Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 29, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
This past week I met with a prospect that had a fairly common sales dilemma. His telesales team sells both directly and through a reseller channel. They are compensated on both types of sales. Channel sales had been subpar, and in our discussions about our inside sales training courses, he wanted some ideas on improving the way his inside sales team works with the Channel. Being an "out of the box" thinker is always helpful in sales, and you have to be that way with the Channel, too. By doing so, you can get a jump on your competitors, and they may never figure out how you did it.
I probably got the "out of the box" concept from my grandfather. He came out of Russia after the revolution, through Siberia, to Harbin, China, onward to Mexico, and then up to the U.S. Some of the creative ways he survived aren't fit to convey in a business blog. But when he came to San Francisco, he bought a house, and one of my earliest memories if of his kitchen. He painted a beautiful Chinese landscape on the entire eastern wall of the kitchen, because he wanted it decorative, and he wanted it to be his (it may still be there, if you know the person who lives on the corner of Hugo and Arguello streets in the Golden Gate Park panhandle, and they've been wondering about their kitchen mural, let me know). He did things his way, rarely listened to anyone about anything, but continually found new ways to solve old problems. In business, I believe that creative thinkers are that way because they want to develop something new, and there's a certain pride of ownership in knowing they got there first. The annals of American entrepreneurship are loaded with tales of the successes of people that made a creative 180 and "accidentally on purpose" made a lot of money and changed an industry.
Many salespeople don't think creatively enough when they work with channel sales partners. They hand them leads, forget about them, and wonder why channel sales numbers are down. Here are some tips for turning this around and getting your channel to increase sales for your product or solution.
1) Call the CEO of your channel company and ask what you can do to help him or her drive more business. Notice I didn't say "ask what you can do to sell more of my product." Your channel company cares more about overall profitability than in just selling your product, because they often have a bunch of other products, too. You need mindshare more than anything else, and in discussing his or her business, you'll probably be the one principal sales rep this year that will show genuine concern for his or her profitability. When I was in sales, one of my channel principals, whose business was partly based on providing engineering consultants as an outsource solution, told me that his outsource business had been crummy. I told him that since I was making tons of calls into his territory, I could ask a question to each of my prospects as to whether they ever used contract programmers. I got my channel partner some business that way, and guess what? My product sales through that channel partner grew exponentially in the ensuing months. Calling high and taking my channel partner's interests to heart were the two keys to getting my channel partner to sell more of my products.
2) Call each of your channel partner sales reps on a regular basis to help him or her make a sale. If you've got a handful, there's no reason you can't call them all once a week. Maybe a call to one of his or her prospects from the manufacturer will make a sale, so why not ask if you can call that prospect and help out. Ensure the rep that you won't let the prospect "go direct" and buy from the manufacturer, and you'll help close the sale for him or her. Sometimes channel partners are unwilling to do this because they're afraid the principal will steal the sale from them. Convince them you won't take away their business, and build trust. I guarantee that you'll be brought into more of their deals, and each of you will have better sales numbers as a result.
3) Create a "virtual channel" by developing your own personal sales channel, right from your desk. Let me give you a "tecchie" example from my own world to explain this concept. I used to sell a software debugger for programmers writing in C language. Before my prospects bought a debugger, they had to have a C complier. There was one C compiler vendor that had bought some of our debuggers for their own use. So I called the sales director of that company, and suggested that I could help them sell compilers to companies that were in Analysis phase, and hadn't bought any software development tools yet. They'd need both compilers and debuggers. The director and I reached a gentleman's agreement that we'd help each other out, and he'd ask his own reps to chat up our debugger. This turned out to be a great relationship. It wasn't formal, wasn't written on paper, but forged a great relationship that was profitable for each of us, and helped my sales territory tremendously. So if you know of a non-competitive vendor that sells to the same people you do, and he or she makes a great product, why not turn that vendor into an ally? This will give you additional "feet on the street," and increase your sales.
