Join Gene Marks and me on February 3, 2012, to learn how to upgrade your sales technology and increase your sales!

Topics will include:

• How to generate greater impact from your sales incentive and compensations plans.
• How to plan for and create a sales culture and not just a sales team!
• How to convert your customer relationship system from a “Glorified Rolodex” to a productive sales and marketing system.
• Which emerging sales and marketing technologies you should consider this year.

Plus, you’ll get copies of our books – Everyone’s in Sales and In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash.

When: February 3, 2012
Where: The Marriott Courtyard at The Philadelphia Airport
Time: 8:30 AM EST – Noon

For details, click here and to register, click here.

At this time of year, executives focus on two key actions:
1) Achieving your 2011 financial plan for orders, revenue, and profit
2) Finalizing a strategic plan that enables achievement of 2012 desired growth targets

For 2011. the clock is ticking, leaving you very little time to reach the end zone. Either you have a game plan to score that touchdown or you’re trying to move close enough to at least get a field goal. Regardless, right now you need to secure a strong finish for 2011 and initiate plans for a successful 2012.

To succeed in 2012, you need everyone in your company to get behind the game plan right away as an active and supportive player. Make sure your strategic plan doesn’t become shelfware that only those in the corporate offices review. Without question, your strategic plan touches every organization in your company – so make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the strategy and is committed to achieving the goals.

How Do You Accomplish That?

With effective communications throughout your business and a solid execution plan. Unfortunately, although everyone knows he or she needs a strategic plan, I’ve seen companies miss the mark on the communication and execution – even though these two criteria can enable your strategic plan to succeed, or they can cause it to implode. Here’s why…

Have You Considered the Following in Your 2012 Strategic Plan?

• Is your plan clear and ready to communicate throughout your company?
  • Reach out to each organization early in your fiscal year to build support for the strategic plan.
  • Communicate the key contributions needed to achieve the plan.
• Are your target markets well defined?
  • Refine “profiling” of your targets to position your sales organization for attaining a higher win ratio.
  • Define accounts clearly to support more focused and directed marketing initiatives.
• Does your sales structure adequately cover your target market(s)?
  • Consider reaching a larger market through partnerships – either strategic alliances and/or channel partners.
• How effectively does your sales compensation plan align with your strategy?
  • Provide a greater incentive for sales reps to sell the strategic products and/or services that drive your growth strategy – not just to sell anything in your solutions portfolio.

Success Follows Implementation, Measuring Progress, and Accountability

Remember…achieving your financial targets is not the sole responsibility of your sales or operations organizations. The cycle of interdependency among various organizations affects success – or the lack of it. What comes first – the chicken or the egg?

• Portfolio management teams with responsibility for bringing new products and/or services to market are key contributors to your strategic plan. Timelines missed here have a ripple effect on the rest of your plan.
• Sales teams need the details on your portfolio of services and/or products, including a competitive analysis, to achieve their sales targets.
• Marketing needs to support sales by generating demand through effective awareness campaigns, events, and lead-generation programs; and marketing is a key participant in any new product or service introduction.
• Operations need to be updated on plans for new products and/or services as well as the sales forecast to ensure they have the scalability to meet demand without compromising quality.

The link among portfolio management, marketing, sales, and operations is clear. Implement a process for these organizations to measure progress on attaining your objectives. Teams focus on what’s measured. Without measurable accountability, too much time slips away before it becomes apparent that the plan is no longer attainable.

In reality, creating the strategic plan is less than half the required effort. The hardest part may be getting everyone in your company behind the plan and ensuring that all the required deliverables are met on time and on budget.

Bottom line – don’t just build a strategic plan…execute it effectively!

Employees and customers remain where they feel satisfied and a part of the culture. They will work together to solve problems and appreciate each other’s contributions and value. They will innovate together, providing input to your company’s next strategy. They will collaborate and impact company successes.

As customers tend not to leave you, they contribute to your efficiencies since you do not incur the cost of replacing them. They also sell for you through referrals as they provide your best testimonials.

