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7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
The trends are not good when judging the effectiveness of small and mid-market B2B sales efforts.
- According to recent purchasing surveys, as many as 40% of organizational buying processes are ending in a “no decision.”
- A recent research project done by the Wall Street Journal demonstrated that on 37% of salespeople were actually effective, and a comprehensive research project done by The Sales Research Council shows number worse than that.
- Margin and pricing pressure continues to mount on businesses, even as we emerge from deep recession.
- Finding good salespeople is tougher than ever.
Most companies continue to struggle to find a successful growth formula that will work in the short-, mid-, and long-term. There are, however, a few businesses that have transformed the challenges before them into a significant advantage over their competition. They’ve developed new ways to shorten the sales cycle, bypass competition and grow margins.
These companies understand that their sales process is the most powerful leverage point available to their business. Companies that are able to materially shorten the sales cycle enjoy huge advantages over their competitors.
- They need less money or capital to grow.
- They are able to capture more revenue without adding people.
- They enjoy a significant cost advantage.
- They’re margins and profits are substantially higher.
Shortening the sales cycle should be a key objective for every growing company. Yet, only about 5 – 10% of small and mid-market B2B companies are able to do so consistently.
Make sure you’re one of them!
Join us on May 23rd at 2pm EDT, as we share the secrets to shortening your sales cycle in our latest webinar.
7 Steps to Shortening Your Sales Cycle
May 23, 2012
2pm EDT
Stop Letting Your Salespeople Down
The days of sending your salespeople into the field (or allowing them to wait for prospects to come to them) armed with product brochures, company glossies and boring PowerPoint presentations and expecting them to “dig deep,” “discover,” engage and close are over!
Today’s world is too tough and too competitive, you’re customers are too time-pressed and overwhelmed with other issues, and your salespeople must deal with unprecedented complexity. Your organization can longer leave it to each salesperson to manage their sales effort independently.
Great companies have seized the opportunity presented by this challenge and are investing the time and resources necessary to create an organizational approach to sales. These companies understand that to gain an advantage and drive powerful results, the organization must provide their salespeople the:
- Provocative story to open doors and gain buyer attention,
- Ongoing, effective communication of this story to their market,
- Sales tools that support the salesperson’s ability to share the story,
- Diagnostic protocol, training and insights needed to enable the salesperson to tailor the story to their prospect, and
- Road maps to enable the salesperson to choose their actions and anticipate what’s next.
While investing in this effort is certainly an undertaking, the pay-off is huge. Companies that successfully implement this approach see their salespeople produce 200% more than the average in sales, while the profit difference is typically 4x – 10x average.
Plus, these companies build a momentum that makes sales and growth almost effortless, while the companies that are still doing things the old way are finding the market increasingly difficult and treacherous.
And please note, if you have great salespeople that are successful even without this type of support, you’re in grave danger of losing those salespeople to organizations that provide this support, where they’ll make more money and not have to work as hard.
Successfully Hiring Salespeople
For 25 years the most frequent question I’ve gotten about sales efforts deals with successfully hiring salespeople. For small and mid-market companies (SME), hiring salespeople is the single, toughest and highest risk hire you can make. It’s what led me to write The 10 Most Common Mistakes Made When Hiring Salespeople.
Studies show that the mis-hire rate is as high as 75%, and that the total cost of a mis-hire is between 10 & 20 times the expected compensation rate.
My philosophy has always been that I’d rather have a bad salesperson than a good salesperson.
- When a salesperson is bad, letting them go is an easy decision and doing so minimizes the risk and cost implications.
- When they’re good, it’s almost (key word – almost) impossible to let them go. You constantly see the potential they have. Plus, there’s the feeling that having someone out there is better than having no one.
The problem is that good salespeople is that they commoditize your offerings. They never achieve that trusted advisor status that makes customers, clients and prospect truly value the salesperson or your company. The opportunity cost with good is huge.
The reality is that SMEs need great salespeople to grow and thrive. The problem is that most SMEs are not positioned to attract, recruit or retain great salespeople.
It is for this reason that I’ve put together my best thoughts, experiences and process that I’ve developed over the last 25 years.
I’ll be sharing my insights in our March 27th webinar: The Secrets to Successfully Hiring Salespeople.
I’ll be sharing:
- The 5 deadly myths that destroy your ability to hire salespeople successfully.
- The 4 sales roles, and how understanding those roles will multiply the effectiveness of your sales hiring.
- How to develop a system that will make you company a manufacturer of great salespeople.
- Develop effective measurements and metrics to ensure the wrong person doesn’t stay.
So join me on March 27th at 2 pm EST, and learn how to make the sales hiring process successful and predictable.
Someone Has To Write It
In the last week I’ve had at least five conversations about the importance of content to support the sales and marketing process. It’s probably a result of the Making Marketing Work webinar we held last week, but the resistance seems to be the same with everyone.
We talk about the importance of content, the strategy to direct the content and the incredibly positive impact this approach has on sales results. Inevitably, the person I’m discussing this with acknowledges the weaknesses they have without it, and its benefits. Then I get the “but.” As in, “But, someone will have to write the content, and keep it fresh and up-to-date.”
My response? “Damn right someone has to do that!”
What do they expect? Look, we live in an incredibly intense and competitive marketplace today. There’s tremendous pressure on margins and differentiating is tougher than ever. Do people really think they can accelerate profitable growth, scale a company and maximize their equity value without expending significant effort?
Companies that do not have an adequate marketing cultivation system suffer extreme limits to their sales ability. Our research demonstrates that the results of sales efforts are reduced by 30 – 70%. The most direct way to doubling your profits isn’t hiring more salespeople, it’s implementing an effective cultivation program. But, yeah, that takes time and effort.
If you’re struggling to find the resources to support the effort, here’s my recommendation: allocate the expense of a salesperson to support the effort. Think about it, if you’ve got 3 salespeople and you eliminate 1 to implement such a program, you’ll still come out 25 – 50% ahead.
Full disclosure – my company develops, implements and/or manages marketing cultivation programs for small and mid-market companies. The reason we do it is because of the impact we’ve seen when a company has such a program versus what happens when a company doesn’t.
Harness The Power of Effective B2B Marketing
In July of 2011, I wrote a somewhat controversial rant as to why marketing just doesn’t work for the vast majority of small and mid-market (SME) B2B companies. As John Wanamaker famously said, “I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.” If you’re involved in a small or mid-market B2B company, you probably wish you were only wasting half.
In our experience, those companies that even do marketing not only find that half of their marketing efforts are a waste, but the half that is having impact is only creating about 50% of the results is should be. And it’s costing your company millions in lost opportunities.
This is the largest vulnerability facing SME’s. Ineffective marketing processes put far too much pressure on your sales efforts, making them less effective in both closing business and protecting your margins. An effective B2B marketing process is critical do either improve sales results, decrease sales costs or too do both.
Next Wednesday, January 18th we’ll share the inside secrets that will allow SME’s to double the impact of their sales efforts, without hiring another salesperson. Join us for:
Making Marketing Work:
Harness The Power of Effective B2B Marketing to Leverage Your Sales Efforts
The best companies in the world know the power and leverage that marketing provides – allowing them to break free and bypass competition why driving tremendous profitability.
In this program we’ll share:
- The 3 critical mistakes SMBs make that cause their sales costs to skyrocket and reduces your closing rates
- A 5-Step Marketing System that directly connects marketing efforts to sales and allows you to gage the ROI of EVERY activity
- How to utilize marketing efforts to double the impact – and value – of your salespeople
Here’s a preview (RSS Readers Click Here to View Video):
Getting 2012 Off To A Powerful Start
Welcome back! And welcome to all the new readers of this blog. The word seems to be spreading as the traffic here has virtually doubled in the last four weeks.
For those new to the blog (and as a refresher to those loyal readers), I’d like to make sure you know about three resources we have to help ensure that 2012 is your best yet.
- Fast Growth Tips. Every week I’ll share a tip, insight or observation into successfully growing your business. We’ve already shared 7 insights to making your lead generation efforts work. Currently we’re in the middle of sharing thoughts to make your marketing efforts work, and we’ll be focusing on how to build a high performance sales team in the coming weeks.
- Powering Your Annual Plan. I know that as a business leader there is no way you would have procrastinated on finishing up your 2012 plan, but in case you did we’ve gotten some great response on this simple workbook to developing and presenting a simple, powerful annual plan.
- Understanding Your Customer Workbook. Regular readers of this blog know how important it is to know and understand your customers, better than they know and understand themselves. The 20th century was all about segmenting products and services; the 21st is all about segmenting customers. Today, the only real sustainable advantage is a deep understanding of your “who.” This workbook is one of our most frequently downloaded; if you haven’t completed this workbook I encourage you to do so.
Thanks again for joining me on this journey. As I’ll be sharing later this week, the outlook is as good as it’s been in years – now it’s just time to execute.
Oh yeah, I don’t miss out on signing up for our next webinar on January 18th – Making Marketing Work: Harness The Power of Effective B2B Marketing to Leverage Your Sales Efforts.
What We Need Is Confidence
I’m not going to lie to you. The last 10 days have been bad. Whether the S&P’s downgrade of the US government has any real meaningful impact or not, it’s both embarrassing and completely confusing. It’s a shot to the gut – for everyone.
The worst thing about it is that it is sapping the confidence in what is already a low-confidence environment. And the problem is that no one, no company, does anything that matters when they lack confidence.
If you’re selling a compelling value proposition to B2B companies, it’s a pretty good bet you’re asking your prospect/customer to make an important decision – a decision that involves some level of risk. It’s too easy for customers to just put things off, and wait for clarity.
This is where you come in. In a market that lacks confidence, buyers seek those who have it. Now is the time for you to be certain; to live the philosophy:
It’s okay to be wrong, just don’t be in doubt.
In November 2008 I said, “Damn the recession – full speed ahead.”
Today, I share the same sentiment. Be the company customers seek out for certainty and confidence – you’ll enjoy the result.
Multiply Your Sales
I’m reading a fascinating book right now, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (affil link).
One chapter addresses how great leaders (called Multipliers) make decisions. Specifically, Multipliers act as “debate makers,” while less effective leaders (called Diminishers) act as “the decider.”
Of course, one of the most famous “deciders” of all-time is President George W. Bush. The authors referenced an interview Bush conducted with author Bob Woodward where he said:
I’m a gut player. I play by instincts. I don’t play by the book.
Woodward, who wrote four books on Bush’s presidency and conducted more than 11 hours of interviews with him, had this to say about Bush:
I think [Bush] is impatient. My summation: He doesn’t like homework. And homework means reading or getting briefed or having a debate. A part of the presidency, part of governing, particularly in this area is homework, homework, homework.
Now please understand this post has nothing to do with Bush, Woodward or politics. The point is that Woodward’s description of Bush is smack-on to the description of the vast majority of salespeople.
I’ve often wondered why intelligent people don’t do the things that they know will help them get better results. Reading this passage lit a bulb for me. The reason is simple:
LOTS OF PEOPLE DON’T LIKE HOMEWORK
Unfortunately, the truth of our times today is that if you want to be successful selling, homework (often lots of it) is necessary. It’s a lot like the signs I saw when I first brought my son to workout at his baseball facility. They read:
- Mediocrity not accepted here
- Champions do what others don’t, when others don’t want to do it
The same is true of successful salepeople.
Design Thinking In Sales
A few weeks ago, I shared a review for The Design of Business, an excellent perspective on design thinking and strategy. Since reading the book, I’ve been far more aware of how this type of thinking provides a critical advantage in the sales process.
Successful selling today requires that you be able to get your customers to understand the limitations of the status quo and to develop complex solutions that can be easily understood. You must have the ability to understand your customer’s current (perceived) reality and to enable them to see how your solution can effectively change that reality to create a better one.
This requires a dynamic-type of thinking that is missing in many sales organizations. Design Thinking is ideal for this effort. Combining the strengths of deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning, “Designers” can lead frustrated buyers to the future they desire, while driving high-margin sales opportunities.
By no means do I think every salesperson must become a “Designer,” but every sales organization needs to have a least one.
If you’d like to learn more about Design Thinking, you can download this article from Harvard Business Review (subscription required) or get the book The Design of Business (affiliate link).
Are You Excited?!
