Archive for the ‘Account Management’ Category
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
Most sales team have a “sales process”. This is a set of steps they take to help the customer make a good decision about their products and services. It typically goes from suspect stage to close stage of the sales cycle. Often these sales processes are written in a very salesperson focused way. They seem to have the goal of “closing” the customer and the worksheets and notes associated with each step are carefully guarded and most certainly never shown to the prospective customer.
In this approach, a sales process is something done TO the customer instead of WITH the customer.
What if salespeople took a different approach and invited their prospective customer into the process? What if salespeople re-wrote the sales cycle steps with the goal of helping the customer make the best possible decision for them? Maybe it is called a Decision Process instead of a sales process?
When a company hires a consulting firm, the consulting firm typically has a process they use on each engagement to understand the customer and then suggest and execute solutions to meet their clients needs. These solutions are typically repeatable based on the diagnosis. This is much of what salespeople do, but salespeople differ in the fact that they try to keep their process a secret.
Having a tried-and-true, repeatable process builds confidence in customers. Salespeople might want to consider sharing their process and invite the customer to take each step with them. They could share their reports and forms along the way. Along the way, making sure to stay true to their promise of helping them make good decisions and then, together, document and demonstrate it throughout the process. This builds confidence and trust in the salesperson and the process.
To build trust, move an opportunity along a decision process with your customer. They will get on the offense with you instead of on the defense against you.
Sales Managers , To get sales team meeting agendas on this topic and many others, subscribe to Meeting to Win. We’d love to work with you and your team!
Tags: CRM, customer meeting success, customer meetings, move deals, sales process, transparency
Posted in Account Management, CRM, best practice, customer meeting, efficient, opportunity, performance, sales consulting, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Sales cycles have typical steps. Customer like to take certain steps to make a decision and salespeople take certain steps to make a sale or help their customers make good decisions. Salespeople can accelerate the decision process by strategically examining the sales cycles for opportunities to add efficiencies. The benefits of doing this exist for both salesperson and customer. Customers need solutions and making efficient decisions on which solutions to purchase must be in their best interest. Salespeople benefit from getting to a go/no-go decision sooner, also. They either get to start helping a customer or, at least, realize they aren’t the right solution and can move on to the next one sooner. I am not suggesting that anyone rushes through an important decision process, I am simply suggesting a regular examination of the sales cycles to look for ways to improve the decision process and begin solving problems faster.
To do so, first list out all the steps a salesperson and a customer make to get to go/no-go on your solutions. Jot down the timeline and if there are pre-requisite steps for any of the steps.
Now, carefully examine if there is an opportunity to:
- Consolidate any two steps into one step.
- Eliminate an unnecessary step altogether.
- Simutaneously conduct two or more steps.
List out the benefits to the customer for making the decision with this new sales cycle. Then, make sure that you and the customer are clear on the steps both would like to take to help the customer make an informed yet timely decision. Stay two steps ahead with both understanding what the steps are, who should be involved and what decisions they should be able to make along the way.
The sales cycle is an important process where important decisions are made. Running it as effectively and efficiently as possible is in everyone’s best interest and a salesperson’s responsibility. Enjoy accelerated sales cycles with this simple exercise.
This week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda is Consolidate to Accelerate. Sales Manager who subscribe to the sales team meeting agenda service will receive a 60-Minute agenda that will lead their teams through an examination of their own sales cycles. Each participant will leave with a new plan for one live deal in their pipeline. Join our subscribers by signing up to get your weekly sales team meeting agendas from Meeting to Win.
Tags: consolidate sales cycles, CRM, customer meetings, existing customer, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, winning in sales
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agendas, customer meeting, efficient, opportunity, sales activity | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
How do you become a mission-critical part of your customer’s team? The one that they call to uncover opportunities to improve, solve problems or get results? To become this part, you first have to know what is critical to the mission. As sales experts in our respective fields, it is our job to expose what is critical to the mission and then suggest ways to accomplish those things.
For example, I provide sales team meeting agendas for Sales Leaders. It is my responsibility to demonstrate to sales leaders how a consistent, strategic communication schedule can impact sales performance, team morale, turnover, bench strength and customer satisfaction. I am the expert and I am responsible for teaching and solving.
