5 Factors That Make A Company Great At Sales

Tommy Boy/Paramount

In order for sales people to effectively manage the sales process, they need really good systems.

My definition of really good systems are ones that (1) get the job done, (2) are easy to use, (3) are fast and efficient, (4) do not waste significant sales time, and most important of all (5) help to insure that prospects and customers are not ignored or forgotten.

Yes, I know. In 2014, one would think that the systems that most companies use fit the bill. The companies that sell them swear they do, but some that understand the sales process and use them do not agree.

In fact, in his Forbes post, Gene Marks admits that his company sells and services the top five systems –Salesforce, GoldMine, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ZohoCRM and Nimble. However, he also says, “They are all terrible.”

Rather than criticize the systems on the market, which would take of lot of pixels and waste your time without adding much value, it is more useful to talk about the basic tools all sales people really need to do their job more effectively. That way sales people can decide for themselves if the available systems on the market give them these capabilities or if they would be better off getting someone in their company to custom configure an off-the-shelf relational database management program as I did years ago.

Lead capture

Leads are captured on a “lead card” or its electronic equivalent. Sales people use the lead card to follow up on a prospect’s interest with the objective of closing the sale. In addition to notes of all contacts, there are four main pieces of information that should be captured on the lead card.

1. Identification of the prospect. If you are selling to a business, most of the information you need is on your contact’s business card. It would be great if your system would enable you to scan business cards using a smartphone app and input them directly. For the additional information you need, your lead card should be designed so you can add it automatically or with minimal effort (date, gatekeeper name, special product needs, competitive products being considered, and other important information).
2. Product interest. The products you typically sell should be pre-listed on the lead card (or its electronic equivalent) so that you can quickly check off the ones in which the prospect has expressed an interest. There should be space to enter other product interests that are not listed.
3. Degree of interest. This is your guestimate of how likely the prospect will buy your product in the current period, which is usually a month. Because the degree of interest is also called “buying temperature” the metaphor for degree of interest that is often is used is Hot for the most interested leads, Warm for the next most interested leads, and Cool for the least interested. The “Hot” leads should automatically update a Hot List (discussed in more detail below). 
4. Lead source. All promotion that you do should have a unique code so that when the lead is captured, you know what marketing activity generated the lead. This lead source should automatically update a report that I call the Promotion Effectiveness Report (discussed in more detail below).

Lead Follow Up and Relationship Building Procedure

Sales people appear more competent when they contact prospects when promised. Even basic contact systems, such as Microsoft Outlook, remind users of a calendared contact date and time. In addition to contact reminders, the steps you promised to take at the end of your last contact should be captured and displayed to insure you do these steps before making contact again. All the data shows that people buy based on their confidence and trust in the sales person. The proper follow-up builds that trust and often separates the good sales people from the mediocre or poor ones. Part of your lead follow-up system should be a Relationship Building Procedure. It includes the following steps:

1. Make contact. Without contact, forget about building a relationship and any repeat business.
2. Set up the next step. At the end of your contact, set up the next step.
3. Get the prospect’s agreement. This gives prospects the feeling that they are in control. Once they give you the green light, they are more likely to accept your next contact without interference from the gatekeeper.
4. Do the next step. This gives you the opportunity to build trust and prove that you always do what you say when you promise to do it.
5. Trust. By repeating steps 1 through 4, you demonstrate that you are trustworthy. As a result, the prospect is more likely to do business with you.
6. Make the sale. Once the prospect trusts you, the sale will be made if it can be made.
7. Take care of your customer. If you take good care of your prospect after the sale, this will lead to a loyal relationship that inoculates you from bad things such as the prospect defecting to a competitor.

Standard Letters and emails

The system should provide sales people with standard pre-approved and vetted letters and emails that are proven to work to do the following:

1. Introduce yourself, your company and products.
2. Generate leads.
3. Notify prospects of new products.
4. Follow up on leads with requested brochures and other information.
5. Answer objections and questions.
6. Close sales.
7. Contact prospects on birthdays and important holidays.

