What About Your Salesreps Who Work From Home?

A lot more salesreps are working from home now than even a few years ago.  But working from home isn’t for every salesrep or every company.  Now’s the time to look at this issue.  It could mean the difference between your home-office reps making their numbers or not.

A post on (Jigsaw’s CEO) Garth Moulton’s blog about the profiles of inside sales reps brought to mind some of the discussions we’ve had with VPs of sales about the challenges related to telecommuting for their salesreps.

I recently discussed an underperforming  home-based salesrep with his VP of sales.  Intent on  diagnosing the problem, I asked, “Do you have evidence that he’s working 50 to 60 hours a week…  for you?”  The VP said he didn’t know whether the rep was working the hours, or full time for his company.  He should have known the answers to both parts of that question and the answers should have been two yesses.

When hiring, there is no question in my mind that you don’t want to be the one who gives a salesrep her first opportunity to work from a home office.  Way too risky.  I’ve seen dozens of failures due to this simple mistake.  You have to be certain that the rep has been successfully selling from a home office environment.  There are traits and skills required to accomplish this.  Know what those are and make sure you compare the candidate against those requirements.

If an office-based rep you currently have on board wants to switch to telecommute for first time, now may not be the best time.  Neither you nor they can afford a slip in productivity.  Just because someone wants to work from a home office doesn’t mean they should.

We’ve been working with a few clients that have very good situations with salesreps who work from home.  Most notable are two women who had a terrific year in 2008 with one of our clients, closing multiple $250k application software opportunities without ever leaving their home offices.  They are relentless qualifiers, have very effective discovery processes, are marvelous at creating demand and leading champions within their customers’ organizations through a collaborative buying/selling process.  These home-based reps are motivated, focused, and have all the skills and attributes required for successful selling from a home office.

Here are some recommendations:

• Don’t hire a rep for a home-0ffice situation who can’t prove they’ve been successful at it in the past.
• Some salesreps need the support and camaraderie associated with an office environment. Others aren’t capable of working from home due to lack of discipline or motivation.  Still others don’t have the knowledge, experience or skills to get the job done.  Make sure you know all the strengths and weaknesses of your own reps and anyone you are looking at hiring.
• Certain selling  jobs require a fair amount of time in the office.  If that’s the case, no one should be based at home. A day a week, fine, but no more than that.
• Don’t let a good rep strong-arm you into allowing them to transition to a home-based office unless you’re certain they’ll get the selling job done.
• Make sure you’ve got the right sales performance measurement system in place.  You need to be able to spot trends in individual performance before they impact your forecast.
• If you’re going to have reps working from home, provide them with the equipment they need, including hardware (for example, a backup hard drive), the appropriate sales enablement software (a strong knowledge management system, for example) and a high-quality headset.

Finally, the risks associated with home-based sales reps are mitigated when you have a pragmatic sales methodology that’s in place and used across your entire sales team.  If you don’t have one, that’s what you need to do, starting today.

Photo credit: © Wollwerth Imagery – Fotolia.com

The Bridge Group: Some Insight Into Lead Generation

Lead Gen is a big, big issue these days for many companies.  Those companies that didn’t have an effective Lead Gen function coming into this economic crisis have a big challenge: investing the time and money now to get this done the right way.  It’s like trying to change a tire on a racing car as it’s going around the track.  If you’re in that situation, you’re not alone.

There is some good news.  It comes in the form of research and advice.

In Q4 of 2008 The Bridge Group, Inc. surveyed over 125 North American technology companies on inside sales implementations.  The focus areas were metrics and compensation.

There are some points from the survey worth considering:

1. Where Lead Gen Reports. In 74% of the companies, Lead Generation reports to Sales, up from 68% in 2007.  This aligns with other recent research.  The reason for this is that Sales believes Marketing isn’t getting the job done for them and they need to take control of their own destiny, or at least a component of it.
   

   ---

2. Mistakes. The Bridge Group points at three mistakes sales managers make that limit productivity for the Lead Generation group: a) providing product training and not sales training,  b) not providing a documented process supported by compelling sales tools, and 3) not providing coaching.  ESR’s research bears this out as well.
   

