When tackling lead generation you want to make sure you go after companies that have similar traits to companies you are already doing successful business.  These would be some of the lower hanging fruit to go after.  The best way to identify these companies is first take a closer, methodical look at your existing customers.

Start by ranking your current customers using three criteria: gross revenue, profitability and “fit.”

The fitness ranking is more subjective than the gross revenue or the profitability ranking. It identifies the companies you know well, those whose business you are familiar with, those that are fun to work with, those you understand best, and those with which you have—or could have—a great working relationship:

What customers come up near the top of all three rankings?  Evaluate the other characteristics of the companies on this list. How large are they? Where are they located geographically? What are the titles or job functions of their decision makers? Analyze your answers to identify common traits, and use that information to find companies with similar traits.

Tags: Marketing, Sales methodology, Sales Techniques

I spoke about the importance of a sales methodology in the last post but whether you use one or not you absolutely need to configure your sales cycles in your CRM solution.  The sales cycle provides a number of key statistics for you as a rep or manager.  It is an easy way to keep all your opportunities organized so you can decide where you should be spending your limited time and resources.  Most CRM solutions allow you to configure this.

The sales cycle consists of  four attributes.  The first one is the “Cycle type”.  If you work in a company that has a single product or service than you will only have one cycle type.  But for companies with multiple products you might want to define a separate sales cycle for each product or group of products.  The complexity and cost of the product usually drives how long the cycle will be.

The next attribute you need to define is the “Step” you are in.  It represents how far you are into the sales cycle.  The steps you define should always be associated with a percentage.  It is important to remember that this percentage only represents how far you are into the sales process with the customer; it is not an indication of winning the deal.  A lot of solutions let you associate activities to each step so you can see what you need to do to get you from one step to the next.  This is great for new reps and gives them a road map on how to move the opportunity along with a customer.

The next attribute is the “Status”.  This is where you define the rating of the opportunity.  As you move your deal through the process the status might also change. It can go from a status of cold to hot to closed or dead.

The final attribute is what is referred to as your “Gut Feeling”, sometimes just referred to as “Gut” in the US.  This is your true sense of how well you are doing on the deal.  It is based on your instinct or intuition as well as on your experience.   This is the basis of your forecast and is the true indicator of whether or not you will win the deal.

Remember that forecast reports or views should always work off of your Gut Feel percentage and pipeline reports and views should work off of your Step percentage.  And weighted forecasts would be the revenue times the Gut Feeling percentage.

Here is an example of a sales cycle for a product company.

Cycle type:  Color copier

Steps: 
 10% Pre-Qualification
 30% Needs Analysis 
 50% Tailored Demo
 70% Proposal Submitted
 90% Negotiation
 100% Contract signed

Status:  Active, Won, Closed, Lost, Dead

Gut Feeling:  You specify some percentage between 10-100%. 

All the attributes except for the Cycle Type will change as you move your deal through your sales process. 

Configuring your sales cycles in most CRM solutions is relatively easy and does not require any programming.  The hard part is defining how many different sales cycles you have and the number of steps each one should have.  You do not want to input too many or too few.  It should be based on your best practices and should be easy for reps to work with. 

You should always define you sales cycles whether you have a third party methodology or not.  Do it for yourself if your company never did.  It will make working your deals so much clearer and will help you determine which things work in the process and which do not.

Tags: crm, CRM Basics, Sales methodology, sfa

As I was watching Sunday football I got to thinking about how teams work together to score a touchdown.  Every man on the team has a job; every play has a specific set of moves; and there is a predetermined amount of time to execute.  They work off a playbook that details the play and what everyone needs to do.  But once on the field they are faced with the opposition which will make everything unpredictable.  The army recognized this and created a document called the Commander’s Intent.  It specifies a battle goal but does not specify the steps necessary to accomplish it.  A commander’s intent requires periodic review as missions, conditions, and therefore, priorities evolve.  It’s left with the people in the field to figure out how to get there based on what the enemy does.  So why bother with a playbook or battle plan when they break down immediately?  It is because the planning process forces people to think through the right issues.  Just like no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no sales plan survives contact with the customer.  

This leads me to this week’s topic on sales methodologies.  All companies should have one.  And, regardless of whether they are from a third party or developed in-house, all sales reps should be following one.  Companies that have longer sales cycles need to consider third-party methodologies such as Miller Heiman, Solution Selling, Holden or Samurai Business Group.  The underlying philosophy of these methodologies is to force you to continually qualify and re-qualify your opportunities.  Sales methodologies work on the premise that the customer is constantly shifting their position.  They are talking to your competitors and being faced with changing business issues that have them shifting their feelings and positions on the deal at hand.  A good sales rep will understand this and is constantly reevaluating the status of the deal.  A good methodology helps a rep determine where they actually stand on the deal.  It provides them with the questions and processes to follow in order to understand their position in the deal.  Are they ahead, behind or neutral?  You want to make sure you are spending resources on deals you feel you have a better than even chance of winning.  For companies that have shorter, less complex selling cycles, should still be following some proven sales process, even if developed in-house. 

Most CRM solutions allow you to configure your own sales cycle and steps needed to move you to the next level.  You need to do this and give it the proper time and thought even when using a third-party methodology.  Most sales methodology companies offer free or low cost plug-ins to be used with your CRM system.  However, they often require that you go through their training, which can run about $500-1500 per person.  Companies like White Springs supplies these electronic add-ons for quite a few CRM solutions. 

Some Yak Shaving will be required but worth it.

Tags: crm, Sales methodology, sfa