Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

The Next Generation of Drill-Down Forecasting

While many sales managers have embedded their sales methodology into their CRM system, new “on demand” Internet technologies have significantly enabled the integration of methodology into the forecasting system. This can now be done without requiring any programming and while maintaining necessary security by keeping the data inside your firewall.

The success of Salesforce.com in penetrating larger enterprises has validated this approach. The ease of integrating CRM, forecasting, and remote coaching now allows for technology-assisted deal coaching and a new level of teamwork between sales rep and manager.

Technique Scorecard
Best Practices, Technique	Importance	Execution
	Degree of Importance (1 = low, 10 = high)	Agree, but we never do this	We sometimes do this	We often do this	We do this consistently
Individual
Salespeople effectively link our solutions to the buyer's pains.
Our salespeople have the individual skills necessary to create preference for us.
Our salespeople are able to develop value propositions that link into strategic value and emotional issues for powerful people.
Opportunity
Salespeople understand political power and allocate resources to winning the votes that matter.
Salespeople effectively qualify out of deals they cannot win.
Everyone on the sales team knows his or her role and responsibility and understands the account and opportunity plan.
Managers know how to effectively analyze and coach competitive deals.
Account Management
We consistently meet customer expectations.
We have a best practices account management cycle.
Salespeople know how to get to executives and know what to say when they get there.
Industry/Market
We have a best practices sales cycle,defined by phase, for each market segment.
We have industry-focused solutions, messages, and expertise.

SECTION IV: Teamwork

Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work

Vince Lombardi

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Michael Jordan

CHAPTER 6: Teamwork

Everybody sells. Everybody either sells or “unsells” their company and its services with every action they take every day. From design to manufacturing to shipping to legal—everybody sells and has an impact on the company’s revenue and therefore affects the company’s livelihood. Some people just don’t realize it. Those who don’t are myopic in their view and perhaps should work somewhere other than your organization.

Obviously, this attitude starts at the top with the leadership of a company and whether or not it has a sales culture. One by one, industries are starting to realize that they need a selling function. Ten years ago it was consulting. Before then, you couldn’t use the “s” word in any of these firms. It was “business development.”

Now, even law firms and medical clinics are realizing that they need a sales function—that business just doesn’t come to them fast enough to fulfill their potential and that even they need to sell value and avoid commoditization.

But not everybody ever imagined that they would be in sales, need a sales training class, or have anything to do with sales. Most universities not only don’t teach it, but most business schools consider it a pedestrian activity (although over 20 million people in the United States alone are employed in sales and probably at least as many throughout the rest of the world).

When we work with firms that are trying to change to a sales culture, the first thing we have to do is take away the old stereotypes — the negative images of selling — and replace them with a vision of selling that is not only acceptable but also worthwhile. Not that the negative images of selling are undeserved. There are a lot of bad salespeople out there.

Most of the bad images people have of salespeople, however, come from those who tried to sell them one thing, one time, and didn’t care about their repeat business. Overselling, high-pressure selling, and all the sleazy images we have usually come from this experience.

But if we define selling in such a way that it’s earning the client’s business by solving his or her problems and serving clients in such a way that they never have a reason to go to anybody else, then most people find the definition acceptable. If we can define selling as outserving and outsolving the competition, most people would accept that — and that’s basically what it is.

If you don’t earn business in such a way that you can meet or exceed your clients’ expectations, you’re not really a sales team; you’re a sales-prevention team. Systematically, you will inoculate your customers against doing repeat business with you.

The real test of selling is whether people will buy from you the second time. You have to do more than just satisfy the client—you have to ensure the client’s return.

Real profitability lies in the second, third, and fourth sale and beyond because that is where the cost of sale is lowest and your pricing can be higher because you have lowered risk and delivered value.

Team Selling

As companies have moved from selling products to selling systems and solutions, their sales efforts have moved from single sellers, who wear all the hats, to sales teams. Team selling consists of two to two dozen people selling to a committee of two to sometimes 200 buyers.

Many sales opportunities will bring a sales team consisting of an account manager, a product specialist (or several), an industry specialist, a technical specialist, a service team, and an executive or two. Since your systems and solutions may now touch multiple departments and, therefore, multiple buyers, all these people may be selling to a committee of buyers.

In team selling, each one of these specialties requires different talents, personalities and competencies, and each team member has different roles and responsibilities.