Over the past few months, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with many high caliber business and sales consultants. They work with their clients in helping them determine effective sales strategies to combat the exigencies of a constrained economy.  These accomplished business professionals bring a wealth of knowledge and skills, honed over years of direct experience as practitioners, and amplified by proficiencies that have been refined through many client engagements. The services these seasoned sales warriors offer are many and varied, but broadly focus on proven methods to implement an effective sales process, creative ways to manage sales pipeline velocity, establish metrics for performance, better penetrate major accounts, or develop an effective senior executive engagement process.  I wanted to know what happened to their customers when they leave, after the engagement is over.

Through conversation with these mature, seasoned consultants, I couldn’t help but be impressed. With few exceptions, their passion for the success of their clients was almost palpable. As I learned more about their offerings, their client’s problems, and the sometimes complex environment in which they operated, it was clear that the client gained very significant benefit by having the consultant/trainer involved in their business.  If I were to judge – and that’s not my place – it seemed that the strategies they developed were solid, the plans they created well-considered, and they really understood the key sales execution areas where their clients should focus.  But this last point is where many were honest enough to admit to having problems.  How can you ensure sustained execution of the strategy/plan/model/technique?

One question that I asked evoked a deeply felt pain. “What happens when you leave?” was greeted with a slumping of the shoulders, a slow but considerable intake of breath, accompanied by an honest “Yep, that’s really a hard problem to solve” response.  Most expressed frustration that they had to restrain themselves from getting too involved.  Their job was to teach the client to fish, not to fish for them.  Others had developed methodologies for 30/60/90 day revisit programs to try to make the best practices they had taught stick. Many had invested time with the executives in their client companies to ensure that the new practices would have top-down support and reinforcement, and some had a formal approach to ‘knowledge transfer’ as the final stage of the client. None were satisfied with the results.

This is a hard problem to solve, and one that, at The TAS Group with our Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation platform, we’ve invested considerable resources in customer interactions, R&D and innovation to address.

There are a few factors to consider, and two myths to dispel if customers of sales consulting, sales training, or sales methodology are to gain the sustained benefit they deserve from their investment.

Myth 1: It’s All About Executive Sponsorship – Wrong

When I first got into this industry about five years ago, I was very surprised at the poor level of usage/adoption/compliance with sales methodologies. In my discussions with the vendors, the most common reason (excuse) given for the poor adoption was that senior executives didn’t get behind the program.  In my opinion that’s a cop-out (by the vendor). Of course executive sponsorship is important for any initiative that involves behavior change, but if the end-user (the sales person) sees value in using the tools their company has invested in, then surely the role of the executive is  one of nurturing and guidance rather than being the ogre on the hill waving the big stick.

One of the greatest behavior changes over the last 10 years has been how we seek out information.  I remember listening to General Colin Powell speak at a conference a few years ago.  He was telling a story about when, early one morning, while he was still at home, he needed to get details on a foreign government with whom he was to negotiate a matter of global economic significance. He, of course, had access to all of the American government’s information systems.  His quip “I could have logged in to our secure systems, but that would have taken a while – so I asked Larry and Sergey” is a good illustration of how we all look for information.  Larry and Sergey, of course, referred to the founders of Google.

As we all modified our information gathering behavior – there wasn’t a lot of executive sponsorship required.  That’s because Google is really easy to use, and the return you get is greater than the effort you expend.   And that brings me to my next myth.

Myth 2: You Must Force Adoption and Compliance – Wrong

When you start out any change initiative with an acceptance that you’re going to need to force compliance, you’re headed for a car crash.  It’s as simple as that. When John doesn’t do something, It’s either because John doesn’t want to, or he’s not able.  If he doesn’t want to it’s either because he doesn’t understand the benefit to him, or from John’s perspective, it’s too hard – the return doesn’t justify the effort.

