Miller Heiman Sales Performance Journal

MILLER HEIMANSALES PERFORMANCE JOURNAL

www.millerheiman.com/subscribe Volume 6 - Issue 21

Inside this IssueBold Initiatives to Boost ProductivityIf your plans over the past few years have revolved around improving

processes and practices so that your organization can be poised for

growth when the economy improves, then it is safe to say that as a sales

leader, you are probably feeling the heat of having to deliver on real growth

objectives this year.

There is no doubt that the global economic climate has improved

when compared against what was happening at this time last year. But

committed organizations know that rather than just rely on an economic

tailwind, growth takes hard, heavy lifting and a willingness to change

things deep within their own structure to enable and ignite growth. Leaders

acknowledge that they can’t go at it alone. It takes an elite, high-performing

team with a disciplined sales process and effective sales tools to reach

seemingly ambitious sales targets.

Raising productivity here on out requires some bold new directives that

everyone will not embrace immediately. And that’s what separates the

organizations that will continue to win this year from those that won’t.

Good selling,

Sam Reese President and CEO, Miller Heiman, Inc.

Create and Lead a High Performance Sales Team: Folklore and Other Sales Tales

Anecdotes surrounding the creation and management of

high performance teams abound. And even without much

real basis behind them, they turn into sales leadership

folklore and get repeated with the same lackluster results.

Confronting these tales directly can be one of the most

effective ways for a sales leader to create and manage a

team that drives organizational success.

Page 2

The Sales Manager’s Productivity Challenge

Sales managers are being pulled in all directions. Aside from

having to improve their own productivity, managing up line is

as much a part of their management repertoire as maximizing

and delivering the results of the teams they manage. Sales

managers need audacity and grit to take on bold initiatives to

remain productive in this ever-expanding role.

Page 4

Identifying Your Sales Planning Sweet Spot

Every baseball bat has a sweet spot, an area that will produce

the greatest performance if used consistently. In sales, it is

the systematic use of a sales process on all sales opportuni-

ties, and the development of formal strategies on the largest

of opportunities that will eventually lead to an overall improve-

ment in your organization’s ability to identify, collaborate on

and win large deals.

Page 7

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Miller Heiman Sales Performance Journal Bold Initiatives to Bost Productivity

FOLKLORE AND OTHER SALES TALESCREATE AND LEAD A HIGH PERFORMANCE SALES TEAM: FOLKLORE AND OTHER SALES TALESby Sam Reese | President & CEO

There is a lot of fact and a lot of fiction when it comes to creating and leading high performance selling teams. Too often, anecdotes without much real basis behind them turn into sales leadership folklore and get repeated with the same lackluster results. Confronting these tales directly can be one of the most effective ways to provide value as a sales leader.

Sales Folklore: The sales force is the only reason anyone here has jobs because nothing happens until someone sells something.This mentality is one construed by weak sales organizations and weak sales leaders who do not know how to work as a team with the rest of the organization. Therefore, in order to get their way on a specific issue, they rely on this false fact. The truth is that great sales leaders understand that they need to work collaboratively across the whole organization and they invite other departments to get involved in the process of customer management. Leaders who take the short cut by insulating their teams from the rest of the company or by claiming that everyone else is “just overhead” and they “just don’t understand customers” are the leaders who are not very effective over the long term.

Sales Folklore: It’s all about hiring great people.If it were only this easy then the success rate of sales organization’s year-over-year performance would be much better. While there are certain characteristics that define top performers (work ethic, intelligence, integrity, etc.), every organization is very different. Companies that first chart out their customer management strategy in terms of how they are going to systematically create new opportunities, manage these opportunities to closure and then manage the client relationships moving forward are the companies that can truly define what skills and competencies they want their salespeople to have. These companies realize that they are trying to find and develop the sales talent that will best execute on their strategy. They are not looking for a bunch of people that will show up and just do their own thing. It is the sales leader’s job to create even more precision by clearly understanding what top performers do differently. Armed with this knowledge, the sales leader can coach to these winning behaviors and find other people that exemplify the same successful skills and behaviors.

Sales Folklore: It is all about the numbers.Again, a myth perpetuated by sales leaders who are not skilled in helping their people improve. While results are certainly a key measuring point, the skilled sales leader understands that the salesperson’s knowledge and activities are the key predictors to achieving the sales rep’s revenue targets. Strong sales leaders look at the three elements of skills, activities and revenue performance as a connected performance triangle. If the only thing to look at was the actual numbers performance, there would be no need for sales managers. A quick financial analysis that ranks people by performance to plan or total revenue or margin could be the lone management tool to make all sales personnel decisions. But the fact is that top sales leaders understand that by helping people improve their skills and by redirecting them to be more effective when it comes to their selling activity, they are able to help each individual become more efficient and more effective.

