by Glen Springer | Apr 1, 2011
The Close – Some Common Sense Using Webster’s New Universal Unabridged
What does “Always Be Closing” mean stage by stage when Sales and Marketing are Aligned? Earn the right to close the deal with the intention of your pitch and the flavor of your content.
Close – v. 1. To unite; to coalesce; to come together.
Step 1
- First Need of your Prospect – Aware(ness) – a. 1. watchful; vigilant guarded. 2. knowing; cognizant; informed.
- First thing you need to do is to Educate – v. 1. to give knowledge or training; train or develop the knowledge of, skill or mind. 2. to form or develops one’s taste.
Step 2
- Now that you have your prospect in the right state of – Consideration n- 1. the act of considering; careful thought or attention; deliberation.
- Your job is now to Convince – v. 1. to persuade or satisfy by evidence or argument; to overcome the doubts of; to cause to feel certain.
Step 3
- Take care of Step 1 and 2 and your future customer will have a – Preference – 1. a greater liking. 2. the right, power or opportunity of prior claim. 3. something preferred, once first choice. 4. a priority or advantage.
- Don’t stop until you are done. To win requires that you continue to – Verify – v. 1. to prove to be true by demonstration, evidence or testimony; to confirm or establish the truth of.
If you cover all the bases and it’s a win for the client and a win for you we are back to – Close – a- 1. shut fast; tight; made fast. 2. having part firmly united.
by Glen Springer | Mar 18, 2011
Aligning Your Sales and Marketing Funnel starts with measurement and metrics because for operational excellence you need to set base lines. In terms of aligning sales and marketing this is especially true for three core reasons:
- It makes all the “play” very “real” by creating a scoreboard
- Your sales and marketing folks start functioning as a team instead of in silos because they have a shared goal
- You improve what you measure – it drives innovations
Making the Game “Real”
We have all watched kids at play. Take any 10 years-olds basketball game. Before the game everyone is laughing and having fun but as soon as that referee blows the whistle and the “game” starts that 10 year old’s effort and intensity increase. What has changed? One thing they are keeping score. The same effect occurs when you give your sales and marketing teams have a shared scoreboard. The only thing that counts at a kid’s soccer game is scoring more points than the competitor. The only thing that matters in your sales efforts will be closed deals.
Removing the Silos
Once you have given the shared goal of closed deals to your sales and marketing team everyone starts contributing to that effort with one focus – to do their part moving deals from one stage to the next. Everyone focuses on closing the next step. And like a kid’s basketball game everyone starts looking at the leading statistics. In basketball it’s going to be assists, fouls, rebounds etc. Everyone can get accolades for doing their part. In sales and marketing you will want to look at:
- Touches to Accepting Information
- Accepting Information to Marketing Qualified
- Marketing Qualified to Sales Accepted
- Sales Accepted to Sales Qualified
- Sales Qualified to Proposal
- Proposals to Close
What ends up happening when you are keeping the common scoreboard focused on closed deals more lead volume is not as important as quality of leads. More time is spent of qualifying deals before they are transitioned. Marketing focuses on pipe velocity as opposed to branding. When you are keeping score the relevant statistics all become focused on improvement towards a common goal – Closed Deals!
We also generally find that the entire sales process becomes more fun for the “Aligned Team”.
You Improve What You Measure
The end result is that you start driving efficiencies in your Pipe’s Velocity. Better Pipe Velocity Means More Time Spent Closing Deals! The team becomes more focused on improvement rather than being territorial.
Let’s take one example. We had a client that we had no problem getting deals in the pipe for. We had no problem taking them to proposal. That’s where deals stalled. The Marketing and Telesales team were doing a fantastic job with their specific responsibility of filling the pipe. But because we were all focused on the closed deals and measuring the pipe velocity the senior sales reps understood that if we got a prospect into a specific face to face meeting explaining the clients technical chops to their SVP of Supply Chain we won 75% of those deals. Marketing took that insight and created an abridged digital presentation that could be shared earlier in the sales process with the technical buyer to share with the SVP of Sales. Telesales then took it upon themselves to ensure that before we called a client Qualified our technical buyer needed to share that with his SVP of Supply Chain before we would scope the proposal. Because we were sharing it digitally we knew if the SVP of Sales consumed that content. When that content was consumed is when the enterprise sales rep and the professional service lead on the client side would take over the sale.
