Archive for sales enablement
Product Launch Planning: Sales Channel and Sales Cycle Complexity
Posted by: | CommentsAs it relates to your sales channel and channel partner readiness, there are two things to consider when developing your own product launch time line. First is the size of your sales channel. The second is the complexity of the sales cycle. By focusing on the sales channel and channel partners you address what is typically the most time consuming and riskiest part of a successful product launch.
Size and of Your Sales Channel and Channel Partners
Get your sales channel and channel partners ready for product launch is often the most critical and time consuming part of product launch. You can deliver the best promotional programs on the planet but if the sales channel and your channel partners aren’t ready (or haven’t embraced the new offering) your success in the market could be severely impacted.
The size of the sales channel and channel partners has a direct relationship to the amount of time it takes to prepare it for launch. Let me illustrate.
When the sales channel is limited to 6 direct salespeople in one office, you can get them together over lunch. But when the sale channel is a combination of direct salespeople and channel partners scattered across three continents you have to plan ahead. Sometimes months in advance.
Let’s say that Acme Software has a direct sales channel of 300 salespeople in North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. They are in 15 countries and speak equally as many languages. Additionally there are channel partners in 10 other countries.
In the case of Acme Software you may need to start the product launch planning process of sales enablement training 6 months in advance of the target launch date just to coordinate training dates. If you have the added constraint of not being able to get everyone together in one place at one time, consider traveling to them or conducting sales enablement training online.
The Complexity of the Sales Cycle
The complexity of the sales cycle can introduce another dimension into your product launch planning. Products that are relatively simple to understand and sell, lend themselves to a much easier sales enablement training regiment and therefore a shorter planning horizon. On the other hand complex products take longer to understand and require much more involvement from buyers before a purchase decision can be made require a longer planning horizon.
Complex sales cycles require much more training about the problems addressed, who is impacted within the buyer’s organization, and what will they need to know in order to make a recommendation to buy.
Let’s build on our Acme Software example. Assume Acme is launching a new solution and for the first time will introduce to the channel a product with a complex sales cycle. Management is anticipating a 9 to 12 month sales cycle with no fewer than 8 to 10 people from the customer’s organization to be involved in making a decision to buy.
We’re presented not only with a new product to launch but a change in the way our sales channel will sell. This introduces risk. In order to minimize risk we may have to consider sales enablement training a year in advance by focusing on the problem, the market, buyers, and how they buy.
Another consideration here worth mentioning is sales culture. It’s not uncommon to see a sales culture where it’s OK to sell what’s not yet available. It’s another opportunity to introduce risk. Only this time the risk is about negatively affecting current sales before product launch. When we start sales enablement training we may run the risk that salespeople start talking about the new product immediately and inadvertently stop the deals they are working on today.
While I’m a strong advocate of a sales culture what sells what we have, I’m also a realist when it comes to long, complex sales cycles. If we wait until the product is announced we’re starting from scratch to build a pipeline. If we have a sales culture that sells futures, we start building a pipeline for the new product but run the risk of reducing the size of the pipeline for current products. Sometimes we’re in a no win situation. Err on the side of getting the sales channel and channel partners prepared to sell and leave the problem of selling futures to the VP of Sales and the CEO to resolve.
What are you struggling with?
Let me know by leaving me a comment below or sending me an email at ddaniels@pragmaticmarketing.com.
Why Asking Sales What They Need from Marketing is a Bad Idea
Posted by: | CommentsA cardinal sin of a marketer is to ask the sales team what they need to be competitive. The response to that question elicits a range of requests, often unrelated to the realities of the market.
Recently, two independent reports confirmed for me a trend I’ve been seeing for years: that sellers have far less control over how products are sold than they believe, and it’s buyers that are increasingly making up their minds before contacting a supplier.
MarketingSherpa published a B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey that reported that B2B sales cycles are getting shorter.
The MarketingSherpa survey correlated lower deal prices to shorter sales cycles, but I believe something more significant is happening.
The Corporate Executive Board published a study reporting that…
“Buyers are not contacting suppliers until they are, on average, 57% of the way through their purchase process —meaning they have already determined their needs, completed due diligence, and have even begun to do some comparison shopping.”
Given this market dynamic, asking the sales team what they need would be a foolish exercise and a waste of company resources. In the end, the sales team would get what they asked for, but not get what they need to be competitive.
Customer engagement starts well before first contact with a salesperson and they are much further along in their purchase decision. Whether the prospect makes contact or not will largely be determined by the information provided to the buyer, the company’s reputation, and market visibility. The marketing team, therefore, plays a decisive role in helping prospects with needs determination and due diligence.
Update: Additional insight from Beth Negus Viveiros over at Chief Marketer
“Recent Corporate Executive Board research shows that B2B customers may look at up to 10 sources of information about potential purchases prior talking to a vendor. Many of these sources are typically not supplier related. In a survey of 1,900 B2B customers, word of mouth was cited by 72% of respondents, while 62% cited non-supplier blogs and 47% cited trade journals.”
4 Things B2B Marketers Must Do in 2012
Posted by: | CommentsFor many B2B marketers 2011 was a challenging year. Given the current fuzzy economic climate 2012 will be no walk in the park. You will have another year of justifying every expense, every marketing programs. There are 4 things you can do to make 2012 a great year for yourself.
Get Acquainted With Your Market
Too many B2B marketers know so little about the markets they serve. They know a lot about their products, but they know very little about the problems they solve for buyers. Do you talk about buyers from your point of view (features in your products) or from their point of view (their problems you solve). There is no way you can gain knowledge of your buyers by sitting in your office or talking to your salespeople or resident subject matter expert. You need to get out of your office and interact with real potential buyers, in the wild, in their native habitat.
Make a commitment to have a conversation with 5 buyers each month. Develop Buyer Personas for buyers you are having trouble reaching or connecting with. Encourage your marketing colleagues to doing the same.
Get to Know Your Sales Channels
As you develop a deeper understanding of your buyers, you understand what they value and how to effectively communicate to them. What about the people who sell your products? You can’t assume they have the same understanding of buyers. Salespeople focus on individual transactions. You need a perspective on the entire market.
Make a commitment to do 4 “ride alongs” each month. Instead of complaining that your salespeople don’t use the presentations you develop for them, find out why because there is a reason. Why do salespeople eagerly sell some products but ignore others?
Get Clarity on What Your Management Cares About
B2B marketers complain that their management team changes priorities. Maybe the problem is a lack of clarity on how management is keeping score. A “do this, not that” reaction stems from a lack of confidence that the marketing team is tracking toward the right goal. Hint: generating more “leads” is not a goal management cares about. They care about selling more stuff.
Understanding management goals helps you prioritize marketing projects and gives you a firm footing to push back on requests that don’t support the goals.
Make a commitment to meet with members of your management team to document their most important goals for 2012. Then meet with your marketing team to translate those goals into actions. Let’s face it. You’re marketing some products that shouldn’t see the light of day and others that desperately need your help.
Measure, Test, and Measure Again
When you understand the goals that management cares about, you can relate everything that your marketing team does to those goals. There is no guesswork. A missing ingredient is demonstrating how the marketing team is supporting those goals. Measure everything and amplify those things that are working.
Test everything: different landing pages, different copy, different images, different messages. Lather, rinse, repeat. Build testing into everything you do.
Make a commitment to choose a small set of meaningful metrics that demonstrate how you are delivering against the goals your management team cares about. If the care about revenue then you should be reporting on metrics that support revenue (growth in the pipeline, market share, customer renewals, etc.)
Why do you have to trick customers into buying?
Posted by: | CommentsIf development builds a product the market wants and marketing connects the solution to customers, the job of selling should become infinitely easier. Seth Godin put it nicely in a recent post…
The goal of a marketer ought to be to make it so easy to be a salesperson, you’re merely an inviter. The new marketing is largely about this–creating a scenario where you don’t even need salespeople.
Are your sales people inviting customers to buy or are they selling?
SWAT Team Approach: Introducing New Products to Established Sales Teams
Posted by: | CommentsYou are responsible for launching a new product and you have an established (perhaps large) global sales team. The board of directors has high expectations the new product and if you nail it, you have a shot at a big promotion.
The risks are high. You have two reasonable options. Option A is to roll it out to the entire sales force at one time. Seems logical. Get it into the hands of as many sales people as possible and magic will happen. Option B is to do a controlled introduction by using a small but highly focused sales team.
With Option A a significant risk is that the new product will get lost in the portfolio. Your sales guys may already have more products they can sell than they can keep track of. Couple that with the fact the new product requires a different sales approach, calling on a different buyer. It’s critical to get a beachhead early on to build sales velocity.
The SWAT team approach is more conservative. Take two salespeople and a sales engineer (technical presales) and have them dedicated to the new product for a limited period of time. Consider the expected length of the sales cycle and start there. Conduct sales enablement and then provide very close sales support. As deals close, the other salespeople will take notice.
By containing the risk within the SWAT team you have the flexibility to make adjustments as you get market feedback. Once the patterns of a successful sale are revealed you can roll out the new product to the rest of the sales force, hopefully with a few success stories. You’ll have refined the sales tools and understand which buyers get involved in a buying decision.
A bonus is that you’ll have two salespeople and a sales engineer who are the ‘go to’ guys for the rest of the sales team.
Sales velocity webinar – October 16
Posted by: | CommentsI’m delivering a webinar on Friday, October 16 at 10am Pacific time titled “Product Launch Readiness: Planning for Sales Velocity”. Click here to register. Hope you can make it – I’m expecting lots of good questions!
Who does the CEO trust for market information?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen CEOs want a briefing on the market they often turn to the VP of Sales to get the information they’re looking for. Why don’t they turn to the VP of Marketing? Afterall it is the marketing department, right?
Your marketing team is too internally focused
It’s not because the VP of Sales is smarter, or has more experience, or is better at politics. It’s because the VP of Marketing doesn’t have a pulse on the market and is too consumed with the day-to-day tactics of marketing stuff. She may be a brilliant manager and her team may execute with stunning precision on marketing tactics, but her team is so internally focused they have become disconnected with what’s really going on in the market.
The CEO knows this and therefore realizes the fastest way to get an answer is to consult with the VP of Sales. The rationale is that since the sales team is regularly engaged in the market, they should have a real-time perspective of what’s happening. And the VP of Sales knows having the CEO’s ear means greater influence and power.
The CEO is getting the wrong picture
Unfortunately the CEO isn’t getting a true picture of the market. Why? Because the picture the sales team paints is a reflection of their most recent interactions with prospects. This isn’t a status of the market, it’s situational awareness based on a snapshot in time and a function of the limited number of eyes and ears engaged in selling.
It’s not that I’m bashing salespeople. Far from it. My livelihood is dependent on my salespeople’s success. However, we shouldn’t expect salespeople to be experts at markets. We expect them to be good a developing relationships that lead to a sale. Their focus is tactical by definition, which is a good thing if we find revenue and profit important.
Change the game
To be an equal player at the table the VP of Marketing needs a new approach. Stop wasting time, resources and energy on tactical activities that aren’t moving the ball down the field and start becoming more strategic in your approach.
- Don’t rely solely on secondary research to support your most important decisions. Real breakthroughs are made by understanding your market in the first person.
- Require each of your team members to get out into the market on a regular basis, write up what they learn, and share it with the rest of the team. Make the activity an important part of their compensation.
- Become the experts on buyers, buying criteria and the buying process. Require each person on your marketing team to own and evolve 1 buyer persona profile.
- Conduct sales enablement training based on buyers not on product features
- Do not rely solely on salespeople to give you the pulse of the market. Their last interaction will likely be their perception of the entire market.
On a weekly basis, how much time does your team dedicate to tactical marketing activities (status quo) versus getting an understanding of the market (game changer)?
You can start small and still be effective. What can you do today to free up a few hours a week to get out into the market?