Sales Folklore: I can only be effective with my team when I am out with them face-to-face and “pressing the flesh.”In a business world where virtual salespeople and teams are commonplace, this myth continues to get a lot of play. It is really an excuse for a lack of planning and a lack of process commitment by the sales leader. Sales leaders who stick to disciplined communication plans with tight agendas, regular funnel reviews with detailed action plans, and frequent communication touch points to keep them connected with their team are the sales leaders more likely to drive performance across their whole territory.

Sales Folklore: Salespeople really just do what the compensation plan tells them to do.While it is extremely important to have a comp plan that is aligned with the strategy of the sales team, this cannot be an excuse for not performing or for doing the wrong thing for the customer. Lazy sales leaders rely on this excuse as a way to diffuse accountability and blame their team’s lack of performance on the corporate guys that just don’t know how to motivate the sales force. Top sales leaders understand that an exciting compensation plan makes their job a little easier but it in no way replaces effective leadership. Salespeople are like



every other employee in the company when it comes to having the desire to feel valued and to be part of an organization with a clear purpose. Sales leaders need to make sure they spend more time recognizing top performers and crystallizing the purpose of the company instead of developing new carrots to see how high they can get people to jump for an extra dollar.

World-class sales leaders take accountability for their performance and they don’t look to blame outside forces when things do not go as planned. They deal in a world of candor and facts while avoiding the numerous pitfalls that will surely happen by believing in unproven anecdotes.

About the AuthorSam Reese joined Miller Heiman as CEO in 2000, and has led the company to its position as the foremost thought leader and innovator in the strategy, process and skills that drive sales performance. During Sam’s tenure, Miller Heiman has expanded product offerings and e-learning initiatives and amassed a global partner network of world-class sales consultants. In the process, he has built a culture that is passionate about achieving results for clients.



For sales managers, taking a productive and efficient approach on doing their job on a daily basis is extremely vital to their success and it starts by facing the challenges head on.

In today’s business environment, front-line sales managers are consistently being faced with:

• Doing more with less

• Increased stakeholder management

• A rapid pace of change

• Recruitment, retention and motivation of the sales team

• Multiple and often conflicting measurements of success

The good news is they are also finding greater recognition for their importance in executing on the senior leaderships’ sales and growth aspirations. Below I’ve outlined a handful of ways on becoming more productive which inevitably will lead to personal and professional success.

• Have clear purpose

• Be ruthless with your time

• Recruit the right people

• Identify your top performers and leverage them

• Systemize the sales process

• Stay close to your customer

Let’s examine some ways to overcome some of these challenges.

Have Clear PurposeVague goals kill motivation. Your sales teams can’t possibly trigger their internal drive without a clear and concise target to reach for, simply because there’s nothing to head toward. Only when the objective is crystal-clear in their mind can you tap into a powerful inner drive. If you haven’t already created a set of clear goals for them, it’s time to deliver a little more direction. Meet with them and let them know what the objectives and expectations are. Continue narrowing down the goals until they clearly see the point of detail you need. Once they understand the details, show how those connect to the upstream flow, that is, the connection

between their goals, your goals and ultimately the company’s objectives and initiatives.

On the flip side, if your senior leadership team has not done the same for you, you need to ask for more clarity. As a sales manager, you are the voice of the sales force and the customer base to your senior leaders. This means you must have the confidence and the competence to challenge their thinking from time to time. For example, if they are seeking high growth numbers from new business in a particular region and you don’t have any business development people in that region, except for account management salespeople who are great at growing rather than winning business, you need to make that clear and push for the recruitment of the right people first.

To support how important it is for sales managers to ensure their metrics are aligned to the business objectives, 89 percent of organizations classified as World-Class Sales Organizations* in 2011 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study stated that their sales performance metrics were aligned to the business objectives of the organization. In all other organizations, this was just 38 percent which shows the misalignment that can occur.

Be Ruthless with Your Time In discussions with sales managers, I regularly hear that they would like to spend more time in the field with customers and conducting coaching and deal reviews but are prevented because of internal meetings and managing up the line. Sales managers need to push back a little here and really identify which meetings they need to be in. They should also explore how they can systemize the reporting and stakeholder management. I often see sales managers producing reports for senior leaders that either don’t get read, or get misinterpreted, or both. Be ruthless with your time and systemize and delegate as many tasks as you can to the right people.