   ---

3. Touches.  To the question, “On average, how many touches (from both sales & marketing) does it take to convert a ‘suspect’ to a ‘prospect’?” the response was an average of seven!  For companies focused on SMBs the average number of touches was five.  For enterprises, it was eight.  Clearly an effective lead nurturing approach can make a significant impact.
   

   ---

There is a reason that President Trish Bertuzzi and The Bridge Group possess an unusually high level of experience and depth of practical knowledge in the area of lead generation. They completely understand their customers and their market. This report must be required reading for every sales and marketing leader in small to mid-size technology companies.

Photo credit: © James Steidl – Fotolia.com

InTouch With Brian Carroll On Lead Generation

One of ESR’s clients has been engaged with Brian Carroll’s InTouch, Inc. team for lead generation and nurturing.  We sat in on a meeting with Brian’s team and the client the other day.

I asked Brian for permission to share with you the Lead Gen Portfolio graphic he uses with his clients.  Take a good look (click on the image for full size) and you can see which components of a total approach to lead gen you are employing and which ones you aren’t.

It’s no wonder Brian’s company is doing as well as it is and he is seen as a  thought-leader in the area of lead gen.  Brian understands selling as much as any marketing expert I’ve run into.  That came through loud and clear during the client meeting, on the podcast, and in a few articles Brian suggested I share with you about lead nurturing. (How Lead Nurturing Drives Better ROI and Lead Nurturing – Ripening the Right Bananas.)

Another critical factor in Brian’s clients’—and therefore his—success is his practical employment of process as the means for delivering qualified and nurtured leads to his clients.

By the way, I interviewed Brian for one of my podcasts a while back.  It’s worth listening to again if you’ve already heard it.

Down Economy. Fewer Deals. Respond To An RFP!

When I worked coaching sales teams I generally took a tough, if not black and white, position on responding to blind RFPs.  My clients heard me say again and again, “Follow conventional wisdom:  If you didn’t write it, your competitor probably did.  Let’s come up with more productive ways to spend your time.”

(Now I’m on the other side of the equation.  ESR helps companies write RFPs as part of their evaluation process for selecting a sales training provider. Since no vendors influence our RFPs, there is always a budget and executive sponsorship and every vendor receiving the RFP has, at least at the outset, an equal opportunity to win, we expect every vendor to respond.  Most do.  Search this blog for “RFP” and you can read more about both perspectives.)

Through an email, the author’s marketing firm (good work Gretel!) pointed me toward Tom Searcy’s terrific ebook Landing Big Sales With An RFP (registration required).  Tom provides as complete a process as I have ever seen for evaluating each RFP on its own merit.  What a perfect time to release this book.  Just when we are looking for new approaches and strategies for finding and winning business.

(I’ve written more than once about the extremely fragmented sales training industry.  I had never heard of Tom’s company Hunt Big Sales, did you?  Let me know if you have.)

In any case, the book is a serious keeper.  No fluff.  No B.S.  It’s stuffed (as in every pixel on every page) with pointers, recommendations, checklists and whatever else you may need to logically and objectively decide whether to respond to an RFP and, more importantly, how to respond to it.

Here are a few of the many lists:

• The ‘6 Ps’ to Replacing a Provider
• The Dirty Dozen of RFPs
• Top 10 Dumbest RFP Questions We’ve Seen (Searcy couldn’t have made this list up.)
• Words to avoid in an RFP response
• Checklist of Final Proposal

Bottom line.  This is the kind of value-forward approach companies need to do more of.  This is a free e-book.  Not only that, Hunt Big Sales says, “Please feel free to post this ebook on your blog or email it to whomever you believe would benefit from reading it.”  (I chose to have you go download it from the website so the author can capture your name, company and email address.  No yahoo, hotmail or gmail addresses, please.  Let Tom know who you really are.  That’s the least you can do for such a high-value gift, isn’t it?)

If you’ll receive only a single, unsolicited RFP in 2009 you need this book to guide you in deciding how to respond to it.

Photo credit: © shooty – Fotolia.com

How Are Sales Training Companies Faring In This Economy?

A few of our clients have asked how the mainstream sales training companies are doing during this economic crisis.  Let me provide you with a few data points.

I received an email today from one CEO saying, “We are completing a great year with a 30+% growth.”