There are many ways to get to the table or to the point of solving. One very powerful way to get in the door and to the table is by offering to do an Assessment. In my case, I could do a Sales Meeting Assessment. My message to a prospective customer is simply, “As an expert at driving sales performance and important initiatives with sales meetings, I’d be happy to assess the effectiveness of your current sales team meeting strategy. After assessing your current approach, I will return to you the results of my assessment along with opportunities to more effectively use sales meetings to drive performance. The outcomes may be things you can do on your own. If there are areas Meeting to Win can help to improve your sales meetings, we’ll certainly include those options in our report.”
This approach is extremely valuable to a prospective customer (many sales teams even charge for this!) and they rarely say “no”. There is no risk for them to have an expert examine their business and share process improvements. The salesperson conducting the assessment has license to learn every detail of how they handle that process now. The intent must truly be to share ideas, best practices and solutions to improve.
The outcome is very often an active sales cycle for the salesperson and some great ideas to consider for the customer.
Understand the mission, help them reach the goal and you become … mission-critical.
Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers. This week’s agenda is Tie Your Solutions to Their Goals. If you would like to lead your team through exercises designed to help them become mission-critical to their customers, subscribe today.
Tags: CRM, customer meetings, energize sales team, motivate sales team, troubleshooter
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agenda ideas, best practice | No Comments »
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
Your products and services – or solutions – meet very important needs of your customers. The more your solutions directly impact their ability to do their business more effectively, the more powerful and important your partnership becomes. Salespeople can hitch their solutions to the most important wagons with a little focus on the right needs.
No matter who you are positioned with in an account, an understanding of the top company goals is useful in the short term and often critical in the long term. In the short term, simply offering a solution they are asking for may be enough to make a sale at a department level. In the long term, much like what we have seen in the past couple of years, spending gets scrutized for one reason or another and any spending not directly tied to the most important goals gets cancelled. Also, salespeople often find themselves in the position of being sold internally by an ally or coach. They have to provide the information and incentive to get their internal ally to fight for their solutions. If that person is armed with the connection to the top goals, the more likely they are to be successful in their interal sales role.
So, we know it’s important, now, how do you do it. Here are some things that you may want to try:
- First of all, start high in an organization. The more effectively you can tie your solutions to their unique company goals, the more likely you are to stay high. Even if you get delegated lower during the process, you still have access higher.
- Research, research, research. Find out everything you can about what the CEO is focused on accomplishing.
- Find out what role your contacts play in the top company goals. For example, pretend your contact is in HR and one of the company’s top goals is the successful launch of a new product for 8% revenue growth this year. How will HR help the company reach this goal? Is it their job to find new sales people? Is it their job to train everyone on the new product? What particular part will they play in this goal? Once you know this you can help them reach their goal which helps the company reach it’s goal.
- Demonstrate how you can help them reach these goals more efficiently. Show how the investment with you gives them the gains they need.
- Once you are in, monitor your contribution and share it in regular reports and communications. Check in often on progress and make sure you stay aligned should the goals get altered.
- Learn to ask questions that get you to the most important goals. You’ll be surprised that often your current contacts actually don’t even know the company’s top goals. You need to learn to ask questions that don’t make them feel stupid yet also help you work toward gathering the necessary information. Simply asking someone “what are your company’s top 3 goals?” may sound like a pop quiz. Use your communication skills to have productive conversations where you both learn if necessary.
Solutions tied to top goals stand the test of time and scrutiny. Get hitched to the right goals for long-term, mutually beneficial relationships.
Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers. This week’s agenda is Tie Your Solutions to Their Goals. If you would like to lead your team through exercises designed to help them “get hitched”, subscribe today.
Tags: CRM, customer meetings, existing customer, motivate sales team, new customers, sales meeting agenda, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda
Posted in Account Management, CRM, communication, efficient, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
I’ve had the privilege as you probably have, too, to meet some very successful salespeople and business owners. Those people that seem to have a magic touch and deliver consistently strong performance and value to their customers. A key to their success was getting to the table in the first place to have the conversations that lead to these strong relationships with customers. They somehow earn their way into the hearts and minds of these customers. How do they do it?
As I have examined and interviewed these people, here are two things that I have found.
First, if you ask them how they do it, they think they know and often they don’t. They very often say “I just build strong relationships” or “I’m not afraid to tell it like it is” or “I kept after them for years”, etc. All things that certainly could contribute.
Now, when I observe these people over years what I really find is that they do something brilliant. They often don’t even realize it’s brilliant and yet it seems to be the trigger for great relationships.
