Category Archives: Sales Management

Leadership : a personal story of transformation

February 2, 2010 – 12:00 pm

As a result of my last post, 21st Century Leadership, many of you have written me asking for examples of such necessary transformation and adaptability. I thought of many scenarios of famous, well publicized leaders. Names of people we all respect a great deal, spanning politics, business, technology, etc. Instead, I decided to share a personal story I had submitted as part of a graduate paper for a class project at Harvard while discussing Leadership mini strengths.

In the summer of 2001 I received a phone call from a recruiting company asking if I would be interested in taking over as president of a company in XXXXXXX, Canada. The company was XXX . My immediate reaction was that the caller most likely was an intern, or first year associate, who had overestimated the qualities I had listed on my online resume. I without further ado discounted the phone conversation and went back to my Chess game. A week later I had received a second call. This time it was the principal of the recruiting company asking to meet me in person. To make a long story short, within a months’ time, I had met the owners and board of directors of XXX at some inconspicuous hotel in downtown Toronto. What began to emerge from the series of meetings that followed was that XXX was looking for a candidate that had traits that were dissimilar to the candidate being replaced. They were looking for a leader, first. They were looking for someone who can easily adapt to the changes in the market place. They needed an person who easily adapted to the cultural changes brought about the many faces, religions, and ethnic backgrounds that comprised the service industry in Canada. They had realized, accidentally, that the job required a leader with emotional intelligence, and not necessarily technical or subject expertise. A good leader, through collaboration and a common cause, can put together a team of people who are experts in their own fields, and good managers who speed up the company vision, they surmised. In spite of my lack of experience in leading anything more than a $10 million operation, they had decided I was that candidate.

I had many mixed feeling and thoughts, including occasional self-doubt, in taking on such a monumental task. But, for every moment of self-doubt, there were many that were exhilarating.  I remember talking to colleagues and any one that would listen about the challenges of the position. I asked many questions, and began reading anything I can get my hands on. Most of my research focused on vision, mission, team building, buy-in, transparency, accountability, and over all leadership. I enlisted the help of the internet in researching national companies in the US, who the leaders were and their success and failure stories. I made appointments with some notable companies in the Boston area that provided similar services to XXX Corp.

I officially took the position three months to the day my chess game was interrupted by a phone call from a head hunter. And almost immediately my excitement began to wane.  On my thirty-day anniversary at the position, I woke up to CNN broadcasting the twin tower terrorist attack on NYC. That was the beginning of what, undoubtedly, will be the most difficult time in my professional career. I never complained much about it, especially when reading news clipping of what America in general, and the families of the victims of the attack, in particular, were going through.

My challenges grew exponentially, and they were not just professional. My North African- Muslim background provided much of the fodder for the fuel my detractors needed. Add to that my no non-sense and straight forward style of leadership, and you had a formula for an explosive situation. On one occasion, a young disgruntled manager placed a box cutters in the trunk of car the day I was to drive back to Boston to see my son, hoping that customs would catch it.

I realized much-needed to be done, and quickly, that required very little in spreadsheets, charts, or weekly conference calls. With the help of the ownership, and a few supporters, I began a series of “town hall” meetings that would have made Barak Obama’s campaign manager during the last presidential elections very proud. I covered every division and outlet in a matter of weeks. I spoke to every employee, as most attended. Some were there to meet this young “American maverick”, others out of curiosity about what an Arab-American Muslim looked and sounded like. The rest, I had hoped, believed in my vision of change, and were there to offer support. As I recall thinking half way through this campaign, every leader of a large organization needed a road show like this one. For, I believe, I had learned some very valuable leadership lessons, and in the meantime, stumbled upon the very core of the problems ailing the organization.

Conspicuously absent from many of these voluntary meetings were several unit mangers and non-core administrative staff. They had not drunk the cool aid, and were waiting on the sidelines for the momentum of this new style of leadership to fizzle away. Perhaps they thought I would tire and give up. They were the old guard, and they were dead wrong. I actually anticipated and was ready for this part of the turnaround. What was really surprising though, was the amount of distrust and negative- counterproductive energy that permeated in the halls, dining rooms, and employee cafeterias. For years, according to most employees, the company took and never gave back. Soon I realized my promises for change would fall on deaf ears. Just like others before me.

