Opportunity Manager Methodologytasgroup.vo.llnwd.net/o15/pdfs/SOM.Methodology_W15.pdf · Opportunity Manager Methodology Is There an Opportunity? – Compelling Event OK – pay attention

© 2016 ALTIFY, Inc. All rights reserved.

Opportunity Manager Methodology

© 2016 ALTIFY, Inc. All rights reserved.


Contents Altify Opportunity Manager Framework ................................................................................................................................ 1

Is There an Opportunity? ........................................................................................................................................................... 2

Can We Compete? ....................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Can We Win? ................................................................................................................................................................................. 8

Is It Worth Winning? .................................................................................................................................................................. 10

Political Map ............................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Insight Map ................................................................................................................................................................................. 22

Gaining Your Mentor’s Advice: ............................................................................................................................................... 35

Competitive Strategy ................................................................................................................................................................ 37

Turning Ideas into Actions ...................................................................................................................................................... 42

© 2016 ALTIFY, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

1


Altify Opportunity Manager Framework Four Key Questions Sales can be the most rewarding of professions. But sometimes – when you work on the wrong sales opportunities – it can be a very hard journey; one peppered with competitors with stronger relationships, the dead-end of the reallocated budget or the expensive uphill struggle of a sales campaign that – if you were honest – you know you should never have embarked on in the first place. You need to allocate your valuable time and resources on deals you can win. When you examine your opportunities from all sides – customer, business, and competitor – you will quickly discover where you should focus. The Opportunity Assessment is a structured, repeatable methodology for analyzing sales opportunities. If you just ask yourself “Will my product fit?” or “Can I get the order in this quarter?” you will be less successful than if you truly assess the potential vulnerabilities in the deal. There are many variables in any sales campaign, but only four key questions. 1. Is There an Opportunity?

You need to know enough about the customer’s business to determine if the cost of the status quo exceeds the cost of change?

2. Can We Compete?

Have we a competitive solution? Can you provide value to the customer that can be differentiated from your competitors?

3. Not only that, you need to ensure you have access to the right people who can buy. In other words, Can We

Win? Are the right, powerful people in the customer’s organization on your side and want you to win? 4. Is It Worth Winning? And, of course, all of

our efforts amount to just so much wasted energy if the opportunity isn’t worth winning; it has to be one that will provide you with the return you need; in revenue, profit or strategic value.

If you use these 4 questions – and the expanded 1-20 – you will uncover the right sales opportunities by exposing roadblocks or dead-ends early, illuminating each side-road or blind-alley to reveal the deals you should select to win.

Is There an Opportunity?Indicators You Comp1

1 Customer Project:

2 Customer Business:

3 Customer Financial Condition:

4 Access to Funds:

5 Compelling Event:

Can We Compete?Indicators You Comp1

6 Formal Decision Criteria:

7 Solution Fit

8 Sales Resource Requirements:

9 Current Relationship:

10 Unique Business Value:

Can We Win? Is It Worth Winning?Indicators You Comp1

11 Inside Support:

12 Executive Credibility:

13 Cultural Compatibility:

14 Informal Decision Criteria:

15 Political Alignment:

Indicators You Comp1

16 Short Term Revenue:

17 Future Revenue:

18 Profitability

19 Degree of Risk

20 Strategic Value:

Comp1 = Competitor1Response Key: + Yes, - No, ? Unknown


2


Is There an Opportunity? Is There an Opportunity? - Customer Project Opportunities always begin with the customer. If you want to do everything you can to win the deal, you should start your sales campaign with a discussion of the customer’s requirement or business initiative. Ask the customer to outline the business problem he or she is trying to solve. This is how you start to position yourself to win. If you want to shape the customers’ journey you need to know where they are starting from. Ask some open questions.

• What is the anticipated impact of this project on the organization? • How does the project link to their overall business goals and strategy? • How important is this project relative to other initiatives? • Who are the key drivers behind the project?

The time you spend exploring and investigating with your customer now, will save you valuable time and help you to present your solution in the context of the customer’s business. Remember that it’s the customer’s perspective that matters, and as things change and people have different viewpoints, you can revisit these questions frequently and should ask them of different people. The more information you have, the more value you can add and the more likely it is that you will be successful. Is There an Opportunity? - Customer Business To discover if there really is an opportunity, you need to look at things from the customer’s viewpoint. To be able to do that effectively you need to really understand your customer’s business. While you are pursuing a deal in a business unit or division, it is important for you to appreciate the context in which your customer is operating. That way you can determine the importance of this initiative. You can do this by developing a customer business profile. As you develop the business profile, answer these questions:

• What is the customer’s core business and in which market segments do they operate? • What are their key challenges and what’s the competitive landscape? • What are the critical success factors for this project? • How is this project connected to the customer’s business at a macro level?

Remember - you are trying to determine if there is really an opportunity here. If this project or opportunity is directly tied to one of the customer’s key business initiatives or to the corporate goals, there is a good likelihood that this project is real. If not, you might need to look further for an opportunity that the client will be fully supporting.


3


Is There an Opportunity? - Customer Financial Condition There are no prizes for winning a deal with a customer who doesn’t have the funds. As you continue your determination of the true existence of an opportunity, you should establish the customer’s financial situation. A basic financial review will deliver up really valuable information. Even when they say it’s not - it’s always all about the money – whether revenue, profit, return on assets, or another financial metric. Here’s what you need to check:

• Revenue and profit trends • Financial analysts reports or company commentary • Financial outlook relative to their peers • The key metrics they use to performance manage their business

If you know what financial metrics are important at a corporation level, then that usually filters down to executives, business units and departments, and ultimately will be the measure of the business initiative upon which your opportunity is dependent. It’s worth taking the time to know. It’s another surprise you can avoid and can shed light on the real opportunity you’re looking to pursue. Is There an Opportunity? - Access to Funds If a company is in a weak financial condition, then budgets are always at risk. However even when companies have a very healthy Balance Sheet, or strong profits, there has to be a very good reason to invest on a given project. In financially strong companies, money is usually only allocated to a limited number of projects – and the criteria for funding are usually stringent. If your project isn’t fully funded, then it’s time to move on to the next one. In addition to knowing that a budget exists, for you to be sure that you’re not chasing an unfunded deal you need to know:

Is the budget fully allocated, authorized and protected? If it’s not there’s clearly a problem.

How was the budget determined? If a competitor helped – you’re starting from behind.

Is the budget adequate for the entire project? Might the scope be reduced and your profitability threatened?

Are additional funds available if required? A positive answer here is a great sign.

Are there other projects competing for the same budget? If so, you need to stay close and help your sponsor build their case.

It’s really a question of ‘Show me the money!’ It’s important to know that there is access, and continued access, to funds – otherwise you don’t have a robust opportunity and you could be wasting your time.


4


Is There an Opportunity? – Compelling Event OK – pay attention – this is really important. One of the biggest sins for sales people is to start talking about their solution or product without first understanding the customer’s motivation to act – their compelling event – the “when and why” that a customer needs to take action. A compelling event is a time sensitive response to an internal or external business pressure that drives the customer to act … to make a decision …. to solve a problem … to take advantage of an opportunity ... by a defined date. It is not just important – it’s critical to know the compelling event. It might be project-driven. It could be the introduction of a new product. If the customer is a retailer it could be a spring sale or a holiday season. It might be driven by a budget cycle. The customer has to have a compelling event for it to be a real opportunity and you must know what it is. To uncover a compelling event you need to understand the customer’s business. That’s why it’s so important to develop a profile of the customer. With this knowledge and your experience you can put yourself in the customer’s shoes, understand the business problem, and their need to act. Then you can clarify the timetable. A compelling event is usually a consequence of an initiative created in line with a company’s business drivers. Business drivers can come in a variety of flavors. For example:

• Losing customers to the competition • Exploiting new market opportunities • Pressure to reduce costs • Integrating systems as a result of a merger • New regulatory requirements

These examples have one thing in common: the consequences or payback will have a measurable impact on the customer’s business. Now, over to you… Think about a customer you are currently engaged with. To uncover the Compelling Event, ask yourself the following important questions.

Why must the customer take action? What is the deadline for the customer to make a decision? What are the consequences if this project is delayed? What is the payback for the customer if the project is completed on time? What will be the measurable impact on the customer’s business?

Are all of the answers clear? Is there more information to gather? Do you need to help the customer define the Compelling Event? Remember, a compelling event is a time sensitive response to an internal or external business pressure that


5


drives the customer to act … to make a decision …. to solve a problem … to take advantage of an opportunity ... by a defined date. Revealing the Compelling Event is critically important to know because without it there may never be a buying event, and without a buying event, there’s never a sale – and that’s not really much fun.

Can We Compete? Can We Compete? - Formal Decision Criteria As you plan your sales campaign you should assume that the customer is sophisticated, organized and disciplined in their purchasing process. Potential solutions are evaluated against multiple criteria – each of varying importance. To compete effectively, you must understand how you and your competitors are being measured. Uncover the buyer’s formal decision criteria and you’re well on the way to clarifying that picture. Never guess or assume you know – but peek inside the customer’s mind and discover your relative competitive strength. Try these questions.

• What are the most important criteria in your purchase decision? • How is the decision going to be made? • How was the decision criteria formulated? • Can you prioritize these decision points by each key player involved in the decision process?

The customer will often share their formal decision process – and it never hurts to ask. Understanding the relative importance of the criteria allows you to focus on the most pertinent information and helps the customer make a more informed decision – and that should be good for both of you. Decision criteria often change over time, and relative importance varies from person to person. Question deeply and frequently to maximize your insight and guide your competitive strategy. Can We Compete? - Solution Fit If the customers’ got round holes, then it’s probably not very productive trying to sell them square pegs. You’re wasting your time and the customers. It’s essential that the product or service you have can meet the customer’s requirements. When there’s a match you have what we call a Solution Fit. It’s the application of your product to solve the customer’s business problem. And it’s only a solution fit when the customer can visualize how it meets the need. Only the customer can call it a solution. You need to reach that critical point if you’re to enhance your competitive position. Here’s what you need to answer:

• How well does your solution solve the customer’s problem?


