General Sales

The FIVE Critical Sales Challenges Facing Every Company, Everywhere in 2020 ….

02.12.2020 by Admin //

I have been contemplating what I believe are the most significant challenges most companies are currently facing, and I have managed to reduce my list to just five.

Challenge One: Finding the Opportunities

I am continually surprised to discover just how few companies have a formal business development strategy. The norm appears to be “If we throw enough mud at the wall, some of it is bound to stick … eventually” For “mud” you should read “resources” This “Quixotic” mantra is costly, unproductive and naive.

There are so many solutions available today, which assist front-line sales professionals to accurately target potential clients/customers – not to mention resources like LinkedIn etc. – it is incomprehensible to me that the majority of organizations are still flailing in the dark.

For example, how many companies do you know that can tell you exactly what each lead is costing them?

Challenge Two: Sales Team Enablement

It is estimated that between 56% and 58% of front-line salesmen and women will fail to hit quota this year. Why? Targets set too high? Maybe in some cases it could be suggested that in a continuing flat-line economy, expectations were unrealistic. But my personal opinion is that we are now witnessing the inevitable results of all those training budget cuts, which were implemented three or four years ago, when the recession began to bite.

We cannot expect an under-equipped and an inadequately armed army to win battles, let alone the war.

There is ample and reliable evidence to suggest that for every $ spent on appropriate and relevant sales team development a return of $100 should be anticipated in incremental revenue gained – it isn’t rocket science.

But do note the highlighted words – appropriate and relevant

Challenge Three: Customer Retention

For more years than I can remember, I have been “crusading” for greater customer focus, and for organizations to work to prevent the constant drip, drip, drip of departing clients out of the back-end – almost as fast as new ones are coming on board at the front-end. How many times do we commentators have to point out that it costs at least 15 times more to first attract, then qualify, and then sell to a new customer as it does an existing one? How many times do we have to highlight surveys that shout at us that the most common reason companies change suppliers is because of a perceived lack of interest? 71% was the number I heard last.

How many vendors do you know who have, amongst all the data they examine every year, accurately calculated the true cost of all the customers they lost in any given period? And if you do know any, I am prepared to wager that not one of them included the total costs of winning that customer in the first place!

The reality is that standards of customer care have never been so bad – it is a self-perpetuating downward spiral. We actually no longer remember poor service, we expect it; but we are surprised when we receive good service. How sad is that?

The good news is that any company, who is prepared to raise their game by just a few percentage points, will stand out from the mediocre rest!

Challenge Four: Controlling Costs

Nobody should ever doubt that the successful formula for any company looking the survive today – let alone thrive – is to constantly look at ways to reduce costs, whilst increasing profits. Note my emphasis on profit, rather than revenue. A very wise old mentor of mine – a keen golfer – once said to me “Jonathan, we always drive for revenue, but we putt for profit” and how right he was/is.

It is a fallacy to believe the responsibility for ensuring an organization’s financial health and stability lies solely with the grey men in accounts. Every individual has a part to play, and especially the sales team – the engine room of any firm, because although it has become a well-worn cliché, nothing really does happen until we sell something.

Our role is to maximise the profitability of every single deal: That means examining the true costs.

Net margin is NOT simply selling price less buy-in price. True profitability takes into account all of the costs associated with creating the lead in the first place; it allows for all of the pre-sales meetings, including qualification, face-face presentations and negotiation – these are all time consuming and cost bearing activities. Then there is the value we must place on after-sale support, or technical input. Only when we truly understand the real cost of each sale, can we begin to understand how we are able to improve our profitability.

Much of this is down to control, and that leads me onto …

Challenge Five: Leading from the Front

The average tenure of a sales manager today is less than two years – actually, if the manager was promoted from within, because they were the most successful salesperson on the team, the average duration comes down to eighteen months. These statistics are quite shocking, but not surprising. This role has become the least secure in most organizations today.

Show me an under-performing sales team, and I will show you an incompetent, poorly trained and inadequate sales manager: This role has now become critical.

That is my five, how many more can you think of?

All Business is Good Business – Oh No it Isn’t!

04.17.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

It would be very easy to be seduced into believing that in today’s selling environment the need to rigorously qualify every opportunity at the front end of the sales/buying cycle is becoming irrelevant: Competition is tougher than ever before; customers are choosing us, rather than the other way round; quotas are being missed by a country mile; the playing field has never been flatter … all compelling reasons to conclude that all business is good business, right? No, very, very wrong!