So there are three great ways to work with the Channel. Far too many reps view the channel as competition, which is absurd when they're getting comped on both types of sales. It's all about team communication, and in such cases, the Channel is part of your team. I've given you some doable ways to solidify important business contacts within your channel structure. If you sell directly and through a Channel as well, add these ideas to your Best Practices Playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 22, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
Third in a 3 part series on sales training theory
The first two articles in this series addressed business processes that must be in place before you consider sales training as a solution, and the value of Bloom's Taxonomy as a training foundation. Today's post addresses how the training itself can go wrong, even if everything else is in place. Everyone that funds a sales training program wants it to succeed. But many times it doesn't. The biggest failure point results from lack of ongoing reinforcement of the principles learned in the training class. But there are other failure points, too, and we've heard several of them that are the ones most often voiced among inside sales execs, managers, and reps. Here are 5 of the most common:
1) Lack of a plan to ensure ongoing reinforcement of the principles taught in the class
2) "Chunking" curriculum into blocks delivered over time
3) Not seeing and vetting the actual curriculum before it's delivered
4) Training delivered from remote locations
5) Inadequate budget to deliver a curriculum that meets stated training objectives
Whether you're going to buy training or develop and deliver it yourself, those are important pitfalls of which to be aware. Here's an explanation:
1) To avoid having your training forgotten or unused, have a reinforcement plan in place that will guarantee the principles will be applied after the training takes place. Most of the time, reps are pretty pumped up about the training once they finish the class. In the training business, that's called a "sugar shot." So they go back to their desks, try one or two things, forget a few others, and a few days or weeks down the road, not much has changed from their pre-training behavior. Our favorite way of reinforcement is to have inside sales managers coach their own reps on a regularly scheduled basis that remains in place year-round. This is interactive, and allows the manager to cross-pollinate best practices with the rest of the team. Less effective are "push" strategies, like updated email sales techniques, and "pull" strategies, which often consist of visits to sales training websites. Most reps never get around to reading sales training emails, text messages on phones, or visiting sales training websites. However you choose to do it, my opinion is that you're throwing away both money and time by not building in a reinforcement piece that works.
2) Beware of "chunking" sales curriculum into blocks delivered over a period of time. The process of "chunking" is the delivery of a curriculum over a period of days, weeks, or months. It doesn't work well for sales training, because all curriculum areas interact with each other, and reps tend to have questions that relate to inter-curricular activities. Receiving all curriculum in a continuous iterative session promotes the learning process called "rehearsal," which allows reps to move concepts from short-term to long-term memory, and it's a critical step in the process of how adults learn knowledge and adopt new behaviors. For example, when reps are trained on innovative ways to open calls, they'll ask about everything from follow-on questions, to closing, to effective questions, to organizational charts. When you chuck your curriculum, your trainer will invariably respond to some questions with "sorry, we can't cover that today, because it's covered in next week's module." When you do that, reps learn pretty quickly not to ask about anything that's not on today's "list." All reps think differently, but you want your training to be interactive. Reps tend to drive curriculum by thinking of how they could have applied the material in past sales situations, and "out of the box" questions engage the class, and they learn more effectively. Chunking takes away one of the most powerful teaching tools, which is about going right to a later module when the class wants to drive it there.
3) See the course materials before the class takes place, and discuss or change elements of the curriculum with which you disagree, are uncomfortable with, or don't quite understand. As a manager, there's nothing worse than sitting in a training class when your instructor delivers a method that you know won't work. Believe me, your senior reps will know it, too. By then, it's a little late to change the curriculum, and your trainer may use the piece you didn't like to build on a hierarchy of behaviors linked to that principle. Your trainer could also have a compelling reason behind the principle, but the place to hash it out should occur well before it's delivered in class. If you're a manager that disagrees with a principle in the class itself, the credibility of the curriculum and instructor will be damaged, and reps will begin tuning out. Always see and vet your curriculum in advance so it can be modified if necessary before the class takes place.