6


• What proof do you have that the customer thinks it’s a solution fit? • Are there any shortcomings in your solution from the customer’s perspective? • Are there future requirements you need to consider?

Don’t try to force a square peg into a round hole just to get the deal. If you don’t have a Solution Fit, then look to creative alternatives or look for the next opportunity. The customer will thank you for it. Can We Compete? - Sales Resources When you choose to pursue an opportunity you’re deciding not to spend time on something else. The time you spend here is time that’s not available to another deal. Before you proceed you need to assess whether you get the return on your investment – and that’s what the Opportunity Management assessment is all about. But before you can resolve that equation for yourself, you first need to ask:

• How much time does the sales team needs to invest on this opportunity. • What additional internal or external resources are required to close this opportunity? • How complex is the deal? • What is the projected “cost of sales” • What opportunities are you foregoing as a result of focusing resources on this opportunity? • What is the opportunity cost?

Honest answers will help you focus, and only allocate time and resources where it’s optimally spent. Can We Compete? - Current Relationship It’s an old cliché, but one that has real value – People buy from people, not companies. If your relationships with the key players are not as strong as your competitors, you’re at a competitive disadvantage. If you’re coming from behind, from a relationship perspective, you will need to work hard to overcome this disadvantage. But first you have to know your starting point.

• How strong is your relationship with the customer? • What is the status of the competitor’s relationship? • Whose relationship provides competitive advantage? • What’s the customer’s view of the ideal relationship?

Just because someone has sold to the customer before doesn’t mean they automatically have an advantage. Get to know the key players and check the pulse on a continuing basis. That way you can move to remedy a competitive disadvantage or enhance a competitive strength. Can We Compete? - Unique Business Value The Opportunity Manager Methodology is about – well, selling. It is designed to help sales professionals win more deals, more often. But we believe that today’s evolved sales professional is more than a bag-carrier or message communicator. Those salespeople who occupy the higher echelons of their profession are businesspeople - business professionals who sell, and who - when faced with a particular customer scenario - can clearly articulate their Unique Business Value in terms that the customer understands.


7


Unique Business Value, when effectively crafted, will link to the customer’s compelling event. Unique Business Value is by its nature, different – it is unique. Finding the uniqueness in the value that you can bring – that the customer views as important – is what begins to build a gap between you and your competition. You can bring value to you customer through:

• Your product or service applied to the customer’s business problem • Your company’s broader capabilities, and • Your own engagement with the customer

Value creation is one of the basic tenets upon which a successful sales career is built. For a salesperson to excel, they need to understand their customer and the unique advantage he or she brings to that customer. So, what do you need to know to firstly uncover the value you bring, and then develop its uniqueness?

• What is the specific or measurable value that you deliver? • How does the customer define value and how will they measure it? • Can you quantify the value you bring in the customer’s terms? • What is the link between your value and your customer’s compelling event? • Has the customer confirmed their understanding of the value you will deliver? • Does this value clearly differentiate you from your competitors?

Determining your Unique Business Value begins with your capabilities to address the customer’s issues. This becomes your solution in terms of products and services. This solution can then be folded into a value proposition that articulates the Unique Business Value you will deliver to the customer, providing a measure of differentiation between you and your competition. Developing a value proposition can be very difficult, but when expertly constructed – it becomes the expression of a unique differentiated value that the customer cares about – and a catalyst for unparalleled success. Your value proposition:

• Defines your unique business value • Is specific to the customer • Creates a specific or measurable business outcome • Sets the customer’s expectation, and • Assures your ability to deliver

Based on their words; their terminology, business initiatives and business drivers, the value proposition should be specific to the customer and should be that which compels them to act based on your articulation of the impact you can make on their business. As you develop the specific value proposition for the customer there are four simple questions you can ask yourself.

• What’s the issue? • How is it affecting the customer? • What are the consequences or payback? • How can you help?


8


Review these four questions before you begin to create your value proposition. Then write down the value proposition, replay it and test it. Make sure it articulates strong differentiators that the customer values and that only you can deliver. Then you’ve really given yourself a competitive edge.

Can We Win? Can We Win? - Inside Support As each sales campaign progresses, you’re either making progress or you’re sliding backwards – things never stay the same. The customer’s buying process rolls ahead relentlessly and the majority of buying happens when you are not with the customer. To keep things on track, and moving along the path that you want, you need to have inside support.

Your challenge is to determine:

• Who in the customer’s organization wants you to win? • Are they both willing and able to act on your behalf? • Do they have credibility and influence in their own organization? • What’s their motivation – their personal win? • What have they done to indicate their support?

Unless you have an internal supporter, it can be difficult to succeed. You need someone to guide you, open doors, and give you feedback. A credible internal supporter with sufficient influence can advance your cause a lot more than your great presentation to the company executives. At the critical moment, you will need this person and you may need to act fast. Can We Win? - Executive Credibility Trying to understand who the real buyer is in a large corporation is sometimes a bit like a Broadway production. Does the play have a cast of thousands or is it a one-man show? Who is playing what role? Who is the lead? Conventional wisdom says “call high”, but you need to ensure that the person you are contacting is actually the executive sponsor, or has strong influence on the executive sponsor. Sometimes the star of this particular show will not be high in formal rank. Both you and your internal supporter need to have credibility at the executive level to influence this important audience. You need to establish:

• Which executives will affect or be affected by this purchase • Have you established trust and credibility with them? • Who do the key influencers believe has high credibility? • Who will they go to for advice? Who will they grant access to? • How will you gain access to these executives?


9


As you bring the curtain up on this particular sales campaign, make sure you’re not focused on the bit players, and that you’re sufficiently engaged with the star performer who has highest influence – not just top billing. Can We Win? - Cultural Compatibility You know sometimes you really feel good about an opportunity; the customer ‘gets it’, really understands the value you bring and wants to buy in exactly the way that you want to sell. Then other times it just doesn’t feel right. No matter how much you talk about value, the customer brings the conversation back to price. The really cool technology most customers swoon over is of no interest to him. You’re finding it hard to gain any interest in the services that you know he needs to be successful. The culture of a customer’s organization will often drive specific behavior that can have a significant impact on the buying process. Customers are often more comfortable with people who conduct business in a manner similar to their own. You need to try to determine how well you fit.

• How compatible does the customer’s business culture mesh with yours? • What is the customer’s philosophy towards vendors & suppliers? • Does the customer want a relationship or a transaction? • Can you adjust or adapt and do you want to change?

Companies who are market leaders behave differently than followers. Cost focused companies tend to want a buy/sell transaction while others value relationships. Companies who differentiate themselves with great customer service will likely demand significant attention and value premier support. Cultural compatibility indicates the ease with which you and the customer can do business together and understanding that helps you stay attuned to changing circumstances. Can We Win? - Informal Decision Criteria Things aren’t always what they seem. Published formal decision criteria are the official guidelines used to make a buying decision. But sometimes it’s the informal criteria that tell you what’s really going on - the customer’s ‘behind the scenes’ thinking. When competitive solutions tick all of the same boxes on the evaluation checklist it’s the informal criteria that can give one vendor the edge over another. You need to question your internal supporters, your partners and your allies:

• How were these decisions made in the past? • If everything seems equal on the formal checklist – how will you decide how to proceed? • How will the decision really be made? • Is there a parallel or side agenda for any of the buyers? • What intangible, subjective or unstated factors could affect this decision?


10


Look for actions and not just words to evaluate responses from vendors. Then watch for the inevitable adjustments to the formal decision criteria. Can We Win? - Political Alignment As a sales person there are really only two things you can do. Find the right people to talk to, and then say the right things. Once you develop insight into both the formal and informal decision processes, you should be able to determine who are the right people, and understand the customer’s Political Structure as it relates to your opportunity. Remember the people with whom you need to be aligned are not always the people at the top of the hierarchy. The key questions to ask here are:

• Who are the most powerful people involved in this decision and do they want me to win? • Why would they want me to win? What’s in it for them? • Are they willing to influence or change the formal and informal decision criteria for me? • Are they willing to get involved and have they the ability to create or maintain a sense of urgency for this

project? Informal decision criteria and political alignment are usually connected. People with the highest degree of influence typically share the way they informally make decisions only with people they consider to be trusted and credible. These are usually people that have already decided they will support your solution because it will in turn support what they want to achieve. If you have true political alignment, then you should have some insight into the informal decision criteria. If you don’t have the insight, then you might question your interpretation of your political alignment.

Is It Worth Winning? Is It Worth Winning? - Short Term Revenue and Future Revenue Remember that when you choose to pursue an opportunity you’re deciding not to spend time on something else. The time you spend here is time that’s not available to another deal. You need to know that if you can win the deal it is actually worth winning – and that’s a combination of what it’s worth today and what it’s worth in the future. Short term return is fairly easy to understand.

• What is the order amount? • Does the initial deal value in itself justify the required effort? • Is the close date within your desired timeframe?

Sometimes the short term revenue isn’t enough to justify the effort, and that’s when you need to make the second sale – no, not another sale to the customer, but the one you need to make to your own company to support the investment you need to make.


11


Needing to justify effort today for future return is a good test of the viability of the opportunity’s long term value. • What is the potential for a future sale? • Will the initial sale provide any real strategic value to your company? • What is the future value of this customer? • How can you be sure you can deliver on the future value?

Agreed alignment with the customer’s business goals always helps, and a focus on commitments rather than promises helps unearth potential weaknesses in your case – and it’s much better to uncover those weaknesses early. Is It Worth Winning? - Profitability They say that revenue is vanity and profit is sanity. While you might not be measured or rewarded on the profitability of a deal, you can be sure that the projected profitability is considered when scarce sales support resources are being allocated. The best sales professionals consider that their accounts or territories are their own business franchise and assess the business case for effort expended on each deal. You must at least ask yourself the following basic questions.