Three examples:
I know one business owner who shares his Decision Grid with his customers and they fill it out together. This one action makes his process transparent to the customer and in one meeting helps this business owner determine if there actually is a decision process and, therefore, a real opportunity. This one 30 minute conversation with a customer early in the sales cycle helps him build trust and pursue real opportunities. Brilliant!
Another sales leader I observe was winning the big contracts left and right in his company. What did he do differently? He had the fastest turnaround time vs. his competitors. Brilliant! He left the customer meeting with his action items and they were done that day. He was a master at coordinating internal resources to meet the needs of the customer. He made everyone work at his pact. Brilliant! He didn’t let time kill any of his deals. His deals flew through the pipeline all because he set the pace for his team and the customer team.
One last example. I know a sales leader whose team has consistently led the company in sales, innovation, top customers and many other categories for over 20 years. What does he do? No matter what the company is doing, he picks one solution to sell. Brilliant! They offer about 40 programs and he and his team put all their focus and efforts around one solution they feel is the most relevant and useful to their customer and they spend all their resources there. Risky? Maybe, but it’s been working.
So, observe the top performers you come in contact with and don’t simply ask them what they do differently, watch them. Figure out what they are doing differently. It is often one brilliant thing that you could repeat in your territory. Go be BRILLIANT!
Meeting to Win recently sent out the Best Practices of Top Performers sales team meeting agenda. Sales teams around the world worked through an exercise to list the brilliant things top performers in their own companies are doing. Right now, those brilliant actions are being replicated across organizations. To experience similar momentum, subscribe to Meeting to Win sales team meeting agendas and elevate your teams to top performer status.
Tags: brilliant, CRM, customer meeting success, motivate sales team, sales team agenda., winning in sales
Posted in Account Management, CRM, best practice, customer meeting, down economy, maximize tools, performance, sales managers, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics | No Comments »
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
2011 Summer Sales Team Meeting Agenda Series = Summer of Experts.
Join us by becoming a subscriber and open your team’s minds by studying expert sales advice and applying it to your own business. Subscribe HERE.
Summer is right around the corner and the time to start executing your summer selling plan is now. You may have just experienced this on a smaller scale during Spring Break season. Decision makers are out of the office on vacations or entertaining clients at golf tournaments. Spring and Summer can mark tough times for sales professionals who are still trying to move deals forward. The odds of getting all the decision makers involved at the necessary stage are not good during the summer. Each activity gets pushed off until “next week” when someone is “back in the office” and, before you know it, your sales cycles have stretched out. And, salespeople and their teammates are trying to schedule in much needed breaks, also.
It is in everyone’s best interest to keep deals moving through the summer. Customers need solutions, salespeople need sales. The season does not change those truths. So, how can sales professionals enjoy their summer and a few successes at the same time? Here are some actions to take now to close some summer deals.
- Look at your pipeline and determine which deals should be closing during the summer.
- At your next opportunity with your prospective customers, walk through all the steps they will most likely need to take to make a decision on your solution. Together, build a timeline for when these steps should occur based on when they need a solution in place. This will give you both a timeline to work toward heading into the summer.
- With your timeline in hand, acknowledge the challenges of meeting deadlines in the summer months with your customer. Build a calendar that includes everyone’s (salesperson’s team and customer’s team) planned vacations or absences. This way you can stay a few steps ahead on planning.
- Make sure that everyone who will be involved in the decision process understands the timeline and the steps in the process.
- Consider scheduling a regular update call with your key contacts. Think of yourself as a project manager keeping the team on track to make a decision. Each week should move the deal forward.
- Keep your momentum during the summer by working a business development plan. Salespeople have a tendency to take a little break during the summer months. Those that keep up the hard work will gain momentum throughout the summer and into the next selling season. Very often prospects are more receptive during holiday and summer seasons. Take advantage of the lighter mood and begin some great relationships.
- Set clear activity and performance goals for the summer months. It is too easy to go with the flow of traffic if you don’t have a better plan. If those around you have slowed down, it is easy to follow their lead. Build a plan to follow and avoid this slow down.
- Take your own vacation. You’ll enjoy it more if you’ve been proactive to continue adding to your pipeline and moving your deals throughout the summer. Now, go get that break!
Enjoy a summer filled with sales by building and executing your summer sales plan now.
Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win, LLC. Become a Meeting to Win subscriber to receive a new sales team meeting agenda every week. This week’s agenda is We Interrupt This Summer to Bring You…Solutions. As a team, you’ll leave this meeting with a solid plan to succeed throughout the summer. You’ll win and your customers will win. What a great summer this could be!
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, customer meetings, energize sales team, move deals, pre-call planning, prepare for sales call, sales team agenda., winning in sales
Posted in Account Management, CRM, Summer Selling Season, communication, customer meeting, efficient, performance | No Comments »
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Who is on your “team”? By team I mean everyone that helps take care of the customer from suspect stage to account management stage. This could be your proposal people, your billing dept, your sales engineers, your operations team, your customer service representatives and the list goes on. It typically takes many people working together to win, keep and grow customer accounts. How well your team works together is being observed and judged by customers and is a big factor in their decision to work with you or not.
There are many challenges facing your extended team. Everyone has different bosses, people are spread all over the country, they leave the company and have conflicting priorities. How do you pull the team together for the good of the customer?
Start by identifying the team. Make a list of everyone who touches every stage of the sales cycle. List these people or functions by sales cycle stage. Include the role they play in that stage.
Now that you have this chart, figure out how to improve your team work. To get started, list 5 areas of breakdown in your team work. Are proposals often late, do customers have billing issues, is Customer Service unresponsive, are orders delivered late? Take each breakdown one by one and figure out how to address it so customers have a better experience.
Some solutions may include:
- Involving an extended team member earlier in the sales cycle.
- Making an effort to get to know each other outside a sales cycle.
- Including the extended team on sales team meetings occasionally.
- Making sure everyone is clear on their role in the customer account.
- Creating a customer-focused culture where everyone sells.
- Encouraging team leaders to focus on working together.
- Creating a communication system across departments.
Work together as a team to win as a team. You’ll enjoy these internal relationships and your customers will be the big winners.
(Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting agendas every week for Sales Managers who subscribe to the sales meeting agenda service. This Friday, the sales team meeting agenda Work as a Team to Win as a Team will be delivered to our subscribers. Join us and start having better sales team meetings this week.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams, sales teamwork, team work, work as a team
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agenda ideas, agendas, free sales team meeting topics, performance, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting | No Comments »
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
So, now I am getting inspiration from beer ads! The ad says that fortune favors the bold and it supports the Meeting to Win message this week about Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose.
Top performers take risks. They risk losing deals or entire accounts by speaking up when clients are making bad decisions. They hold their ground during negotiations. They challenge a competitor’s offering. They demonstrate their value and then demand the right price. They walk away from bad deals. They get to decision makers. They risk offending gatekeepers. They ask their referral network to make introductions. They challenge strategy. They point out problems. They share solutions. They say no to non-selling activities. They care more about results than padded activity reports and inflated pipelines. They call higher in organizations.
Fortune favors the bold. Take a risk today – and tomorrow – and the next day. Play with passion.
Just Sell quote from Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th president of the United States on being bold.
(Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers who want to lead inspiring sales team meetings. Join us by subscribing today. Upcoming agendas include Playing to Win or Playing to NOT Lose, Work as a Team to Win as a Team, Lost in Translation, System Based Selling and Create Better Buying Experiences.)
Tags: CRM, energize sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in Account Management, agenda ideas, best practice, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, gatekeeper, sales meeting agenda, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
I’ve had many conversations lately about movement in the marketplace. Personally, I’ve been taking calls all week from business leaders moving forward on initiatives they’ve been sitting on for months. Customers are making moves, looking for solutions and ready to move forward. I love it! I can feel it in the air.
This week our focus has been on treating our existing customers like the gold that they are. Salespeople need to be proactive to ensure they stay part of the customer team as they forge ahead. One way to do that is to be visibly accountable. This means that salespeople need to proactively manage themselves so the client doesn’t have to. There are a few ways to do this.
First of all, set up a process for regular business reviews. I believe these should be conducted quarterly and formally. This means there should be a formal agenda that covers:
- A review of the original scope of work.
- The actual scope of work – what’s changed (something always does!) and what adjustments have been made. This topic ensures everyone is on the same page with the way the partnership has evolved.
- The successes and shortfalls. How to make the most of the successes and how to adjust to fix the shortfalls.
- An updated Needs Analysis. Find out what has changed in their business, priorities, etc. Uncover new opportunities.
- Next steps/Action Items
Customers should leave these business reviews feeling great about their investment with you. They don’t need to micromanage the partnership, you are doing that for them.