THE SALES MANAGER’S PRODUCTIVITY CHALLENGE THE SALES MANAGER’S PRODUCTIVITY CHALLENGE

by Rob Hartnett | Sales Consultant

“Sales managers would like

to spend more time in the

field with customers and

conducting coaching and deal

reviews but are prevented

because of internal meetings

and managing up the line.”



Recruit the Right PeopleSales managers today are talking more and more about the “war for talent” and the difficulty of recruiting professional salespeople. The first thing to realize is that a major part of a sales manager’s role is the recruitment of great people. Therefore you should constantly be on the lookout for good people and not just look when you have to fill a role quickly. Know what you are looking for and have a system for hiring, retaining and motivating your salespeople. This system for recruiting is vital and is a skill that new sales managers need to acquire quickly yet it is rarely covered.

Below are some basic rules for consistently hiring customer-focused salespeople:

• Benchmark your best people using profiling tools – then hire against those profiles for the role required. As a starting point, you should have an ideal profile of your best business development person, best relationship manager, best sales operations person and best key account manager. It is too expensive to rely upon “gut feel” alone.

• Hire people who can smile – sounds obvious but it’s amazing how people can’t or won’t and yet think they will ace at sales. As they say, hire for attitude and train for skill.

• Hire people who speak clearly – if you can’t understand them during the interview then think how a busy customer would react.

• Hire people who are able to promote/sell the company’s product or service with ease – some people can communicate easily, others struggle. Hire the ones who don’t struggle as you will have better results quicker and they also tend to be more coachable

• Don’ t be afraid to fire – It is your role to protect your organization’s brand and your customer from poor salespeople. Despite this obvious fact, research by McKinsey Quarterly suggests that taking action to deal with poor performers is the most difficult, least exploited talent-building lever for any company. Indeed, ineffective people often stay in position for years. This also applies to channel members. It is interesting to note how many high maintenance channel members are also the lowest contributors to revenue yet take our time away from the low maintenance, high upside channel members.

Identify Your Top Performers and Leverage ThemIn the 2011 Miller Heiman Best Practices Study, it was found that 95 percent of World-Class Sales Organizations placed

a premium on understanding why their top performers are successful and leveraging these best practices to improve others on their team. Yet there is either ambiguity or even a lack of systems to develop talent in most organizations.

Salespeople around the world have an intense need for growth and variety; too much of the same old thing and soon motivation wanes. To avoid this, put them out there for new work challenges to keep things fresh and new. One simple yet highly effective way to do this is to have your top performers mentor younger and newer salespeople. However don’t expect this to happen automatically. You will need to provide some training on how to mentor effectively and seek feedback from parties to ensure success. Also don’t think this is just a Gen Y thing; do this for all your staff no matter what their age or generation.

While you’re talking with them about their current goals, spend time talking about the path of advancement within your organization as it may apply to them. Motivation needs growth to maintain its power. If they aren’t sure what opportunity lies ahead, their drive to keep pushing forward may diminish. Articulate a path of advancement that is open to them. Fuel their ambition by telling them which opportunities are in their future and exactly what they need to do today to experience them down the road. In the TV series Undercover Boss, this was a consistent theme where the undercover bosses came across talented staff who were about to leave because “they could not see a future” at their current employer.

Systemize the Sales Process In World-Class Sales Organizations, 94 percent stated their organization collaborated across departments for large opportunities. They do this by developing a sales culture in an organization where as many people as possible understand the sales process even when they are not customer facing.

A common sales process that systemizes how you create and manage opportunities and manage long-term relationships allows sales managers to scale their business. Sales managers need to have confidence that if they have hired well, consistent customer-focused process is being followed every day on every call to obtain the best possible outcome for the customer and the selling organization.

By having a sales process for acquiring, growing and retaining customers as described above, it is much easier to promote the concept of cross selling and up selling to the customer at the most logical time in the sales cycle. When a sales process is understood and, most importantly, supported by cross-functional departments (marketing, manufacturing, support), it allows sales managers to work more closely with other department heads. A growing trend among leading organizations is the alignment of sales and marketing where the two departments



regularly share best practices and define together things such as “what is a sales-ready lead” and “customer life stages” in order to best service a prospect or customer. Another benefit of an organization-wide understanding of the sales process is having a common understanding of the definition of each stage of the sales funnel. This allows manufacturing to be able to gear up when they see significant orders forecast in “Best Few” as this means an 85 percent chance of closure, for example.

Finally and most importantly, a sales process provides what very little other sales training provide and that is something robust and measurable to coach against. So much coaching in the sales environment is done subjectively and on gut feel. A sales process allows sales managers to coach with precision, which is more effective for both the salesperson and the sales manager.

