Are Salespeople Really Using Those Marketing Materials?
There’s a two-sided, high-impact frustration out there. You’ll recognize it — I repeatedly hear it as I work with sales and marketing teams. Sometimes, it is the reason I’ve been brought in.
We’ve all heard salespeople complain that Marketing still hasn’t given them what they’ve asked for. Marketing, on the other hand, will tell how the salespeople are never satisfied, and often don’t use the very tools they asked for once they’re made. If the sale involves channel partners, it becomes even more exasperating for both sides.
It’s a frustration that costs in wasted time, wasted money, and lost sales opportunities.
- I’ve seen this at organization of all sizes, from 30-person system integrators to multi-billion dollar worldwide tech companies.
- It can happen even when the departments are run by pros who have tremendous respect for each other.
- It’s not limited to dysfunctional companies – often it’s the best-run ones who are most intent on solving this problem.
Which side is right? Both and neither.
If you’d like to blame the salespeople, you can cite how they often ask for things ‘automatically’ and then blame all missed sales on the missing ROI calculator or great success stories they asked for last year. If you want to fault the marketing folks, it’s easy to say nothing they produce is exactly as good as the salespeople were expecting, or that they cut corners and take too long. Such blaming, however, fixes nothing.
When I work with a company, I point out how the problem has two facets:
- Real-world Data and Insights
- Buy-in
‘Real world’ means creating tools based on what will really have an impact, and what is truly credible and useful. Not simply ‘the usual stuff’.
For example, suppose you are a salesperson whose job is to sell through channel partners and their salespeople. So you clearly need tools to accomplish that. It’s easy to ask for PowerPoints, cheatsheets, talking points, and case studies. But if those channel salespeople get all that from every vendor who is trying to influence their behavior – and already get some form of that from you but don’t use it much – investing Marketing budget and time on slightly different versions is not going to move your sales upward significantly.
What you really need is something that will strike a chord with those channel salespeople, based on their real-world meetings, not what they claim they need. And it has to be simple enough for them to embrace and start using right away.
If you’re a direct salesperson, you need the same impact, but with your direct contacts.
The second part is Buy-in, and it works both ways.
If Marketing is going to figure out and deliver new and better tools, the sales team should be poised and ready to use them. When something great is made – such as an engaging and compelling series of short videos – then the sales leaders should get their people using them as soon as they’re available. That’s how to get more and more useful tools from Marketing, by showing them a definite and prompt reaction.
Buy-in also means that Marketing has salespeople involved. These creations shouldn’t be seen as foisted upon salespeople, but rather created in cooperation with them. This doesn’t mean the marketing folks obediently follow every claim a salesperson may make, but that they listen and get a representative sampling of thoughts and insights from sales managers and frontlines salespeople. That way, the final tool arrives with buy-in from the sales team – and an inherent usefulness with customers or the channel salespeople who sell for you.
This isn’t accomplished by memo or executive decree. It takes effort and ongoing interactions (and sometimes outsiders like me and the people I use on such projects) to get to the heart of what will truly get results.
But the result is worth it – the company with on-target tools that get embraced and used by all in the sales organization will outsell competitors who are still creating ‘checklist’ marketing materials that go unused and only result in complains.
How to Improve Your Sales Process in 60 Seconds
Every company I work with already has a sales process in place. You’ve seen those diagrams – they’re usually well thought-out and filled with boxes and arrows. They’re the steps that company would like prospects to take. If they’ll just do that, they’ll end up as revenue generating customers.
Despite having that model, I’m brought in to figure out ways to help their existing salespeople somehow bring in more business. Someone in management is convinced sales could be higher, and I’m now there because I agree.
Beware Seductive Models
It’s easy for a company, and for individual salespeople, to get caught up in model-worship. Prospects get plotted on the diagram, and we know which box is next for them. Then it’s time for them to follow the arrow to the next box.
Prospects, however, couldn’t care less.
Methodology and process are internally focused; they’re all about what you want. But what corporate customer cares even a little about your sales process? It’s not even called a sale over there. To them, it is a possible purchase, and they have their own ideas, process and politics about that, thank you. Your boxes and arrows aren’t even on their radar screen.
Plus, you’re not alone.
Your competitor also has boxes and arrows — steps they’d like that prospect to take. Guess what – theirs look just like yours. Have three or four competitors? Each prospect now has even more salespeople who’d like them to proceed from box to box. Good thing they’re oblivious to sales methodology boxes or they’d be confused and exhausted by it all.
Untouched by Any Box
In reality, no prospect anywhere ever gets touched by any process methodology. Those boxes and arrows never enter their world. All any prospect can ever know is what actually happens to them – what a salespeople says, does or doesn’t do, and what marketing messages actually get to their eyes and brain. It is only behaviors – actions – that can influence others.
If you want to improve the results from your sales process, here’s an exercise that will only take a minute. For each arrow in that process, ask this question:
What in real life will make this busy, easily distracted prospect actually want to make the jump to that next step?
Asking this takes the focus away from what you and your company want, and over to what will be compelling and motivating to the prospect. That’s when sales go up, because real people buy because of desire — not some company’s process into which they’ve been mapped.
When That New Product Launch Must Be a Sales Success
Recently, I had two clients who were both introducing new products / programs to their existing customers. One was a billion dollar company, the other a 50-person one. Both were making the same well intentioned mistake.
Inside each, hardworking product managers had done their jobs well. They and their teams had created well thought-out products that surely would bring value to anyone who bought. They’d assembled presentations and informational materials that spelled out those features and benefits, and showed how their new widget made great business sense over any other choices.
I’d been brought in by executives because each launch was of crucial importance to its respective company. You know that type of launch – it’s one that, for strategic as well as revenue reasons, absolutely, positively had to be a success. So important that failure simply wasn’t an option.
As usually happens at the first group meeting, at each company the product team showed me how well they had all bases covered. And they had. At the large multinational, they had a system for launches, a well-oiled one with talented pros who took pride in what they did. At the smaller company, far fewer people were involved, but equally proud and caring; they’d done excellent work. While no one would say it, I could tell they didn’t understand why an outsider (me) was needed.
So I talked about Customer Vision: When a launch is pivotal to a company, one has to look at things through the eyes of the ultimate customer, as well as any people who are in between you and them.
When one takes that view, two things become clear:
1. This new product or program isn’t nearly as important to anyone in the outside world as it is within the walls of our own company.
2. The world, including the people and businesses we want to buy it, has been getting along pretty darn well so far without it.
Over the years I’ve found that these points, no matter how gently made, tend bring out the ‘buts’. But this new product is truly remarkable and will really help companies. But it will save them a lot of time and money. But no other product does what ours can do.
Let’s assume that’s all true. And let’s also grant that one’s team has done a terrific job identifying the features and benefits, and also have attractive marketing materials and presentations to tell that story.
There’s one more ‘but’ to consider: But who cares?
Not, who should care? Not, who would benefit or save money or time by caring? The big question at this point in time is, who cares about this so much that it’s a priority to them, their success, and to their management and budgets?
The answer is in point #1 above. Right now, at the moment of launch, no one outside your company cares nearly as much as everyone inside does. Customer Vision shows why.
It’s unlikely to even be on their radar screen. They’ve got a never-ending parade of daily meetings and crisis to handle. They’ve got projects and problems that carried over from yesterday. They’ve got other companies trying to get their attention about their new widgets and programs. They’re swamped.
That’s why truly crucial launches require more. Somehow they have stand out above the clutter. They have to capture the imagination. They have to get people thinking they might be a hero if they mention this to the right people. The bigger your goal, the more you need to get beyond ‘typical’ launch strategies so you’ll stand out.
It doesn’t require huge spending, but it does call for Customer Vision and a bit of creativity. We’ll look at both strategic and tactical ways to do this in future posts.
“What will get us sales impact the quickest?”
I’m frequently asked to speak and teach at sales meetings — and that’s a question I like hearing. It shows me this company want results from this meeting, not just activity.
Too often, meetings are booked tight with sessions that may be important internally, but aren’t focused on how customers are influenced — or not — by the company’s salespeople.
Product managers want to talk about new features and benefits. Sales Operations has systems to explain. Senior execs bring insights about what the company is thinking and will soon be doing. Now factor in meals and events. Ask any planner, before you know it every hour is filled. Hopefully, someone saved time to advance selling.
When a client asks me, “What can you do that will get us sales revenue impact the quickest?”, I ask them three questions:
- Where do you think you’re losing opportunities, either to competitors or indifference?