Employees also stay because they are satisfied as recognized contributors to the creation of value. Everyone has a pipeline of customers, some internal and some external, but the customer-centric mindset is prevalent in all activity and initiatives. This pipeline of customers actually defines the critical path of one’s contribution to the objectives and goals of the organization. Employees are all able to tell you what their critical path is for impacting a customer and a sale. They also understand each other’s pipelines and roles and how they contribute to organizational objectives and goals. The matrix of cross-functional activity is understood by all. All members have energy and passion for the value of their individual roles and contributions to the pattern and fabric of the organization. Each can clearly and simply articulate the value proposition of your company. Customers don’t hear a different message from different people with whom they interact.

You will also attract better, more qualified and accomplished sales professionals. These people value winning situations. They recognize that the joint collaborative work of all stakeholders cannot fail.

Revenue will increase because you have introduced a level of stability into your workflow, which maximizes synergies and overcomes obstacles with a flexibility to accommodate changes, and, therefore, contribute to closing sales.

And finally, the customer is perceived to be king and everyone knows it!

Are your customers considered royal?

Does this sound familiar? It’s the sound of the frustrated sales rep. We have all been there. Every sales rep on the planet has been there. It can be a frequent trip, and there are no frequent flier miles for that one!

Maybe it’s time you fired your prospect. Yes, I said “fired.” Shocked? Don’t be. It happens all the time and maybe it should happen more. It happens when we as sales professionals do everything we can to close the order. All of the right things have happened. The buying signals have been strong. Contracts submitted. According to our prospects, we are just “waiting for the signature.” Days turn to weeks. Weeks turn to months. We don’t know what to do. So as a final gesture we call the prospect and say something that might sound like “I have not heard from you, so I am assuming you are no longer interested in our offering. I am withdrawing the offer as we agreed. Good luck to you and I truly wish you the best. Thank you for the opportunity to work with you.”

Whoa! A sales rep challenging the prospect to stand up and deliver! The audacity! The temerity of that rep! Then guess what happens? The prospect might call and bring the deal back to life! It happens every day. I have done this, and I have coached my reps and managers to do it. It can be liberating. We have closure and we can move on.

You essentially fired your prospect, who…responded!

Sales is a two-way street. It involves a genuine and honest sales professional dealing with a genuine and honest prospect. It means a relationship has been built so that should the prospect go radio silent, we know why. We owe the prospect everything we can to conduct a credible sales campaign. The prospect owes us the respect to communicate the intentions.

Friends, think about this the next time you have a situation like what I have described. If you decide to take the step of firing your prospect, be sure you follow these steps: Be polite, be sensitive, and be professional and thankful for their time. Do not be antagonistic. Watch your tone of voice, be confident, and be ready to walk away. Take the high road, and keep your head held high.

Whatever you decide, do not burn the bridge that the prospect needs to walk back across to meet you. The reasons he or she went silent may have nothing to do with you or the sales campaign. It may be a personal or an unrelated reason. Give the prospect the chance to explain and meet you on the bridge.

Todd Cohen is the principal of Sales Leader, LLC, a speaking and consulting firm focused on growing sales through sales culture. Visit www.ToddCohen.com for more information.

Every project needs an internal champion. The projects that succeeded had one. I’m not talking about a Microsoft-Trained-Dungeons-and-Dragons-IT-Propeller-Head either. They’re good only for backups and security. I’m talking about a really good administrative person. Someone who has a brain and isn’t afraid to use it – or a baseball bat, if necessary. The champion is not afraid to make mistakes. Or yell and scream, if necessary. The champion is authorized by management to get the job done…and is evaluated on its success. The champion should know everything about the system. He/she should get all the advanced training needed. The champion is responsible for the accuracy of the CRM database. The outside consultants are used to back up the champion. If you don’t have someone like this in place, then you will fail, fail, fail!

2. There were black and white deliverables.

Don’t try to “get more sales” or “service our customers better.” That’s a joke. You buy a piece of equipment to cut metal. You purchase a truck to deliver your product. What’s the specific thing that your CRM system should be doing? How about 2-3 needed reports that you’re not getting? How about replacing 2 databases with one combined system? Come up with an exact deliverable and have your CRM consultant tell you just how much it will cost to deliver it. Justify this investment by how much more sales or fewer expenses will result. Pay them when you see it and it’s working. My best clients go into their implementations with a clear, measurable goal in mind.