My plan was to build not only consensus, but also ownership and buy-in, through accountability and transparency. I was the first to volunteer for this plan. I made my compensation public and a function of the general performance of the company. Soon afterwords, I suggested, through indirect influence, that all managers do the same, each reflecting the performance of his or her unit of operation. Then I made sure all that information was available on a company intranet that all employees could access with a simple user name and password. The results were not surprising. Within a year’s time, the old guard had changed to new, invigorated, and full of energy and passion type of future leaders. Employee retention improved by nearly 200%, and same store sales realized a double-digit yearly growth rate (The last part of the plan never took place. In fact, other internal issues within the company derailed these efforts from being realized, even though there was every indication that we were on our way)

I later decided that seeing my son more than just on the weekends was more rewarding, and returned to Boston. My mission of taking on a monumental challenge, and succeeding, was accomplished.

Disclaimer: Although this is a personal account; names, dates and financial data were changed to protect against any possible breach of confidentiality.

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Purpose before Self-Your mission as a leader

August 23, 2009 – 9:24 am

In an era when many business leaders seek celebrity at the expense of their companies, others are quietly focused on something else entirely: the business.

What they care most about is carrying out the mission of the business, delivering the promised results, and building an organization they can be proud of.

They have a sense of purpose that goes beyond their own personal desire for extraordinary wealth, status, self-aggrandizement, or power. They put a broader purpose before interests that benefit only them.

Magnetic Leadership

Look around your organization and you’ll likely see leaders who are always thinking of what’s best for them or what will make them look good.

Then there are others who are driven to create something meaningful and enduring. Their purpose might be to make the organization the most respected in its industry, or to develop the best workforce in the world. One CEO I know has made it his purpose to recast his company as an innovation-driven organization.

These are the leaders people typically gravitate toward. The ones we trust, and who we want to be more like — not because of how much money they make, how much power they have, or how well-known they are, but because of who they really are, their inner substance.

Given the public transparency of the 21st century, leaders who put purpose before self are the ones to follow — and to emulate.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Some leaders make impassioned speeches about their glorious mission or lofty goals, but their actions reveal their true motivations. They want their own fame, power, and fortune more than anything.

Are you the type who says the right things, or the type who does the right things? Is your self-interest served by meeting a higher purpose?

Put yourself to the test by being intellectually honest in answering the following questions:

1. Are you willing to give up some of your turf for a broader purpose?

In 2005, a $20 billion company underwent a major reorganization, and one of the senior executives approached the CEO to tell him a portion of the executive’s new job really should belong to someone else.

What was he thinking? He was in a horse race to succeed the CEO and already had the smallest scope of all his peers and fellow contenders for the top job. Under those circumstances, many leaders would try to expand their span of control. But he believed the organization would work better if certain areas went to someone else.

This leader was not naïve or unambitious. It’s just that he truly wanted the business to succeed. Of course he hoped that his thinking would be recognized and appreciated. When his boss and the board get close to the succession decision, no doubt they’ll remember that this person revealed he’s not a greedy empire builder.

Caring about the good of the organization can mean ceding a portion of your span of control, voluntarily agreeing to cut back on projects in order to meet a budget goal, or sharing part of your leadership responsibilities with an up-and-coming leader who needs a development opportunity.

It might also mean giving up valued team members who would better serve the organization in a different capacity. In today’s global organization, letting go of good people is almost an imperative.

2. Do you place a high value on relationships?

Leaders who lead with a purpose understand that they must build and sustain relationships — with customers, suppliers, employees, colleagues, and others whose favor or contributions are important to their organization’s success.

They don’t see relationships as an immediate exchange of benefits. Their primary concern is not “What’s in it for me?” In fact, it may not even be clear exactly how a relationship could ultimately prove beneficial. Nonetheless, they’re happy to devote the time and energy.

One legendary leader who understood this was John Weinberg, the former head of Goldman Sachs. He was famous for regularly calling to check in on clients, even when he had nothing to sell them. He just wanted to be available to them to help with any issue he could.

