Sales and Marketing Performance Blog

Soft Skills - Hard Currency for Sales Professionals

I was explaining our sales training approach (which is based on improving communication, language and inter-personal skills and applying these skills in selling situations) to a corporate sales training professional recently, who made a comment to which I took exception.

He said, “Yes, well of course that’s soft skills training, and we are not planning on doing any of that. We offer it for our management team, but our sales training is focused on product training, overcoming objections, negotiating and closing the sale and we are currently implementing the TAS methodology and training.” The implication here is that soft skills are touchy-feely and somehow optional or nice to have, or something that sales people are born with....not the hard skills sales people to need to crunch deals and close hard. Needless to say it was a short meeting.

According to Wikipedia: Soft skills is a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people.
I continued to consider what the training buyer had said, because it called into question our recent experience and the sales performance improvement methodology we had developed.  I began to analyze the selling process and dissect its elements and offer the following insights.

Selling is a craft or skill that can be entered as a profession at a minimum by anyone with the ability to use a telephone. The craft of selling is innate in some individuals with highly developed interpersonal skills and intellect, - these people (about 5%-10% of the sales population) are known as naturals. For the rest of us, selling is a skill that is learned both by doing it and through training, - and with practice and coaching it can be mastered.

The B2B selling profession is underpinned by process (this resembles a science) where every move and transition in the selling cycle is captured and as such can be analyzed and optimized. Selling methodologies and CRM however will not help salespeople engage buyers, diagnose needs and qualify if capabilities are relevant, which to my mind are the highest order elements in the whole sales cycle.

Furthermore corporations that are focusing training on overcoming objections, account planning methodologies, negotiation and closing are working on the wrong end of the problem.

What has radically changed over the past 10 years is the impact of the Internet on the ways companies and people buy.  What hasn’t changed much is the way most companies train their sales teams and the way sales-people are selling and this is a problem.

Let’s examine selling skills in each of the elements of the selling process.

Sellers are at a distinct disadvantage today vs. just ten years ago.  Back then, the salesperson’s role was to introduce new technology products and ideas to buyers. Sales-people were conduits for information and were required by organizations so that they could compare relative offerings in order to make informed decisions.

Today, salespeople are disenfranchised from the buying process. Buyers can find out pretty much everything they need to know about your product and your competitors products and services; see them in action and watch videos of customers talking about them; price them and download or use them in a 30 day free trial, without leaving their desks or picking up the phone.

When a buyer does engage with a sales-person they expect the salesperson to understand their business, to bring the gift of knowledge of how others have implemented their solution and for the salesperson to ask insightful questions in order for the buyer to envision how products/solutions could be used to create value. They also expect salespeople to listen and have their concerns and questions handled and concisely answered.

What buyers are not looking for are cold-calls, SPAM email, first meetings with uninformed and ill-prepared sales people; lengthy product and corporate presentations; product-speak gobbledygook on Websites and in sales presentations. Further they are not interested in being trial-closed or in being manipulated or pressured into buying products based on the monthly or quarterly closing cycle of the supplier, unless of course this happens to be a product they want and are ready buy at the end of quarter discount-fest.
 
What buyers really want is for salespeople to be better at their craft;

• In communicating the value in using their products and helping the buyer differentiate them from competitive products,
• In asking insightful questions which will help buyers articulate their issues,
• In truly listening to their goals, aspirations and concerns,
• In integrating their stated needs with an understanding of your product capabilities,
• In understanding how they do things internally and their sensitivity to risk,
• In diagnosing and qualifying if their needs and the product capabilities are relevant and of value and to qualify out if they are not.
  

Suppliers need more focus on raising the standard of their customer facing team’s communication, language and interpersonal skills which underpin their everyday activities and giving them the sales tools they need to engage and win.

The tools I am referring to are known as sales enablement and integrate delivery of product-usage knowledge, customer marketplace knowledge, customer success stories, with lightweight process and CRM tools that deliver value for individuals - as well as recording data.

Soft skills are the new hard currency of sales professionals, because these skills are the foundation of everything they do.

Differentiation vs. Competition - a Guide to Achieving it

The following is a true story extracted from a recent call in a company, possibly just like yours.

Julie, a sales rep from ABC Software, just got back from an initial meeting with a prospective client who registered interest in your products on your Website. Your inside sales team spoke with the prospect and qualified interest in a meeting to discuss ABC application usage in Acme. Julie's Sales Manager, Bob, asks "So how did the Acme meeting go?"

