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Hewlett-Packard
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 - Volume 3
By Jim Dickie & Barry Trailer
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 – Volume 3
Current Research Studies by CSO Insights
Sales Performance Optimization Topical Reports
2010 Survey of 3,000+ Firms
Key Trends Analysis Sales Management Analysis Sales Rep Hiring/Compensation Analysis Sales Process Analysis
Sell Cycle Analysis Core CRM Analysis Sales Strategy Analysis CRM 2.0 Usage Analysis
Sales Execution Analysis Sales & Marketing Alignment Analysis Account Management Analysis Recommendations Going Forward
Sales Management Optimization Key Trends Analysis
Telemarketing/Inside Sales Optimization Key Trends Analysis
Lead Generation Optimization Key Trends Analysis
Sales Compensation & Performance Management Key Trends Analysis
For more information on these studies go to CSO Insights Research
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 – Volume 3
Terms and Conditions
Copyright © 2010 CSO Insights All Rights Reserved.
Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/. All trademarks are those of their respective companies.
Please feel free to post this document in its entirety in your blog or email it
to anyone you feel would benefit from reading it.
Thank you.
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance – Volume 3
Table of Contents
CSO Insights Sales Management eBook Project Overview .................................................................. 1
Mr. Kenneth R. Powell..................................... ......... .........................................................................2
Vice-President, World-Wide Sales Enablement, ADP
The fate of any sales organization lives and dies at the front-line sales leader level. Although it can be
the most rewarding job in sales, at times it can literally seem like trench warfare. The challenge today is
to find the best people to fill those positions and then surround those sales managers with all the
appropriate learning and resources, because the complexity of the markets we currently live in make
their jobs much more challenging than ever before.
Mr. Philip J. Garlick………………………..…………………………………………………………………………………………………10
President, OneSource Information Services
For the last two years we have been in a recessionary environment which has resulted in less budget
going around. That, in turn, has meant more competition for a smaller number of dollars and more
scrutiny on the buyer’s side in terms of making decisions. As economic conditions continue to influence
the world of sales, we need to ask ourselves what does this mean to the selling process; what will we
have to do differently?
Mr. Kevin M. Joyce…………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………….19
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Miranda Technologies
Any discussion about how to improve sales and marketing alignment needs to start with the realization
that historically these two disciplines have had little respect for each other. I use the metaphor of cats
and dogs; it's just not in their DNA to become completely intimate with and interdependent upon each
other and have their success based on each other. But the realities of the business world necessitate
that we make that happen anyway, so let me share some thoughts on how to make this work.
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 – Volume 3
Mr. Robert Savage……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….....29
Co-Founder and President, Savage & Associates
We look for people with a good work ethic who possess a great attitude. There has to be a certain
amount of intellect and talent, but beyond that, they must possess great habits. We all have habits,
but are they good ones? Honing good habits to improve ourselves and getting rid of bad habits that
we all have at different stages in our lives is what helps us focus and really achieve.
Mr. Jim Dickie……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………40
Managing Partner, CSO Insights
The serious decline in sales performance over the past two years is causing CSOs and CEOs sleepless
nights wondering how to optimize the way we sell. Much of the focus has been on what salespeople
should do to increase their effectiveness. While this is certainly part of the equation, sales
management has to step up their game as well. One key area where many sales management teams
are underperforming is pipeline/forecast management, and this won't improve until we start doing
three things differently.
About CSO Insights……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………48
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance – Volume 3
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CSO Insights Sales Management eBook Project Overview
One of the great personal benefits of the benchmarking work we do here at CSO Insights is that we get to
tap into the wealth of experiences and wisdom of numerous sales and marketing thought leaders. In light
of the significant challenges surfaced from surveying over 3,000 companies worldwide during the course of
our 2010 Sales Performance Optimization (SPO) study, improving the effectiveness of our sales teams is
more critical today than ever. Because of this, we have committed to producing a series of eBooks to share
some of the knowledge our colleagues in the sales world have shared with us.
In each eBook we provide an overview of the key findings from our latest SPO research. We then present
a series of commentaries generated from interviews we conducted that profile the approaches that CSOs
and their teams are utilizing to effectively leverage people, process, technology, and knowledge to
improve sales results, even in tough economic times.
For the purposes of this eBook, we selected interviews that we felt covered a broad range of issues and
ideas that would be of interest to many sales and marketing executives for helping to optimize their
strategies this year and beyond. In future eBooks we will be taking specific topics such as territory and
compensation management, improving lead generation, hiring and developing new sales talent, optimizing
cross-selling and up-selling, effectively leveraging CRM technologies, more effectively engaging channel
partners, improving sales management via analytics, etc.
Through this continuing exchange of insights we hope to make this eBook series an ongoing educational
process for sales executives, versus a one-time learning event. If you have suggestions for topics you would
like to see covered, or if you have a story you are willing to share, please contact Jim Dickie, Managing
Partner at CSO Insights via email at jim.dickie@csoinsights.com or phone 303-521-4410.
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Kenneth R. Powell
Several years ago, three colleagues who didn't know one another each said the same thing to me: "You
really ought to meet Ken Powell—he is doing really innovative things." So I did, and they were right.
Ken is the Vice President of World-Wide Sales Enablement at Automatic Data Processing (ADP). ADP is
recognized as a world leader in business process outsourcing, as well as having one of the premiere
B2B sales forces globally. His mission is “Making Good Salespeople Great,” and he has spent his entire
professional career dedicated to that goal. Ken has held positions in front-line sales and sales
leadership, as well as senior roles in sales operations, marketing and sales training. In his current
position, Ken is responsible for the vision and execution of the overall sales enablement strategy for a
$9 billion dollar multinational business with 5,000 sales associates. He holds a BA in History from the
Ramapo College of New Jersey, an MBA in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of
Technology, and is completing his business coaching certification at Corporate Coach U. He is a
frequent speaker and author on sales effectiveness topics. I asked Ken to share some of his insights
related to sales leadership for this eBook.
Jim Dickie
The fate of any sales organization lives and dies at the front-line sales leader level. Although it can be
the most rewarding job in sales, at times it can literally seem like trench warfare. The challenge
today is to find the best people to fill those positions, and then surround those sales managers with
all the appropriate learning and resources, because the complexity of the markets we currently live
in make their jobs much more challenging than ever before.
At ADP, we take development of our sales leadership personnel very seriously. We have implemented
a number of programs over the years to identify the right sales leaders and then help them acquire the
right knowledge and skills to be effective in leading their teams. So let me share some of the concepts
that I feel are key to optimizing sales leadership performance.
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Finding the Right Leaders
Any discussion on sales leadership needs to include asking the question, “Who should be a sales
manager?” Conventional wisdom would suggest that we take our top performing sales reps and move
them into a leadership role. But in sports there is an old adage that says the best player doesn't always
make the best coach. When I talk to my peers in other companies, over time we have found that adage
definitely holds true in terms of what we've seen in moving top performers into leadership roles.
There's a very specific profile of what makes a great sales person and a very specific profile around
what makes a great sales leader. And those attributes are very different. This realization may cause
you to reengineer the hiring process, not only around finding great sales associates but also around
finding great sales leaders. When you evaluate candidates today, I feel you should look for three
things: talent, fit and skills. Let’s consider each of these individually.
Talent is the behavioral DNA that someone has, that someone's born with. For example, an individual
may be someone who's very detail-oriented. That is an attribute they are born with—you can't teach
it. As part of the hiring process you first need to understand each individual’s innate competencies.
The second characteristic is fit. Here we need to assess the candidate and understand what kind of
corporate culture they will work well in. Do they thrive in a high-paced, fast energy environment,
juggling a million balls at once? Are they looking for a deliberate, methodical pace to what they do and
how they do it? Is individual recognition important to them, or are they more focused on the success of
the team? Are they self-directed and feel limited when others tell them what to do? The objective is to
determine the type of environment they best operate in and then how that compares to your
organization.
Lastly, there are learned skills that a sales candidate brings to the job that need to be factored into the
success equation. For a sales person this could include competencies they have developed in areas
such as listening, presentation skills, negotiation skills, etc., which they can leverage in effectively
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selling for us. So as we look to bring these individuals on board, we should also be looking at their
competencies as related to being a future sales leader as well.
Traditional, behavioral-based interviews, which is predominantly the way that people still assess talent,
only hits on one of these elements: skills. To gain insights into talent and fit, you need to dig deeper.
One practice I would recommend to help with interviews is to use a competency assessment service.
There are several good options available. In general, these services first help you model your top
performers. Once you have defined what it is that inherently makes someone a great sales leader or a
great sales person at your firm, you can then leverage that to do an assessment of those attributes as
part of the interviewing process.
Using this approach, you can determine immediately where an individual stands regarding the first
element of the hiring process: talent assessment. An example of behavioral DNA that would separate a
leader from a high-performing sales person would be someone who's really self-motivated, not just
self-motivated; I would almost use the term “selfish. “
When someone is as selfish with their time as a sales person, it is actually a good thing because you
want them laser focused on driving their number. However, if someone is selfish with their time who is
a leader, it actually works counterproductively. In that case, they're more inwardly focused as opposed
to motivated to drive and mentor a sales team.
