The Sales Insider

Two quick hits on some stuff I found interesting:

I.

Craig Rosenberg is generally a pretty smart and insightful guy. As the self-proclaimed “Funnelholic” and Focus.com VP of Products and Services, his extensive background in B2B sales and marketing gives his voice some weight in our space.

So when Craig (@funnelholic on Twitter) recently posted that “Being a B2B buyer sucks,” I snapped to attention.

All four of his points were excellent, so read the article, but I was particularly taken by Point #4:

The ‘contact us’ box sucks. I see that, and I just think black hole. The dropdown you provide doesn’t make me feel like I am going to go in the right direction. When you walk into a good store, someone asks, ‘How can I help you today?’ How about taking that methodology to the ‘front door’ of your buying process?”

Craig, you have no idea how true that is–and the Harvard Business Review proved it.

According to the HBR article, 26% of all online “Contact Us” Web form requests go completely unanswered (our own internal studies show the number can range from 25% to as high 40%). It’s as if the business believes you don’t exist.

Another 25% wait over 24 hours to get back with you, the real-world equivalent of walking into Nordstrom’s and having the cashier tell you, “Come back tomorrow when we feel like talking to you.” Another 6% wait between 12 and 24 hours to contact you.

Is it just me, or is the ridiculousness of this state of affairs beyond description?

Everyone—and I mean, EVERYONE—talks about paying more attention to the customer, treating clients and prospects like gold, because they’re getting harder win and keep. Yet if you’re the average company, nearly 60% of direct Web-generated inquiries—people who come to YOUR Web site and specifically ask to be contacted—have to wait at least 12 hours to hear back from you, assuming you get back to them at all.

I know I beat this nearly-dead horse on a regular basis. But for some odd reason, I keep finding opportunities to address the issue (wonder why).

II.

Loved this quote from Kevin Davis in his article, “Are You Selling Too Fast?” over on the American Express Open Forum:

I’ve been delivering sales seminars for 20+ years. When I ask salespeople to tell me how they sell, they rattle off the steps of their sales process. When I ask how their customers buy, they are stumped.

This disconnect between selling and buying is the root cause of many sales problems.”

It’s easy to park our rear ends in our office chairs and plot our pipelines for the month—but we’re not really thinking about what the prospect is going through to make their buying decision.

The best sales reps know how to get into the customer’s buying cycle, and engage with how the prospect’s decision will be made, not how the product will be delivered.

Just when you think the business world is changing for the better, that marketing and sales professionals are starting to “get it,” that a new age of enlightened prospecting is on its way, based on serving the customer and truly providing strategic value to them, rather than just pushing product . . . you have a meeting like the one I sat in on last week.

To be honest, calling it a “meeting” is a bit disingenuous; a live-action comedy of marketing errors hits far nearer to the mark.

I can’t reveal names or the organization involved, because it would be a blow-up embarrassment for them. But here’s a summary of the last few bits of our collective conversation:

Mystery Company X: “We need better branding. Our clients and prospects have a hard time articulating what we do.”

InsideSales.com: “Okay, yeah, that sounds like it could be a problem, but how are you actually serving the customer? How are you lowering their barriers to adoption? How are you being transparent with your interactions to give them the info they need? Where are you getting your best customers, how are you tracking that, and how are you converting them?”

Company X: “We’re looking for better communication channels here, not a sales process redux.”

Ummm . . . okay.

You know, since:

1. They didn’t have a single place on their corporate Web site where a customer could interact directly with employees, management, or support to build long-term pre- and post-sale relationships.
2. They have zero social media presence. No officially sponsored Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn profiles where people could attempt to get better information, or interact with them.
3. Their customer service manager admitted UP FRONT that they’re “in the process” of finding a CRM/Sales automation tool to track lead response and conversion rates, because nobody in the company has a CLUE how effective their lead management process is, or how it’s being managed.
4. They have a substantial competitive advantage in terms of the actual product versus their competition, yet their customer base is a FRACTION of what it could (and should) be.
5. Their supposed “channel partners” have shown remarkably little interest in helping cross-promote their product (gee, wonder why).
6. Their management team has blown through two rounds of funding trying to “expand the business,” but haven’t managed to operate a single quarter in the black to date.

But obviously, the real problem they’re having is with their branding, right? I’m sure it has nothing to do with how their customers are being serviced, or the company’s attitude toward interacting and communicating with its clients and partners.

The question is, what do you say to someone at that point?

I don’t know if there’s a particularly nice way of saying, “That’s fine, we can play along if you want. But based on your current corporate attitudes and behaviors, treating your customers without the general disdain and contempt you’ve evidenced to this point might be a better place to start.”

It’s one of the oldest clichés in recorded history: “Never discount the power of a first impression.”

But when it comes to sales hiring, just how long does a real “first impression” last?

The Bridge Group states that the average tenure of a typical Inside Sales rep is just under 3 years–2.9, to be exact.

But just how long does it really take to know if a rep is going to work out?

Anthony Iannarino over at The Sales Blog gives some pretty good advice for just how long a sales hire’s “first impression” should last:

“What you have seen in the first ninety days of your salesperson’s employment is what you can expect to see in the future. If they haven’t done the prospecting that you have agreed to during that time, they aren’t going to. If they haven’t met their activity quota, they aren’t going to. If they haven’t built the pipeline or won the opportunities that you agreed to and that are what should reasonably be expected of them, they aren’t going to.”

Great advice, and something we’ve followed for years over at InsideSales.com. All of our sales hires are given a 90-day “evaluation period,” where they’re offered full compensation for their work, but with the understanding that continued employment is conditional based on the work they do during their eval. If the 90-day initial review doesn’t show the results we’d like, we have a serious conversation with the rep about whether they’re going to stick around.

