Rick Page - Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]

A contact manager is not adequate for opportunity management, and neither is the simple forecast that comes with most CRM systems. Among the best practices we see in opportunity management tools are:

• A lead prequalification checklist

• A prospect qualification checklist

• A competitive assessment

• A value linkage chart

• A stakeholder analysis

• An action plan

• Coaching questions

Lead Prequalification Checklist

Marketing tends to measure its success by the quantity of leads generated by any given campaign. But the sales department is frustrated when it receives a blizzard of unqualified “leads” from marketing, most of which will not turn into prospects even after hours of phone calls.

Research shows that a very large number of these leads are never followed up on at all, probably because of the lowquality experience of previous leads.

Jim Ninivaggi, director of the sales performance practice at SiriusDecisions, a sales effectiveness analyst firm, says:

In some organizations, up to 90 percent of leads don’t get followed up on at all. If I get 100 leads and only two pan out, the next time I get 100 leads, I’ll ignore them because they aren’t worth my time.

Of these leads that aren’t getting followed up on, most of those prospects will buy something in the next 12 to 18 months. They may not buy it from you, but the interest level was usually high enough that they will probably buy something.

It is more economic to have a marketing person nurture these leads than to have a field person follow them up. This is where marketing can play a very effective role.

Prospect Qualification Checklist

An agreed-on set of qualification criteria not only prompts the salesperson to identify the risks of proceeding but also removes the emotional issue of qualifying out versus quitting. In this way, you have the proper expectations for the forecast because everyone is using the same standards.

What are our agreed-on criteria for pursuing this opportunity? Will they buy from anybody? Will they buy from us? How does this prospect compare with our other opportunities? Do we have the resources?

Competitive Assessment

The key to competitive tactics is timing and anticipation. A technology that prompts our thinking promotes earlier action and competitive advantage.

How do we compare against our competitor in this account? Do we have a good chance to win? What are our relative strengths and weaknesses compared with their needs? Do we have any unique differentiators? What strategies can we anticipate from each competitor? How do we beat them out of the starting blocks?

Value Linkage Chart

A tool that helps us think through our value proposition allows us to present and focus benefits and messages to the right stakeholders without them having to figure it all out by themselves (and sometimes get it wrong). How do our solutions link into their issues and needs? Who cares? Does our value proposition link into strategic initiatives or issues? What cultural, financial, political, and strategic benefits can we offer?

Stakeholder Analysis

Who will be involved in the evaluation? Who matters? What part will they play? What is their current preference? How much power and influence do they have? How do we win their vote? How can we live without their vote?

Action Plan

This is the outcome of the analysis and strategy review. It is the purpose of a sales process. Without it, people wander in an account, waiting for things to happen. The most important impact of technology in this area is the ability to adjust the plan purposefully and dynamically through online strategy conferences with teammates who may be remote.

What actions are needed to win this opportunity? Who is the owner of each action item? When is it due? How will each competitor respond?

Coaching Questions

While there is no substitute for a manager’s coaching to challenge assumptions and blind spots, embedding the list of questions to ask the customer and yourself about your strategy is a useful tool to jog salespeople’s minds about all the issues they need to cover. This “coach in a box,” in an automated opportunity management system, not only reminds reps of the training concepts back in the binder in their office but also eliminates “ambush coaching” because all the questions have been previously defined. The result is competitive information earlier and fewer blind spots later.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Sales

One of the most useful technology tools we have seen is color-coded organizational charts of the stakeholder analysis. These charts are generated automatically from the opportunity management tool that we use with our clients, and they help sales managers to immediately visualize who in the organization prefers us and how much power they have.

Most veteran managers can take one look at this and drill down to about a dozen questions that not only will purify the forecast but also will help to bring a value-added coaching session to the salesperson to improve his or her strategy.

Too often, most sales coaching consists of little more than the basic questions of “how much and when” and brings no value to the salesperson whatsoever. In discovery for a recent speech in Europe, the sales executive of a Fortune 500 company admitted, “We are a very process-oriented company, but we are under such quarterly pressure that our account reviews focus too much on when we are going to get business and how much rather than what we’re going to do to win it.”