The payoff was that he built deep, trusting relationships with his clients, who would often turn to him for advice. These relationships in turn helped solidify the reputation and strength of his business. It’s part of what brought him recognition as a great leader.

3. Can you value — and leverage — different perspectives?

If you lead with purpose, you understand that there’s little value — and much short-sighted paranoia — in dismissing or deflecting viewpoints that differ from your own.

If you try to create a picture from a higher altitude, namely the corporate viewpoint rather than a departmental or divisional viewpoint, you’ll be better able to reconcile conflicts. To do that, you have to be able to step into someone else’s shoes and see things through their eyes.

Are you given to clashing with other leaders in your company, or do you seek to build strong working relationships with them based on your shared commitment to the common good of the organization? Do you automatically push back on customer demands for earlier delivery dates, discounts, or more favorable credit terms, or do you try to understand why these requests are being made and work with the customer to arrive at solutions that benefit both parties?

Leaders who put purpose before self can recognize, accept, and even leverage different perspectives — often to tremendous advantage

4. Are you comfortable with transparency — because you have nothing to hide?

Transparency is the order of the day, and people are more willing to work with, work for, and partner with people they trust. Trust is, after all, the crucial glue of collaboration.

Those who are narcissistic, who cut corners, and seek the easy path when the right path appears too difficult, and who clearly put themselves first, are less effective because they’re held in much lower regard.

If, on the other hand, a higher purpose guides your actions, others will know where you stand and what you’re about because you have nothing to hide.

Mark Twain observed that if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. He offered this as a humorous observation, but as a leader you should take the spirit of the message seriously. If you put purpose before self, you’ll spend little time covering your tracks, “spinning” bad news, brandishing your image, or seeking to rebuild trust with others. And, as a result, you’ll have that much more energy to devote to your purpose.

Disclaimer: source and author unknown.

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Rethinking Major Accounts Strategy, part 2d

July 25, 2009 – 8:23 am

As we come to a close of the Congruence Model, our last section being the Processes and Systems that allow for all other elements of this model to flow freeely and coherently. I would like to quickly say thank you to some of you who have actually taken the time to phone or email me, and in some cases, post a comment. For this is exactly the kind of forum I was hoping to create. A free exchange of ideas spanning many industries, experiences, and skill levels.

Processes and Systems:

This final element of the congruence model includes systems and processes for planning, managing information flows, identifying opportunities, measuring customer satisfaction, and many others. These systems and processes enable key account managers to effectively develop and implement strategies and plans for individual accounts.

The analysis of the key account helps the key account manager identify the full scope of potential opportunities and threats at the key account. This identification, together with analyses of competitors as well as your own firm, leads to a series of decisions regarding which opportunities to pursue (and which to avoid), which threats to combat, and the particular strategic approaches to pursue.

The key account manager needs to have complete understanding of the fundamentals that constitute the key account: they include organization, ownership, top management, locations, corporate culture, financial performance, and future prospects.

To develop the appropriate depth and breadth of data to conduct these analyses, the manager should attempt to become intimately involved with the key account’s strategic planning process.

The strategic key account analysis comprises four major elements: identification of mission, external analysis, internal analysis, and an analysis of strategic coherence.

These analyses will lead you and your team to a set of planning assumptions on which the key account strategy will be based.

Conclusion:

The material presented here is extensive and even overwhelming, in scope. It takes us back to the 80/20 rule and the value of key accounts. If it would hurt your bottom line to lose more bids, or be of immense value to gain a potential key account, then performing a full-blown situation analysis, isolating planning assumptions, and carefully identifying opportunities and threats is surely worth the effort.

Having a group of dedicated Business Development Managers is a short sighted solution- transactional sales that might increase revenue in the short term, but fail to garner any long term relationships- therefore future contracts and revenue. Because of the very nature of the payment plan BDOs receive, it contributes very little to company loyalty, and that contradicts what most mission statements has set to achieve. Additionally, it should be pointed out, that this approach was tried and abandoned by most  in the early 1990s. BDOs do not provide what most companies stands for and represents in their mission statement and value proposition. They are not the long term solution.

