What pm can do to overcome the eight most common barriers to accelerating your sales revenue ProductCamp DFW 2012

Copyright 2012 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

What Product Management/Marketing Can Do to

Overcome the Eight Most Common Barriers to

Accelerating Sales Revenue

Tom Evans

Lûcrum Marketing

@compellingmktr

June 23, 2012

Symptoms of Sales Cycle Challenges

• Your product is falling short of revenue targets.

• At the end of every quarter, your sales team faces

pressure to accelerate deals.

• Too many discounts are made in order to close sales.

• Prospects keep delaying purchase decisions.

• Conversion rates of prospects to deals are low.


Eight most common sales cycle barriers

1. Lack of sales methodology

2. Sales team (channel) has not been properly enabled

3. Solution does not address a significant (or top of mind)

pain for the economic buyer

4. Your message doesn’t communicate compelling value

5. You’re selling to the wrong level of buyer

6. Sales leads not well qualified

7. Sales tools don’t help advance the sale

8. No system to track sales process (lack of visibility)


1. Lack of Sales Methodology

• Issue

– Sales team does not have disciplined process to move

prospects to closed opportunities

• Steps to Overcome

– Choose a methodology that best matches company’s

needs.

– Train the full sales team (plus marketing and

executives)

– Build sales tools to support the methodology


Example tools for “Solution Selling®”

• Reference Story

– Helps show that salesperson is knowledgeable of

buyer’s problems

– Helps buyer admit pain

• Pain Sheets®

– Helps salesperson diagnosis Pain for different buyer

profiles

• Telephone Script

– Creates interest in first 20 seconds


Reference: Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets by Michael Bosworth, 1994

Solution Selling & Pain Sheets are registered trademarks of Solution Selling, Inc.

2. Sales team not enabled

• Issue

– Sales is selling anything to everyone with little

effectiveness


– Create well defined market plan (target segments, buyer

pains, messages, etc.)

– Create core set of sales enablement tools

• Executive Level Presentation, Product Backgrounder, Needs

Discovery Guide™, Message Driven Demo™

– Train the sales team (plus marketing and executives)


Needs Discovery Guide and Message Driven Demo are trademarks of The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

Sales Enablement (Base Components)

• Product Backgrounder

– Succinct key elements of market plan

• Needs Discovery Guide™

– Per buyer profile: Challenges / Impact / Capability /

Benefits

• Executive Level Presentation

– High level discussion of how your solution addresses

needs. (10 – 15 slides)

• Message Driven Demo™


Needs Discovery Guide and Message Driven Demo are trademarks of The Lûcrum Group, Inc.

3. Solution does not address a significant (or

top of mind) pain for the economic buyer

• Issue

– Solutions solves problem, but not a big one.

– Solutions solves big problem for user, but buyer doesn’t

feel it.


– Discover key issues for buyers in your market

• Market trends, business drivers, strategies, challenges, goals

– Can you identify a need that you can add to your

solution that increases the importance to the economic

buyer?


4. Message not communicating compelling value

• Issue

– Message does not cause buyers to want your solution.


– Discover key issues for buyers in your market

• Market trends, business drivers, strategies, challenges, goals

– Develop message(s) that speak to these

– Focus on the top 2 – 3 messages that have the highest

impact (value & differentiation)


Six Steps to a Compelling Message

1. Who is our audience?

2. What are we selling?

3. Why should our customers care?

4. What we can do for our customers?

5. Why us?

6. Create your message(s)


5. Selling to wrong level of buyer

• Issue

– Selling to the user, technical buyer or middle manager

who has no authority to buy and little influence.


– Sales training and/or sales enablement problem

• Or maybe a hiring problem

– Product doesn’t address an executive level problem


6. Sales leads not well qualified

• Issue

– Bad sales leads waste time of the sales team, results in

low conversion/close rates & long sales cycles


– Define a well defined target market (Market Plan)

• Specific segments & buyers

– Define lead qualification criteria

– Lead nurturing programs

• Move lead to qualify prospected (sales ready)


Lead Qualification/Scoring

• Work with sales

• Start with perfect lead

• Demographics

– E.g., revenue, employees, project budgeted, company

profile, buyer role, order size, urgency

– BANT – Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline

– Source

• Interactions

– Forms completed, click email links, downloads, website

pages, phone call, data completeness


7. Sales tools don’t help advance sale

• Issue

– Many bottlenecks in funnel, low conversion rates, sales

don’t use tools, etc.


– Ask the sales team

– Understand the typical “buying process” (and players)

– Understand the key concerns, roadblocks for each

buyer type at each phase of the sale

• E.g., Cost (TCO), Needs Assessment, Business Case, Risk,

ROI, References, Approval


Understanding the Buying Process

• What are the typical phases of the buying process?

• Who are the typical buyers & influencers?

• Who is involved at each phase?

• What are their main concerns at each phase?

• What are they doing at each phase?

• What are the typical barriers to moving ahead?

Build tools that address buyers and influencers needs

at each phase!


8. No system to track sales process

• Issue

– If you can’t track sales opportunities, you can’t manage

them


– Implement a Sales Force Automation (SFA)/Customer

Relationship Management (CRM) system

• Full picture of prospect

• Put more rigor into sales forecasts (e.g., probability of close)

• Manage sales funnel, close rates

• Monitor sales projections & sales team performance

• Access to current sales tools Copyright 2012 - LÛCRUM MARKETING

Summary

• Understand key issues/pains/goals/needs of buyers

• Well defined market plan (target segments, buyers,

messages)

• Understanding the “buying” process

• Build sales & marketing tools that help move leads to

prospects and help prospects make buying decision

• Lead qualification/scoring & nurturing

• Great relationship with sales (alignment, tools,

enablement, qualified prospects)



Thank You!

Tom Evans

Lûcrum Marketing

[email protected]

+1.512.961.5267

mailto:[email protected]