Here’s a thought.  How about trying to design a solution for the sales person that entices adoption, rather than having to force compliance. I think that’s what Google would do – and their approach is working ok so far. (By the way, the vision that guides our methodology and software development at our R&D center, at The TAS Group, is one where we envision the world’s sales organizations waking up every morning with a spring in their step and a constant thought – I want to make more commission today – best load up Dealmaker!). Sustained usage happens when you win the effort/reward battle, and when the new behavior becomes a natural part of the user’s day. When a sales person gets more back from the system (methodology, CRM etc.) than they put in; then that’s the first battle won, and the behavior is automatically reinforced.

As with most problems worth solving, this is a hard one.  Most sales people intellectually understand the value of a sales methodology.  The work done by the aforementioned sales consultants and trainers is appreciated, and sales people, as well as sales management, can absolutely see that adherence to best practice makes sense – and makes money.

But traditional techniques;  paper/Excel/Flash models of methodologies or processes don’t work in today’s world.  The most dangerous of these approaches are the Flash models that exist in the market today.  These masquerade as Sales 2.0 tools, and for the most part are just a pretty software version of the traditional tools, that don’t allow allow customization for a business, provide only light CRM integration (if any), don’t add any intelligence in the context of the specific sales opportunity being worked, or provide meaningful analytics from which the system can learn.  This is an opportunity missed. A fundamentally different approach is required to entice adoption, and add true value to the sales person.  (I will set out my view of the optimum blueprint in a future post during September.)

I’m happy to say that the awareness of the need for a better solution to the “What happens when you leave?” question is well progressed, and that we are working with a small number of the high caliber sales consultants/trainers who want to ensure that the benefit they provide to their clients lives on after the engagement is complete.  For our part we will continue to try to raise the standard, and either directly, or through our growing partner community, deliver sustained customer value and true return on investment for our customers.

For a customer’s perspective – see my previous post.

Sometimes I despair about the message some of my traditional competitors give to the sales effectiveness market.  I’m responding to a blog from Miller Heiman, one of the oldest providers of sales training, one of the best known names in the industry, and a company that should – in my opinion – be providing leadership.   One blog post starts … “Product Innovation as  Growth Strategy is Sexy but …” and then goes on to relegate the value of product innovation to little more than a distraction.   A follow up post adopts an almost ‘King Canute like’ attitude to the application of technology to supporting and automating the selling process. (Legend has it that King Canute the Great, seated on this throne on the seashore, waves lapping at his feet, commanded the sea to advance no further.)

Technology and innovation plays a very important role in the advancement of any profession.  Consider the advances in productivity, and improvements in customer experience, delivered by innovations in technology or business process, from companies as diverse as Salesforce.com, Southwest Airlines, Apple, Google, GE, IKEA or Nordstrom. These companies’ efforts drive their competitors to improve and raise their game – all to the ultimate benefit of the individual or corporate consumer.

The use of technology and innovation is extremely light as it has been applied to sales effectiveness solutions.  Maybe this is because it’s a hard problem to solve, though few things worth doing are easy.  Perhaps it’s because sales is not always an exact science, or  technology might be seen to de-value the attendant artistry. I would suggest that technology can liberate creative intuition by removing drudge and providing a foundation for more informed judgment.

Trivializing the value of automation that improves productivity of sales does the sales professionals a disservice. Instead of trying to stem the flow of new ideas, creative approaches or new thinking, we in the sales effectiveness industry should continuously be seeking innovative products and services to help our customers succeed.

There’s a problem that has to be solved.  Sales is the engine of any company, and on a macro sense, sales is the growth catalyst of the economy. Getting sales working, and working in a sustained, predictable and effective way is critical to any company or economy’s success.  Since 2005, as CEO of The TAS Group, my goal has been to fundamentally improve how companies adopt and approach sales training and sales methodologies, by leveraging technology.  I believe that there is a huge benefit to be gained by our customers, and that we can deliver dramatic and sustained value.  Most sales professionals understand the value of applying sales methodology best practice to their selling efforts. However, as with many learning endeavors, learning without application produces only a Hawthorne effect with short-term un-sustained behavior change.