Increasing, or changing the incentive plan, is also a short term band aid, which does not address the core issues. Sure, consultants would be more motivated by additional financial compensations; however, a lot of what a consultant does is very subjective, and therefore hard to quantify. This front-loaded plan will most certainly motivate consultants to be more productive, and may increase utilization ratios across the company, but will fail to establish what you have established as a financial goal- positive, suatainable cash flow. 

Each of these two possible solutions has value to it, but will not on its own solve the current revenue crisis. Both solutions must not be considered as mutually exclusive. I mention this because of the remaining 20/80 of the equation- the other 80% of the customers that provide 20% of your companys sales, or Non Key Accounts.

What should be done next is provide a strategy, combining both the BDO and new incentive plans with the traditional “seller-doer” model to address the non-key accounts, which will increase revenue and position the firm more competitively.

The following publications have been used as references to the prior 4 blogs pertaining to Major Account Management:

  1. Capon, Noel. Management and planning
  2. The Wall Street Journal,
  3. The Economist,

      4.   Ingram, LaForge, Avila, Williams. Sales Management analysis and decision making. Sixth Edition

      5.   Forrester research, January 23, 2003

      6.  http://www.cnn.com/business/marketing

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Rethinking Account Management Strategy, Part 2b

July 9, 2009 – 7:16 pm

In our pursuit of better account management, we continue with the second of the four major points that, together, comprise the Congruence Model.

Organization of Key Accounts Management

Certain “actions-of-choice” have to be taken for your company to survive in this increasingly fast-changing, complex, and turbulent environment. Your organization has to develop a heightened awareness regarding the importance of a small subset of their customer base, those firms that currently do, and in the future will, account for a large percentage of your revenues and profits.  The critical business implication is that these customers have an importance to the firm’s long-run future that exceeds that of the “average” customer.

Typically, introduction of a key account management program cuts across existing lines of responsibility and authority, and various organizational systems and processes. Power bases are affected and, as a result, turf wars and individual political agendas may get in the way of successful key account program introduction. Strong committed support from the top of the organization can ease the introduction of key account management but, nonetheless, considerable skill is required to get a key account management program up and running.

Aside from the top down approach in support for the program, selecting the right mix of key account management is crucial. Focus should be on three critical roles—top management, the key account director, and key account managers. 

Top Management: For a key account strategy to realize its potential, senior management must fully and openly support the key account program in a tangible manner. This support must be multifaceted and may be evidenced in a key account program champion. Top Management must openly and consistently support the program in the following manner:

  1. Commit to a key account strategy
  2. Provide a positive internal environment for securing high quality Human Resources
  3. Fund the development and/or purchases of systems and processes
  4. Support the development of a key account culture
  5. Be directly involved with key accounts
  6. Secure the firm’s objectives at the key account. These may go beyond sales and profit margins
  7. Develop strategy and action plan from a micro-level.
  8. Ensure the implementation of strategy and action plans.
  9. Develop and manage relationship with key account.
  10. Build and manage key account team.

 Key Account Director: The person assigned to this position must have full support of the top management, be an executive with considerable business acumen, and must assure the congruence among the four elements of key account strategy: organization, human resources, and systems and processes.

Key Account Manager: Typically, this is a formally appointed position. A consultant or senior executive may assume the key account manager role in addition to other responsibilities. Regardless, the key account manager is the lynchpin around which the entire inter-organizational relationship revolves. This function may vary considerably depending on the client, or area of interest. However, the following responsibilities remain:

Necessary Key Account Manager Skill Sets:

1. Business skills – The increasingly important yet difficult role played by key account managers makes it imperative that individuals of the highest caliber staff this position. Management must be very clear about the particular set of knowledge, skills, and abilities that it requires in the key account managers. Skill sets requirements should be determined based on the priorities set by senior management; that is, build a relationship or acquire new business. Management should also be very clear about the results expected out of each KA manager and each Key Account relationship. For example, the skills necessary to ensure that current sales levels are maintained and increased may be quite different from those required to identify opportunities within a client’s other business sectors.

