Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
Salesforce.com is a CRM database tool that's become the standard for many companies' inside sales teams, and I've seen it used many times when I coach team members during my inside sales training courses. It's powerful, but like most robust tools, it needs to be tweaked for the characteristics of the team using it, based on use cases. Generally, I encourage my clients to either have a dedicated Saleforce.com expert on staff, or utilize a consultant to assist in making the best use of the CRM.
One of my blog correspondents is going nuts over how her company has implemented Salesforce, and she's made a very cogent, if impassioned, statement about how it's not working as well as it should at her company. What triggered her correspondence to me was the ongoing discussion on the blog based on my KPI (Key Performance Indicators) post. She's got a litany of concerns, including some that relate to intra-company politics, but basically what she's dealing with is a sales process that's not working as well as it could. She wants to remain anonymous, which is why I'm telling the story here, and it's not listed as a blog response.
I'm posting it here, because she addresses issues that I've been hearing a lot over the past few months. I'll let her tell it in her own words. If you can relate to her issues, you'll know you're not alone. And if you don't have similar problems, congratulate your CRM expert for doing a great job.
Here's what she has to say:
"Data Quality 101. I've been burned by the company buying a bunch (7000+) of "leads" from somewhere & loading them into Salesforce.
"The alleged quality was questionable. For a 10% sample of my patch I kept statistics on: address, phone, URL, description & contact. Boiled down to taking an AVERAGE of 7 minutes to bring a single Account record up to callable quality. So I'm doing DATA ENTRY, while I'm paid on sales. Would you have any idea if there's a mechanism or accessory for Salesforce that quarantines incoming 'leads' into a pending status before accepting them a valid?
"One of my big, first clues to Salesforce was their introductory training video... where at one point they go out of their way to emphasize the importance of using "good naming standards/conventions" when choosing a opportunity name. So if one time it's called BCBS MA & another time Blue Cross/Blue Shield Massachusetts & another time BlueCross/BlueShield Mass... duh you'll get results all over the place. Guess what? Busy salespeople are NOT typists. They'll make up whatever name makes sense to them at the moment.
"Surfing the Salesforce site last night was not enlightening. ‘Data Quality' seems to be no more complex than de-duplicating. Basic challenge... when the CEO puffs up his chest ‘We're using Salesforce...' which means we're way cool, this essentially slams the door on the question, ‘...yes, but HOW well are we using it?' Another non-unique challenge... the freshly appointed Salesforce administrator took it as personal insult to imply that just perhaps everything in Salesforce wasn't 100% up to snuff. How dare you challenge my manhood! I just do not understand why people get so tied up in their shorts over common stuff like this... admit it, knuckle down & fix it & get on to selling."
Geoff here again. So there you have it, some pretty frustrating words from an inside sales rep trying to motor through a challenging situation. Lots of my readers are management people at startups, just beginning to put together an inside sales team. If you're in this category, put some serious thought into pre-tweaking your CRM to get in inline with your KPIs, and try making a few calls yourself as a use case to ensure that your system is set up to optimize the successful work of your reps. Add this to your Best Management Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jan 11, 2010 @ 01:01 PM
At this time of year, salespeople are typically focused on two things: closing prospects that are already in the pipeline, and managing new leads that are coming in through trade shows, downloads, you-name-it. But you've already got a better lead source than those new leads, and they're sitting in your CRM sales database. Let me explain, because if you ignore what's in your CRM, you're missing some hidden but active sales opportunities, and working hard, not smart.
Two weeks ago, I made a printout of every month of activity on last year's calendar, including all calls to my telesales training prospects. Loads of those calls I made last year never resulted in conversations. In just about every one of those cases, I finally left a voicemail as a last resort. Like most voicemails, they didn't get returned. So I decided to set up a call blitz after the first of the year, and call every one of those prospects from last year. I made loads of calls every day. And guess what? Lots of them were interested, and I loaded up my pipeline for the new year!
It turns out that they never returned my calls last year because they had no money and didn't think it had any value to tell me. Most of them remembered my name. Some of them didn't. But the fact was that if they were good enough to call last year, I had already determined that they were viable prospects. They still are, but they're "warmer" now, because they heard my name a few times last year. Many of them are from very large companies. And now my pipeline is jam-packed with these formerly "dead" prospects.
