Finding the decision maker and getting them to respond can be one of the hardest things a sales rep faces during the sales cycle.  Sales intelligence data can give you insights on who the decision maker might be, what questions to ask, and how to respond to his or her questions. However, you can’t expect to find the decision-maker easily. You must employ tactful strategies and ask questions to qualify that person as the budget holder or if he or she is just a user or influencer that wants your solution, but can’t sign on the doted line.

The decision maker is usually a VP- or C-level employee that likely won’t be using your solution, but the people reporting to him or her will manage and work with the solution. Sales reps first need to get three types of authorities on-board: the user, the influencer and the decision maker. The decision maker holds the key to the budget and has the power to say yes or no.

These executives are typically the hardest to identify and contact. If someone refers you to someone else, the person you were referred to is usually the decision maker. If the person you contact responds saying the solution is a great fit, they’re probably not the decision maker, but rather the influencer or user who needs or wants your solution. Also, if you get pointed to the same person multiple times, than they are usually the decision maker. Contacting all three is a must, but putting more energy towards finding the decision maker and aligning their business needs with your solution is most critical.

Decision makers want specific evidence of previous success so they can clearly understand how your solution is going to solve their business problem. They need to see a measurable ROI and want reference data in order to identify how the solution can affect their bottom line. If you can or have determined that the decision maker has a budget, you’re one step closer to qualifying a prospect. But, for the prospect to meet the necessary BANT criteria, you need to have answered two out of the three remaining criteria. Using sales intelligence data can decrease your research time in trying to find the prospect’s business problems, what people’s titles and functions are, and whether or not your solution is budgeted.

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- Mark Kilens
mark.kilens @ salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

Before you start the relationship building process with prospects, you need to identify which of your prospects are hot and which ones are not. Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need and Time) criteria, you can better qualify what leads you should go after. Originally developed by IBM, BANT criteria can help you determine if there’s a budget, who holds the authority regarding the purchasing decision, their business needs, and the timeframe for the implementation. A sales rep needs to fill in three of those four criteria in order for a lead to be a sales opportunity. If sales reps can do this, they won’t be potentially wasting time with a lead that might have a need but no budget, or one that has a budget but the timing isn’t right.

Determining if a prospect has room for your solution in their budget is a critical step to closing a sale. The budget qualifying process usually falls into three categories: the prospect has available room in their budget; the decision maker doesn’t have room, but will find the money; it’s not currently budgeted, but may be next year. The budget is usually the most difficult part of BANT to discover, but it’s also the most integral part to the BANT equation. In order for sales reps to accurately develop their sales forecast, they must uncover the prospects that have money budgeted for their solution. It’s even more important now because of how companies’ budgets have been dramatically reduced, coupled with their capital spending plans. Fortunately for IT sales reps, there appears to be good news on the horizon. Comments from EMC’s CEO and CFO and data from CIO.com survey identifies that companies will start increasing their budgets and spending for IT infrastructures in 2010.

Sales intelligence resources can also assist you in determining the components of a prospect’s budget; what their capital spending plans are (time) and uncover their current business drivers (need). Sales steps should start the relationship building process by asking questions to better understand their problems and opportunities. By doing this, they can make a bridge to the budget discussion without forcefully asking if they have money to spend. You don’t want to be kicking tires with a prospect that has a need, but doesn’t have a budget. Identifying who owns the budget and if they currently have money for your solution will accelerate your sales cycle. If authority, need and time all meet the necessary criteria, getting your solution budgeted should be the priority for the decision-maker. Identifying the budget can be difficult, but once done, you’ll have discovered what prospects are hot, and you will be in a better position to forecast your sales.

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- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

Last year was a very turbulent year for IT spending. Most companies were trying to reduce their costs and weren’t spending cash on their IT infrastructure until the dust settled from the great recession of 2009. Luckily, the tech industry tends to rebound fairly quickly from recessions because it plays such a critical role in the business functions of Fortune 1000 companies. Without maintaining and innovating their IT infrastructure, companies are at a competitive disadvantage, and it can start to affect their revenues and customer satisfaction.

EMC is one of the largest sellers of enterprise IT software and hardware and they have been an industry leader in developing innovate technology for decades and have weathered many recessions. In January 2010 they released their quarter four earnings report and their CEO, Joe Tucci, had a lot of commentary on where he thinks companies will start to spend their 2010 IT budgets.

He stated the number one priority for CIOs in 2010 is storage. CIOs will use a significant portion of their budgets to optimize their storage systems and methods including back-up disks with data de-duplication, storage consolidation, unified storage, tiering of storage, and business continuity. Companies’ data requirements are increasing every second and their valuable data needs to backed up and secure. Data storage initiatives will accelerate throughout the next decade, and cloud computing will be a major player in the data storage industry.