On the advice of a client, I’ve started reading Peter Schutz’s The Driving Force: Getting Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People. Schutz was the CEO responsible for turning Porsche around.
Tell me, what is happening at Porsche today that is so exciting that you can hardly wait to run and tell our customers and dealers about it?
What a powerful question! What are you excited about?
Fridays With Vistage
Many of you know that I regularly speak to Vistage groups around the country. For me, it’s a great opportunity to go into depth with groups of forwarding thinking CEOs about how to position their businesses to enjoy disproportionate rewards.
Join me on Friday, May 21st from 2pm to 3ppm EDT, as I share 3 critical secrets that will enable you to increase your sales, shorten your sales cycle and expand your margins – in any market condition.
Key takeaways:
- Define your core market to earn premium margins.
- Provoke awareness and move from being a discretionary purchase to an indispensable one.
- Monetize the sales process by building Cash Flow Farms™.
You can register by clicking here.
Sneak Peek – Your Feedback Requested
As many of you know, one reason that my company exists is because we want to end bad selling. For six years we’ve been developing innovative ways that enable companies to break free from their competition and drive more sales, faster and more profitably. Everyone at Imagine is very proud of what we’ve accomplished in this area.
But (you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you), I’ve always felt like we’re missing something. By some estimates more than 25% of adults in North America are involved in selling, which would mean that there are somewhere around 100 million salespeople, just in North America. In our own small way, we’ve been making progress on our mission, but there is no way we can have the impact we need to have by working only with salespeople who work for the companies that hire us.
For the last two years I’ve been playing with a variety of ways to bring our ideas, approach, processes, tools and support to a wider audience. For one reason or another, I’ve always hit roadblocks that have prevented us from moving forward. I’m excited to tell you that we have overcome the final roadblock and will be announcing a new program geared directly to people involved in a direct selling role. I’m not ready to announce the details yet (we’re working through the final details), but I wanted to share this intro to the program that we just recorded. I’d love (really) your feedback on it. I think it’s funny and makes the point, but I’m not our market – you are. So please tell me what you think.
Introduction to The Sales Genius Network – 1 from Doug Davidoff on Vimeo.
Can You Give Me A Price?
Last week, I was working with a brand new client on sales strategy. They had an opportunity to pursue a significant opportunity and were being asked to price their services. They asked me how to handle it.
The problem was that there was nothing clear whatsoever about what was expected or what issues needed to be addressed. The prospect, “wanted to get a feel for what to expect.” While I certainly understand that, there was probably no dumber question to ask than, “what’s the price?”
While my client agreed with my observation, we both understood that in today’s world, procurement exerts an awful lot of control and even when their requests don’t make sense, if you don’t play by their game, there isn’t much you can do. You can’t, after all, tell procurement that they are being dumb.
Flying to Winnipeg this morning for a series of speeches, I had the rare chance to read an actual newspaper and look at the comics. In it was a Dilbert cartoon that tells the story.
Now you’re armed. The next time a buyer asks you for a price prematurely send them this cartoon, with a recommendations that they first diagnose their situation to apply the appropriate action.
Welcome To The New Times Square
I’m in New York City speaking to several groups of CEOs about creating demand. I love New York City – there’s so much to do, so many people to see (and watch) and so much stimulation. It was a beautiful evening, so instead of taking a cab or the subway back to my hotel I decided to walk. I arrived in one of my favorite places – Times Square.
I’m awed by Times Square. How could so much end up in such a small place? Think about your company, your products and services – what would you do if you had to compete in Times Square? How would you gain the attention necessary?
Guess what – you do compete in Times Square. Today, there is so much stimulus competing for less and less attention. Today, you must earn the attention of any one you wish to communicate with. To do that, you must create value all the time.
So the next time you reach out to prospect, ask yourself – are you creating enough value to deserve their attention?
The New Site Blues
Please forgive the challenges you may be experiencing with some of the links in our posts. We just went live with our new website and the kinks are still being worked out. If there is a link that isn’t working and you’d like a copy of whatever content it refers to, just email me a doug(at)imaginellc.com.
Thank you.
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Resources
Doug's Washington Business Journal Columns- Intelligent Growth Articles
Third Wave Selling Blog
Products to Grow