- Why do you think your top achievers outsell the rest?
- What would be the impact if we somehow brought everyone the insights those top achievers have, and the actions they take with prospects and existing customers?
That last question is the key. Most quickly ‘get it’ – if each salesperson began selling just a little bit more like those top performers, sales numbers would quickly go up. That’s a very successful, high impact sales meeting!
Then they ask, as you may be wondering right now, “How can you do that?”.
The answer is, it depends. It depends on your sale, your marketplace, your customer and competitors. It also depends on what’s causing your top salespeople to outperform the average.
But, I explain, this can be figured out surprisingly quickly. There are certain things I’ve learned to look for; identifying those keys is a rather straightforward process.
Then we’re going to spend our time, whether it is in a speech, a seminar or workshop (it depends on the company’s size and goals), focusing on those specifics. We’re going to do it from the customer’s point of view, so each salesperson sees the sale through that prospect’s eyes. We’ll do it all so the very next interaction with any customer will have greater impact — more intriguing, creating more desire, becoming a higher priority.
The specific goals will vary, of course; think of your own company’s most pressing goals. It might be about making a new product or program a success. Or reaching higher in organizations, or cracking into new markets. But key to success is always the same:
If you want to see increased sales after a sales meeting, everything hinges on salespeople learning and internalizing insights and skills, not mere knowledge.
Do all the other sessions belong in a sales meeting? Sure; internal matters have their importance. But when that meeting is over, if that’s all that was learned, no behaviors were changed and the big opportunity was missed.
Sales Insight on a Deserted Island
First, a quick joke. Then today’s topic, which is how different points of view can postpone or even kill your sale, and a simple tactic that can prevent this.
Three guys, stranded on a deserted island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. Poof! He’s gone. The second guy then wishes the same, and he’s gone. The only one left is the third guy, who says to the genie, “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.”
(I don’t know about you, but when I first read this, it cracked me up.)
Now let’s get off that island and over to your sale. There’s a temptation to believe that everyone over at a prospect company thinks the same and wants the same. But, as anyone who has worked within an organization can tell you, that’s never the case.
One person wants this, another person wants something similar but not exactly the same, and a third would rather have something altogether different. Or that person is quite happy with the status quo, thank you, because that’s where their power comes from so they’d like nothing to change.
This last person is the enemy of this purchase because it brings that feared change. You really need to address that point of view to possibly change it. The problem: Rarely is it voiced in your presence.
Compounding the challenge: You’re an outsider. You’ve just met this group and only for a brief moment in time. How do you know who is where in the equation?
You don’t. And never will (though often experienced salespeople can sense it, especially from body language if there’s an in-person meeting).
Smart selling uses what I call Customer Vision. If you think there’s even a chance that someone’s personal interests may be to hold the company back from buying, you need to speak to that possibility. Gently.
Much depends on your particular sale, of course. But you can’t go wrong by always addressing the notion of doing nothing with something along the lines of,
“It’s clear you folks are serious about taking advantage of what (your product / type of solution) can do for an organization. At some companies, they’re not there yet – still trying to do things in old ways that are eating up resources and will have to change eventually anyway. So it’s question of how long they’ll try to do that, and what advantages they’ll give competitors as they do.”
Then you return to your usual steps for moving a sale ahead. Don’t make a big deal of it; it’s more like a passing comment based on your extensive working with so many companies.
Often that little thought will have an effect on that potential deal-postponer; he or she may quietly reevaluate the wisdom of fighting this purchase.
Will you ever know for sure? No — but I’ve worked with thousands of salespeople and can tell you that it’s little things like this that separate the top sales achievers from the rest.
Dan Bricklin and How We Got Here
Dan Bricklin has been called, quite rightly, the ‘father of the spreadsheet’. Before his big idea, there was no Excel, no Lotus 1-2-3. His mind invented Visicalc, the first spreadsheet, the one that turned the original Apple II into a business machine and catapulted it to success.
I attended a breakfast talk yesterday by Dan. He’s a very bright guy with an easy-going style; he’s filled with knowledge and insights. It was the same years ago, when early in my career, I worked with him as a regional sales manager for Software Arts selling The Visicalc Package and TK! Solver.
His talk was a brief history of time, with youthful photos and videos of people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mitch Kapor. It reminded me of just how many astounding products have paved the road that has our world where it is today.
But it also reminded me that each one had to be sold.
Even the most beneficial ‘better mousetrap’ entered a world where people were busy and getting along pretty darn well already. Somehow, their attention had to be captured and key points made in a way they’d absorb and embrace. Then came the hard part, the speed-bump that had to be overcome: Getting them to champion it so money would get spent.
Dan pointed out how fortunate it was that the spreadsheet, which opened up all sort of new ways to ponder “what if…” scenarios in business, was so useful to money-folks — the ones who became venture capitalists and funded tech companies. They were the first to be ‘sold’ on how valuable it could be. They then became the catalyst for the entire tech industry upon which our world today relies.
Selling even great products still took work, hard work. Dan Bricklin’s talk reminded me of when Apple was on the verge of failing, when PowerPoint didn’t exist, and how today’s essential products had to clamor to get attention and orders. And that many others vanished quietly because they couldn’t.
Today, Dan’s mind works on new platforms — his Dan Bricklin’s® Note Taker is a very successful app on the iPad. He shared his thoughts on how competitive such marketplaces have become. Selling is always the hard part.
As marketing guru Alan Rosenspan puts it when he teaches his workshops, “If you hear people tell you ‘Our product is so remarkable, it will sell itself’, tell them: Well, in that case, it will be the first one in history to do that.”
Great ideas are invaluable; so too is the well thought-out selling that makes them a success.
‘Zero email’ — A Trend? How Will This Affect Selling?
Shocking news today from a tech company with 74,000 employees: The CEO wants them to stop sending emails under the company’s new “zero email” policy.
The reason? CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company Atos says only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent are, in effect, spam. That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.
But enough about them. What about you?
If your prospecting is email-dependent, what happens if this becomes a trend?
First question: Will it?
I think odds are good that it will.
Emails are just too easy. We’ve all been guinea pigs for the past ten of so years as they’ve demanded more and more of our daily time. Quick math: At even 18 seconds each for a glance, 200 will easily eat up an hour of every day. Now add in all the time spent thinking about the ones that need a reply, then writing that response, and mentally keeping track of all that.
Especially when smartphones intrude on personal time to deliver new ones day or night, something has to give.
I predict an easy productivity move by senior managers to take back all that time. After all, who is going to stand up and say, “No! I want more email; I don’t get enough and have plenty of spare time to read it!”
And this will affect selling. It will help you if you already have a relationship with that customer — you’ll be able to get in on the IM system and therefore you are ahead of possible competitors who are not. But if you’re one of those not-yet-with-a-realtionship-over-there people, getting in will become much harder.
Such changes have happened before. Once upon a time, a phone call could easily reach a prospect — until voicemail changed that. Newspaper or trade magazine ads had far greater impact ten years ago, when people had time and leafed through them.
Until today, email has only grown. What happens to selling when it shrinks? A need for new creativity. Stay tuned; it’s coming up sooner than we think.
Is Selling Dead — Again?
If you need any proof that much of the world doesn’t understand selling, check how often it is pronounced dead.
This happens as regularly as the seasons — followed just as predictably by the astonishing revelation that, no, believe it or not, selling is actually very important.
The latest ahah! comes in The Economist magazine. The article first explains that, “Management theory mostly ignores selling. Peter Drucker, perhaps the most influential guru, wrote that ‘the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.’ Then, however, it points out how important it is, citing a new book by three McKinsey consultants (‘Sales Growth: Insights from Leading Sales Executives’) that “the difference between the best and worst companies when it comes to selling is far greater than the difference for functions such as supply-chain management, purchasing or finance.”
So selling matters. (Duh. As if all the companies who spend on fielding, training and advancing a sales team were all knuckleheads.)
Academics, along with the media, love the notion of selling as dinosaur. We see this message regularly — remember when the web was going to eliminate the need for selling? In many industries, it turned out that companies that didn’t realize they needed selling and salespeople were the ones who were eliminated.
Now we’re told that smartphones that will finally do away with selling. But here’s a secret — you know those successful web and phone-based apps like Groupon and Synrgy’s Level-up? They all have extensive sales forces signing up retailers and making visits to show them how to work the scanners (and to build the relationship in this competitive field).
If you want to succeed — especially once you have competitors — selling matters.
