B2B Sales Pipeline

I have a man-crush on a little fellow known around the golf world as “el Tigre”, Tiger Woods. This guy has it all…he’s successful, famous, beautiful family…I mean WOW. On the golf course he’s effortless - 300 yard drives, finesse with the irons and is a good enough putter when he gets on the green. When he leads going into Sunday he is nearly impossible to beat.

Let’s look at WHY Tiger is great -He has been golfing since childhood, he’s spent tens of thousands of hours practicing, and has 20+ years of experience. With a pedigree like that, he is probably so good that he can just show up on Sundays and win, right? He just puts on the red shirt and everyone else just starts playing for second…

Wrong! Tiger spends the week leading up to the competition playing practice rounds so that he better understands the terrain, and shows up early before matches sharpen his skills on the driving range and putting green.

Sales Person - I have read estimations that in 18 months you will become an expert in your industry. You will know all the answers to the questions, understand your organization’s value proposition, and be able to spout off features and benefits in your sleep. You’re good, but good enough that you don’t need to understand the terrain of your industry and sharpen your skills?

Actually, once a salesperson reaches this “expert” status, his or her effectiveness goes down. They’ve worked hard to understand things during the previous year and a half and now have reverted to being age 13, when they know it all. Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw - “Teenagers, hurry up and get a job now, while you still know everything“.

How can we fight the apathy of expertise? By doing the things that allowed us to survive and even excel during the previous 6 Quarters, most notably:

1. Continued pre-call planning
2. Understanding the competitive environment
3. Educating yourself on market trends
4. Staying abreast of new technologies
5. Collaboration with co-workers

Continuing to do the things that made you successful are the quickest and easiest way to ensure future success.

It’s a fact of life in sales – You will cold call. Most people hate it because they remember the many times that a cold caller has interrupted their dinner to ask them to change long distance services. This 6 PM annoyance truly is “interruption marketing”. That’s not what your sales manager is asking you to do…he or she is asking you to perform “consultive selling” by phone. What differentiates this from the call from your local phone company:

1. You are not calling to interrupt – You have a valuable service that will be valuable to this potential customer. You know that because of your research (see #2 below). Your goal isn’t to spin off into a sales pitch, but rather to introduce yourself, grab their attention and ask for a follow-up action (schedule an appointment, view a demonstration, download a whitepaper). MarketingSherpa found that the #1 think recipients of Cold Calls value is that the salesperson be considerate of their time.

2. You have done your homework – Know what you are going to say, to whom, and why it matters BEFORE you pick up the phone. Are they a good fit for your solution? are they already using a competitor? A study by MarketingSherpa found that the #2 thing cold call recipients appreciate is that a cold call be educated on their business and not just calling down a list and reading a script.

3. You engage the potential customer through probing – Ask questions about their particular business processes to find their pain points. If you do all the talking, expect the customer to identify you as the annoying sound coming from the other end of the phone.

Pitfalls to Avoid:

• Sacrificing Quality for Quantity – Sure it’s a numbers game, but do a little precall planning. What does their organization do, who do you want to speak to (use resources such as LinkedIn or Spoke for good info).
• Initially Leaving a Message – You use a CRM…when you call, if you are obviously headed directly to VoiceMail, hang up, set a reminder and call later that afternoon. It’s easier to delete a message from a sales rep than it is to cut them off when you are on the phone. NOTE: everyone has caller ID, so avoid the stalker appearance and only call 2x’s without leaving a message lest you weird out the customer.
• Not trying to “Warm” the call prior – There are ways to warm up individuals who you are cold calling – a couple of options: Dropping a name of a person who redirected you to them, sending a precall e-mail to identify yourself, the organization and what you’ll be calling about, getting the target’s gatekeeper to set an appointment for you. NOTE #2: Gatekeepers can be powerful allies, so remember their name, make your case and ask for an appointment rather than just leaving a message.
• Launching into features and benefits – In Geoffrey James’ column “The Art of The Cold Call Pitch” he brings up the ideal of “voice-spam” and that a potential customer would delete this same message if it were received by e-mail. Rather than flying into features and benefits, use this opportunity to identify next steps such as a follow up appointment at a more convenient time (See #1 “You are not calling to interrupt” Above)

Now pickup that phone, and let’s dial for dollars.

Marketing Executives, look yourself in the mirror and repeat after me – “Are all these names I provide to Sales actually “leads” who are ready to purchase or showing buying behavior?”

Not by a longshot. Why do I feel it necessary to rant about this? Because, like a starving person in the wilderness, Salespeople all “Grab the low hanging fruit”.

Why? - In our world, it isn’t so much about what the salesperson has done (…blew away last years numbers), rather what has the salesperson done LATELY (…going to miss quota his quarter).

So with the pressure to produce immediately, what is the salesperson to do – grab the low hanging fruit.

A 2004 study from BPM forum found that an estimated that 80% of all “leads” fall through the cracks. What the study doesn’t point out is that often, these “leads” are simply a list of names of people who dropped by your corporate booth at a conference (and who wouldn’t give up a business card for the chance to win an iPod). To be fair, it’s normally a combination of junk and potential customers who have shown intent by providing their information. You then turn this list over to a Sales professional who subjectively evaluates the list, identifies the 20% of “low hanging fruit” and and discards the other 80%. The end result - Marketing gets lambasted for not providing enough “quality” leads, while Sales just took 80% and tossed them in the circle file.

So why do Sales think many of these leads are “bad”?

#1 – They will take too long to close because of where they are in the sales cycle

#2 – They will take too much effort to educate

#3 – They didn’t respond to initial outbound communication such as 1 phone call and/or a single e-mail

Marketing - is 80% of the information you provide to Sales worthless? Absolutely not, they just have very limited value in the short term (AKA This Quarter). These potential customers have shown some amount of interest and likely require more information prior to purchasing. They need to be nurtured, incubated, educated - cared for. Give them additional information, a free sample, something to move them closer to being a customer. Instead of giving us 100% of inbound names, give us 20-30% of actual leads…people who have expressed interest, are quaified, are the decision maker and are motivated to fix a pain point in their life. Deal?

Please save your friends in the Sales Department from themselves…

I’ve been been realizing more and more that information touted as credible is often written by people who only THINK they know the subject matter. For example: I was checking out of the supermarket last evening when I noticed that many of the attention grabbing headlines:

15 Things Your Boyfriend Secretly Wants

Ironically most were written by a member of the opposite sex. Every time I see one of these headlines, I chuckle to myself and wonder how different that article would be if it were written by the “Boyfriend” in question.

I kind of feel the same way about all the expert Sales Advice available on the www. My goal with this blog is to offer offer an honest, in the trenches view of Sales, from someone who actually spends his day selling. I’ll post a couple times a week, sharing thing that I’ve found that work and others that don’t. Keep an eye out for the occasional book review, market trend discussions, emerging technologies, and the Friday Rant and Rave.