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-Zebra Chad

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste...”

The above is a quote from President elect Obama’s chief-of-staff-designate, Rahm Emanuel (pictured left), while speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO conference.

These words also apply to your sales department. What do Rahm’s words have to do with sales and selling more? Everything!

Your sales and sales management departments are competing for business in a market driven by fear and noise from the current record breaking financial crisis. Competition will come from like companies, and from every other alternative use of your prospects available discretionary capital. Don’t waste this sales crisis—retool your sales department now!

These five tips will help your company survive, stay focused, and find a position to achieve long-term growth.

1. Focus where you create verifiable value: Executives don’t want to know what you can do, they want to know what you have done—over and over again. Executives buy based on value and comfort. Expertise helps create comfort. Stay where your expertise is so strong that you have answers to questions that they don’t even know to ask! That is our definition of expertise.

2. Quantify your value: Utilizing industry statistics based value claims about your solution is weak. Specific knowledge of the business issues your solution solves, and the subsequent value generated when you solve them are paramount in this environment. Buyers want to know that your advertized results are repeatable for them.

3. Partner to verify your value: The number one reasons executives do not purchase cost justified solutions is because they don’t believe their own people “can do it”. Partner with the process and solution owners your executive decision maker trusts, to gain an understanding of the organizations readiness and ability to implement your solution. Leverage this understanding and build a proposal that has everything you know will be needed to be successful.

4. Present the EVA of your solution: In these tough economic times your greatest competition will be apathy (non-decision). Your project will compete with ever other use of the available capital dollars. To overcome apathy and fear, present the classic ROI and payback period, but also learn to present the economic value add (EVA) of your solution. EVA is the most prolific form of value claim because it demonstrates the value your solution provides over-and-above the best project return your prospect is considering.

5. Build a “force success” proposal: What amount of education will your prospect need to be successful? Include it. Are independent partners providing part of the solution? Then you will need partner management. Include it! Include a change management component in your solution. To ensuring your customer is successful and that you help “Force that Success” your proposal needs to include all of product, education, consulting, executive management, change management, partner management, and overall customer service and support needed to all but guarantee your prospect will achieve the expected value.

Grumpy Old [sales]Men

The title of this blog post is stolen from one of my favorite movies of all time - Grumpy Old Men. If you haven't seen it, it's a entertainingly sensational dramatization of what goes on when old men take to the ice.

Indeed I AM coming to you live from my ice fishing shack on beautiful Lake Poygan! ...and yes folks, it actually is the beat up old jalopy in the picture. Ahh, the wonders of a mobile office; I've got my cell phone, my laptop, and a high speed wireless internet connection courtesy of Alltel Wireless (it'd be an even better courtesy if I didn't have to pay the monthly fee for it). Not to mention the requisite modern day fishing technology; the shack may look humble, but it is equipped with a 10,000 BTU propane heater, various electronic fish locators/sonar, and even an underwater camera.

Well, you never know where inspiration will strike you, and today it struck me while I was sitting here fishing. When the fishing gets tough, just like it is right now, a good fisherman analyzes every aspect of his (or her) approach to find a way to catch fish. It's easy enough to succumb to the insanity of doing the same thing day in and day out while expecting diferent results, but that's not the approach I chose to take while investing my valueable (and limited) free time in my beloved hobby. Whether it's moving to a new location to find the fish, trying a new lure, or changing to a new tactic, this is what it takes to continue to be successful and catch fish even when others are not.

The same philosophy applies to a good salesperson. Even when times are tough, such as they definitely are with the current economic climate, a good sales person still finds a way to capitalize on the opportunity that can be found amidst the chaos. It's easy enough to revert back to old techniques just because they have worked for you in the past, but this does nothing to position you for succes in the present. On the ice, we call this fishing a memory. In sales, we call it being a has-been.

Right now is the perfect time to evaluate some of the biggest aspects of your sales process to figure out what you can do to make yourself more successful. Are you...