3. Management was not “girly-men.”

Schwarzenegger doesn’t like them, and neither do I. This is not a “win-win” situation. You’re not trying to make people happy. You’re putting in a system to help you generate more sales from existing and new customers. Your competitors are doing it. Don’t listen to those whining salespeople who don’t want to use this system – CRM applications are standard stuff nowadays. The strongest managers I know look at CRM as just a tool to use to get the information they need so they can manage their sales and service groups effectively. People don’t like change. Everyone’s got his or her own system. Well, it’s not about them, is it? It’s about the company. If you’re a girly-man with your direct reports, then avoid putting in a CRM system. Take your people to the opera instead.

4. They took small steps at a reasonable pace.

No one turned the place upside down. Our successful clients took the attitude that their CRM implementation would take place over a long period of time and broke the project down into chunks. Many figured out early that a “test group” of users (especially users with the right attitude) is the right place to start. This way, they could get their feet wet and work out the kinks. And assuming success, the test group of users could help spread the gospel – train other employees and help with issues. Each phase would be about 30 days or so. And of course these phases were part of an overall plan. By doing it this way, management could make sure things were going according to plan and give themselves the opportunity to cut their losses if things weren’t really happening they way they hoped.

5. They weren’t afraid to fail.

Look, some really great and successful companies just don’t embrace CRM. Their culture isn’t right for it. They’ve succeeded without it. Some of our clients’ CRM failures really weren’t failures at all. Management knew that CRM was a new concept for their company and were willing to take a chance (remember about taking those small steps) on it. CRM systems fail all the time and for many reasons beyond management’s control. Don’t be afraid to walk away from something that’s just not a good fit. If it was an affordable learning exercise, then it really wasn’t a failure at all.

Source: Gene Marks is the owner of The Marks Group PC (www.marksgroup.net), a 10-person CRM consulting firm based outside of Philadelphia, PA. Gene has written five books and speaks frequently on small business topics. He also writes biweekly online columns for Forbes, Business Week and The American City Business Journals.

I think that it is common for people to think of a thought leader as someone who must be very highly educated, has won awards, or is a published author – perhaps a scientist or a famous writer. This might be true to a certain extent, but here is the rub: We are all capable of being thought leaders in our own right. Owning the title of thought leader means nothing more than making sure you are educated and passionate about something and being able to articulate that experience or expertise to a client or prospect. If you have expertise in selling your product and/or service, you can claim thought leader status.

As sales professionals, we must always be thinking about how to raise our profession and our sales community as a whole to new and unprecedented levels of respect. We can do that in many ways. For this article, I am talking about being known as someone who can speak with authority and intelligence about the field in which you sell. For example, if you are selling knowledge management systems to catalyze education, you need to know what is happening in the space, trends, and developments, the current thinking of the experts, the state of technology, and so on. You must be able to express an opinion and converse intelligently and authoritatively on your services beyond the clicks, bits, and bytes of the actual product. If you cannot have a discussion on theory and be able to hold your own with the experts, you are not a thought leader. You run the risk of being “just the salesperson” in the client’s eyes. Being a thought leader increases your value to the client. You get the appointments and the client’s time. That is money in the bank.

What Does It Take Be a Thought Leader?

Becoming a thought leader is not difficult. In fact, it is easy, and if you like to learn, it’s fun! Make it your business to educate yourself by reading, attending industry meetings, and networking! Know everything you can about your space. When I was selling online education, I made it my business to learn and understand how people learn and to know what the adult learning theory means. I talked to everyone I could and was able to really converse with the experts. My clients knew I took the time to learn and respected me for doing it. They trusted me to make sure I knew what was happening. The results were better relationships, fun sales calls, effective networking, and bigger deals.

Everything you absorb will help you know your space better; this empowers you to educate your clients and prospects. Elevate your sales calls to discussions on concepts, developments in the market, and futures. Take a dive into the cerebral pool with your clients. You will earn more respect, and this creates a more natural bridge to being a better sales professional. Being a thought leader shows you care about what you do and about your clients’ business and their passions! Being a thought leader in your own right means you can connect at a new and more exciting level.