Virtualization is another area that Tucci identifies as somewhere that CIOs will be spending their budgets. Virtualization decreases the amount of physical hardware and redistributes how networks and computers are allocated across the infrastructure. It reduces company costs and increases the efficiency of their IT systems. Along the same lines as virtualization, he sees security and governance, risk, and compliance spending accelerating in 2010. EMC is increasing their development of private clouds and are working with Fortune 1000 companies to redistribute their data centers using virtualization. All of this is great news for IT sellers trying to penetrate Fortune 1000 companies this year.

EMC’s CFO Daivd Goulden also commented on how spending started to increase in Q4 of 2009, “I think we also saw even maybe a little extra in some of that spending the customers didn’t do in Q1 and Q2 as companies got more confident in their next year 2010 business plans, they were doing a little bit of catch-up because I think they really starved their infrastructures in Q1 and Q2,” he said.

Now is the time to identify your prospects using sales intelligence resources and start forecasting your sales pipeline for 2010. Sales reps can’t rest on the laurels of 2009; they must identify current company problems and opportunities and then communicate how their solutions can help them leave the low points of 2009 behind.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

Unfortunately, a harsh reality in sales is that, on average, 30% of leads in your pipeline will not convert to close. While sales forecasts are certainly not always correct, because sales can be a very unpredictable line of business, they can be extremely helpful in bringing more deals to close.

Sales forecasts can be helpful for time management for sales reps, as they can highlight which accounts they should spend their valuable time selling to, and which accounts are not highly likely to buy. Then, over time, these forecasts provide historical data on close rates for a variety of types of leads. The more forecasting you do, the more accurate you can become with your predictions if you assess the actual closing rates against your previously forecasted numbers.

The debate of over whether sales forecasting is worth spending time on is a heated issue within organizations and even the blogosphere—and both sides of the argument are valid. It is true that most forecasts are not going to be completely accurate, but it is also true that forecasting accuracy CAN be improved, and also that they can be helpful when they are not 100% correct.

The real issue is how much you depend on your forecast, and even more importantly, what you depend on it for. The worst thing you can do is to treat your forecast as a prediction of the future; depending on not-yet-closed sales to operate your business is, obviously, extremely dangerous, like using a credit card that you might not be able to pay off. In this respect, yes, sales forecasting may not be a good idea.

On the other hand, using this data to analyze patterns in your sales cycle and improve upon the process is a worthwhile endeavor. Sales forecasting templates are a good way to keep this information functional, consolidated and ready to analyze, especially if your CRM system does not already have a sales forecasting functionality. The more you can compare forecasted numbers with actual numbers, the more value you will get out of your future forecasts, and the more accurate they will become.

With a template, you may begin to see patterns in what types of leads are coming to close, which of your products are selling better, and ultimately be able to see how much time you are investing into these deals that is either profitable or a complete waste. Taking the time to fill out a template on a daily or weekly basis forces you to think about where you should be spending your time, and how long it might take you to close the sale, so that you can allocate your efforts appropriately and efficiently.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107

Crafting rock-solid positioning statements is essential to qualifying and closing a sale. The statements should also incorporate your product’s value propositions; they must relate to the problem or opportunity you’re trying to solve for the company. Creating positioning statements can be very difficult if you don’t have correct knowledge about the account you’re trying to close. Utilizing sale intelligence resources and asking the right questions are the best ways you can collect information about a company. In 2010, companies are increasing their technology spending. Therefore you must understand what they need to deliver to their CEO, so you can align your positioning statement with their current problems or initiatives.

A positioning statement cannot be just a statement about your product or company, its benefits and why it is better than your competitors’ offerings. A great positioning statement will convey a story to the audience and trigger a connection with them, so that they have to immediately act on it. Understanding what is currently driving their business is critical to creating a powerful positioning statement. Sales intelligence data and sales enablement resources help you paint a picture of accounts that includes past, present and future information. They will enable you to uncover your prospect’s relevant problems or initiatives and help you align your product or service so that you can create a compelling story with factual information.

The positioning statement should include who you’re targeting, what their problems are, your differentiator and value proposition. The alignment with their problems and how your solution solves them must be at the heart of the positioning statement. They need to align, or there isn’t a chance high probability for making a sale. It should be crystal clear to the buyer why they should choose your solution over someone else’s. If this is proving to be difficult, try going after another prospect. You don’t want to be kicking the tires with a prospect that isn’t a fit, and the positioning will help you determine what tires to attack by identifying the company’s business drivers and aligning your solutions with them.

- Mark Kilens
mark . kilens@salesquest.com
978-749-9999 ext. 118

Iqbal Rashid, a lead generation specialist, discusses how to develop a powerful positioning statement.