PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales managers and WIN … · PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales managers and WIN MORE DEALS! DONAL DALY ... Mobile and Cloud 41 DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK

PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales managers and WIN MORE DEALS!

D O N A L D A LYCEO AND FOUNDER OF THE TAS GROUPAUTHOR OF THE BEST-SELLER ACCOUNT PLANNING IN SALESFORCE

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12 Elements of a Great Sales Playbook

The implementation of a sales playbook can be one of the most impactful initiatives for any sales organization. There are two reasons for this tremendous ROI.

First, by following some simple guidelines, it can be a remarkably easy initiative to implement, and second, research shows that this results in 33% additional revenue.

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INTRODUCTION

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In today’s flattened world, competitive pressures mount, market cycles shorten, buyers are more informed, and sales leaders and their teams are subject to more scrutiny, stress and anxiety than ever before. In the last 5 years the world has experienced economic turmoil, financial meltdown, and the explosive rise of social media. The screw has been tightened a few turns on the sales role, businesses have been turned upside down, and constant change is the new constant. At the same time, tremendous opportunities have emerged for sales organizations that can nail their go-to-market strategies. Sales playbooks can be the catalyst to remarkable improvement in sales velocity.

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CONTENTS

ONE Repeatable Winning Sales Processes 6

TWO Customized to the Buying Cycle 9

THREE Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage 12

FOUR Industry Sales Process Templates 14

FIVE Many Simple and Complex Processes 17

SIX Process Benchmarks and Insight 20

THE 12 ELEMENTS OF A GREAT SALES PLAYBOOK

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CRM

SEVEN Team Visibility for the Sales Manager 24

EIGHT Integrates with CRM System 27

NINE Informs Sales Forecast Visibility 30

TEN Motivational and Visual 34

ELEVEN Social and Collaborative 38

TWELVE Mobile and Cloud 41

DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK 45 ABOUT THE TAS GROUP 51 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 52




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ONE Repeatable Winning Sales Processes

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THE KEY WORD HERE IS ‘REPEATABLE’

When everyone performs the same winning behaviors all of the time, the sales team can achieve remarkable sales velocity. A winning sales process is a sequence of best practices from your top performers (or learned from external observation) that ensures your salespeople are repeating the actions that result in success. A repeatable sales process provides your teams with a defined, systematic and measurable way to sell, and makes sure every salesperson knows the buying signs that occur when you are winning, or the activities that will ensure they succeed.

REPEATABLEWINNINGSALES PROCESSES




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THERE IS A COMMON LANGUAGE THAT IS UNDERSTOOD

The result is an increase in productivity, a shorter sales cycle, quicker on-boarding for new salespeople and more wins for the sales team overall.

When everyone adopts the same sales process, there is a common language that is understood, not just by sales, but by the whole organization. Recent research shows that while only 60% of sales teams have a sales process that is well defined, and well executed – those who do are 33% more likely to be High Performers.

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TWO Customized to the Buying Cycle




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TWITTER, LINKEDIN AND OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS... ‘THE DEVIL YOU KNOW’

Customers buy in lots of different ways; some purchases are guided by a single decision maker, while in other cases there can be a large buying committee. Some issue RFPs, others invite recognized suppliers to discuss their issues, an increasing number learn through Social Networks - networking with their peers and your competitors on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social channels - and just a few remain with the incumbent supplier, trading ‘the devil you know’ for potentially more advanced or competitive solutions.

In every case, customers know every step they want to take in the buying cycle. They have a business problem to solve, alternatives to consider, decision criteria they deem critical, and a procurement process that is unlikely to be overturned.

CUSTOMIZED TOTHE BUYING CYCLE

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In short, they have a detailed project plan, with hurdles and obstacles you have to scale. So, it makes sense to ensure that your selling activities are fully aligned with your customer’s buying activities.

Unless you visualize the journey the customer wants to take, you won’t be with them when they reach their destination. The job of today’s sales professional is to help the customer buy, not to sell to them. Understand your customer’s plan and their approach.

Once you do, you can align your sales cycle, and plot your way to success.

Win rate exceeds 50% for two-thirds of companies that have a defined sales process.

DID YOU KNOW?