So, go climb the knowledge mountain and claim your thought leader status.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations continue to fail at a rate almost as alarming as Hollywood divorce rates. Don’t believe me? As recently as 2009, Forrester Research showed a 47% failure rate on new CRM projects. People just don’t use them like they should. Many wind up not using them at all. What a shame.

Why does this happen? CRM systems have been around a long time. But they still fail. Charlie Sheen has a history of drug abuse and marital conflict. But he was earning $2 million an episode for a TV show – and now even more on a speaking tour. Some things are truly a mystery. But getting people to successfully use a CRM system doesn’t have to be.

To find out why, let’s take a look at Mitch Landon. He knows how to get his people to use his CRM system, without inflicting bodily harm, breaking any laws, or visiting Colorado.

Mitch is a perfect example of the perfect CRM client. He doesn’t beat his wife. He doesn’t do drugs. And he knows how to run a sales group. We all know clients like him – and when we stumble across one of them, we know that the project will be a success – for both his company and ours.

Let’s take a closer look at Mitch. He had just switched jobs when he gave us a call. At his last job, he used one of the CRM systems we sell. He’s not saying his system is the greatest CRM system in the universe. And he admits he used maybe 20% of the application’s capabilities. But no matter – he likes it, and he’s comfortable with it. So when he moved to a new position at a new company, his first order of business was putting in a tool that he could use. So he called us and ordered 10 licenses of the same software for his sales group.

And then he gave us orders. Very explicit orders.

Get the reports

The first thing he ordered was a few good reports. Mitch knows that all CRM systems, no matter how the software vendors hype them, are nothing more than glorified databases. And databases are all about the data. So when Mitch hired us, the first thing he did was give us four key reports he uses to run his sales group. These were reports detailing pipeline, historic activity, future activity, and incoming prospects. He (literally) drew out the reports on a piece of paper, being very explicit about the columns and rows. He told us to create these reports so that each week he could print them out from his CRM system.

For Mitch to do a good job, he knows he needs good data. He’s not an expert in using the system. And he doesn’t care if his salespeople are experts either. But if you want to keep working for Mitch, you better damned well do the data entry necessary so that he gets his weekly reports. Because if you don’t, and his reports are incomplete or inaccurate, there will be hell to pay. Telling us the reports he needed gave us, his outside CRM consultants, a very clear deliverable. We created fields to support the reports and trained his staff to do the data entry necessary to generate his reports. We didn’t waste the time on other bells and whistles. We focused on getting Mitch the data. And his salespeople got the message: Do the data entry so Mitch got his data.

Look at your leads

Next, Mitch turned to leads.

There are two things that every salesperson loves: A two-for-one drink special at a Vegas conference…and leads. For many companies, leads come in through their website or by phone or by referral. Mitch changed it so that all his company’s leads had to be funneled through his sales administrator. And then from there entered into his CRM system.

This served a couple of good purposes. For starters, by having a trained administrator, rather than a brain-dead salesperson (by the way…I’m a sales guy so I understand brain dead), enter in this valuable lead information from the beginning, Mitch was assured that key profile information would be correctly captured. But the biggest benefit was that the sales guy had to go into the system to get his leads. So not only was he required to do data entry for Mitch’s reports, but he needed to update, follow up, and track his leads in the same system too. So if you were a salesperson who worked for Mitch and you wanted leads so you could make sales, you got the message pretty quickly that the place to find them was in the CRM system.

Mitch also set up a few automated process alerts to ensure that if leads weren’t acknowledged (or had no activity) within 48 hours of being entered into the system, the salesperson would be visited late at night by a guy named Vinny. And then the lead would be reassigned to someone else (with a notification sent to Mitch). This stuff is simple to set up. And it struck terror into his salespeople’s hearts. Think they started using their CRM system then?

Don’t forget expenses

Mitch, like every good sales manager, knows that most salespeople (including me) are greedy bastards. At least the best ones are. Not only are they greedy about getting leads, but they also want to make sure that not a single dime unnecessarily comes out of their own pockets. That’s why expense reports are so important to them. So what does Mitch do? He requires them to enter their expenses through the CRM system.

