Putting sales 2.0 to work

Putting Sales 2.0 to work
Scott Miller

District Vice President of Sales – Ceridian

www.scottymiller.wordpress.com 1 of 20

The world of selling is changing and the change is wrapped up in the
catch phrase, “Sales 2.0.” On the buyer’s side, best practices are more
readily available, as well as information about solutions and competitors.
In some cases, buyers no longer rely on a sales people for product demos
or access to their customer base.

Barry Trailer, co-founder of CSO Insights frames the phenomenon: “. . . essentially universal
Internet access provides unprecedented (some might argue unlimited) insights to product features,
benefits, applications, pricing, successes and failures—even before a sales rep is involved in the
conversation. This shifts the dynamics (i.e., power) in the buy-sell equation. Sellers unwilling, or unable,
to leverage the various communication channels available to facilitate buyers' investigations will
increasingly find themselves less successful in their sales efforts.”

Sales people can no longer use traditional techniques as effectively as they
once did. Picking up the phone, making a cold call, scheduling an
appointment, doing discovery, demonstrating capabilities, competitive


differentiation, handing a proposal, providing references, and negotiating
a deal were once done on the sellers terms because they had all of the
information. The irony is that many of us have been selling information
technology that would eliminate manual process; but, we were never
affected by it on a personal level. With tools like Google, Facebook,
Wikipedia, Podcast, Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, consider that
chapter of selling closed. The information is now, quite literally, at your
finger tips.

Forward-looking sales organizations are embracing this change. Terms
like social networking, mobility, online presence, and search engine
optimization have given marketing a well-earned seat in the board room.
Now, sales people need to be able to compliment marketing’s efforts by
selling to buyers the way they are buying today and, most certainly will
buy, tomorrow.


As Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway, authors of the book Sales 2.0 state, “Sales 2.0 practices
combine the science of process-driven operations with the art of collaborative relationships, using the most
profitable and most expedient sales resources required to meet customers’ needs.”

The Evolution of Selling

The evolution of selling began as B2C: business to consumer. I have a
grainy image of pioneering Americans flipping through a catalog back in
the old west. Then, as the world began to industrialize, businesses were
created specifically to sell to other businesses, hence the genesis of B2B
selling.

At first, B2B selling was as simple as you need “X” and I have “X,” sign
here. Then, Neil Rackham created the SPIN selling mechanism while
working for Xerox. He found that the most successful sellers were the
ones that listened. They pointed their focus on the customer and away
from the product.

Sometime later, Michael Bosworth created the Solution Selling method to
help sellers understand that pain is fluid. Pain can start high and trickle
down or osmose from the bottom to the top. He also taught us to align


with our buyers’ vision of addressing that pain. Jim Holden taught us
organizations have a few key personalities with power when he
introduced Power-based Selling.

Rick Page ties the concepts of pain and power together and adds the third concept:
preference. Preference gives deeper insight in respect to competition and politics, ideas
once thought taboo by earlier methodologies. He then added prospect, part and plan to
create the ground breaking R.A.D.A.R.® methodology to win the complex sale.

Our challenge is quite simply this: How do we take the new reality that is
Sales 2.0 and marry it with the best practices of winning the complex sale?
After all, if buyers don’t need sellers, how can we at least stay relevant
and KEEP OUR JOB?

Lucky for us, buying rarely has an altruistic and utilitarian decision-
making process. In a complex selling environment, there are multiple
decision-makers and multiple vendors. Each decision-maker will be
impacted by the selection differently and they make their decision based
upon that impact! Stated otherwise, complex sales have risky, political
ramifications for the decision-makers.


The marriage of leveraging emerging technologies and selling the greatest
amount of impact to powerful people is Sale 2.0.

Putting Sales 2.0 to work

The purpose of this e-book is to expose emerging technologies that allow
us to communicate with buyers in the new age. Then, we must use these
emerging technologies to incorporate a strategy to win a complex sale. It
might read like a sprint, and it should. Keeping up with the speed of
information is critical to our success. In this e-book, I will introduce 2key
concepts:

1. Consolidate emerging technologies and strategy into the CRM to
create a sustainable competitive advantage for your sales force
2. Add value beyond the traditional buyer/ seller paradigm to gain
trust and relevancy and sell peer to peer (P2P)


Consolidate Emerging Technologies and Strategy into the CRM
One thing all sales leaders should know is that poor CRM (Customer
Relationship Management) adoption from the field is the rule, not the
exception. Most sale professionals see very little value in the CRM
because there is very little value in recapping their activity. In their eyes,
the CRM is for management oversight. As Rick Page, CEO of The
Complex Sale, Inc. states, “the last thing we want to do is turn six figure
big game hunters into data entry clerks.”

We, as sales leaders, need to change that perception by equipping our
reps with the best possible tools available for success. With emerging
technologies changing the rules of buying behavior, the CRM must keep
pace. It must be a single source of competitive advantage and the first
place your sales force goes for strategic selling information.