2. Leadership skills – Leadership and team building skills are necessary qualities for key account managers. Team leadership “requires a complementary mix of skills, a purpose that goes beyond individual tasks, goals that define joint work products, and an approach that blends individual skills into a unique collective skill—all of which produces strong mutual accountability.” To successfully lead a key account team, the key account manager should possess strong interpersonal skills that engender trust, resolve conflict, and bring about the required behavior. In addition, such personal traits as assertiveness, attractiveness, charisma, energy, flexibility, integrity, persistence, personal discipline, and toughness improve the chances for success.

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Rethinking Account Management Strategy, Part 2a

July 2, 2009 – 2:35 pm

First, a note to all the loyal readers of this blog, about 30 by now:). I have been abscent for a few weeks, and for that I am sorry. To my surprise, I received some inquiries about future posts. With no further delay, here is part 2.a) of  Major accounts management & strategy:

CONGRUENCE MODEL FOR KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

Effective key account management requires consideration of several complex elements in an overall management process. Consideration must be given to several interconnected building blocks that I term the key account congruence model.

  • Strategy                      
  • Organization of Key Accounts
  • Human Resources
  • Systems and Processes

Successful implementation of this model will be achieved only if senior corporate executives fully understand the issues involved in key account management and are prepared to put in place the organizational, technological, financial, and human resources necessary to manage the firm’s key accounts on a long-run basis.

I have personally witnessed on more than one occasion SMB suffer in acquiring and managing major accounts, because senior management failed to understand their roles in the success of the model.

Today, I will share my thoughts on the strategy, as a key point of the congruence model.

The following four major points are necessary to the success of the congruence model management must make sure are in place. They are what I refer to as KPIs, or key performance indicators, which if measured properly, will form the basis of a successful strategic plan.

  1. Defining Key Accounts Values:
  1. Identify target clients and corresponding profits they represent to your organization.
  2. Develop factual understanding of what the most profitable customers expect and value from company.
  3. Identify which of these expectations impact their decisions to partner with organization.
  4. Formulate and quantify how key accounts rate your company’s performance versus its competitors.

        2. Designing Key Accounts Experience:

  1. Thoroughly understand the experiences your best customers currently have with your company.
  2. Identify the critical touch points which make up the customer’s experience touchline.
  3. Design new service experiences that will deliver your company’s promise in a way that is consistent, differentiated, and valuable to targeted key accounts.
  4. Identify specific team members’ behavior required to deliver the key account promise at each point.
  5. Develop fully integrated and comprehensive change strategy to implement the new relationship and assure success.

       3. Equipping People and Delivering Experience:

  1. Develop internal communication plans to build commitment, understanding, and clarity around the implementation of the new relationship.
  2. Assure that leaders/managers at all levels understand their roles and champion the key account experiences.
  3. Prepare all team members with the skills and knowledge required to deliver the key account experience.
  4. Be proactive in improving people, processes, and services to deliver the key account experience.

       4. Sustaining and Enhancing Performance:

  1. Develop systems to continually collect customer and employee feedback and how it can improve the relationship.
  2. Implement a balanced set of performance metrics that provide executives on both sides with objectives, timely feedback, and how ENSR measures against its promises.
  3. Have a reliable, effective training program that continually builds capabilities to deliver customer experience.

Because of the increasing importance of key accounts to your firm’s longterm success, management must make critical resource allocation decisions around KAM. At a fundamental level, it must decide on the level of corporate commitment to key accounts in general, on a vision for the key account program as a whole, and on the types of key account relationships it wishes to develop. More specifically, it must identify specific criteria and selection processes for choosing key accounts, considering both current and potential revenue and profit streams, and other important issues. Both in making critical key account selection decisions and for allocating resources among its key accounts, a variety of portfolio approaches may provide significant managerial guidance.

Potentially useful criteria that can be used in the key account selection process are grouped into two major categories—direct sales revenue and profit, organizational interrelationships.

1.      Direct sales revenue and profits

  • Current Sales Revenue.
  • Current Profits.
  • Future Sales Volume and Profit.
  • Financial Security.

 2.     Organizational interrelationships

  • Coherence with Firm Strategy.
  • Cultural Fit.
  • Your company valued by potential customers
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Competing with the BIG BOYS

May 23, 2009 – 4:54 am

If you are concerned with maintaining your competitive advantage, or simply staying alive like the rest of us, you most likely have considered alternative sources of revenue in the last eighteen to twenty four months. You might be a one person outfit selling a better mousetrap, or a Fortune 500 executive launching a new division to rev up growth. Discovering new markets must be part of your overall growth strategy.

