There are times in the sales process when it is in your best interest as a sales rep to push back politely on the prospect. A hot sales book right now is The Challenger Sale and it outlines some interesting dynamics most seasoned sales vets don’t know, or have backwards. What I really like about pushing back on the prospect or politely challenging their thinking is that it shakes their frame of reference and the status quo. When you can shake up the status quo, you get the attention you need to sell.

Selling features will bury you

There are of course different ways to push back depending on your industry, who you sell to, etc but the overall premise is that you need to get your prospect to think differently. Get them off of features as best you can and focused on the end game or state you are going to help take them too. It’s easier said than done, but it is worth the effort.

Here’s a little story from the sales trenches

I once had a prospect in a deeply competitive sales pursuit that sent me over the competitors RFP and asked me to take the time to fill it out. I tried calling her first and got her voicemail, but I ended up emailing her that I would not fill our a competitors RFP as a matter of good business practice.

I then coached her that competitors grease analysts/consultants to dream up these RFP’s that they then use to try and tilt the conversation in their favor. I rhetorically asked her to go through that RFP and rank the items on the 10+ page document in order of mission critical/can’t live without to nice to have. I also told her if she did this it was probably not the best use of her valuable time. She got the big picture and I never heard about that RFP again. We won the deal. Through continuously challenging her to come up a level to strategy we won the deal. Our competitors lead with features, confused her and lost. We would have absolutely lost if we answered that RFP as requested.

Challenge prospects politely and you will earn their respect

While we do want customers to like us, we’re not there to become their best friend. We’re there to show them how to get better results, show them how they can do it differently, easier and change the direction of the company for the future ahead. To do that is not easy. To do that you have to politely challenge your prospects and lead the charge. When you challenge properly you earn the respect of your prospects and they turn into customers. When you just chat people up and try and close on features you lose most of the time.

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If you’ve ever been in marketing or sales you know how important quality lead generation is to the revenue pipeline. You also know how hard it can be. In a recent Marketing Sherpa survey, 78% of CMO’s cited quality lead generation as their biggest marketing challenge. While generating those high quality leads to feed sales is no easy task, it can be done. Below is a handy little infographic that details the modern lead generation process from the inbound channel.

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31271/How-Inbound-Marketing-Works-From-Start-to-Finish-INFOGRAPHIC.aspx

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Guest post by Kyle Porter, CEO, of SalesLoft, an innovative Sales Intelligence Software company.

Almost every industry has been disrupted as the internet has connected us all over the last twenty years. Telecommunications, energy, entertainment, finance, whatever the industry, the internet has likely improved it. The way we stay in touch with our friends and family has even changed. Instead of a phone call or letter, we’ll send a text or tweet. Every industry is going through a transformation and B2B Sales is seeing it’s most significant disruption begin right now.

Compared to other industries such as music or publishing, the sales industry is a late-comer to innovation: technology just can’t replace building authentic relationships or understanding a customer’s need. Sales intelligence will never substitute what makes a sales rep great, however, sales intelligence will make a sales rep greater.

Countless information exists on how to be a better sales rep. However, other than altering your pitch, work load, or delivery, how do you become a better sales rep? The answer is simple: data.

McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) came out with a study on big data exploring “large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed and how it’s now part of every sector and function of the global economy.” This big data movement is making it’s way to sales, and “sales intelligence” is the term industry thoughts leaders use to describe this shift.

Prospects are sharing information which is valuable to sales reps everyday. A blog post about a new product line, a tweet about their businesses needs, or a promotion posted on LinkedIn are valuable data for a sales rep. The problem is that it is impossible to manually stay informed on all this valuable information available on our targets.

The MGI study addresses 5 ways big data creates value:
1) Creating transparency
2) Enabling experimentation to discover needs, expose variability, and improve performance
3) Segmenting populations to customize actions
4) Replacing/supporting human decision making with automated algorithms
5) Innovating new business models, products, and services

Sales is experiencing parallel value-add because of sales intelligence. Below we take a look at the way the sales industry is being transformed:

• Creating transparency: Large amounts of data are available on your prospects providing information never known before.

• Improving performance: The sales cycle has sped up with the help of big data. Targeted information, delivered in a easily consumable way is saving sales reps valuable time and prioritizing their resources more efficiently.

