The Sales Insider

A couple of years ago we hired what we thought was going to be a stellar sales rep. He appeared to be smart, well-spoken, and had the individual charisma that we thought was going to make him a star.

So when the numbers came back after six months, I was surprised that he was nowhere near hitting quota.

“Hmm, that’s interesting,” I thought. “I figured he’d be a star, let’s give him a little more time.”

End of the next quarter, same results. Now I was panicked. How could he have possibly been failing? What had I done wrong? What was wrong with our sales process? If this “superstar” sales rep wasn’t hacking it, surely we had to fix something, right?

I talked to the front-line sales manager about ideas. We went over sales collateral. We reviewed pitches and product demos. We mentored.

And what we discovered was that in spite of his evident natural talents, they never really translated into the rigors of his daily work. There was an intellectual laziness, an assumed air of success–”This is going to work simply because I’m the one doing it.”

Now of course some long-time sales professionals might argue the point. “Of course you have to assume success,” they’d say. “You have to have confidence that you’re going to get the sale. If you can’t be confident, you can’t succeed.”

Which I completely agree with, but with this rep it was different. His confidence was purely internal, not external. His confidence in himself never translated to confidence in management’s goals and directives. It never translated into confidence in our sales processes and technologies.

There was no question he wanted to succeed, but he wanted it to be on his terms, on “his watch.”

Needless to say, his close rate never improved. His pipeline was always full, but at the end of the month/quarter revenue was scarce.

And worst of all, the rest of the reps had picked up on the fact that he wasn’t really being a team player. They resented when he would get “hot” leads, because, they grumbled, “He’s never going to get anything out of them anyway.” Letting him go ended up being a double-positive, because the rest of the team worked harder, and we weren’t throwing good leads into a dead pool.

Ultimately I learned a few things:

1. Trust the numbers, not appearances. Baseline numbers are set for a reason, so unless they’re a complete sham, use them. If you don’t trust your quotas, why have them?

2. If you don’t trust the numbers, you don’t trust your process. If you can’t believe what the numbers are saying, it means you believe there’s a break in the system.

3. Employee failure is expensive, but the situation allowed us to get a fresh look at what we were doing. Stagnation is today’s ultimate business-killer, and while a total overhaul of a team or process isn’t always necessary, a minor “reboot” isn’t a bad thing. Embrace opportunities for change.

4. Reps need to be aware of the line between confidence and intellectual laziness. It’s okay to occasionally do an “end around” past company process if it’s going to make a prospect happy. But constantly justifying breaking the rules because “It’s the way I get success” should be a red flag that something is amiss.

Seven years ago we set out to build the ultimate cold-calling technology. If sales is a numbers game, then the logic is that a PowerDialer can help reps go from making 35-40 calls a day to 200 or even 300. That’s great if you have enough leads to call. Or if you make enough calls to make contact.

And it is especially important when you realize that it takes 8-12 calls to make sure you have the best chance of making contact. Our research shows most reps call 1-2 times and give up.

To me leads are people who find me and I call them back. They have need.

A list is people who I find and call and try to generate interest and turn it to need. Occasionally I stumble upon the golden contact who has need when I call.

In just a few days we have spoken with Hoovers, InsideView, Jigsaw, and Zoominfo. We get asked all the time; who is best.  Over the years we have tried them all and our clients try them all. In fairness, they change quite often. So we will keep trying them.

I have to honestly say the answer is the one I hate when people give it to me… it depends.

• Hoovers is really D&B (their parent company.) They have the legendary Duns number, and the largest database on the planet.
• InsideView is really a sales intelligence company with access to lists. They give you better information before you make that call.
• Jigsaw is a great list company if you want great company info. And they are now owned by Salesforce.com, our favorite partner.
• Zoominfo is a great list company with the most contacts per company. Their contact data seems to be the most current.

We like them all based on the needs of the job we are engaged in (and notice I even put them alphabetical… I think.)

The power of automation, as most of us have discovered, is a two-edged sword. When set up properly, automation is leverage for the work you already do, multiplying results. When set up incorrectly, it multiplies your mistakes in the same way and occasionally causes you to “auger in.”

So in the interest of honesty, we screwed up pretty bad yesterday.

One of our good, solid marketing vendors sent out an email in the morning of January 6 according to plan . . . except it wasn’t the right content. In fact, it was inviting our friends to join us at Dreamforce ’10 on December 6th, a month after it happened. And though it would be easy to point fingers and blame the vendor, ultimately the fault is ours. It’s our job to make sure we have the right content in place, that it’s clearly marked, and that it’s in the right format—not our vendor’s.

But there are a couple of things our little faux pas reminded me of as well.