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THREE Sales Tools in Context at Each Stage

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At each stage of the buying process, salespeople need to employ the right tools at the right time to advance the sales to the next stage in the process. A B2B sale is not a single event. In fact it is a collection of micro-sales events, each crafted to move closer to the eventual goal – closing the deal.

Salespeople are frequently faced with a myriad of sales tools and overwhelmed by a torrent of information.

Salespeople are busy and often don’t know which tool they need, where to find it or how to use it at the specific point in the micro-sale. Integrating sales tools into the playbook as part of the sales process is the solution.

It means sellers can easily and quickly self-serve, get what they need, when they need it to advance the sale. Not only will that help increase their win rate and drive sales velocity, but it will also drive higher usage and the right outcome at the right time.

SALES TOOLSIN CONTEXT ATEACH STAGE

A B2B SALE IS NOT A SINGLE EVENT




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FOUR Industry Sales Process Templates

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It is widely accepted that tailoring your sales process to the specific needs of an industry will increase your chances for success. It makes sense to incorporate the best practices that are specifically applicable to your target market. As you build your playbook, look for a partner who can bring expertise for your industry, ideally based on empirical evidence, gathered from others who are active in your market. Leveraging what has worked before in your industry will give you an advantage.

Your playbook templates should be cognizant of industry differences. If you sell to multi-market segments, then the activities of your sales team should reflect that.

INDUSTRYSALES PROCESSTEMPLATES

LEVERAGING WHAT HAS WORKED BEFORE




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PROVIDE A GO-TO LOCATION FOR SALESPEOPLE

The playbook(s) must provide a go-to location for salespeople to quickly access the research and knowledge they need to bring pertinent insight to the sales, based on proven industry-specific templates.

That way, the sales team will win more deals. Third party industry sales templates are readily available from suppliers who have been tracking and analyzing millions of sales cycles. That is the catalyst you need to get started.

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FIVE Many Simple and Complex Processes




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One playbook or sales process does not fit all. Sometimes you are pursuing a brand new customer or a very large deal that demands a complex and sophisticated set of ‘plays’ to win the deal. In other cases, the transaction might be quick, one that suggests a different rhythm. It is likely that not all sales in your organization travel at the same speed. Inside sales, field sales, renewal, maintenance, add-on deals, large company pursuits, small company pursuits, complex solution sales, simple product sales, can each be accommodated within a well designed playbook using a common language for the team, but intelligently presenting the right steps, and just the right steps, for each transaction type.

In short, the sales processes within playbooks should support the type of sales process you are executing. This ensures you have the right activities and outcomes for the appropriate buying process.

MANY SIMPLEAND COMPLEXPROCESSES

NOT ALL SALES TRAVEL AT THE SAME SPEED

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Salespeople are expending the right level of effort, commensurate with the return from the sales and the complexity of the situation. You have the right stage durations for accurate forecasts and can manage performance based on the types of deals your teams are working.

All of this combined means that the salesperson is getting optimum benefit from the time they spend in the sales process.

Your sales playbook should have the requisite intelligence to support that automatically and serve up the right playbook at the right time.

Only 33% of sellers

made quota in their

last reporting period.

DID YOU KNOW?




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SIX Process Benchmarks and Insight

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Benchmarking delivers many advantages for companies looking to improve the performance of their sales organization. Your playbook must capture those benefits, learn from them, and uncover insights that help you to drive your sales velocity. When deploying a playbook, ensure that you have built in a capability that guides you to progress through these stages of evolution for your sales team.

Record a current-state assessment that goes beyond the typical lagging indicators of win-rate, quota achievement, deal size, or market penetration. You should be looking for measures of early qualification, the velocity through each stage of the sales cycle, and indicators of where deals are most commonly getting stalled or lost.

PROCESSBENCHMARKSAND INSIGHT

ENSURE THAT YOU HAVE BUILT IN A CAPABILITY THAT GUIDES YOU TO PROGRESS




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Having achieved a comprehensive assessment of the current–state, a company can then develop a foundation for sales productivity improvements that are truly transformative. You know where you are starting from, and you see what you have to change. Now you can easily identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement.

Continuous improvement is the third major advantage you should be looking for as you use your playbook as the source of benchmarking for your team. The more sales cycles you go through, the smarter your playbook gets. Don’t rely on playbooks that don’t support you in gaining this insight.