Seasoned professionals fully understand both the value and importance of thorough objective qualification – not just at the front end, but right the way through the sales cycle. Qualification is a process, not a single event, and even internal and reactive salespeople should be fully skilled in asking a small number of basic questions regarding precise requirements, time scales, budget, competition, etc. before they are prepared to reveal their price and delivery.

As the value of the product, service or solution increases, the depth of the qualification should increase proportionally.

External salespeople have the opportunity to meet with prospective customers and it is far easier to extract information face to face than it is via the telephone. However, it is vital that some initial answers are elicited prior to that first exploratory meeting in order to ensure that the meeting will be worthwhile to both parties. With sales costs spiralling upwards and sales time becoming limited, considerable prudence is required on the part of the salesperson.

What we do now have at our fingertips, is a host of excellent software solutions that allow us access to so much valuable information, but in “big-ticket selling” nothing replaces a face to face first meeting.

During that first meeting, a considerable amount of detail can and should be confirmed – e.g. background and history of the company, the key individuals, the composition of the DMU (Decision Making Unit) if there is one, timescales, budget, competition, current suppliers, and most important of all, buying criteria, etc.

Only by rigorous questioning will the salesperson be able to answer the following questions when they get back to the office:

Is there a requirement/need that my company can satisfy?
Is it winnable at an appropriate profit level?
Do I want to win it?

The very best sales professionals will not pursue the opportunity, after proper objective analysis, if the answer to any of those questions is ‘No’. They will rather invest their precious selling time seeking out and closing opportunities that will provide a profitable return on that investment.

At the very highest selling levels – i.e. strategic “big-ticket” selling and marketing, clearly the sales cycle is much more protracted, complex and typically moves through four stages:

Rigorous opportunity assessment
Develop a strategy
Present the solution and re-assess the opportunity
Gain formal commitment, sign the order and develop

In Summary

Having a tilt at every windmill, in Quixotic fashion, that presents itself is neither practical nor profitable.

Qualification is a core competency that every professional salesperson should take on board as quickly as possible. Working to the maxim that “All business is good business” is unrealistic and totally erroneous. It takes just as long to work an unprofitable opportunity through the pipeline, only to lose it at the death, as it does a profitable one. The ability to determine which is which can have a huge impact on your ultimate success in a front-line sales role.

Are You Really Up to the Challenge of Change Required to Become a Top 5% Player?

03.25.2019 by Jonathan Farrington //

Becoming a Top 5% sales performer requires significant changes in your “world view” – how you think about yourself, and how you think about your relationships with key stakeholders. You are faced with new ways of thinking, many of which directly challenge what you have been taught and believe.

When faced with significant innovations in thinking, we tend initially to find ourselves in one of the following three characterizations:

The “Authoritative Critic”

The “Authoritative Expert”

The “Enthusiastic Apprentice”

We can think about these three characters as being on a spectrum that runs from outright rejection to eager acceptance.

As we take a brief look at each of these, allow yourself to wonder where on the spectrum you fall.

The Authoritative Critic

This individual quickly dismisses new ways of thinking, rejecting them as ridiculous, foolish and unwise.

What is this individual’s motivation? Fear of change, of loss.

The Authoritative Expert

This individual is one who typically responds to the introduction of innovative ideas by rejecting the reality that the ideas are indeed innovative. This individual is typically thinking “What’s the big deal? I’ve always done it this way.”

What is this individual’s motivation? Fear of losing face, of appearing inadequate.

The Enthusiastic Apprentice

This individual is excited by innovative thinking and is eager to learn. He/she may not understand or totally embrace the innovative concepts, but they are excited about the possibilities that well-informed change may bring about.

What is this individual’s motivation? It is hunger for knowledge and excitement about the possibilities that may come with that new knowledge.

The nature of change is dynamic. As much as we might like to believe that change is linear, the truth is that deep transformative change develops in a spiral pattern.

As you reviewed the above characteristics, you may have seen parts of yourself in each description.

Knowledge is the power. The more aware you can become of your own process of “spiralling” through the cycle of change, the more conscious and intentional you can be about choosing change, choosing growth, and choosing to become a genuine Top 5% player in the game of sales.