Sales Training Success: CCS Significantly Boosts Torani's Win Rate

Tweet

 

Sales Training Success: CustomerCentric Selling® significantly boosts Torani's win rate and greatly improves individual sales performance.

Business Problem
Upon reaching out to CustomerCentric Selling®, Torani's goals were to:

• Build more face to face time with both the distributor and owner/operator in order to increase the value of each opportunity
• Create a common selling language within the organization
• Build selling competencies
• Improve the selling skills of the sales force

The reasons Torani was unable to achieve these goals was due to these challenges:

• The sales force was reacting to sales leads rather than proactively qualifying
• There was no standard way to assess progress on any opportunity
• The sales force had a wide variety of selling skills which were not being harnessed into best practices
• The sales team was spending too much time on administration rather than seeing clients and prospects.

What Torani needed was a way to measure the value of an opportunity to evaluate whether it met the newly established guidelines (minimum amount of an opportunity, penetrate new geographical market, allow a relationship with a new distributor to flourish), and then determine the win rate. The deal guidelines were published in Salesnet, the new CRM that Torani chose to adapt

The CustomerCentric Selling® Solution
After conducting a customized CustomerCentric Selling® Workshop with all levels of account managers, CustomerCentric Selling® worked with the sales team to monitor the results of their sales process implementation initiative. In addition, CustomerCentric Selling® was retained to provide sales coaching, so that all sales people would be able to assimilate and personally implement the new sales process.

Since implementation:

• There have been 140 plus wins (domestic only)
• Every team member has had double digit contribution to the win rate
• Of the 140 plus deals, 81% were within the established guidelines
• The win rate within guidelines has increased to 95%

"We have stopped in basket selling and have begun to make the most of our out basket opportunities. I am very pleased with these results and the team is now thinking, planning and prospecting 'bigger'."
-Larry Winkler, Foodservice Sales Director for Torani

Customer Closeup
R. Torre and Company, trading as Torani, is a San Francisco-based, family owned company, providing The Original Italian Flavoring Syrups and specialty beverages and service to the distributor and operator community in Foodservice, Retail and International channels. Their competitors, in particular large corporate conglomerates, provide similar products without the "detail in service" that for which Torani is well-known.

More information on Torani can be found at www.torani.com

Benefits to Torani:

• 140+ wins since implementation
• Out of 140+ wins, 81% were within guidelines
• Post implementation, the win rate within guidelines has increased to 95%
• Every team member has double-digit contribution to the overall win rate

Read more of our sales training success stories by visiting our Customer Showcase.

Sales Training Success: CCS Helps Axient Increase Revenue

Tweet

 

Sales Training Success: CustomerCentric Selling® helps Axient increase revenue by 2.1 million over the first 12 months.

Business Problem
When the Managing Director for Axient first employed the help of CustomerCentric Selling® business partner, Acuere, they stated their primary goal was to increase revenue. The challenges they faced in achieving these goals were:

• Increased competition
• Perception of fax as an old technology
• Inability to gain access to key decision makers

"CustomerCentric Selling® (CCS) provided a framework and methodology to ensure customer goals and values are exposed, captured and used to deliver the best outcomes and return on investment (ROI)." --John Pitt, Axient

The CustomerCentric Selling® Solution
After identifying the sales challenges, the capabilities that Axient defined called for a repeatable, consistent sales process that could be applied across their sales, marketing and operations teams. This process would provide tools and processes that enabled:

• Arming the sales team with the skills to have business level conversations with 'c' level decision makers and key players
• Selling solutions based on business outcomes and values - not products and services
• Competitive differentiation by the way they sell, and by having a consistent, repeatable and measurable sales process

Acuere provided these capabilities via a tailored CustomerCentric Selling® training workshop with follow-up reinforcement sessions with the team.

Result: Axient boosted revenues by 2.1 million over the first 12 months since implementing the CustomerCentric Selling® methodology.

