CeV Issue 3

The great sales revolution

Issue 3 28.08.13CeV Consalia’s event publication

Faced with unprecedented change, salespeople are struggling to make an impact in today’s turbulent economy. Explore how thought-leaders like SAP, GSK and ATOS are outperforming the competition by making themselves both more relevant and more professional.

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London02.07.2013

From the CEO

As an organisation whose role it is to help clients improve or solve issues surrounding their salespeople’s mindset, competencies and approach to sales, we are constantly looking to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in sales.

This year, a newly formed ‘Genesis Group’ of senior sales leaders and professionals gave their time to outline some of the major challenges currently influencing today’s rapidly changing sales world. Their input fully shaped the content of our 5th Global Sales Transformation event.

‘The Case for Transformation’ was hugely successful, bringing out some fantastic insights and ideas about how we can all enhance and further legitimise the sales profession.

As we continue to host these events, it is our ambition to generate enough of a movement that we might someday see sales regarded as the world’s most sought after profession.

Global Sales Transformation Event 5

About Consalia

Consalia works with some of the world’s foremost organisations and has achieved a validated client sales performance improvement of over $6.75bn in seven years. We are a joint venture formed by three of Europe’s largest and well-respected consulting groups: Praxi, Development Systems and ITC Network. We have a combined turnover of €35m.

We also have a trusted network of partner associates who fall under the brand of The Consalia Global Alliance, the underpinning unity and strength of which is down to long-standing relationships. Combined with a worldwide network of over 450 consultants and associates, located throughout 30 countries and covering 26 languages, we deliver consistently high levels of training with local relevance.

In 2012 we launched the world’s first in-house Masters programmes in Leading Sales Transformation; and also in Sales Transformation

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The SAP approach to SalesTransformationInsight into SAP’s Value University, and how the tech giant is working to transform its sales force, including a pilot scheme to accredit sales leaders through a pioneering Masters programme.

Relevance, mattering more to others, for othersIn a world where everything is becoming a commodity, how salespeople ‘show up’ has never mattered more. It is no longer about what you sell but how and why you sell it. It’s about mattering more to the client.

The importance of ‘Win Themes’William Mills, VP Strategic Sales Engagem-ents, ATOS, highlights the value and importance of defining ‘Win Themes’ in large outsourcing deals and talks us through a high-profile bid.

Social sellingSocial media in B2B sales is a bit of an enigma. ‘Social selling’ looks at the role of social media in the B2B arena, drawing on the insights and expertise of two leading experts.

Gathering momentumA summary of the key messages from GST5, including acknowledgement of a growing groundswell of opinion for the need to legitimise Sales as a profession. Academia, politics, professional bodies and the corporate world must combine to achieve this goal.

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IntroductionAn introduction to some of the key themes and objectives explored in GST5, The Case for Transformation.

From ‘circus’ to salesRoger Scarlett-Smith, President, EMEA, GSK Consumer division, offers anecdotal insight into his personal journey in sales as well as sharing how GSK strategy is driven by the customer.

The lost art of learningIan Helps, Director, Consalia, explores the relevance of learning in today’s organisation and explains how technology is transforming the way we use, retain and learn information.

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CONTENTS

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What next?

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The five key take-aways from delegates outlining what needs to be done for Sales to be recognised as a legitimate profession.

Our committment A snapshot of the Consalia-designed Masters programme – our committment to raising the standards of professional practice with the world’s first in-house Masters in Sales Transformation and in Leading Sales Transformation.

issues of organisational and personal relevance from the customer’s perspective, and explored how sales organisations and their people might adapt to what has become a very different sales environment. Delegates and speakers were drawn from amongst the upper echelons of the sales profession, international business leaders and educationalists. They delivered an agenda put together by the Genesis Group of senior sales professionals, who advise Consalia and represent a range of global corporates across several business sectors.

The day provided the opportunity to reflect on future sales best practice and discuss how sales can become more relevant in a less-differentiated world. It drew attention to strategies designed to boost revenue and win rates and generate long-term, sustainable growth even in the current relatively challenging economic environment. The day explored

GST5: The Case for Transformation Written by Nick de Cent. Edited by Phil Linter.

An Introduction

T’S A SOBERING THOUGHT when you discover that fewer than 10% of salespeople sell to C-level executives in the way that they wish to be sold to. And this is not some consultant’s best-guess figure, but hard data derived from research conducted by Consalia between 2005 and 2008 as part of a doctoral thesis, and since continued through customer interviews.

Not only does this statistic underline the shocking fact that the sales function is failing to fulfil its potential but it also highlights that companies’ investment in traditional sales training is often misplaced.

A key issue is a lack of customer centricity. For many organisations, the way that businesses try to sell to them is simply not relevant: it’s often too self-focused, maybe even entirely product-centric. Held at the London Stock Exchange, ‘The Case for Transformation’ – Consalia’s 5th Global Sales Transformation Event - probed

The ever-changing, fast-paced nature of the world today means that it is a much more unpredictable place in which to operate. As a result, people have changed the way they think about, react to and conduct their business. In this report, Nick de Cent, business journalist reflects on the key messages and outcomes of GST5.

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the same concepts from a business leadership perspective, showcasing a variety of speakers who explained how they apply concepts such as ‘tactful audacity’, ‘proactive creativity’ and ‘authenticity’ in the course of their daily sales and leadership roles.

Exploring key sales effectiveness issues, it looked beyond the theory to examine the practicalities of implementing sales transformation programmes and also followed the progress of mega-deals through real-world case-studies.