So what can you learn from this? You most probably will have a higher "hit" ratio from people who already know who you are or have heard of your company. Many prospects that had a need for your solution but didn't have budget last year, DO have budget this year. You've already put a bit of time in calling these prospects, and you don't want your competition to get the business now because all of a sudden budget arrived, and you didn't call! So here's a formula that will accelerate your sales cycle. It takes a little extra work, but will put more money in your pocket this year, and faster:
1) Get a prospect printout of last year's calls, by month. Sort by company name, and be sure to put the name and title of the prospect in the readout, too. If you can't set the print parameters on your own, ask your in-house CRM guru to do it for you. That's why you have the CRM in the first place.
2) Take the printout home and carve out a couple of weekend hours to highlight every company you'll want to call again. Focus on large companies as well as prospects that had a need, but no budget.
3) When you get back to work on Monday, begin by calling every prospect from last year that is working at a company that is a customer of your company's, anywhere in the world. There may be exceptional opportunities to cross sell, upsell, and reference sell with these people. Next, call companies that had a need, but no money. Finally, call all those really big companies that you want to have as customers.
4) Allocate at least three hours every day for outbound calling to this list, and "hard schedule" it so you'll really do it, without interruptions. It's better qualified than any new list you'll get, because it focuses on established needs, leveraging current customer relationships, and making something happen at big prospect companies.
Don't let your competition grab the business you spent so much time cultivating. This process I've described is working for me right now and it can work for you, too. Add it to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Aug 03, 2009 @ 01:15 AM
My colleague Art Sobczak asked me to participate in an audio seminar on the subject of "following up after initial sales contacts, and then continuing to follow up while in an active sales cycle, or to stay in contact if an immediate opportunity is not present." In other words, you've already had the initial conversation. Now what do you do to ensure you stay in touch in timely fashion? I cover this material in my telesales training courses, but preparing it for the audio seminar caused me to narrow it down to the 6 most common "staying in touch" errors I've witnessed. And here they are... any of them sound familiar?
1) Failure to wrap up the initial conversation with action items for the next call, and gaining agreement from the prospect as to what they are, and when you'll call back. At the end of the initial conversation, you'll know whether your contact is a valid prospect or not, according to your qualification criteria. If you've got some action items, discuss them with the prospect, and gain agreement as to when and for what reason you'll call again.
2) Failure to call back in a timely fashion. A "timely fashion" depends on the urgency of the sales situation, but if you have a "live" opportunity, you should be calling at least once a week to discuss progress and action items.
3) Failure to have an exciting, compelling reason for your next call. Your call should make the prospect happy that you called. Have a valid new response to one of his or her concerns, a new solution offering that will improve your prospect's life, or discuss some good news about your prospect's company that might positively impact your sales situation. If you're involved in price negotiation and have a new angle on pricing, make it exciting!
4) Failure to log conversation results and scheduled callbacks in your Customer Relationship Management system (CRM). None of us can remember much about a conversation after it goes away, so important points have to be logged so that you can remember. If your pres-sales tech support people or sales engineers have access to your CRM, they'll need that info too, when they call to assist you in helping to qualify or sell to the prospect. And be sure to use your automated call scheduler to remind you when to make your next call.
5) Failure to use creative contact techniques when your prospect hasn't returned your call. Maybe your prospect is difficult to reach. Maybe he or she just doesn't want to talk to you right now, when your caller ID comes up on his or her phone. You really do have to get through, though, to find out what's going on. Three creative techniques you can use here are:
a) Use *67 to hide your caller ID before you place the call.
b) Listen to his or her voicemail all the way through to see if he or she lists an alternative contact. If so, call that person, and ask him or her to find your prospect.
c) Upon getting your prospect's outgoing voicemail message, hit 0#, then ask the receptionist to put you through to someone in the department who can track down your prospect.
The three techniques I mentioned under item #5 are especially important when you have a proposal in front of the prospect. If you do, using the above techniques will rarely result in the prospect being upset with you, and will enable you to manage the sales process more effectively.
6) Not checking in at least once a quarter with good-prospect, no current opportunity people. We talk to these people every day. They are ideal for our solutions, but have valid reasons for not moving forward. You've done your ROI questioning, you're at a high level, but there's no traction. I ask these folks when they'd like me to call them back. If it's beyond 90 days, I'll call them at the 90 day period, as anything can change, and I want them thinking about me. These are the prospects I don't want slipping by, and they're always on my radar screen.