Products, Pricing, and FAB tables

The system should enable sales people to access a current complete list of products along with prices and discount schedules (if any). Each product should also have a FAB (features, advantages, benefits) table which provides the following to help sales people give presentations and answer objections.

1. Features. Inherent characteristics of the product.
2. Benefits. What the features will do for each segment of the target audience.
3. Advantages. The advantages of the features and benefits over competitive alternatives.
4. Tangible Time & Money savings. This translates the benefits and advantages and into time and money savings (or other tangible benefits important to the target audience) and cross references to “proof” articles and analyses written by independent, credible 3^rd parties.

Competition Information

The system should provide a place to store and retrieve information on products that are directly and indirectly competitive. The information should include comparison charts; strengths and weaknesses; advantages from the FAB table; and independent, credible, 3rd-party proof to support the information in the charts and the strengths and weaknesses.

Presentations

Good systems enable you to store and retrieve effective presentation structures so sales people can tailor their presentations for each customer without having them “reinvent the wheel” each time. Good presentations can overcome obstacles and make the sale. Bad ones can erect new barriers that will derail the sale – even after prospects decided to buy your product. There are three basic forms of presentations that sales people use. Your systems provide the basic structure of these presentations.

1. Typical Powerpoint. These are the most common and also tend to be the least effective. In their best form, they are customer-needs focused with benefits tailored to what customers said they want. In their worst form, they are company and product-centric and focus on your company, product, and you rather than the needs of the customer.
2. Question form. Presentations in question form are far more effective than typical Powerpoint decks. They ask questions for which your prospects want answers, and the provide answers tailored to your prospect’s needs. They typically incorporate the intelligence the sales person has gathered about the prospect prior to the presentation.
3. Picture caption form. This type of presentation tends to be the most effective. As sales people give their presentations, the pictures and benefit-focused captions remind them what to say. This presentation form is more interesting than 1 and 2, and is less likely to cause sales people to read the slides. The photos and captions remind them what to say without their reading from a “canned” script.   

Signals

Throughout the sales process, the system should help the sales person to look for three types of signals – Buying, Rejection, and Objections. If they get a buying signal, they should be able to access closing statements on the system. If they get an objection, the system should give them proven answers. And, if they get a Rejection signal, it should give them pointers on how to quickly uncover the reasons for the rejection and get the sale back on track (if possible).

Identifying and Answering Objections

The system should provide the common objections sales people receive from prospects and customers along with answers that have proven effective to close business. It should also remind sales people of the Answering Objection Procedure below and provide Proof Articles (as described in step 5 below).

1. Lowering the barrier. Before sales people can answer an objection, they should lower the barrier by empathizing (but not agreeing) with the objection.
2. Identifying the real objection. Since prospects often disguise the real objection for numerous reasons, the system should help sales people uncover what is really keeping them from buying. For example, “The price is too high” is not a real objection since a prospect could voice this if (1) they are negotiating, (2) they are comparing your product with one that is not comparable, or (3) they really perceive the price is too high. To answer this objection, the sales person needs to drill down deeper before formulating an effective answer.
3. Breaking it down. Large obstacles need to be broken down into (1) tangible, answerable components (time and money, which the fourth column of the FAB table above can help you do) and (2) bite-sized pieces (making them largely insignificant).
4. Answering. Once the obstacle is broken into little pieces, it is usually easy to answer. For example, a $1,200 difference in price could be reduced to pennies per day over they useful life of the product.
5. Providing proof. To establish trust, good sales people provide independent, credible, third-party proof to support each answer.
6. Looking for and reacting to signals. As they answer objections, sales people should look for the signals discussed above and react to them accordingly. If they receive a buying signal, close the sale.

Customer Case Histories, Testimonials, References

Prospects often ask for references of satisfied customers. The system should make it easy to store and retrieve references, testimonials, and case histories to satisfy this request. Happy and successful customers serve as credible witnesses to the benefits provided by your company and products.