"As a newbie to the sales world, this course [CustomerCentric Selling®] has empowered me to achieve my targets by providing a toolset to work with." --Bryan Ponnan, Account Executive for Axient

Customer Closeup
Axient is the only Australian-owned and operated single source provider of software plus services to send, receive, process and manage production fax. Axient provides customers a full range of business benefits including reduced IT operating costs, improved IT infrastructure and a defined IT strategy and architecture for production fax.

More information on Axient can be found at http://www.axient.com.au/

If you have questions about this client, please contact Deb Miller at dmiller@customercentric.com

Benefits to Axient:

• Increased revenue by 2.1 million over the first 12 months
• Arming the sales team with the skills to have business level conversations with 'c' level decision makers and key players
• Selling solutions based on business outcomes and values - not products and services
• Competitive differentiation by the way they sell, and by having a consistent, repeatable and measurable sales process

Conclusion - Aligning Sales Methodology with Technology

Tweet

 

Sales Training Insight: Ensuring a Successful Sales Organization Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology (Conclusion)

By John Holland, Co-founder and Co-author of CustomerCentric Selling®

Choosing the Right SFA Solution
The widespread acceptance of SFA and CRM means that there are numerous vendors and offerings available. In evaluating vendors, there is a fine line between enlightenment and confusion.

One major decision is whether to consider hosted or non-hosted applications. Either provides functionality, but hosted applications usually offer quicker implementation, reduced up front expenditures, and lower total cost of ownership. The application is run and managed by the vendor versus being done in house.

As we have previously stated, the ability to customize tasks or steps to match your processes is vitally important and should be factored into your decision. A good SFA solution is one that can be tailored to meet your unique and dynamic needs.

Flexibility
While customization for your organization is an important step, keep in mind that salespeople exhibit diverse work habits and approaches. An SFA system should provide the ability to personalize usage of the system at user levels—to increase adoption, facilitate ease-of-use, and increase efficiency. The ability to personalize a homepage or portals to better mesh with the way a person works can go a long way towards becoming an ingrained habit. It is the equivalent of adjusting the seat, steering wheel and mirrors to your specific requirements before driving a car. By being able to format a welcome screen with current opportunities, to-do lists, and unique time-sensitive tasks, salespeople begin to feel the system is working for them, not vice versa.

Salespeople will vary as to what they want beyond the basic dashboard screen offered by an SFA application. Providing them the ability to configure it to their specifications without IT reliance will help to maximize acceptance and productivity.

Work Flow Customization
Most sales environments are interrupt-driven. Whether in the car, office, or at customer locations, interruptions are inevitable. Entering information in a logical sequence and flow makes using the system and handling partial entries easier. At the same time, the ability to enter notes about conversations as they occur and file them later into a specific account will reinforce that salespeople can efficiently interact with the application in the normal course of their business day. Workflow rules also automate sales processes such as approvals, and can be customized to match business needs/strategy.

Within a process defined by senior management, salespeople appreciate the ability to define their personal workflow to achieve and report against standard milestones. Imagine the difference in workflow between an inside sales person responsible for generating new leads, and a senior account executive handling three major accounts. If salespeople lack the ability to modify workflow within the system, some (or all), of the staff will conclude the system does not fully meet their needs.

360-Degree View
A 360-degree view enables sales, marketing and support to access a summary of all activity within an account, minimizing the chance of looking uninformed to a customer or prospect. Without such a view, salespeople are distracted from their primary focus—bringing in revenue for the company—as they are asked time and again by non-sales staff to provide background information on their accounts.

Companies with internal call centers have a way to pass leads with detailed summaries of initial conversations, providing continuity when outside salespeople follow up with buyers. Product marketing can analyze wins and losses to better determine market requirements so new announcements will reflect buyer needs. Products aligned with buyer needs are easier to sell. And, marketing can electronically route leads to salespeople, ensuring prompt follow up, while future campaigns can be fine-tuned based upon past results so the number and quality of leads can be increased.

Improved Productivity
Salespeople and managers can project one sales cycle ahead to verify there is sufficient activity in each pipeline so quota can be met. If there is a projected shortfall, additional business development may be required. The key here is that activity can be increased proactively versus reactively several weeks or months later.