Through a combination of user-defined fields and completing an “other” action, every time salespeople want to get reimbursed for anything out of pocket, they go through a process of entering the data into the system. And then they’re taught how to print out a prewritten report detailing those expenses so that they can submit it with documentation to accounting. Suddenly those salespeople who’ve made a career of paying their kids’ private school tuition via the IRS mileage reimbursement rule know that they won’t get their expense check unless they enter the data into the system. And voila! More people were using the system than ever before.

E-mail is also the tie in

Mitch wasn’t through. Most good CRM systems have their own e-mail clients and also a very deep integration with Microsoft Outlook. Even those salespeople who still wear hats and drive Cadillacs have come to realize that the Dodgers are not coming back to Brooklyn…and that email is an important part of doing business in this century.

So Mitch had his IT guys configure their CRM’s email and requires his sales group to use it. The bigger complainers, if justified, have been allowed to stay with Outlook. But this is only if all of their activities are being tracked in the CRM system. E-mail exchanges now show up on Mitch’s history reports. This way, Mitch can get a flavor of the conversations going back and forth between his salespeople and their customers. And if a salesperson is out of the office, the person responding to a prospect’s call has his history in the system. No one looks like a dope (at least not as much). So now that his salespeople are required to use their CRM’s email, they’re using the system a lot more.

It’s really the culture

Have you figured this out yet? It’s not the CRM system. It’s Mitch. It’s the culture.

Mitch is not a very patient man. He gets angry waiting in line at the supermarket. He doesn’t understand why it takes some people so long to make a right turn. He doesn’t like to wait until the end of the newscast to get tomorrow’s weather.

And he doesn’t have the time to listen to his salespeople gripe about the CRM system. He knows it’s not a perfect system – no system is. He understands that “user friendliness” is completely judgmental. He doesn’t want to discuss this. He just wants the company’s data entered into a shared database so that he can use that data to drive more sales. That’s what he’s been hired to do. That’s what he’s using his tool to do. Everything else is secondary.

The tone comes from the top. To work for Mitch, you have to buy into his system. If you don’t like it, says Mitch, then leave. He knows two facts: there are a million girls for Charlie Sheen to sleep to with. And there are a million salespeople who understand the value of a good CRM system. Those are the people that will use the system. And use it well. Those will be the people he hires.

And that’s how he gets everyone to use his CRM system.

Source: How Does Mitch Get His People To Use Their CRM System?
A Whitepaper From The Marks Group

Our 10-person firm was founded in 1994 and serves over 600 active companies using GoldMine, Microsoft CRM, ACT, QuickBooks, HEAT, ZohoCRM, and other tools and technologies that help them do things quicker, better, and wiser.

For more information about how we can help you do the same, please email gene@marksgroup.net or call 888-224-0649 x801.

Over a thousand HR and Training Professionals have heard the presentation message. Now you can have that message and more. Clare presents tools, cases, and mini quizzes in a conversational tone that will keep you engaged in this “need to know” information so necessary for your professional success.

Everyone can quickly grasp the basics of finance and:

• Connect the dots between work and the bottom line
• Understand the value of pennies
• Make a sound financial case for new initiatives and process improvements
• Get it – and have fun at the same time.

Click here to learn more about Clare and her book, EBIT-Duh! Finance for the HR Professional.

What Is a Value Proposition?

A value proposition is a clear, concise statement that quickly describes what customers will get by using your organization’s products or services. Strong value propositions communicate how an organization’s products or services deliver measurable results, such as by boosting revenue, reducing employee turnover, increasing market share, and decreasing costs.

The value proposition must speak directly to your customers’ needs. In addition to solving their needs, you should also be crystal clear about what your organization does that’s unique compared to your competitors. It should also present the most compelling reason for customers to do business with you. For example, my company’s value proposition is: “We build sales culture to help organizations drive revenue.”

Value Proposition – Baseline Sales Tool

The value proposition is a baseline sales tool and the common thread of sales success in an organization. If all members of your organization truly understand the value proposition, they’ll become a valuable part of the virtual sales team. Their focus will center on fulfilling the value proposition and providing strong support to the sales team.  By establishing a unique value proposition and making sure everyone in your organization understands it, you’ll find your sales culture will come alive and deliver powerful results!