A common understanding of the sales engine is one of the most impactful benefits of the benchmarking process.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS THE THIRD MAJOR ADVANTAGE YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR

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Everyone involved gains a shared understanding of the current state; and a vision of the journey upon which the enterprise must embark, and that increases overall productivity.

When a sales playbook incorporates a benchmarking process that can dig into an informed knowledge source, and apply that knowledge in the context of the company’s current state, true value transfers to the organization and quantifiable value emerges.

EVERYONE INVOLVED GAINS A SHARED UNDERSTANDING OF THE CURRENT STATE




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SEVEN Team Visibility for the Sales Manager

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Being a front-line sales manager is one of the hardest jobs in sales. It is also the critical link in sales. Unless the sales manager has all the tools he or she needs to easily manage the business, the whole performance of the sales organization suffers.

In a recent survey, sales managers report that ‘Sales Process Not Being Followed’ is their number one frustration.

Every sales manager needs visibility into the sales process activities of their team and both the absolute and relative behavior and performance of each salesperson on the team.

If the sales organization is adopting a sales playbook to increase sales velocity, then it must provide an easy-to-use tool to enable the sales manager to monitor the team’s application of the plays, and the consequent impact on revenue performance.

TEAM VISIBILITYFOR THE SALESMANAGER

EVERY SALES MANAGER NEEDS READILY AVAILABLE VISIBILITY




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The playbook must provide the sales manager with a view across her entire team’s work. What are the critical deals being worked on by the team? Where is each deal? Where should we be focused? These are all answers that should be informed by a sales manager’s view of the operation of her team’s sales playbook.

It is also critically important that the sales playbook system that you deploy is quick and easy to use. Sales managers are really very busy. You need to provide them with the ‘Easy Button’.

Sales playbooks are often designed just with the salesperson in mind. Remember that the sales manager is the critical link. If you can leverage your playbook initiative to increase her visibility into the sales team, you will strengthen that link and improve your return.

LEVERAGE YOUR PLAYBOOK

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EIGHT Integrates with your CRM System

CRM




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This one should be a ‘no-brainer’. Let’s say you use Salesforce as your CRM. If that is the case, you are already asking your sales team to enter their opportunity information into Salesforce. If that is where your opportunity information is held, then that is where your playbook should be. It must integrate tightly with your CRM system so when a salesperson works with an opportunity, the playbook will always be present. That way the playbook (if it is smart enough) can react to the attributes of the opportunity, like the size of the deal, or the products included in the opportunity record to present the right playbook for that opportunity.

But not all integrations are created equal. If you are on Salesforce, then the playbook will benefit immensely if it’s ‘native’ on the Salesforce Platform.

CRMINTEGRATESWITH YOURCRM SYSTEM

YOUR PLAYBOOK SHOULD BE WHERE YOUR OPPORTUNITY DATA IS HELD

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Unlike other solutions that are linked to Salesforce, or just lightly integrated, this means that your data resides in the Salesforce Cloud, with the same security as Salesforce, the same performance as Salesforce, and all of the data captured within the playbook is inherently accessible to Salesforce reports, dashboards, and other applications.

When your playbook is native, you do not have to worry about the security of a third party cloud, the data transfer issues that occur with non-native solutions, or the reliability of a third party hosting infrastructure.

Complete integration with your CRM delivers the optimum experience for the salesperson, and provides sales managers with greater flexibility on how they view the data in the context of the rest of the business. It is important.

When sales methodology and playbooks are

integrated with CRM, salespeople have higher

quota achievement.

DID YOU KNOW?




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NINE Informs Sales Forecast Visibility

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Salespeople spend about 2.5 hours each week on sales forecasting, and for most companies, the accuracy of sales forecasts leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, based on recent research, companies that do not define and effectively execute a sales process have inaccurate sales forecasts 71% of the time! When success or failure is usually measured in margins far less than 25%, these forecasts are truly worthless. The good news though is that there can be a very strong causal connection between sales process and forecast accuracy. In that same research study, it emerged that companies that did define and execute their sales process well reduced the level of inaccuracy to 33%. That is a 200% increase in sales forecast accuracy.