• What is the projected profit on this sales opportunity? • If I have to discount, what will be the profitability impact? • How can I improve the profitability of this deal?

Adequate profit margins afford your company the ability to properly support the customer, delivering good relationships and a long term customer. Is It Worth Winning? - Degree of Risk There’s a saying that goes “Early failure is always better than late failure.” Have you ever won an opportunity and realized after the win, that this is one you would rather have lost? Usually that’s because a deal has gone bad after the fact; the customer’s unhappy, your company is unhappy and too much resource has now to be applied to fix the problem – taking time away from more productive activity. It’s always better to ‘front-load the pain’. Consider upfront how the deal might fail.

• How could you cause your solution to fail? • Are any of the critical success factors at risk? • Will the customer hold up his part of the bargain and apply adequate resource to drive success? • How else could the customer cause the solution to fail? • What is the impact of failure?

To fail early is unfortunate, but to fail later means someone hasn’t done their homework and that will usually end in tears. It goes without saying that failed customer relationships aren’t repeat customer relationships.


12


Is It Worth Winning? - Strategic Value As you finally assess ‘What’s in it for me?’ you need to consider that sometimes opportunities are important for their strategic value alone, for the “big picture” win. Maybe a particular deal is with a high profile marquee account, with a recognized market leader or even a big brand name. Occasionally you will need to look at value other than just the revenue you will attain. From time to time a deal will have sufficient strategic value that makes up for poor or mediocre revenue return. So, how do you tell if a deal is strategic?

• Will this become a reference account for you? • Does it give you access to market or customer influence? • Can you use it to generate revenue in other customers or markets? • Does this deal line up with your business strategy? • Will the opportunity help you improve your product or service?

If you uncover a connection between what the customer is trying to do in this deal and what your company is trying to do in its business you’re likely to have found real strategic value. Work with other members of your company to plan how best to assess and mine the value of a strategically important deal.

Political Map The Role of Political Alignment and Influence Most deals are not lost because you don’t have the best solution or the best price. They are usually lost because you didn’t understand the politics of the organization. In other words, the most powerful people in the customer’s organization didn’t want you to win. Contrary to normal assumptions – power doesn’t always flow down the organization’s hierarchy. Particularly in a sales situation, informal power or influence works differently and can emanate from a variety of sources. Consider a recent sales opportunity that you were involved in and reflect as to which of the following describes how the influence was evident.

• Horizontally to peers • Up to superiors • Across departmental boundaries • From outside of the organization • Regionally and globally

Influence is rarely a one lane highway or a single source phenomenon. In the buying process it can often be felt from internal or external subject matter experts, reputations or track record and experience, or education.


13


Tracing these lines of influence helps you chart the territory, map your status in the account, and set you on a path to shorten your sales cycle by spending time with the right people, discussing the right issues. Buyer Attributes – Why? To ensure your control in an account you need to be aware of the political factors that influence the customer’s decision-making process. While the formal organizational structure is most widely known, it often takes a second place to the Political Structure when it comes to making things happen. For example, as you know, Executive Assistants frequently wield significant power that contradicts their position on the organization chart. Getting aligned with the right people in the political structure is one of the most important things you need to do to secure an account. Unless you understand the political landscape you don’t understand the rules of the game. There are four factors you need to investigate to develop insight into the political structure. For each player, you should know:

• the role they play in the buying process • their adaptability to change • your frequency of contact or coverage of them, and • your status with those individuals

Target Account Selling provides you with a roadmap to guide your journey through each of these buyer characteristics. Once you know your starting position you can begin to plan your route, what steps you need to take on the way, and where there might be roadblocks you need to navigate. Buyer Attributes – Role When determining who in your customer’s organization to develop priority relationships with, it’s not the name or the title that’s important – it is the role they play. There are four formal roles in the buying process:

• User • Evaluator • Decision Maker • Approver

A USER is someone who will directly use your products and services. They can sometimes influence the sale, when their opinion is solicited by one of the other buying roles.


14


An EVALUATOR is someone (or usually a committee) responsible for analyzing your proposal or solution against defined criteria, and making a recommendation to management. There can be product, purchasing and legal evaluators. An Evaluator has the ability to say ‘no’ to your solution, but cannot say ‘yes’. While Evaluators do not make the decision, they are key people for you to work with as they define the attributes of a solution. Developing a relationship with an evaluator often means that you can influence the content of an RFP, or their buying criteria. A DECISION MAKER will analyze evaluation results, listen to recommendations and make a commitment to a supplier or partner, or to a certain strategic direction. The Decision Maker is usually responsible for the project to achieve its objectives. APPROVERs are senior level people who review a decision, approve or veto it and then typically release the funds. In large organizations, there may be multiple levels of approvers with dollar or budget thresholds used to delineate their approval responsibility. The same person can play many roles, or a role can be performed by many people. It’s the roles people play that you should use as your guide to where you prioritize relationships. Buyer Attributes – Adaptability to Change My brother Stan is a true geek. He’s proud of the fact that he stood in line for hours to buy an Apple iPhone, and he’s got every new gadget he can afford – and some he probably couldn’t afford. He never reads manuals and is happy to deal with glitches in early versions of products because he just loves innovation. Stan thinks I’m boring. I’m comfortable with what I know, what other people have bought before me, and when I’m used to something, I just hate to change. The funny thing is, when Stan and I go into a technology store together, the sales person rarely changes their approach – irrespective of whether they’re talking to the luddite (that’s me) or Stan the techno-wiz. People have different levels of adaptability to change – and sellers need to consider where their potential buyer is on that spectrum. In Geoffrey Moore’s seminal book “Crossing the Chasm”, he provides a model we can use to describes a buyer’s acceptance of new ideas, approaches, solutions and technologies. INNOVATORS love to be first with the latest ideas. They are attracted to new, new, new. While usually influential, they rarely have budget, but need to be courted. VISIONARIES are revolutionaries. They want to break from past and start something new. They often create success from someone else’s idea. They expect to achieve significant competitive advantage by being among

Technology Adoption Lifecycle


15


the first – though at the leading edge not the bleeding edge. Visionaries usually have budget but often demand costly product enhancements tailored to their needs. PRAGMATISTS believe in evolution not revolution. They adopt products and services with a proven track record and have a low tolerance to risk, preferring to buy from a market leader. They can be a challenge to deal with if you are selling a truly new solution or product. CONSERVATIVES are pessimistic and dislike change. They refute ROI claims and tend to change only when they might be left behind. Conservatives are typically price-sensitive, skeptical and demanding. LAGGARDS are the last to implement new solution and generally will only do so when there is no alternative. Usually these guys are just too much hard work. Sell around them. So, with so many different levels of adaptability to change, how do you know how to position your offering? Use the following chart as a guideline. You should focus on product excellence and innovation when selling to innovators. For visionaries focus on the competitive advantage they can achieve. Pragmatists want to see proven expertise in solving similar problems, while Conservatives want ROI and guarantees. And Laggards – well, if you must – focus on how they can protect their existing investments. Categorizing each can be achieved by looking at their track record, what’s been bought before, or conversations about technology trends – if they get excited by this they’re probably at the front end of the curve. People generally gravitate towards similar types – but in a selling situation, it’s your job to stay neutral in this regard, and use what you’ve learned to build relationships with whoever has the most influence. Buyer Attributes – Status It is important to recognize the status relationship that you can build with key players in the buying process. Establishing and developing the right relationship with the right players for the opportunity you are pursuing can be invaluable to your success, now and in the future. There are five different relationships you can establish. These are:

• Mentor • Supporter • Neutral • Non-Supporter • Enemy

As the names suggest, some relationships are positive and other less so.

Innovators

Visionaries

Pragmatists

Conservatives

Laggards

• State of the art • Trials• Tests

• Product excellence• Innovation

• Status quo• Enhancement or

extension of existing system

• Investment protection

• Not to be left behind

• Industry standards at low price with no risk

• Return on investment

• Guarantees

• Evolution • Solve problems • Total solutions

• Proven expertise in solving similar problems

• Revolutionrecognition • Customized solution

• Future• Competitive

advantage

What They Want What They Buy What You Should Sell


16


A MENTOR believes your success is critical to their company or their personal success. A Mentor will work to help you win and will go out of their way to provide you with feedback, information and guidance or competitive information. Mentors will take a personal interest in your success and will sell in your absence. Be aware that mentors often change from opportunity to opportunity. A SUPPORTER is someone who wants you to win and thinks you should, and will typically provide you with information, though they may not be vocal in their support. Someone who is NEUTRAL shows no preference. They could be neutral because they don’t have an opinion or may choose not to voice their opinion. Your job is to motivate key players to move from being Neutral to become a Supporter. A NON-SUPPORTER prefers an alternative solution or product, or another supplier or partner. They believe you should not win. They may help your competition quietly. If you work hard a Non-Supporter can become Neutral or even become a Supporter but this change in status will take significant effort. With an ENEMY their position is personal as they believe your success will hurt their company or them personally. Consequently they will openly work to cause you to lose. It’s likely that they see personal success with your competitor’s success. Knowing each buyer’s status informs your interactions. How you act when interacting with each individual should be informed by what you know about your status with them, combined with their role, and their adaptability to change. Buyer Attributes – Coverage We all tend to like spending time with people we like, those we find easy to deal with, or who aren’t hard to please. However, as you know, you don’t really get to choose the personalities of those who hold the buying influence. Once these individuals have been identified, it’s important to track your coverage of the key players in the account. We categorize the extent of coverage into 4 levels:

• No Contact • Brief Contact • Multiple Contacts • In-Depth

By tracking how much time you spend with each person in the account, you will have a much better idea of who in the customer organization you need to spend more time with, especially when you apply your tracking to the people you have determined to be the key players in the account. The key is to be objective with your own efforts – maximize coverage of key players and reduce coverage of non-key players in the account. A frequent trap we all fall into is to engage with senior influencers at the outset of the sales campaign and not stay in touch with them throughout the sales campaign. That provides opportunity for the competitor to outflank us, and that’s not a good thing.


17


Track your coverage with all the buyers – it’s the best way to avoid surprises. Buyer Attributes – Political Status You know that the organization chart in a company is merely a description of reporting lines. It does not show the corridors or power or the lines of influence. Knowing each person’s key characteristics of buying role, adaptability to change, your coverage and your relationship status all give you good insight – but it is still a two-dimensional view of the organization.

To help you uncover influence in your account, think of the organization chart as a cube. Now let’s rotate the cube and look at a side view, with rank as the vertical axis and influence as the horizontal axis. Rank is a formal, Influence is not. As a person moves from bottom left to top right, they move from Awareness to Agility and with sufficient acumen cross the threshold to join the Political Structure. Members of the Political Structure attain a level of influence in the organization to position themselves to make things happen. And a select few will increase their level of influence to join the Inner Circle where control sits. People in the Inner Circle usually approve buying decisions, are visionary or innovative, and rely on their trusted lieutenants in the Political Structure to be the decision makers. As you uncover information about each player that’s involved in the buying process, either actively or passively, you can get a true perspective of the political map and the lines of influence.

Influence as opposed to authority is the flow in non-traditional directions, but it’s most often influence that holds sway. Don’t get caught up in the boundaries of the organization chart. Think of everyone (external, as well as internal) who may have an impact on your opportunity. Map the political structure and follow the lines of influence. If you uncover this information effectively, you can be sure these lines will point you in the right direction.

Edward StamosExecutive VP

A P =

Leanne TomlinVP Sales & Marketing

A/D V =

Thomas KirkDirector of Operations

E C -

Howard JonesDirector of

Information Services

Allison PerezOperations Manager

E C -

Michael LeeSystems Manager

E L =

Christopher WuProduct Manager

I +E/U

Pat HigginsSales Manager

xE/U


18


Uncovering Influence When you spend time with the ‘right’ people in the account discussing the ‘right’ issues, you know you can shorten the sales cycle. By now you know that the right people are those who don’t just have power – but have influence. Understanding the need to uncover the centers of influence is one thing; figuring it out though is something else. There are 4 key pointers you can use to uncover the influencers in the client organization:

• Business Value – who is creating it in the organization? • Track Record – what have they achieved in the past or who gets the important assignments? • Partisans and Allies – who is connected? Where do people go for advice? • Philosophy and Policy – who established it and who can change it.

As you consider each of these pointers; use them to differentiate between the Political Structure and the Inner Circle.

Inner Circle Political Structure

Business Value Defines goals, objectives and strategies Sponsors new projects Controls Outcomes

Executes objectives and strategies Makes it happen Implements new projects

Track Record Recognized as consistently successful in the past Sought out by other for advice

Recently successful Assigned new highly visible projects

Partisans and Allies

Center of the informal communications network Surround themselves with people they trust Able to reach down into their organization for advice

‘End nodes’ of the informal communications network Collect and provide information to the Inner Circle

Philosophy and Policy

Define the organization’s culture, values and policies Able to change or circumvent policies

Understand and assimilate the organization’s culture View policies and procedures more like rules

The Inner Circle sets the Business direction, and relies on the Political structure to make it happen. People have reached the Inner Circle because of their consistent Track Record. Political Structure members are beginning to build their reputation. All important informal communication flows to and from the Inner Circle, their Partisans and Allies. They rely on the Political Structure to be an essential source of such information. The organization takes on the personality of the Inner Circle, who set the Philosophy and Policies for the company, though occasionally like to bend the rules. The Political Structure are true disciples, understanding and applying the rules religiously. No single piece of the puzzle will give you the full picture. It’s a puzzle you must solve to optimize your chance of success in the opportunity. Use these 4 pointers to starting putting the complex picture of power and influence together


19


Relationship Strategies In each sales campaign, for each opportunity you pursue, you must employ the right relationship strategy for each of the key players. Knowing the characteristics of each participant is not enough, you must use what you know about their role, their influence and status and their adaptability to change to be able to forge valuable connections – not just contacts. There are three basic relationship strategies:

• Leverage your mentors and supporters • Motivate those who are neutral, and • Neutralize any non-supporters and enemies

Leverage and Motivate are essentially offensive strategies where our objective is to expand the relationship to gain competitive advantage. Neutralize is a defensive strategy to use for damage limitation. As a general rule, when you want to change someone’s mind – first you need to look inside it. Before you start to employ a relationship strategy, you should understand the landscape from the customer’s perspective, and that’s only possible if you understand their business and personal agendas. You can achieve maximum impact when you can progress each individual’s business agenda while simultaneously advancing their personal agenda.

Business Agenda Personal Agenda Measurement Reward Alignment with business objectives

Promotion Recognition Money Personal growth Legacy Team contribution

Someone’s business agenda is easily uncovered by determining how they are measured and how they are rewarded. If you can demonstrate that your solution can help to accomplish their business agenda, you are adding business value. A personal agenda is sometimes more difficult to expose and you need to determine whether it is power, prestige, or money – or a combination of all three. If you can deliver business value, while helping someone advance their personal agenda – you’ve got a good basis for building a strong relationship. Relationship Strategies – Leverage Working with your supporter or mentor, a Leverage Strategy helps you to capitalize on your current good relationships to improve your position and establish credibility with others.


20


• Ensure that you understand why they want you to win.

If you are not sure about your position ask for some small favour in order to gauge their willingness to support you.

• Confirm your value with the supporter or mentor by articulating some past or future value.

If you detect any hesitation in agreement, probe until you find the source of doubt. You may be trying to leverage the wrong person.

• Ask for the help you need.

People like to be asked and they like to be thanked. If you don’t ask they might assume that you don’t need help. If your competition pays them the honour of asking for assistance, they just might switch sides.

There is nothing wrong with asking for help, but don’t make it too difficult and be careful about compromising your mentor’s or supporter’s position. Lastly, since you are asking for a favour, you should think of ways to repay the favour without putting them in an awkward position. Help them succeed but don’t get too personal with your gratitude. Relationship Strategies – Motivate To motivate a Neutral player for support, you must build credibility and trust. You need to go back to the basics. Moving someone from the middle of the road to your side requires extreme preparation and patience.

• Understand the business and personal agendas in the context of this project. • Examine the compelling event and business drivers to uncover the personal implications. • Determine why the person is neutral. Is it because they see no personal upside or have they insufficient

information? • Craft a personalized value proposition for your solution to emphasize the value that most relates to

them. • Reinforce your value by leveraging your mentor or supporter.

Don’t get impatient, or let a Neutral’s seeming intransigence or lack of understanding get under your skin. If the customer sees you make the commitment to do your homework, you may not automatically get their support, but should get their respect, and that can only help. Relationship Strategies – Neutralize What do you do when one of the key players in the target is a non-supporter, or worse than that – an active enemy? It’s really hard to get them to come around to your perspective, and usually the best thing you can do is to neutralize the person – to prevent them from hurting you. There are usually three reasons why someone might be against you and there are recommended neutralize strategies to limit the damage in each case.


21


Cause Action

Product/Vendor Bias Seek peaceful co-existence Change their mind

Misaligned Agendas Clear up misperceptions Agree to disagree and isolate

Personal Conflict Change approach Change personnel

When the problem is as a result of a Product or Vendor Bias – they are just not inclined to vote for your solution. You can either seek peaceful co-existence; acknowledge their position and strive for mutual respect, or – and this is difficult - try to change their mind. Be aware - Sometimes this will reinforce their resistance. If agendas are Misaligned, try to clear up any misconceptions, or agree to disagree and try to isolate the cause and impact of the misalignment. Personal Conflict is always a tough issue, and either you can change your approach to present a more palatable face to the issue, or when that’s not achievable or doesn’t work, you might need to change the personnel working the opportunity on your side. In any case, handling an enemy is never easy. Never do it by yourself … get advice from your colleagues and seek advice and help from mentors or supporters. They may provide you with invaluable insight and help you avoid making a bad situation worse. Building Personal Credibility In every sales situation, you’ve got a secret weapon that no one else has. Your competitor doesn’t have it, the customer can’t get it from anyone else, and it’s totally in your control. It’s up to you to find it, grow it and maximize its effectiveness. The secret weapon is credibility - potentially the most valuable selling tool you have for establishing relationships. You work hard to understand your customer. But what about how the customer sees you? It is important to look at yourself through your customer’s eyes. Your customer will decide to form a relationship with you depending in great part on their trust and confidence in you. Not just one or the other, both trust and confidence are necessary for you to reach the pinnacle of customer relationships and be perceived as a trusted advisor. Trust is easy to define – its truth over time. You follow through on your commitment, always keep the customer in the loop, and build trust through experience.


22


Trust on its own is not enough. Without demonstrating your capability to add real value you might well earn only a friend and not a business partner. Becoming expert in the customer’s business, understanding what their competitors are doing, and being able to relate to their business challenges, are all part of what it takes to become a trusted advisor. And that assumes you’re fully competent in discussing how your products or services might be applied to help them in their business. Winning salespeople know that they must work collaboratively and interdependently with the customer, developing trustworthiness and capability, both at the same time.