There are many CRMs to choose from, but I recommend and use
Salesforce.com because of its ease of use and wide adoption within the
profession. More importantly, I recommend Salesforce.com because of the


App Exchange. The App Exchange is where users can install pre-
integrated tools to make the database into the strategic arm of your sales
team. Think of it like the iPhone, where hundreds of applications are
available to choose from.

For a CRM to work optimally, it needs to mirror your sales cycle. For a
sales cycle to work optimally, it needs to match your customer’s buying
cycle. As an example, every natural milestone in your sales process needs
to be reflected as a stage in your CRM:

Buying Cycle Selling Stage
Understand and Develop Need Territory Coverage
Sponsor Project First Call
Research Vendors Discovery
Evaluate Solutions Proof of Concept
Select Vendor of Choice Proposal
Submit for Funding Approval


Within each stage, we need to come to agreement upon and document the
tactical best practices that will progress the sale to the next stage. These
best practices should be embedded inside the CRM as reference points, or
even check points, as to whether we continue working an opportunity. As
the buyer becomes less and less dependant upon the seller, sellers must
become more and more insistent that they are doing the right things to
progress the sale.

Create (Demand Creation) Win (Opportunity Management)

(Phase 1) (Phase 2) (Phase 3) (Phase 4) (Phase 5)
Territory Coverage First Call Discovery Proof of Concepts The Proposal

Webinar Research: Pain Demo Solution Will we win
Cold Call Individual Prospect Link Pains Will it close
Web Visits Position Preference Sell to Power How much
Trigger Event Company Process Differentiate What’s our plan
Trade Shows Industry Power
Social Network Plan


As a salesperson, I know I am doing the right things to progress the sale
to the next stage by documenting the best practices. As a sales manager, I
can feel comfortable that my rep has an understanding of my
expectations. It might be easy to do a “quick online demo” or submit a
template pricing proposal, but we shouldn’t without reciprocity that will
help us win.

A Sales Culture of Accountability – KPIs

A recent survey from the Complex Sale found that 93% of sales leaders
thought that having a sales culture of accountability was the number one
cause for success! Oftentimes, sales organizations use revenue attainment
goals as the key metric for success. The revenue attainment objective is
owned by one person and divided among that individual’s direct reports.
This process continues throughout the sales organizations down to
individual sales representatives quotas.

Revenue, however, is a lagging indicator of success. The best practices
implemented by the world’s greatest sales forces also attach leading key


performance indicators as goals. The goals start at the top and cascade
down to the field, just as revenue attainment quotas.

Leading Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are specific to individual
sales organizations based upon their clients buying cycles and revenue
generation targets. Most successful organizations start with how much
revenue they need to attain from the base of accounts and create metrics
around account penetration and retention. An example of leading
indicators for account management would be net new opportunities,
renewal rates, and percentage of growth, as applied to each account. We
prescribe other goals for opportunity management and demand creation.
These companies track the progress of these KPI’s on a continual basis
(monthly or quarterly) through a KPI dashboard inside of the CRM.

We see that the most successful companies use this process to hold sellers
accountable for the correct activity and management accountable to the sellers.
This practice leaves out any uncertainty in expectations throughout the sales
organization.


Peer to Peer Selling (P2P)
A new study by Forbes finds that 53% of C-level executives do their own
research online, well before they delegate a project or contact vendors.
Therefore, sales people need to add much more value than the standard
discover, present, pricing method that permeates our business. The buyer
wants to buy from someone who can add value well beyond your
offering. They want advice from a peer who has seen everything and
provided a solution to a problem, not a product.

Successful sales forces are able to take their operational features and
functionality and translate their benefits into a compelling value
proposition for non-technical buyers. As you begin to sell more complex
solutions, more stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
These stakeholders often do not have the technical expertise to
distinguish your solution from the competition or other in-house
alternatives.


Inherent in a value proposition is a keen understanding of the pains of the
non-technical buyers and a linkage of your solution to solving those
pains. Many organizations make the mistake of having one generic value
proposition; when in fact, the value proposition must be tailored to the
individual to whom you are selling.

As a go-to-market strategy, successful sales organizations take a census of
every potential stakeholder in their sales process. They uncover every
potential pain this individual could have and link their solution to solving
that pain. If they don’t have a solution for a pain, they stay involved and
recommend someone who does. They also take inventory of every
potential competitor and create competitive position statements and ways
to handle objections. They lean upon the expertise of their best
practitioners and marketing departments to create an easy-to-access tool
kit or playbook for the sales force.

With this knowledge and confidence, they become more of a peer to their
prospects. With social networking, they can communicate with them as a
peer.


Territory Coverage

Demand creation in a Complex Sale 2.0 world can be summed up in one
word: touches. You don’t know how your prospects want to be
communicated with, so you cast as wide of a net as possible. You don’t
know what message will resonate, so you offer many. Additionally, you
don’t know when your prospects are ready to hear from you, so your
outreach is constant. The medians available to you will not replace the
telephone as the primary means of communication – they will enhance it.
Sellers don’t want to make a cold call as much as buyers don’t want to
take them.

Your buyers need your information. They just don’t want to talk until
they are ready. Brian Carroll of InTouch writes an excellent e-book
entitled Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. Carroll explains the
multimodal approach to engage prospects in a manner that they prefer,
before they are ready to make a purchasing decision.


Steve Woods, CTO at Eloqua, wrote a great white paper, Digital Body
Language. The premise is that by using Eloqua’s tracking capabilities,
sellers can know when prospects hit their website, what pages they go to,
and how often they do so. By creating an algorithm that weigh all three,
the prospects score themselves and sellers use that score to triage their
selling efforts, all inside of the CRM. For example, pages on your website
that indicate cursory interest, like the home page, result in a low score.
Pages that reflect deep interest, like an online demo, reflect a much higher
score.

Buying Cycle Selling Stage Web Page
Understand / Develop Need Territory Coverage E-books / Blog / Webinar
Sponsor Project First Call Online Assessment / RFP
Template
Research Vendors Discovery Product Datasheets / About Us
Evaluate Solutions Proof of Concept Online Presentation / Trial Offer
Select Vendor of Choice Proposal ROI Calculator / Clients
Submit for Funding Approval Terms & Conditions / Financials


Social Networking

Peer to Peer salespeople understand that building your personal brand is
just as important for you as building a corporate brand is for the
marketing department. The first place to build an online presence to
network is LinkedIn. Using social networking sites like LinkedIn is peer
to peer selling. My LinkedIn profile is a virtual billboard about my
accomplishments, people who network with, and recommend me.
LinkedIn allows you to view up to three degrees of separation to see the
mutual contacts you have with your connections. It also allows you to
communicate with your network en masse or one-off. There are a number
of applications one can add to their profile that raise awareness about
what you are reading, shared presentations, polls, and personal blogs.
LinkedIn also allows its members to form and become members of other
liked-minded groups. The Complex Sale, Inc. has created its own group
called the R.A.D.A.R.® Alumni Association. Our members are updated
via e-mail on group discussions, shared best practices, news links, job
openings, and Complex Sale points of interest. Afterall, the best prospect


is one who has bought from you in the past. In sum, social networking
tools like LinkedIn are a great way to stay connected.

I also have an account on Twitter for those that prefer communication in
that median. This is an emerging technology that has gained controversy.
The median has grown well beyond a way to tell your friends what you
are doing. While twitter may not be the median of choice for your buyer,
it can most certainly be used to gain information about their interests and
company. Simply type in the key words that your target buyer would
care about and see the results. (As an example, try this key word search
on sales 2.0 and see all of the thought leaders tweeting on the topic.) I
recommend following thought leaders in your industry and sharing their
insights with your buyers in a median that they prefer. It is a source of
endless competitive advantage.

By following your customers, competitors, and industry, you will become
a better resource to your buyers, perhaps even becoming their peer. But
remember, for social-media to be effective, it must be relevant and


consistent. You must be willing to connect and follow people that connect
and follow you.

Today’s buyer needs to hear from you well before they need your
solution. WebEx and Gotomeeting.com are both great tools to share
thought leadership via a webinar or podcast. The webinar is a central
focal point for a campaign-based demand creation strategy. Like all
social-networking, webinars need to be relevant, thought provoking, and
consistent. Try to deploying polls to keep the attendees engaged and keep
the dialogue conversational with panelists instead of a one-sided
infomercial. Invitees that accept share their interest in your topics/
service, and those that accept multiple invites show allegiance to your


brand. Attendees that express they want to be contacted at the end of the
webinar should be put into the CRM as a lead. Recorded webinars should
be on your website and catalogued to pique the interest of your visitors.

Trigger Events

Jill Konrath, in her best selling book, Selling to Big Companies, coined the
phrase, “use the news.” What she refers to is allowing your prospects to
tell you when they are ready to buy. Organizations offer press releases
about new position appointments, quarterly earnings, partnerships, new
initiatives, etc. in an effort to generate public relations and investor
interest.

Google allows its users to create a personalized home page to consolidate
social networking sites and RSS feeds of industry content. The Google
reader feature allows for centrally located content to be catalogued under
various headings without having to go directly to a variety of news,
industry, or trade websites. I recommend Google alerts to be created on
all of your top prospects, competitors, and industry.


About the Author

Scott Miller is a District Vice President of Sales at Ceridian Corporation.
He has worked in Sales, Sales Consulting, Sales Management, and Sales
Training for over a decade. His passion is optimizing the sales process so
that his sales team can be in front of the right buyer, to say the right thing
at the right the right time. That is what Sales 2.0 is really all about.


Putting sales 2.0 to work

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