Stay Close to Your CustomerThis is a challenge for sales managers as they often spend their time in internal meetings and less time out with customers, and coaching their people. Sales managers must keep in touch with the market and what is happening in their market place and their customer base. Here are some ways to do this:

• Conduct regular Win-Loss reviews with customers and prospects.

• Be part of quarterly/annual reviews with key customers.

• Write articles on your customers’ sales environment and learn from them about their challenges.

• Regularly conduct 360-degree reviews of your team which will involve speaking with customers and alliance partners.

Sales managers today are definitely under pressure to succeed and deliver more with less. However, this role is also the undisputed path to senior leadership roles in most organizations. Learn to make this role a productive and saleable one and the lessons learned will prepare you for greater roles in the future.

Granted, you’re not going to be able to implement all of these suggestions overnight. But, as you build your plans to develop a more productive sales team and overall sales culture, start to apply some of these solutions to prepare you for the bigger challenges ahead.

About the Author Rob Hartnett is an independent sales consultant for Miller Heiman and managing director of Selling Strategies International (SSI), a sales performance consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia. Rob is a dynamic and inspirational speaker on developing high performance businesses and is the author of the best seller “Fast Times Ahead – the internet revolution and you” published in 2000 and most recently the runaway success “Small Business, Big Opportunity – winning the right customers through smart marketing and advertising” which has over 100,000 books in print.

* World-Class Sales Organizations had 20 percent better year-over-year growth in several metrics such as qualified opportunities, account acquisition, account retention, productivity per salesperson, and quota achievement when compared to other respondents in our study.



IDENTIFYING YOUR SALES PLANNING SWEET SPOT IDENTIFYING YOUR SALES PLANNING SWEET SPOT

by Brendan Hawkins | Director of Client Success

Leading sales organizations have been investing in CRM systems at record rates over the past several years. While there is a number of reasons why companies invest in CRM technology, if you asked sales leadership to summarize the value in two words – it’s pipeline visibility. By embedding information on their prospects, customers, products and selling stages into the chosen CRM system, sales leaders have more information on the deals in their sales pipeline at their fingertips than ever before. What used to be contained in a rudimentary and often outdated spreadsheet that was regularly distributed amongst the sales territories is now available real time, making the information much more reliable.

Through the CRM system, a sales leader or manager can see which reps are selling what products to which prospects. Organizations can track what customers are buying, which deals were eventually won, and which sales opportunities were lost. CRM systems are great at delivering data, however, where they fall short many times is the why aspect.

• Why did we win the large sales opportunities this year?

• Why do some deals take longer to win than others? Could we have done something to accelerate the deal?

• Why did we pursue a large opportunity that was a poor match to our ideal opportunity? Was this an appropriate use of resources?

• Why were Red Flags missed?

• Why did one Buying Influence favor our solution, but another favor a competitor?

• Why do we lose deals?

Many sales organizations have discovered that today’s leading CRM systems are better than ever when it comes to managing a pipeline, however with the exception of the rare CRM-super users that document everything, the system often lacks significant information around the why. That is because CRM systems are more-or-less management tools; the details on the deals are stored inside the sales rep’s head.

In leading sales organizations, CRM usage by salespeople is not optional. Period. No doubt in the early days when CRM was a new thing, everyone struggled to get usage. Some organizations made exceptions for the old timers or late-adopting top performers…. It is likely everyone regretted doing that. In this day and age, CRM systems, or some other form of pipeline management tool, are just another part of being a salesperson. Until someone comes out with a system that reads the minds of salespeople, pipeline management systems are here to stay.

Similar to CRM, usage of your sales process, by way of the sales tools that enable the sales process, cannot be optional. Period. Not even for the top performers. After all, one of our primary interests is to know what the best reps are doing when they win deals so we can coach and develop the middle and bottom toward the performance level of the top.

In most companies we work with, salespeople are expected to use the sales process principles they are taught on all deals, but only the larger ones have a formally documented sales strategy in place. Our most successful clients have put a lot of time and thought into deciding which deals should have a formal strategy in place vs. where it is optional. The key is determining your unique sweet spot.

Determining Your Sales Strategy ThresholdEvery baseball bat has a sweet spot, an area that will produce the greatest performance if used consistently. There are many ways to determine your sweet spot or threshold for when a formal opportunity strategy should be developed and collaborated on vs. the deals that are pursued using the sales process principles but likely do not justify a fully-documented sales strategy.

“Many sales organizations

have discovered that

today’s leading CRM

systems are better than

ever when it comes to

managing a pipeline,

however, the system often

lacks significant information

around the why.”