As part of any assessment process you need to make sure you are focusing on multiple attributes that
are meaningful for how your company operates. Assessment service providers can help you identify
these. Aligning a potential hire to those attributes provides good insight into if and how that candidate
could be successful working for your company. One individual might show potential for being a great
sales associate, another might be a future sales leader, while a third might be a pre-sales engineer, and
so forth. Bringing science to the hiring process helps ensure you have a solid population of great sales
talent as well as future sales leadership talent in place.
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Sales Leadership Development
But identifying the right people who have the potential to be successful sales leaders is not enough.
You have to ensure they are successful. As a general observation, I believe that sales organizations, on
the whole, grossly under-invest in and under-develop their sales leaders. The dollars that are spent on
these individuals, versus sales rep development, is alarmingly disproportionate. I often see the Pareto
principle applied where 80% of the dollars are spent on sales associates versus 20% on leaders.
Personally, I feel the allocation should be weighted more heavily toward the leaders. The reason is
simple. If I can significantly impact the ability of one leader—who in turn is managing a team of seven
sales associates—then I can potentially improve the performance of eight people. Making sure sales
leaders excel at coaching and mentoring raises the performance bar for everyone who reports to that
leader.
To invest those dollars wisely, you need to have dedicated resources in charge of sales leadership
development. That person’s or those people’s goal should be to build and foster the talent pipeline by
ensuring you have the right amount and the right type of development opportunities for your sales
leadership team.
As you start to evaluate candidates who will move from selling into managing, a number of factors
need to be considered. First, since they are going to be leading others, they need to have a track record
of success that gives them credibility with the salespeople on their team. Based on this, performance-
wise they should have been over quota for a certain period of time to be considered.
In addition, they should come with recommendations for the position. We all consider references
when we hire someone from the outside. What I am advocating is that someone, such as their senior
sales leader, needs to have enough confidence in their abilities to recommend them for a management
position.
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Next, you should again conduct a skill-based assessment to determine how this person stacks up to the
competencies they will need in their new role as a sales manager. And while this is helpful, you still
need to see how the person matches up to what they look like on paper, so a thorough interviewing
process is still required.
If this sounds like a lot of effort, it is. But you are making a key decision when you move someone into
a sales leadership role. Pick the right individual, and they can help ensure the success of their entire
team. But if you pick someone who can't do the job, the success of their team is now in jeopardy.
Leadership Development Phases
Once candidates are identified, I feel it is in everyone's best interest to let them explore leadership
without being forced to make a decision to jump into management. We should give them a chance to
put a toe in the water, understand what leadership entails, and find out if this is the right career move
for them.
To facilitate this, you might offer a few selected training opportunities, a workshop around aspects of
sales leadership, one-on-one coaching time with an experienced sales manager to learn the pluses and
minuses of the job, etc. After that exposure, ask them for, at least, a soft commitment as to whether
they do or do not want to continue forward to becoming a leader.
If you and they agree that this is the right career choice, then you need to make sure they have the
right skills to be successful. Any sales leadership program should have two focuses: managing your
people and managing your process.
With the people category, depending on your firm, you may want to include topics such as providing
effective feedback, coaching, transitioning to leadership, time management, introduction to
interviewing, day in the life of a sales leader, etc.
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With managing your process you may choose to focus on sales rep management protocols, one-on-one
mentoring approaches, and pipeline and forecast data analysis, etc.
I personally believe in a phased approach to training. Delivering training over time allows sales
managers to learn new skills, integrate them into their workflow, and then learn a few more. So after
your initial training program, you may want to offer advanced sales leadership education on topics like
hiring top talent, performance management, building a winning team culture, handling difficult
conversations, etc.
In the sales process area you could move into areas such as sales forecasting, territory design,
managing a strategic sales process, business acumen, leveraging channels, and so on. You don't need
to develop all the training yourself. There are a number of resources you can subscribe to that provide
sales managers with meaningful content.
As with any type of development program, once the course work is completed, you need to monitor
the performance of these front-line sales leaders and look to ensure they are applying those lessons in
their day-to-day workflow. You also need to consider what type of help these sales managers will need
to move into higher level sales leadership positions.
If first-line sales managers show ability as strategic thinkers, they should become candidates for further
advancement. To prepare them for those roles, you should be looking to offer development programs
on topics such as staffing and succession planning, personal brand, and leading through leaders. On the
process side we focus on financial acumen, trend analysis, budgeting, selling expense management,
competition and market analysis, maximizing partnerships, etc.
Based on the challenges sales organizations face today, and the rapid rate of change we are all
experiencing, personal development should be an ongoing process. Even those in the most senior sales
leadership positions can benefit from becoming more effective in areas like talent management and
innovation, strategic planning, running a business and leading change.
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Individualized Development
Other leaders I have talked to often want to know what makes up the timeframe for the various phases
of a successful sales leadership program. I tell them that Phase One is six to twelve months before a
person receives their first leadership assignment. But, I also add that they should not get hung up on
timeframes because one of the things that we've recognized the need for, and are doing more work
around, is individual development plans.
Standard timeframes are good measuring sticks for the 80% of the population that generally matches
up to it. Personally, I would recommend considering an individualized approach to development. If a
candidate shows you they have the ability, either through their performance or through their capability
to accelerate their learning, then you should encourage and promote and fast-track those individuals.
To facilitate this, you should develop specific milestones and accomplishments that need to be
adhered to in order to complete a sales leadership development program; become certified, if you will.
The certification should include a balance of knowledge and skills as well as performance. As long is
someone is progressing at the appropriate pace, you should keep investing in them.
I know what I am advocating requires a big commitment, but at ADP we personally have seen a
significant return on our investment. If the performance of your sales leadership team is optimized,
they will be able to generate the maximum performance out of their teams. It does take a big increase
in sales productivity to generate the funds to cost justify the types of programs I have been proposing.
Recommendations
If I were going to give recommendations to other organizations regarding the development of their
sales leadership teams, first I would reinforce a point I made earlier: not all top performers make great
sales leaders. Because of this fact, an investment in a selection tool that models the behaviors of their
top performing sales leaders and hiring according to those profiles is critical.
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Second, the focus of the investments and support services you provide needs to be on helping
individual contributors become great coaches. When you say coaches, I think that term is often
misused. From a leadership perspective, coaching in its truest sense is really about helping drive
performance, helping people identify performance gaps through self-exploration and ensuring the skill
set you need gets developed above all others.
Third, the individualized component of learning today is something that we don't do enough about, but
we all need to. The traditional university style of learning where there is a laundry list of classes that
the associate or sales leader has to take is antiquated, and it should be replaced with an approach that
identifies performance and skill gaps for each individual and then provides that individual with a
personalized curriculum that closes the gaps and increases their effectiveness.
Finally, the ideas I have been exploring here are not a “nice to do,” but rather a “must do.” If we don’t
invest in ensuring that sales leadership teams, from first-line sales managers up to the top sales
executive, have the skills and support services in place to make them as effective as possible, we will
be hard pressed for them to get the top performance from the teams under them.
To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,
or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks
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Philip J. Garlick
Individuals can ascend to the executive suite through a variety of different paths, but I have always had
a personal affinity for those who came up through the sales ranks. This is probably why I enjoy
interacting with Philip Garlick. When I first met Phil over a decade ago, he was Vice President of Global
Sales and Support for OneSource Information Services, a leading player in the sales/business
intelligence marketplace. Phil has since gone on to assume the role of President at OneSource, adding
the responsibilities for strategic direction, business development, and overall management of the firm.
Still, his roots in the world of sales at OneSource—and prior to that in various sales and marketing
positions for Wang UK and Grand Metropolitan—are evident when you talk to him about the
challenges facing businesses today. Phil holds a Master's degree in economics from Manchester
University, UK, which is another reason I asked Phil to share his thoughts on sales effectiveness in
turbulent times for this eBook.
Jim Dickie
For the last two years we have been in a recessionary environment which has resulted in less budget
going around. That, in turn, has meant more competition for a smaller number of dollars and more
scrutiny on the buyer’s side in terms of making decisions. As economic conditions continue to
influence the world of sales, we need to ask ourselves what does this mean to the selling process;
what will we have to do differently?
The New Selling Realities
In talking to our clients around the world, and in fact just looking at our own experiences at
OneSource, it is clear that there are two new realities for sales. The first is related to who companies
sell to. A few years ago, as a salesperson, you might have been able to find a champion within an
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account in your territory, determined his/her needs, provided a proposal, and had the deal approved.
These instances are happening far less frequently today, if they are happening at all.
The first new reality is that as spending limits have been revised and reduced, purchase approvals now
involve more stakeholders, including more at senior management levels. This is making it more
challenging for sales to get sign-off on any expenditure related to purchasing new products or services.