As you can see in the graphic (click to enlarge), the typical level of knowledge retention after a sales training event falls off dramatically (87%) after 30 days without effective reinforcement.  We help companies solve that problem with our Dealmaker Virtual Learning System for ‘knowledge transfer’, and the complete Dealmaker Sales Performance Automation platform for ‘knowledge application’ and ‘knowledge reinforcement’.  Rather than force compliance (by the salesperson) we work really hard at designing solutions that entice adoption.  Our goal is that the sales person wakes up in the morning and says, “Today I want to use my sales methodology in Dealmaker, because it will help me win that deal.”

Technology on its own is rarely the answer.  It’s certainly not for the doctor reading your cancer test results, or for your pilot flying you home. But where would the doctor or pilot be without the results of the related innovation in their fields?  In the field of sales effectiveness, a useful analogy may indeed be the pilot.  His CRM system stores the data in the black-box in the plane, but his Sales Performance Automation system shows him the flight-path.  It’s the map to his destination. The flight-path removes the need for him to figure out each turn he has to take, but it frees him to add the value that only human interaction can bring – and yes, it’s automated.

At The TAS Group we focus on helping companies solve three really important problems; (1)  Increased Revenue, (2) Improved Sales Forecast and Metrics and (3) More Effective Sales Execution.   We think these are critical for any company to get  right, and we invest a lot of time in working with our customers to help them do that.  At the same time we invest heavily in research and development in both core sales methodology intellectual property and supporting technology to help make our customers more successful. In fact, we spend millions of dollars every year in our R&D center to find better ways for our customers to address these three important challenges.

We guide our customers to be more innovative in what they do, and where appropriate to leverage technology to increase the effectiveness and productivity of their sales organizations.  Yes, we innovate – and we advise our customers to innovate.  We make no apologies for innovation, or for automating the tasks that we feel can be automated for the sales professionals or their managers.  It’s working for our customers – and that’s our goal.

We believe all companies who profess to increase sales productivity have both a commercial and moral obligation to embrace change in this fast moving world and seek and to continuously innovate in the service of their customers.  It’s not something to be afraid of, and we’re happy to help any company in our industry (competitor or not) who wants to join with us in raising the standard of sales effectiveness solutions.

The original posts to which I refer are here and here.

If you’re interested in knowing how to determine the actual value of your sales pipeline, this might be worth a read.

In a previous post I set out what I consider to be the important elements of a sales pipeline management system.  That’s all about knowing how much you need to have in your pipeline to achieve your revenue target. Clearly, if you don’t have enough opportunities in the sales pipeline, you won’t make your revenue target.  Using a measure we call the Pipeline Value Factor, you can calculate the value, number and spread of deals that you need – but that’s still not enough.  The health of your sales pipeline is a function of the momentum, age, activity and velocity of opportunities.

Most pipeline reports measure only the pipeline value or volume, by adding up the value of each opportunity in each stage, and coming up with a total pipeline value.  However, unless those deals are being actively worked, it’s likely that the pipeline report is giving you an inaccurate, or at least incomplete, view.

When we’re measuring the true worth of a pipeline we consider the status of each deal, at each stage in the funnel.  We classify each deal as Active, Stalled, or Inactive. Depending on the sales-cycle and the overall cadence of the business, the status is determined by when the deal was last worked. If, for example, your sales-cycle is 90 days, it would be reasonable to assume that a deal that has not been worked for more than 60 days is Inactive.   If the sales person has placed that deal at one of the later stages in the pipeline, then there clearly is a misrepresentation of the value of that stage in the funnel.  As we all know, opportunities never stand still; either they move forward towards closure, or they regress towards ‘no decision’ or loss.

So, how do we do this?  In our case, as you might expect, we use one of the pipeline analytics reports in the Performance Coach module of Dealmaker – our Sales Performance Automation platform.

In the graphic below, you can see that this sales person, Lynne Clooney, has a total pipeline value of $11,499,800 – the number represented in the bottom right corner.  When you look more closely you also see that only $5,980,000 is Active, $3,670,000 is Stalled, and $1,849,800 is Inactive. In this report Stalled deals are those that have not been worked in more than 30 days, and Inactive deals have not been worked for more that 60 days.

On the face of it Lynne’s pipeline isn’t bad.  We know that she has a quota of $2.5m, and with nearly 5 times that in the funnel, you could be forgiven for thinking that she’s in good shape.  However, the sales cycle at Lynne’s company is 90 days, and we can tell from this report that there is nearly $5m in her pipeline that she has not worked on in the last 30 days.  Should I be concerned about that?

More critically, we can see that of the $1.8m that’s recorded at Inactive, there are deals worth $320k in Verbal Order, and $240k in Acquisition.  With these being the two last stages of funnel, we might be expecting them to close soon – but that’s surely not going to happen if they’re not being worked. Time to review the plan, or determine if in fact we’ve lost the deals, and they should be removed from the funnel.

Getting this kind of insight provides considerable actionable data to help the sales person.  Frequently, if deals are Inactive, it points to a lack of urgency on behalf of the customer, or an inability on behalf of the sales person to identify or create a compelling event, where she can demonstrate to the customer the value of making a decision now.  In either case, it should point to an opportunity for Lynne’s sales manager, or marketing department, to create an initiative or program to help move the deals.  In other cases, it just highlights that the sales person has not recorded as sales as lost or disqualified – but then everyone is working on an assumption that she has enough in her pipeline – and that not good for anyone.

Where deals are Stalled, our experience would indicate that there is some obstacle that is causing difficulty for the sales person.  This is where the sales managers should prove their worth.  It’s time to coach or brainstorm to figure out how to apply the resources of the organization to help the sales person.

This is the first in a series of posts about Pipeline Management and Analytics.  I will start with what I consider to be the immutable laws of pipeline management.  At the end of this post – after the 10 laws – I include a graphic of the Dealmaker Pipeline Snapshot, that we use here at The TAS Group, and with many of our customers, to effectively manage the sales pipeline.

1. Maintaining a strong sales pipeline, with enough qualified opportunities at each phase in the pipeline, is the only way to avoid the quarter-end crunch.
2. Pipeline Velocity is a lot more important that Pipeline Volume
3. Your pipeline is a better predictor of the medium and long-term health of your business than your sales forecast – and they are two very different indicators.
4. Having too many stages in the pipeline is counter-productive. Six is the optimum number of stages in the pipeline.
5. It is futile to determine the value of a pipeline by multiplying the value of each opportunity by the probability of it closing. You rarely get a % of a deal.
6. You can’t depend solely on marketing to fill the funnel. You must generate your own leads. If you don’t look constantly for new opportunities, you lose control over your destiny.
7. A healthy pipeline will have the right blend of deals, in terms of size. If you want to fill a barrel with rocks and maximize the usage of the capacity of the barrel, you have to fill the gaps between the rocks with stones or pebbles. It’s the same with your pipeline.
8. Pipeline stages have no inherent value in terms of deal progression.  It’s only the customer related actions tied to each stage that gives meaning to the progression of deals through the pipeline. Clear deliverables (based on evidence of customer actions) must be linked to each stage.
9. You need an algorithmic measure for each stage of the pipeline to determine whether you have enough opportunities at each stage. Consider the time to close, the probability of closure, and the target revenue to calculate the value you need.
10. Deals that are inactive (have not been worked on for more than 60 days) should be cleared out of the sales funnel and sent back to marketing.  Otherwise you’re given a false sense of the value of your sales pipeline.