I was speaking recently at a conference on Sales 2.0 tools.  During the coffee break after my session I ended up in a conversation about sales enablement and sales playbooks. The conversation got derailed for a while as one particularly active participant wanted to debate the role of mobile and cloud technologies in the future of sales professionals. Seriously? I am not sure I understand how anyone would feel the need to ask that question. In my opinion mobile and cloud are as certain a part of our future as death and taxes – but maybe that’s just me.  Anyway, I am getting somewhat off the topic.  I say ‘somewhat’ only because the sales playbook discussion took a turn, and the debate centered on whether it was essential that a sales playbook was integrated with a company’s CRM.  (As you may know, we have spent a lot of time on this because of the work we do with Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook.)

Wasn’t it ok to have a defined playbook in a PDF could be linked to from a sales opportunity record?

Well, no!

For me that is almost the same as asking if it would be ok to have all of the contacts for an opportunity in a spreadsheet ‘linked’ to the opportunity record in the CRM.   It just doesn’t make any sense.

There are many facets to Sales Playbooks in general and this topic in particular – but I have addressed here the two most important that you should consider as it pertains to making sure that your sales playbook and your CRM system work optimally together.

1. Integration of Sales Playbook with the CRM System

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 the CRM system so when the sales person works with an opportunity, the playbook will always be present, just where it needs to be.  That way the playbook (if it is smart enough) can react to the stages of the sale, 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 hugely if it is ‘native’ on the Salesforce Platform.  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 Saleforce, the same performance as Salesforce, and all of the data captured within the playbook is inherently accessible to Salesforce reports, dashboards, and other applications. 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 sales person, 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.

2. Informs Sales Forecast Visibility

Salespeople spend about 2.5 hours each week on sales forecasting, and for most companies, the accuracy of sales forecasts leave a lot to be desired. In fact, based on recent research; companies who 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 who did define and execute their sales process well reduced the level of inaccuracy to 33%.  That is a 200% increase in sales forecast accuracy.

To maximize the impact of your sales playbook on the accuracy of your sales forecast, it must be integrated with the CRM and you should consider.

• Does the sales playbook incorporate intelligence that objectively monitors  or manages the close date of the sale? that is in the CRM? 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 sales person the difference between their opinion of when the deal will close, and a projected close date based on past behavior of winning sales cycle.

• 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 reps 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 when integrated with the CRM should help you to give those 2.5 hours back to the sales person, improve the accuracy of the forecast for each opportunity, and provide the sales manager with insight into the factors that will help her understand what she needs to do to make or exceed the quota for the team.

(Disclosure: My company, The TAS Group, is in the business of helping companies increase sales velocity using Dealmaker Smart Sales Playbook integrated with Salesforce.com.)

At The TAS Group, we just recently completed a global study of sales performance.  The full report will probably be available by late April.  If you want a copy email me ddaly (at) the tasgroup (dot) com.

The statistics are pretty revealing – so I thought I would share them with you now.

1. 33% of sales people made quota in the last reporting period

2. Only 52% of sales people say they can access the key players for a sale

3. 39% of sales professionals say they are not able to effectively uncover customer problems, and

4. 35% struggle with designing customer focused solutions

5. 59% of sales close as originally forecasted

6. Sales forecast accuracy jumps to 76% when sales methodology is applied well

7. When the Sales function contributes to company strategy, quota attainment is 15% higher than when Sales is not involved

8. Quota attainment is 25% higher when Sales and Marketing are aligned, and

9. Win Rate is 15% higher when Sales and Marketing work well together

10. 59% of sales reps are good at opportunity qualification

11. 32% of sales professionals do not develop competitive strategies for their opportunities

12. When competitive positioning is part of a company’s sales strategy, revenue increases by 30%

13. 44% of reps are able to maximize the value of a sales opportunity

14. Only 36% can maximize the value of their key accounts

15. Salesforce.com has the highest % of CRM users with adoption > 50%

16. TAS has the highest % of methodology users with adoption > 50% (We are very happy about this!)

17. When methodology is integrated with CRM sales teams are 35% more likely to achieve average quota over 75% (As you know this has been my mantra for a long time!)