• Segmenting populations: More data offers opportunity to segment your prospects in every stage of the sales cycle.

• Replacing human decisions: Hunches and gut feel will always be valuable to sales reps, now data helps them decide on who’s important and where to spend time.

• New business models: New companies have started in the sales intelligence industry. Look no further than SalesLoft.

In the enterprise SAAS eco-system, sales intelligence is just beginning to grow roots. The global CRM marketplace is estimated to have reached over $18 billion in annual revenue. Enterprises place significant priority on sales, and rightfully so. But CRM and sales force automation (SFA) tools just aren’t enough.

While migrating toward a commodity offering, these products have neglected to provide much value beyond storing and presenting information generated from manual input. And sales reps have grown dissatisfied with a tool that was built for management and not for production.

Amazon, Pandora, Ebay and Facebook have led innovation in suggestive selling and recommendation engines, but what about the millions of sales reps around the world? These professionals seek knowledge and an edge so they can get ahead of the game and generate more revenue.

Sales intelligence is in it’s primitive stages. Right now, job changes alerts, technology scraping, knowing a company’s SEM/marketing spend, and targeted keyword searches (keyword operators) are just the beginning.

Sales intelligence can gather data from a host of sources on both the global internet and internal systems. Imagine a system that could fully analyze your entire CRM and uncover defining characteristics of companies more likely to buy your product. Every day, new data is captured and more sources of information hit the open web. Target, the major retailer, was able to identify that a teen female was pregnant before ever her father knew.

B2B sales intelligence is following in the path laid out by the big retailers and B2C organizations who have led the way before us. Just think, at the rate the web is growing, what are the chances that some of this new data can be helpful to B2B sales?

It’s a great time to be in sales and as history proves time and time again, the people who leverage technology today will reap the benefit tomorrow.

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Guest post by Tristan Bishop @knowledgebishop. Tristan drives digital strategy at Symantec, using social media monitoring and Social CRM to capture customer commentary. He is widely considered to be a powerhouse of knowledge in the Social CRM arena…. and a super silly daddy. Tristan blogs at KnowledgeBishop.

For those that are wondering, “what the heck does customer service have to do with the sales and marketing cycle”? The answer is more than you probably think.

“Please state your date of birth.”

A few feet in front of me, an elderly woman looked up at a young cashier. Stunned and flustered, the elegant matron asked “Why do you need to know my date of birth?” The cashier deadpanned, “Halo 3 is rated M for Mature: I can’t sell it to you without entering a birthday in the system.” The grandmother sighed, looked down, and spoke her birthdate. She is 71 years old.

From retail to finance, Customer Service policies have devolved into absurdity. Earlier this week, I wrote about how my bank seems to have built “planned inconveniences” into their customer retention strategy. These two experiences demonstrate just how deeply the “Disposable Leadership” paradigm has polluted the service world.

I’ve recently begun to write about ways we can drive Renewable Leadership in a Disposable World. In this post, I want to suggest some ways in which a brand’s Customer Service practices reveal the sustainability level of the underlying business. Because my customer service experience is primarily with contact centers, the examples will come from that arena.

Disposable Service

The disposable organization is optimized for quarterly profits, not long-term growth. For this reason, in the disposable enterprise:

1. Average Handle Time (AHT) is more respected than Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
2. Time to Resolution (TTR) matters more than Net Promoter Score (NPS)
3. The cheapest possible labor is sought: Aptitude is a distant second to wage requirements

Because the goal is to control costs, not to build loyalty, the disposable customer service organization:

• Hides their 800 number and makes their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system impenetrable
• Requires the customer to repeat all their authentication tokens with each transfer
• Makes the caller regret they bothered, incenting them to never annoy the Contact Center again

Renewable Service

The renewable organization is optimized for long-term growth and the health of all entities involved, including shareholders, employees and customers. For this reason, in the renewable enterprise:

1. The customer service strategy is proactive and preventative, not “break-fix”
2. The customer service group exists to protect (or restore) positive emotions toward the brand
3. They leadership wants to “spray the new car smell” back on the Customer Experience

Because the over-arching goal is to build customer loyalty, the renewable contact center:

• Listens TO customers rather than reading AT them
• Keeps any and all authentication information and case records up on the screen during transfers
• Gives the Customer Service Representative leeway to restore happiness without escalations

Making the Shift

A renewable contact center rewards CSRs for delighting the customer, respects the customer’s time and drives retention. I know many of you work in customer service, and have ideas on how to drive renewable thinking into the industries that sorely need it. I welcome you to share other disposable practices you’ve observed, other renewable practices you admire, or ways to transition from the former to the latter.