It explored relatively recent innovations like social selling in a B2B context and took a wider perspective to consider whether the image of sales now needs to be reformed. Venturing beyond the immediate business world, delegates heard how politicians view the world of selling. And, with a highly interactive format, it offered the opportunity to participate beyond traditional question-and-answer sessions and feed in ideas via break-out groups

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick de Cent is a journalist, editor and social media specialist with 30 years’ experience writing about business and management. He has retained an interest in sales performance issues since the 1980s and is a passionate advocate for professionalism in selling. Nick currently edits and writes for various print and online media, including The Times ‘Sales Performance’ supplement, Sales Initiative magazine, eyeforpharma.com and Pharmaphorum.com, as well as corporate clients such as McKinsey & Co, the Sales Leadership Alliance, Consalia and SalesAssessment.com.

Nick has launched and edited business magazines in the finance and sales fields and contributed to a wide range of publications in the national, business and IT press, including the Financial Times. He works extensively in social media on behalf of clients, particularly in the science and technology sectors. Nick has an honours degree in biology and is a Fellow of the RSA.

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and networking sessions.

Participants discovered how thought-leaders – companies like SAP, ATOS and Toshiba, which is the latest organisation to sign up for Consalia’s innovative work-based Masters programme – are transforming their own sales organisations. What was clear from the day is that there is a great appetite for change, to transform the wider sales profession and make it more effective, more professional and more relevant to the requirements of today’s business world.

This report summarises the keynote presentations given as well as the core themes, messages and conclusions from GST5.

A customer-centric approach is the key to growth and competitive success in today’s business world. In order to transform performance we need to be truly customer-centric and able to adapt through a process of reflection. That was the message from Roger Scarlett-Smith, President, Consumer Healthcare Europe, at GSK, who delivered the keynote address at Consalia’s 5th Global Sales Transformation Event.

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Roger Scarlett-Smith President, Consumer Healthcare, EMEA, GlaxoSmithKline

I ran away and joined the circus if you like.

How customers drive corporate strategy at GSK

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N EFFECTIVE SALES strategy combined with a customer-centric approach to selling not only drives revenue but moreover has implications across the entire business. “Our identity as businesspeople globally is fundamentally tied in with the future and development of sales,” Roger told the audience. Furthermore, the ability to understand the customer has important ramifications beyond the typical sales scenario, for instance spilling over into buying situations too.

“A defining feature of many successful people at the top of organisations nowadays is that they have had that experience of being a sales rep,” Roger declared. He added that looking at his business through the eyes of the customer has revealed exciting opportunities for growth with the prospect of delivering a range of new services and products.

In a presentation packed full of anecdote and analysis, he set out some of the lessons learnt over the course of a 30-year career, from his time as an entry-level trainee sales rep on secondment from marketing, to the dizzy heights of the boardroom. Roger currently heads up the EMEA business of GSK’s £5.1 billion consumer health care division, which is responsible for 19% of the group’s £26.4 billion turnover. The business is well-known for brands like Lucozade,

NiQuitin and Sensodyne.

Speaking in the context of the theme of ‘organisational relevance’, Roger outlined some of the factors that have enabled his

organisation to drive sustained revenue gr-owth despite the persistently slow eco-nomy in recent years.

Roger looked at how we can become more organisationally relevant to the markets in which we operate.

Originally destined to be a lawyer, Roger decided instead to pursue a less restricting career in commerce. “I ran away and joined the circus, if you like!”

Turning back the clock 30 years, he described his first day as a sales rep for Procter & Gamble, when he learnt a fundamental lesson: any sales process always needs to be viewed from the customer’s perspective.

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“Selling is about a relevant discussion,” he emphasised.

He described his first sales call to a pharmacy in Slough accompanied by his area manager. Despite following the company’s comprehensive sales process to the letter, the customer said “No”. Roger explained how his approach had been wrong: “I’d not stopped for a moment to ask him any kind of questions. I was absolutely focused on what I wanted out of this and not what he wanted”.

“At a certain point, my experienced area manager tapped me on the arm and said ‘Roger, I think we need to go outside for a while.’ We walked around the block a few times.

“I’d never been so humiliated in my life. I really felt that surely somebody with my academic background, with my commitment to success, must be able to be the killer salesman! Of course, that was the beginning of some major insights about selling which have carried me through my career”.

CLIENT CENTRIC STRATEGIES

Our identity as business people globally, is fundamen-tally tied in with the future developmentof sales.

UNDERSTANDING THE CUSTOMER

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growth and success.

Roger explained how this strategy is interpreted as GSK’s “winning formula”, adding: “In terms of evaluating any strategy, if you put that filter over it, it really is helpful”.

An important part of Roger’s current role is “actually deciding what your identity is as a team”, and allocating resources accordingly. This means focusing on the customer.

“We’ve completely globalised our manufacturing resource; we’ve completely globalised our innovation resource; we have, to a great extent, globalised many of our shared services and the ways that we do HR and quality and things like that. We embrace that as a benefit because it means we don’t have to bother with that stuff as much and we can really focus on the outside customer”.

“It gives us a chance to think about our true role, our differentiating role, and our ‘exquisite reason for being’, which is that we’re there to meet the customer needs in the local marketplace”. GSK refers to this as the ‘sales plus’ approach, because it includes certain local resources required to support the selling team.

Roger went on to describe how universal adoption of the customer facing strategy is supported by a

The experience is just as relevant at a leadership level, Roger explained. “I still see people in boardrooms hammering away, not asking the question, only interested in what they want out of it – really refusing to read the signs that this is not working and not understanding that selling is about a relevant discussion, one that you actually participate in with who you’re speaking with, one that has to be customer-centric”.

Fast-forwarding a few years saw Roger in the role of marketing director as part of the team negotiating with ICI to acquire its Corsodyl mouthwash brand, which GSK desperately wanted to add to its oral healthcare portfolio.

This time, Roger was in a buying situation, but understanding the other party and aligning the offer to their needs proved just as important.

“What became obvious during the process of due diligence was that this thing had been scientifically researched like no tomorrow. They were immensely proud of the scientific benefits of this unique product which they had invented and patented.