INFORMS SALESFORECASTVISIBILITY

THERE CAN BE A VERY STRONG CASUAL CONNECTION




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To maximize the impact of your sales playbook on the accuracy of your sales forecast, there are two things to consider.

Does the sales playbook incorporate intelligence that objectively monitors the close date of the sale? If you have built in the sales best practices, and your sales playbook can learn about the rhythm of your business, then it should be smart enough to help predict the close date of the opportunity, and identify for the salesperson the difference between their opinion of when the deal will close, and a projected close date based on past behavior of winning sales cycles.

DOES THE SALES PLAYBOOK INCORPORATE INTELLIGENCE?

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Does the sales playbook provide the sales manager with insight into deal vulnerabilities and risks in the forecast? It should be able to answer these very important questions: What’s in the forecast? Are any of the salespeople counting on unusually large deals to make the quarter? Are all deals being worked? What’s closed? What’s projected? Which deals are moving quickly, and where are the opportunities that are stalled? Your sales playbook should help you to give those 2.5 hours back to the salesperson, improve the accuracy of the forecast for each opportunity, and provide the sales manager with insight into the factors that will help them understand what they need to do to make or exceed the quota for the team.

DOES THE SALES PLAYBOOK PROVIDE INSIGHT INTO VULNERABILITIES?




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TEN Motivational and Visual

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MOTIVATIONALAND VISUAL

SALESPEOPLE ARE AS MOTIVATED BY FEEDBACK AND PROGRESS AS THEY ARE BY WINNING DEALS

There are only two reasons why an individual does not complete a task. Either they do not have the skills, knowledge or competence to complete it, or they are not motivated enough to do it. Think about that – these are the only two reasons. Your sales playbook should improve competence and increase motivation.

The competence piece is easily understood. To achieve competence you need to have the core knowledge, the skills to execute on the knowledge, and a clearly defined path to success. If you have followed the best practices set out above, you can build this piece into your playbook.




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Motivation is a little more challenging. A study on “What Motivates Salespeople” shows that, perhaps surprisingly for some, compensation is not the primary motivator. ‘Making Progress or Winning’ is ranked by salespeople as the main reason they get up in the morning. In fact, we can break down the motivational conundrum into three pieces: Incentive, Indicators of Progress, and Direction.

To entice adoption of the sales playbook (rather than force compliance) your sales playbook needs to provide true value for the salesperson – resolve that reward/effort equation, so that the salesperson gets more back from the playbook than they put into it. It must be highly visual, and provide obvious cues to the next step, recognition of progress, and include elements of gamification to encourage participation.

COMPENSATION IS NOT THEPRIMARY MOTIVATOR

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Salespeople are as motivated by feedback and progress as they are by winning deals – possibly because they probably can’t win a deal everyday, but they can make progress.

Playbooks should empower the salesperson not only through knowledge and intelligence, but also through live metrics which provide real progress indicators in response to a salesperson’s activities and their performance in relation to their peers. Then you will deliver both competence and motivation – and your results will skyrocket.

THEY CAN’T WIN A DEAL EVERYDAY, BUT THEY CAN MAKE PROGRESS




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ELEVEN Social and Collaborative

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SOCIAL ANDCOLLABORATIVE

LEADING SALES PLAYBOOKS HELP BY LETTING EVERYONE ‘FOLLOW’ THE PLAYS

As B2B companies rely more heavily on social collaboration tools, some of the biggest winners are going to be salespeople. They know that the Social Universe is a great place to listen and learn. When you follow your customers on Twitter, read their blogs, or study their LinkedIn profiles, you can quickly get a sense of who they are.

The winning salespeople are using online social platforms to increase productivity by understanding and influencing customer relationships, creating new channels for research, and increasing responsiveness to customers.

Salespeople who are the leaders in their organization are using social tools such as Chatter in Salesforce to improve collaboration in their own sales teams. Leading sales playbooks help by letting everyone ‘follow’ the plays, contribute to the conversation, and collaborate on the deal.




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They promote an environment where salespeople can lead their own community of contributors to their deal in an open and collaborative way. The B2B world is constantly becoming more social and collaborative and you should ensure that your sales playbook accommodates this advancement.

THE B2B WORLD IS CONSTANTLY BECOMING MORE SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE

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TWELVE Mobile and Cloud




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As twin engines of growth, the inexorable rise of mobile device ownership and the advancement of cloud computing are the most significant changes in the business landscape that any of us has witnessed in our lifetimes.

