Dave Stein: Proponents of employing a formal sales process in B2B selling say it’s the key to winning.  Opponents say it inhibits the creativity that salespeople need to get the job done.  What is Kadient’s perspective on the importance of sales process?

Kadient Team (KT): Kadient is a proponent of employing a formal sales process (the science) and believes that in doing so, there is still plenty of room to allow a salespeople to be creative (the art) in how they engage and deliver within a formal sales process.  Deploying a sales process will allow an organization to identify (and learn) what the successful, repeatable sales activities are and what the quota-achieving reps do to succeed in specific selling situations. This information is what will help drive improved sales results across the board.  If a company is not working to formalize its sales processes, they are simply being negligent as there is widespread proof from analysts that deploying a formal sales process drives significant improvements in overall sales performance compared with those who do not.  We embrace a concept that our Sales Playbooks are “guardrails” for the sales reps and not a set of “handcuffs.”  This allows the new sales rep in an organization to use and follow as much of the sales playbook that they need to become revenue producing as fast as possible.  And, for the experienced sales person, the Sales Playbook is designed to give them the key activities and content they need to move their opportunity forward faster and allow them to take on more opportunities in their pipeline.

DS: Explain to us what sales playbooks are.

KT: While sales playbook is not a new term, traditionally they are synonymous with a pitch book, champion kit or the 25 lb. binder provided to a sales person following a sales kick off or sales training. They contain all of the information used to educate sales for delivering a company’s products and solutions. Some have moved to delivering them electronically on a CD, DVD, Thumb-Drive, or through a smattering of links on a company’s intranet.

Kadient has taken the notion of the traditional sales playbook and made them interactive, dynamic and embedded them within the CRM system. Kadient’s Sales Playbooks align situation-specific sales and marketing strategies, content, tools, and coaching with the customer’s buying cycle / company’s sales process. They maximize sales productivity by delivering this information contextual to the selling situation that a salesperson is working, all within the system where they work their opportunities—their CRM.

DS: How do they help salespeople win business?

In today’s technology enabled world, information about a company, its products, value proposition and competition are readily available and buyers are more knowledgeable than ever before.  Kadient Sales Playbooks spotlight what a salesperson needs to do next to advance an opportunity and reinforces the sales process/sales training with proven sales strategy and tactics. Salespeople are able to drill down into specific activities they need to execute, and complete them, right from within their CRM and in doing so, they are provided with the right information they need to have the meaningful conversations required to advance and close opportunities. Specific competitive sharp sticks, the precise value statements for the products they are selling, and the exact proof points they need for a particular type of opportunity are served up to them—when they need them.

DS: Would you share with us a customer success?

KT: Polycom, the world leader in unified communications, has enabled their global sales force with Kadient Playbooks. In just 6 weeks, Polycom rolled out 12 vertical based playbooks whose use has resulted in significant productivity increases across their salesforce.  Experienced and newer salespeople have been using these playbooks to get to the information they need to work their opportunities much more efficiently than in the past and they have the confidence that the content they are being served up through playbooks is relevant, correct and current.

It’s not just about time savings, though, it’s about changing and improving the way salespeople sell.  Larry Ball, Senior Director of Global Sales Enablement, says, “We have a vast array of products reps are expected to sell. If reps aren’t comfortable with the products or solution positioning, they default back to what they know. Playbooks give them the confidence to have conversations about all our solutions and not just stick with what they know.”

Polycom is leveraging the playbooks analytics at all levels of their organization to  deliver to the bottom line and get a better handle of forecast, “The forecast metrics are key – specifically, knowing if a deal is over or understated,” says Larry. “This information is tremendously useful for every sales manager who doesn’t have the time to go on sales calls but does have to forecast. This way they can know if the numbers they are getting from their salespeople are real or not.”

Note: ESR published an ESR/Brief™ on Kadient entitled, Kadient—A Helping Hand in Sales Process.  It can be downloaded for $29.95 from ESR’s website.

Photo credit: Fotolia.com

I asked tough questions during the briefing, but I got answers that made sense.  Every one of them.

They suggested that I log onto the new Dealmaker Genius customized opportunity management process application.  A few days later I did.