The end result was we lost deals earlier in the funnel because we discovered if they were a “true” fit earlier because we had that digital dialogue with the SVP of Supply Chain (the business buyer). The volume of the pipes Sales Qualified Deals decreased by 50% but the closing rate increased by 3X. This saved everyone in the food chain time and consequentially saved the client money. This equated to more revenue at less cost. Over time net result was that because we worked as a team we were actually able to invest the money saved on the backend (wasted enterprise reps time spent pursuing deals that were not going to close) and we were able to put more deals into the front end of the pipe for a net gain of 4X the revenue at the same time.
Everyone won. The client had more deals. The sales reps experienced more success and the technical buyer was given the tools they needed to save themselves countless hours scoping a solution that their company was not yet ready to buy. The beautiful long term output is that a year later some of those SVPs have now changed their mind and are circling back because they are ready to buy. We can guarantee that without detailed measurement of the pipe’s velocity these short term and long term gains would never have been realized.
by gabriel_sales | Feb 11, 2011
Over the past 10 years over a half dozen of our Virtual Sales and Marketing engagements have been supporting the complex sales efforts for Call Centers, Business Process Outsourcers and Knowledge Process Outsourcers. We have been the B to B sales outsourcing group for the outsourcers. This has been invaluable in helping us to learn how to provide our clients with operational excellence (we have been able to keep our finger on the pulse of innovations) and it has also given Gabriel Sales a unique perspective of why it helps to consider upfront to ensure successful engagements.
Sales Outsourcing and Marketing (all of it or just parts of it) is unlike any other outsourcing. If done correctly, with the technology now available, it’s a blend of Customer Service, Business Processes and Knowledge Processes—and still the non process Art of the Close. It’s our position that Sales in now 80% Science and 20% Art. That being the case – one thing we have learned working in outsourced models for as long as we have is that there is no one right approach to guarantee success. The more you share with your potential partner upfront the more successful you will be. We will eventually dig into all these areas in detail below.
So, to kick start this dialogue we wanted to touch on the following buckets of questions, thought starters and opinions to help those of you considering outsourcing sales (that are struggling with what to think about) some way to frame your thoughts and conversations with us upfront.
1. What am I looking to change about sales and marketing top line and bottom line? Closed deals and more revenue is just the starting point. We all know it’s about closing business. Help your partner out and go a little deeper. Am I taking a new product to market? Do I want better margins? Do I want clients that can scale? Do I want to be in a growth vertical? Do I want to sell to the budget makers not the budget spenders? Do I want to be in a new geography? Do I want to empower my channels? Is this about pipe velocity – more deals faster, better, more profitable?
2. Is managing sales teams a strength or a weakness? It’s tough to manage sales and marketing folks. Sales people especially are often the most optimistic of professionals because they need to believe to succeed. If they are not closing deals there is always one just around the corner. If you beat them up too much sales end up going sideways because they lose confidence. If you don’t hold them accountable enough the pipe never bears fruit. Does it make sense to delegate that management to a partner that is contractually bound to hit targets and Service Levels from day one?
3. Will outsourcing help me to manage my risk? This is a loaded question because the answer here will almost always be yes. Outsourced sales organizations are bound contractually to targets, reporting requirements, feedback requirements that you never get from employees. Outsourced Sales organizations get rid of your fixed costs and move them to a variable expense on your P&Ls. Outsourced sales organizations get rid of your need for hard infrastructure investments in technologies and marketing platforms. You get a Senior Sales and Marketing Talent, Executive Talent, a functioning sales machine, and marketing support for generally around the fixed cost of a senior enterprise rep. Most importantly if you are launching a new product — outsource partners provide real time market intelligence out of the gate because this is combined with their lead gen activities. You get instant sentiment and instant market pulse. Failure is generally not an option for outsourced providers so they want to fail fast, so they succeed faster.
For more on Gabriel Sales or sales outsourcing, please contact us.