4) Remote sales training these days is often an invitation to hidden multi-tasking as the training is taking place. Just about the worst thing that can happen in a sales training class is for your reps to be unengaged with the trainer and curriculum to the point to doing other things during the class. That would include checking emails and texting on portable devices, fast-forwarding through the course materials, and daydreaming. These all happen pretty frequently when training is delivered from remote locations. It's pretty common for management personnel in the room to be doing the same thing, too. Since the trainer can't physically walk around the room, he or she isn't optimized for ensuring that everyone is engaged. When the trainer is physically in the same room, he or she can walk around the room, constantly pinging everyone on curriculum data points, and can ensure that those PDAs are put away so people take the training seriously. In most societies these days, people have been brought up to multi-task when they're watching television (and remote training is television). It's second nature, and a habit nearly impossible to break. The physical presence of a trainer is a different story, and there are different expectations and expected behaviors of the part of learners.
5) Be careful of making training decisions that are based primarily on budget issues. Every company wants to save money, and doesn't want to overpay for anything. But it's the job of your salespeople to bring revenue to your company, and you wouldn't be considering training if there weren't performance gaps that you perceive as being critical to your overall financial success. So seriously consider determining what your best training solution is, then tackle the budget issue to see if you can get it worked out. Remember that your salespeople work roughly 2,000 hours each year, and successful training and continual reinforcement will make that training successful every single hour of the year. So find the training solution that will work optimally for you, and make a case for getting the funding approved to do it. The old adage of "when you buy quality, you only cry once" really does apply here, and most companies that have achieved less-than-expected results from training have realized that going the cheap route caused them to have to regroup and train all over again because the expected sales results never occurred, and that the behaviors the company wanted to change never did.
So there are 5 common failure points that are part and parcel to the business of training. Sales execs and managers love to talk about training, what worked and what didn't, and what to do better next time. In my interviews with them in discussions about my inside sales training courses, at least one of the failure points listed above was given as a reason they felt their training budget had, to a large extent, been wasted in the classes delivered by their previous training providers. Whether doing training yourself or hiring an expert, keep this checklist handy, avoid the pitfalls, and have a great training session. And add avoiding these pitfalls to your Best Management playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 15, 2010 @ 10:02 AM
Even though we're best known for our telesales training courses, I have dozens of conversations every week regarding compensation issues and hiring new reps. Inside sales managers love talking to us, because we don't charge for referring great reps that have been through our training courses to them. Often, those managers will ask what the going pay rate is for inside sales people, because if the comp plan is too low, reps will leave as soon as a better opportunity comes along. And if they pay too much, they'll have to hire fewer reps. Here in the Bay Area, in the past six months, I've seen base pay for quota-bearing inside sales reps vary between $35,000 and $90,000 per year, quite a spread. The dilemma is compounded because base pay can also depend on the area of the world where your corporate HQ is located (I can't envision an inside rep making $90K base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan).
So how do you figure out what inside salespeople are making in your geographical area, so you can make a case for getting paid more money (or if you're a manager, getting better pay for your reps so you can hang onto them longer)? Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group has been putting out inside sales compensation surveys for a few years now, and they're always great reading. She has very good data on KPIs (metrics) as well. Trish gets her data through a survey she takes every year, and she's invited my blog subscribers to participate in the survey in compiling this year's data. This is a terrific project, and when it's completed, all you have to do is download it from her website to read it. It's free, and I think it's one of the most valuable compensation and metrics tools and rep or manager can use. To participate, just contact her. Here's how she suggests you do it:
"We'd like to invite you to participate in our 2010 Inside Sales Metrics & Compensation survey. Participation should take no more than 6 minutes. We will be using this data to produce our 2010 research reports, which you will receive pre-release and at no charge. You can access last year's report (no registration required) here: Inside Sales & Lead Generation
To begin, respond to me by email at insidesalesreport@bridgegroupinc.com with your appropriate Inside Sales implementation, based on the definitions below:
Lead Generation- Reps tasked with pipeline generation, appointment setting, pre-qualifying inquiries, etc. (Reps carry no revenue quota)
Inside Sales- Reps tasked with revenue generation, closing business, etc. (For on-premise software/hardware solutions)
SaaS / Inside Sales- Reps tasked with revenue generation, closing business, etc. (For SaaS, Software-as-a-Service, models)
Note: If you have multiple implementations, please feel free to request more than one survey."
Geoff here again. Just a reminder to email Trish, not me, at tbertuzzi@bridgegroupinc.com , and tell her which of those three categories you fall into. She'll email the appropriate survey right back to you. Have fun with the survey, and I think you'll enjoy reading the eventual compiled data that derives from it.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 08, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
Second in a 3 part series on sales training theory
A question I'm commonly asked is "what's your training methodology?" All training companies have their own, and they're copyrighted, mine included. I was having a discussion with a potential client about adult learning issues, and it got deep into the basics of what makes training work. I'm a big believer in something called "Bloom's Taxonomy," and it's driven the way I train ever since I got my Master's in Education, where I was first introduced to Bloom. I'm going to share some of Benjamin Bloom's methodology with you, because it makes more sense than 90% of what I read today about best training practices.
Benjamin Bloom was an educator at the University of Chicago who cobbled together a team of researchers in the 1950s in an attempt to determine how adults learn most effectively. The resulting body of work comprised three domains of learning, the affective, cognitive, and psycho-motor, and was entitled Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Book 1: Cognitive Doman is the one that's especially important for effective transference of knowledge. In it, Bloom posited that there are six sequential steps a learner must take in order to have learned a concept. I'll tell you what they are, then give an example of how they're used with a training example right out of inside sales. The steps are:
Knowledge: Rules ... can you recall it?
Comprehension: Can you explain it?
Application: Can you show that you use it?
Analysis: Can you compare it with what you've already been using?
Synthesis: Can you use it in the process of inventing something better?
Evaluation: Can you judge it against a standard?
We train people not to begin a cold call with the question "How are you today?", so I'll explain how I apply Bloom's Taxonomy to that training concept. Let's look at the model again, this time by using the example.
1) Knowledge: Here's a rule... Never begin a cold call by asking "How are you today?"
2) Comprehension: This hackneyed question has been used by business-to-consumer telemarketers for years ad infinitum, and now just about everyone hates hearing it. It builds negative rapport, and prospects are savvy enough to know that you don't really care how they are today. They know they're going to hear a sales pitch, and much of the time will just hang up on you. At this point, we give the rep a better way to start the conversation. It differs for every client.
3) Application: Now we give each rep an opportunity to use the new opening in class through role-play. But that doesn't mean that he or she will actually use it on the phone. And that's why we do real-time coaching during actual phone calls. Old habits are hard to break, and just because a rep does it successfully in class, doesn't mean he or she will use it on the job, unless we're there to hear it being used on real phone calls. Then we know that it's applied.
4) Analysis: Each rep will analyze how much better the new "opening" works compared to what was used before. They see better results immediately, because they've compared it with what they did before. In just about every case, it's an improvement.
5) Synthesis: Sometimes a rep will want to subtly tweak the new opening to work better for him or her, usually just by changing a word or two. If I think it's effective, I'll go with it, because the rep has invented a way of using the new opening that works well for him or her. Every rep communicates differently, and individual changes are just fine provided they work within the conceptual framework of the practice.
6) Evaluation: Using the new subtly changed opening, the rep can now judge --- in real time --- whether his or her new opening works as well as the one we delivered in the class. Great reps tend to be self-judgmental, and may use their new opening, or go back to ours. But this evaluation process allows the rep to work within a framework of success, and build upon a superior foundation.
Bloom's cognitive strategy works in every learning environment, and it's a great model for encouraging reps to be intelligently inventive with new concepts. Another of Bloom's domains, the affective domain of learning, concerns attitude, which is all about getting inside sales reps to enthusiastically embrace new learning concepts so they'll actually want to perform them and integrate them into their daily lives. The cognitive strategy that Bloom discusses goes a long way to creating positive affective behavior, and is best reinforced by an ongoing coaching program that stresses positive reinforcement.
So there are some best sales training practices for you to consider. Many sales executives and managers are training their teams themselves these days due to stringent training budgets. If you're one of them, I encourage you to inculcate Bloom's Taxonomy into your Best Management playbook.
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Mar 01, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
First in a 3 part series on sales training theory
In the 20 or so years we've been in the telesales training business, we've turned down a significant number of potential training situations. The main reason? We didn't think training was the solution for the client's problem, and we knew it just wouldn't work, because other things needed to be fixed first. Today's post is about saving you money if you're thinking of hiring any company to train your team, or doing it yourself with internal resources. Lack of superior performance can be a training issue, but not always. So before you consider sales training as a solution to poor performance, ask yourself the following questions to determine if you've correctly analyzed your sales situation:
1) Product. Do you have a significant underperforming product issue? If so, it's probably all over the web, and prospects love to talk. This "bad rap" will stop calls from being taken by prospects, and voicemails and emails being ineffective. Possible solutions: fix the product or consider dropping it from your product mix.
2) Compensation. Are your reps being compensated for the wrong behavior? For example, dual commission structures, in which reps are paid better on some products than others will virtually guarantee less activity on lesser compensated solutions. A common case is when inside salespeople are paid less for turning over a lead to the field than when selling it themselves, which will result in fewer leads going to the field. Another situation commonly found is when business development teams are being comped for the number of raw leads being sent to the field, qualified or not! For salespeople, compensation drives behavior, so consider changing your comp plan if they're being paid for behaviors not conducive to your company's profit picture.
3) Business processes. Is your inside team burdened with unnecessary paperwork or non telesales-related duties? If so, this could be affecting their efficiency. We see this mostly in non-centralized sales environments where individual sales reps report to Regional managers and work away from headquarters. Sometimes these reps are charged with generating proposals for the entire regional team, which is one issue we commonly find that takes telephone time away from inside sales reps. Solutions to this vary depending on the company and situation. If you think this may be the case, consider asking each of your reps to log their duties for one week, then compile your answers to see if there's a common thread.
4) Intra-company conflict. Is your team getting "mixed messages?" Calling high is a prime example. You want your inside team to feel comfortable talking to upper level executives at major accounts, but if they're being told by others in the sales organization to avoid calling into accounts beyond a certain size for no intelligent sales-related reason, you're losing business, and your inside team's sales numbers will suffer. This is just one example of an internal roadblock that can damage the efficiency of an inside sales group.
5) Motivation and Personnel Churn. Does your team really want to work in your company and be in sales? One classic example is when a company converted their customer service reps to salespeople. The problem? They didn't want to be in sales and found it distasteful to ask for the order. They really wanted to be customer service people again, and their ears were not open to sales training. We've seen many situations where people converted to sales jobs and loved it, but it's not always the case. In the case of poor performance, it's always a great idea to ask the rep if he or she really embraces Sales as a career. Some companies have a terrible problem with inside sales personnel continually leaving the company, and they're rightly concerned with having to deliver the same training over and over throughout the year for replacement reps. Personnel churn sometimes results from underpaying reps, but often results from individual motivational issues as well. These are best covered by superior interviewing processes, but beware of "personality tests," which have little value in determining the potential effectiveness of a sales rep.
I've touched on product issues, business processes, intra-company edicts, compensation, and motivational issues that you'll want to ensure are handled or discussed before you take the financial step to train your team. Superior sales training is an essential way to get your team performing at optimum level, but you'll want to make sure you have a firm foundation in place before you do it. Add pre-training analysis to your Best Management playbook.