Are You Getting Things Done?

You need to get things done – lots of things, and the right things. Are you getting all the results that you could? Are you maximizing your output? Are you getting the critical things done, with the least amount of effort and stress? David Allen is a world renowned authority on personal productivity. With his groundbreaking work-life management system he helps people to work smarter, easier and more effectively - building a road to success.  

“One of the greatest traps in growing a business is also a pitfall for self management: if you don’t trust your systems, you can’t let go of operational details and you’ll limit your ability to create at a bigger level.”  

Here is a great introduction video by David Allen that will get you on the path to getting things done. Multi-tasking or rapid-refocus? gtd-vid.jpg 

For those who can’t wait to get things done immediately, these tools will help you. Today! 

  1. GTD – Mastering Workflow | The Five Phases
  2. GTD – Workflow Advanced

Also visit David’s website to get The Complete Set of David Allen’s Free Articles.

Let me know what YOU think! 

Interview BNR Nieuwsradio featuring myself on Search Marketing

For our Dutch readers/listeners, this is an interview aired in June 2007 following our presentation on Holland’s biggest Digital Marketing Event in Amsterdam. BNR Nieuwsradio is the Financial Times’ news channel. The interview was conducted by Jeroen Smit who, for his radio show, highlights promising developments in marketing.bnr-nieuwsradio.jpg

Top 10 Factors for Getting Salespeople to Overachieve

As a sales manager you may ask yourself, “How are we going to meet this year’s target?” I came across this very interesting article that I had to share with you. It is written and copyrighted by Dave Kurlan of Objective Management Group and I trust it will give you some fresh ideas. 

Top 10 Factors for Getting Salespeople to Overachieve

There isn’t a single key to over achieving so I’ll list my top 10 factors for helping salespeople overachieve. I’m sure I’ve written about each of these topics at some point in the past but I’ll put them all together here: 

#1: Goals - I’m talking “raise the bar, stretch, out of the comfort zone, more than the typical 15% increase in sales” type goals here. You must raise expectations in order to celebrate superior performance. Don’t forget two things: (1) that a forecast and plan come from the goals; not the other way around; and (2) goals are derived, not from the company, but from the individual’s income requirements, based on the bills that accompany life’s obligations and desires. 

#2: Incentives - including compensation, contests, commissions, awards and prizes. Incentives bridge the gap between corporate carrots and the personal goals we just discussed. If an individual has the goals but the company’s compensation isn’t designed to reward superior achievement, the incentive to perform can not be maintained. If the company has a rock-solid compensation plan but the goals are wouldn’t excite Dr Phil, the personal incentive to perform will be AWOL. 

#3: Managing the Pipeline - a Visual Pipeline makes it significantly easier to manage the pipeline but the key to managing the pipeline effectively is working with your critical ratios. Think monthly goal, closing percentage, average sale and length of the sell cycle. Let’s say that your salesperson has a six month sell cycle, a $100,000 monthly goal, a $20,000 average sale and a 25% closing percentage. Effectively managing the pipeline requires that your salesperson places 20 (5 $20,000 sales x 4 at 25% closing) new opportunities worth of total of $400,000 (25% of $100,000) into the pipeline 6 months in advance of the monthly goal (if the goal is for July then the opportunities must enter the pipeline in February). Get that to work and the outcomes are all but guaranteed. 

#4: Accountability - This is such an important factor in over achievement. You must hold each salesperson accountable to something measurable (like the number of conversations required to book the number of sales calls required to identify those 20 new opportunities) every day. Even more importantly, you must have consequences for failure to meet those requirements and consistently follow through whenever necessary. Develop the nerve for full accountability and you’re nearly there! 

#5: Motivation - This is the combination of Goals and Incentives. In essence, does the salesperson have a strong enough Desire and Commitment to do whatever it takes - every day - to reach the goals? When they don’t, it’s your job to motivate them by knowing what each salesperson’s goals are. I’m not talking income requirements or gross sales here, I’m talking planes, boats and cars; big houses, vacation homes, golf trips, world travel, home theaters, fantasy camps, exclusive events, etc. 

#6: Self Starter – In earlier posts we discussed what it takes for salespeople to succeed in a remote location. Those factors, whether salespeople are more effective when working independently or as part of a team; and whether they require supervision or can work without it; help to determine whether they are self-starters. If not, you must start them up every day, twice daily or as often as it takes. If you have self-starters, you are one lucky manager.

#7: Skills - The more the better, but let’s focus on the most important skill sets for overachieving. Your salespeople must be able to hunt for new opportunities, identify the most qualified and be able to close them. Anything else they can do is a bonus! 

#8: Urgency - I wrote about Closing Urgency in January. Your salespeople must have enough urgency to get their opportunities closed, when they become closable, even when their prospects are trying to put them off. 

#9: Weaknesses - Unfortunately, there are weaknesses that will neutralize all of the previous 8 factors. There can be dozens of weaknesses that could impact performance but none are so powerful as these five: Non Supportive Buy Cycle, Need for Approval, Tendency to Become Emotionally Involved, Money Issues, Self-Limiting Record Collection. 