Based upon my understanding of current sales training demand, another CEO asked me whether I thought he should be hiring additional people.  He had just won two big opportunities and had a reasonably full pipeline.

On the other side of the coin, one very savvy CEO has taken his company’s expense levels down a few notches, just in case.  I know of several training companies that have reduced headcount at the executive level.

One CEO wrote in an email, “We have upgraded our forecast for 2008 as our last quarter efforts have yielded results that will keep us on par with our 2007 results (not bad in this economy)!”

One training company founder shared his thoughts with me.  He couldn’t get the attention of the very people his company is focused on helping—the VP of sales.  “They’re just looking at the quarter.  No further. They’ll come into the new year with no strategy, no plan.  They’ll be right back where they are now, if not worse.”

You may be wondering why the situation for sales training companies isn’t worse.  The reason is that there are companies—more than you might expect—that are investing now in sales performance improvement.  I wish I could share their names with you.  They really deserve credit.  In fact, ESR is involved in more sales training evaluations now than at any point since we started the company.  I am very encouraged about this.

If you’re shopping for sales training, here is some advice in addition to ESR’s recommended and documented vendor selection process:

1. Redeploy any salespeople that can’t get the sales job done before you buy any training.  It’s a waste of time and money as well as a distraction and demotivator for the rest of your team to continue having chronic underperformers on board.
2. Make certain you understand the current situation of any vendor you are considering doing business with.  It’s not the worst thing if business is down for them.  But if they have reduced headcount, you want to make sure they’ll provide you with the right resources—the experience and expertise—to enable a successful initiative.
3. Don’t negotiate the vendor out of a reasonable profit.  If they don’t make money on your account, you’ll wind up losing, especially during these tough times.  On the other hand, there is no need to subsidize the rest of their business.  Cut a fair deal.
4. Of course budget is an issue.  Consider progressing in phases.
5. Make sure you have metrics in place to validate progress, because you’ll want to get more funding later on.

Photo credit: © James Steidl – Fotolia.com

Why Is Goal Setting So Important In Sales?

Jonathan Farrington wrote a guest post on Paul McCord’s blog this week, entitled Top 5% Achievers Expect to be Successful Because They Plan for It.

Jonathan provided the why’s and how’s of goal setting in as clear a way as I have seen.

As Jonathan’s title suggests, goal setting isn’t a standalone activity, but rather a component of a larger planning process.  Whether it’s written down or not, that process normally has four parts:  (1) an assessment, (2) the determination of a goal, (3) devising a strategy to achieve the goal, and (4) coming up with individual steps or tactics required to execute the strategy.

Let’s say I’m 80 pounds overweight (which I was many years ago).  My assessment would be short and sweet:  I need to lose weight because at 240 pounds, I am headed toward a heart attack, diabetes or both and can hardly get out of my car.  Losing 10 pounds wouldn’t accomplish much and losing 150 would leave me, at six-feet tall, skinny as a rail.  You can see that the assessment points me toward a goal.  Lose 80 pounds.  Many of us learned about S.M.A.R.T. goals or objectives.  That concept works well.

My strategy to achieve the weight loss back then was through diet and exercise.

So far as tactics were concerned, I completely over-reacted—something I tended to do back then.  I immediately went on a macrobiotic diet (which I significantly modified after 6 months or so).  In addition, I started walking, then jogging at the high school track.  I could have employed other tactics to support my strategies, like going on The Atkins Diet and swimming instead of running.

I understand that people who accomplish great things in either their business or personal lives don’t always think in terms of this four-part plan.  But they follow one nevertheless.  You don’t just wind up climbing Mt. Everest, saving the lives of thousands of African children, losing 10 pounds, or learning how to play the piano without a goal and the plan to achieve it formal or otherwise.

With respect to salespeople, consistent and long-term effectiveness requires a formal planning process (including that important second step: goal-setting).  With many opportunities in a rep’s pipeline, all with different characteristics, timeframes, buyers, decision processes, competitors, and buying criteria, keeping them all advancing toward a sale requires executing a number of complex and parallel plans.

I’m sure you’re thinking about a super salesperson you know who doesn’t formally plan their sales campaigns.  I won’t argue with you.  But I will say they are the exception.