Whatever the case, at some point you’ll need to go back to basic- thinking like an entrepreneur — whether it’s to launch a new product or service line, extend to a new market segment, or establish a beachhead in a new geographical territory.

The reality, as every entrepreneur knows, is that most markets already have existing competitors. Even the largest companies in the world sometimes find themselves the small fish in a big, new pond. And the bigger fish already know the territory; they have the scale, connections, and market share to make life difficult for newcomers.

Still, there are tried-and-true ways to swim with the sharks, and start and grow a business. What I will share with you, and what other readers have provided, are not only classic cases of market penetration, but some unconventional ways and some examples of how to leverage the tools that avail themselves to you.

There are three steps to effectively entering a new market in spite of what players are on the scene:

1.     Don’t buy into swinging for the fences, try for singles and doubles:

 Big companies are accustomed to hitting home runs every time they step up to the plate. They generally do not venture anywhere unless they know for certain the ROI is in place and waiting. For they have the research, the channel partners, and the consultants. What they lack as a result of their size are flexibility to change courses quickly and efficiently, flexibility to work with customers on specific needs, and the quickness necessary to meet deadlines.

As a new player, you may not have the resources some of the BIG BOYS have in place. Do not despair. There is a clear advantage to being small, cross functional, and flexible.  You can create pilot teams throughout your company, each composed of people from all the departments. Their mission: Getting a revenue project up and running in a ninety days. That is what I call “small ball” strategy, to use one of Baseball’s favorite terminologies.

90 days? I can sense some skepticism as you are reading this.

What you need to keep in mind is the purpose of the 90 day goal-line: The 90 days forces everyone in the team to confront issues that would keep you from succeeding. The clear focus and short time frame force team members from different departments to break down the walls that literally and figuratively keep them separate.

On a personal note, I always try to enlist the help of at least one stake holder from the customer side. If that is not possible, make sure the customer’s wishes are well represented through the sales representative.

2.     Be creative with execution.

There is so much to cover in this section. I want to instead focus on small organizations with scarce resources and smaller budgets.

You probably remember the case of how Red Bull decided to compete. They did not go after the soft drink market and compete head to head with the giants of that industry. They instead went after the college and athletics crowds, and distinguished themselves as an energy drink. As they established their name brand, customers, like liquor stores and super markets came calling. The rest of the story is well known to all. My point is, you need to know your competitors. You need to know your market, or a segment of it. Taking the road less traveled is often times the safer way to go.

On a recent trip, I came across a customer that was hesitant to pull the trigger on a solution that was certain to help his organization. He was reluctant due to timing, budgets, and all the reasons you are all too familiar with. I offered we customize a solution for him, provide him a sampling of our offering at no charge to his company. I needed to validate to him and his shareholders the benefits. Our down side was insignificant vise a vise the trust I needed to create. I am certain that if he does not go forward with it, it will not be because he failed to see the benefits our solution will offer his company.

3. Change your moneymaking approach to be different from the market leaders.

By not playing in the same soda markets as Coke and Pepsi, Red Bull didn’t have to compete on price, where it probably couldn’t have won.

By working with our prospects on finding unique solutions for their needs and offering proof of concepts, and even providing the hardware they need to “play with”, we have essentially increased our chances of landing future contracts exponentially.

The Game has just began

If the good news is that you’ve successfully entered or created a market, the bad news is that you’d better be ready for a competitive reaction. If you’ve been successful, you’ll almost certainly wake the sleeping giants and draw in newcomers.

Be prepared to fight

There may be times in which a new entrant’s growth stalls even though it does everything right. Innovating, moving quickly, and offering something unique — be it customer service, technology, value, brand association, or a different mix of attributes — should give the entrepreneur a good start.

But giants have a lot of power in their scope (i.e., bundling different products and services together), brands, relationships, and customer bases. Think of Microsoft’s successful battle with Netscape over the web browser market. Clearly, not every big company is slow or can’t innovate. Some are very good at figuring out new market segments and can shift huge amounts of resources — both capital and great talent — to defend whatever turf is under attack.

Not all big companies are afraid to take risks, either; indeed, because of their size and resources, they can afford to take them. GE, for example, brings those advantages to almost every market in which it competes.

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Qualifying a Sale

May 16, 2009 – 12:56 am

In short, the decision a sales representative has to make is based on a set of preexisting criteria, whether or not your products and services are right for the prospect; and equally important, whether or not your prospect can benefit from this relationship.

Deciding this is a reciprocal relationship, may be one of the toughest and hardest decisions you will ever have to make as a sales person (some other time we will discuss ethics and integrity of a sale). It is also the one that will define you as a sales person. I warn you here, that if you are selling some sort of consultative service, make sure you realize that the benefits to your potential customer are well defined over time, and that real expectations are set prior to consummating the deal. What you do not want to happen is for your prospect realizing that his/her needs were not considered during the qualifying process.
How successful you are in qualifying prospects depends on how much pre-qualifying leg work you are willing to do. In a nutshell, get to know everything about your prospect and his business. I have divided successful qualifying into 3 steps:

Step 1:

Some sample questions I have found useful. You may add or omit some of them
depending on what you might already know and on the type of business it is:
What prompted you/ your company to look into this?
What are your expectations/ requirements for this product/ service?
What process did you go through to determine your needs?
How do you see this happening?
What is it that you’d like to see accomplished?
With whom have you had success in the past?
With whom have you had difficulties in the past?
Can you help me understand that a little better?
What does that mean?
How does that process work now?
What challenges does that process create?
What challenges has that created in the past?
What are the best things about that process?
What other items should we discuss?

Step 2:

At this point, you should be comfortable drilling down to the more technical, and vertical
specific questions. Make sure you discuss timelines, budgets, expectations, etc…If you
had prepared carefully during the prior phase, there should not be too many qualifying
questions, and they should be to the point.
Here is a sample of what I have found to be effective, and to the point. Again, use your
discretion to decide whether or not some these apply to your type of business:
What is your timeline for implementing/ purchasing this type of service/ product?
What other data points should we know before moving forward?
What budget has been established for this?
What are your thoughts?
Who else is involved in this decision?
What could make this no longer a priority?
What’s changed since we last talked?
What concerns do you have?
OK. You are not there yet. The next part is to analyze the answers. Personally, I assign
numeric values to each answer, say 1 through 5. 1 being least favorable match and 5
being most favorable match. You can now add them up. The next step is completely
subjective analysis: determining whether or not there is a fit. I assume this is how dating
sites matches potential dates. What you have done here is build a profile. Next, ask
your self, do my products and services best match the needs of this prospect. If you
decide to continue with the sale process, the next part of the is no less important.

Step 3:

This is where you must establish rapport, trust, and credibility. Please notice that in this
line of questions, you are specifically addressing the individual and his/her concerns. This
shows empathy and caring, not apathy or indifference.
How did you get involved in…?
What kind of challenges are personally you facing?
What’s the most important priority to you with this? Why?
What other issues are important to you?
What would you like to see improved?
How do you measure that?

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged | Comments (6)

Better Strategy for a Healthy Growth Rate

May 13, 2009 – 2:23 pm

Whether you make products or deliver services, you are at the mercy of how well you get your message through to your potential customers. That is why you need an adept sales force.

By that I do not mean a well structured sales organization comprised of a sales manager, regional directors, and the foot soldiers we have all been at some point in our careers. Look at any successful organization, from the brick-and-mortar, traditional Fortune 500, to the nouveau riche companies like Google and Amazon. The organizational lines that define departmental functions are not as clearly defined.

This is to say that everyone in the organization, from CEO to admin, from IT to deployment, are all sales people. They all share the same vision, the same mission, and speak the same tongue. They have consumed the proverbial kool-aid. If this sort of culture is not what you are accustomed to seeing in your company, be assured you most likely do not work for a top notch organization.

What is at play here is the unmistakable belief that these folks may not make a commission on the sales, but they all get rewarded equally when a sale gets finalized and the check clears the bank. Continue reading →

By lotfi saibi | Also posted in Business and Politics, Strategy and Leadership | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)