Publicity, Awards, and Advertising

The system should enable sales people to store and retrieve publicity and awards on your company and products. Publicity and awards serve to reassure prospects that the achievements of your products and company are being recognized by credible third parties in the marketplace. While not as credible as publicity and awards, advertising serves as a validator of the products advertised – especially if the content is effective and the media (in which the content appears) has a good reputation.

Closing sales

The system should provide your sales people with closing techniques that have been proven to be effective and organize them according to the two basic categories of closes – Trial Closes and Standard Closes.

1. Trial Closes. Using trial closes, sales people assume that there might be a sale, and they test the assumption. Good sales people use trial closes throughout the sales process to save time for everyone involved. There are many different trial closes. The following is an example of the “two positive choices” trial close: Mr. Jones, “we have this product in blue or red, which would you prefer?” If Jones picks one of the choices, the sale is closed.
2. Standard Closes. Sales people employ a standard close when they have answered all known objections and ask for the order. For example, the sales person might ask, “When would you like us to deliver?”

Hot List

The Hot List enables sales people to focus on closing the highest-probability leads to meet their monthly sales goals. Sales managers go over the Hot List with each of their sales people to help them answer objections and close the the lowest hanging fruit. They also use the Hot List to dynamically forecast the sales of each of their sales people. If the expected value of a sales person’s sales are below quota, this enables the sales manager to encourage the sales person to get more leads on the Hot List to correct the situation before the end of the period. Good sales systems enable you to automatically generate a Hot List from the hot leads, dynamically predict sales, and compare them with quotas so management can be proactive rather than reactive.

Promotion Effectiveness Report

As each sales person captures the promotion source for each lead, the information automatically flows onto the Promotion Effectiveness Report. Every time a sales person gives a presentation or makes a sale from a lead, that information is recorded on the Promotion Effectiveness Report. The system should automatically add up the total number of the leads, presentations, and sales company-wide for each promotion source. When compared to the costs of that promotion source, the marketing department can calculate the promotion effectiveness, or ROI, of each promotion. Since totals for leads, presentations, and sales are reported by sales person, the sales manager can automatically compute the batting average of each sales person and determine the number of leads and presentations each one needs to achieve his or her sales quota. In this way, the sales manager and company marketers systematically work together to insure that (1) plan goals are met and (2) the money invested in promotion is not wasted (the ads and promotions that are effective will be repeated and the ones that don’t will be discontinued).

Market Information Form

Since sales people are in touch with the marketplace more than any other position in the company, they are in the best position to collect market intelligence. To make it is as easy as possible, the system should enable them to collect the following information on mobile devices as automatically as possible. Since collecting information sounds like extra work, the system should remind sales people that this information is being collected to help them generate more sales and commissions.

1. Complaints. Once collected, complaints are distributed to those that can solve the problem quickly. The objective is to “turn the negative into a positive” and build a stronger relationship with the offended party. The way companies handle complaints can mean the difference between success and failure in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
2. Compliments. After obtaining permission, marketers use compliments in their marketing communications. Nothing is more effective than bona fide testimonials from customers. Copies are also given to sales people so they can put them in their presentation materials and use them to impress prospects and close business.
3. New Product ideas. These are fed into the company’s new product development system.
4. Competition Information. This is given to sales people to put in their reference materials so they can use the data to answer objections and close business (with the caveat of not disparaging competitors) and is fed into the company’s new product development system so that new products can be designed to beat competitors.
5. Strategy feedback. This information is organized by the marketing building blocks (1) corporate image, (2) positioning, (3) product, (4) pricing, (5) distribution, (6) promotion, and (6) marketing information system. Based on feedback, strategies are adjusted as necessary.

The Cloud and Mobile

In order for the system to be most useful, all of the above information should be stored in the cloud and accessible by both desktop and mobile devices that sales people carry with them wherever they go. If systems being used by your company enable your sales force to do the above, perhaps they are good enough. If not, you may consider finding other systems or creating your own using off-the-shelf relational database management systems you can configure to do just about everything your sales people need.

If done properly, the right systems can dramatically improve your business and increase sales without greater effort – creating a win-win situation for your sales people and your company. If inadequate, they will cost you a lot in missed opportunities and lost business. Best of luck.