Here’s how it works:  Based upon the industry you’re selling into, how your customers buy, and certain characteristics regarding your sales approach, products and services, the application poses a series of questions about what it takes to successfully manage a sales opportunity.  It proposes a very comprehensive list of qualification criteria, allowing you to accept, change, or delete.  You can add criteria as well.  When your list is complete, it then cycles back and asks for the importance, or weighting factor, for each criterion.

The end result is a documented sales process, replete with metrics—for example, how much potential business must be in each stage for a rep to achieve their targets.

The results of this process documentation exercise can be incorporated into The TAS Group’s Dealmaker sales performance automation application. But here’s the thing…  The output from the 15-minute exercise can be used as a stand-alone tool as well, or as the foundation for customizing their existing CRM application.

Powerful.

Here’s my quote from the press release:  “For the experienced sales leader, this is better than sliced bread.  Rather than spending time and money on tips and tricks with little sustained impact, being able to create a customized sales process for their own business can set them on the path to lasting, measurable sales performance improvement.”

This is another big step by The TAS Group in providing sales professionals with appropriate technology that will enable them to be more effective and efficient.

I’d be hard-pressed to accept any excuses from process-averse sales leaders as to why they wouldn’t avail themselves of this tool and the benefits that it will bring.

Photo: © Albert Lozano-Nieto – Fotolia.com

1. Sales training is most often reactive. We ask VP of sales what their sales training strategy is.  The answers we get would indicate that many either don’t understand what the word strategy means or they do, but it doesn’t apply to training and developing their own people.  A tactical approach to sales performance improvement is as much a contradiction in terms as I can imagine.  It doesn’t work.
   

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2. Wrong people in the sales and sales management positions. I’ve written about this before.  It’s a very, very serious problem.  ESR estimates that mis-hiring will continue to significantly hinder sales effectiveness in 2010 with only a single-digit increase in the number of companies employing a formal hiring methodology for sales people and managers.  We need to fix that.
   

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3. Selling requirements are not really understood. When ESR assesses our client’s sales effectiveness, we often uncover things that they themselves don’t see or understand.  If a company delivers sales training without an objective and comprehensive understanding of their sales-related challenges, it just won’t be effective.  And companies do that every day.
   

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4. No foundation methodology in place. I hope you’ve been reading what experts like Jonathan Farrington and Dave Brock have been posting about sales methodology and process.  Check out the leading industry experts’ research reports.  Is there any question at all that a sales methodology must be the backbone of a company’s sales approach?  I write about this subject often as well.  Let me ask a simple question.  If you don’t train sales reps on how to effectively and efficiently use your sales process, what do you train them on?  Some isolated tactics?  A few tricks and tips?  We’ll never get to real sales productivity that way.  If it was going to work, it would have worked by now, right?
   

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5. Flawed training company selection. Literally every day I speak with buyers of sales training who have, as a group, been through all the programs with all the leading trainers.  Yet they are still seeking the right trainer.  No sales trainer fits every training situation.  In fact, no sales trainer fits most situations.  The ones ESR covers are very good—industry leading, in fact—for specific situations.  When a company selects the wrong partner for their unique situation, it’s like going to an ear, nose and throat doctor when you’ve cracked a tooth.  Same general area, but oh, so wrong.
   

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6. No measurement. Al Case and I just completed a feature article for ASTD’s T+D magazine about how to measure sales performance improvement.  There is absolutely no reason why sales trainers and their clients can’t work together to specifically measure not only the financial impact of the training (and process) work, but also use a measurement system to assure that everyone is adhering to what they learned.  I’ll have a downloadable PDF for you on this subject when the article is published.  (Good reason to subscribe to this blog!)
   

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7. Having a traditional, live, instructor-led training approach only. If you are not leveraging technology to deliver learning, you’re behind the times.  If you insist that your salespeople can only learn sardine-canned into a conference room at an airport hotel, you’re wrong.  These days, technology-enabled learning has come a long way.  Companies like The Brooks Group, The TAS Group, Richardson, Miller Heiman, Imparta, SPI and others have developed some innovative learning (and in some cases, selling) applications.
   