One recent pharmaceutical client we worked with recently had a very simple expectation:

I just want to win more large deals, and lose fewer of them.

Seems reasonable, right? We thought so.

So the client began to plan out their Strategic Selling® implementation to introduce their new opportunity pursuit process. This included everything that was going to be done prior to the workshop, in the workshop and, most importantly, after the workshop to ensure the process stuck in his organization. He knew that to make things easy on the salespeople who would be authoring the strategies and the managers who will be responsible for the coaching side of the plan – the expectations had to be both specific and trackable.

• To determine which opportunities would always have a strategy in place, and where it would be optional, this client started by looking at the average number of opportunities a sales rep pursued in 2009 and 2010. He found it to be 85 qualified sales opportunities, and knew a formal plan would not be in place for all of them. These 85 were not leads or tire kickers, but qualified opportunities that made it 25 percent into the sales cycle.

• He then looked at the average win rate, which was approximately 60 percent of the opportunities that were forecasted, or about 55 deals that were won.

• An average $3,200,000 was won and $2,800,000 was lost in 2009 and 2010.

• Of these deals, 40 percent of the won opportunities made up 80 percent of the $3,200,000 revenue that was achieved.

• When they looked at the lost opportunities, the split was significantly different. Twenty percent of the deals made up 80 percent of the $2,800,000 in lost revenue. Meaning they lost more than a few big ones.

The sales leader was very confident, he wanted to continue winning those 40 percent of the deals that made up $3,200,000 in revenue that was won, but he also wanted to improve his chances of winning the 20 percent of the deals that was lost to his competitors.

• On average, the top 40 percent of the 55 won deals (22) and top 20 percent of the 34 lost deals (7) made up this threshold. That means of the average 85 deals a rep pursues each year, 29 of them will make up the majority of the business that is won and lost.

• The VP of Sales then went and pulled a list of the top 22 deals won by each rep in 2009 and 2010 and the top 7 deals lost by each rep. The won opportunities ranged in size from $35,000 – $125,000 and the top 7 deals that were lost ranged from $45,000 - $225,000.

Based on this information the sales vice president decided that he wanted formal Strategic Selling® Blue Sheet strategies developed for every sales opportunity over $50,000, by the 25 percent sales stage. He knew this would mean each rep developing less than three strategies per month, something everyone in senior leadership agreed would be more than reasonable.

This sales leader had discovered his sweet spot; yours may be focused on different data points like product volumes, account types, opportunity types, new product launches, etc.

You must check what you expect….Unless you have really cool technology that will do it for you.For those customers who have the luxury of having one of today’s leading pipeline management systems – this is where things get very easy.

From inside a CRM/SFA reporting system you can pretty much track everything. You just need to determine the leading and lagging indicators that will predict the success or failure of your sales strategy. For the example of the sales leader above, he had a report created for every sales rep, sales manager and VP of sales that shows all open opportunities in the pipeline over $50K, that were in or beyond the 25 percent forecast stage. In this report, next to each opportunity, he could monitor if an opportunity strategy had been created, when it had last been updated, if a manager had provided feedback and a list of each of the pending/open Best Actions the rep had prepared to win each deal.

Even better than reporting off the sales strategies is to build it into your pipeline management process. For instance if you want a strategy developed for all deals over $50K by the 25 percent sales stage, today’s clients are just building CRM workflows/rules that simply do not allow a deal of this size to move onto the next CRM Opportunity Stage without the Blue Sheet being developed. This way if a rep wants to move a large deal through his pipeline, a plan has to be in place to justify the forecast. With this approach, the entire sales organization can rest at night knowing that there was due diligence on large sales opportunities, every single time. Creating technology processes that naturally drive the sales planning process in your organization allows the team to focus less on the usage and more on how effective salespeople are becoming in pursuing large sales opportunities. Ultimately, it is systematic and effective use



of the Strategic Selling® principles on all sales opportunities, and the development of formal opportunity strategies on the largest of opportunities that will eventually lead to an overall improvement in your organization ability to identify, collaborate on and win large sales opportunities.

About the AuthorBrendan Hawkins is director of client success with Miller Heiman and regularly works with Miller Heiman clients of all types and sizes to educate them on the capabilities of the Miller Heiman Sales SystemTM and to assist clients in the development of successful sales performance strategies. For more information on how your organization can determine its “sales planning sweet spot,” contact your Miller Heiman sales consultant or Brendan Hawkins at 1.775.827.4411 or [email protected].

Documents

Miller Heiman Sales Performance Journal