And, in fact, if you miss involving certain stakeholders in the selling process, the end result can be that
the deal languishes in the world of no decision—forever.
The second reality is even more interesting to me, which is, more than ever, salespeople need to earn
the right to sell. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when you could pick up the phone,
call a business professional in a company, and get an appointment by asking for some time to come in
and learn more about their business. Well, today we live in an era where no one has spare time.
Customers are not going to invest time educating you; they expect you to be educated about their
world when you call them.
One could say these realities are short-term trends and once the economy gets back on track to
steady, predictable growth, selling will get easy again. Personally, I don't see that happening; I think
selling has fundamentally changed. I may be wrong, but since no one has a clear idea when things will
get better, the expectation from our boards and stockholders is to grow our business now—not
somewhere down the road—requires that we deal with these new realities.
The Informed Sales Force
The old adage “knowledge is power” is taking on a new meaning in the world of sales. To be successful
today, salespeople need a basic grounding in the markets they are selling into. At the broadest level,
they need to understand the industries they are focusing on and the challenges that firms in these
marketplaces collectively face.
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They need to go deeper and understand each of the key players in those industries. Who competes
directly with whom? Who is growing, standing still, or declining? What are the individual external and
internal challenges that these companies are dealing with?
One of the key objectives is for salespeople to be able to determine, of all the accounts they could call
on, which ones should they call on. Sales reps need to focus on the best available opportunities. To
make these choices, they need to have a detailed understanding of their prospects in context to the
overall market. Without this level of understanding of the firms in their territories, it will be hard for
them to make intelligent choices as to where to best spend their time.
Assume you decide that ABC Company is an account on which you need to focus. We now get back to
the stakeholder issue; who inside of ABC Company do you need to call on and why would they agree to
meet with you? You need a strategy and a plan before you make that first call, and that is requiring
salespeople to have access to Business Intelligence (BI) to do so.
The Business Intelligence Access Challenge
In comparison with five or ten years ago, the amount of information that's available— largely for free
on the Web—is immense and expanding. This represents a potential asset for salespeople today, but
only if they can overcome four challenges. The first of these is time.
The research from CSO Insights shows that the amount of time salespeople can dedicate to selling
today is a precious resource. Yes, there is a lot of data available through the Internet, but having run
sales forces, I can tell you I don't want my people spending their time endlessly surfing the Web to find
the data they need. That task can too easily end up being a huge time sink.
The second issue we need to consider is that there is a huge difference between data and intelligence.
It is one thing to find a 100+ page analyst report on the Web. That is a wealth of data. But how do we
distill that volume of information down to the one or two pages of intelligence a salesperson needs to
know in order to integrate it into an account penetration strategy?
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Assume for the moment that you can solve that problem. The third challenge is to determine how
current the information is. The markets we all sell into have become more volatile, and companies and
industries are changing more rapidly than ever before. So when you do glean a piece of business
intelligence, you have to do a relevancy checkpoint.
I'll give you a case in point. Let's say someone is trying to reach me as President of OneSource. That
sales person can get access to a lot of information about my firm and some on me. In many cases we
were the ones who put it there in the form of press releases, interviews, articles, and so forth. Because
of this, the information is accurate, but is it relevant? If a sales person calls me and uses a quote that I
made two years ago about my industry, business, goals and objectives, quite honestly, I consider
him/her uninformed and end the call.
This brings me to the fourth challenge: was I the right individual for that salesperson to reach out to in
the first place? If you go to our website, like most sites out there, as the company President I am
visible. Go to the Management Team page and there I am along with my direct reports. Also, on that
page is the 800 number to call.
Assume a news item hits the Internet where I am quoted as saying that OneSource wants to expand its
partnerships. Let's say you are a consulting firm that helps companies do that. Should you call me?
To be frank, while I may want us to optimize our partnering, as President I am not going to actually do
that. So wouldn't the best person for you to call be the person inside of OneSource that I have assigned
to solve that problem? And wouldn't you also be more effective in selling to OneSource if you knew the
other influencers further down the organizational chain that could make or break your sale?
This gets back to the issue of stakeholder identification. Business Intelligence (BI) is ultimately only
useful if you know the right people to share it with. Otherwise, it is meaningless.
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The Business Intelligence Industry Evolution
I look at the challenges I just outlined in two ways. As a member of the BI industry, this is clearly an
opportunity for companies such as OneSource. If a BI firm can cost effectively collect, synthesize, and
share BI with its clients, along with information on contacts at all levels within the prospect firm to
whom the insights are meaningful, then it has a great opportunity to create clear value for its clients.
Knowing what to do is the easy part of the equation; how to do it is more challenging. Let’s consider
why. Of what I just said—collect, synthesize, share—on the surface “collect” appears to be the easiest.
Anyone with access to a browser can type in keywords and collect data. Some of the data, but not all of
the data.
The social media phenomenon represents another emerging information source, and we in the BI
space need to figure out new methods of data collection to effectively leverage that knowledge asset.
That is why, for example, our development team is focused on new methods to scrape, if you will, data
from sources like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc.
Here are a few examples to illustrate how mining social media can uncover opportunities for sales
reps. Let's say a manager of a company "tweets" that they are attending a computer security
conference and is interested in the session on blocking spam emails. If your firm sells email firewalls,
your sales person would want to contact this manager. Or if someone blogs that they are dissatisfied
with one of your competitor's level of service, this would be a perfect time to reach out to them about
how you could more effectively solve their problem. Or a manager updates their profile on a social
media site to show they have joined a sales training management group. If you work for a firm selling
sales training then this is a person you should meet.
Synthesizing Knowledge
Synthesizing what you gather then becomes the next challenge to overcome. To make sense of all the
pieces of data you can gather, BI firms need to enhance their information processing engines to
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organize, index and then package and integrate what some might describe as the chaos of the Web
into meaningful intelligence.
To facilitate this, we have been investing heavily in a technology to support our new iSell offering
called sales triggers. The intent of triggers is to identify events that are taking place within a prospect
account in a marketplace in which the company operates or perhaps at the individual contact level.
Here is an example. Assume you are a sales person for an office furniture firm. You have done business
in the past outfitting offices for XYZ Bank. You could set up a trigger for a BI solution such as iSell to
monitor the Internet and look for specific types of events related to XYZ Bank. Each day, the
application acts like your personal research assistant, scouring the Internet for meaningful insights—no
effort required by you.
Our headquarters are in Concord, Massachusetts. So assume for the moment that the City of Concord
issues a building permit for XYZ Bank to build a new branch here. That is an event that would be posted
on the Internet, and the new generation of trigger event trackers would post and bring this
information to your attention.
While the bank may not have broken ground for the building of their new branch, that doesn't mean
that the buying process for outfitting the new office with furniture can't start. By letting you know that
certain events have occurred, you are in the position of being first to respond, and in sales that is
always a key advantage.
Share, Share, and Share
It would be great if the BI industry could share intelligence with you once and meet all your needs. But
it is not that simple. We have two areas we need to then focus on. The first involves another use of
triggers. In addition to being useful in uncovering new opportunities, they can also be an effective way
to monitor events that could derail existing opportunities.
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If a merger or acquisition is announced that impacts one of your prospects, or they miss their quarterly
revenue goals, or one of your competitors makes an announcement regarding lower prices or new
capabilities, and so forth, trigger-event enabled BI tools notify your reps about those events. This
allows salespeople to not only identify new opportunities, but also assess risks related to existing
opportunities they are pursuing so they can take proactive steps to minimize the impact these might
have on closing a deal.
Immediacy of intelligence access is key. Because of this, BI applications must have the ability to send
information like this directly to mobile sales reps’ Blackberries or iPhones, so they are never out of
touch with what is happening in their territory.
A second aspect of ongoing sharing is related to contacts. If a stakeholder leaves the firm, if a new
executive comes in, if items such as phone, address, or email change, BI applications need to be able to
identify those events and notify the right rep. In addition, if the solutions are integrated into CRM, as
for example iSell is with Salesforce.com, then the contact records can be automatically updated, as
well.
A couple of decades ago, companies in my market space were, in reality, "list vendors." We provided
reps with lists of contacts and wished them well in turning the list into sales. Being a BI provider, as you
can see, is much more challenging. To be a real player today you have to provide much more value to
be meaningful to your clients, which requires more investments on our side. But if we are successful,
then the impact BI can have on sales success is significant.
ROI from BI
Clearly providing salespeople with the intelligence they need requires an investment on the part of
sales organizations. Whether you are a company with one sales rep or 1,001, you need to see a clear
return on investment for any expenditure you make in your sales teams.
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When I talk to companies that are effectively leveraging BI, they all point to hard dollar benefits they
are achieving as a result. For instance, trigger events are helping firms generate more leads. Access to
intelligence about the companies reps are selling to is helping them come up with the strategies to
convert more leads into legitimate opportunities. Further access to better intelligence on the
competition is helping reps more effectively differentiate their offerings and avoid competitive losses.