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8. Sacrificing learning reinforcement and coaching. The importance of learning reinforcement (including coaching) is undisputed among researchers and impartial experts in the sales effectiveness industry.  Event-based training without reinforcement is a waste of time and money.
   

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9. Lack of investment in tools to support new selling requirements. Although there are wide variations depending on industry, salespeople need technology not only to learn more, but specifically to sell more effectively and efficiently as well.  They need tools to manage their pipelines, accounts, opportunities.  They need tools for research, networking, communication, collaboration, gaining knowledge, creating and finding leads.  Do we leave them to fend for themselves?  All of this must be integrated into a strategic approach to sales effectiveness, of which training, of course, is a critical component.
   

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10. The disconnect between corporate learning and sales. In many larger companies there is a long-lived disconnect between the training and sales departments.  There are numbers of reasons for this.  A team of us working with Brian Lambert at ASTD are tackling this issue head-on in 2010.  For now, so long as that disconnect exists, sales is disadvantaged.
    

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11. The continued hope that tips, tricks, and new toys will save the day. I can’t ever leave this point out.  Look here for more.
    

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12. Reduced budgets for sales training. The stats aren’t in but we expect the sales training spend in 2009 to be way, way down.  Buyers of sales training won’t really every be able to get the protected budgets they need until they track the results of training and can provide a credible, achievable ROI to executive management.
    

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Here they are again:

Those are the challenges that every sales trainer and every company looking to improve the effectiveness of their sales team must overcome.  Let me know how I can help.

I’m not going to put forward any more arguments on the subject of whether or not process important in selling.  There is enough research out there—from ESR, from other research firms, and a there is a wheelbarrow full of studies and surveys from vendors like HR Chally, Miller Heiman, and many more—that proves that employment of a pragmatic, widely complied-with sales methodology (and its associated processes) results in more sales, often at higher contract values, with shorter times to close.  It’s a fact.

Just for clarification, allow me to define two often confused terms:

Methodology: A formal, documented and universal system consisting of processes, methods, principles, tools, learning, approaches, strategies and measurement designed, built and supported for the purpose of achieving sales effectiveness.

Process: A formal or informal, documented or undocumented systematic series of actions or steps directed to achieving a specific goal.  We want formal and documented processes.  Examples would be qualification process, hiring process and opportunity management process.  Informal and undocumented processes, when placed in the hands of process-averse managers and salespeople, just don’t get followed.

So what’s my problem?  The ever-expanding list of excuses from some sales leaders as to why process (they really mean methodology) isn’t good for them, their companies, and their sales teams.

Most recently I heard, “It stifles creativity.”

Any sales trainer or consultant who takes a strategic approach to sales effectiveness will tell you that when they build a methodology with their client, they have a full understanding of where creativity, and adaptability, and accountability, and any other “-ilities” are required and how flexibility for those capabilities (two more “-ilities”) get built in.  Personally, I’ve been involved in methodology-building dozens of times across many industries.  Not only do we allow for the “art” component of selling—in fact we encourage it.  We encourage creativity.  We build in room, guidance, and support for the relationship building and other non-scientific aspects of effective selling.  But we don’t allow every salesperson to follow their own path, in their own way.

If it’s not defending a “no process” philosophy with the stifle creativity argument, it’s:

• “It’s more work for the reps.”
• “Every customer is different so a standard process won’t work.”
• “Things change too quickly for a standard process.”
• “My reps won’t follow one.”
• “My reps don’t need one.”
• “When I was a carried a bag, I was successful and I didn’t follow a process.”
• “All my reps need is some cold-calling training.”
• “Selling is an art and not a science.  Leave process to the engineers.”
• “They’re too rigid.”

Of all the excuses we regularly hear, none of them is valid.  Not a single one.

So, to you sales leaders who struggle to make your numbers and hop from job to job every 19 months or so: ask yourself why you’re ignoring the facts and still not doing the single most important thing that will enable you and your team to be more effective.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ve heard enough excuses.

Tom is a 20-year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry, with a diverse set of global experience crossing sales (direct, indirect and inside), channel management, marketing, SFA/CRM, consulting, finance, legal, training, systems and operations.   He is currently General Manager of Channels at Force Management, LLC.  He’s got quite a background including full or part-time roles with Channel Enablers Pty Ltd., Think! Inc., OnTarget Inc./Siebel Sales Methodology Experts, and Miller Heiman, Inc., where Tom was President, North America.