Sales organizations can share best practices. It could be that after collecting data there are particular vertical industries or titles where win rates are better. There could be sharing of specific tactics against know competitors, complete with intelligence about their pricing, strategies, etc. Past events in sales cycles that have lead to losses can be identified and proactively monitored.

Based upon past transactions, salespeople can be prompted with suggested additional offerings the customer is likely to want. When new offerings are announced, salespeople can be provided with a “hot list” of accounts to contact first.

Conclusion
Having an SFA or CRM system in place has become the norm. Companies attempting to integrate sales process with automation can elevate their expectations to making the way they sell a competitive advantage.

Consider the number of loss reports in which salespeople cite price or product as the reason for losing. If product is to blame, then the opportunity was never really qualified. For non-commodity offerings, if price were the major variable, procurement could make vendor decisions. While almost never mentioned, most losses occur because one seller outsold the rest.

SFA implementations supported by sales process offer companies the potential to gain a competitive advantage, by impacting the quality of a salesperson’s work. By empowering sellers to make better calls, senior executives can positively influence the customer buying experience. By combining automation with process:

1. Organizations can share best selling practices.

2. Salespeople can have conversations with executive buyers about improving business results through the use of their offerings.

3. Managers can participate in qualify/disqualify decisions and can coach sellers through sales cycles.

4. Executives can exert more control over revenue generation and forecasting.

Recommended Next Steps
Whether you are considering SFA for the first time or have been through multiple implementations, the application is here to stay. Having said that, the bar should be raised with respect to the potential benefits and business impact that can be realized. From a sales perspective, the technology alone can provide productivity gains for salespeople. Ultimately, this can affect the quantity, but not the quality of a salesperson’s work.

Consider taking a fresh look at your sales process to verify that it reflects the steps needed to move through sales cycles. Evaluate how these steps apply to the different types of transactions in a salesperson’s pipeline, especially smaller transactions, and make changes accordingly.

If you have an SFA system installed, take a realistic view of how well it has been accepted by the sales organization. If it is something they deal with rather than embrace, drill down to uncover the reasons and see what steps can be taken to address them. It may be necessary to sell or resell your management team and salespeople on the potential benefits of utilizing the software. Paying maintenance on unused seats is often throwing good money after bad, especially on older systems. Doing a cost vs. benefit on automation integrated with sales process may justify a new initiative.

Part 4 - Aligning Sales Methodology with Technology

Tweet

 

Sales Training Insight: Ensuring a Successful Sales Organization Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology (Part Four)

By John Holland, Co-founder and Co-author of CustomerCentric Selling®

Consistent Positioning of Offerings
Even with standard milestones and a common skill set, process will not be possible unless your sales staff is supported with consistent messaging to position their offerings when calling at executive levels. Traditional salespeople tend to make product-centric calls—deadly when calling at executive levels. Getting access to this level will not have the desired effect if the seller can’t relate their offerings to an executive buyer’s business issues. Failure to do so leads to being delegated downward or worse, to dismissal because the executive doesn’t understand the potential value of using your products or services.

Superior salespeople make different calls based upon the title of the person they are contacting. They intuitively understand the higher the call is within an enterprise, the less product-centric the call should be. Executives and decision-makers give sellers 30 minutes or less to generate interest in their offerings. Executives also prefer to start with a discussion of their business needs and then understand how the offering could be used to improve results.

Knowing what to say is critical if a potential sale is to advance through the defined milestones. In too many companies, sellers are required to develop their own messaging—ultimately shaping the buyer’s perception and expectations. In other words, even though it doesn’t appear in his or her job description (nor should it!), positioning offerings falls on the shoulders of the salesperson by default.

How can managers effectively evaluate opportunities when salespeople independently decide what to say about their offerings?

Sales Ready Messaging®
An alternative is to create sales ready messaging®, with the objective of helping sellers have directed conversations with each targeted business level buyer. If conversations are more structured, the outcome of calls becomes more predictable, empowering sales managers to take a more active role in making qualify/disqualify decisions. The first step in creating Sales Ready Messaging® is to create a list of Key Players.