So those are the six "staying in touch" mistakes I most frequently encounter, but I could add a whole lot more to the list. To keep things positive, there are great things you can do too, that your competitors may not do. One of my prospects is a big baseball fan of a particular team. I found a fascinating article written on the other coast about his team, so I emailed it to him. I don't do this kind of stuff to sell them anything, I do it because I genuinely like my prospects, and try to brighten their days when they hear from me. There's a little bit of that element in #3 above.
So try to avoid the poor contact skils "deal killers" I've listed above, and add the solutions to your Best Practices Playbook. Now how about you? What follow-on call errors have you heard or experienced yourself?
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Jul 06, 2009 @ 01:26 AM
Last week, just as I was getting ready for the long weekend, I got a blog query from Dave, one of our subscribers. And it's a toughie. Read Dave's question:
"I'm in a new "sales" position, using [sigh] Salesforce.com . Bottom line... while I'm compensated on SALES, much of my work/time (particularly as I work through the "leads" in my region) is data entry. I've put a watch on it & takes upwards of 5-10 minutes to bring a skeletal lead (no address, phone, website or description) up to usability. From experience I know it's crucial to have these basic facts at hand... but it kills my prospecting/selling time. I'd just as soon not go to my boss with the typical lament: "these leads aren't any good." Suggestions?
P.S. With the popularity of Salesforce, I'd be willing to guess there are a lot of folks wrestling with this frustration. This also touches on the greater topic of ‘data quality'... this morning I happened to find: collection/mish/mash of Blue Cross Accounts. BlueCross, Blue Cross, Blue Cross of MA, Blue Cross of Massachusetts, Blue Cross/BlueShield & more."
Geoff here: So what Dave is dealing with here are raw company leads, where there is no contact, and he has to go to the web, use Hoover's, OneSource, or another source to get company, contact, and website data, in order to turn it into something he can call. OK, Dave, there are several areas to tackle here, and they all touch upon the challenge with which you're dealing. And there are solutions. Here goes:
1) As a general FYI, every one of my clients deals with similar Contact Management Relationship (CRM) issues, regardless of what CRM they're using, from Oracle, to Siebel, to SAP. To date, I've never spoken with a rep that's totally in love with his or her CRM database. Take heart in the fact that you're not alone, Dave, you're in a very big (and vocal) club.
2) I believe you when you said it takes 5-10 minutes to do enough data mining to bring a skeletal lead up to snuff. For what I'm going to suggest in #3 (below), I'd like you to actually log ten skeletal situations, with the time it takes to do each, and the name of the ultimate contact you enter into the contact field. Put these on a sheet of paper, because I'm going to take a scientific approach under item #3, and you'll need ten instances of quantifiable data to make your point.
3) Determine how many calls you need to make every day for your territory to reach its sales quota. It's easy to do, because I've got a blog post that tells you how to put together meaningful call metrics, and you should read it and cobble together yours. It's not that difficult, and it may differ from the call metrics you've been given. You'll end up creating a weekly sales quota sheet as well as a daily call quota sheet.
4) With the facts you uncovered under # 2 and #3 above, determine how many skeletal leads you can process in one day, and still make your sales numbers. If it's untenable, go to your manager with the irrefutable data. This is taking a scientific approach, and it's hard to argue with numbers. I've often said that managers like solutions, not problems, and taking this approach puts you squarely in solution mode. If your data checks out, your manager will have to come up with his or her own solution as well that works for the entire inside sales team.
5) I've saved a very good part for last. Trish Bertuzzi at The Bridge Group told me about a product called InsideView that acts as a front-end for Salesforce.com, and aggregates data from a number of different sources and compiles it right into Salesforce in a few moments. I saw their online demo, and I'm a believer. This product appears to be ideal for Dave's data discovery dilemma (give me an ‘A' for alliteration in my next English class), as it could dramatically cut the time he's taking to do manual data mining.
To sum up, I always teach a bit about research tools and techniques in my telesales training courses, and invariably, CRM issues come up. Every great telesales rep I know has figured out the number of calls he or she has to make to make the monthly number, so if any of you haven't taken a few minutes to compile yours (item #3 above has a link to show you how), then add that capability to your Best Practices Playbook. And Dave, thanks for bringing up a topic that undoubtedly frustrates many of your colleagues as well.