#10: Coaching and Training - Your coaching must support any training initiative and help salespeople overcome their weaknesses, develop skills and master the selling process. While most training will be conducted by sales development experts from outside your firm, the coaching absolutely takes place from within. Pre-call strategizing and post-call debriefing, with every salesperson, every day. This list of factors is not all inclusive but it’s a good start. You can build a salesforce of over achievers if you incorporate not some, but all of these factors. 

Let us know what gets you going the extra mile. 

Best practices in sales.

While sales managers are looking for ways to incorporate true best practices into their organization, the question is: “Which techniques are truly best practices and which are merely recommendations by a self-proclaimed expert?” 

Recently an interesting article about best practices in sales was brought to my attention.It starts by defining a best practice is “a technique or methodology which, through experience and research, has proven to reliably lead to a desired result in a specific context.” The author Steve Gielda, partner at Advantage Performance Group (www.advantageperformance.com), adds that a best practice must be: 1) Observable (something top performers actually do as opposed to something they say they do); 2) Measurable (a behavior, not an attitude); 3) Repeatable (something that can be replicated across the sales force); 4) Closely linked with success (if performed regularly, it leads to winning more often than not).

Here are five that truly are best practices:

#1: Understand and develop customer needs. The ability of a sales person to identify a customer’s problem areas. The ability to ask good questions and listen to what the customer says naturally follow this practice.

#2: Gain mutual trust. Top performing sales people work hard at building and maintaining trust. They do it by always telling the truth, even when it might cost them business; by responding quickly to complaints, problems and customers’ expressed needs; by returning calls in a timely manner; and by doing what they say they are going to do, when they say they are going to do it.

#3: Know your customer. This goes beyond uncovering their needs to knowing what they and their organization can do. The best practice is to penetrate deeper to understand the customer’s business. Who are their customers? What are the trends impacting their customers’ market or industry? How do these trends impact the strategic direction of the customer? Who are the customer’s competitors and how do they threaten the customer? Top-performers do not solely rely on asking their customer about these issues, but invest the time to research it themselves.

#4: Access and power to leverage internal resources in creating customer value. Top-performing sales people are expert resource brokers. They not only know what the customer needs to drive better results, but they know the person or people who can best demonstrate that solution. They know when to draw on internal resources and when to partner with other vendors to serve the customer’s interests.

#5: Know who else is talking with your prospect during the sales cycle. You may find yourself in a complex sales process and therefore view one good sales call as one link in a long chain of successful interactions. The goal in each customer interaction is to move the sale forward, sometimes inch by inch. You want to know if and when your prospect is speaking to the competition. 

Now judge for yourself and give us your feedback. Do you agree with any or  most of these? Let me know what has helped you close your best deal yet.  

What is the value of your solution? (is there a problem?)

In my last post I promised to blog something on “What is the value of your solution? (is there a problem?).” I think everyone in sales will at some point in their career have become frustrated with customers or prospects that jump straight to the question, “How much?” after you’ve given your presentation on all the features and benefits your solution has to offer. Naming a figure (say $10,000) will immediately put you and your prospect in a premature discussion about price. And you know for sure what your prospect’s reaction will be. “Oh, that is too expensive!” “Expensive?” you think, “Don’t they understand the value of my solution?” 

So, what is the value of your solution? A solution has no inherent value, really. Your solution derives its value from the problem it solves. If there is no problem you can’t fix it. So, is there a problem that your solution is tackling? Does your solution fill a need or help to achieve a goal? That is the question we should ask ourselves in qualifying our prospect. Once we have qualified, we need to quantify it – in terms of money. How big is the problem we are seeking to address?

Let’s say, your annual sales revenue is $1,000,000 produced by 100 orders at an average of $10,000 per sale. The current cost of sales is 40% making it $4,000 per sale. And the length of your average sales cycle is 40 days bringing the calculated cost of outstanding sales to $100 per day. So each day an opportunity is not closing will cost your company $100 per potential sale. That is the problem! If your solution reduces the average sales cycle by 15% from 40 days to 34 days, you are saving the company $60,000 per year. That is the value of your solution.

 If we present our value proposition in this way, do you think the customer will have the same reaction when coming up with a figure, say $10,000 when asked “How much?” Is there a problem?

Can we get the best of both worlds? Sales, Marketing and the great divide.

Hello and welcome to my personal blog.

This is my first post and I am excited that finally I have my very own personal blog. In this blog I’ll cover topics about sales and marketing, both on- and offline.

If you’re in sales you will be able to identify with many of the issues to come ranging from understanding your client’s buying reasons (unique selling points are a thing of the past), creating and claiming customer perceived value, and closing the deal.

Marketers will finally understand why half of all sales people don’t use the marketing tools provided. “What’s wrong with my presentation? It’s all about how great we are!” Customer focus anybody? Also, expect to find articles about:

Have you taken your business online and had your nephew create a stunning website (at a special family rate of course)? Sure your sales numbers have now sky rocketed, right? If not, then you might ask yourself why people are not finding their way to your website. Where do you start? As a sales and business development manager at one of Holland and Belgium’s leading Search Engine Marketing agencies I look forward to sharing - and receiving - some of the best (and worst) practices in the field. Please be sure to subscribe to our feed and keep yourself updated. Lots to blog about!

Soon,

Rob