Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Thu, Sep 02, 2010
Effective, successful new product launches have become more important than ever, but are one of the highest risk business investments. You can, however, increase your chances of success with these new product launch best practices.
Make sure everyone is on the same page - before you launch. Successful new product launches require that the sales organization, marketing and customer service are well aligned and work together to create more opportunities and win customers. If everyone is working together, your company will gain new customers more effectively and improve lead generation, prospecting, and conversion rates.- Establish a cross-functional launch team with dedicated leadership. A major product launch isn't a part-time job. Successful new product launches usually are managed by teams solely responsible for building the market for the new product or service. These launch teams should also reach broadly across functions: public relations, marketing, product management, sales, project management, customer service/support and other core function involved in bring the new product to the market.
- Leverage past successes. Build on proven processes and systems to manage the new product launch. Look for a team leader and for team members who have successfully launched new products in the past. If your company has experience gaps, hire or contract with people who have a proven track record.
- Formalize the launch plan. Ensure there is a detailed, formal launch plan that includes: sales objectives, sales channel strategy, promotional plan, contingency plans, and schedule with key milestones. Plus, make sure the entire executive team is on board with the plan before the launch starts.
- Expand your organization with consultants. Bring in consultants to staff up in areas where you have talent and/or experience gaps. After the launch is well underway, you can easily downsize without disrupting your organization.
- Launch aggressively and pre-empt the competition. Most new products need to be quickly established in the marketplace before the competition can respond with an imitation. So make sure that when you launch, you are ready to take a dominant position. Many new product launches fail because there was a lack of time for pre-launch planning or inadequate resources to properly introduce the product and pre-empt the competition.
- Track progress. Establish a process to track, monitor and review launch progress against financial and schedule goals throughout the entire process. Make sure that the oversight process is rigorous, regular and required.
Need help with your new product rollout? Our team can help.
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Fri, Aug 27, 2010
The goal of a Rapid Market Entry is to rapidly acquire a significant market share. But what is the best way to achieve this?
There are a number of strategies for Rapid Market Entry – Price Leadership and Production Differentiation are two of the most common. But a Focus Market Strategy is often the most effective and most rapid way to enter a new market. This strategy is quite simple – “focus” first on one high-potential segment of the marketplace. Design the message, pricing, feature set and support services for this specific market segment and serve them is such an exceptional manner, that no one else can compete.
Since your company is just entering the market, you can afford to outflank the competition by addressing this specific market segment while the competition needs to be spread across the entire market. Once you have conquered this market segment, then you can move on to other parts of the market.
How to win with a Rapid Market Entry
To get your target customers to change vendors or consider a new product, your company needs to have an offering that is better, faster and/or cheaper. The majority of buyers will need to have more than just a fancy presentation. Then look for ways to differentiate your company’s support and customer-service specifically for your target customer segment.
Other considerations for Rapid Market Entry
- Make sure your team can handle a Rapid Market Entry. Rapid Market Entry is often very effective because it is well underway before your competitors can respond. Before you launch, make sure your team has the recourses to be successful. If they don’t, then develop a strategy to increase your capabilities by either expanding your staff or through sales outsourcing.
- Consider test marketing as the first step in the implementation process. This can be simulated, controlled, and/or conventional test marketing, but make sure it is designed to allow your team to evaluate, decide, and refine the product and its launch program before your rollout.
- You do not always need to be first. The market entry strategy is situational and depends on the nature of the product and the market. But often later market entrants acquire and retain the largest market share.
- Make sure your team has tracking and contingency plans in place before you launch. Once a new product is launched, set up regular tracking of performance versus goals. If goals are not being met, make sure that there are options to modify and improve the program to get it on track. The failure to make quick fixes and program changes can lead to a product launches early demise or the continuation of mediocre performance.
What are your challenges for rapid market entry? How are you overcoming them?
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Wed, Aug 25, 2010
For the past couple of years every major sales force automation (SFA) company has been talking about how vital Sales Force Automation 2.0 (SFA 2.0) technology is. Combining the wireless Web with social technologies brings sales, marketing and consumers closer together, but does it solve the basic issues facing your sales team?
Vendors promise that SFA 2.0 will solve almost every issue a company has from pipeline management practices to building customer relationship that will hold up in today’s brutally completive marketplace. But SFA 2.0 is just another tool and it is useless unless it is part of an overall sales strategy. Investing in these solutions without have a plan, is a bit like buying the most expensive power tools and hiring an expensive construction crew to build a house without first investing in a set of blueprints.
Why do most SFA investments fail to pay off?
Most companies do not have a clearly articulated sales strategy. They do not have processes that help their sales reps find the most effective way to sell. If they haven’t done this vital planning, even an investment in the best new technology invariably results in costly SFA implementations that do not have the expected ROI.
How can you avoid this trap?
First and foremost, make sure that your management team has defined the overarching sales strategy and put in place processes that will enable your sales team to find the most effective sales message. Then make sure that your organization has put in place these five elements of effective sales process management.
- Formalize the lead qualification process so that your reps can focus on the later part of the buying process.
- Develop sales messages tailored for different market segments.
- Design a flexible organization with the ability to ramp up or down rapidly based on changing market conditions.
- Test, measure, track and optimize results.
- Leverage market intelligence from other business sectors.
For most large companies, this is all achievable because the organization has the staff and resources to rapidly accomplish this. For a mid-sized company, putting these elements in place often stretches the sales management team too far and distracts from ongoing sales efforts. The most successful path for a mid-sized company is to hire an outsourced sales force and strategy organization to aggressively fill these gaps.
Has your company used an outsourced sales force or sales strategy partner to accelerate your sales efforts?
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Fri, Aug 13, 2010
Is sales an art or a science? This question has been asked a lot. And the usual answer is the non-committal, but wrong answer: "It's both." In reality, sales is at its core a science often so skillfully disguised as an art that the customers and, many salespeople, have no idea science is involved.
Does it really matter? Absolutely!
By science, I mean applying systematic processes to persuade people to buy a product. Sometimes the processes are so habitual that we forget how much science is involved. Deciding where to focus effort, selecting the best prospects, observing the prospect carefully to know when to ask for the order, doing everything in the right order to make a sales transaction occur and make sure the buyer returns, are all systematic, even scientific processes.
A sales transaction is always complex process. But from the simple act of purchasing a candy bar in a supermarket checkout line to a purchasing manager buying industrial equipment, the basic process is the same. The first step is to gain awareness, then build interest and create a desire for your product.
The "art" often appears to come at the next, critical step – creating trust – converting a prospect’s interest in your offering into a belief that they can trust you and trust what you say about the product. Persuading buyers with clarity and passion in the hands of a master may look like art, but the most powerful persuasion techniques are carefully designed and managed. A sales pro will make sure that his client never feels like a target and gives the illusion that the sales presentation is as unique as the buyer this he is.
Over the years, research has uncovered persuasion techniques that are most effective, most often. These techniques combined are often labeled "the art of the sale" but they are really carefully calculated b2b sales strategies.
People want to buy from an expert
A prospective buyer starts to identify an expert based upon appearance. Does the salesperson look like they know a lot about the product? Once a salesperson has passed this initial visual screening, they need to demonstrate they really have product knowledge.
Parrots make poor salespeople
People prefer to buy from salespeople who do not need to memorize information. Practicing your sales pitch so that you will appear fluent when talking about the product is essential to maximizing success. A professional, more informal presentation almost always beats out a canned pitch delivered by a salesperson who seems like they just memorized the presentation.
Buyers prefer to buy from confident, relaxed and friendly salespeople
Studies have consistently found that prospects are hesitant to buy from salespeople who appear nervous or insecure. It is all about attitude – be confident and smile. No matter what happens, even if things go awry, stay cool, calm and collected when making presentations, answering questions or demonstrating to your potential customers. Some salespeople have built their careers by responding calmly and humorously to mistakes – they use these occasions as opportunities to build a relationship with the prospect.
Honesty works
It is much easier to convince a person about something that you believe is true than it is to convince them about something that you do not believe.
Buyers can usually recognize overselling
Overstating the benefits of your product will either fail in the initial sales presentation or fail when your products cannot live up to the promises you made. In controlled studies, buyers were surprisingly reliable at identifying overselling even when they had no expertise or experience with the product category.
Trying to close the sale prematurely almost always fails
Watch for signs your prospect is ready to buy. Sometimes a buyer will give you direct information that the time is right. They will ask about pricing and payment plans, delivery schedules, warrantees or other questions that indicate that they have move to the next step in the buying process. And usually these verbal signals will be accompanies by more subtle, non-verbal cues: open body language, direct eye contact, nodding, agreeing, enthusiastic responses, making calculations, or, the obvious one, reaching for a pen or wallet.