One, I can’t help seeing the irony of sending an out-of-date email for salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event that touts our PowerDialer app’s Top 10 position on the Salesforce AppExchange . . . nothing better than shouting, “Hey, look how awesome we are!” when you’re not wearing any pants or our zipper is undone.

But since Marty McFly’s not around to loan you his DeLorean to go back to December 2010, just take it from us that if you have any relation at all to the sales, marketing, or hosted software industries, you should check out Dreamforce next year. You won’t regret it.

The other thing this reminded me of, though, is the need and power of being genuine. One of the reasons, I think, that our little email foul-up got such an interesting response (and yes several associates in the industry let us know what happened) wasn’t just that the content was irrelevant, it was that it was clearly designed as a “marketing piece” (the egregiousness of the error was so bad that one of my good friends, Bill Otteman, Director of Sales Ops at Genius offered (again) to provide his services for future campaigns). Let’s talk Bill!

There’s still room for the occasional, “high concept” marketing email in today’s environment, but that space is getting awfully small. Research has proven time and again that a brief, genuine, “human” email gets a much higher response, and should be the primary focus for sales-targeted email. People want an email from a person, not a marketing department.

And it’s funny, we have touted our internal research that an email from a sales rep, that is written in plain text, quite often doubles the response-rate over a “marketing-ish” email. And a spelling error in the email even drives the response rates up further; because it comes from a “real” person who makes mistakes.

So when we make a mistake, it’s a good time to remember just how human we all are… all the time. And remind ourselves to cut someone else a little slack when it happens to them, even if it goes out to tens of thousands of people!

Found a link today to a pretty interesting research report from Frost and Sullivan detailing the decline of premise-based (hardware) dialer technologies in the year 2009.

The space suffered negative revenue growth (down 5.6%), and the summary indicated the reasons, none of which will come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the hosted software/SaaS dialer space:

“Other methods and media are supplementing the use of agent-assisted outbound calling to comply with the laws and reduce campaign cost . . . Point solutions for outbound customer contact while still valuable are increasingly being viewed as not as efficient or effective for multi-function and unified outbound customer contact campaigns. Trends indicate that market demand is rapidly shifting away from point solutions.”

In other words, premise-based dialer technologies are

• too inflexible
• require a heavy up front cost investment, and as the 2009 economy showed us, the ongoing benefit and ROI of the investment is far from a sure thing
• don’t integrate well into other systems
• and last but not least, don’t link to other data applications to gain additional insight into existing business, call, and sales trends.

Hosted dialer solutions, on the other hand, mitigate or eliminate all of the above, particularly the sunk costs associated with dialer hardware. It increasingly makes little sense to sink hundreds of thousands of dollars into a piece of hardware that isn’t going to show a true ROI for 3-6 years, especially when there’s no guarantee that the initiatives that drove the adoption will still be a viable business model by the time the company actually sees any ROI.

Two years ago, Roger Andrus, head of the Business Development Corporation of Provo, Utah, ran a little experiment by bringing in a select group of applicants for an intensive, 12-week business mentoring program in conjunction with Griffin-Hill, a respected training organization.

The results were startling.

Overall, each of the companies represented in the 2010 TechX Revenue Xelerator were on pace to do an average of 28% more business than the year before. The next year, a new group of companies attended.

The results were just as remarkable.

With a now-proven track record of success, the Provo Business Development Corporation is ready to start the 2011 edition of the TechX Revenue Xelerator program.

This by-approval-only program provides 12 weeks of FREE one-on-one expert mentoring, with proven methodologies and cutting-edge tools for rapid, substantial, and sustainable revenue results.

The goal for the program is to teach and provide the tools and methodologies to follow a simple formula: Generate More Leads –> Maximize Conversions –> Close More Business.

Classes are held weekly at the Technology Center at Novell, on the Provo, Utah Novell Campus located at 34 East 1700 South.

All Utah companies are encouraged to apply, though special consideration will be given for companies based in Provo, or whose primary operations have a direct effect or connection (distribution, sales, production, etc.) to Provo City.

Participating mentors for the 2011 program include: Griffin Hill Technologies, InsideSales.com, Sebo Marketing, LeadGenix, Snapp Conner.com, Launch Sales and Marketing, Press-Media.com, Eagar University, and Corporate Alliance.

The application process closes January 15, and available openings are limited, so don’t wait to apply!

For more information, visit: www.ProvoTechX.com

To apply, go to: www.provotechx.com/our-process/apply-now

On a recent guest post at the Bridge Group’s blog, author Henry Bruce brings up some research by Marketing Sherpa that states that 75% of all sales leads generated are going to buy at some point in the next 18-24 months.

Think about that for a minute.