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I just finished Aaron Ross’ new book entitled: Predictable Revenue. If you are in Sales or Marketing leadership you need to read it. If you are a front line sales or marketing professional, read it too and buy it for your boss. For those of you that don’t know Aaron lead the charge at Salesforce.com in building their Enterprise inside sales team. Aaron grew the team from just himself to over $100m in incremental recurring revenues over a few short years.

I was reading David Skok’s For Entrepreneurs blog (one of my favorites if you are interested in building SaaS sales and marketing teams) and I stumbled across this excellent interview with Aaron Ross. Below is my favorite excerpt.

Excerpt:

One of the biggest productivity killers is lumping together a mix of different responsibilities (such as raw web lead qualification, cold prospecting, closing, and account management) into one general “sales” role. This creates significant inefficiencies:

1) Lack of Motivation: Experienced sales people hate to prospect, and are usually terrible at it.

2) Lack of Focus: Even if a salesperson does do some prospecting successfully, as soon as they generate some pipeline, they become too busy to prospect. It’s not sustainable. Any individual that tries to juggle too many responsibilities, will have a much lower ability to get things done.

3) Sales people have a reputation for being ADD – how does adding more responsibilities help that? For example, qualifying web leads is a much lower value distraction for sales people than managing current clients. And managing a large current client base is a distraction from closing new clients!

4) Lack of proper training and support: Their company doesn’t train them on how to prospect effectively, give them helpful tools or reasonable goals. Usually the guidance is along the lines of “make more calls!” Wow, that’s helpful.

5) Unclear Metrics: It’s harder to break out and keep track of key metrics (inbound leads, qualification and conversion rates, customer success rates…) if all the functions are lumped into single areas. Different roles makes it much easier to break out different steps in your processes, which means better metrics.

6) Less Visibility Into Problems: When things aren’t working, lumped responsibilities obscure what’s happening and make it more difficult to isolate and fix issues with accountable follow through.

If you want some insight into bleeding edge modern sales and marketing strategy, you can read the rest of the post here:

Why Sales People shouldn’t Prospect – An interview with Aaron Ross

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Guest post by Bob Marsh, SVP Sales Strategy at ePrize and Head of Sales Contest Builder an ePrize company.

This was a question I posed to sales managers via a few different LinkedIn Groups over the last month. It became a lively conversation with over 50 comments made across the groups. While it’s not a statistically significant study, it does provide insight from some experienced sales managers on how to motivate salespeople.

I personally believe, which was well validated from the responses, that there are some fundamental things you need to do in order to effectively motivate salespeople. For example, while sales contests and spiff programs were the most common response (which I was happy to see as that’s my business), a spiff program won’t solve for a larger root issue of having the wrong people, a flawed compensation plan, or ineffective sales management. A sales contest is best when it’s bolted on top of a strong foundation. As the old saying goes, “You can’t put lipstick on a pig!”

Find the Right Sales Reps in the First Place

As a sales manager you need to take a look at the culture, values, and goals of your company (and for you and your sales team), and then find people who align and buy-in. It’s very tempting as a sales manager to be wooed by candidates who claim to have lots of contacts or has successfully sold in your industry. But, if they don’t match your culture and values they won’t succeed or be fulfilled.

Once you do that, you then need to provide autonomy and the tools to succeed. Tools include things like ongoing industry training, a well-organized sales process and CRM system, and marketing collateral. The right people will be self-motivated to win – your role is to support them to be successful.

An Effective Sales Compensation Plan

Even if you have the right people, a flawed compensation plan can misdirect the team, frustrate them, and lead to turnover. A comp plan should be easy to understand and get the salespeople focused on no more than three things at the absolute most, e.g., bookings, recognized revenue, and/or profit. Some plans categorize those by product line, which can make sense but just be careful not to overcomplicate it. A salesperson should be able to easily articulate the specifics of their compensation plan, or at least an understanding of what the compensation plan is motivating them to be selling.