Key Players are those titles within organizations that your salespeople must call on in order to sell, fund and implement an offering. Most sales organizations discover this is a predictable list. For a company selling CRM, a potential Key Player list would be:

• VP of Sales
• CEO/COO/CFO
• VP Marketing
• VP of IT
• Call Center Manager

The CXO titles are listed together because these conversations would be similar, all relating to improving bottom line results. Also note we did not list titles below middle management. The higher the title within an organization, the more predictable the conversations and creating a Key Player list directs sellers to execute a top down (vs. bottom up) approach. The next step is to create a menu of high probability goals for each Key Player.

For example, supporting standard milestones is an SFA feature that can be used to improve forecasting accuracy. A seller mentioning the feature runs the risk of the buyer not fully understanding how it would be used. To avoid confusion the feature is converted to a usage scenario:

Event: After making calls

Question: would you want

Player: your salespeople

Action: to be prompted via their laptop to update progress on each opportunity against pre-defined milestones in a centralized database?

By executing the questioning template at the right time to the right Key Player, the outcomes of sales calls become more predictable. Your sales managers don’t have to be on the call to get a sense of how the conversation went. Every sales manager within the company can now use standard debriefing questions. This is possible because the buyer’s solution has already been “framed.” Even better, your managers now have the ability to access each salesperson’s funnel and electronically coach them through buying cycles, effectively leveraging their experience to help increase win rates, quota performance and earnings.

A good SFA solution supports usage scenarios and scripts by identifying at what stage in the cycle certain usage scenarios are used, and then consistently enforcing them across the organization with corresponding sales tasks. This capability supports the concept of cloning the best salespeople—great salespeople already use scenarios and understand their prospect’s business needs before presenting features and benefits. This ensures that average salespeople will use the most effective business-focused pitch to the right title and at the right stage in the sales process. Without a good SFA tool, this may occur randomly, will be difficult to enforce and monitor, and won’t ensure consistency.

Auditability
After implementing Sales Ready Messaging®, your sales managers can gain an understanding of the outcome of all Key Player calls. Sellers can negotiate a written sequence of events with buyers mutually agreeing to a schedule of steps leading to a buying decision including an estimated close date.

When agreed upon, this sequence of events allows sales managers to select opportunities to forecast while knowing approximately when the buyer plans to make a decision. By having Key Player Letters and a sequence of events readily enforced with a good SFA system, the role of sellers becomes one of building and documenting potential opportunities in their funnels rather than of guesswork and subjectivity. Your sales managers are responsible for auditing deliverables, grading pipelines and forecasting—not hunting down salespeople to follow the process.

User Acceptance and Adoption
In your experience, can you remember any software vendor failing to claim ease-of-use as one of their competitive advantages? It is customary for SFA vendors to claim ease-of-use as one of their offering’s attributes on executive calls. Making the same claim to salespeople who will be expected to use the software on a daily basis is a greater challenge—they are all from Missouri, the “Show Me” state.

A major component of ease-of-use is relevance to the tasks at hand. Companies that perform sanity checks to verify what they require salespeople to enter is relevant and necessary enjoy a huge advantage over those who don’t. Ease-of-use is not only an attribute of the SFA software. Another critical factor is how well the application has been customized to fit your selling environment. A good SFA solution should be customizable to fit your sales strategy, so you can implement the right process, milestones and tasks that fit your business.

Two observations about an SFA system:

• If it isn’t easy to use, salespeople won’t use it.
• If it’s easy to use, but salespeople aren’t getting value, they won’t use it.

Based upon past experience with SFA, or having heard war stories from their peers, salespeople may view SFA as something to be” dealt with.” The required input can be perceived as a burden that mostly benefits others within the organization. In extreme cases, an SFA system can be viewed as “big brother” enabling management to selectively put sellers under a microscope. Salespeople may feign acceptance but work around the system, choosing to enter only those opportunities that appear winnable (or that have already been closed).

By better articulating potential benefits to salespeople—specific metrics for improvement with customers in win rate, reduction in sales cycles, improved cross-selling, quicker startup times, and the like—you can reduce pushback and increase acceptance.

