The Sales Insider

About three years ago we were analyzing the leads that come from our website trying to find out if some were better than others.

Everything we do at InsideSales.com is based on metrics. Instead of just hiring marketers, we hire math majors and economics majors in our marketing department because it is all about studying and testing and analyzing.

So we charted out our leads and we found that there were two obvious “clusters” of leads based on the types of offers we had made to generate them. I call them “Buying Signals” and “Tire Kickers” and we found there was an 8 to 1 difference in the results they generated based on overall revenue.

Buying Signals are just that, respondents to offers that clearly say I’m anxious to talk to somebody at InsideSales.com about making a purchase decision. I have “need,” not just “interest.” Anything product-centric, pricing-related, commitment-based, etc. We learned that even a toll free number is an “offer” somebody can choose to accept on a website (and is often the very best one.)

Tire Kickers want to learn something. They aren’t ready to buy, they have “interest” but not need. They may not know that have need yet. The way to turn a Tire Kicker into a Buying Signal is with compelling information and education. Our research shows that a Tire Kicker is 8 times less likely to buy than a Buying Signal.

I was reminded that interest is the counterfeit of need. Interest belongs to the marketing department, whose job it is to educate. And need belongs to the sales department, whose job it is to build value and close to fulfill need.

Kinds of Buying Signal leads:
Free trials, demos, product overviews, contact us, product slicks, pricing requests, proposal requests, toll free phone numbers.

Kinds of Tire Kicker Leads:
Company overviews, white papers, research papers, webinars, on-demand webinars, how-to’s, forums, blogs.

So what did we do?

We cut out most of our Tire Kickers and focussed on Buying Signals. We even scaled back our well-known research papers like the paper that Inc. Magazine recently quoted.

What happened?

Things went great for about two months. Our sales went up, then they went down. And our leads started drying up. We couldn’t figure out what happened until one day we looked at previous leads and found that people typically downloaded 2-3 Tire Kicker offers before moving to the Buying Signal leads. It was a “lead funnel” and we had stopped the new leads from entering the funnel.

So immediately we put back all of our Tire Kicker information leads and expanded them.

It was almost a disaster, but it turned out to be one of the most important things we have ever learned.

Hope it helps!

Ken

One of the most powerful things I have ever learned in managing salespeople is the power of posting results visibly. When I do that results go up 20% almost overnight. I don’t care what it is; dials, appointments set, demonstrations, closes. Now of course, depending on length of sales cycles, it takes time for more results-based numbers to show.

Why?

I think sales reps are extremely competitive. They are the competitive athletes, the warrior class of the business world. The most correlated measure when I hired top performers was a competitive resume in athletics in college or high school. They can’t stand to be beat, or to be second. (see my blog on “Hiring Athletes… A Great Bet for Inside Sales Jobs“.)

My friend and mentor Jeff Call taught me this principle when I was back at FranklinCovey managing the fastest growing department in what was then one of the fastest growing companies in America. He would have me post the individual and team stats every day. And our numbers kept rising.

Where did he get the principle of performance visibility? “Putting the One Minute Manager to Work” by Ken Blanchard. Ken was a guest lecturer and a bit of a mentor to us at Franklin during those days. His other book “Raving Fans” had also been a recent hit.

Thanks Jeff. This is one of those gifts that keeps on giving!

A very interesting article by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, both of the Sales Executive Council, show recent research that selling is not just about relationships, but rather about teaching customers, tailoring sales messages to the customer, and taking control of the sale.

I have been following the Harvard Business Review (HBR) since the time we did research in conjunction with them in the March 2011 issue entitled The Short Life of Online Leads.

The Sales Executive Council did a global study in 2008 involving more than 6000 B2B sales reps from nearly 100 companies in many industries.

They classified these sales professionals into five profiles:

1- Relationship Builders: who focus on building strong personal and professional relationships.

2- Hard Workers: come early, stay late, make more calls, make more visits, and go the extra effort mile.

3- Lone Wolves: are very self confident and may break rules by doing things their way or not at all.

4- Reactive Problem Solvers: are customer-centric by being reliable and detail-oriented with strong follow-up and well executed implementation.

5- Challengers: understand their customers’ businesses to push their thinking and drive the entire sales conversation with themselves in control. They are not afraid to assert even controversial views with customers and bosses.

These five profiles are almost evenly distributed among typical salespeople, but only one stands out for performance… The Challenger.

In fact, the Challenger makes up 40% of the high performers.

What makes them different?

1- They teach their customers. They focus their sales conversation not so much on features and benefits but on providing unique insight on the customers business with new ideas to make and save money. They help customers see things they didn’t know existed!

2- They tailor their sales message to the customers needs. They are deeply tuned in to the objectives and value drivers of the customer and position their sales pitch to each different stakeholder within a customers organization.

3- They take control of the sale. They are assertive, not overly aggressive, but comfortable with tension and rarely give in to a customer who doesn’t know their solution like they do. They can press customers to make a decision, even on price.

If the Challenger is the winner, who is the loser?

The Relationship Builder. In fact, they account for only 7% of high performers in standard sales situations.

Why?

The data seems to say that relationships have changed. Challengers push for better decisions, while Relationship Builders give in when the customers push back to preserve what they think are relationships. They are likable and generous, not competent and valuable.

The study goes deeper, Challengers dominate the world of complex solution selling by making up 54% of the stars, while only 4% of Relationship Builders make up the stars in more complex sales.

Restated, Challengers win because they have mastered the complex sale. This fact is extremely valuable when considering the future. With a down economy, this looks like an even more valuable trait. In other words, the Challenger looks to be the profile skill most desired for sales results well into the future.

Wow, lots of things are changing, BANT, relationship selling, what next?

Click here to see if you are considered a Challenger or to see a graphical summary of how the Challenger stacks up against the other profiles.

I’m looking forward to their new book “The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation” which goes on sale at Amazon on Nov 10, 2011

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