Over the course of a few days in Orlando, Tom and I compared notes on a number of important issues germane to sales trainers, sales training companies, and buyers of sales training.  The result is this “discussion” I’ve reconstructed with Tom’s help.

Dave Stein: On the subject of content and IP (Intellectual Property) licensing fees… I know you have worked on a large number of methodology licensing deals, especially while you were at OnTarget/Siebel. Do you think those deals were good for customers and for the training companies?

Tom Martin: A lot of training firms started to do license deals because customers asked for them without understanding the impact of some of their decisions. For example, most training firm standard licensing wording does not benefit the customer if they want to seamlessly integrate IP from multiple suppliers.   License deals could become better deals for both the seller and buyer by expanding their thinking beyond simply price, volume and terms length.

DS: Almost every corporation we’ve worked with has an amalgam of methodologies, processes, terminology, tools, and coursework from multiple vendors.  I suspect, according to the strict licensing wording in many vendors’ contracts, these companies are in violation of some contracts.

While we were talking after my keynote speech at the SMT conference you commented about how many veterans of the high-tech world don’t pay much attention to most sales training because they say they’ve heard it all before in a prior training class and have even heard the same “war stories” used by different training firms.

TM: To some extent, that’s true. Many training firms were founded by alumni of other firms and their courses often have substantial similarity to each other, while legally being new copyrightable works.  Some trainers who have “adopted” others’ approaches would say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

DS: Of course if you’ve had your content pirated, as I have, you might not be in such a benevolent state-of-mind. I’ve got a folder with emails from vendors who accuse others of stealing their stuff.  I know it goes on.  More often that the general public knows or cares about.

TM: There are some great new elements, often from lesser known firms, but you and I agree that many (but not all) of the 20-year old selling concepts are still valuable to some salespeople.

DS: That’s why I founded ESR—to end the destructive cycle of selecting the wrong sales training companies for the wrong reasons.

TM: I should also mention that what I see differentiating competing training firms most often is not their core content but their implementation approaches – these vary far more widely.

DS: Some very successful sales leaders we’ve worked with don’t worry much about which sales methodology they use.  They’re only focused on compliance, measurement, and ongoing process improvement.

TM: Then there is the all-to-common situation where new training initiatives are commenced by a VP Sales new in their job. Someone who wants to bring in “their” language and so they often force 200 people to learn something new as opposed to the VP learning something different—or being open to finding a way to blend the two.

DS: We see that a fair amount ourselves.  When you think about the average tenure of a sales VP being less than two years, there may be a link here, or I should say, maybe a link needs to be broken.  Too many sales training buyers pick a vendor based only upon comfort, past experience, whoever is “hot,” etc.  It happens all the time

We also talked 2 weeks ago about how training firms can make it difficult for a past client to integrate their methodology with complementary methodologies from other firms.  With the DealMaker Partner Network and WhiteSprings helping customers address this to some extent do you see a shift coming in the market?

TM: I could make the analogy between the cell phone market and training – now we’re able to keep the same phone number when we change carriers and in some cases we can take a phone from one carrier to another—all because consumers demanded more power in the relationship.  I expect more and more mid-sized firms to be demanding licensing rights around derivative works and the ability to integrate multiple methodologies without being held hostage because their contract wasn’t set up with those rights.  The largest firms have been doing this for the past five years so I think it will trickle down to smaller and smaller firms until it is a generally accepted standard in the market.  Some training firms will fight this but it’s the right thing to do for clients.

DS: Yes, I think some of these restrictions are very one-sided—the vendor’s side. Some vendors collect big licensing fees each year for delivering no new value.  Someone bought their stuff ten years ago, signed an agreement and they’re stuck.  Some of ESR’s work with training and methodology buyers raises brings this issue into the light of day.  We want vendors to make a profit and continue to invest in new products and services.  On the other hand, there has to be value for the buyers’ investments.  Paying royalties on the use of an irrelevant, decade-old training manual, a term, a word, or an outdated form doesn’t make sense from their perspective.  Just today a large buyer of sales training invested in ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide as a first step in firing their current, well-known provider for precisely this reason.

What do you see out there with respect to integrating methodologies, Tom?

TM: There are some training firms that do a nice job as “methodology integrators” but I think too many customers allow themselves to be forced to treat every set of training IP as its own silo, which ends up minimizing the effectiveness of their sales people and especially their sales managers.  The sales manager does a deal review and has to pull out pages with all the Opportunity Management  methodology information, then another set of pages for the Negotiation element, then more pages about the Questioning program from a different vendor, and then when they are done they create a Sales Call Plan from a different vendor that is less useful because it doesn’t have all the right Opportunity Management and negotiation words—and can’t because no one has the legal right to create that amalgamation and it’s too much legal hassle to ask for it.

The result is that sales managers are burdened with 3-inch-thick, 3-ring binders that they rarely pick up because they’re simply not usable. What is more “sales-consumable,” in the words of Force Management’s Grant Wilson, is being able to manage your sales force with no more than 10 well-designed pages. I first saw the 10-page sales manager playbook when I attended Force Management’s “Command of the Plan” training and wished I could go back 10 years in time—I didn’t enjoy life as a front-line sales manager because I had a stack of 3-ring binders and wonder how much life would have changed with the elegant simplicity of a 10-page manager playbook.

Photo: © RTimages – Fotolia.com

I picked up a tweet from Kadient’s Rich Berkman (@richberk) last week about a new guide they had just published, How to Create Killer Sales Playbooks: Four Steps for Designing Sales Playbooks that Win Deals.

Just from the title, I was immediately encouraged.  Here’s why:

1. I believe in sales playbooks. I’ve used them and have recommended them to clients, who generally saw significant performance improvement;
2. “Four Steps” represents process and sales leaders and sales people can often use a lot more of that;
3. The guide is focused on winning deals.

I downloaded the guide and read through it.   These guys from Kadient get it.  Here’s a quote from the guide (with permission).  Highlights are mine:

Whether you decide to begin with a top-down or bottom-up approach, your playbooks should be aligned with your sales process.

“But, wait,” you say. “We don’t have a sales process!” This is a very common situation. Chances are that you do have some process or steps that define the stages of your sales cycle. Sales playbooks are an excellent organizational hub for defining them. Also, every organization has successful salespeople who are following their own processes.

If you don’t have a defined process, you can still get started quickly by defining a baseline set of sales stages and then using playbooks as your organizing tool for its development. Focus on mapping out your existing sales-to-buyer lifecycle or process. Some of the most successful playbooks have been those designed from a blank slate or ones in which it was decided that the sales process would be reinvented through the use of sales playbooks.

If you have a sales process (or multiple ones), align it with your customers’ buying cycle and create a map for your sales playbook. The goal is to stimulate a conversation between seller and buyer-the seller diagnosing the buyer’s needs and then providing the buyer with the right information at the right time.

In addition to directing salespeople to what they should do at each stage of the sales cycle, mapping will also identify specific activities that need to be completed to advance deals. This should illustrate how your sales teams engage with customers at every stage of the buying process.

You can download the guide here (registration required).  I highly recommend it.

Photo credit: © Sharpshot – Fotolia.com

As you can see, the process is considerably more comprehensive than you might think. Clients ask us, “Do we really have to do all this just to do some sales training?” Our answer is, “Only if you want it to work.” (Thanks, John Zobel.)

Here’s another taste of what’s in our Guide:

Resources: 

• ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide :: Third Edition
• Understanding, Defining and Meeting Your Sales Training Requirements

Here’s what’s been going on at ESR:

• A large client in the financial services sector is working very hard to keep their sales opportunities from coming down to price.  That tendency is considerably worse right now than it’s been in previous years.  They have superior service, a stellar reputation, a world-class team, enviable financial viability, and other significant customer-focused advantages. But in many situations, it’s a challenge to get the customer to acknowledge the direct link from all those capabilities to measurable business value for them.  The client is becoming considerably better a competing, employing advanced selling skills, strategies and tactics for overcoming price disadvantage, when it exists.  Even though demand is up, commoditization is the biggest challenge.  All in all, a challenging year.  I believe they’ll get through this pretty well, with everything considered.
• A smaller client is facing other challenges.  They are doing well at demand creation.  A strong marketing function is serving the sales team well.  However, they’re facing the all-too-common 80/20 situation.  The 20% of the reps that are bringing in the deals are top quality.  The company has to make a move to redeploy the reps who can’t be trained and coached into a higher level of sales productivity.  Also, the company is relatively process deficient.  They possess a single, high-level Powerpoint slide that represents their selling process, but it is in no way sufficient to drive consistent performance across an entire sales team.  The good news is that a strong management team is determined to overcome the challenges they have.  We’re working with the CEO who will be driving the transition to a more effective sales capability.  They aren’t looking for shortcuts.
• One Fortune 500 company is coaching us through creation of a collaborative proposal for ESR to perform an assessment of their global sales approach and capabilities.  That will result in an RFP and a vendor evaluation and selection process.  They need to transition from the commodity approach they employ now to a more collaborative and consultative relationships with customers.  They are seeking a long-term sales training/consulting partner.  We are delighted that they are taking a strategic approach to sales effectiveness. They aren’t looking for shortcuts either.
• Another Fortune 25 is in an enviable position with regard to the stimulus package and Obama’s strong energy initiatives.  They want to make the most out of this situation.  We’re providing guidance to them on the right approach for re-engineering their sales processes as well as in selecting a training partner.  They’ll only have one chance to get this right, and they know it.  No shortcuts here either.
• ESR is working with a leading sales training company, surveying the effectiveness of social media in B2B selling.  I’ll provide a link to the short survey soon.
• ESR has been investigating and evaluating the use of virtual worlds—mainly Second Life—for training and strategic account management among some very large corporations.  Anders Gronstedt is the expert in this area when applied to sales effectiveness and training.  We’ll be reporting on Second Life in March.
• Having suffered through a number of delays, ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, Third Edition will be published.  Right now, I’m the bottleneck.
• Within a week ESR will be publishing a research update on Sales 2.0.  I’ve been writing about this subject a lot on this blog.  I’m very concerned about all the hype around Sales 2.0 and that it is distracting many companies from doing the right things to improve sales effectiveness.  Al Case, our Principal Analyst, performed the research and is authoring the reports.  I’m certain they’ll be enlightening because we’re unbiased, objective and don’t have any Sales 2.0 products or services to sell you.
• We’re working with a few trainers looking to sell or license their IP.  At the same time we are in discussions with several entrepreneurs looking to invest, in one form or another, in sales training IP.  Lots of phone calls and a bit of match making.
• We’ve got a number of events coming up:
  • FranklinCovey Sales Performance Group — Wed, March 11, 1:00 pm ET — Strategies For Getting Your Customers Through the Financial Crisis A webinar.
  • The TAS Group — April 8th — Time and subject to be announced for this webinar.
  • Callidus Software — June 26 — Sales 2.0: How to Realize the Full Potential Value – A webinar.
  • Boston Conferencing — July 30 — Hiring Salesreps and Managers That Get The Job Done A paid webinar.
  • We’re presenting at ASTD’s ICE conference May 31 to June 3: How to Measure Sales Performance Improvement
  • I’ll be keynoting at SMT’s annual conference October 14-16
  • Assorted presentations at different internal company events…
• Lots more going on, including a new ESR website, new value for our subscribers, and a few new, exciting initiatives.

We at ESR are fortunate, at least for the moment.  We see opportunity.  Our clients need our guidance.  So long was we can directly contribute to them getting through these tough economic times, they’ll be OK and therefore we will as well.

Photo credit: © Stephen Coburn – Fotolia.com

Elizabeth shared with me that her firm just added 15 sales consultants and kicked off a new partnership in India.  They have a new program, Securing Strategic Appointments, in which the participants learn, among other things, how to craft the right message, with valid business reasons, to meet with customer executives.  In addition, the program lays out specific plans for getting those critical appointments.  Elizabeth says there is a lot of interest in using these skills for selling to the government.

We talked about the economy and travel restrictions.  Miller Heiman has set up additional public sessions.  I wrote a post about public sales training sessions a while back.  They are, under certain circumstances, something to consider.