That was a huge kind of ‘Aha!’ We ended up in a bidding war with Colgate and our strategy to win was to recognise the nature of the deal from ICI’s point of view”.

So, the buying team decided that the best approach was to recognise the “immense merit” of ICI’s scientific effort. “We almost did an ‘encomium’ – a paean of praise – to the science of this business, and the rest for the commercial rights. And we won it; we won it with a phone call the next day. And I know that, if we had pitched it with a straightforward number, they would have continued the bidding race”.

“We bought this thing for, I think it was £24 million. We now make more than £24 million profit globally on this brand a year, so it was a very good deal. The reason we got it was by thinking about it from a truly customer-centric perspective”.

Turning to the topic of global sales and business strategy, Roger outlined his definition to the audience – “the logic that drives our future prosperity”.

LOGIC is about the choices one makes based on the evidence, facts and data at hand. “You have to have done some homework”.

DRIVES – strategy has to drive a collective action.

FUTURE – “It’s not about how we’ve got here, it’s about what we’re doing in the future”.

PROSPERITY is not just a short-term win, it’s about sustainable

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IN A BUYING SITUATION

THE RIGHT STRATEGY

SELLING MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

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continuous improvement philoso-phy, based on real-time learning.

“We reprocess that into how we do our business going forward”. This way of operating becomes ever more efficient, enabling the organisation to focus on the variability that is customer-led.

“You can become much more acutely aware of what the customer needs are and compare that with your ability to meet those needs; and you can race with your competitors to meet those customer needs better because they are the key signal that is driving what’s going on in the business”.

This customer-centric approach is changing the shape of successful organisations, stimulating a move away from strategic general managers and a marketing-led mentality towards a sales-led focus.

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Asked during the Q&A how sales roles are changing, Roger responded:

“When I was ‘growing up’, the graduate recruits were all in the marketing team and finance and the school leavers were in the sales team. The same would apply when you went to see a customer, say, Tesco: there might be somebody who started off from the shop floor. Now they’re likely to have an MBA and our salesteams are likely to have at least

one degree, if not two. That doesn’t mean to say that the interpersonal aspects have gone away. I think that’s why it’s a very difficult job to do well because, nowadays, the standard has gone up so much higher”.

“Really understanding how you can be relevant to your customers, in a way that perhaps they don’t even share with you is a real art and both are needed to succeed at the highest level now,” he concluded.

Given that’s what’s going to be driving us for the future, if there’s a stronger arguement for sales becoming more professional, I’d like to hear it.


“Actually there’s a very profound change going on in how we all learn in the workplace, how we all learn our jobs,” he declared.

This has been hugely influenced by the deluge of information and data available in today’s business environment. He described a study in the US from Robert Kelley of Carnegie Mellon looking at ‘how much knowledge we store in our brains to do our job’.

In 1986, typical knowledge workers were able to retain 75-76% of the knowledge needed to do their jobs. In contrast, today’s society is far more complex and information-rich, the amount of data we need has exploded. Current knowledge workers are only able to retain a fraction of the information they need.

Highlighting the latest figures from the study, Ian told the audience: “Look at what it is now: 5% of the

Ian Helps Director, Consalia

The lost art of learning

knowledge we need to do our job, we actually keep in our minds”.

The corollary of this insight is that we are getting the other 95% of the knowledge we need from elsewhere – from IT, tablets and our personal network – which introduces the concept of the so-called ‘outboard brain’.

“Actually what we’re all becoming is organisms – people – that are getting so much of the learning we need from everyone we’re surrounded with,” Ian said.

What does this do to the way that we need to learn and develop? “It makes us incredibly agile... even in the same organisation, everyone’s job is completely different. All your customers are learning 95% of their knowledge elsewhere”.

Ian stressed: “The consequence of this is that we can’t teach ‘what’ anymore. We’ve got to teach the

NTRODUCING A SESSION on the effectiveness of organisation-al learning, Consalia Director Ian Helps set out to examine the intersection between learning, technology and “how we’re all changing as individuals”. He asked the audience to consider “how relevant is learning to us” and “how learning is actually changing” in the context of the millennial generation and shifting attention spans.

Retain your investment

If there’s one thing that’s clear when it comes to sales transformation, it’s that ana-lysing the issues and understanding what to do is probably less than half the battle: it’s the implementati-on and the effectiveness of the processes that drive the transformation which can make or break any change programme.

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with a competitive edge.

Ian referred to this new way of learning as “persistent learning on demand”, whereby everyone has a “persistent core’ that is us, that give us an ability to really know who we are”. He suggested that this needs to be accredited “so we know it’s any good”. In Consalia’s case, Middlesex University provides the external, objective accreditation component to their “pioneering in-house Masters programme”.

Ian cited a recent initiative from internet browser company Mozilla that goes beyond formal education. The ‘Open Badges’ concept enables people to demonstrate their ‘personal brand’ – “what it is that we are and what it is that we’ve learnt”. He explained that sales professionals could display badges, for instance, on LinkedIn; in turn, prospective customers could click on a badge to understand how it was achieved and the data behind that accreditation. Such novel means of accreditation could be set up by employers, individuals and training companies, Ian proposed, and such a system would make it much easier for people to demonstrate ways in which they are accredited.

Moving beyond classroom learning, Ian declared “the world is hurtling towards us”. The ‘just-in-time’ component of learning is essential, but learning has now become disposable too. “Many of the things we’re learning today, you become an instant expert and then you drop it”.

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‘how’ and the ‘why’”. There is no point trying to teach people the 95% of the knowledge needed for their jobs at any one time because it is changing so fast. Instead, people need a framework and a blueprint for learning how to acquire the relevant knowledge themselves and presenting it in a way that is relevant to their customers and

colleagues. “We’ve actually got to help people with the 5% so that they know how to be brilliant with the 95%”.

He suggested to the audience that “we’ve actually got to rethink learning”. Quoting a 2006 learning effectiveness study, he said that a quarter of learning effectiveness comes from pre-work, roughly a quarter from the learning event and 50% from the follow-up. And yet organisations continue to invest their time in a very different way.

“The learning event is taking 85%; the pre-work, 10%; and the follow-up, 5%”. He called for a rethink of “where and how we’re developing ourselves and our people”, pointing out that we need a core ability to learn and to manage their knowledge acquisition, and this is what will provide organisations

Apps are a prime example, he explained, whereby one can simply “refresh crucial skills exactly at the time that they are needed”.

Ian concluded: “If we think sales is changing, the world of learning is going to be going through absolute upheaval too, which gives us all opportunities to learn better and faster”.

The general consensus in the theatre highlighted a clear divergence between their perception of the importance of learning for sales effectiveness and the reality of their own organisation’s current sales enablement (L&D) processes. At this point Ian introduced Axel Ferreyrolles, from SAP’s EMEA Sales University, whose insights of in L&D would greatly compliment the session discussions of the previous keynote.

76%Average information retention by knowledge workers in:

5%

1986 2013

When learning is most effective:

24% - pre-work

26% - learning event

50% - follow up

How organisations investin their employee learning:

10% - pre-work

85% - learning event

5% - follow up

Dr Brent Petersen, 2004, University of Phoenix

There’s a profound change going on in how we all learn in the workplace


you innovate in the right way, working with your customers for them to be more successful”.

The starting point for the company was to respond to several current mega-trends, including: the importance of big data; the speed at which you can use that data to make management decisions; the proliferation of online and mobile devices; and the massive and growing inter-connectivity of

the world. At the same time, SAP had to ensure its approach to the market focused both on the customer and the customer’s customer.

SAP began acquiring companies that would

XEL BEGAN his keynote by describing the new learning environment necessary to achieve SAP’s objective of a truly transformed and innovative sales function, which has been set up in conjunction with Consalia over the past three years. The current focus is on the first-line sales managers and quota carriers.

The EMEA sales team operates in the context of SAP’s strategy to help customers “become best-run businesses through innovation and technology”. Part of this customer-centric approach is innovation. He explained: “Innovation is key because our customers, in a world of destruction, need to keep innovating if they want to survive”.

The concern for SAP was whether it could align its sales force with this innovation agenda. “The point is, how to get there is not easy,” Axel emphasised, and yet SAP has achieved 20% growth over the past four years under difficult economic circumstances.

“Not everyone is in a crisis, if only you do the right things and if only

SAP equips its sales force to perform in the face of the demands of today’s fast-changing marketplace. In his presentation ‘Enabling Sales4Success – an SAP EMEA experience’, Axel Ferreyrolles explained SAP’s approach to achieving sales transformation.

supply the necessary applications, including the ability to address the opportunities offered by mobility and the cloud – in terms of software on demand – which both have profound implications for the way that customers ‘consume’ SAP’s offerings. “We are able, with this combined set of technologies, to unlock the potential of the customer,” Axel explained.

That was the strategy, passed down from SAP’s two CEOs and mandated by the board; the tricky part was for the COO and the team to make it work operationally. An immediate concern was to increase the number of quota carriers achieving their targets. In IT the average is 40%, Axel claimed. With SAP at around the average, he asked: “What would be the impact if we could increase that percentage by ten points? It would have a massive impact on the top line, but how to get there?”

One issue related to the pipeline, Axel said, so SAP moved to a 4x pipeline over four rolling quarters. It also took steps to promote ‘linearity’ – selling consistently across the quarter – and so improve forecasting and stability. The sales operation moved towards selling more innovation and increasing sales through business partners to cover all lines of business. Thesales team also needed to look at new business models such as outsourcing, while the company

Axel FerreyrollesHead of Value University, EMEA, SAP

The SAP approach to Sales Transformation

SELLING MORE INNOVATION

We had to relearn howto approach the customer and how to look at the business in a different way. These mega-trends actually make us think differently.

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“Salespeople are not natural learners,” in contrast to pre-sales specialists, except for salespeople recruited straight from university. However, even this group becomes resistant to learning after two to three years in sales! So, the SAP approach is to ensure the content is relevant but progressive, delivered in bite-sized chunks and labelled as a ‘refresher’ (“because salespeople know everything”).

“So we ‘refresh’ them on new things and then we give them activities,” Axel joked.

He also stressed the importance of follow-up activity, which needs to be scalable across the whole organisation at a reasonable price.

continued to take steps to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

A key part of Axel’s sales enablement role is to take into account the mind-set of the salesperson. The direct sales force was focused on the big deal and now the company was asking them to sell transactional deals as well. At the same time, both the 4x pipeline and requirement for increased linearity met with resistance. An additional challenge for Axel has been the scale of the project, to “manage 1,000 quota carriers and 200 sales managers”. To achieve the transformation, the company focused on instilling the principle of ‘customer first’ amongst these two groups.

In order to turn the division into a knowledge organisation, the EMEA president had mandated 14 days of training a year per role; this was delivered in a multi-channel format with strict attention paid to content governance. The SAP sales force is kept up to date in four ways – in terms of information, knowledge, skills and behaviours.

Summing up SAP’s EMEA sales transformation programme, Axel described an accreditation journey whereby sales managers pass through a series of achievement stages covering management and coaching, leadership and influence, the overall outcome of which is transformation of mindset and behaviour through a process of critical reflection. Each stage has its own recognition of accreditation, progressing from silver, through gold, up to the newly announced SAP Masters accreditation at the peak.

Developed in conjunction with Consalia, this two-year programme focusing on leading sales transformation currently involves 16 first-line sales managers from around the world and will enable them to self-reflect, develop, build and “start being the change agents in the organisation”.

At the same time, this transformation programme is running in conjunction with a programme to align the sales force to the Challenger methodology. It is also being measured on a number of levels and from several perspectives, in terms of coaching effectiveness, management and business impact (the number of people who achieve target).