Adoption
Having milestones, a common skill set for salespeople, consistent product positioning and a way to audit opportunities in place will not ensure success unless your sales force uses the technology. In implementing change, human nature is such that the initial reaction tends to be one of resistance. Many salespeople feel sales is far more art than science and may well be skeptical about relying upon the new system as they attempt to achieve their numbers and desired earnings. One idea some companies have adopted that works well is to form an advisory board with representation from the sales organization to ensure input is solicited for changes and enhancements going forward.

Once past the initial learning curve, salespeople discover that administrative tasks take less time. Complete contact information reduces time spent to oversee activities of other staff within their accounts. Lead tracking minimizes the chance of inadequate or no follow-up. Sales managers can share best practices and begin to manage on an exception basis (those that vary from best practices).

Acceptance by the entire sales organization should contribute to a higher quality pipeline, shorter sales cycles and a “single version of the truth” for all people to access. Senior management can realize increased revenue because salespeople are making better calls, and the CFO can be confident that the forecast resembles reality.

Management Support
Managers’ support is critical in driving usage of the SFA system. If salespeople sense a lack of commitment by their manager they likely will do whatever minimum gets them through. In the same way salespeople should be “sold” on the personal benefits of SFA, so it should be for first-line managers. If managers had to inspect deliverables input by salespeople before they could grade an opportunity, the adoption would be mandated. Senior sales executives should also imbed the SFA system as one of the fundamental tools sales managers use to assess, support and develop their staff, as well as using the system from their desktops to review the revenue pipeline.

Read more of this insightful article in our next blog posting!

Part 3 - Aligning Sales Methodology with Technology

Tweet

 

Sales Training Insight: Ensuring a Successful Sales Organization Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology (Part Three)

By John Holland, Co-founder and Co-author of CustomerCentric Selling®

Reducing Subjectivity
Having auditable milestones helps to reduce the degree of subjectivity in grading pipelines. Whether using an Excel spreadsheet or SFA to forecast, the opinions of salespeople who are under pressure to show sufficient activity is—in many cases—the input.

The major reason CFO’s require sales forecasts is because they need to know top-line revenues in order to predict and achieve earnings. Their objective in forecasting is significantly different than that of a salesperson with a thin pipeline attempting to show their manager an adequate level of activity and progress to keep the manager off their back. As long as salespeople forecast, this will be an issue. To allow for this, the vast majority of CFO’s discount the forecast they receive from sales.

By enforcing objective, auditable tasks, your sales management can make assessments independent of their reps’ subjective input—and CFO’s can be more confident of pipeline accuracy. A good SFA solution goes a long way in providing the functionality to automate task management, ensuring your entire sales organization is held to the same series of tasks according to sale type.

Some examples of auditable tasks might be:

• A site survey done by a support person
• A call made by a professional services consultant
• A formal cost vs. benefit
• A meeting with a specific title or titles within a prospect
• A credit review
• A prospect visit to a reference account
• A demonstration of your offering
• A quote sent to the prospect

The creation of milestones tailored to different types of sales provides organizations a road map of sales cycles. Adding a higher degree of milestone auditability minimizes the importance of seller opinions as to how qualified or real a given opportunity is. A test would be to have multiple managers assess deliverables from a particular opportunity to see if everyone arrives at the same conclusion as to the stage in the sales process.

Cloning Your Best Salespeople
Most companies have a small percentage of salespeople that consistently achieve or exceed their assigned quota. These superior salespeople are naturally customer-focused and are comfortable calling at high levels because they understand executive buyers are most interested in hearing how the offering impacts business results.

The best salespeople intuitively understand the steps required and the titles they must call on to maximize the chances of being successful. These sellers require minimal coaching from their managers.

Overall top-line results could be dramatically improved if there were a way to share their best practices with the rest of the sales organization.

Having Your Average Reps Emulate Top Performers
In sharp contrast, the majority of salespeople struggle to achieve their quotas year in and year out. These traditional sellers have a tendency to lead with the features and benefits of their offerings and are most comfortable calling at lower levels, where buyers are most receptive to product-centric sales calls. Traditional sellers often rely upon internal “champions” to sell their offerings up to top management. These are sellers that require more hands-on coaching from their managers.