Elizabeth and I discussed technology as well.  According to Elizabeth, Miller Heiman has made significant progress with their e-learning offerings and their sales enablement tools that integrate with the top nine CRM systems (through White Springs).  Miller Heiman consultants are also now performing Blue Sheet reviews via webinars and conference calls, helping to keep their customers’ costs down.

Back to Miller Heiman’s marketing.  Miller Heiman’s brand equity is substantial.  That’s not only because they’ve been around for thirty years.  (Other training companies have been around that long or nearly that long.)  So far as sales training companies are concerned, Miller Heiman is predominant on the Web.  I’ve got Miller Heiman tagged in Google Alerts, as well as 40 or so other sales training companies.  There is no question that Miller Heiman significantly outnumbers the others with hits coming from blogs, articles, other companies’ websites (Hoover, for example), conference agendas, news, and other sources.

“Strategic Selling,” a trademarked Miller Heiman brand, is certainly widely recognized, but has become so often used generically, that it may not be connected to Miller Heiman as often as they would like.  This is similar to the issue that SPI has with their trademarked “Solution Selling.”

Miller Heiman’s leadership position in marketing isn’t something to take lightly.  After all, with the close relationship sales should have with marketing in most companies, a training company’s ability to market themselves effectively is a proof statement of an understanding of some of the most important issues, isn’t it?

Finally, this all may sound terrific to you if you’re searching out a sales training company. I can only warn you that selecting Miller Heiman or any other company based upon this or any other one-page write up is precisely the wrong thing to do.  ESR’s Sales Training Vendor Guide, Third Edition, will be published later this month.  In the Guide, Miller Heiman and two dozen other providers are evaluated, compared and contrasted.

Disclosure:  Miller Heiman subscribes to ESR’s research.

Photo credit: DesignImage.com

Researchers collected data on nearly 8,000 patients who were operated on in eight hospitals scattered around the world. As a basis for comparison, about half the patients underwent surgery before the checklist was adopted. The death rate fell from 1.5% to 0.8%, and the rate of inpatient complications fell from 11% to 7%.

As a pilot, I’m always aware that while flying and on the ground, lives depend on me not missing any steps or getting them out of order.  Make sure propeller area is clear before starting engine.  Landing gear extended before touching down on runway.  It’s amazing how many pilots don’t use a checklist and execute wheels-up landings.   (Note:  I wrote this post literally as US Airways Flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson River.  There is no doubt in my mind that the event would have been a disaster had the pilots not executed their emergency engine-failure and water-ditching checklists. )

ESR estimates that 80% of sales opportunities are lost due to either ineffective qualification or ineffective planning.  Every sales plan I’ve ever written has had a checklist.  What’s a sales plan without a list of events, activities, calls, meetings, and tactics—a checklist?

A top salesrep I mentored almost missed his number one year because he didn’t have a checklist.  Here’s what happened:

He was selected at a division of a Fortune 500.  The VP of Manufacturing was his sponsor.  The solution was $1.5 million of ERP software and related services.  During a conversation about the opportunity, I asked him whether the appropriation was on the agenda for approval at the next board meeting, the last of his company’s fiscal year.  The silence on the other end of the phone was my answer.  “I’ve never forgotten to check that before,” he said.  I believed him, but he forgot this time.  I held on as he called his sponsor on his cell phone.  The item had not been added to the board’s agenda for that next meeting.  A quickly executed series of calls got the item on the agenda and the rep got his dea.

A checklist is a simple way to instill some discipline into a salesperson or sales team.  There is very useful technology that will support building a series of pre-ordered events and steps for a sales process and for monitoring execution.  But in the absence of a tool like that, an Excel-based checklist will get the job done.

When you think about it, the checklist is nothing more than a to-do list.  The difference is the checklist is built for multiple sales opportunities.  Here’s one you can download, with my compliments.  It was used as an example in my book, How Winners Sell. It’s very simple, but will get you moving in the right direction if this is a challenge for your sales team.

If you don’t know whether your sales team needs a formal checklist as part of their standard sales planning regimen, ask them, “What are the next five things that need to be done, in order, to advance this sale?”  The answer will reveal a lot.

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