Secondly, get to know new people in the account regularly. Ask to speak to people who are impacted by or work with your solutions. Find out what they like, what they don’t, etc. Make sure they have your contact information. You are probably the only one talking to all involved! You will have an amazing perspective and be able to bring useful ideas to the table based on these relationships. Not to mention, your name will be mentioned in many conversations as if you are part of the team!
Then, provide regular emailed updates to senior decision makers. Often, once an account is won, the more senior decision makers move on to the next priority leaving functional people to manage the relationship. Often, the salesperson’s relationship with the real decision makers is harder to maintain and grow. To keep developing that relationship, send an update once a month or every 6 weeks hitting the highlights of recent events and successes. (You may be amazed at the places these emails will get forwarded.) They will appreciate it, feel informed and see you as a true partner and you’ll keep developing this important relationship.
Another way to stay visibly accountable is to put your bosses in front of the client regularly. Bring them to quarterly business reviews or other meetings. Make sure the client sees that your senior leadership team is aware of the work your companies do together. They will feel supported and important when they see the team behind you.
Demonstrate to your clients how important they are by holding yourself accountable in plain sight. They will see you as a valuable team member who takes initiative and ownership of results. You’ll be a dream employee they won’t want to see go.
To get sales team meeting agendas designed to develop your sales team and accelerate sales performance, visit Meeting to Win (http://www.meetingtowin.com/) and subscribe for weekly agendas. We love to work with Sales Managers who see the value of investing in their teams!
Tags: CRM, energize sales team, motivate sales team, new customers, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agenda ideas, customer meeting, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, meetings, performance, sales activity, sales management, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
(This Friday the Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agenda, 10 Things You Don’t Know, will be delivered to all our subscribers. We are focused on treating prospective customers AND existing customers like prospective customers. Get a new Sales Team Meeting Agenda EVERY Friday by subscribing to Meeting to Win Sales Team Meeting Agendas today.)
Most sales reps get to enjoy some long-term customer relationships. Too often sales reps take these customers for granted and settle into an account management mode. Account management can mean many positive things, but in this case, we’ll call it account maintenance. It is not enough to just maintain an account. Your customer signed on for more than that. This week’s Meeting to Win theme is treating existing customers like prospective customers by helping them identify and secure solutions to their problems and tools to get them results.
In our 10 Things You Don’t Know article, we suggested several ways to treat these existing customers like hot prospects. Here is another way.
Get a Fresh Set of Eyes on an Existing Account
Ask a team mate to coffee. Ask them to review your clients’ website before meeting with you. Ask them to pretend this client was a target account that they were trying to acquire as a client. Then get together with them for coffee and ask their initial ideas for pursuing this client. Then, tell them everything you know about the account, who you know at the account, your theories on what you don’t know and your history with them. Now, ask them what you are missing. Find out how they would move forward to help this client.
Guaranteed you’ll walk away with a fresh perspective on an old account. You and your client win when you take a fresh look at their business.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
- In your next sales team meeting, choose 1 existing account on the team that could use a fresh perspective. (Send an email to the team and ask them to nomimate their own accounts.)
- Choose one and let the team know the account name.
- Ask the team to research the account before the meeting.
- Ask the account owner to send a one-page overview of the account – what they know, who they know, history, etc.
- During the meeting, ask the Account Owner to share a 5 minute overview of the account that was not included in the pre-work.
- Ask the team to be the “fresh eyes” and share new ideas and perspective on the account.
- At the end of the hour, get a list of all the new ideas for the Account Owner.
- Account Owner should share what they will try from the list of new ideas.
Fieldwork Idea:
- Choose teams of 3 and, over the course of the next 3 weeks, each team should spend one hour per rep on one account per rep doing the same thing.
- Choose one rep’s account each week and get together for coffee, if possible. If not, do this on the phone.
- Each person on the team should end up with a list of fresh ideas and perspectives on one exisiting account.
- Get back together during a sales team meeting conference call and each rep should share the outcomes of gaining a fresh perspective on their exisiting account.
- What lessons did the team learn?
Enjoy the Fresh Eyes exercise. Join Meeting to Win to get interactive sales team meeting agendas for your sales team every week. We’d love to work with you!
Tags: CRM, existing customer, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in Account Management, CRM, New account, agenda ideas, agendas, best practice, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, sales activity, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »
