Thursday, May 31, 2007

90% of Marcom is never used by Sales

Sales people are being told repeatedly to sell strategically, identify pain, differentiate, sell value, avoid discounts...but in addition to sales processes, selling methodologies and CRM technology, with what "intelligence" do we equip them?

If "Up to 90% of marketing collateral is never used by sales" (American Marketing Association) is true, what selling tools do sales people really want?
A CSO Insights report among almost 1300 companies shows that the selling information sales people want is intelligence oriented rather than promotional.

SWOTs, Competitive Analysis, Objection Handling insights, User References, Case Studies and Account Planning are considered the most wanted, while most keep being pushed with Brochures and Presentations.
An easy access to the much wanted intelligence documentation is among the added value sales people can get from CRM systems, while increasing its adoption rate.
Add to it the capability of some CRMs of tagging documents, wikis, measuring the number of downloads and "stars" ranking by the users themselves and we are getting closer to a shared knowledge mechanism of enriching our corporate "selling IQ"- a valuable differentiating asset.

Face to face time is probably the most expensive selling asset. How many times we see salespeople coming back to the office only to chase information within the organization? How much of it are repetitive questions?
In several of our CRM consultancy projects we asked international sales channels about their daily pains in selling, to rediscover their desire of cross communicating with other sales people to learn, share and benchmark. Unfortunately some companies still stick to the "star" configuration of communicating between the headquarters and each sales channel individually, while isolating them from sharing and enriching each other. What a waste...!

“The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away” Walter Wriston (1919 – 2005), former chairman of Citicorp.
Isn't that person the sales person and our challenge to facilitate it?

Friday, May 4, 2007

Gross Profit Erosion?

No business is immune against "commoditization".

Buyers are measured by costs reduction while (weaker) sales people leverage on price discounts to achieve revenue goals - particularly when their commission is at risk (usually by the end of the quarter).

Professional buyers exploit it too. Even if not ready to place an order, they might "negotiate" an order - only as a starting point for an eventual future price negotiation.

This can be avoided by VALUE SELLING training - part of our SALES ENGINEERING & CRM PROGRAM, which include among others: testing techniques of readiness to place an order, avoiding multiple price negotiations with non decision makers, just to mention a few....

Volume never compensates for price discounts.

SHOW ME YOUR GROSS PROFIT, AND I'LL TELL YOU HOW WELL YOU SELL VALUE

1. Remember: customers do not buy on price only, unless you consent to it

2. Improve your Value Selling skills: as price pressure grows, learning how to sell value becomes a surviving skill.

3. Add Gross Profit to your KPI (Key Performance Indicators): if you use a CRM, embed it on the pipeline dashboards graphs.

4. Monitor gross margin performance of your sales force as an indicator of "VALUE SELLING" training needs.

5. Automate a discount authorization workflow in your CRM

CRM (Customer Relation Management) enables managing your sales and marketing processes. Beside being a useful technology, adopting CRM implicates changes in the sales management culture, as it drives sales from an "art" to a discipline.
Important: A. Bergman Ltd. does not represent CRM vendors to allow unbiased advisory services

Learn more on SALES ENGINEERING & CRM PROGRAM: call (Israel) 09-9502066 to schedule a meeting

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

So you thought you were selling Product Value...

What does your customer really buy?
We usually focus on our customer dilemmas related to the value he can get from our solution, our service and his resulting payback - and that is what we try to sell...
But actually his buying decision is heavily influenced by additional parameters not related to the product benefits at all.



Solution, People and Company are among the major ingredients of the package our customers buy. The weight of each of them may vary - but one thing is clear: they shape the buyer's decision.

Managing the 3 components of value can obviously provide the additional differentiation needed to win over your competition, but how do you solve the above dilemmas of your buyer?

- Who is responsible in your company to develop those value ingredients?
- What selling tools do you need to deliver those messages?
- When in the selling process are they most needed?

Think about it...!