Thinking differently about sales

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life, and also in terms of a brand or solution. He suggested four “dynamics of mattering” as the keys to personal relevance:

AUTHENTICITY – being true to self and real to others or aligning your outside with your inside, so that “your values are your value”. Styrlund cited the book Moral Intelligence which charts a study

that found that senior executives with higher character or values produced on average 17% more financial return.

Phil referred to a TED talk by Simon Sinek, which outlined the concept of the ‘golden circle’ whereby the “outside of our firms need to align to the inside”. Sinek argues that the difference between good companies and great is that good companies say: “Here is what we sell; here is how we do it; and why”. However, great companies begin with the why.

MASTERY – seeking wisdom over intelligence. “Truly masterful people seek wisdom not intelligence,” said Styrlund, suggesting that intelligence has

Philip StyrlundCEO, The Summit Group

Relevance – Mattering more to others, for others

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Personal relevance is increasingly important in today’s challenging business world, particularly in a sales context. All too often, what a salesperson tells a prospective customer is simply not relevant to their business, argues Phil Styrlund.

ALESPEOPLE WHO SUCCEED are those who make themselves relevant both to their customers and to their colleagues – that’s the view of Phil Styrlund, sales veteran, author and CEO of The Summit Group*.

Pausing only to underline his passion “for the nobility of sales”, Styrlund opened his presentation with a poignant anecdote about his father, a survivor of the Great Depression and a veteran of Omaha Beach. Near the end of his life Styrlund’s father told him: “I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of not mattering anymore”.

And, of course, the question of ‘mattering’ is what concerns people most in their lives. In a commercial context, the issue is brought into sharp focus as businesspeople strive to matter to the people they interact with. Indeed, “relevance matters more than intelligence” in the business world, Styrlund argued.

“No-one cares what university we went to. No-one cares how smart you and I are. What they care

about is how relevant we are: how does what you have, and what you know, and what you bring, impact what I care about?”

At the same time, the accelerating process of commoditisation in the global economy means that “everything has become a commodity”, according to Styrlund. As evidence he cited the iPhone 5, which went from a product people were standing in line for to being $99 at Walmart.

“In the world where everything’s a commodity, how our salespeople show up has never mattered more, because it’s not any longer what you sell but how. How is the new what”. Paradoxically, while most salespeople may be having a tough time of it out there, it is they who are the real differentiator in today’s commoditised world. “They are the human value propositions”. Styrlund declared. “How they show up as relevant businesspeople is the only distinguisher left”.

Styrlund spent several years investigating what it means to be relevant personally and in business

Your value system is your value proposition.


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you” - this client-centric mindset is the key to success, he stressed.

He referred to the “disruptive dialogue”, whereby salespeople question the status quo and bring valuable new insight and perspective to a business conversation. Likening this to the Corporate Executive Board’s Challenger model, Styrlund set out a three-step sequence for salespeople to follow:

STEP 1: Here’s your current state. STEP 2: Here’s a new perspective.STEP 3: Here’s the path forward.

Summing up this approach, Styrlund described it as a fundamentally different mind-set and skill set. He suggested salespeople also need to be ‘tri- relevant’:

1) Be product relevant.2) Be business relevant; connect what you bring to a business driver.3) Be financially relevant or fluent; be able to articulate the financial impact of your solution.

ACTION – the great distinguisher between thinking about being relevant and actually beingrelevant, suggested Styrlund.

almost become a commodity, whereas wisdom is at a premium in today’s world. One of the great accelerators of wisdom is resilience, he suggested – “people who’ve been through difficult things”. Styrlund referred to experiences when we grow as people as “our great humblings”.

Phil dismissed the ‘human brochu-re’ type of salespeople and explained that customers are seeking the three currencies of business relevance:

INSIGHTS: “Tell me what’s work-ing somewhere else”. “You’ve been in this industry a long time, what are some of the lessons learned that you can share with me?” “What matters next?”

Phil also advocated salespeople adopting a ‘general manager mindset’.

Understand the customer. Manage your own company. Manage your own team. Manage yourself.

EMPATHY – “it’s not about you”. Salespeople need to be able to transcend their own perspective and ego and truly immerse themselves in the concerns of the customer.

Styrlund set out the concept of so-called ‘third-box selling’, whereby one takes into account the customer’s customer. In an economy that’s in a permanent state of instability and where salespeople have to articulate a compelling business case to convince a company to do something instead of nothing - and “then do that something with

He added: “We can’t intellect-ualise our way to growth; we actually have to do something”. He quoted a

familiar saying in the US: “Hard work always beats talent, if talent doesn’t work hard”.

In conclusion, Styrlund emphasised that the four elements he had outlined where the factors that drove improved results. He also flagged up the importance of focus and salespeople understanding which customers are worth investing in and which ones not to chase, ie when they are not relevant. He ended with a final quote from his father: “When it comes to relationships, whether in life or in business, just be interested not interesting”.

HINDSIGHTS:

FORESIGHTS:

*The Summit Group is part of the Consalia Global Alliance, a group of like-minded companies committed to setting the new global standard for strategic selling. The alliance delivers global consistency of execution across 30 countries in 26 languages.

You can’t think your way to a new way of living; you have to live your way to a new way of thinking.


NTRODUCING THE CONCEPT of win themes at the recent Global Sales Transformation Event at the London Stock Exchange, Consalia CEO Dr Philip Squire described the approach taken by a small IT supplier which succeeded in re-energising its business with National Australia Bank (NAB), itself an organisation which had transformed its relationship with the marketplace as a result of a highly innovative promotional campaign around the theme of breaking up the cosy relationship with the other major Australian banks.

At the time, the supplier in question was in danger of fading into oblivion in the face of IBM’s success in winning a massive outsourcing contract with the bank. Yet, the company successfully moved from a $1m a year sub-Tier 2 supplier in 2012 to annual business worth $9m in 2013 thanks to a co-ordinated proposal and communications campaign targeted at the bank, relaying the views and perceptions

Relevance is a key theme in today’s complex sales environment, not only at the general organisational level but at a personal level too, as well as in relation to individual engagements between organisations. In this context, the concept of ‘win themes’ is especially significant, often being the differentiator between a winning bid and an unsuccessful engagement.

of the bank’s SME and personal account customers.

Four key themes – ‘Know me now’, ‘Invest in me’, ‘Work for me’ and ‘Make IT matter’ – highlighted how NAB was viewed by its customers and brought into focus ways the supplier was able to help the bank better engage with its customers.

The messages were even displayed on the clothing worn by the account team. At the same time, the team used some of

their company’s own innovative technology as part of their everyday marketing collateral, for instance by integrating microchips into business cards which played a relevant promotional video, the purpose of which was, of course, to serve as a catalyst for the bank to consider incorporating such technology into its own activities. Thus, in this case, the medium truly was as important as the message itself – and both needed to be inspirational.

Extending the idea of win themes, Phil introduced William Mills, VP Strategic Sales Engagements at outsourcing specialists ATOS, who described the thinking and activity underpinning a recent €750m win with a major financial services blue-chip in New York.

Putting this in context and setting out his credentials, William described his “personal journey in the world of sales” outlining his career as a cavalry officer, IT project manager, head of M&A, and outsourcing specialist.

William illustrated the typical boardroom view of salespeople:

“90% are a total waste of time”,

“I don’t want them pointing at me; I want them pointed back at their own company – bringing the best of their company for my business”

William MillsWVice President, Strategic Sales Engagements, ATOS

The importance of ‘win themes’

2012 2013

THE NAB STORY

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The approach was formalised into HP’s own MSc in Business Change, accredited by Middlesex University. HP’s application of the programme harnessed the power of reflection and incorporated skills derived from people’s previous career: in William’s case - army intelligence skills based on ‘believability of evidence’.

This methodology paid immediate benefits in winning outsourcing deals thanks to an evidence-based approach to opportunity qualification, increasing the effectiveness of the qualification process as well as the win rate, while also reducing unprofitable activity, boosting critical thinking and eliminating unnecessary complexity.

“The result of all that was I was actually prepared to say: ‘I’m now a salesman,’” William declared. Fast forward to ATOS and the bid in New York closed in summer 2012, where intelligence skills and the ability to handle multifaceted projects proved crucial to winning the business. It was a highly complex project, involving outsourcing, a divestment (splitting the company into two), company transformation, acquisition of a data-centre and a 36-acre solar field. Competition involved most of the major Tier 1 suppliers, outsourcing specialists and consultancies. ATOS itself came late to the deal, being given six days to respond to the RFP, while the others had been involved for some five weeks.

The outcome was that the ATOS bid team worked to put together a proposal within the timescale and “really hit the spot with the “customer”. The key to this was thinking about their business, which consisted of four or five

“They’re driven by short-term objectives”

“They have little or no knowledge about my business”.

Originally in denial about being in sales, William explained that for much of his career he preferred to think of himself as a consultant. His epiphany was attending a training session run by Phil in 2005: this covered executive selling and introduced the twin concepts of customer centricity and third-box thinking (“thinking about the values of your customer’s customer”).

This in turn sparked the genesis of HP’s ‘win value-proposition workshop’ which introduced third-box perspective to the company’s sales process to “make sure the entire sales team got this customer centricity into their heads”. The programme went on to prompt holistic evaluations of customers which went beyond the IT perspective to include the views of stock exchange analysts, brand value consultants and innovation experts.

William told the audience: “The idea was to get a completely holistic view of our customer, to go to have a business conversation with those customers, and it made such a difference”. It made such a difference that the team closed $4.3bn-worth of sales at a win rate of 73%. This approach outperformed a control group which didn’t use the process: it was able to close the same number of opportunities but these were worth a mere $400m in revenue terms and at a win rate of only 25%.

different businesses, within the whole: one half of the business revolved around financial services such as 24/7 ratings information and financial data; the other half was related to education, including publishing and educational services such as SAT tests, with large but regular requirements for IT capacity.

The bid team had to research and sell to four different sets of CIOs with different values. While the process was “a roller-coaster ride”, the Masters degree “provided a lot of stability in the background” by providing an intellectual framework for the thinking, planning and execution of the bid, as well as the ability to learn from previous complex projects.

ATOS also had strong relationship managers within the account but winning the deal involved mustering the whole of the company behind the bid, including the CFO, CEO and the VP responsible for delivery who were all camped in the relevant office putting together the proposal.

THE EPIPHANY

£4.3bn

Win rate of 73%

Win rate of 25%

£400m

Comparative HP deal win rates

Figures display revenue closed and percentage of deals won by HP team using Consalia’s WVP.

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How relevant is it for the B2B arena?

social selling is still based largely on anecdotal evidence; however, the case for conducting pre-call research is a ‘no-brainer’.

“There are wonderful opportunities for using social media,” he declares. Essentially, there are two roles for social media in B2B sales:

• Using it as a communications and engagement vehicle with your key constituencies; and • For sales intelligence gathering.

The key is to connect with the right people, in the right place in a relevant way. Social media enables you to identify the right people to talk with, according to Sam. It also allows you to find out whether your offering is relevant.

But the social media environment also demands a change in mind-set for the majority of salespeople. “Don’t sell; that’s the key. Rather, share,” Sam explains.

He advises that participants follow the 10:1 rule, a recommendation that he follows himself: “I have to provide ten pieces of valuable information but nothing to do with me or my company and then I get ‘permission’ to talk a little bit about myself”.

He emphasises that salespeople need to generate trust and

OCIAL MEDIA in the business- to business (B2B) and consum-er worlds are like two sides of the same coin: there’s plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of social media with consumers, but what about where there is a limited pool of buyers with often very specific requirements? For many B2B specialists, the last time they used LinkedIn was when theywere looking for a new job and plenty have given up on Twitter after only a brief flirtation.

But that may be a mistake. Author and sales intelligence expert Sam Richter acknowledges that the case for the effectiveness of B2B

credibility first and then you have “permission to talk about yourself”.

Of course, this isn’t an issue that’s confined to social media; it’s also relevant in a wider sales context, with only some 7% of salespeople thinking with a customer-centricity perspective. In contrast, almost every B2B buyer today will have used business intelligence and social media to research a prospective supplier before any interaction.

As with other areas of business, the information environment drives change and often exposes poor practice. “Technology can really accelerate your relevance or your irrelevance,” argues Phil Styrlund, CEO of The Summit Group. Technology and the easy availability of information has fundamentally changed the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

Sam agrees, pointing out that the traditional broad sales role definitions of ‘hunter’ and ‘farmer’ are blurring with the advent of social media. “The really good hunters have to start absorbing some of the farmer mind-set of caring,” he stresses.

Illustrating the perspective of the buyer, he cites the well-known Theodore Roosevelt quote:

74%

Bid to win

Social sellingwith Matthias Lüfkens & Sam Richter

Sales figures

72.6%

23%

Sales figures

Aberdeen Group Study, 2009

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“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”. He adds: “I think it’s probably always been that way but buyers don’t have to put up with it anymore”.

So, can social media really have an impact on B2B selling? In terms of business intelligence and research, the case is proven. A 2009 Aberdeen Group study found 74% of best in-class companies using effective sales intelligence techniques recorded improvement in their bid-to-win ratios compared with only 8% ratio of the laggards; similarly, 82% of best-in-class companies saw improved revenue-per-account metrics compared with 45% of average companies and 14% of the laggards.

A recent research study from A Sales Guy Consulting, The impact of social media on sales quota and corporate revenue indicates that salespeople using social media significantly outperform their

product launch on Twitter.

He advocates not simply following but being a leader, while also finding an editorial line you are confident with and pursuing it.

He explains: “People follow you because they know what you will be tweeting about and you need to stand out”.

Matthias also recommends personalising corporate accounts as much as possible. “People prefer to follow personal accounts”.

Echoing the points raised by Sam and Phil, he confirms: “You have to have a conversation. You can’t talk at them”. In terms of engaging consumers, sweepstakes and competitions work well, as does gamification. Above all, don’t be boring. And a little, reasonably often works well. “Don’t tweet what you eat; tweet when you eat”.

peers when it comes to quota and closing deals. It found that, in 2012, 72.6% of salespeople using social media as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often.

In B2C, the evidence for the effectiveness of social media is much more clear-cut. There aremetrics to measure engagement across the various communities and companies can use social media for a variety of purposes, including holding conversations with their fan base, measuring customer satisfaction and addressing issues with their products and services.

Speaking at Consalia’s recent Global Sales Transformation Event, Burson Marsteller’s Matthias Lüfkens stressed the advantage of having numbers behind a campaign – an “army of brand ambassadors” – to provide momentum. One technique is to distribute so-called ‘tweetsheets’ for staff so they can talk about a

It’s about the value to the other person, what’s important to them.

Don’t dabble in social media; make 15-20 minutes a day to find and share a piece of useful or interesting information.

Understand the importance of research. Remember the four ‘Rs’: reading, writing, arithmetic and research.

Social Media Top Tips

Increase your digital footprint.

Treat your fans like your best friends.

Engage, surprise and seduce them.

Turn customers into brand advocates.

The ROI is priceless.

Sam’s top tips

1.

2.

3.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Matthias’ helpful hints

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GROUNDSWELL OF OPINION is growing to support an entire movement dedicated to professionalising sales. It’s being driven by the needs of numerous stakeholders – not least the views of the public, who are demanding higher ethical standards after decades of mis-selling scandal across multiple industries – but also by business itself, which needs salespeople to add significant value to the equation. Add in the concerns of politicians, educationalists and professional organisations and you have a potent force for change.

Explains Consalia CEO, Dr Phil Squire: “In the past, there has been too much bias on assumptions of what good likes for sales with too little research conducted into what actually produces long-term sustainable sales performance”.

One of the primary drivers behind the movement for sales change is the information revolution, ushered in by new technology: this has transformed the balance of power between buyers and sellers.

Buyers no longer need salespeople to provide basic information; they can research the market themselves on the web. Technology has further

The salesperson as a consummate business professional is an idea that is finally coming of age.

Gathering momentumThe movement gathers pace

revolutionised the market by channelling low-value and commodity sales online, making the traditional ‘talking brochure’ role of the rep redundant.

At the heart of this sales revolution is increasing recognition that selling is about being customer centric. Taking the concept one step further, the role of the modern salesperson is rooted in understanding the customer’s customer – so-called ‘third-box thinking’: to remain relevant, organisations and their salespeople need to be able to create genuine value for their customers, and that means improving their customers’ ability to do business.

All of which means that the role of the modern salesperson is increasingly sophisticated and demanding. This new role requires an accompanying transformation in the way we view and educate –

not simply train – salespeople: a genuine paradigm shift in selecting and developing new and existing salespeople for their challenging new function.

The UK trails the US in terms of degree-level courses for sales professionals. Across the Pond, they have a saying: “Old-school sales was no-school sales”. There, the number of university sales programmes increased from 45 in 2007 to 101 in 2011.

In a Harvard Business Review article, DePaul University claims academic study offers distinct advantages compared with the sales training industry: students develop a broad understanding of all the functional areas of business; they are exposed to multiple techniques, not just the one favoured by a particular sales training vendor; and their knowledge is engrained over many months rather than just a few days.

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Professionalism in selling and the importance of the contribution to the economy made by salespeople is moving up the agenda of politicians. Over the past few months, Shadow Small Business Minister Toby Perkins has been holding a series of meetings with professional bodies and representatives of the sales profession, including a parliamentary ideas workshop on ‘The Importance of Sales to the Skills Agenda’ at the House of Commons.

Prompted by the concern that many businesses, particularly smaller ones, are not selling to their full potential, the event aimed to address the issue that sales is rarely given the importance it deserves by politicians and there is little focus or strategy from government in this area. Furthermore, sales skills are not taught in schools nor do they feature prominently in business courses at colleges or university: the result is that young people are missing out on life-changing opportunities.

One time salesperson Toby joined Consalia’s 5th Global Sales Transformation Event at the Stock Exchange on 2 July to reinforce the message that professional sales is now firmly on politicians’ radar. “There’s a vital role for government to promote the value of sales,” he told the audience.

Setting out his views on the future direction of the profession, Toby emphasised the size, importance and key role of the sales profession in the UK, citing the old maxim: “Until someone sells something,

Here in the UK we are lagging behind: you can almost count the number of university sales courses on the fingers of one hand. Phil declares: “It’s a poor reflection of our own industry that those wanting a career in sales will struggle to find an undergraduate degree that properly majors in sales and even fewer opportunities to pursue a post-graduate degree in sales or sales management”.

There are a few centres of excellence in the UK, such as the pioneering MA Sales Management programme at Portsmouth Business School and the key account management work delivered by Cranfield. These have been joined by Consalia’s game-changing, in-company Masters’ programme, accredited by Middlesex University.

The process of transforming the sales sector will require a comple tely new mind-set and needs to be sustained. Appropriate and effective sales education can both underpin the transformation and act as a catalyst for change. It will involve numerous stakeholders, including schools and the tertiary education sector, as well as professional bodies, business itself and training organisations.

Concludes Phil: “We owe it to the thousands of people in sales to talk about the ethics of selling, to make values in selling lead other levers to generate sales and to help legitimise the profession by looking for ways to properly educate the profession of sales”.

The concept of the salesperson as a business professional is a concept whose time has come.

nothing else happens”. Stressing the significance of selling and entrepreneurship, he recalled the first sale he ever made in 1987. “I could tell you who it was to, what it was for, how much it was. “I remember that first date I woke up self-employed,” he added.

Toby highlighted the educational opportunities in relation to selling and called for entrepreneurship to be a normal part of the school curriculum. “We’ve got to make more; we’ve got to do more; and, of course, we’ve got sell more,” he told the audience.

On the subject of the sales profession’s reputation, he said: “I think it’s important that people get out there and start supporting it”. However, while banging the drum for the profession, he also stressed the “need to be intolerant when we see people who are not doing it right”.

He added: “It’s in all our best interests that sales has a better reputation than it does. People who operate in questionable ways need to be held open to scrutiny”.

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THE POLITICIAN’S VIEW


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What next?Key issues in the professionalisation of sales

What the delegates said

Answering the question “Where will sales be in ten years?” delegates were looking for sales processes to move towards professional selling, with salespeople able to spend more time selling and not on admin. This would involve more face-to-face activity and creativity with more time spent meeting the needs of clients. Key considerations were: human Interaction, intelligence and relationships.

THE MASTERS

OST OTHER PROFESSIONS offer the opportunity to gain an academic qualification, as validation and acknowledgement of a level competency in one’s field. Yet historically, sales has been underserved in this area and as such has never benefited from the same level of benchmarked standards.

Recent high profile cases of miselling, bonuses and unethical conduct have heightened the already negative connotations surrounding sales. So don’t we owe it to the thousands of people in sales to talk about the ethics of selling; to make values in selling lead other levers to generate sales and to help legitimise the profession by looking for ways to properly educate the profession of sales?

Since 2007, Consalia has worked with academic institutions, clients and customers; an investment that has culminated in our pioneering Masters programmes, accredited by Middlesex University.

Consalia is now able to offer two routes to gaining a Post Graduate Masters degree in Sales Transformation, one for Sales Leaders, the other for Sales Professionals involved in selling complex solutions. These are unique programmes, which focus on applying world-class, leading edge thinking and expertise to participants’ transformation goals within their organisation.

This represents the first opportunity for organisations to offer academic recognition to their sales individuals for their experience and expertise within the workplace. Both programmes are totally focused on sales and are based on proven practices for performance improvement and real-world learning.

The programmes are offered on an in-company basis, as a series of modules to be run over a period of two years.

This is our committment to sales.

To find out more contact: [email protected]

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Our committmentMaking sales the world’s most sought-after profession

Individual & organisational relevance as projects are work based.

The 1st work-based masters designed by those in Sales for Sales.

Relevance

WBL means time out of the office isminimised.

In-house programmes mean you aren’t tied to university semesters.

Time

Validated sales process and sales perfor-mance improvement.

Motivate & retain top talent / reduced attrition rates.

Enables organisations to measure the benefits of learning.

Value

Outputs of student assignments will fuel thought leadership as well as innovation for your company.

Through close scrutiny and interroga-tion, students will creatively change and improve upon their own practice.

Innovation

Key Benefits


M

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Contact us

London Singapore

Consalia LtdThe Glasshouse5a Hampton RoadHampton HillMiddlesex, TW12 1JN

T: +44 (0)20 8977 6944E: [email protected]

W: www.consalia.com : @Consalia

Consalia Asia Pac Ltd8 Temasek Boulevard# 42 - 01Suntec Tower ThreeSingapore 038988

T: +65 9732 3181E: [email protected]

Minneapolis Adelaide

The Summit GroupPart of the Consalia Global AllianceMinnesotaMinneapolis

T: +44 (0)20 8977 6944E: [email protected]

W: www.summitvalue.com : @SummitGroupInc

Consalia Asia Pac LtdConsalia Instructional DesignAdelaideAustralia

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