A salesperson will internalize how the plan works, and then aim their efforts based on what you’ve designed. This could be simply signing deals, focusing only on projects that have maximum profitability, or putting extra attention on certain product lines. This doesn’t mean they will push things a client doesn’t want, because strong salespeople know that long term success is based on trust and referrals. But, your comp plan will naturally aim them in a certain direction.

Ongoing Sales Coaching

There has been countless research on the benefits of coaching – in the moment coaching, and ongoing coaching sessions. People crave to be coached to get better, and want their manager to play that role. Once you have the right people on board, and you have a way to measure what you want them focused on, you have a foundation to coach against. Your coaching sessions can be used to discuss how they are doing against their goals, what will help them improve, where they need help or support, and to celebrate what’s going well.

Want to know what motivates each person individually? Ask them and they’ll tell you! Every person is motivated by something a little different and part of your responsibility as a manager is to help them be successful. Coaching sessions should be focused on the items above, and how they support helping the salesperson achieve their own individual goals. If what you are asking them to be focused on is not personally fulfilling or motivating, both of you will have a hard time being successful unless you can change things up.

Sales Competitions and Spiff Programs

Sales contests and special incentives should be “bolt-ons” to a sales compensation plan, as they are generally used to address a specific and unique need for the business. For example, creating some extra focus around a new product, to address the fact that your pipeline for next month is looking light (run a contest this month to build more pipeline for next month), driving new business, or following-up on leads you just collected from a trade show.
Sales contests are a great way to create some energy, get people focused on sales reports (which get reframed as a “contest leaderboard”), and creates a reason for the sales manager to regularly communicate how people are performing with some positive reinforcement. Also, many commented on the often surprising fact that while the prize or incentive is important, ongoing status updates are even more critical. Make sure people always know where they stand which motivates them to continue climbing up the leaderboard.

What motivates you to succeed in sales?

Like anything, there is no single answer to how to motivate salespeople, and it requires a healthy combination of many factors. Above is a very brief overview, but would like to hear other thoughts people below. If you’re a salesperson, what do you think of the points above? What else motivates you? If you’re a sales manager, what other tips can you share?

Chad Levitt: Thanks Bob, really great perspective.
==========

Bob Marsh is SVP Sales Strategy at ePrize and Head of Sales Contest Builder an ePrize company. Sales Contest Builder is a innovative app in Salesforce.com’s AppExchange that allows you to build Sales Contests in a snap. Motivate your sales team. Increase sales performance. Make it fun and energize your team with high impact sales competitions right inside Salesforce.com. You can get your sales contests on Twitter @contestbuilder

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Here are some really awesome Slideshare sales presentations to dive through at your leisure. I picked these 7 out because they are all truly forward thinking and range from creating best practice inside sales process, creating the social enterprise, viral marketing trends and sales strategy. Have at it!

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As sales reps and leaders we’ve all been on calls with these two personalities – the raving fan and the miserable grump. Both types are similar, they just happen to live on different sides of sales town. What do these prospects have in common? They will never buy from you, no matter what you do or say, no matter how perfect a fit your offering is for their personal aspirations or company. How do you know if you have one of these prospects? I say this tongue in cheek, but it illustrates the point quite well, you could insult the prospects first born child and you would still not notice a change in their demeanor. The fan will still love you and the grump will still be miserable.

What the heck does this have to do with the Laffer Curve and optimal tax rates? Much more than you think, as the acclaimed sales author Steve Martin (yes, same name as the actor, different guy though) notably points out in his excellent blog post.

Excerpt:
“The Martin Curve explains a curious aspect of human behavior that I have experienced as a salesperson, vice president of sales, and professional speaker. I have come to realize that in every audience there are people who simply cannot be sold. Even if you walk on water or levitate an elephant in the air, these people will not follow you. Perhaps it’s because of their neurological wiring or maybe the result of some childhood trauma. There’s no way to tell where their close-mindedness came from. Conversely, a similar group of people will fall in love with you instantly, say all the right things, but never buy. They seemed to be enamored with what you have said but don’t follow up with any discernaable action. Both of these groups are fatal for salespeople.”

Fatal the raging fan and miserable grump can be. Here is what they look like on The Martin Curve.