1. Pursuing the right prospects? (identify and target your Zebra!)

2. Targeting those prospects at the Power-level?

3. Prepared with a Power-level, value-based approach when you get there?

If the answer to any of the above questions is "No," then these are some ideas to get your sales methodolgy on track for the new year. If you need some inspiration to help you along the way, try signing up for your free subscription to Zebra University, where you will find all the sales tools and documents that we use with our customers in our consulting business.

One more caution... any new approach takes lasting dedication and discipline to make it work. It's easy when things get tough to revert back to your old ways, but try not to let this pitfall sabotage your efforts. Being succesful in today's business climate takes a different approach than it did even yesterday... Don't be a "grumpy old man" and allow yourself to revert back to your old ways of trying to land the big one. On that note, it's time for me to go try to find the fish!

Five suggested steps to reaching your sales-related New Year's resolution

1. Create your Zebra profile (if you have not already done so)
2. Practice the discipline to only pursue Zebras in 2009 and beyond
3. Learn to penetrate at the Power (decision-making) level, and stay there
4. More than double your pipeline close ratio (by only pursuing Zebras and staying at Power)
5. Earn a bigger bonus for 2009 as the result of the above! (every sales persons' goal)

Wishing a very Merry Christmas from my Zebras to yours!

A little housecleaning...

Well, I was digging through my list of "to-do's," and I realized I had promised to link to the edition of The Sales Roundup Podcast that featured an interview with Zebra Jeff and I once it became available... well, it's available, and you can listen to it HERE! The interview was a lot of fun, and features a lot of great content, including but not limited to how to "sweep" the junk out of your sales pipeline for the new year!

Speaking of rounding up a cleanup, what to do about the US Automotive Industry? Here are a few points for sales people to create some leverage in this troubled industry:

1. You can't do business the same as yesterday and expect a different result.
2. Long-term is obviously critical, but also figure out how to survive now!
3. Get “lean” in the sales department. Stop wasting sales, customers service, presales, marketing, support engineering and all of executive resources pursuing prospects who 85% of the time are not going to buy
4. Competition is not going to come just from the usual sources.... Apathy – I.e. doing nothing will be the biggest competitor. You MUST demonstrate why the next dollar spent should be with you among all the other alternatives, not just your classic competitors.
5. There is still opportunity in chaos, but you have to change to capture it.

Obviously these ideas apply beyond just the automotive industry, especially in this tough economy. No topic is more relevant right now, and I'll "drive" you towards some other ideas to reinvent your wheel in this time of crisis next time... The old car will still run, it just needs a tune up in order to make sure your competition stays in your rearview mirror for miles to come.

It's not the hours we put in, but what we put into the hours...

In the August 25/September 1, 2008 Business Week, Jim Collins (Good to Great author) article Good to Great Expectations – Jim Collins on getting to the next level referring to CEOs states: “There are only 24 hours in a day, so what difference does it really make if you work 10 hours or 14, given that there are a thousand potential hours of work”.

Nothing could be more-true for sales people. Who has more potential work to do than a sales person?

Did you know that the most competitive companies only close about 15 PERCENT of the deals in their sales pipeline? That means that salespeople, (like you), spend time with prospects who, 85 percent of the time, AREN’T GOING TO BUY!

Unless I am throwing the ball for my chocolate Lab Winnie, I hate wasting time (actually I feel that this is anything but wasting time – but you get the idea).

There is a better way. Figure out what not to do. Put prospects that don’t belong on your forecast on you “Do not do list”. Figuring out what not to do is more important than figuring out what to do. From experience I personally know that following this approach will help you land 90 percent of the business you pursue.

Also, think about your answers to these questions:

1. Why are you successful?
2. How do you know when you are going to win?
3. Are you objectively analyzing your sales strategy to make sure your actions are as focused as possible??

Finally, here are links to two great blogs from Sales 2.0, one old and one new, that address the topic of this blog:

"Choose your Hot Prospects Carefully"

&

"Are You Losing Them at Hello?" by Jill Konrath