Intuitive sellers only need a compass while traditional sellers need a map and directions. With clearly defined sales stages, your managers can coach less intuitive salespeople through sales cycles. If stages can be defined to approximate those that customer-focused sellers execute, best practices can be shared. Road maps help to maximize the chances of succeeding for two major reasons:

• They define the ultimate objective so there is an overall plan. This differs from sales cycles whose direction changes on a call-by-call basis.
• Defined steps allow managers to coach traditional sellers on a step-by-step basis.

The other major benefit is that over a period of time, your managers can assess where blockages occur in each seller’s pipeline. This helps determine potential skill deficiencies such as business development, need development, getting access to power, controlling sales cycles, closing and negotiating. Based upon past difficulties, managers can make joint calls or strategize with a salesperson at the specific point or points in the sales cycle where they’ve had difficulty.

To go a step further in attempting to clone the behavior of top performers, map selling skills and techniques to achieving defined milestones and strive to help your salespeople more consistently position their offerings.

Read more of this insightful article in our next blog posting!

Part 2: Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology

Tweet

 

Sales Training Insight: Ensuring a Successful Sales Organization Aligning Sales Methodology and Technology (Part Two)

By John Holland, Co-founder and Co-author of CustomerCentric Selling®

Sales Methodology
A well-defined sales methodology enables you to define and implement a sales process that ensures more objective input to SFA. Potential benefits of implementing standard sales processes include:

• Shorter sell cycles
• Increased win rates
• Shorter startup times for new salespeople
• Improved forecasting accuracy
• Reduced cost of sales
• Reduced discounting
• Higher percentage of salespeople achieving or exceeding quota
• Integrating marketing and sales efforts
• Empowering sales managers to assess and develop their staff

The fact that SFA offers potential improvement in these areas supports the case for integrating sales methodology and technology. Before addressing integration, let’s take a closer look at what sales processes really are and how they can provide input to SFA applications.

Implementing a sales process requires the following five components:

• Standard milestones that define the steps in sales cycles
• A common skill set for the sales staff
• Consistent positioning of offerings by salespeople to frame the outcome of sales calls
• A standard way to document calls so sales managers can audit opportunities
• Acceptance and adoption by the sales staff

Standard Milestones
Sales process milestones, also called “stages”, provide a road map to guide sales organizations through sales cycles. Even broad or nebulous milestones ensure salespeople share a common understanding of the steps involved in making a sale.

A common misconception of many organizations is assuming they have a single process. However, upon closer examination, most companies discover they have several sales processes—add-on business, professional services, maintenance agreements, contract renewals, new accounts, national accounts or global accounts. 

One of the challenges in implementing a comprehensive sales process is ensuring milestones fit your selling environment, and that milestone deliverables or tasks expected from the sales staff are commensurate with the size and complexity of a given opportunity. If expected deliverables are out of proportion, your sales staff will fight the process and would be correct in doing so. To avoid this situation, first define the steps in your most complex sales process, since milestones for other sales processes are usually a subset, and then reduce the steps for less complex sales.

Set Milestones that Work for You
It is common even for a given type of sale to have varied deliverables based upon transaction size. An example might be having no requirement for add-on business with customers for less than $10K, a simple set of steps for transactions from $10K-75K, and additional steps for deals of $75K or greater. Senior management should set these thresholds. Allowing latitude to the field points salespeople down the road of anarchy. 

Milestones are helpful in enabling discussions between sales staff and management, but care should be taken to have some concrete, auditable steps. Managers often use milestones and year-to-date performance to project the likelihood of achieving quota. Asking or requiring a salesperson to have at least $250K in the pipeline at a particular milestone within 30 days virtually ensures the rep will attempt to convince his or her manager that, indeed, they have achieved that number in their pipeline. If there is no objective way to determine achievement of milestones, how confident can your managers be that the seller’s opinion matches reality?

Read more of this insightful article in our next blog posting!

Part 1: Aligning Sales Methdology with Technology

Tweet