Photo Credit: Bob Cates

Early Failure is Better Than Late Failure

Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group, wrote a great post (Early failure is better than late failure) on his company’s blog that is more than worthy of your consideration. (Disclosure: The TAS Group is a subscriber to ESR’s research.)

In the post Donal discusses the not-often-enough-overcome challenge of effective qualification.  From the post:

When budgets are tight – as they are in times like this – opportunities are sometimes hard to come by.  When that happens you’re tempted to chase anything that moves, succumb to demands for extortionate discounts, or throw in extra products for free.  All this does is make it harder to make your number.  You will need to do more deals to reach your quota, and as word gets around of the deals you are prepared to do you enter the death spiral.

Easy for you to say, you might think.  With so many fewer deals out there, you’re telling me to have my salespeople qualify harder and eliminate some of those potential opportunities? you continue. 

Precisely.

So why isn’t effective qualification something every salesperson does automatically, like eating, breathing, and submitting expense reports? 

I see three predominant reasons: 

First of all, it’s not in many salespeoples’ DNA.  Optimism is often considered a critical trait for a salesperson.  For many salespeople, denial is only one small baby step from optimism.  They don’t ask the tough questions because they don’t want to hear the answers.  (It was Mark Twain who said, “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”  He wasn’t a sales consultant, but probably could have been with such an insightful remark.)

Secondly, some subset of you, their managers, also don’t want to hear the truth.   Alexander Pope wasn’t a sales consultant either, but with his observation that “Hope springs eternal,” he could have fooled me.

Finally—and I think Donal will jump aboard on this one—there is too often no method (accompanied by the appropriate learning and tools) provided to sales people for them to effectively qualify opportunities.

During these challenging times, can your sales team to raise their hit rate against the smaller number of opportunities that may be available to them?  If not, you’ve got to take a serious look at your total approach to qualification. 

Photo: © James Steidl – Fotolia.com

Embedded Sales Learning

Chris Hens, President and COO of White Springs, presented at the Richardson client forum last week.  The subject was in-context sales learning and reinforcement.

With a background in sales training, Chris has a deep understanding of the challenges companies face with respect to sales performance improvement.  White Springs has worked with Complex Sale, Holden, Huthwaite, Miller Heiman, ValuSelling and SPI, among others, to automate sales and opportunity management processes and to connect those to a company’s CRM system.

Richardson has been, and continues to be, a leader in non-traditional (other-than-classroom) learning.  They’ve engaged with White Springs for embedding and integrating their sales learning content into their established tools and business practices.  Chris calls this embedded sales learning. (See graphic, courtesy of White Springs.  Click for full-size.)

Why is this so important?  In order to increase sales effectiveness, more salespeople must complying with the sales process that has been designed for their selling situation.  When that process is modeled in software such as this and they are provided learning reinforcement within that software, it will increase compliance, contributing to sales performance improvement.

Whether you’re shopping for sales training, sales process work, Sales 2.0 tools, or CRM, be certain that your sales processes (qualification, discovery, opportunity management, etc.) are top-of-mind. The vendors you should consider must have the proven ability to support technology-enabled selling and learning.  ES Research has done a considerable amount of research in this area. 

Podcast: Brian Carroll on Lead Generation

We’ve just published my interview with Brian Carroll for my sales thought-leader podcast series. 

Wait!  Brian Carroll is a sales thought-leader? 

Absolutely. 

All of us in sales face a significant and ongoing challenge.  I’ve written about it again and again.  It’s the lack of mutual understanding, alignment, and ability to effectively and jointly execute among many sales and marketing organizations.

Brian understands the issues and has pragmatic approaches for overcoming them. Here is Brian’s blog.

In this podcast, we talk about:

• What works to get sales and marketing alignment
• How the marketing funnel impacts the sales funnel 
• Reengaging and optimizing past sales leads
• Teleprospecting and nurturing tactics

Listen to the podcast.  (Also available on iTunes.)

Hiring Inexperienced Sales Reps

Will the seasoned CEO buy from the new salesrep? Are you willing to bet your job on the answer?

I came upon a terrific blog post a while back written by Martice Nicks.  That post followed an earlier one Martice wrote.  They both discuss a very important and always relevant question: Should I hire experienced or inexperienced sales reps?

Without stealing all of Martice’s thunder, I want to hit you hard with something from his post I found compelling: