental, non-performance way on what people are trying to achieve, we help them get over that hump. And again, there is a short-term drop off in performance. We trade that for the long-term gain in mastering of those skills with clients. The other thing that can really help is to apply those skills in real deal situations and get feedback in real time. So in a deal of pursuit or in an account management situation or in a prospecting or negotiation situation, having someone who you can go to who can give you real time coaching guidance just makes all the difference because then you feel like you are operating with these new skills and knowledge with a safety net under you. You are not going to fail. If you fall, you are going to fall into that safety net and bounce back and be fine. DP: Do you have any other advice for a learning leader, sales leader, or a line of business leader that really wants to ensure that whatever investment they make in training sticks? GK: Make sure you have a systematic process for making sure that training sticks. So if you are going to invest 20 percent of your overall project budget or more than 20 percent of your overall project budget in sustainment, first of all, have that number in mind. What is that number? And preserve that number in your project budget. But then really look systematically at a way to identify what interventions at each of the five stages are appropriate in our culture. How do I really help people to focus by setting expectations? How am I going to kick that forgetting curve so people are retaining knowledge? Make sure that skill application - people are bought into applying the skills back on the job. Ensure that managers are supportive of people applying the skills back on the job because there is nothing that kills sustainment faster than a manager saying to a sales person I know you learned that in training, but that is not how we do things. "That is not how we do things " has killed more good sales training than any other sentence. So making sure that your managers are skilled at training or coaching what is being trained in the sales training is really important. Then making sure that they see, in step four, aligned systems, they see a difference. So if you have a sales process, if you have done sales process work, you make sure that sales process is reflected in the CRM. Make sure that coaching conversations around opportunities reflect that sales process. But make sure that the systems are up-to-date and people are returning going oh, this is different. This is not going to be just the sales training fad this year. And last, really, really make sure to publicize success. People need to hear about early success. They need to hear about the wins. If people do not hear about the wins, they are going to assume that they are the only ones struggling, right. For a few months this will have to be about people changing their behavior because you are not going to see the results immediately. And so wins early on are about people who change their behavior, who try to do things, maybe someone who failed and got back up on the horse and was persistent and tried again and succeeded. So early wins are really important because human beings are impatient to see success. Those those early wins help to cement for people, even if you do not experience them yourself, hearing about early wins helps to people say they can do this. Other people can do this. I can do this too. And it makes you much more likely to persist and not fall back into your old behavior. ————————————- Richardson and SAVO have partnered together to bring you  SAVO Sales Process Pro Richardson Edition™, an CRM-enabled application that allows sales and marketing leaders to reinforce training and execute best practices through coaching at each stage of the sales cycle. To learn more, click on the link above or the image below.     The post Why Sales Training Sustainment Fails and Five Steps to Improve Success appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson to Host Selling with Insights Workshop at Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston Richardson will be the host of a selling with insights workshop at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston on July 15, 2014. The workshop will focus on how sales teams can leverage insights to provide value to customers and win more deals. Richardson’s President and CEO David DiStefano and Senior Sales Training Consultant Kim Dean will host the session. They will focus on sharing best practices to help salespeople to be able to make a connection with prospective customers. Throughout the workshop, attendees will participate in sample exercises that teach sales teams how to generate and deliver insights that will create credibility and differentiate their solutions from the competition. In the interactive workshop, participants will learn: A framework for leveraging insights and creating value for customers A process for personalizing Insight Messages Skills for effectively presenting insights, creating needs, and shaping the customer’s thinking toward engaging in the sale Risks to avoid when leveraging insights during the sales process "In today’s market, if you want to win, you must be able to differentiate from the competition," says Richardson President and CEO David DiStefano. "We are excited to partner with Selling Power on this event to give sales leaders the opportunity to gain insight into some of the new sales skills that Richardson believes are critical to success." —————————————— Richardson’s Selling with Insights® sales training program teaches your sales reps advanced preparation techniques and dialogue skills to effectively present insights, challenge the customer’s thinking, add more value, differentiate your solution, and build credibility as a trusted business partner. If you would like to learn more about Richardson’s Selling with Insights workshops and full seminars, please email Jim Brodo at jim.brodo@richardson.com or click here to read more.   The post Richardson to Host Selling with Insights Workshop at Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.