"Well it went pretty well, we had the buyer tell us about what they were thinking and they actually shared with us that there is a real need driving their interest and they also mentioned that they are looking at a couple of our competitors. I gave our standard presentation and we had some good questions at the end of the presentation, which I had to cut short because the prospect had another meeting and we started late."

"So what are the follow-ups?" Bob asked. "Well they said they would consider what we had told them and get back to us with a configuration spec., so we can deliver a quote."

Unfortunately, Julie did not get a second meeting with the client. (like 3 out of 4 reps today* CSO Insights). Julie dutifully submitted a quotation in response to the spec. and a month later received an email from the client advising them they had run second in a close-run thing.

This story has some of the details removed for brevity, but it illustrates a common problem in many companies that affects both sales and marketing; differentiation vs. competition.

The question is - how do marketers and sales people actually achieve differentiation?
The key to differentiation that is widely mis-understood is that differentiation occurs in the mind of the buyer, not in PowerPoint presentation or on your Web-site (unless both are based on the criteria below).

According to Geoffrey Moore's "Chasm Theory", in the early market you may be alone in the market, striving to get found on the Internet and to convert visitors to take more than a passing glance at your product. As the market matures, competitors will emerge; - either "fast-followers" or "innovators" working on the same idea at the same time; competitors that look and feel from their descriptions on the Internet, just like you. Your product might be cheaper, faster or have more gizmos, but the base functionality provided in the product-class appears the same to the buyer.

In our Post-Internet World, where competitive advantage is fleeting, differentiation is a major issue for all companies.

In the B2B and B2C space, differentiation is achieved through the interactions your prospects are having with your Web-site and the quality and relevance of the conversations of your sales and support team...but how is it achieved?

Differentiation for both sales and marketing occurs in the mind of the buyer and for sellers, it starts by identifying your ideal customers and developing their buyer-persona's.

1. By analyzing the interests of your target buyers, their likely needs or goals, the issues preventing them from achieving them, and the cost of not achieving them, we can engage buyers in "what's in it for me" conversations for each target buyer group.
2. If we know what our buyers really care about and take the time to think through the value-exchange that occurs when using our products; we capture and share this insight, along with best-practices diagnostic questions (in Buyer-Relevant Messaging Templates) with the sales and marketing team, then we can use this Messaging to improve the quality of our Internet site and to improve the quality of sales and support conversations both over the phone and in person.

This is just first-base though. Your sales and support team needs to be trained in how to use the templates to create stories to truly engage buyers.

Improving the skills of your sales team to engage targeted buyers in conversations about their business and relevant industry issues requires industry knowledge, product knowledge, communication and language skill. (Most sales training is centered on product knowledge, not inter-personal skills).

The Internet-era mainstream buyer (value-added, value-offered) knows what they want, in many cases what they are prepared to pay and often are more knowledgeable about the market than our sales reps.

• Our sales and support team needs classroom training and performance support tools to master new interpersonal communication language and psychology skills.
• Regular role-playing is required to master diagnostic conversations based on content within the templates and to engage buyers in conversations about their business and to create buyer-vision.
• Finally we need collaborative tools and feedback mechanisms to share our success, what works and what doesn't, and to tune the ineffective and unused templates out of the Messaging Architecture over time.

Sales naturals (the top 5-10% of your team) will have figured out how your products create value in the eyes of the buyer and are effective in engaging buyers in the value-exchange....that's why they are the top-sellers.

If the other 90% of your sales team is not armed with a clear understanding of the goals, needs and issues confronting your target buyers, skilled in using best-practices questions to diagnose whether your capabilities are of value and to create buyer-vision; then the default behaviour for sales will be to revert to "product-speak" in front of an LCD projector and as Julie discovered, this usually spells no follow-up meeting and the end of the opportunity.

 

Inbound Marketing - a better approach to lead generation

When engaged by VICO Software in 2008 on a sales and marketing messaging alignment and consultative sales training project, we had an “AH-HA” moment when it came to a discussion around marketing performance.

VICO had the opposite problem to 95% of technology companies (not enough leads)….they had more leads than their sales team was effective in processing - they had sales execution problems.

The single biggest problem in our own business and every one of our clients over this period, (with the exception of VICO Software) was a lack of leads. The sea-change in our consulting business and the marketing approach of our most recent clients has been the move to Inbound Marketing.

What we discovered was that VICO’s Marketing VP, Holly Allisson was single-handedly out-marketing companies 10-50 times larger than VICO using an Inbound Marketing platform in combination with mind-share creation and prospect incubation events on a shoe-string budget. VICO’s SVP Sales and Marketing, Don Henrich, suggested we investigate their inbound platform, (HubSpot.com).

This prompted us to change our sales and marketing performance methodology and focus on Inbound Marketing as a core competency and service deliverable for B2B companies. 

Having gained 6 month’s experience with HubSpot’s inbound marketing capabilities it has become indispensable to our business and a core part of our consulting service offerings. 

What elements in combination form an inbound marketing platform that could empower business owners and professional marketers to build inbound marketing traffic?

• Either a fully hosted Website with an easy to use Content Management System (CMS), (or integral sub domain for blogging and creating landing pages on your main site that mirror the look and feel of your site),
• Proven best-practices method for on-page and off-page SEO, where the platform does the work VS. you needing to be a PhD in SEO
• Integrated blogging and landing page creation,
  
• Integrated social media feeds based on your favorite keywords,
• Lead integration to Salesforce.com CRM for closed-loop analysis,
• Integrated Keyword optimization and page optimization,
  
• Link–blogging and inbound link analysis
  
• Performance analytics for business owners of any size
• High quality training, video, .ppt tutorials and comprehensive “how-to” articles....

The inbound marketing platform is central, but certainly not the only element to successful inbound marketing; add to the mix an E-Mail marketing tool, Website content that is high quality and relevant to visitors with different interests; and in a B2B market, downloadable E-books and white-papers that are compelling and easily shared. Regular Webinars, Podcasts and video posts will also build inbound visitors, community and incubate those visitors not yet ready to covert.

Assuming your product or service suite is at a minimum competitive, chances are people are looking for products and services just like yours today. Here a couple of questions to help you determine whether you are ready for inbound marketing.

1. Do you understand the buyer-persona of your target audience?
2. Would they find you today on the first two pages of a Google query search?
   
3. If they do find your site, would your landing-pages convert them from visitors into leads?
   
4. If they do convert, how competent is your sales team in engaging them in business conversations about their issues, differentiating your offerings, creating a vision of success in using your products, qualifying and engaging them in a buying process?
5. Do you have a lack of inbound leads masquerading as sales problem? - if you do, then you have an exciting opportunity.
   

Our sales and marketing performance methodology has evolved, we have evolved and we are helping our clients evolve their sales and marketing process. Inbound Marketing has permanently changed the marketing method and creates significant opportunities for both large and small corporations....what are you waiting for?

Effective Product Launches - marketing messaging alignment

Innovative and complex products are launched daily in technology centres around the World. The product promise, is to enhance our work, play, health, or longevity. Unfortunately, a great many of these innovations will be abandoned before they achieve long-term commercial success, because they won't hit their early sales targets.

The years of struggle in research & development dampened by few bad quarters, all too commonly prove to be fatal both for the product, the team and the investors. A desperate downward spiral of finger-pointing and blame occurs; Is the problem with the product, the sales team, the market, the price, the channel? 

In most cases the problem is a lack of inbound-leads because interested buyers in the market couldn't find the product or understand how to use it. Another familiar problem is that sales coudn't effectively position or differentiate capabilities vs. competition and thus failed to sell it.

A significant contributor to past failure is a result of sales and marketing working in silos; speaking different languages to the customer and buyers being left to figure out for themselves how the products could create value in their environment.

Today there are much more effective ways of launching products and they require marketing and sales to work together and to learn the language of the customer, not the "product-speak" typical in technology companies. 

Sales and Marketing Alignment is a framework and set of tools, which when applied to inbound marketing concepts and sales technique, changes forever the way companies sell and market products.

The process starts with identifying the buyer-persona of target-buyers and enables sellers to integrate sales and marketing messaging into business process and across all media, so that potential buyers can easily find and understand how to use the products in their environment.

An important step in improving new product introductions is to align sales and marketing messaging and to train the sales team to sell differently and for everyone in the company to use the new structure. Core process steps are:-

1. Create the target buyer persona and identify buyer goals, needs and issues.
   
2. Develop a Messaging Architecture that clearly positions the product in a competitive market and identifies core win-themes in how the products creates value when used - (your competitive DNA);
3. Create buyer-relevant narratives based on addressing the needs identified in the buyer-persona that combine the "win-themes" or capabilities from the Messaging Architecture and best-practices diagnostic questions to guide conversations that enable buyers to envisage using the products to create value, achieve goals or solve problems;
4. Training the sales team to use the templates and to sell consultatively, qualify more effectively and execute a formal sales process that serves both buyer and seller.
5. Enabling collaboration and encouraging sales team feedback  to improve team effectiveness and learn from the experience of colleagues on every call.