There are questions that the sales rep asks the client. There are questions that the reps should ask themselves. And then there are questions that a coach should ask the rep. There are over 100 in all that we have documented from some of the best salespeople in the world. This is how many it takes to win a complex sale.

Traditional questions asked of salespeople by sales managers typically include, for example: What are your differentiators that will cause them to buy from you? What is the source of urgency that will cause them to buy now? How will they make the decision? Whose votes really matter on the committee? Why would they buy from you? Do enough important decision makers prefer you to win? Who cares about your benefits, differentiators, and value?

This checklist can be automated as part of a drill-down forecast so that the vice president of sales can see the manager’s confidence level in the sales plan and the chances of winning.

This practice is spotty at best in most organizations and missing altogether in many others. Look for these organizations in the financial section of the newspaper when they miss next quarter’s earnings.

Coaching in Eight Simple Questions

Exactly what the 100 questions are needs to be validated by your sales managers for your industry and solution set. It is one of the first things we do with a client. But many managers have found it helpful to categorize them into eight universal questions that everyone can keep in their head or on a wallet card:

The top salespeople we know discover 80 percent or more of the information they need early in the sales cycle and either qualify out or pursue. Mediocre salespeople usually have less than 50 percent of the information late in the game. Coaches help the average salesperson to fill in blind spots and challenge assumptions earlier to gain advantage.

A good coaching session not only can improve the chance of winning, but also improve the forecast as well. The coaching process lies above the sales process and is an “analysis of the analysis” from a more experienced eye.

Our principal, Phil Johnson, has worked with several of our clients to include the front-line sales managers’ analysis and confidence rating in the salesperson’s plan as part of the official forecasting system.

A major flaw in current forecasting philosophy is to multiply the percentage of your chances to win by the value of the deal to get an expected value for the opportunity. This is usually reduced by the manager based on his or her confidence in the rep rather than the analysis. All of the opportunities on the forecast are then combined in the hope that the law of large numbers will get us to a total figure that is somewhere close. In reality, deals are binary. You either lose them or win them.

Phil’s approach of including a confidence rating feedback system from strategy reviews ensures not only that the analysis is being conducted on a periodic basis but also that the forecast reflects the realities of winning rather than a probable expected value for each deal. This is a new way of thinking about a forecast.

There is a symbiotic relationship between good coaching questions and the activities in a best practice sales cycle. The coaching questions are what the salesperson needs to know in order to win the deal. The activities are the things the salesperson needs to do to find out what he or she needs to know.

Answering the questions isn’t about filling out a form — it’s getting the information it takes to win. If your sales management team doesn’t have the discipline to require salespeople to get this information and get it early, then your organization doesn’t have the discipline to win, no matter what technology you use.

Too often coaching is really a “review” of where you are and have been in an account or opportunity. True coaching is discussing blind spots, strategy, and actions to support both accounts and opportunities. A good coach can help a salesperson challenge what he or she doesn’t know or is assuming and then build actions to fill the gaps. A key value that coaches bring to sales reps is to anticipate competitive responses and prepare counterstrategies. Better information leads to a better strategy.

Unfortunately, a large number of deals that are on the forecast have already spun out of control owing to one event or another. Consequently, every pipeline also should include “suspects” so that sales managers can start asking pointed questions and coaching salespeople how to get in control of these deals early in the cycle. This is the difference between a forecast and a pipeline. And this is also where a good CRM system allows sales managers to track lead quality and responsiveness.

Forecast or “Pastcast”—Driving in the Rearview Mirror

Many sales managers don’t review or coach forecast and pipeline opportunities early enough to make a difference because of the current quarterly focus. Public companies’ deals generally don’t get reviewed until the quarter in which they are forecasted to close. If the average sales cycle at a company is six months, the deal is not being focused on until it is in its last 90 days.