I come across many IT companies that are struggling to teach their sales people to sell to business executives rather than to IT people.  Meanwhile the CIO (who nearly every IT sales person claims to sell to) is becoming more and more of a business person and less and less of an IT manager.

In his blog Richard Fouts gives a good overview of the modern CIO (this is the 25th anniversary of the coining of the term "CIO") and points out that most CIO's now report to the CEO and rank defining corporate strategy as one of their top three responsibilities.

So whichever way you slice it, sales people in IT companies are going to have to sell to business executives not just "techies".  Clearly with the CIO's role changing to focus on business issues IT sales people will have to thoroughly understand their prospect's business even when talking to the CIO.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the years, I have had many sales people and business leaders say to me "well, it's December so I guess we will not be able to reach our prospects now". 

Well actually the truth is December is a great month to gain access to many key decision-makers.  Many hard-to-reach decision-makers who seem to be continuously traveling during the rest of the year suddenly decide to base themselves out of their office so they can be with their family.  So December is actually a prime month to set up meetings with key decision-makers and to get them on the telephone.

So this year why not allocate a portion of your December to calling executives who have been hard for you to reach during the rest of the year.  You will set yourself up for a great start to next year (you may even end up “fat and happy”)...

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I suspect most people have no idea what the answer is to question #1 since the number is so large.  I suspect the answer to question #2 is zero but no greater than one.

We are all grappling with breaking through the "marketing noise" today but as more and more of this noise moves into electronic media, like email and (yes) blogs, there is an opportunity opening up.  It's the opportunity of old fashioned media like letters, note cards and faxes.

Here's the story of purportedly the world's greatest sales man from the Guerilla Marketing for Consultants blog.  The secret to the world's greatest sales man was that he sent lots of postcards!  And here's a recent success story from a small business owner who used hand-written notes to prospect, from the Duct Tape Marketing blog, he generated ten leads from twenty hand-written notes!

So if you want to break through the noise out there and connect with new people or keep-in-touch with existing contacts, it just might be time to pick up your old fountain pen...

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There seems to be a fair bit of confusion on how to effectively run a sales call (meeting).  A couple of years ago my partner, John Orvos, introduced me to a very simple format for running sales meetings that I now use every time I am in front of a prospect.  The format is:

• Introduction
• Purpose
• Needs discovery

There a few stages after "needs discovery" to take you to the ultimate close but I usually find in selling complex solutions that these stages have to be tackled in subsequent meetings.  Therefore for the first meeting all I need to remember are the three points above.

Introduction
The introductory phase of the meeting should be pretty short with most prospects (at least in the North East corridor).  This section involves some small talk to warm up (two minutes literally in New York!) and a very brief reminder of what your company does and what your prospect does.  This section should be kept brief because it not that important.

Purpose
Once the initial introduction is complete you need to state the purpose for the meeting.  "As I understand it we are meeting today to discuss...XYZ...Is that correct?"  Usually the prospect will just say "Yes"

The reason stating the purpose of the meeting is important is that it naturally gives you control of the meeting. In ninety percent of meetings it will allow you to start asking questions rather than have the prospect bombard you with questions that are often designed to find weaknesses and risks in your offering.

Needs Discovery
Once you have taken control of the meeting you can naturally slip into asking questions to unearth the needs of the prospect.  The correct questions to ask are another large subject altogether. In fact, enough to fill a book! And The book on this subject is Neil Rackham's SPIN Selling. (I can cover some of the basics on these questions in a future post).

So the next time you go on a sales call remember to state the purpose for the meeting.  It will get you off the "back foot"...which those who play cricket know is a good thing.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 03:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Senior managers & delivery people are from Mars...sales people are from Venus?

Sometimes it seems like sales people and managers (especially senior managers), and some delivery people, are not from the same planet.

Again this week I heard about a situation where an SVP in a company was siding with a delivery person against his sales force.  And the interesting thing about the issue in question was that is was how to sell solutions to a certain group of prospects.  The senior manager felt the sales people should do what the delivery person was suggesting not what they felt was best to move a deal forward.

Without too much disrespect to delivery people all over the world, why is it that you feel you can second-guess sales people but you would never, even for a second, listen to a sales person who told you how to deliver a project?  I have myself encountered this several times in my career.  A programmer or technical architect would tell me to call the prospect more often or tell me I should say "XYZ" to the prospect but I just can't remember a time when I suggested a schema for their database design.

One of the best "counters" I have seen to the advice from one of these "back seat drivers" is to "give them the wheel"...It's really interesting to take one of these people and bring them on a sales call or put them on the phone to make the next follow-up call.  Somehow their perspective is quite different afterwards.

Have you encountered this issue and how have you handled it?

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 02:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)