The facts are pretty amazing. The mobile industry has scaled dramatically over the last decade. At the end of 2013, there were 3.4 billion unique subscribers in the world. Mobile is not an option anymore. Sales people live on their phones. Sales calls typically happen ‘on the road’ and the phone is the device that we all choose to use.

The smartphone has become an extension of the sales person’s armory. It is usually the first thing they check when the plane lands. It is the last thing they check before they walk into a meeting and the first thing they check when they walk out.

MOBILEAND CLOUD

THE ADVANCEMENTS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

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If the sales playbook you implement is not mobile, then it will not be available to the salesperson for a large portion of their working week.

Time is precious, and the salesperson’s time is incredibly precious, both to them and to the sales organization looking to maximize the performance of their key quota-bearers. Since so much of a salesperson’s time is spent moving between A and B and back again, they should be equipped with the capability to connect to their sales playbook at any time, wherever they are.

Apps on your mobile device are at the end of the spokes attached to the hub in the cloud. The total size of the Cloud Computing Industry in 2014 is estimated to be $150 Billion as compared to $46 Billion in 2008 and the overall Cloud Computing growth rate is 5 times more than the IT growth rate globally. This shift is empowering for salespeople on the road. For business strategists, marketers, sellers and buyers alike, mobile and cloud are becoming the twin axes around which business revolves – and your sales playbook needs to benefit from the tremendous advantages they can bring. When your sales playbook is hosted in the cloud your team can collaborate more easily and integrate more seamlessly with other cloud based applications.

TIME IS PRECIOUS




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In our business we use salesforce.com as our CRM, Concur to manage travel expenses and Box for enterprise document storage, all in the cloud on our phones, like ourselves at The TAS Group, each of these companies (Salesforce, Box and Concur) uses Dealmaker to enhance sales effectiveness, in the cloud and on their phones. It just seems to be the smartest thing to do.

MOBILE AND CLOUD ARE BECOMING THE TWIN AXES

Survey of American Adults:90% have a cell phone

58% have a smartphone32% own an e-reader

42% own a tablet computer

DID YOU KNOW?

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DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK




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Now that you understand the 12 elements of a great sales playbook, it’s time to put them into action. We recommend using Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook, a software app that delivers your sales playbook to each member of your sales team, right within Salesforce CRM. The following pages highlight some of the benefits of Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook.

To watch a video of Dealmaker in action, go to www.thetasgroup.com.

Increase sales velocity for your team by applying repeatable winning sales playbooks based on intelligent industry templates and smart sales tools. Increase visibility into team performance and manage sales forecast and pipeline risk.

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ABOUT THE TAS GROUPWe provide smart sales transformation in the cloud and your

mobile device. Our customers are progressive sales

organizations that maximize revenue in key accounts,

increase win rate and uncover sales vulnerabilities. Our

methodology and sales insight apps are smart, context aware,

and knowledge based, making it easy for sellers, their

managers and sales executives to accelerate revenue growth

- predictably.

The Dealmaker Smart Sales Transformation application is

built on the Salesforce1 Platform for extending the Salesforce

Sales Cloud. Customers include: Akamai Technologies, BMC,

BT, HP, Virgin Media Business, Salesforce and more.

For more information, visit www.thetasgroup.com




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Author of Amazon #1 Best-

seller Account Planning in

Salesforce, Donal Daly is CEO

and Founder of (his fifth

global business enterprise)

The TAS Group, the global

leader in Smart Sales

Transformation.

Combining his expertise in enterprise software applications,

artificial intelligence, and sales methodology, he continues to

revolutionize the sales effectiveness industry. Feel free to

download The TAS Group's latest publication, Battling the

57%: Deconstructing the Buyer Seller Dance.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Follow Donal’s Blog at www.dealmaker365.com

Send your comments and feedback to: [email protected]

http://www.thetasgroup.com/accountplanning.php

http://sales20network.com/blog/

mailto:[email protected]

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PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales managers and WIN … · PROVIDE VISIBILITY for your sales managers and WIN MORE DEALS! DONAL DALY ... Mobile and Cloud 41 DEALMAKER SMART SALES PLAYBOOK