Being prepared for a sales opportunity is a critical component of being a successful sales rep. Now, more than ever, being educated on your target account in preparation for an important meeting, presentation or call can be the deciding factor in whether or not the sale moves forward and the prospect becomes a customer. Account planning helps you to effectively prepare and stay focused on the prospect’s business objectives and goals to ensure that you achieve your planned results, create a consistent experience for the prospect, and ultimately identify how your product or service can make a positive impact on their business.

Strategic Account Planning

This need for preparation and planning is especially important when selling enterprise technology solutions. You need to know the account inside and out, what technology is currently installed, if your competitors in the account, who the decision makers and influencers are, what their business drivers are, and what their budget is. All of these components can be determined through the research required to create a strategic account plan that will guide you through the sales process.

An account plan should be your blueprint to guide you through the account. It should answer the 5 W’s: who, what, where, when and why, and it should assist you throughout the course of the sales cycle. The account plan should be continuously updated with information you uncover throughout the sales cycle and help you connect the dots to win the sale.

Account planning takes a lot of time and research. The first thing you need is a well-designed account plan template, as the template is your roadmap for the sale. Once you have a template, you then need to fill in your roadmap with different routes and eventually connect the routes to your final destination: closing the sale.

The most difficult part of account planning is performing the research to start mapping your route. Sales intelligence tools can help you answer the 5 W’s and create a logical roadmap for your sales process. As discussed previously in this blog, sales intelligence is critical to achieving best-in-class sales results. Companies using sales intelligence have shorter sales cycles and have more sales reps hitting their quota. Using sales intelligence research in conjunction with account planning gives you the map and the routes for the sale. After that, it is up to you to execute the plan and follow you guide.

Unfortunately, like using a GPS to find your way, in selling there is no one telling you where to turn or when you have reached your destination. But, there are great sales intelligence resources out there for you to take advantage of, and coupled with account planning, you can outrun your competitors.

-Mark Kilens
mkilens @ salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 118

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The issue of how a sales rep’s time is spent is not as simple as eliminating the need to do personal research by investing in sales intelligence; it is clear that the buck does not stop there. It not only takes time to do the hard research; even if the tools are paid for, there is still the issue of aggregating all of the content and making it available, easy to find, and consolidated in one place.

CRM systems solve this issue and even further reduce research and preparation time. In their study, Aberdeen found that 72% of their defined Best-in-Class companies currently have some sort of a CRM solution to “centralize” their information, compared to only 50% of the Laggard companies. Even further, 74% of Best-in-Class companies also integrate their marketing materials in the CRM system so that their sales representatives can “speak intelligently about the right products and services for their prospects.”

Clearly, centralization is important. It is not enough to just purchase contact information and company profile reports; if sales reps are actually going to use them before they make a call, it needs to be easily accessible and attached to the place where they are retrieving account and contact information. The number one priority of the rep is to hit their numbers every month if they want to keep their job. When the choice is between making more calls each day by passing over research and spending time to access information to be fully prepared, the choice is likely to be the former.

Aberdeen also looked at the most common delivery methods of sales intelligence at companies within the sample space. The majority (57%) indicated that e-mail was the method for delivering sales intelligence. While e-mail is not CRM-integrated, it is more easily accessible and convenient than accessing information on the internet, as only 31% indicated that they use a third-party web application where a login is required, and 29% indicated that their sales intelligence is aggregated on the company’s intranet. At the end of the day, a rep’s time is much better spent analyzing the information and preparing for a call than spending time looking for it, and Best-in-Class companies indicate that their reps spend “at least three to five hours a day in the CRM solution,” and therefore, their sales intelligence is best utilized when it is delivered in the CRM.

The key to sales success is not as simple as purchasing a sales intelligence tool and expecting numbers to immediately go up. The disconnect between a sales intelligence tool and a rep must be eliminated by exposing them to the tool, giving proper training, and making accessibility to the information quick, easy, and constantly present. CRM software, while occasionally expensive, is the best solution to this problem, and will increase the usage of your sales intelligence investments.

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

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

“Sales management, for the most part, is stuck in the 19th century. The problem isn’t just archaic tool or organizational structures; the fact is that a majority of sales managers don’t understand that their job is to enable sales reps to do their job better, not control them” – Steve Reeves, Founder of FrontOfficeBox.com.

This quotation in Aberdeen’s sales intelligence study perfectly describes the disconnect that exists between the purchase of a sales intelligence tool and the success of the tool as exemplified by metrics within the sales department. Aberdeen’s 2009 study measured the successes of “Best-in-Class” (top 20%) versus “Industry Average” (middle 50%) and “Laggard” (bottom 30%) organizations based upon 4 key performance criteria:

• Year-over-year increase / decrease in the amount of time sales representatives spend searching for relevant company / contact information
• Year-over-year performance in lead conversion rates
• Year-over-year performance in sales cycle time
• Year over year performance in the percentage of sales representatives achieving quota

Not surprisingly, the Best-in-Class companies achieved increases of more than 50 percent in all of these performance areas, but what is more interesting is how much these rates fall in companies where sales intelligence may be used, but it has not been implemented correctly.

From the top 20% in the industry to the middle 50%, the rate of improvement drops an average of about 25%. Year-over-year improvement for the “Industry Average” class hovers around 25%, as opposed to the 50% or more increases for the Best-in-Class companies. The numbers are even more staggering when looking at the “Laggard” class; these companies saw at best a 3% improvement, which resulted in an 5% average decrease in personal performance improvement in the company’s sales reps, where the Industry Average and Best-in-Class reps saw 1% and 15% increases, respectively.

Obviously, just purchasing sales intelligence tools is not enough to decrease research time and increase lead conversion rates, sales cycle time, and reps hitting their quotas. And in this economy, if you are in the bottom 30% and not correctly utilizing these tools, it has resulted in a decrease in performance rather than just minute increases. This indicates that now is NOT the time to slack; it is the time to get your act together.

You cannot just give your reps a map and expect them to drive from point A to point B if you haven’t taught them how to drive, or even more fundamentally, how to read a map.

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

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Knowing an account inside and out has always been the key to success in making a sale, but the time it takes to get to that point is not only precious, but also far from minimal. In this economy more than ever, sales teams are on overdrive trying to make ends meet and hit their numbers. Time previously spent researching and preparing is being sacrificed to make more phone calls: the brute force sales method. More cold calls does not always equal more sales, especially if they are not prepared for; you can’t force your prospect to become your customer. Sales intelligence can alleviate all of these issues that hinder your success.

But, as always, preparation is time-consuming. And the troubles do not end there; all research is NOT created equal. Raw research is not optimized for use by sales reps; it must be aggregated, organized and delivered to reps “in a manner that is unobtrusive and within the daily workflow.” In other words, reps cannot and should not be creating their own sales intelligence.

The Aberdeen Group did a study on the impacts of external sales intelligence on sales success in their report, “Sales Intelligence: The Secret to Sales Nirvana.” Aberdeen defines sales intelligence as “external content that is sourced from a third-party and used to supplement, not replace, internal assessments of sales performance.”

Of the more than 300 organizations Aberdeen surveyed, 76% of them indicate that they use sales intelligence, and 59% of them said that the current state of the economy is the “prominent factor” in deciding to incorporate sales intelligence into the sales process. Incorporating sales intelligence is not only a time saving strategy but also proves its ROI by “enrich[ing] leads in the sales pipeline.”

Obtaining and delivering sales intelligence to reps is only the first (and easiest) step in correctly utilizing research to achieve the best sales results. In order to see numbers rising and to justify the investment, reps need to be educated on how to process the information they are given, do it in a timely manner, and get in the habit of using the tools they are given. The difference in success when sales intelligence tools are used properly versus when they’re not is tremendous…

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

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The CIO’s that we have interviewed have  consistently told us that companies should not only focus on selling directly to them (CIO title) but to definitely market and sell to other recommenders, influencers, decision makers and champions within the account. Selling deeper and wider into F1000 and G500 accounts is the biggest key to success. Here are 9 additional ideas for getting the best ROI from these giants.

1. Research your targeted Fortune Company thoroughly. Understand their business, the vertical market position they occupy, the organizations they compete with, and their corporate culture. 

2. Build an organizational chart of your target Fortune Company. Map the relationship of the Decision-Makers to the Influencers to the Recommenders. Finish this map before you approach the decision-maker and aim to schedule a meeting or conference call. We recommended that you conduct at least two informational interviews prior to making direct contact with the Decision-Maker.
 

3. Prepare your value proposition and strategic message thoughtfully. Customize your message based on the referrals and the information you’ve gathered. Map out and rehearse every detail of what you will say and do when you meet with executives at your prospective new F500 customer. 

4. Identify a problem your solution will solve. Being able to explain the Fortune Company’s problem and how your solution will solve it is a great way to show you have done your homework. Especially in today’s economy where people are looking to create greater efficiencies through consolidation and reduce costs. 

5. Use a policy of exclusion. You must accept the fact that some companies and or individuals won’t require your solution or see the vision. We recommend that you identify those companies and individuals as early in the process as possible. Set them aside and move on. 

6. Never accept one executives’ statement or reply as fact until it has been verified and supported by other executives. Always remember that organizations of this size and breadth make decisions by committee, not by an individual.
 

7. Use customer success stories to sell more effectively. Once you have identified there is a need to satisfy, and/or a problem to rectify, then you need to associate other success stories to their situation. The association must be as clear and precise to the new customer’s situation in order to obtain maximum impact.
 

8. Find Multiple Contacts and Multiple Champions. Who are they? Where are they positioned in the organization? What value can your company bring to them specifically? The more value you can bring across the organization, the more money they will SPEND and the bigger your deal will be.


9. Use Sales Intelligence Tools that are made available to you. Hoovers, One Source and CRUSH Reports are all tools that are created to help you find decision makers faster and reduce sales cycles. Make sure you are using them to their full potential.

Make sure to check out the SalesQuest demos to ensure you are getting the most out of your CRUSH Reports and the Online Platform’s Advanced Search sales intelligence tools.

Or E-mail your questions to tdavenport@salesquest.com

©2010 Sales Intelligence Blog. All Rights Reserved.