Does that sound cruel? In reality, for most reps it’s a breath of fresh air and sigh of relief, to know that they’re not going to be “BS-ing” themselves (and their managers) about a job they weren’t particularly qualified for or enjoying.

Real revolutions–the ones that definitively change the way we work and live–rarely start in executive board rooms. They almost never start from profit-analysis reports, pipeline review meetings, training agendas, or marketing demographic outlines.

A revolution isn’t about creating a “brand,” or “engagement,” or “measurable metrics” (though in many cases those come later).

It’s not about who has the best “spin,” the best PR, or the best prime-time network ad slot.

It’s about an idea.

An idea, and people that believe in them so strongly that the idea becomes reality.

Revolutions don’t happen by accident. They come because the time, the place, and the circumstance demand it, and the people in the center of it can’t bear the thought that things might remain the same.

So what does this have to do with business, or lead management, or lead generation, or better sales management practices?

Consider this:

According to a 2009 research study done by SKKU and infoUSA in 2009, the number of professional inside sales departments deployed across all industries in the U.S. and Canada was approximately 800,000.

However, that same research study predicted that by 2013, the number would grow to well to over 2 million, a nearly 300% increase in businesses engaging in professional inside sales operations and processes.

Bear in mind, that’s 2 million professional inside sales departments–not just a job count tally (the number of professional inside sales jobs can obviously be extrapolated to be much, much higher).

A 300% increase isn’t a “minor trend,” or a “significant shift.”

It’s a Revolution.

Look, let’s be frank–all of us here at InsideSales.com are part of a business. We exist as a company because we provide software and services to our clients to make a profit. If we want to continue making a profit, we have to provide those products and services better, faster, more reliably, and with more value than our competitors.

But one of the driving focuses, one of our clearest, most visible agendas for making our clients happy is focusing on the Inside Sales Revolution.

Inside sales is growing because it is IN FACT revolutionizing the way businesses operate. Technology gives inside sales teams and managers better visibility into what’s working. It’s more repeatable, scalable, and measurable than many outside sales practices. It puts more control of the process back in the hands of those who want it most: sales reps and managers. Technology merged with inside sales means there’s far more ability to track, analyze, report, and ultimately act on what’s working, and push aside the stuff that isn’t.

Inside sales is revolutionizing business because it is a fundamental reaction to the reality of the Customer 2.0. When the power is in the customer’s hands, the ability to see, find, shape, and react to their needs becomes the most important part of a sales rep’s job.

Technology, and the immediacy of connecting with a customer at the exact moment they need you, reach out to you, is the new reality of the 21st century.

We’re in business to make money. But we’re also in business because we have a vision for our clients that makes them better at what they do, because we’ve helped them envision how what they do impacts their own clients.

A few months back, I mentioned that we had started on the process of doing a project for a local Utah non-profit, the Center for Women and Children in Crisis (see their Web site here).

And last week, we put the “rubber to the road” and actually did it.

We feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to participate in this project. InsideSales.com CEO Dave Elkington and I have made a specific commitment to finding opportunities like this, and giving back to the community, particularly to at-need and at-risk groups.

If any of you have knowledge of other opportunities like this one, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Call in to the company, and ask to talk to me directly about a charitable work opportunity.

What’s the real value of what you sell? Of your expertise?

The reality is, it doesn’t actually matter what the “real value” is. What matters is, what’s the absolute, bottom-line, no-questions-asked lowest possible price you will ever sell your products and services for?

Regardless of the actual number, that’s ultimately its value to you.

I bring this up because I bumped into a link on Twitter to a blog entitled the Redhead Writing, where author Erika Napoletano talks about how too many businesses give away the “meat” of what they sell for free, then wonder why the client isn’t willing to pay more.

Be warned: the article, and much of her Web site uses language that, well, let’s just say that your typical sailor wouldn’t feel too out of place (at the risk of mixing metaphors, I realize for some of you that’s a feature, not a bug).

But in the midst of the article was this fabulous gem of wisdom:

“If you’re looking for something for free, you’re going to get a lot of 36,000 foot view information mixed with some 5,000 foot view gems. If you want ground level insight, that [crap, cow dung, poop] costs money.”

And the principle couldn’t be more accurate for high-touch B2B sales.

Why are we so willing to undercut our products and services’ value? Why are we so willing to give away our time and resources chasing after those elusive deal closes?

I know why the prospect asks for it: bargaining on price is leverage. They know it puts pressure on you, and it’s the most immediate win for them—it’s the fastest, simplest, most easily measurable way for them to minimize their cost of risk. In some cases it’s less about the actual dollar amount as it is about their own mental state—”Well, it wasn’t what I hoped, but at least I bargained for it at a good price.”

Don’t ever forget that when a prospect buys, it’s because they inherently value what you’re selling more than they value the things required to get it. The fact is, a sales transaction by its very nature ultimately generates more value for the customer than for the seller. As sellers we accept this fact because most of the time even getting the “short end of the stick” is still enough to be profitable.

Why are so many “bad clients” the most demanding? Because they know that they’re far and away getting more value than what they’re putting in to it, and they’re going to maximize that to the absolute limit.

Giving away stuff “free,” or “cheaper” is easy to do, just be aware that what you’re doing is merely increasing the relative disparity in value between you and the prospect. If you’re fine with that, by all means no one will stop you–but before you do, do some realistic thinking about what your real hard price cap is, and whether or not it’s what you really believe it should be.