Tread carefully with these two types of folk. Make sure you qualify and don’t be intimidated to ask explicit questions around the prospects goals/desired outcomes, plans to achieve them, challenges they are facing and timeline to fixing the issue or reaching their desired state. If they won’t or can’t answer you may just have a fan or a grump – that will never buy.

Be wary. Endeavor to spend your time with prospects that want your help and have the means to buy. Rinse and repeat. Amen.

Source: Understand Why You Lose Deals: The Martin Curve

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Have you ever wondered where all this rapid change is leading us in the sales and marketing professions? What does the rise of the social networking fabric, advancements in technology and changing buying habits mean for our companies and our jobs? While nobody really knows where all this change is taking us, I do believe there are some tell tale patterns that have emerged. These patterns will continue to etch themselves into the marketplace until they are just the normal course of doing business. Below are some fascinating quotes on these patterns and my take on what it means for sales and marketing leaders.

Excerpt:
The digital revolution that created so many new business and marketing opportunities is now driving the customer revolution. Digital media and channels allow more data capture, and the ability to capture information in real time is enabling real-time interactions. Technology platforms and advancements are creating mass engagement, changing consumer decision making and buying processes. Because customers have grown accustomed to real time interaction — primarily through their experiences in social media — they expect the same level of engagement, the same level of attention, from companies with whom they conduct business.

Source: Merkle – CRM 2.0: Customer Strategy as a Business Strategy

My take:
We live in the always on economy and your prospects and customers expect instant access to information that can help them make profitable decisions. They also expect real time interaction with your sales, marketing and service employees. Are you meeting these expectations or are you striving to keep up with the giant pivot happening in the marketplace?

The closer you can get to real time with your communications, the greater your competitive advantage will be in the marketplace on the real time factor. The closer you can get to true personalization based on an individual’s engagement with your company by channel (website, social, CRM, helpdesk, billing, email, your product or app, etc.) the greater your competitive advantage will be on the engagement factor. The two factors of real time and engagement are critical success factors in the new world of business.

Excerpt:
I realize just how powerful social network analysis is for the future of marketing. The web is no longer just a collection of HTML pages linked together. It is a network of networks of people who are totally connected to each other. I believe it’s the understanding of these connections that will shape not just search, but all of marketing.

Source: Acronym – Get Ready for a Search Marketing Revolution

My take:
Marketing and Sales departments need to merge together and adapt to the change in buyer expectations. Your buyers are not a one time transaction or a series of transactions that calculate lifetime value. They are living, breathing people that share experiences with their social connections; these social connections increasingly influence perceptions of your company in the marketplace and perception is reality. Social is the new normal, the social network and your company’s ability to make meaning of connections and take action will drive the future of your company’s engagement with your prospects and customers.

Excerpt:
“Google has launched a new API to graph social networks across the web. This intensive research by major search engines into the web’s social fabric clearly indicates that we’re moving into a new form of information retrieval, one of networks of trust.”

Source: Acronym – Get Ready for a Search Marketing Revolution

My take:
Pay attention to what search engine giants like Google and Bing are spending their R&D dollars on now. Whatever they are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at in R&D costs are things you should be paying attention to at a strategic level. It just so happens that Google and Bing are in the process of making meaning of social. If social networks and the meaning that can be derived from them is important enough for Google and Bing to focus on to stay ahead of the pack, you should probably be paying attention and adapting too.

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At HubSpot we’ve had the pleasure of having some really awesome people stop by to tell us their stories and share their awesomeness in their respective field. For HubSpot’s last Biz Talk we had the pleasure to have Nancy Duarte come tell us her story. For those of you that don’t know Nancy Duarte, she is widely regarded to be the top mind in creating, designing and delivering world class, kick ass presentations. If you have ever seen an Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, you have experienced the work of Nancy Duarte – she designed the slides for the documentary that became known across the world.

If you are in sales or marketing and want to tell better stories that resonate with your prospects, internal and external stakeholders — you should watch Nancy’s presentation shared here. She is good. She will make you a better story teller and presenter.

Here is her similar presentation from TED xEAST if the video does not work from the Google Video. Grrr.

Nancy Duarte’s talk at TEDx East from Duarte Design on Vimeo.

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