Whenever the death of selling is proclaimed, I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s quote: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”.
I’ll bet on — and invest in — a company with a strong and advancing sales team over one who is counting primarily on marketing to deliver the numbers.
As long as people influence people, selling determines a company’s future.
Social Media, Selling — and You as a Salesperson
There’s much abuzz about social media and where it fits into creating customers — and no doubt will be for years to come.
But let’s get personal.
As I ask in my book, The Technology Salesperson’s Handbook, what does social media mean for a salesperson?
Well, two groups of people are looking, or at least might be looking at you in that social media.
- Employers
- Customers
If I was a prospective employer or headhunter, I’d certainly check you out on LinkedIn. What would I find?
For many salespeople, not much. They have a mere skeleton of a profile. A few companies are named, along with years worked (because LinkedIn insists) — and that’s about it.
I understand the reasons.
First, it’s hard and awkward work to reflect on oneself, then distill the key parts best ways to mention them. Second, it’s human nature to postpone such a task, especially if there’s the easy justification that, hey, since I’m not looking for a new job, it can wait.
But it’s a new world, and it’s here to stay. Social media gives everyone a window to take a peek at you. The question is if you give them anything worthwhile to see when they look.
At your current employer, for example, only HR probably has your resume. But what if some executives want to know more about you as they consider advancement or upcoming opportunities?
The easiest thing to do is click on over. If your profile gives them an easy and inspiring glimpse into you and your accomplishments, everyone benefits. But if you’ve been too busy to put that in there, they get nothing — except possibly the insight that you don’t care very much about such things (or don’t have much to mention).
If you were they, wouldn’t you move on to others who do share more?
But even more importantly, what about customers?
More and more, for reasons beyond the scope of this post, both prospects and existing accounts have become stingier and stingier with their time. Should I spend time with you? I may click to your profile to find out.
I’m even more likely to do that before I decide whether to include others in that meeting — especially managers. This applies to existing accounts as well as prospects.
So the point here is: Take a moment, right now, to visit your LinkedIn profile as a customer would. Does it gently project experience and expertise? Will it bring a stranger greater confidence about you? After reading it, will they be even more motivated to bring others to meet with you?
Hopefully, the answers are all yes. But if your profile is just ho-hum right now, changes are called for. In a future post, I’ll discuss what belongs there, and how to do it without it seeming like you’re boasting.
B2B — What Are You Really Selling?
(This is an excerpt from my book; here’s the Amazon link if you want to read more.)
What You’re Selling VS What They’re Buying
When I speak at big sales meetings, I sometimes bring along McDonalds.
Not a bag of burgers and fries, but a perspective. Because consumer companies know something that many B2B companies have trouble embracing:
Often, customers — even tough B2B customers –are buying something that is very different from the goods you think you are selling.
I ask the group, “What does McDonalds sell?” Immediately, someone will call out “Burgers!” Another, “Fries!”
This, of course is true, by the multi-millions. But then why don’t we always see rows of burgers frying in their commercials? How come there’s nary an oil-dripping fryer basket in sight?
So I ask the group, “What else do they sell?”, and the right answers soon come up. “Convenience!” “Cleanliness!” Bingo. They may make burgers and fries, but McDonalds knows their customers are buying something else. That’s why their commercials are all about happy people having happy times. (Founder Ray Kroc: “A mother with two children in tow cares more about clean restrooms than she does about the tastiness of the burger.”)
Every company – including yours – has such a duality.
- Rolex, for example, makes very nice watches, but any $10 quartz watch will keep time just as well. Their customers are buying luxury far more than timekeeping accuracy.
- Disney World knows its customers don’t fly a thousand miles to go to an amusement park – they’re coming to ‘The Happiest Place on Earth’.
- You know those websites that will automatically back-up your hard drive? Their marketing talks about how you could lose your precious photos forever without them, not the tech specs of their storage system.
My goal in bringing up McDonalds is to get my audience thinking about their customers’ point of view. That’s not easy for a salesperson to do – their own company aggressively markets to them with product–centric announcements and materials. After months and years of that, seeing the customer’s view requires thought and focus.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking your customers are just choosing products or services — that’s only the view from inside your company. Most likely, they also see themselves buying things like confidence, safety and personal success.
Make a point of catering to those needs and desires, and you are far more likely to bring in that sale.