Insight Map What are Insight Maps? Insight Maps allow you to visually connect your solutions to your customers’ problems allowing the customer to quickly understand the value you bring to the table. One of the key challenges, as a seller, is that we hear customers describe their issues, challenges and reasons they are looking for any solution but unless we (the seller) have a high degree of experience with all solutions available, it’s very difficult to make the connection from customer business challenge to solution. Why is that true you might ask? Often vendors are educating sales people and partners on their value, features, benefits, customer stories and results but the solution materials don’t often have the customer challenges as part of the sales kit. We don’t educate the team on the problem statement behind why we created the solution in the first place. So sellers miss the connection between challenges that they hear from the customer and potential solutions. We want to enhance your solution positioning to turn sales conversations into customers, and improve sales and marketing alignment, for faster sales enablement and greater sales velocity. The challenge for all of us is having the business conversation and exhibiting business expertise vs. solution expertise. We don’t want our sales team or partner teams to be the hammer where every customer looks like a nail. When that happens, customers feel like you are just trying to ‘sell them’ something, anything vs. help them to be successful. When sellers behave this way, it is very transparent to the buyer. The funny thing is many sellers don’t recognize it because they are doing exactly what their company has asked them to do. It's a classic misalignment. Why Insight Maps Matter: What we are faced with today, as sellers working with buyers, is that executives don’t believe that sellers are well prepared to engage with them. Why is that? Because executives say that sellers know about their offerings, BUT not the realities and the needs of executives. This is an issue with our current onboarding procedures for both sales and partners. We do this to ourselves. YES, 71% of executives do think we know our products, so our current onboarding is working from that perspective BUT

© The TAS Group 2014

Source: Forrester Executive Buyer Insight Study

Why Insight Maps Matter

Executives don’t believe that salespeople are well prepared to engage with them...

…because they know about their own offerings, not the realities and needs of executives.

Salespeople are knowledgeable about:

Their own products and services

Buyers’ roles and responsibilities

Buyers’ specific business

Questions buyers ask

40% 36% 43% 71%


23


our sellers don’t know about buyer roles and responsibilities, their specific business and therefore we don’t know the business questions to ask buyers. We can and we need to fix this perception. There have been many attempts to fix this, it’s not new news that sellers need to understand the buyer. So why is this so hard? Why Is This So Hard? Why is it so hard for organizations to effectively enable sales teams to understand the customer’s business?

1. There is a lot of customer information to know. Their business, competitors, financials, operating procedures, industry and challenges. The information has not been consumable or visual- long emails, text documents, etc., don’t bode well for many overactive sales people. They are on the move, don’t carry the paper, have limited time and are highly distracted.

2. Customer ready messaging is not available in context of the business problem when the reps need it. We are often using a fire hose to pump as much information as possible to the rep making it difficult to consume, remember and use.

3. Reps can’t find the documents or information with the relevant information when they need it.

4. The messaging is not always persona specific.

5. It’s hard to maintain, keep up to date.

When you think of your best performing sales reps, it’s usually those that have been with the company for a long time or those who have deep industry expertise. However, waiting for sales reps to accumulate their own experience is expensive. You can’t wait for the experience.

We need to accelerate the sales team’s business experience - jump start deep business expertise and connect that expertise to customer ready messaging in a consumable and visual format. Inspire your sales teams to turn conversations into customers with smart business insights and solutions for the customer’s business for: • Faster sales enablement • Shorter onboarding • Effective product launches • Increased channel velocity • Executive business connections

What do I say?


24


So What Are Insight Maps? Insight Maps are a graphical representation of customer business challenges to be used by the salesperson, together with their customer, to visually link business problems (expertise) to stakeholders (personas) to provide business insights and potential solutions. This allows the salesperson, in collaboration with their customer, to prioritize the business areas and potential solutions where value can be added by the sales rep. Then we connect your solution with the customer’s business problem so we can articulate Unique Business Value. There are two parts to focus on: 1) customer’s business problem(s) and 2) your solution(s).

Customer Shoes: Let’s start with the first one, the customer’s business problem(s), or said differently, getting into the customer’s shoes. How do we do that so we put together the most effective map possible? To get started, we may need to change our frame of mind just a bit so let’s try to get on their side of the fence ….

Goals

Pressures

Initiatives

Obstacles

Solutions

Customer Map

Connect your solution with the customer’s business problem


25


The Way Companies Work: While many of you will already know the concepts we're about to cover, we want to make sure we're all on the same page with regard to terminology and how we'll apply it. Every company has goals. As goals are established and communicated, strategies for achieving these goals are developed and ultimately, specific actions or tactics are planned in order to execute on the strategies. Tactical issues can include thousands of daily actions or decisions throughout the entire enterprise. Within most companies, the goals, strategies and tactics cascade down from the top. CEOs, Boards of Directors, COOs, etc., establish the goals for the enterprise and communicate these to the executive team. Executives then develop their strategies for how they will achieve the goals and communicate to the next level of management the specific actions (or tactics) that they'd like taken. These tactical directions are intended to execute on the strategy and achieve the stated goals. Because many organizations have multiple levels, the managers who are given these tactical responsibilities, develop strategies for how they will be achieved and assign further tactics to those on the front line who will perform them. Why this is important is because depending on who you speak with, they may tell you their strategy is xyz and you need to decide, is it a strategy or is it a tactic. It is all dependent on who you are speaking with. That's just the way companies work. But Companies Don’t Buy, People Do: We need to connect the business to the people that buy from us. Who are the people that care about our solutions? Who are our decision makers or primary buyers? What do they care about? How do they measure success?

Sales Productivity


26


Decision Maker: The decision maker is the buying role or persona that has the ability to commit the company to a vendor or to a certain strategic direction and has accountability for selecting the solution. This is the person who owns the problem your solution addresses. You may also have secondary personas for which you will need to craft separate and distinct messages. Your primary messages should be targeted to your primary buyer, and your secondary messages to other influencers. Primary Persona – Center of Your Universe: To whom do you target your primary messages? Our primary persona is the center of our universe as it relates to messaging, benefits, value, etc. Now there are other influences and secondary persona we need to build value for but your primary buyer is where we are centered at the moment. Goals and Pressures: How does our primary buyer measure success? Typically they will set their goals against how they measure success. For example, our VP of sales may have a goal to grow revenue in this fiscal quarter, or increase revenue per head, or improve forecast accuracy from 42% to 75% this fiscal year. That’s all ‘business as usual’. But let’s take a look at what your buying persona cares about. He cares about quarterly targets, having visibility into performance and a high quality pipeline to ensure revenue growth and forecast accuracy. And as our buying persona is running their business, things happen; our business doesn’t always perform to plan. In our example here, our VP of sales misses the quarterly targets. Of course we need to understand the magnitude of the miss, but a miss puts our buying persona under pressure. But missing the quarterly number is not the pressure itself, missing the quarterly number is NOT the cause of the pressure, we need to know WHY. What is happening to cause the VP of sales to miss the quarterly target?

Decision Maker: The buying role or persona that has the ability to commit the company to a vendor or to a certain strategic direction and has accountability for selecting the solution. This is the person who owns the problem your solution addresses.

To whom do you target your primary messages?

You may also have secondary personas for whom you will need to craft separate and distinct messages. Your primary messages should be targeted to your primary buyer, and your secondary messages to other influencers.

Example: Increasing Sales

How do they measure success? • Revenue growth

• Sales productivity

• Forecast accuracy

Goals An end result to be achieved by the Decision Maker; (ideally) with a measurable outcome and a specified timeframe.

Grow revenue by 15% in FY 2015

What does this person care about?

• Quarterly targets

• Visibility

• Pipeline

Pressures The internal and/or external pressures that significantly impact the Decision Maker and serve as the catalyst for Initiatives or action.

Missing quarterly targets because: - Competitive losses - Poor growth in current accounts - Inadequate pipeline - High sales attrition


27


Pressures are the internal and/or external pressures that significantly impact the decision maker and serve as the catalyst for initiatives or action. We need to know this because we can’t fix the fact that he is missing the quarterly number, we can fix the WHY he is missing the quarterly targets. So now that we understand how our buyer is measured, his goals and the pressures he faces on the business which impact what he cares about, then we want to identify the initiatives that we see most commonly where our go-to-market packages will help our personas. Initiatives and Obstacles: Initiatives are specific projects created to address the pressures and achieve the goals owned by the decision maker. For example, a VP of sales that is missing quarterly targets because of competitive losses, poor growth in current accounts, inadequate pipeline, and high sales attrition, might have two initiatives here – 1) implement a key account program and 2) design a strategic compensation plan to change rep behavior. And as our buyer personas establish these initiatives, they have also evaluated the obstacles they face which they must address. Obstacles are things that aren’t working; a task, situation or process that is broken and needs to be fixed, doesn’t exist and needs to be enabled and is required to deliver on the initiative. Root cause, barriers, issues, symptoms and problems, all describe obstacles.

Used in the context of “obstacles that will prevent the success of the initiative”. What is broken or doesn’t exist that is driving the company to fund and prioritize a solution? Should be quantifiable to understand the magnitude of the obstacle. Enables sales to articulate specific benefits and value (ultimately unique business value).

An example for our buying persona might be the following obstacles:

Can’t access key players No account plan method Limited cross sell and upsell Product, not solution-led sale Plans not aligned with GTM No collaboration Delay in payout Multicurrency issues


How do they measure success?


• Revenue growth




• Visibility

• Pipeline

Goals

Pressures

Obstacles Something that isn’t working; a task, situation or process that is broken and needs to be fixed or is required to deploy initiative but does not exist.

Grow revenue by 15% in FY 2015

Missing quarterly targets because: - Competitive losses - Poor growth in current accounts - Inadequate pipeline - High sales attrition

Specific projects created to address the pressures and achieve the goals and owned by the Decision Maker

Initiatives

Key account program Strategic comp plan


How do they measure success?


• Revenue growth




• Visibility

• Pipeline

Pressures Missing quarterly targets because: - Competitive losses - Poor growth in current accounts - Inadequate pipeline - High sales attrition

Solution A set of capabilities or products that help the customer to remove obstacles to relieve business pressures.

Obstacles

Can’t access key players

No account plan method

Limited cross-sell / upsell

Plans not aligned to GTM

No collaboration

Delay in payout

Something that isn’t working; a task, situation or process that is broken and needs to be fixed or is required to deploy initiative but does not exist.