18. The #1 reason why sales methodology is not used is that only some people use it.

19. 60% of companies use a defined sales process

20. Companies are 33% more likely to achieve average quota over 75% if they use a sales process.

We have analyzed all the data that we gathered – and it was a lot – and some of the insights are fascinating.  We are looking forward to getting this finished and published to share.

As I mentioned above – If you want a copy email me ddaly (at) the tasgroup (dot) com.

Regular readers will know that I am passionate about combining sales methodology with technology to make life easier for sales people.  One of the areas where I have seen lots of wasted time has been in Account Planning and Management.  So, I decided to do something about it and I’m excited to  let you know that my new book Account Planning in Salesforce is now available at your favorite online store. You can get an extract here, and buy the book here.  It should be less than $10 (I’m trying to make it very affordable) and proceeds go to Peter Gabriel’s WITNESS charity.

As I hope you would have come to expect, this is not a theoretical book – but is practical and marries methodology with technology to make effective account planning accessible to all sales professionals who care about taking care of their customer while they go about selling to them.  But this post is not meant to be a promo for the book.  I was very fortunate to have a number of people who are a lot smarter than me review the book while it was a work in progress, and I want to share some of their comments here – as I think they point to the many challenges that sellers face when seeking to maximize revenue from their major customers.

This is Account Planning that works – because it is fully integrated with salesforce.com. There has never been a time where customer focus has been more important.  As broad marketing becomes irrelevant, sales professionals need to treat their current customers as their marketplace; consider what the marketplace needs and then deliver true value.

My friend Matt Dixon, co-author of The Challenger Sale, was kind enough to review the work in progress.  Apart from commenting that this is the only business book that he has ever seen that quoted lyrics from Metallica! (more about that later), Matt’s take was that “[the book] grounds its recommendations in the context of modern B2B sales, where customers armed with massive amount of information and advice can afford to engage sales people later and later in the purchase decision … there are no short-cuts to getting this right.”  Matt knows this better than most I think.

When Bob Thompson of Customerthink read the book, he hit the nail on the head.  He was kind enough to provide this quote for me.  “All too often Account Planning is a once-a-year effort that gathers dust on the shelf. Use Donal Daly’s ACCOUNT PLANNING in SALESFORCE to help transform this critical activity into a usable, customer-centric approach to growing loyal relationships all year long.” I thank you Bob.  There is a recognition from those who know how it really works, that there are many hours wasted on developing account plans that are never used. (By the way, if you’re not familiar with Customerthink, you should go and have a look.  Bob curates some wonderful insights on his site.

Matt Cox over at HP told me that from his perspective “Account Planning is a core sales skill that requires a disciplined approach and ongoing care and maintenance.”  and of course he is right. When I spoke to Peter Jofriet, who runs Sales Excellence at Honeywell, he said that “account planning must live and breathe as part of how you run your business. It needs to become part of your culture, and should be integrated into your overall business cadence.”  This is a really critical observation. Account planning can be the new marketing for your large accounts.  If you are hoping that your marketing department is going to help you penetrate that key customer, then you’re likely headed for disappointment. Ask Peter, he knows. And he had nice things to say about the book as well.  I thank you Peter!

More than half of the sales professionals that I have spoken to acknowledge that they are not maximizing revenue in their accounts. Sales reps are leaving money on the table and they are not serving their customers well.  I am trying to help them solve those problems. This book, based on interaction with hundreds of sellers and their customers, describes how high-performing rockstar sales reps are successful at maximizing value in their strategic accounts, both for themselves and for their customers.

You can read more insights from some of the others who supported me along the way here. I am deeply honored by the caliber of people who were interested enough to share their thoughts.

And about those Metallica lyrics …

Account Planning is not always the most riveting subject, so a book about account planning isn’t guaranteed to be a page turner! Well, I tried to make it as consumable and enjoyable a read as possible.  I feel pretty confident in saying that this is probably the first and only book on account planning that includes a playlist to help you hum along as you develop your plan.  You will find songs here that you know (from the Beatles, Metallica and U2), some you may have forgotten (anyone remember Rose Royce?) and probably some new songs that you will not have heard before. I borrowed from the lyrics of these musical muses to illucidate some of the points I was trying to make.  Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters refers to Trust – and in Account Planning, it is true; without trust, nothing else matters.  I hope the playlist adds to your enjoyment when (if) you read the book.  I know it lessened the load when I was writing it.

Account Planning is a tremendously important endeavor. It drives revenue, increases customer satisfaction, aligns your organization, and provides incredibly gratifying moments when you can see the impact of your work – both for the customer, and for your company. I hope this book accelerates your journey. More info here.

Thank you.

There has been a lot a debate among the sales training / sales enablement community about The Challenger Sale from CEB’s Sales Executive Council.  Some of it has been cogent and balanced, but unfortunately a lot has been mud-slinging and poorly articulated or uninformed specious commentary that does not reflect well on the sales training industry. Most of the latter type has, probably predictably, come from those who might have good reason to be threatened by the seeming ubiquity or pervasiveness of TCS.  On the other hand, where measured arguments have been put forward, it seems that these originate more often from users, practitioners, or observers who acknowledge the value of TCS while wondering about its place in an overall sales eco-system.

I have read commentary from Linda Richardson, HRChally, Jonathan Farrington, Dave Stein, Tamara Schenk, Solution Selling, and others, and you can look at the links and judge for yourself who is engaging in productive debate, who is posturing to protect their own patch, and who is being downright unprofessional.   Methinks the latter doth protest too much!

Most of the anti-Challenger rhetoric seems to rail primarily against how the Sales Executive Council has presented Challenger to the market, and less about the substance of the TCS model, or the research behind its findings.  Many of the commentators take umbridge at SEC’s positioning of the findings as being new or noteworthy.  “There is nothing new or unique here” is a common cant.  Well, clearly that is not true: Otherwise TCS would not have captured the attention that is has, resonated as strongly with the marketplace, or evoked such a – sometimes vitriolic – response from those who feel threatened by it.

At The TAS Group, we faced similar criticism from some of the traditional sales training players when we introduced Dealmaker to the market.  We presented a view that effective adoption of methodology could only happen when supported by intelligent software and integrated into the daily workflow of the sales professional by combining the application of methodology with usage of the CRM. We were subsequently positioned by our competitors as only focused on technology, and we were questioned by the analysts as how we could maintain deep research in methodology and technology at the same time.  Well, that was six years ago, and the evidence suggests that we were not as misguided as some would have thought.   Now, although not everyone has the depth of technology resources that we do, everyone recognizes the need for software as an integral part of a sales performance system.  And, the advancements we have made in methodology during that time has served our customers very well.

I don’t think TCS is either perfect or a complete sales system, or a one-size-fits-all solution; nor do I believe that the folks at the Sales Executive Council think so either.  (By the way, I am struck by the fact that it is evident that many of those who are criticizing TCS had not spoken to the SEC before they expressed their views.)  A complete sales performance system requires everything from market planning to territory segmentation, account stratification, account management, opportunity management and sales process, all supported by skills and technology.

But TCS has a number of undeniable strengths.  It has done a better job of highlighting the need for greater sales and marketing alignment than many of its forerunners.  (I have written about that problem here, here, here, here, here, and here.)  With a level of clarity all too rarely seen in the industry, it has debunked the myth of the Relationship seller.  Where others represent it as arrogant that a sales person should bring insight, or being able to ‘teach’ the customer as being arrogant, I see it as a customer focused approach, and an acknowledgement that buyers are more informed and therefore the sales person has to prepare much more diligently.  It demands that the sales person work hard to understand their customer and the customer’s industry, and requires a level of intellectual capital that all customers should look for from their suppliers.   In my opinion, any effective sales person should be able to bring insights to her customer of what has worked elsewhere.  I think that is table stakes.

Through its membership community, SEC has an effective petri dish to test its approaches, before unleashing them on the market.  Their heritage in research is a matter of fact – not of opinion. While they still have a way to go, I would have hoped that constructive inclusion, a recognition of how TCS complements other methodologies, would have been the response, but sadly …

More importantly though, the success of Challenger – and it is unquestionably successful – points to a failure of traditional providers, particularly those who focus on sales skills.  The fact that TCS has been so quickly embraced points to a deficiency in the alternatives.  Otherwise why would there be a gap in the market for SEC?

Make no mistake.  SEC has done a remarkable job of positioning TCS in the market, and indeed is using the principles espoused by Dixon and Adamson in their book to effectively challenge the status quo.  Something is working – and the response of the detractors only validates the approach.

In June 2012, Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry appeared on the cover of Fortune magazine.  As Fortune reports it:

 Last May, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts flew to California from her London headquarters to introduce herself to an executive she thought could be critical to the future of her business: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. When the two met at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, they stood in the hall batting around ideas for 15 minutes before even sitting down. Ahrendts explained her vision: to create a company where anyone who wanted to touch the brand could have access to it. She just needed a digital platform to make it happen.

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Benioff sketched a diagram of how Burberry could become a “social enterprise,” overlaying technology like Salesforce, SAP, Twitter, and Facebook atop the entire company. (Benioff signed the drawing “Angela + Marc = LIKE,” and Ahrendts keeps the framed original, pictured below right, in her office.) “I told him, ‘I think I finally met someone who talks faster and has more energy than I do,’ ” she says. “We just connected.”

However, as anyone who attended any salesforce.com event between mid-2011 and 2012, physical or virtual, could tell you, you could see that Ahrendts’ new celebrity status is due in no part to the level of exposure given her by Benioff. It even got to the stage that Twitter contributors were wondering if she was going to wear ‘that white suit again’.  Benioff – certainly one of this era’s marketing geniuses – knows how to make his high-profile customers feel special – and knows, better than most, the value of the Customer Network Value.

In many cases customers are totally bypassing the early stages of the traditional buying cycle.  Rather than calling a company for information, they are instead joining forums on line, engaging in conversation on Twitter or Facebook, looking to people with ‘Klout’ or influence to guide them through the information gathering and evaluation phases of the buying cycle.

They look for recommendations from peers and others ‘like them’ to short-list potential suppliers, refine their requirements, and gain insight in the application of a vendor’s product that often surpasses that of the vendors sales person.

To care about your Customer’s Network Value, you must first care about your customer, and treat customer service, and every customer interaction as an extension of marketing.  Caring about your customers before they become customers is actually more difficult but increasingly important.

You can achieve this firstly by participating in the same networks in the Social Universe as the customer traverses the Contact phase of the buyer/seller transaction.  Then you need to monitor what is happening and respond to your customer during the Control phase, as that is where they can have most impact on your future customers.  In any case, if the customer wants to interact in the Social Universe, it is your job to facilitate that interaction.  It is increasingly becoming an implicit part of your promise to deliver – and you need to be prepared.

We need to recognize that our customers and prospects hang out somewhere, and that somewhere is increasing somewhere online in the Social Universe, where each is weaving their own tapestry with the threads of their network.

You really do want to be one of the threads!

Unless you want to become irrelevant, or unless you can consistently be the low-price provider servicing those who care only about price, then you need to be part of the ‘recommendation chain’. You must establish trust, and the customer must see you as someone more ‘like them’ than a representative of your company.  But, the threshold is high – because in the end, for new customers, you’re going to ask them to do business with you. Being ‘like them’ breaks down some barriers, but it’s not enough.  You must continually add more value in the Social Universe than you expect to get in return.  You’re looking to recoup the return on the influence you have developed online later.