A direct close is usually most effective
Once you detect the right moment, a direct question like, "Which one would you like?" is usually more effective than an indirect close.
What do you think? Is sales an art or a science?
We can help you with your sales performance.
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Mon, Aug 09, 2010
When I ask sales executives, "What is your biggest challenge?" I hear a lot of different answers. One of the most common answers is "getting more high-quality leads." Very often, however, we find their company already has many sales opportunities that are being missed. Focusing on fixing these sales leaks vs. getting more leads can result in larger sales gains.
Top 5 Ways to Lose a Sale
Not recognizing a prospect. The number one way companies miss a sales opportunity is when they fail to recognize a prospect. Someone doesn’t forward an inquiry in a timely manner or at all. A sales rep doesn’t ask the right qualifying questions. Or a hundred other ways that organizations fail to connect with a prime prospect in time to make the sale. The Fix: Take a look at your sales process for handling inquires, make sure your sales reps are properly trained to recognized a prospect, and make everyone in the company who has customer contact part of your sales team.- Lack of planning. Planning gives you the best possible opportunity to reach your prospects with a timely sales presentation. It also enables sales reps to manage their most valuable resource, time – booking the right number of appointments so that they can spend enough time with each prospect to make the sale without ignoring valuable leads. The Fix: Make sure that you are not stretching your team too far and are properly staffed, consider expand your capabilities by working with a sales outsourcing company, determine if you have all the sales management tools you need to properly plan and track sales leads and discover any planning gaps.
- Poor first impression. You only get one opportunity to make a first impression. If you leave a bad first impression, you shouldn’t expect to be able to ever convince the prospect that it was the "wrong impression". The Fix: Put yourself in the customers’ place and look in the mirror – literally and figuratively – and be critical.
- Not knowing enough about the prospect before your meeting. Knowledge of your client and their market, and how your product can solve their problems, is essential to making a sales presentation that addresses your prospects needs and concerns. Taking the time to learn about your client before you meet can be the difference between sales success and failure. The Fix: Invest your time in doing research, make sure that you have access to the necessary sales support resources.
- Not really listening to the prospect. The Fix: Make sure to actively listen to your customers, ask open-ended questions that give them the opportunity to talk about their needs and concerns, encourage them to be open with you.
What do you think is the #1 way to miss a sales opportunity? Contact us for help with your sales performance.
Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Thu, Aug 05, 2010
Last month I turned on Major League Baseball's All-Star Game. The National League was once again facing the American League and, since the National League hadn't won since 1996, I was pretty sure I knew how it would turn out – the American League would win. I watched long enough to see the American League take the lead and then I changed the channel. I was sure the American League would win.
As even casual baseball fans know, I was wrong. In the end, the NL came from behind to win their first All-Star Game since 1996, ending a run of seven consecutive AL wins and 12 of 13, interrupted by a draw in 2002.
It made me think about how often we switch off and decide there is no way to win long before the decision is made.
In baseball, everything needs to work together for a team to win. A pitcher can have a perfect game but, if no one on his team crosses home plate, he can never win the game. Likewise, with a sales pitch, there are a lot of things that need to work together to make it successful.
- The product or service needs to have a market.
- The sales team and customer service reps need to know the product.
- The sales pitch needs to be fast and on target, and the benefits to the customer need to be tangible.
- More than anything else, you, your sales team and the fans in the stands need to believe you can win.
Putting together a winning sales season
Anyone who has ever tried selling something knows that it's hard. You have to learn to deal with rejection, to get 10 or 20 or more "no's" before you hear that "yes". And after a while, even the best sales rep may start to avoid tough, competitive sales situations that they are sure they can't win.
If you just leave the sales job to your sales reps and don't get your entire organization to give them support and encouragement, you aren't very likely to have a winning season. Align your organization to focus on the customer and support your sales reps, and you can chalk up a few more wins.
A sales team effort
Your best "pitcher" steps up to the plate. He looks towards home for a signal from the catcher. Is there someone there to give him the best pitch to throw to strike out this batter? Or is he standing on a field all alone with no teammates and no one cheer for him in the stands?
Has someone gathered the research info he needs? Is there a customer service team that is ready to make sure the post-sale service is so well executed that reorders are almost a guarantee? Is every point of customer contact focused on maximizing customer satisfaction? Do you take the time to recognize success and celebrate the big sales wins? Does your sales team really know that what they do matters?
Don't let the members of your team think they "know" how the game will end
If they are sure you are going to win the business, they may slack off and your competitor could steal it. And if they are sure you have no chance, nine out of ten times the prospect will see their lack of effort and resignation, and you'll lose the business.
Winners must believe they are capable of winning but they need to be committed to work hard and smart, day after day, to win.
How's your sales team's pitching staff doing? Ask us for advice.
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Mon, Aug 02, 2010
Sales outsourcing is commonplace - over 90% of businesses report using vendors for at least some of their Sales functions. Small and mid-sized businesses use outsourced sales teams to enable them to compete with large companies. Companies outsource sales functions to reduce costs without reducing revenue or negatively affecting their sales pipelines. Many companies use outsourced sales teams to accelerate the pace of new market entries. Some companies use sales outsourcing to expand their capabilities and credibility in specialty markets.
Even though almost all companies use sales outsourcing, the strategic use of sales outsourcing to accelerate sales is rare. I recently spoke with a few sales innovators to see how they were using sales outsourcing as a rapid sales growth driver. All of these business leaders had achieved sales increases - even in this tough economy.
New Territory
A CEO of a large manufacturing firm told me he accelerated his company's market entrance into new territories by partnering with a sales outsourcing company who had existing relationships and market presence in places where his company did not have sales reps but had untapped market share. A market entry that would have taken them a year to accomplish was completed in less than half that time by leveraging the resources of their sales partner.
New Product Introduction
The VP of Sales for a technology company said that one of the main reasons he adopted sales outsourcing is that it is the most cost-effective way he can launch new products that fall outside of his company's current product set. He keeps his in-house staff focused on existing markets and developing current clients. He then expands the company's new product marketing efforts by contracting with a sales outsourcing company that has a proven track record in selling similar technology. By doing this he has been able to move rapidly and beat his competitors by being first to market.
Digging Deeper
The head of Sales and Marketing for a business services firm actually lets an outsourced sales team compete with her in-house sales force. She says that the competition has kept everyone motivated to sell more and dig a bit deeper. Because of leveraged compensation plans, her sales reps were motivated to produce results where they can get them quickly and easily. They went after the low-hanging fruit, leaving much of the available market for the competition. Adding additional outsourced sales resources has enabled her company to gain additional market coverage, at a lower cost, and got her internal sales team to look at prospects more carefully before passing on them.
Running with the Big Dogs
My final conversation was with the CEO and owner of a mid-sized company who needed to do a better job competing with much larger companies. He also needed to reduce costs and reduce the company’s sales and marketing investment risk. After careful evaluation, he and his executive team decided to outsource the company's entire Business Development effort. Using a shared sales force allowed the company to dramatically expand their sale force reach while passing on some of their inherent risk to their service providers
Four different companies, all who had achieved sales increases in the past year. Four different companies who adopted innovative ways to integrate sales outsourcing into their growth strategy.
What's your growth strategy? We can help you with sales outsourcing.
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Fri, Jul 30, 2010
What is the best way to engage a prospect in a sales dialog?
The answer is to make your sales presentations entertaining, interactive and memorable.
Every one of us has sat through one of those presentations. You're sitting in a boardroom. You’ve eaten the catered lunch. It's 1:15PM. They dim the lights and start the slick PowerPoint presentation. The pitch begins. You realize that that "free lunch" really wasn't free. Your mind wanders and you start to plan your weekend or think about all the work you should be doing. You send a text or two. You really don't remember the presentation at all.
Don't let this happen to your next presentation
Companies often invest a lot on money in client entertainment. A sales presentation often includes a costly catered lunch. The sales materials you leave behind are expensive and often go unread. But how much money, time and effort do most companies invest in making the sales presentation really entertaining and interactive?
It is hard to make a sales presentation memorable
We live in a fast-paced, dynamic world. Peoples' attention spans are getting shorter and fragmented because we are constantly forced to multitask. Sales presentations need to keep up and be designed for this new, more demanding audience that will not be entertained by a "dog and pony show".
You clients and prospects live in an interactive world where they are used to having an active role and being in partial control. Here are a few ways that sales leaders have made their presentations engaging and memorable:
Make it a Magic Act
Magicians have been doing it for years; they spice up a boring act with audience volunteers. This is one trick worth stealing from them.
When the magician selects his volunteer, at first we secretly wish we were selected. If the magician then locks the volunteer in a box and pulls out a gigantic saw, we change our minds and breathe a sigh of relief. No one really wants to volunteer to be sawed in half.
Start the presentation off with a brief introduction but then move quickly into a dialog. Keep it informal, keep it on topic, and involve your audience. It doesn't matter where you are giving the presentation – a large group, a few people in a conference room, online or by remote video – you can build in audience participation. Just don't lock anyone up in a box and pull out a gigantic saw.
Make the presentation style suit your audience
Don’t use a "flashy" presentation for a small, informal group. Save it for a large meeting, conference or for a Board presentation where it is expected.
When you are presenting a small group or an audience of one, keep the presentation simple. Don't use a laptop or projected presentation unless it is core to your product or service. When you have a small group, work to maximize your opportunity to make a personal connection.
Discard the old structured presentation agenda
Have the guts to abandon a classic, structured sales pitch. Most presentation experts recommend a sales presentation with an Introduction, Benefits with concrete examples, Conclusion where you "ask for the order", followed by a Q&A period.
Think about changing this up. Why not incorporate the benefits in the introduction? Why not invite questions in the middle of the presentation? And why wait to ask for the prospect's business?
Remember, your audience has seen dozens, if not hundreds of presentations. You do not want to blend into the sea of just another corporate presentation.
Don't use outdated clip art, complex build slides and cluttered templates
It seems elementary but is it still such a common mistake, I have to include it. The fastest way to brand you company as "out of touch" is to use canned clip art. At all costs, avoid "cartoon" style illustration. Don't use complex build slides or cluttered PowerPoint templates. It is far better to use a plain template with straight-forward, simple language and online information-added graphics.
We all love PowerPoint but…
This is one case where less is really more – more memorable that is. Keep the slides to the minimum number required to tell the story. Research studies have found that shorter slide presentations are more memorable. Don't bore the audience with a data dump. Make a few brief, powerful points and support them with fast memorable facts and brief case history example. Try to inspire questions – don’t give all the answers.
If you are not a standup comic, don't pretend to be one.
Everyone in the room is exposed to the high-level comedy on TV so the bar for a joke is very high. Use prepared jokes only if you can really deliver them professionally. If you lack comic timing, avoid them at all costs.
Say thank you and don't just hope for an encore performance - ask for it.
And no matter what, end the entire presentation with a thank you and a request to go to the next step – ask for a follow-up meeting or when you can start service. Make the audience want an encore.
Bottom line: Make your sales presentation stick. Impress yourself with how elegantly simple it is and how well your audience listens. Deliver the goods, not the fluff.
For more help with your sales processes - give us a shout.
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Posted by Chris Foran on Wed, Jul 28, 2010
Research shows organizations that spend more time recruiting high-caliber people earn 22% higher return to shareholders than their peers. Ponder for a moment the last sales person that you hired. After you selected them, did they work out as intended or did they turn into somebody totally unlike what you thought when you interviewed them? The most important aspect of any business is recruiting and retaining top sales people.
Hiring is both art and science. Refusing to improve this vital process will almost always guarantee you will be spending money and time hiring the wrong people. Here are several reasons why traditional techniques are inadequate:
- The majority of applicants exaggerate to get a job
- Most hiring decisions are made by intuition in the first few minutes of the interview
- 2 out of 3 sales hires prove to be a bad fit within the first year
- Most interviewers are not properly trained nor do they like to interview applicants
5 P's to Help You Improve Sales Team Hiring
- Prepare - Prior to the interview make sure you understand the key elements of the job. Develop a simple outline that covers the job duties. Screen resumes to gain information for the interview. Standardize and prepare the questions you will ask each applicant.
- Purpose - Talented sales people have more choices and job opportunities to choose from. The interviewer forms the applicant's first impression of the company. Not only are you trying to determine the best applicant, but you also have to convince the applicant this is the best place for them to work.
- Performance - Identify the knowledge, attributes, and sales skills the applicant needs for success. If the job requires special education be sure to include it on your list. Identify the top seven attributes or competencies that the job requires and structure the interview accordingly.
- People Skills - The hardest to determine, as well as the most important part of the process, is identifying the people skills a person bring to the job. Each applicant wears a "mask." A good interviewing and selecting process discovers who is behind that mask and determines if a match exists between the individual and the job. By understanding the applicant's personality style, values, and motivations, you are guaranteed to improve your hiring and selecting process.
- Process - The best interview follows a structured process. This doesn't mean the entire process is inflexible without spontaneity. What it means is, each applicant is asked the same questions and is scored with a consistent rating process. A structured approach helps avoid bias and gives all applicants a fair chance.
Hiring and retaining a great sales team isn't easy. We can help you with this all-important process.
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Posted by Mansfield Sales Partners on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
Go back a couple of decades and you will find that most companies had a unified Sales and Marketing function. Today, even in mid-sized companies, the Marketing function is often separated from Sales. Marketing is the "keeper of the brand" and creates "sales support materials" but really doesn't actively engage in "selling".
How did this happen?
Probably we need to assemble a team of MBA's to study this phenomenon for a couple of years and present their findings to uncover the truth. But allow me put forward a theory – it started with the systemization of Marketing at Harvard and other leading academic institutions. Great and important work that really helped elevate brand management, but also started to separate Marketing from Sales.
Does it matter who did it? Not really. The real key is to fix the problem.
Jumpstarting Sales Growth
Breaking down the barriers between Sales and Marketing is one of the fastest ways to refocus your organization on what matters and jumpstart sales growth. In most organizations this is not an easy task but a determined CEO can make it happen. Here are a few examples of successful efforts.
- Just get them to talk – honestly: One CEO I know decided that he would call regular Sales and Marketing meetings. He didn't engage in any formalized Sales and Marketing Integration process. He just worked to foster communication and dialog between his two departments. He held Sales and Marketing Team meetings every week and focused the meetings squarely on a discussion of disconnects and missed opportunities – and how to solve these problems. He mandated honesty. Some of the meetings were tense; a few were almost out of control. After several weeks, however, the meetings started to become productive. Realistic plans for change were developed. The Sales Team started to feel like they had a voice in the entire process. The Marketing executives got credit for actually doing some things right and became less defensive about change. Over time, the meetings evolved from problem-solving sessions into a way to brainstorm sales growth strategies and to synchronized efforts. It didn't solve all the problems, but it helped.
- Exchange student: What is the fastest way to connect Marketing to Sales? It may be to make the key marketing executives actually sell something. A CEO faced with a struggling division did just that. He took his VP of Marketing and put him on the phone, selling the division's services to small business owners. Much to the VP's dismay, he was assigned to the task for a month and given a sales quota. After a week or two, the VP’s perspective started to change. He learned that the division’s lead generation program had significant gaps and he re-evaluated his vendors. He also discovered that it was hard to sell the division's service, that the company lacked a clear competitive advantage. The experience not only built a new respect for how hard it can be to sell, but it also inspired him to reconfigure the service offering and build in meaningful advantages. The division continues to struggle but the refocused sales and marketing program have started to make a difference.
- Shared goals, clear roles: Every CEO knows that success is almost impossible without common corporate goals and strategies that are understood. But it is equally important that the roles and responsibilities with Sales and Marketing are well defined and properly interconnected. Usually there are clearly written job descriptions neatly filed in HR and quickly forgotten. Sometimes outside venders have formal goals. But rarely does anyone take the time to make sure that all the key players know what their roles and responsibilities are, and to eliminate any gaps or gray areas. One large corporation has solved this. They hold quarterly Sales and Marketing conferences to make sure that everyone is on the same page. All of the key members of the Sales and Marketing team are included – both internal and external. Many companies hold similar meetings but what distinguishes this company is that they always spend the first session on making sure that there is clarity and agreement about goals, roles and responsibilities. Then they move on to planning the upcoming sales effort. Everyone knows what they are expected to do and what they must accomplish to achieve the sales goals.
- The sales presentation is useless: A consultant was hired by a CEO to develop a sales training program. The consultant first learned about the company and sales process. Not surprisingly, she discovered a disconnect between Marketing and Sales. The Marketing Team had put together tools and presentations for their sales team that bore little resemblance to the actual pitches given by sales. The sales team didn’t support marketing’s program and they quietly developed their own pitch. As a result, there was a disconnect between the benefit statements, key concepts, and core message in the company's advertising and sales support materials vs. the sales presentation. Clients and prospects were confused, and sales lagged. The consultant went back to the CEO with a proposal to help the company integrate its sales and marketing efforts. Sometimes an outside consultant can identify and help solve these problems more effectively than internal staff.
Is there a Grand Canyon between Sales and Marketing in your organization? We can help.
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