And leveraging BI to build compelling business cases is reducing no decisions.
One factor to consider is that sometime over the next year I expect to see companies start to increase
hiring in sales, which always occurs at the beginning of an economic recovery. Having BI available to
the new sales professionals helps reduce the ramp-up time that it takes to get them fully productive.
One other factor is that cloud computing now makes BI accessible to a firm of any size. Any firm can
get cost effective access to the intelligence its sales teams need without having an internal information
technology staff and infrastructure.
Advice to Peers
Putting on my former Vice President of Sales hat, if I were talking to a group of my peers, what advice
would I give them? First, we need to start to invest in our sales teams if they are going to succeed
today. How I personally may have sold in the past is not how I should expect my salespeople to sell
going forward. As I said before, there are new realities at play.
Being in the BI solution space, I, of course, think firms such as OneSource have a key role to play in
helping sales teams meet those challenges. But sales executives need to be aware that not all BI
players are created equal. When looking for outside sources of intelligence, the advice I would give is
to focus on the steak, not the sizzle. At the end of the day, the measures of success from BI need to be
on the quality of the data and the intelligence your sales teams are going to get.
There is a lot of buzz in the BI space about intelligence delivery—giving users access to information via
smartphones, portals, and CRM systems. To me, more attention needs to be on information quality.
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Someone may come up with a way to feed BI directly into your brain, but if the data lacks integrity—if
you cannot trust it because it's not reliable—then you don't have intelligence anymore.
BI is about accuracy; it's about currency; it's about timeliness; and it's about knowing you have a
source that delivers valuable content. This is the standard to which the BI space needs to be held
accountable.
To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,
or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks
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Kevin M. Joyce
A lot of us talk about optimizing sales and marketing alignment, but I have not found anyone who has
focused more on making that a reality than Kevin Joyce. Kevin has more than 20 years of experience in
executive sales, marketing and business management, specializing in high-tech electronic imaging and
graphic arts businesses. He currently has worldwide responsibility for Montreal-based Miranda
Technologies' sales, marketing and strategic direction. Prior to that, Kevin spent six years in key
executive positions with Eastman Kodak, including Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company and Vice
President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Digital Printing Solutions. He has been a featured speaker
at such events as The CMO Summit, The SustainPro Conference, The Aprimo Accenture Marketing
Operations Excellence Forum, Revenue 50, and Advertising Week. He is a graduate of St. Michael’s
College with a BA in American Intellectual Studies and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s
Program for Executive Development. When I asked Kevin to share the lessons he has learned on how
to make sales and marketing work effectively together, he shared the following.
Jim Dickie
Any discussion about how to improve sales and marketing alignment needs to start with the
realization that, historically, these two disciplines have had little respect for each other. I use the
metaphor of cats and dogs; it's just not in their DNA to become completely intimate with and
interdependent upon each other and have their success based on each other. But the realities of the
business world necessitate that we make that happen anyway, so let me share some thoughts on
how to make this?
Laying the Foundation for Sales and Marketing Alignment
Sales and marketing alignment is a topic for which I have great passion. With my recent arrival at Miranda
Technologies, this is one of my top priorities. While successfully linking these functions in the past for
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Fortune 500 companies, I believe the concepts can be successfully applied to any size organization, and I
am happy to share my thoughts and plans. Hopefully, they will be provocative enough to stimulate input
from peers who are also focusing on this challenge so all of us can get even better at it. Perhaps the best
way to start is to give you some background on where I am coming from, and how I got to where I am
today.
The first seven years of my 20-year career I spent in the sales organization. I was vice president of sales
for a high-tech semiconductor business selling circuit boards and then I went to an Israeli-based graphics
arts company, which also had a very sales-centric culture. I then spent about seven years in president and
general management roles where I had all functions reporting to me. It was only then that I started to see
the gaps existing between my sales organization and my marketing organization. It became clear that
these two groups needed to be more effectively aligned. But how do you do that?
I then went to Kodak. For the first three years I was running the geography of the Americas, which was
predominantly a sales-focused role. At Kodak, as with any large organization, if you want to optimize sales
performance you need to look beyond the sales organization. Sales can introduce process, good
forecasting, solid sales techniques, etc., but unless this is done in parallel with a marketing organization
that is intimate with what sales is doing, you will never get to where you need to be.
Based on this realization, after a few years in sales management I put my hand up and became the Chief
Marketing Officer (CMO) in order to introduce a sales-centric, market-centric approach to marketing at
Kodak. I served in that capacity for two years. We made progress, but in order to get to where we really
needed to be I decided to take things a step further.
My thought was why don't we have a person who understands sales, the regions, and the CMO role
manage both sales and marketing? I assumed that role for an additional two years at Kodak. This was by
no means an immediate fix, but in that role I had the opportunity to forge a new level of integration
between these two organizations, allowing me to field-test the concepts I had been developing over my
career.
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Optimizing Forecast Credibility
Let me share the process I will be bringing into Miranda. The first thing that needs to happen is that you
must establish one forecasting language, one sales process and one operating rhythm for how the
organization works. The initial challenge is to build credibility inside the company so that when the data
comes in to a rep, to a district, to a region, to a VP, and all the way up the cycle to marketing, that people
can trust the data coming from sales.
The goal here is to create an environment where supply chain, finance, operations, research, etc., all use
the sales forecast as it is supplied by sales and marketing. The major benefit from this effort is that the
entire organization gets to the point where they believe the forecast as is without layers and layers of
second guessing, if you will. By getting a forecast that is truly reliable, discussions throughout the
company become primarily focused on what we should do versus worrying about what the data means.
This is a game changer for any company.
To support this you need to create a methodology where anybody can articulate two terms—two
probabilities—and know immediately where an opportunity is in the sales process and where we stand
from a competitive position on a deal. The goal should be that it literally only requires a 30-second
discussion to determine where we are so we can then focus on what we are going to do about the
situation. That was the first step.
Sales-Focusing Marketing
Once you have established credibility regarding the data from the sales organization, the next step is to
ensure marketing develops a better understanding of sales. This can be a challenge. Over the years I have
rarely found any marketing professionals who frequently look at the sales forecast or use the data they
were getting from the field.
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To start to accomplish this, you need to require that the marketing organization become intimate with the
sales process and understand what a pipeline and a forecast from a rep or from a region really entails.
Part of this involves getting marketing proficient at utilizing the sales force automation system to look at
market trends; what pricing are used, where are deals getting stuck in the funnel, are the right tools
available to support each step of the sales process, etc. In the past I have mandated that marketing start
interpreting what the data tells them with regards to—is there a market issue, is there a product issue, or
is there a training issue we need to address?
In doing this, you will often find that the marketing process is not as disciplined as it needs to be in terms
of understanding market needs—what products your company should create, the commercialization of
those products, the management of those products throughout a life cycle, and so on. To become more
effective at this requires clearly differentiating who is responsible for thinking about the future and who is
responsible for managing the current situation. To facilitate this, I have found that it requires completely
reorganizing the marketing function and clearly redefining roles and responsibilities within that
organization.
The end result of all this is what I call the "Marketing Network." Where before there may have been a
marketing organization that everybody associated with MarCom, branding, or public relations, you now
have a more organized, cohesive team. As salespeople see strong business skills being created within the
marketing organization, that marketing is gaining insights by effectively interpreting the data, and that
proactive efforts are made to help salespeople or regions with issues, respect for each other increases
significantly. The cats and dogs start to get along.
As a result of this, you end up with an environment where marketing people contact sales about issues
that are going on in their area. As you instill a very strong sales sense into the marketing organization,
they begin to proactively create tools when they look into the pipeline and see an anomaly impacting
sales effectiveness. Perhaps sales is getting stuck at a specific point in the sales process, or they're staying
too long in a stage of the sales cycle, or they start to experience a very low win rate, etc. The key is to get
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marketing to understand that it is their responsibility to recognize what is causing problems for sales, and
effectively deal with those issues.
So, you need to clean up sales, clean up marketing, and then the Holy Grail becomes how do we take this
macro function of sales and marketing and bring it all the way down to the sales rep?
The Holy Grail - Optimizing Sales & Marketing Alignment
With reference to which is the most important function to drive the success of an organization, I originally
would have said sales, because I started as a sales VP. If I had to do a split, I might have said 75% sales and
25% marketing. Today, I have reversed my thinking. I now feel that it should be 75% marketing and 25%
sales. The reasoning behind this is if the marketing organization is disciplined and really understands the
processes and tools required by a sales rep to achieve the highest probability of success, their efforts can
eliminate a lot of inefficiency and cost in the organization.
If marketing is doing their job, then the other 25% is great sales skills execution. It is not that I am
minimizing the importance of what sales needs to do, rather I fully appreciate the value that we are asking
marketing to do: serve as a very valuable resource to sales and spend their time doing what needs to be
done to help them sell.