A. Only 1 in 4 leads is ever totally non-productive. They may not convert now, or in the time frame the rep wants, but contrary to popular belief, it’s relatively rare for a sales lead to be total garbage. 75% of the active leads in our CRM systems RIGHT NOW are going to buy a product or service in our sector from somebody, somewhere in the next two years. So why not from you/me/us, if we’re the right fit?

B. It also seems to indicate that the need to intelligently score leads is now more critical than ever to prevent waste. 18-24 months is a long time, and no sales rep in their right mind is going to try and keep a prospect “on the hook” for a year-and-a-half. If they’re not buying now, stop wasting effort, the thought process goes, and use a long-term lead nurturing strategy.

But if they can’t make contact quickly, sales reps are far too willing to consign leads to the “nurturing” bucket (which all too often is perceived as a garbage can, rather than an opportunity generator).

You can’t qualify someone you can’t contact, obviously, but one of the big reasons reps aren’t “making contact” is because they aren’t responding fast enough, and they’re not persistent enough.

As Sales 2.0 Network’s Donal Daly states, there’s only 2 reasons you ever lose a sale—because you weren’t supposed to be there in the first place (meaning your solution was never the right “fit” to begin with), or you got outsold. You got outworked, out-thought, out-presented, out-collateraled, outsmarted.

Immediate lead response technologies and techniques can be a key component in avoiding both. If you respond immediately to leads (as in minutes, not hours or days), you’re massively more likely to make contact with the inquiry. Your ability to set an appointment and start a viable needs analysis increases, and happens in a shorter time frame. Bottom line, immediate and persistent response means you’re much more likely to know right off the bat whether you’re supposed to be there at all.

Furthermore, for qualified “hot” leads, particularly leads coming off the Web, the faster you make contact the stronger your chance to make a good, valid first impression—an impression that is much more likely to carry over into the 18-24 month nurturing cycle if they’re not buying now. CSO Insights states that 40-50% of all sales go to the vendor who makes first contact. Don’t just get there, get there first, and get there by phone, not just email. MIT research shows a phone call should be the FIRST contact attempt, not the second, third, or fourth.

If you lose a sale because you simply weren’t supposed to be there, it’s always better to do it early rather than late. And if you lose a sale because you’ve been outsold, why let it be because you didn’t seize the opportunity when you had it? Even if a prospect isn’t buying until potentially two years down the road, the opportunity to make a first impression only happens once.

You and your company have done everything right up to this point.

The marketing team created a compelling, targeted set of material that caught the attention of a potential buyer. They found your Web site and grabbed some information—a couple of white papers and a pricing list.

You followed up on the new lead quickly and effectively, using good lead management and nurturing tactics to make contact.

You feel like you’ve done your homework. You feel you understand their position in their industry. You’ve done a deep needs analysis, and feel you have a common ground with the prospect on how to address their pain. You get your best collateral and presentation material, tailored to the information you already have.

You wind up and give them your best 95-mile-an-hour fastball, the pitch that’s worked for you so many times in the past.

Yet contrary to evidence, against every sign you’ve seen to this point, you’re met with looks of confusion, or even worse, apathy.

The prospect doesn’t get it, or worse, doesn’t seem to care.

Now what do you do?

In baseball, the difference between a run-of-the-mill pitcher and an All-Star is rarely their “first pitch.” In the Big Leagues (and we’re assuming that’s where you want to be), everybody has a 90+ mile-per-hour fastball—but the best pitchers have a 2nd, a 3rd, sometimes even a 4th pitch that they can command.

While there are occasional exceptions to the rule (see Mariano Rivera and his un-duplicate-able cut fastball), in most cases the best pitchers win because when their primary pitch isn’t working, Plan B isn’t crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.

Sales is no different.

When your initial, carefully-prepped pitch is a “miss,” the answer is almost never to keep “winding up” and tossing something out there.

Stop, and figure out what happened.

Typically it’s one of three things:

• You’re not actually a contender and you didn’t know it.
• You’re in the dark about something going on inside the prospect’s company.
• You’re talking to the wrong people for the value prop you’ve presented.

If you’re just a “sounding board” for a competitor’s RFP and they’ve already locked in to another vendor, stop wasting your time and move on. Maybe the prospect just realized that your solution will require an entire technology platform overhaul—one they had no intention of making. Maybe your solution forces them to change a licensing situation with another vendor, and they don’t want to upset their current arrangement.

If you really are in contention, then clearly something has changed. There’s a management “realignment” on the horizon and your product/service is in the line of fire. A relocation is about to happen. A key budget or cashflow problem has reared its head.

Regardless, the solution is the same: dig back in. Who’s really in charge now, and who’s really going to make the decision?

Gather data, re-set your presentation, toe the rubber, and fire again.