The next wave available to companies is an explosion of sales effectiveness and new efficiencies. Prepare for a 10-year run of sales team upgrades and resets.

This new era of sales enablement is already underway in many companies like Citrix, Fujitsu, Adobe, Boeing and VMware, to name a few, that are investing in re-optimized sales tools and practices for their modern updated sales teams.

There are 4 components* to a revamped sales enablement program:
1. Strategy (where to go)
2. Messaging (what to say)
3. Process (what to do)
4. Leadership (how to coach)

* DSG Consulting, an MXL Partners affiliate partner firm.

The redevelopment and integration of each of these component areas into carefully tailored sales 2.0 manual and automated playbooks is opening up an exciting new frontier in a land filled with opportunity. We’ll break down each component in this SalesNote.

Are you “revamping” enablement of your sales organization?

Reminds me of salespeople and sales teams as they wind down these last 2 months of the year. There are those that step up and those that check out; those that live up to the hype and those that disappoint; those that overcome adversity and those that crumble under pressure. We watch it every week on TV. And we watch it every year as it’s crunch-time season in the sales arena.

Tebows and turkeys abound.

Regardless of what you think of Tim Tebow’s NFL prospects as a productive quarterback, he’s a winner. What he did this past weekend in Oakland, CA is a great example of one stepping up, living up to the hype, and overcoming adversity. A VP of Sales would love to have a whole team full of Tim Tebows who can face knockdowns, disparagement, failure and come roaring back with tenacity, hustle, appropriated skill, mental and physical toughness, and a gracious winning attitude. Sorry if you’re a Florida, Tebow or Denver hater – gotta love a gutsy winner with heart.

In our business we can teach sales skills, process and prowess. We can’t teach heart. Heart can be developed over time but must come from within. You know when you see it. It’s a great thing to watch in any field of play.

Besides, after all the books and training over 15 years, try to find one VP of Sales or Account Executive who can tell you what the 9-Block Vision Processing Model is or even what exactly are “the 9 Boxes.” While brilliant in theory and profound for a past generation, the practical application is often lost in the reality of today’s dynamic sales arena. There’s also a new generation selling in a different era.

While my sales, management and consulting career grew up with Rackham and Bosworth over the past 30 years, today I’m seeing 4 challenges facing salespeople relative to selling methodologies:

1. Shorter Conversations - customer conversations are often brief and on the phone. Reps need to be agile and skilled in the managing of short selling conversations.
2. Blended Conversations – lead generation improvements require clear distinctions between call introduction, qualification and discovery. Reps need clarity of process and conversation flow.
3. Convoluted Questioning – sales call questioning process fundamentals have been lost, forgotten or confused. Reps need talk tracks grounded in simplified questioning fundamentals.
4. Mistargeted Discovery – discovery conversations are often given short-shrift, prolonging or derailing sale cycles. Reps need clear discovery plays or templates that are simple, planned, manageable and trackable.

Do you need a revamping of your “solution selling” methodology?

Over past years we’ve seen sales training change in the following ways:

• It’s not about packaged sales training programs.
• It’s all about custom-built and focused sales training.
• Experienced sales reps need and appreciate relevant training.
• Rookies need, want and seek practical and helpful training.
• Sales Managers want a return to strong sales fundamentals.
• Value Propositions are best as custom sales messaging built for specific target buyers.
• A well-defined, well-taught selling process drives best behaviors.
• Sales Management training is an effective and repeatable sales leadership/coaching system.

Do you have a clear and modern perspective on today’s approach to sales training?

At MXL Partners, we’re big believers in a rolling 30-60-90 Forecasting methodology. Many companies acknowledge that they practice this, however we’ve recently seen yet another example this quarter of a sophisticated multi-billion organization with sketchy forecasting practices.

While all the information is in the CRM and reports are plentiful, there are still 3 issues:

1. Visual Clarity in Reporting – CRM reports are cluttered and inconsistent, allowing missed cues and trends buried in the data.

2. Consistent Updating and Accuracy of Information – without deliberate discipline and appropriate attention to detail at the rep and management level, this is a key reason for misleading forecasting.

3. Adherence to Sales Process – paying only lip service to stages, milestones and stepscauses more pain and delusion than it should.

When a rep creates and manages their own visibility reports of all Pipeline, Best Case and Commit Opportunities, updates this weekly with views over at least a rolling 90-day horizon, and then forces adjustments and actions to this Pipeline/Forecast view per a prescribed milestone process, then they will be prepared to report to management, and themselves, with truth and accuracy.

It’s actually simple and powerfully effective. The problem is not in the CRM but at rep and management level.

Meet or Exceed Expectations- Effectively present Features and Benefits = 67%
- Differentiate from Competition = 69%
- Align Solutions with Customer Needs = 68%
- Generate Accurate Bid/Proposal = 85%

Needs Improvement- Understanding Customer Buy Process = 40%
- Effectively Cross-sell/Up-sell = 47%
- Sell Value/Avoid Discounting = 42%
- Forecasting Accurately = 54%

This data shows that salespeople, for the most part, know their products, but are lacking in areas not typically emphasized in training across sales teams.

In more and more organizations, the need for an effective Sales Leadership System is clear if not obvious. It is possible and desirable to have a process-driven sales management structure that runs with machine-like efficiency and as effectively as the most well-designed technology system.

There are 4 key requirements associated with an effective sales leadership system:

1. Sales Process Redefinition – over-hauled, clarified and aligned with Sales and Marketing, no lip service any more
2. Sales Strategy Reinforcement – clarified customer targets, audiences, messaging, playbooks and gameplans
3. Sales Metrics Discipline – consistent visibility and measurement metrics, reliable, streamlined pipeline/forecast management
4. Sales Review Cadence – acceptable and sustainable pace and form of rep/team reviews, coaching, planning per month or quarter.

Not easy or quick to roll out. These take time, care and experience to institutionalize a best-practice sales leadership system. Tough to do if your driving Sales, Marketing or the whole company. It’s like orchestrating a complex symphony while you’re playing first chair violin. Let’s discuss your 2011 plans.

How’s your sales leadership system?

1. CEO/President – as cited, senior execs drive strategy, but are certainly to be visiting customers and feeling the marketplace pulse. What they don’t need to do is over-engage in sales cycles and inject themselves too deep into details competently managed by their direct reports and field reps. Knowing deals is one thing, micro-managing from the CEO perch is another. Start-ups excluded.

2. VP of Sales – this level of management often comes in one of two flavors: the Field Marshall who is deep in the trenches with the team, very involved with customers, meetings and closing calls; and the Process King who is more hands-off, process and operations oriented and works through First Line managers. Best leader, but hard to find, is a blend of superstar sales driver-closer and systematic, process-driven sales executive.

3. Sales Director/Manager- depending on the size of the team, you may need a strong sales/process blended manager who can manage team business while driving and coaching field salespeople. At this level, better to error on hands-on approach but moving toward managing the business. Toughest transition for many great sales closers to make, as they just can’t let go of the thrill of the deal.

In any event, it’s all about getting deals done, and this often overrides prudence. With executive leadership’s involvement in sales often a function of deal size, criticality, style and gifts, its wise to ask the question:

Is executive management appropriately involved in sales deals?

Every selling stage can be dissected into a bullet list of action steps, tactics or strategies. Additionally, specific collateral documents, templates and sales tools come into play at various points along the process.

For instance, at Stage 1—Lead Generation, salespeople are tasked with following up leads inbound from marketing campaigns or websites, or initiating targeted contacts on their own. There is typically some live preliminary lead qualification beyond common lead scoring or form fields. A well-managed sales and marketing team will coordinate specifically what a rep should be doing and document those actions. These are grilled into the sales rep at sales meetings or training sessions. A playbook can be developed for different types of field reps (inside teams, outside direct, etc.) as well as for different product lines (upsell items, renewals, new business sales, etc.).

At Stage 2—Discovery/Qualification, there is ample room for error and inconsistency as reps need to further qualify the opportunity and execute a professional discovery or information gathering sales call. By document-ing the specific qualifying and probing questions as well as referencing various helpful sales tools for the rep to utilize, sales management ensures that their team is conducting the right effort at the right time. This continues throughout the rest of the sales cycle.

An enterprise software company’s sales team was comprised of inside reps, outside reps and market development/lead generation reps. There were inconsistencies in the quality of customer meetings as reps
often generated a proposal (Stage 4) after a single conversation (Stage 1) with the customer/prospect. While sales were closing in some cases, some implementation issues cropped up because the reps had failed to fully scope out the tailored application and use case of the software solution. What was missing was a more detailed discovery/qualification conversation or meeting (Stage 2) and then a planned proof-of-concept (POC) or pilot/trial that solidified the success of the solution but also further developed the customer relationship and growing engagement. The reps were guilty of short-circuiting the appropriate sales process, a common problem in many of today’s sales organizations. This problem was alleviated by ingraining through sales training the importance of good sales cycle management and crystallizing the correct actions, tactics and tools.

As noted earlier in the CSO Insights research, approximately two-thirds (63%) of firms fall into the category of Random or Informal when it comes to adhering to a specified sales process methodology.2 One-third (37%) are Formal or Dynamic when it comes to effectively following some documented sales process.

But today’s marketplace landscape requires more than simple documentation and training. “Sales Process 2.0″ is all about the dynamic interactivity of sales stages, steps, actions, collateral beyond the printed page. There are some exciting new technology solutions that have taken the concept of “Playbook” to new and powerful levels through the automation of a documented selling process and the just-in-time serving up of the appropriate tool, script, or action-step to guide the new or experienced salesperson. When these tools get implemented across sales organizations around the world, then sales effectiveness will meet sales efficiency and produce consistent sales excellence.

Do you have a Sales Process Playbook?

2. CSO Insights, Sales Performance Optimization Report, 2009.

It’s time to reap what you’ve been sowing. The kids are back in school, the customers are back from vacation, the sales meetings are happening and the internal organizational kinks have been worked out (at least for the rest of the year). No more excuses. It’s “Gravy Time”.

As a college student I sold books door-to-door for 3 summers with The Southwestern Company of Nashville, Tennessee. It was the hardest yet best summer job I ever had. I learned a lot about hard work, selling, and motivating myself and others around me. We’d hit the first door at 8:00 in the morning and the last door at 9:30 at night, 6 days a week. The time between 6:00pm and 9:30pm was called Gravy Time because that’s when both husband and wife were home and could make decisions to buy. My biggest sales were during this time.

In any environment the salesperson with the right sales mentality loves this time of year. It’s an all out sprint. Whether at IBM or any organization where I managed a territory or sales force, or today when I coach and train organizations, the 4th Quarter is when it all comes together. Gotta love it – it’s Gravy Time!