A lesson I have learned over the years is that by and large salespeople really don't know how to market
themselves. Maybe your very best salespeople might take it upon themselves to develop a marketing
strategy for a specific account or even for contacts within that account, but that is the exception versus
the rule.
Because of that, the challenge we need to put out to our marketing organizations is to create the
framework that would allow a sales rep for your firm to act like a Subway sandwich franchise. What do I
mean by this? Marketing at Subway helps drive sales execution. They do the analysis on what to sell and
how to sell it. Once a quarter the Subway franchise gets a new well-thought-out campaign. This includes
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new promotions—perhaps new products—and marketing materials that the local store can customize
based on their location and clientele, etc. This brings a whole new level of sophistication to the
performance of that franchise.
That is what I want here at Miranda. To optimize our effectiveness I need sales to move away from
working off of handwritten lists of people to call, going through a trunk full of brochures to get an
appointment, walking in without a comprehensive strategy for how to discuss the potential of a $2M
capital equipment purchase, etc. Instead, I want them to invest the time needed to think about how to
have a much deeper relationship with their accounts and then execute those strategies.
To support that, you need a marketing organization that must stay intimate with what is going on in the
sales process and in the region so they are accessible for the salespeople to leverage. This increases the
level of sophistication of both organizations, and is what I externally call ‘smarketing’—sales and
marketing become integrated as one.
‘Smarketing’ in Action
Let me share with you what is different inside your company because of this. ‘Smarketing’ relies on a
disciplined approach regarding how people are expected to communicate their activity— by steps in the
sales process, by probability, by time, etc. As they do this at a high frequency, a minimum of four times a
month, the data starts to speak volumes.
The way it works today is that the data comes in on a monthly or quarterly basis; people look at it and
might say, “Oh my God, what happened here?” This alone is an improvement, but in most companies it
can take another three months to put the right changes in place. Basically, the best you have is two cycles
a year to react.
The next objective is to have marketing continuously speaking to sales, going out on calls, testing if their
data-driven premises are indeed coming true and, if not, to respond proactively—the canary in the coal
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mine. At Miranda, I want us to have 12 cycles to react to the marketplace. Accomplishing this can give us
the opportunity to implement twice as many types of campaigns or initiatives and it can be achieved
when sales and marketing organizations are truly integrated.
When this happens you reduce the cost of sales and improve the productivity of the sales force. There is
one other thing you need to emphasize with the sales force, and that is the need to shorten the life cycle
of product introductions to assure they hit the window of the market in its sweet spot. It is the data that
the sales organization provides to marketing that gives them 75% of the insights for future products. So
feedback from sales to marketing is also imperative.
Dealing Effectively with Competition
I have a unique philosophy for dealing with the competition and it is a difficult one for some people to
accept. Let’s say that marketing analyzes the marketplace landscape and sees that we have three
competitors vying for deals against us. Against competitor A, the lead player in the market, we lose 75%
of the decisions. Against competitor B we split the deals 50/50. And finally, against competitor C we win
75% of the decisions.
Your ego may tell you that you need to go toe-to-toe with the market leader, competitor A. But that is the
wrong choice. Because we have a finite amount of time and a finite amount of resources, it is far more
valuable for us to focus on competitor C than on competitor A. Here is why. Our goal is to gain market
share, and we can do that very effectively by targeting competitor C for a while as we continue to refine
how we are going to beat competitor A.
That is the approach I have adopted. I want our organization to come up with our marketing strategy for
the year—data-driven—and create the tools needed to support that strategy. All of this comes out of this
‘smarketing’ process and it is then clear to everyone who we are going to go after. I have had a lot of
success with this model, but I will be honest and say it takes a lot of discipline. It is like telling the militia
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not to shoot till you see the whites of their eyes. The instinct is just to go into that campaign even when
you know competitor A is there.
Transitioning to ‘Smarketing’
Smarketing requires a culture change. During the transition period you may well eliminate 25% of the
marketing organization. The reason for this is as you redefine the roles that people will have within the
marketing network, you will most likely see that within the marketing organization there is a lot of
duplicate effort. In the absence of a real disciplined approach as to who should do what, you
inadvertently create that overlap.
When there is not a crisp definition of what people should do, they will gravitate to what they want to do.
As a metaphor, I refer to this as ‘swarm ball.’ If you ever have any children that play soccer under the age
of 10, you know what I am talking about. The entire marketing organization basically swarms around the
ball and the ball is whatever the issue is at that moment.
When I share this image with the marketing organization as to how they operate, I make it clear that this
has to change. Like players on a professional soccer team they need to focus on consistently playing their
defined role. They have to transition from swarm ball to an environment where they're a wing; they're a
center; they're a goalie. They play that role and just trust that the ball is going to be passed along to them
at the appropriate moment, in the appropriate manner.
It may sound easy, but it is a very difficult thing to do. Internal culture changes have to take place. In the
past, I have had senior people where I had to sit down to say, “This is not your responsibility. I know you
like to do this but you have to do that. You may not like to do that as much, but that is the way it is. We’ll
try to move you into another role you really like to do but for now this is your role.”
It is a very challenging management issue to reset people’s minds. One useful practice I have found to
make this happen is to have workshops and do scenarios related to launching a product, for example.
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During these sessions we spell out specifically who is responsible for this and who is responsible for that.
We walk away from the past and define the new ways of doing things going forward.
Recommendations Going Forward
In looking back at how I went about aligning sales and marketing, what advice would I give? The first thing
I have to say is that in the past I have used a serial approach when embarking upon this transformation. If
you are wondering which do I do first, sales or marketing? The answer is it doesn't have to happen that
way. With the right vision of integrating sales and marketing into a ‘smarketing’ organization, those tasks
can begin in parallel. Set expectations with each function and with each other on where you need to get
to and the value it brings to both of the organizations, and you can start moving them down the path at
the same time.
My next recommendation would be to make sure sales has a core understanding of the role of marketing
inside an organization and vice versa. And as part of that process, educate the sales force on how valuable
they are to marketing and how valuable marketing can be in terms of helping them make more money
each year.
Then take this even deeper and really train salespeople on marketing and train marketing people on sales.
For instance, in the past when we have conducted sales training courses I included our current marketing
people in those sessions.
Marketing people take part in the role-plays that salespeople are going through. They see firsthand what
the initial presentation look likes, what the value proposition is, how products are related to needs, etc.
As they go through the training, they clearly see where the problems are. For example, they may have
thought the value proposition was clear to everybody, and then they see that half of the salespeople are
struggling with it. In fact, some of them are actually building a case for something completely different.
Those insights are priceless.
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To support all of this you need to effectively leverage technology. Over the years I have used a variety of
customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise marketing management (EMS) systems. I have
found the systems you select are less important than how you use them.
Once these systems are in place, the effort needs to focus on integrating them together to give marketing
more insight into the data. Without this a lot of manual interpretation of the data has to take place in
order to get to the ‘smarketing’ outcome. You need to develop middleware, with some level of the
intelligence into the data, so that marketing doesn't have to spend two days analyzing the figures every
month to come up with specific outcomes and have a dialog with sales.
So that is an overview of what I feel are the core concepts regarding optimizing sales and marketing
alignment. As I said before, hopefully this will stimulate some brainstorming on the part of other
companies and we can all share best practices to get great at ‘smarketing.’
To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,
or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks
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Robert Savage
Robert Savage leads Savage & Associates; a financial services firm based in Toledo, Ohio, which was
founded by him and his late older brother, John F. Savage. Since 1993, Savage & Associates has been
recognized nine, and soon to be 10, years in a row as a Top 100 firm by the General Agency Manager’s
Association (GAMA) International, an organization made up of all the life insurance-based financial
services firms in the United States, including firms such as Equitable and Northwestern. This is
especially notable since Toledo is one of the smallest markets in America. GAMA International also
selects one person for their Management Hall of Fame each year. Bob Savage was inducted in 1999.
The Savage brothers received the local Entrepreneur of the Year Award presented by Ernst & Young,
Merrill Lynch, and INC Magazine. Bob’s other sales awards include being a four-time member of the
$10,000,000 Forum and a 26-year recipient of the National Sales Achievement Award. He also serves
on numerous community and corporate boards. I caught up with Bob for this interview as he returned
from speaking engagements in Singapore, Toronto, and Australia.
Barry Trailer
We look for people with a good work ethic who possess a great attitude. There has to be a certain
amount of intellect and talent, but beyond that, they must possess great habits. We all have habits,
but are they good ones? Honing good habits to improve ourselves, and getting rid of bad habits that
we all have at different stages in our lives, is what helps us focus and really achieve.
Our company is a bit unusual in several ways. First, we bring in young college graduates, usually about
five a year, and we teach them the financial services business. Second, every member of our
management team has personal clientele in addition to management duties, which is a very unusual
structure.
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We teach our people to look at themselves as individual entrepreneurs. They can’t give great advice to
business people if they don’t see themselves in that category. We promote teamwork by having
everyone’s office be a similar size, whether you are a 24-year-old rookie just graduating from the
bullpen or our executive vice president. We have 50 offices and each one is distinctive. That is rare in
large service companies. We encourage individual office decoration because we believe that it is very
important that each office reflect its occupant so that the clients think of their chief financial advisor as
a distinct individual.
In our kind of sales, it is important to get inside people’s heads and know exactly where they want to
go in life. We do that by asking penetrating questions about exactly where they are today, both
financially and personally. Once that is determined we ask more questions to determine their personal
dreams, goals, and objectives—where they see themselves in 10, 15, or 20 years.
Our job is then to take all that information and develop a financial superhighway that gets clients from
where they are, no matter where that is, to where they want to be. We help them figure out how to
get organized, overcome financial hardships, and have a successful financial path through life. We do
that with businesses as well as individuals.
Using our approach, a new mentee should become productive at the end of the fourth year at the
latest, and at the end of the third year in most cases. Every once in a while somebody will become
productive in two years. So our game plan is aimed at a three-year ramp up where a person is
mentored every day.
Our biggest investment is the enormous time we take and the patience we demonstrate in bringing in
our new people. We look at 23 candidates, mostly college juniors and seniors, for every person we
invite to join our firm. We spend an enormous amount of time in selection. The last thing we want is
for somebody to come in and have a bad experience. In an industry where bad experiences are
common, selection is key. And, if you can find the Larry Birds, Michael Jordans, and the Tiger Woods’,
you will win the ballgame.
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A quick aside about athletes: we have had two great athletes come to work here. Athletes are very
common in our industry, but neither one of ours made it. There is certainly an argument that the
really great ones have so much natural talent when it comes to playing sports that they never had to
work at it. But when they had to do the blocking and tackling in our industry, they didn’t relate. I
completely ascribe to the theory that somebody who gets knocked down a lot learns to get up. That’s
the reality of what it takes. It’s not just great talent.
Ongoing recruiting is key to our business, so we develop relationships with many universities and
colleges. We ask the professors to let our younger people into their classrooms to talk about our
business. Our goal is to entice the students who are impressed by the career opportunity
demonstrated by our young associates to come by our office and visit. We talk about the greatness of
the industry and how we feel we can put them in a position to have a great walk through life. We are
looking for those who can walk through the woods and never see the shadows. That is what it takes to
be effective in our kind of business.
We know exactly the characteristics what we’re looking for: people with a history of success; people
with leadership abilities, who other people follow, who are assertive, honest, have a great work ethic,
and a sense of humor. We want people who are articulate and poised, who possess great
communication skills and who you’d like to spend time with. That is what we are looking for in our
business.
When I was in school in the late ‘50s, the education system thought there was only one form of
intelligence. The formal education system recognized that one form, and people who were good at it
got Ph.D.s. Having served on two university boards for a total of 19 years and working a lot with the
university community, we know today that there are many different forms of intellect. We are hunting
for people who are operative, who are first-rate communicators, and whom people have chosen to
follow during their college years.
Given our business needs, we’d rather have the person who was vice president of the student senate,
was president of his fraternity or her sorority, or the one who put together the yearbook. We need
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people who help clients organize their money. They need to be leaders, not just theorists who
pontificate wonderful philosophies.
I don’t talk to candidates until the management team has interviewed them, and everyone agrees that
the selections make sense. When I talk with the candidates, I’m really not looking for talent. I assume
they have the talent or they would not have made it this far. I’m looking for character flaws,
personality flaws, or lack of compatibility with the kind of open space that we coordinate.
We have a true open door policy. When you walk out of here at night, every individual office door is
open. It’s a trusting relationship that is very unusual in business, but that’s the way we built our space
and we don’t want somebody who doesn’t fit in.
What we really offer our associates is independence. If they have intellect, a good work ethic, and
decent people skills, they’ll make a great living wherever they go. We can give them something very
few corporations offer: control of their own time. They can arrange their hours so they never have to
miss a kid’s ballgame or play. They can take five-week vacations in national parks every year if they
want. They can decide when they work and when they don’t. The reality is, by year’s end, they will be
putting in a lot more hours than people who work in typical corporate structures, but the beauty is
they can do it their way. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of freedom.
Investing in the Profession of Sales and Marketing
I was a trustee at the University of Toledo for 11 years. Five years ago, the president of the University
came to me and said that they wanted to develop an Advanced Sales and Marketing Center in the
College of Business. They wanted me to become involved, but I told them I would not do so while I
was a trustee.
Six months after I retired as a trustee, the president of the University approached me again, and after
consulting with our management team we agreed to sponsor what has become the Savage &
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Associates Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing in the College of Business at the University of
Toledo.
In many ways our business structure is similar to a law firm—a service business that does not attempt
to accumulate cash reserves. For that reason we were not in a position to write a large corporate
check. Because of their great love for the University of Toledo we were able to get 26 of our associates
and a couple of our friends in the community to write checks. Collectively, we gave $600,000 to the
University to establish the Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing that bears our name. I continue
to be its strong advocate as we bring this Center to life.
Many professors think that people in sales skin somebody or take advantage of them—unfortunately,
that is part of our image in academia. But I smile at this because, having had a long career in sales, the
salespeople who I’ve known are the most creative and most helpful people in business. In fact, a major
common denominator amongst CEO’s of small- and medium-sized businesses is their background in
sales and communication. I think it’s important that we move sales into an academic environment.
We will all benefit when the future sales people are well prepared by a college of business to go out
and intelligently represent companies.
I’m very convinced that if we could crank out 1,000 sales majors a year who really understand the
communication process that is needed in business, every one of those people would get three job
offers. Every business has a never-ending need to attract and retain people who can articulate the
value proposition of their employer.
Here’s our vision for the Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing. Toledo is a town of 600,000
people. The environment in a town like this allows the members of the business community to know
each other fairly well. Thirty of us from different industries are involved in the Sales Center. In
developing the classes, at least once or twice a week the professors will call in a successful business
person that fits well into that particular part of their curriculum. The business person arrives, talks
with the class, shares his or her wisdom, which has been developed from hands-on experience, and
then answers student questions.
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At the end of the courses, the students have all these wonderful, rich experiences from real life. When
you combine that experience with the professor’s ability to give them structured learning and insight
from an academic viewpoint, the students end up with the best of both worlds. This has not been done
much in the past. Now, though, a lot of places are beginning to look at it and are trying to get centers
started. We believe we can build this into a real model, at least in the Midwest and perhaps beyond.
Sales Excellence
Sales excellence depends on what you’re trying to market or sell. In our kind of business, the sales
person must totally understand the products that are solutions to people’s long-term financial
planning. They must communicate both on the human-value side and on the product side. We view
our people as specialists who help their clients prepare for the future and protect themselves from
life’s financial pitfalls.
Some people in our business are concerned about the threat of the Internet. I think the Internet will
work for a few analytic souls, who are data-driven decision makers—but only a very few. The Internet
gives you an enormous amount of data and information, but most people are not hunting for more
data and information. They are already inundated and overwhelmed by having too much data and
information. What they’re hunting for is knowledge and wisdom. Our job is to take all that data and
information and provide clients with the parts that apply to their personal or business lives. We help
them get organized in a way that makes their lives better. I tell people all the time, “We’re in the
wisdom business. None of us wants to know how the telephone works. We just want to know the
right phone number to call.”
Making Our Business Better
My view is that each associate should do whatever it takes to make Savage & Associates a far better
business. It seems strange to many people that our business with 130 associates does not have any
individual job descriptions. That is because we have a view of what each associate should do to make
Savage & Associates a far better and more effective business.
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We have a sign that says it all. It is posted in our training area, as it has been for more than 25 years. It
says four things:
Do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong.
We all know right from wrong; nobody has to tell us that.
Treat other people the way you want to be treated.
The next time you’re in an argument and you’re about ready to knock somebody over with this great line you just thought of, imagine yourself on the other side of the table. Would you like that line to be delivered to you? If not, then be quiet.
Always do the very best you can.
That’s all anybody can expect. We all have been given gifts and talents. If we are doing the best we
can—that’s great.
Keep in touch with God. We have Jews and Moslems and 27 kinds of Christians here and we’ve never had anybody cause any trouble with the understanding of this point. We’ve also never had anybody object to it.
We hire two or three high school juniors every year. They work here for one year answering the
phones and greeting people. Probably 80% of our appointments are here in the office. Our doors
open at 7:30 a.m. and close at 6:30 p.m., so for 11 hours a day these young kids keep the doors open.
I am not involved in their selection. They just know that ‘Mr. Savage’ is the president. The first time I
bump into them, I look them right in the eye and ask, “Do you know what your number one job is?”
They look at me and it is clear they don’t have any idea. I tell them, “Your number one job is to smile
and to add to our business environment. We have the best business environment in Toledo and your
job is to make it better.”
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Later, I’ll come around the corner and they’ll see me and have this kind of ‘overdone’ smile—as only
teenagers can do—which is very out of place, but over the next few weeks, as things get more relaxed,
the smile is very natural and very pleasant. I tell these young people that everybody has some
personal problems and concerns and they should leave them outside in the parking lot when they
enter our office. When they appear to be in a great mood it truly enhances our office and business
environment.
I believe we get what we ask for, so it’s very important for those of us in leadership positions to be very
clear about our expectations.
Mentoring
All our associates are generalists at the beginning. Once they move through the process, and by the
time they’ve been here seven or eight years, about half the people have become specialists. It’s very
interesting. When you get associates as young as we do, by the time they’re 30 years of age, they are
seasoned veterans and have a 30- or 35- or 40-year career ahead of them if they choose.
I think the greatest psychological reward from being a member of our management team is seeing new
people join us, develop confidence toward whatever their specialty becomes, and then truly become
expert in that phase of the financial business. These days, it is important that you become a real
expert in one thing, because our business is too complex for our people to remain generalists. As their
knowledge grows, other associates will bring them into cases that need their expertise. Today that is
how we generate a great deal of our business, especially in estate planning, pensions, financial
planning, and business insurance.
Our average marketing person, not including the clerical or staff people, joins us at age 21. Out of our
69 representatives, 54 of them joined us at age 21 and have been here an average of 17 years. In a
business that nationally is noted for having enormous turnover, that is an incredible record.
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I think our turnover is low because we have great role models and mentors. We mentor very, very well
and it’s a huge part of our operations. In the first week somebody joins us, he or she is assigned a
mentor who’s not in management. The mentor is somebody who is successful, can tell the mentee
where everything is, and can answer any kind of question he or she has. The mentor becomes the big
brother or big sister who can help guide them by sharing their years of experience about our operation
so they have a smooth introduction to our organization. The mentors and mentees work extremely
closely together and in many cases become lifelong friends.
Our program includes a great deal of formal classroom education, which is taught by our management
team. They teach the new people everything they will need to know about each aspect of our business.
This includes basic financial planning, estate planning, pensions, and group insurance. We cover the
intricacies of different kinds of life insurance, the tremendous variety of investments, when they’re
appropriate and when they’re not.
In addition to teaching, the mentor’s job is to coach the new person about the reality of working with
clients and their expectations. If new associates did not grow up in a business household, then they
may never have been around business and may not know what to expect. The mentors usually take the
mentees along on client calls so that the mentees can watch them in action. It gives them an
opportunity to see successful people giving appropriate advice and doing successful things.
Sometimes we get personalities that don’t work well together. We change the mentor very quickly
when that happens, and continue to monitor the situation.
In our business, many people are called managers, which I think is an antiquated term. I believe we’re
all in the coaching business, and should think of ourselves every day as coaches. Nobody has ever
heard of a world manager, political manager, or a religious manager. The reality is, each day we all
follow world leaders, political leaders, and religious leaders. We are coaches and leaders and should
think of ourselves in those terms to be effective.
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Perfect Practice Makes Perfect Performance
If you talk to anybody in the life insurance-based financial services industry, they’ll say you have 10
suspects, three prospects, and one sale. Twenty-five years ago, we said that was the dumbest thing in
the world.
We expect that if you meet one person, you’ll have one sale. You may not—and probably won’t—have
it now, but if you truly understand financial planning and it is clear you are concerned about your
customers and their financial future, you should eventually do some business.
If you are relatively bright, know your products and their proper solutions, and know how to
communicate effectively, almost everyone with whom you spend the proper amount of time should do
business with you. It may take five years, but the idea of not spending in-depth time with people to
help them understand what you offer is ridiculous. Our job is to create a high-quality environment
with all the people with whom we communicate so that they recommend us to their friends who are in
relatively similar circumstances.
Training people correctly is our business. If our organization can’t teach people the intricacies of the
financial services business and how to communicate, then we have no business at all.
Learning the Insight to Communicate Well
So far, we have not employed any particular technology on the sales side. We have a full-time
technical director whose job is to make all our technology work on an ongoing basis. But at this point,
we’re using technology to back up a lot of processes, including our financial planning reports, but we
do not use technology directly in sales. It is a tool that is very important and saves us an enormous
amount of preparatory time, but we only show the client the end result. That does not mean that
some day we won’t; we are walking our way along the technology curve, and we certainly see the
enormous potential of technology.
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Leading by Example and Enthusiasm
I read a great deal, actually every night, and apply what I learn whenever I can. I’m one of those people
who get up early every morning and stays energized hoping to be a proper role model and a positive
force. One of the things I have done for 25 years, and continue to do, is give eight hours every week
trying to make Toledo, Ohio, a better place.
I think that is very important that all of us try to positively affect the towns and neighborhoods where
we reside. A community’s greatest resource is the talent of its leadership and we all have a huge
obligation to make things better. Every time we meet anyone, we can either lift them up a little, or
knock them down a little. I think it is important that we all become uplifting human beings. People
gravitate to others who smile, are pleasant, upbeat, and have positive things to say. No one likes to be
around complainers. The reality is, in a historical sense, most of us have very little to complain about.
I think our organization’s actions have been value-based because of the example set by our parents
and friends early in our lives, a long time ago. I am reminded of the story that is told of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt who, in the early ‘40s, flew over the Pacific to meet the Commanding General
Douglas MacArthur. The President was trying to entice the General to come back to America at a time
when he was hoping to win a third term. When his approach was not motivating the General to fly
back to the mainland, it is said that the President told him he should come back to see all the many
changes that had taken place over the years the General had been out of America. The General is
quoted as saying, “The things I believe in never change.” I am not sure of the accuracy of the quote,
but it is a compelling story.
The things that have made Savage & Associates one of the great financial services organizations over
the last 43 years are fundamental: quality people who are well educated and are trying to truly help
people understand and better prepare for life’s probable economic events and pitfalls.
To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,
or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks
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© CSO Insights CSOiCL67112 Page | 40
Jim Dickie
Jim Dickie is the Managing Partner of CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking
how companies are leveraging people, process, and technology to optimize the way they market to,
sell to, and service customers. He has over 29 years of sales and marketing management experience.
Jim began his career with IBM and Sterling Software and then went on to launch two successful
software companies. Jim is also a contributing editor for CRM Magazine, CustomerThink,
SoftwareMag.com, a contributing author for the Harvard Business Review, and an often-requested
keynote speaker at sales effectiveness, sales management, CRM and Sales & Web 2.0 conferences. He
has authored several books on sales effectiveness and CRM, and is a board member for Baylor
University’s Center for Professional Selling. Outside of work, Jim is a Trustee and Past Board Chair for
The Morris Animal Foundation. For this interview I asked him to share insights on the challenges facing
the people leading our sales teams.
Kim Cameron
The serious decline in sales performance over the past two years is causing CSOs and CEOs sleepless
nights wondering how to optimize the way we sell. Much of the focus has been on what increase
sales rep effectiveness. While this is certainly part of the equation, sales management has to step up
their game as well. One key area where many sales management teams are underperforming is
pipeline/forecast management, and this won't change until we start doing three things.
The Sales Management Challenge
In the first quarter of 2010, we released the findings from our 16th annual Sales Performance
Optimization (SPO) study, which showed the largest year-to-year drop in percentage of reps making
quota—58.8% to 51.8%—and percentage of overall revenue plan attainment—85.9% to 78.9%—in the
history of the study. Yes, the economy was in shambles last year. But, is it that much better this year?
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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Coach reps on how to prioritize which accounts to pursue
Ensure that reps can communicate the impact of your offerings
Ensure reps have established contact with high level executives
Ensure reps have effectively differentiated your offerings
Ensure that reps identify all the key stakeholders to contact
Assist reps in qualifying out low quality opportunities early
Ensure reps are selling value to avoid excessive discounting
Assess opportunity before making resource commitments
Ensure reps develop strategic plans for all key accounts
Dynamically detect changes in the current pipeline/forecast
35%
36%
37%
39%
39%
41%
41%
42%
49%
51%
53%
49%
52%
47%
51%
48%
46%
48%
39%
42%
13%
15%
11%
15%
10%
12%
13%
10%
12%
7%
Sales Management Best Practices Execution Assessment
Needs Improvement Adequate Exceeds Expectations
Do any of us have confidence that the recovery is here, and that it is sustainable? It would be nice if it
was, but as a CSO it would be foolish to bet on it. So what do we do? That was the question that
prompted us to launch our first annual Sales Management Optimization (SMO) study this year. We had
625 firms take part, giving us feedback on what challenges the people leading our sales teams were
facing, and more importantly, what they were going to do about them.
When we kick off a new study, there is always a sense of uncertainty as to what we will find. As part of
the survey we gathered data on just over 100 metrics. One of the things that struck me, as we looked
to identify best practices in sales management, was that managers know what to do; they are just
having a hard time doing it. Let me share a chart with you to illustrate this.
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The sales management assessment chart shown above lists the top 10 practices that survey
participants identified which we, in turn, viewed from the perspective of how well these organizations
rated their ability to consistently and effectively execute each of these aspects of sales management.
When you first look down the list, you say, “Yes, that's what we should be doing!” But then you need
to stop to consider what the chart is telling in regards to how well we are doing these activities. Being
that these tasks are core to successful sales management, my first reaction was that we have way too
much red on this chart. And regarding the companies in the blue section, they may want to ask their
CEOs if they agree with this assessment. We just had a full 7% drop in reps making quota and in
percentage of overall plan attainment. I am betting most Boards of Directors don't consider that
"adequate."
How do we do what we know we need to do better? In a brainstorming session we had with our
advisory board, several participants focused on the first item on this chart: pipeline/forecast
management. When you consider the other nine items below that, they are all related to how effective
we are at adding opportunities into the pipeline and then closing deals in the forecast. How well are
we doing at this task? Not as well as we have in the past, and not nearly as well as we need to be
selling to hit our current year revenue targets.
Let me back-up my statement by sharing one other chart that shows the win, loss, no decision rates for
forecast deals from our 2006 study and our most recent 2010 SMO study. I’d like to point out that
these are forecast deals, which represent the opportunities sales has committed to close. These
should be the deals we have the most visibility into, and they also represent the sales projections that
finance, manufacturing, distribution, customer service, marketing, etc., should be using to make
planning decisions. What the chart shows us is that we have experienced a 5%+ drop in close rates
over the past five years.
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0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
2010
2006
44.8%
50.1%
31.3%
30.3%
23.9%
19.6%
The Decline in Win Rates of Forecast Deals
% Wins
% Losses
% No Decisions
When we do strategy sessions I always find it useful to put this in perspective. Assume you have a 100-
person sales force, each rep has a $1M quota, and your average deal size is $50K. Under this
hypothetical model each rep needs to close 20 deals to hit plan. With a 45% win rate, a rep needs to
develop 44 opportunities to get 20 to close. What if I could get back up to the 2006 level of 50%? Now I
close 22 deals, or to put it another way, $100K more in revenues per rep.
I am not talking about finding more deals, which based on the tight marketing budgets available today
we would be hard pressed to do. I am talking about closing more of the deals we have already
identified. And if sales managers could just help their teams do that one thing, life would get a lot
easier. Unfortunately, there are road blocks in the way for most of us.
Formalize the Process
To begin with, I’ll paraphrase a well-known saying of John Chambers at Cisco: you can't manage what
you can't define. Of the companies we have surveyed, when asked to describe the type of sales
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methodology they had in place, 52.9% reported random or informal processes. That is a huge problem
for sales managers.
If you don't have a common vocabulary for what a qualified opportunity looks like, if you don't have a
consistent view of what the steps in the sales cycle ought to be, if everyone gets to establish their own
criteria for determining the probability that a deal will close, etc., then how can a sales manager
effectively coach and mentor his or her team? If I have a group of seven reps I am managing, it is
almost like I need to speak seven different languages to communicate and find out what is going on in
their pipeline and their near-term forecast.
In the study we published in Harvard Business Review a couple years ago, we clearly showed that
formal process adoption has a direct impact on sales results. Get all your reps on the same page, train
them on a single way to engage and develop prospects, give them the right tools that support that
process, and win rates increase. So that is challenge number one—we need to bring more science to
the art of sales.
If companies need help doing this, then it is readily available. In checking our solution provider
database, I found we now have data on over 60 sales training firms, the vast majority of which get
good reviews from the companies we have benchmarked who are using their sales methodology and
process. While there is clearly a cost associated with any of these solutions, the cost of doing nothing
to address this first sales management challenge is much, much more.
Inspect the Process
Getting a formal sales process in place is just the first step. My dad was Chief of Armor at the Pentagon
in Washington, DC for five years. I remember walking into his office as a kid and seeing a plaque on his
desk that had a saying many of us are familiar with: “You can only expect what you inspect."
That to me is challenge number two for sales management. Are the troops doing what they were
trained to do? Once the process is in place, sales managers need to reinforce and enforce that process
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to get it to stick. Otherwise, it is too easy for reps to slide back into old habits. We all look at each other
and we say, "That's obvious." But let me ask a question, what tools are we giving sales managers to
help them do this key task?
The SMO study found that on average sales managers have six people reporting to them. If they are
going to maximize their effectiveness, managers need to be able to coach/mentor by exception. By
that I mean knowing which reps need what help to advance which deals. To do this requires that
managers have clear visibility into the pipeline and the forecast, and far too often they don't.
Here is the challenge. About a third of the firms we surveyed said they track their sales
pipelines/forecast using spreadsheets and about another 45% said they use the opportunity
management capability in their CRM systems. Using either of these approaches, I can get pipeline or
forecast numbers with a few clicks of the mouse.
Let's take a scenario. At the beginning of the quarter I have $12M forecast for the Southern Region. At
the beginning of the last month of the quarter I again have $12M forecast. The question is, is that a
good thing or a bad thing? And the answer using this approach is that I don't know. To make that
determination I need to understand what has changed in the forecast. If $10M from the original
number has been dropped from the forecast and it has been replaced by $10M worth of new business
that is at much earlier stages of the sales cycle, I'd be more than a little nervous.
Very few companies have, what I would consider, a true sales analytics system in place. What is
needed is an application integrated into the opportunity management system that continually
monitors change. If a deal is moved from this quarter to next quarter, the projected dollar volume is
reduced, the close rate probably gets lowered, etc. The sales analytics engine detects that event and
notifies the appropriate manager. Armed with this knowledge, the manager now knows which reps to
work with and on what deals to get things back on track.
This to me is one of the key areas that CRM has to get much more sophisticated at to be truly useful to
sales managers. The good news is that this issue is being addressed today. Some of the core CRM
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providers are increasing the analytics capabilities in their systems. There are also robust sales
performance management applications available as well. We have benchmarked sales organizations
using solutions from companies like Cloud9 Analytics, Birst, Right90, PivotLink, etc., that turbo-charge
this aspect of sales management.
Optimize the Process
So you get a process in place, you consistently monitor its adoption, are you done? You better not be.
Years ago I interviewed Kevin Kalkhoven when he was the Chair of JDS Uniphase. One observation he
made has always stuck in my mind from that conversation. When asked what was the biggest mistake
high-tech companies can make Kevin said, "The one thing that I can guarantee you is that the moment
you become fat, dumb, and happy in today's highly competitive marketplace–you are dead."
That statement directly applies to a company's sales process. It would be great if we could define a way
of selling, put it in place and just go execute. Unfortunately, the sales ecosystem we all live in is very
dynamic. The economy gets better or worse; a new competitor comes into the market or an old one
disappears; new government regulations make it harder to do business or easier, etc. Any of these
events can present a risk or an opportunity, and to minimize the damage or leverage a new advantage,
we need to be constantly modifying the process based on changes in the marketplace.
I'll go back and reinforce the ideas that Kevin Joyce, of Miranda Technologies, presented in the
interview we did with him. Continually optimizing the process requires a very high degree of sales and
marketing alignment, which is missing from too many companies.
Process optimization also requires another thing––consequences for not doing so. We are in the
process of conducting our annual Sales Compensation & Performance Management study. Based on
the early data, it is clear that few companies are linking sales manager compensation to getting
managers focused on how to continually improve how their sales teams sell. Rather, their commissions
and bonuses are tied to did you hit your number, regardless of what you did to hit it. In the long term, I
think that is a mistake.
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Final Thought
If I sound like I am being hard on sales managers that is not my intention. I have been a sales manager,
I have been a CSO—I know these are challenging positions. But we have to get better at these roles if
we are going to successfully lead our teams. And here is the crux of what I have been talking about.
If we look over the product development side of our business, the mandate to the person running that
function is very clear: debug the product! We expect them to do whatever it takes to deliver a high
quality offering to the market that has the right features to truly meet our customer's needs.
Well, the watch-words to the head of sales needs to be equally clear: debug the process! We need to
turn how we sell into the same kind of advantage as what we sell. If sales management can step up to
that challenge, they can take a leadership role in their market. If they fail to do so, they will be
constantly trying to play catch-up to a competitor who has accomplished this.
To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,
or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks
Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 – Volume 3
© CSO Insights CSOiCL67112 Page | 48
About CSO Insights
CSO Insights benchmarks the challenges faced by today’s sales and marketing organizations. We track
trends in the usage of people, process, technology and knowledge to improve sales effectiveness.
Research is the core of our business. Each year, we survey thousands of Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) to
learn the challenges they see as most critical. We also review offerings from solution providers to
retain our position as the experts on options for CSOs.
We write numerous articles and speak at major sales and marketing conferences to share what we’ve
learned from executives like you.
Founded by Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer, CSO Insights has served sales and marketing executives for
over 16 years. We offer only pragmatic suggestions, experienced-based example, and the kind of
insights you’ll want before your next executive strategy session or Board meeting!
To receive our monthly newsletter chocked full of best practices and thought
leadership articles, go to CSO Insights Newsletter
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