28


Solutions: Once this is all in place, then of course the buyer is looking for solutions. A solution is the means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation. Solutions are:

how you go-to-market, how you help your buying personas playbooks, solution plays, products, product groups, product and service groups grouping of your capabilities that solve business problems

Key to a Compelling Map is Pressures: Pressures are internal and/or external pressures that impact the decision maker and serve as the catalyst for goals and initiatives. What we are looking for, however, are the ‘big money’ pressures (meaning your decision maker would pay big money to make the pressure go away) that your customer doesn’t control (external) or That your customer can control but hasn’t (internal). This definition, the big money pressures, is important to ensure your sales team is selling to the right pressures that buyers or key player decision makers pay large sums of money to fix. Big money pressures typically fall into eight (8) categories: Financial, Operational, Customer, Competitive, Market, Partner, Supplier, Technology. Pressure Examples:

1. Financial: revenue, profitability 2. Operational: forecast,

productivity, turn over

3. Customer: customer satisfaction, loyalty, defection 4. Competitive: win rate 5. Market: new emerging markets, economy 6. Partner: channel conflict, 7. Suppliers: dependencies 8. Technology: cloud, mobile

Pressures for a VP of Sales Might Be:

Financial Pressure: discounting, margin, high cost of sales, Operational Pressure: not enough selling time, unable to forecast or measure the business Customer Pressure: no industry solutions, customer defection Competitive Pressure: low win rate, underperforming reps, price Partner Pressure: channel conflict Technology Pressure: mobility and cloud


29


You can see how these pressures tie back to what the VP of sales cares about and how he is measured. How does he measure success?

Revenue growth Sales productivity Forecast accuracy

What does he care about?

Quarterly targets Visibility Pipeline

Customer Insight Map:

So these are the elements of your Insight Map and how they fit together. You do have a solution in mind when you are creating the goals, pressures, initiatives and obstacles. Your solution is going to be your go-to-market package or any subset of that package. What I mean by that is you may have an Insight Map that aligns to why you built or offer a particular product or solution, however, you may have groupings of features and functions within that solution that specifically address different initiatives. Those subsets are also called “solutions” and you would need to give those a name. For example, Salesforce sells a product called Sales Cloud. They have an Insight Map outlining their customer’s goals, pressures, initiatives and obstacles that illustrate the need for Sales Cloud. However their “solutions” are groupings of features and functions within Sales Cloud. 1) Play 1 Pipeline Management, 2) Play 2 Rep


30


Performance, 3) Play 3 Business Insights, and 4) Play 4 Sales Productivity. Each of those four are solutions for the Sales Cloud Insight Map. You may also have a solution for a business process that you solve. For example, the Insight Map below from Altify reflects the challenges around Sales Transformation. Altify has a solution (which in this case is comprised of multiple products) that helps customers achieve Sales Transformation. You will see on the map that the “solutions” in this case for Sales Transformation are many different products. You will want Insight Maps for the way you go-to-market because this is what you sell. What Insight Maps Tell Your Sales Team: The Insight Map tells you why you built the solution, why customers buy your solution, the problems, barriers, initiatives, and triggers your reps should listen for in their conversation. When we learn the customer’s business issues, we are able to tell their story. The customer will see your business expertise, know that you listened to them and have an appreciation for their challenges. If you can’t explain it easily, you’re probably missing some information – and you should develop your PRIME Actions to get that information from one of your contacts in the customer or from someone you haven’t yet met. By thinking about the customer’s business issues, you have a valid business reason to meet with them and you can actually broaden your reach by getting additional face time with your buyers.


31


It’s critical to remember every customer you ever meet has desires – things they’d “like” to do. But desires are often reprioritized by business functions that are broken and many times urgent if the consequence to not fixing it has significant impact on the goals and pressures. The bottom line is that, in order to get the customer to part with their money, you must uncover, or activate the customer’s areas of weakness, meaning they can’t conquer the initiatives and obstacles that are connected to pressures without your help or the help of someone else. The risk to ignoring the areas that are broken and would negatively impact the organizations ability to perform is significant as it relates to a compelling event. Desires are not nearly as compelling as areas that are broken. When the time comes to make a decision and write a check, customers can wiggle out of spending money on their desires, but they must spend money to reduce or eliminate risk on something that is broken or missing. Building Your Insight Map: You will gather this information through a variety of sources, your experience and insights with other customers, perhaps the customer’s requests for proposal, initial business development calls, and ongoing conversations with your customer. You no doubt ask about and make note of these issues today as you’re engaging your customer in an opportunity. The map will allow you to:

Organize and communicate the information you’ve gathered much more quickly than keeping text only notes

Serves as a foundation for working together and sharing with your customer Can be updated quickly and easily as new information is gathered and shared immediately with

everyone on your team Quickly highlights where actions are still required both in discovery or the development of your solution

message With insight mapping, we need to document the information we have for two reasons:

1. To show that our sales team understands the compelling event 2. It proves to our customers that we listened to them, we understand their business and we are working

in their best interest to ultimately create a solution that will deliver results. This process will also help us to very quickly identify the specific business issues we’re expected to solve. While a solution typically addresses obstacles – tasks, situations or processes which are broken and need to be fixed, or missing and need to be enabled – we can construct value statements very quickly based on our ability to help them achieve their initiatives and eliminate the pressures. When we focus on the linkage – we will quickly see obstacles that seem isolated or initiatives that don’t have obstacles to eliminate. This will drive us to ask more questions of our customer and potentially grow the opportunity. To construct your Insight Map, start documenting and organizing the goals, pressures, initiatives and obstacles you’ve uncovered. You might even need to make some assumptions to make logical connections between your currently known data points. That’s not only needed, but it’s encouraged – especially early in the opportunity – as it will give you a reason to get back in touch with the right people at the customer to explore those assumptions or validations.


32


You might start at the top, remembering the conversations you had, and ask yourself: Why won’t Chris, my decision maker, be able to grow revenue? What pressures did they mention? An example might be they have pressures to growing revenue. They can’t count on the forecast, revenue from their customers is shrinking, and their win rate is declining. Or you might start at the bottom with obstacles and understand how they are grouped or related to each other to create an initiative. For example, the customer mentioned their sales teams don’t understand the customer’s business and they also mentioned they don’t have a common sales language. They also told us they are not selling to the right people. All three obstacles seem to be causing slippage in their forecast which is why they have initiated their quality pipeline and forecasting project (initiative). Remember, we should be able to tell a story from our Insight Map… a story of their business situation that is driving their purchase decision. Regardless of how you approach the construction of your map, it needs to reflect the connections from everyone you’ve talked to and it should absolutely have business issues for the key players from your Political Map. If you don’t have business issues for your key players, you don’t have a valid business reason to engage with them and you will have very little value to offer them as you would not know their goals, pressures, initiatives and obstacles. You need a comprehensive picture of your customer’s situation to earn the right to discuss your potential solutions. Testing and Validating Your Insight Map: Customers expect you to have done your homework before they meet with you – even the first meeting! So, the leading best practice is to start an Insight Map, based either on a hypothesis showing the business issues you typically see in the customer’s industry or market segment… OR… based on any insights you’ve gained through your business development process, your initial conversations or the research you or your team has completed. Certainly the information available to you will grow over time, but you can elevate your credibility when you’ve taken this first step and created a draft Insight Map. This draft map, whether based on your hypothesis or the information you’ve gathered thus far on this particular customer, demonstrates to the customer that you understand their industry and have some insight into the complexities of their business. The draft map accelerates the conversation giving you competitive advantage by approaching the customer with a visual, collaborative tool to linking their business issues with potential solutions. You can use this draft map as a discovery conversation starter. When you’ve built your first version of the Insight Map, particularly when you’ve incorporated any information specific to a customer, you want to evaluate the information you’ve collected and organized to identify any gaps. Look for inconsistencies and make note of the actions you need to take to ensure your Insight Map is optimal for sharing with the customer for their validation. 1. First, do some quick checks to ensure that obvious gaps are identified. You might have to restructure the

map or gather some additional information so that the Insight Map clearly shows their obstacles, initiatives, pressures and goals.


33


2. Next, compare the Insight Map to your Political Map. All your key players should have at least one business issue on the Insight Map. If they don’t, you run the risk of them looking at you and your solution and asking themselves, “What’s in this for me?” If you’re not identifying and meeting the challenges of highly influential individuals, your risk is magnified substantially.

3. Next, check to see if you can tell a logical story. Be certain that the map can be easily understood. The customers should recognize themselves in your map.

4. Check for question marks. Have you confirmed all the issues with those you believe own them? You would sound foolish making a claim that Chris, your decision maker has a goal to increase revenue per rep by 5% if that wasn’t really the true. You will be far more confident and less tentative with your value statements if Chris told you directly that this was his goal.

5. Next, check your map for missing quantifiable metrics. Reimbursements take a “long time” sounds like a real issue, but how long is a “long time”? Is it 2 weeks or 24 hours? If we’re going to make a value statement about reducing that time, it would be better to state the specifics to create compelling value in the mind of your buyer.

6. Lastly, look for “orphan issues” – those issues which we’ve heard, but haven’t yet connected to an initiative. Any of these issues drive PRIME Actions on your part to fill in the blanks or gain greater clarity.

You can also look at the information on your Insight Map to consider how it will be received by the customer when you collaborate with them. Ask yourself these questions to either make further adaptations on the map or to drive further actions prior to you sharing the map with your customer:

Are the pressures and obstacles compelling? Even if they’ve been confirmed, will the value delivered justify the investment in your solution from a

business perspective? Put yourself in the seats of the customer’s budget committee and ask if these results would warrant the

investment? Remember, the key is to listen for the pressures and obstacles – it’s not your job to diagnose the customer’s challenges – it’s your job to listen for those business issues and connect them to the impact and ultimately to the goals and initiatives.

