Winning Sales Organisations - WSOs

I want to share something with you. I just came home from a short seminar with Robert B. Miller, one of the founders of Miller Heiman, the Sales Performance Company. I got an invitation from my business contact, Vidar Top, and decided to give it a shot. It was about success in Solution sales, rather that product sales. You decide if it was worth it.

Bob talked about B2B sales. And complex sales. How you as a sales person should understand how your key accounts or new business ackuisitions buy from you. How it involves different layers in the organisations and how each layer involves more people. Most of them can say no to you, but recent years the power of saying yes has rised to the top in organisations. Do you know who that is in your hot prospects or even key accounts? Bob´s company also performs a study to understand what the high performers do better. In the industry, in the region or even your company, you have high performers or Top Guns. Bob wonders why do not all companies resarch and implement these best practises into their own organisation. Some companies do, and very ofte the best companies out there are best because thay always search for ways of improvement. It is all about improving sales quality.

Winning Sales Organisations - WSOs
The survey according to Bob defines the winners as thos companies who have:
20% growth revenue
20% growth in average account billing
20% growth in new account ackuisition
Only 7% of the 6000+ companies go into this category (so there is room for improvements)


Areas where these companies stand out I would summarise in the following:

1. Customer focus - Do we know what the customer thinks of our solution? Long term customer relationship is the most important thing. Keep your Key Accounts. Understand their business better than themselves.
2. Opportunity creation - Why are we different? Why do we win? Why do customers buy from us? Most industries are suffering (vendor point of view) from commoditisation - they all look alike. You need to think outside the box, what can I bring to the table, and do the customer see this as being benefitial to him. Think in terms of individualisation rather "one size fits all". Know your Value Proposition. It used to be: Product - Feature - Benefit. Now it is more like: Benefit ONLY if it solves a specific problem in the eyes of the customer. You need to understand what the customer is trying to fix, accomplish or avoid to be successful in selling. And most importantly you need to standardise a way of qualifying your leads. The cost of selling is so high so you need to win fast or loose fast. You need to know when to stop investing in large deals. You have Good sales, Better sales and Best sales: Only a proper template for for where we do our best sales and what is common for our best large accounts. Find your companys Sweet spot, so to say.
3. Opportunity management - Be with your key accounts. Get the pulse of their business. Even though you don´t get business right now, it might be 6 months down the line.
4. Relationship management - Lear to listen. Wiat for the right moment for your own message.
5. Sales management - Managing people change over time. What was good when your were your might not apply today. Do not cap bonuses, do not force too much policies, and understand why your best performers succeed. There is no such thing as discounts....
6. People - Leverage talent. Let your your salesstaff shadow the more experianced. It takes some gut to leard selling to executives.
7. Reinforcement and support -
8. Management executives - Understand when during the year executives make desicions. When is the right stragetgi time. Get in that timeslot before it all gets known publicly. In stead of waiting for their RFT (tender document), help them write the need analysis. Remember that high cost solutions are decided upon by top ranked executives. Make shure your executives are involved in the case at the right time with their own level. Just get your best or right resource for that. Top executives today need to spend between 20% and 50% in face to face contact with their key accounts.

A small hint for all of you at the very end. Having a short executive meeting. Ask what you want more from your sales people, and what you want less of. The shut up for 20 minutes. Your client starts talking, and the answer you make at the end, might well give you a handshake at that moment, not even telling how your are going to fix their problem.

And here is a free tip on improving your sales.

Good luck, and thanks Bob.