"I don't have time to play politics. My job is to serve my customers"

This is a classic statement from a sales person and an obviously well intentioned one also.  But I beg to differ with this approach.

Research has shown that one of the top things that customers want from sales people is to feel that the sales person controls the resources of their company.  The customer wants to talk to a person who will get things done on their behalf. 

But in reality the sales person is rarely the owner or CEO of the firm and they cannot dictate what gets done.  This is where "politics" begins.  The sales person often has to fight for scarce resources within their firm on behalf of their customer (engineering support, special pricing etc.)

It seems like a lot of sales people get frustrated with this process very quickly and feel that fighting for these resources is not part of their job.  They often settle for sub-optimal results internally which they then deliver on to their customer (not what the customer wants).

What I find most interesting about this is that sales people of all people in a company should actually be the best equipped to "play politics".  Most of the tools and techniques sales people use to sell customers can actually be applied internally and be very effective (for example, understanding stakeholders and their motivations).

So my thought for sales people is to change your mindset.  Think of dealing internally not as "politics", a frustrating waste of energy, but as "inside selling", part of your process to close more deals and give customers what they want...

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

By Brian Carroll

In his Building the "Sales Machine" weblog, Aaron Ross notes:

Conferences and tradeshows have a bad (ok, terrible) reputation for generating worthwhile leads. For good reason! However, it's not the tradeshows' fault - the responsibility for lead generation falls to the attendees, who have to carefully think through the whole lead generation process (including prior preparation and post-event follow through) on how to generate business from events. You need a process that emphasizes quality of leads over quantity of names.

The post goes on to outline his ideas on an effective trade show process including  preparation, the event and follow-through.  If you participate in trades shows, then you should definitely check it out.

Brian Carroll of B2B Lead Generation blog fame comments:

I agree.  Well meaning marketers can ruin their lead generation results by rushing an unqualified list of tradeshow attendees to their sales team.  After doing numerous lead qualification programs, we have found 5% to 15% of trade show inquiries are truly sales ready leads.

So don't pass marketing driven inquiries to your sales people until they're more rigorously qualified as sales ready leads.  Early stage leads - those who are not ready to speak to a sales person yet - can be developed further with an effective lead nurturing program.

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our "front line" research with technology firms shows that on average “solution-type” field sales reps make between three (3) and five (5) prospecting calls per day!

That figure is way below the usual expectations of sales managers and owners but it correlates with my observations in over a decade of selling in this business.  This number is also way below what most sales executives say they are going to do when they sign up for their job (the “low end” numbers I usually hear are 20-25 calls per day).

The obvious outcome from this very low prospecting volume is few leads/appointments.  Our research here indicates that somewhere in the range of five (5) calls are needed to get a conversation (obviously there are lots of variables here, like industry, title, size of target company etc.) and that something like 1 in five (5) to 1 in ten (10) conversations will result in an appointment (lead) - very dependant on the quality of your value proposition.

The unfortunate outcome of this math is that, left to their own devices, field sales reps in "solution" sales will spend one to three weeks just getting one appointment, almost certainly not what their company is looking for, and possibly a “job ending strategy”.

Have you seen this kind of performance?  What did you do to improve it?  How else did you generate leads/appointments?

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

She made the comment that she now understood that sales is in fact quite simple.  "It comes down to being human and interacting with your buyer as another human being".

I agree 120%.  I think many of us who have "officially" worked in sales have been "polluted" over time with misinformation that appeared in some of the early sales books...particularly those terrible closing techniques. 

Many of these techniques pay no respect to the buyer as being an intelligent human being.  And if you have ever been in the buyer’s shoes and had someone try one of these techniques on you, you know how annoying they can be.

Obviously I do think there are many legitimate things to learn to become a great professional sales person but there are also a lot of things that some of us would be better off forgetting.

So let's shred a few of those old sales books today!

Posted by Sales 2.0 at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)