Do you have the big money pressures identified? If not, this gives you the opportunity for additional face time with the customer to discuss metrics and impact to create a compelling reason to buy.

Can the obstacles be addressed by your solution? Are the obstacles something that are broken or missing at a functional level? Are they quantified? Do we understand the magnitude of the problem and how does that compare with other obstacles they have on their plate?

For all the obstacles – test to see if they’re specific enough to know exactly which portion of your solution – meaning a particular feature, function or attribute of your product or service – will be used to address their problem. It’s not enough to know which product or service will solve it, you must be able to identify the particular capability, so you can draw specific competitive differentiation and advantage.

Identify your action plan to confirm all the unconfirmed business issues – either prior to or during your collaboration conversations with your customer.

With practice, you’ll quickly and easily see the gaps or inconsistencies on your Insight Maps.


34


Preparing the Insight Map for Sharing: The Insight Map is intended to be used with your customer. Its purpose is not only to illustrate that you understand their business, it is to provide them with information they may not have thought of before, such as:

• Business impact on the organization connected to the internal and external pressures they face; • Those areas beyond their immediate community who are experiencing similar or related business

issues; and • How the lowest level symptoms or obstacles they experience are connected to the goals, pressures and

initiatives they are trying to solve. You started with a draft Insight Map, built either from your hypothesis or your initial insights, and the map has grown based on the specific details you gathered during your multiple discovery conversations. The Insight Map is a visualization of your consultative approach, and there are several points you’re going to want to share with key players and influencers, to make sure you’re on the correct path and that they can give you collaborative feedback along the way. The Insight Map is certainly a great way to test your mentor, to see if you truly have a mentor or merely a supporter. In all cases, you’ll always validate your Insight Map before you propose a definitive solution, and you’ll also want to check in regularly with your supporters, mentors and key players to ensure they’re kept abreast of your progress throughout the discovery process. Specifically, you should consider such sharing whenever you’ve found:

• a significant amount of new information – such that your map has grown substantially • business issues of significant impact • new pressures and Initiatives or new decision makers or approvers in the inner circle or political

structure As you ready yourself to have that collaborative conversation with one or more of your supporters or mentors, there are a few preparatory steps needed to ensure that they will respond positively and actively engage with you in the collaborative effort. Once you’re confident that you’ve tested and addressed the gaps identified by you, your team and Coach Me, consider these additional steps prior to sharing the Insight Map with your customers:

1. First, change any language or words that may be perceived as offensive on your map. Imagine that you are the customer reading the map regarding your situation and determine if you would be offended by anything illustrated on your map.

2. Next, prepare questions you’d like to ask to fill in any gaps that your internal testing of the map identified, whether they be gaps in your knowledge about specific issues, or to fill in missing pieces altogether. You should be ready to use every meeting with the customer to conduct more discovery.

3. And, highlight anything that has been assumed and needs to be confirmed by the customer. This not only reminds you to validate it, but is evidence to the customer of your consultative approach – working hard to make sense of their challenges, but not assuming anything without gaining their confirmation.

When you’ve prepared your map as we’ve just discussed, you are now ready to share it first with your mentor, to further reduce risk, and then, ultimately, with others in the customer organization.


35


Gaining Your Mentor’s Advice: Before you review your Insight Map with the larger customer evaluation team, it’s encouraged that you take the time to share it with your mentor to gain their validation and additional insight. After all, your mentor wants you to win, so by definition, reviewing it with your mentor is the best opportunity to learn from an ally. Use this “risk-free” collaboration to have them advise and counsel you on things you might have missed or should know, including additional people you could talk to and triangulate your information. While it’s perfectly acceptable to have “assumed” issues early in the buying process, you want to validate these as time goes on, so your Insight Map will ultimately be agreed to by those in both the political structure and the inner circle. Your mentor can be a valuable asset here, and point you in the right direction to gain that confirmation. Ask your mentor to identify any potential political topics or issues that you should avoid, or how particular people might react to the Insight Map. Since you’ve built it using the customer’s words and business issues – rather than your own diagnosis of their problems – it is usually readily accepted, though there may be an occasion where someone in the customer doesn’t want to acknowledge an issue– even if their colleague believes it to be true. Your mentor can help you identify if this may be a risk and give you guidance on how to avoid or manage it. Always ask your mentor if there’s a particular sequence to follow when sharing the map with key individuals on the evaluation team. As an example, because those in the political structure are charged with “making things happen” you probably want their buy-in before you share with those in the inner circle, who “control the outcomes”. While that’s a logical conclusion, it may not always be true… so to reduce risk, ask your mentor to confirm that this is the approach you should take. Reviewing your Insight Map with your mentor and incorporating their comments is the best way to demonstrate to them that you are working in their best interest. Gaining Agreement on the Insight Map: Once you’ve made changes based on your mentor’s input, you will schedule time to meet personally with the appropriate people on the customer’s evaluation team to gain their agreement or confirmation of the information they’ve provided you as well as additional input. You are seeking to accomplish three specific objectives from each of these validation discussions:

1. First, as mentioned, you want them to confirm your understanding of their business and if they are a decision maker or approver, you want their agreement on the goals and pressures specifically and its priority against all other priorities the organization has to accomplish.

2. Next, you want them to acknowledge the cause-and-effect linkage you’ve documented on the map. You should be especially prepared to discuss any assumptive connections you’ve indicated based on your experience with other customers, in order to validate that such connections are valid in this organization.

3. Lastly, and this is perhaps the most important – you want them to change something on the map. No Insight Map is ever perfect. If they change nothing, there is a risk that they’re not paying close enough attention. When a customer starts changing things on the map – whether they redraw some of the linkage connectors, or re-write a business issue or change the ownership of the issues, it increases the transfer of “ownership” from you to them – in other words, they start to feel it’s their map rather than yours. And the more they take ownership of the pains, the more accepting they become of the solution. To make this happen, hand them


36


a pen along with the map as you present it and invite them to make changes where they think they are needed.

The customer’s agreement on the Insight Map establishes a solid foundation for your eventual solution proposal and presentation. If it’s not accurate and agreed upon, the risk increases that your solution message won’t hit the mark and won’t be accepted by the customer. Showing Solutions on the Insight Map: As you’ve seen, the Insight Map is an effective visual to share with your customer and get their validation that you understand not only their goals, pressures and initiatives but also their obstacles and how they interrelate with one another. The face time you get with your customer helps to cement the impression of your consultative approach in your customer’s mind and ensure you have the understanding you need to present a compelling solution with unique business value. The next step, once they’ve signed off on the Insight Map, is to identify and notate the solutions you’ll present to show that you can address their obstacles and pressures and deliver the results they seek. Solutions are either groupings of functionality or capabilities, a product or many products, products and services, or perhaps just services. They should align to your go-to-market strategy at a granular enough level to where the customer can make the connection and see your unique business value. As an example, when you look to buy a new car, and your issue or obstacle is that your car isn’t powerful enough to cruise along the motorway, it might be confusing if the dealer kept talking about how great the “car” is without talking about the specific capabilities such as horsepower, torque or engine displacement that would fulfill your need for speed. You also want to identify your competitors and how they stack up against you with their capability. When you’ve done so, you can assess how you believe your customer will perceive the competitors’ solution when compared to yours. Remember – it’s the customer’s perception that matters, not what you think. As you look at the notation of each competitor, identify whether you believe the customer owning each business issue will perceive the competitor’s offering as:

Better than yours Worse than yours The same as yours Or unknown


37


When you understand these competitive strengths and weaknesses at this level of detail, you can adjust your messaging as you present the solution to emphasize those areas where you know you’re going to be perceived as stronger and de-emphasize those areas of perceived weakness – or adjust your messaging to persuade your customer that you are, in fact, not at all weaker than your competition. As you add your various solutions to the Insight Map, you can see your gaps in solution and identify where you may need to gather some additional insights on the customer’s perceptions about you and your competition. Once you’ve added solutions to the map, you need to do a quick check to make sure you have the resources you need in order to present the solution as effectively as possible to your customer. First, make sure that you’ve been objective and candid about the solutions your competitors are likely to present. If your competition’s solution is marked as worse than yours, then you have to ask yourself, why is the competition in this opportunity at all? Why can’t I just close this opportunity if my competition is so weak? You don’t want to step into a trap when you present your solution just because you did not take the customer perspective when you were evaluating the competition. If most or all of the competitor’s solution components are marked as better than your solution, how will you win? You would want to ask yourself: Why am I still competing in this deal? Is this opportunity winnable? Remember every unqualified opportunity you are working is a qualified opportunity you are NOT working. Where you have the competition being perceived as equal in ability, you’ll still want to show your capability just to stay even with the competition, but you need to adjust your plan to focus on your differences in order to gain preference from your customer. You may decide to reallocate your time to your unique business value and less time on where the solutions are the same as your competitors. And lastly, if you have any question marks, where you just don’t know how the customer will perceive the competitor compared to you, you should identify the PRIME Actions you or your team will need in order to find out before you present your solution.

Competitive Strategy Introduction to Competitive Strategy Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world without competitors? You could spend your time creating truly valuable solutions for your customer, knowing that you would get the return you deserve. Well, as you know, life’s not like that, and as you strive to maximize your opportunity conversion rate, you need to develop competitive strategies tailored to each deal scenario. Most strategy theory borrows from Sun Tzu, the author of “The Art of War”. If you haven’t read it, I’d suggest it’s worth the time. Here are a few of the key principles documented by this great Chinese warrior in 478 B.C that hold true still today.

• Know your product (or service), your customer, and your competition, and you need not fear the result of a hundred sales campaigns.


38


• Know only your product (or service) and not the customer or the competition, and for every victory gained, you will suffer a defeat.

• Finally, if you don’t know your product (or service), your customer, or your competition, you shall succumb in every battle.

You can probably tell that I’ve taken a little editorial license here; but though selling isn’t the same as war, Sun Tzu’s principles are unerringly pertinent. In Target Account Selling, there are 2 basic classes of competitive strategy: Attack and Position. An Attack strategy is used when:

1. There is a compelling event (or you can create one) 2. You are in a position to compete. 3. You have a good solution fit that addresses the compelling event, and 4. You have a specific order in mind with a specific solution, at a specific price, and by a specific date.

A Position strategy is used when:

1. There is no compelling event (or, you can’t create one), or 2. You are not in a position to compete.

Typically, position strategies are implemented either to build a position for the future, or to prevent the competition from penetrating an account. In total there are 5 strategies you can adopt within Attack and Position. Attack Strategies are Frontal, Flanking and Fragment. Position Strategies are Develop and Defend. Study each strategy, assess the situation, pick the right strategy, visualize your success, and then execute. Guidelines to Selecting a Strategy Selecting the right strategy for a particular sales opportunity is like taking a golf shot – you can only choose one strategy – and then you must follow through. You cannot mix multiple strategies – otherwise you will stray off course. If you’re leading a sales team, you must clearly communicate the single strategy, that’s to be implemented by all. The only time you should consider a change in your strategy is when the ground rules change or there is a major change in the target account. The 5 strategies you can choose from are: Frontal, Flanking and Fragment are Attack strategies, while Defend and Develop are Position strategies.


39


Let’s review how to select which strategy to apply. You can see that Attack strategies are only applicable if there is a compelling and you can compete. Otherwise a Position strategy should be chosen.

Attack Strategies: Frontal The purpose of a frontal strategy is to quickly and decisively subdue the competition. It’s a direct approach based on the customer’s perception of your overwhelming superiority in solution, price or reputation. Remember it’s the customer’s perception that counts. A frontal strategy is a high risk, high gain strategy. It requires a lot of resources. It’s a blatant approach, and obvious both to the customer and the competition. To be successful with a frontal strategy you need:

• Overwhelming superiority You need at least a 3:1 advantage over the competition that is recognized by the customer and should be based on your solution, resources, your price or another considerable advantage.

• Size and speed

What this really means is - o If you have overwhelming strength, GO FRONTAL o If you can get the sale over before the competition even knows about it, GO FRONTAL o If you are 1st on the scene and you can set the agenda, GO FRONTAL

It’s a knockout punch.

• Plentiful Resource With a frontal approach you will burn up a lot of resources. So don’t forget to review your resource requirements before you engage.

Because a frontal strategy is blatant, you should expect a competitive reaction. Before you engage, you must ask yourself:

• What’s the 3:1 solution advantage I have? • Does the customer believe enough in my reputation to carry me through? • Have it got what it takes – the resources – to get over the finish line?


40


A frontal strategy can be very effective, and very rewarding, but quite dangerous. Consider the risks before you engage and check your proof points otherwise the competition might get the knockout blow in first. Attack Strategies: Flanking A ‘Flanking’ strategy is appropriate when you need to or want to change the rules of selection. You’re shifting the focus of the customer’s buying criteria to new or different issues that favour your solution – and that can be difficult. If you try to shift the focus of the customer’s buying criteria to leverage your strengths, the customer must acknowledge the business value that the shift would create. In this situation you will undoubtedly need inside support. The timing of the rule change must be precise and you need to pick the right target and the right set of issues that favour your solution. So, think about the 2 options you have here;

1. Alter the Rules – change the buying criteria, or 2. Acknowledge and Expand – expand the scope of the decision criteria.

A Flanking strategy demands that you can deliver a strongly differentiated advantage to the customer. You’re asking them to either switch or expand their focus. In either case you will need strong inside support, and you should also consider that as you introduce new factors for the customer to consider, you might also introduce new competitors for them to evaluate. Attack Strategies: Fragment Sometimes you just know that you can’t win all the business that a specific opportunity represents. A fragment attack strategy divides an opportunity into smaller parts and focuses the customer on the subset where you feel you can be successful. If you win this piece, you will gain a foothold, and perhaps expand your presence later. Here your objective is a limited target and you are not relying on overcoming your competitors. This means that you and your competitor each will win some portion of the opportunity. Fragment strategies work well when you position your product as a niche solution against a specific weakness in a competitor’s solution or perhaps in a single department or functional area. Alternatively, you can take a peaceful existence approach and seek to expand an existing solution with your offering. The main considerations for you of a Fragment Strategy are:

• Is this a launching pad to exploit future opportunities within this account? • Have you got inside support? • Will this opportunity deliver sufficient return to justify the effort?

When you go after a piece of an opportunity, you’re probably changing the customer’s decision criteria, and for that you will need inside support.


41


Many sales careers are littered with small unprofitable deals that were going to be ‘really big’ someday. So, think carefully about the balance of effort and reward before choosing this form of attack. Positioning Strategies: Defend Just because there is not an active opportunity in play, doesn’t mean you stop selling or building your position in an account. The Defend and Develop strategies are designed to protect your hard won account from competitive attack. Defend Strategy Like all good defensive strategies, the key to the ‘Defend’ Strategy is to protect what you’ve achieved from a position of strength. You must gain the high ground where you can see competitive attacks as they approach. As allies you need influential managers and senior executives; and the best way to win their trust is through frequent contact and continuous delivery of business value. To protect your position you must:

• Expand your relationships to a higher level • Support your current allies • Demonstrate your credibility and business value • Be aware of the risk of self-isolation, and • Constantly monitor competitive activity in the account

After you’ve closed a sale you must not become complacent. Persist in developing an unassailable position and you can maintain a profitable customer. If your competition does get a foot in the door, you can defend your ground by isolating them, keep them busy on small, insignificant business that uses up their time, energy and resources – and that deflects them from stealing your customer. Positioning Strategies: Develop Develop Strategy If there is no compelling event, or you are not in a position to compete, but you’re interested in future potential, then the ‘Develop’ strategy is a good option to deploy in an account. Without a compelling event, you’re investing today for a potential future return. If you can’t compete, your develop strategy is to delay the buying process, so that you can sell future solutions. To effect a develop strategy you must:

• Continue to collect profile data to build intelligence • Focus on establishing or increasing your executive credibility


42


• Ensure that the Unique Business Value you can or will provide delivers true commercial advantage to the customer

The develop strategy requires executive credibility and inside support. Your success is dependent on the trust you have established as you may be asking someone to go out on a limb for you. ‘Try & Buy’ programs are examples of a develop strategy. In this case you’re giving the customer the opportunity to evaluate your solution without any commitment. It can be expensive, but it’s an effective way to keep competition at bay. A good example of the ‘delay variant’ of a Develop strategy is early product announcements – think Microsoft – interested customers may put off the buying decision until they see whether you really will come up with a better solution that currently being offered by the competition. Remember, a develop strategy works when you’re trying to position for a future engagement. Make sure the future opportunity is real, and that you’re not chasing shadows.

Turning Ideas into Actions Executing Your PRIME Actions Every sale needs a plan. It provides the momentum to help you decide what you want to achieve, and to visualize the journey you want to take. However, in the end, it’s all about the execution. For every hill you climb, or road you travel, you only reach you destination one step at a time. Your Opportunity Plan must be very specific. Each activity must be measurable, attributed to specific resources, and have an associated timeline. Think about what needs to be accomplished, when will it happen, who will execute, and what resources are needed. The acronym PRIME should help you remember the five categories of activities. As you Prove your value, think about what you do better than the competition that the customer cares about. Retrieve any missing information. Develop activities to anticipate the competitive attacks and Insulate yourself from the competition. It’s better for you to identify your weaknesses and Minimize them, than for your competitors to find and exploit them. Catalog your strengths and move to Emphasize them. When you use the PRIME formula, the brief list of tactics that you generate will be high-yield for you and high-value for your customer. Let’s take a more in depth view:

Prove your value First, focus on developing activities to validate and confirm your Unique Business Value with the customer. Think of things you can do to differentiate the value of your solution from your competitors, particularly as they relate to the business and personal agendas of the key players in the customer organization. Retrieve missing information Review the Opportunity Assessment and resolve any (-) or (?) for you and any (+) or (?) for the competition. The activities you execute may involve key players in the customer organization, your


43


business partners, your network and other members of your sales team. Look at ways to use the Internet or other sources of public access to retrieve the information. Insulate against competition As soon as you began to implement your sales campaign and proposed a business solution, you became visible within the customer organization and to external competitors. The greater the dollar value of the deal, the more external competitors you will likely encounter. Internal competitors, including alternative solutions, may also arise. Your objective is to develop activities to anticipate the competitive attacks and insulate yourself from the competition. Minimize your weaknesses It’s better for you to identify your weaknesses and minimize them, than for your competitors to find and exploit them. Inventory your weaknesses and test them against the customer’s decision criteria. Analyze past decisions made by the key players in the customer organization and determine how you could alter the weight and ranking of each key issue to your advantage. Emphasize your strengths Inventory your strengths by testing them against the customer’s decision criteria. Utilize the key players in the customer organization to help you validate your position. Develop ways to elevate your strengths as key issues that are highly ranked by each of the key players.

To help you build the best plan you can, here are a few tips that I’ve learned from winning sales professionals.

• Don’t build your plan alone • Brainstorm ideas and then refine them • Create accountability for the actions • Question and Test the efficacy and viability of your actions • Execute on all your actions • Communicate the plan to the entire sales team • Share success and recognize everyone’s contribution!

Selling is hard work – but it brings great rewards. The buzz, or excitement you get when you close that hard fought deal, is a tremendous feeling. The more you prepare, the better you plan, and the better you execute, the more times you will have that feeling. So, do the work, stay the course, and take control over your own future success. Happy selling!

Documents

Opportunity Manager Methodologytasgroup.vo.llnwd.net/o15/pdfs/SOM.Methodology_W15.pdf · Opportunity Manager Methodology Is There an Opportunity? – Compelling Event OK – pay attention