SalesVPI

Web Assisted Selling -- An idea who's time has come?

United Flight 173 from Boston to San Francisco

I am a flying advertisement for Sony Vaio notebooks as I'm stuffed into seat 21F. Any larger notebook and I couldn't open and work in the cramped corners with the seat in front of me reclined in my lap.

I'm heading to the Sales 2.0 conference and customer meetings. This is the first conference that begins to address the ideas and vision that have driven my professional life, in over 12 years with my current business, and 20 years working with multimedia in business communications.

I call my longstanding vision "Web Assisted Selling".

Web Assisted Selling is a strategy to use web delivery methods and multimedia communications to transform the way we engage customers and deliver our ideas and value messages. It is a critical capability in my quest to create value for customers through the sales conversations we conduct.

I believe Web Assisted Selling can provide a significant competitive advantage. But, like many new technologies, we need a new paradigm to apply it correctly in order to realize its full potential.

Four Components to the Strategy

Simply stated, there are four key components to a Web Assisted Selling strategy:

1. A central library of pre-produced multimedia modules and related elements (audio, documents, coaching notes, URL links), with an online assembly capability;
2. On demand delivery, and support for all vehicles such as PowerPoint, streaming audio-graphic programs, audio podcasts, and portals;
3. Live delivery support for web meetings;
4. Programmatic support that executes this vision as a well defined program, managed for continuous improvement of content, training, user support, and the overall process.

Disclaimer: I consider this to be an important generic idea. But it is the vision that drives my company. We have produced a 3 minute multimedia vignette that introduces this idea, and a 12 minute program that explains our approach in greater detail (there is registration required for the latter program).

Applications for Web Assisted Selling

There are many applications enabled by this strategy, they fall into three primary categories:

Prepare:

A central messaging and multimedia library that leverages PowerPoint, audio, Flash animation and video with links to associated documents, traing content and sales tools extends the typical training activities into "just-in-time coaching".

This helps sales people remediate learning lessons for complex and important ideas that need to be heard (role of audio) many times before they are internalized. It embeds sales coaching right into the sales workflow. In this, the appropriate materials show up when people need them. Short "overnight expert" audio graphic programs help sales people prepare for the "advisor" role of "trusted advisor".

Engage:

Web Assisted Selling improves the quality of visual support, which in turn improves sales conversations.

Mutlimedia programs become sales tools as "buddy-in-a-box" programs that help sales deliver complex or important messages. These programs help deliver messages in the proper "voice" -- the voice of the expert. Sometimes this is a technical voice, or that of an analyst, customer, or company executive.

Deliver:

Most sales conversations do not take place in real time, in person. Most are conducted over the telephone, or through self-viewing vechicles such as email, web sites, or documents. An important "vehicle" in the complex sale is third party individuals who deliver messages when sale professionals are not even present.

Web Assisted Selling improves the quality of these conversations by leveraging media to deliver with great impact, motivation, accuracy and (hopefully) convenience.

Sales professionals need to align the delivery method to the preference of the customer. Today, there are many more methods available than just a few years ago.

Given the way I sell and work with customers, I don't fly nearly as much as I used to. And, if you've driven in Boston lately, you know that's not an efficient use of time either. Nothing can replace the value of in person meetings. But the cost of these meetings -- direct and opportunity -- is so high. Every flying experience re-motivates me to take our proficiency with these ideas to a higher level.

Sales organizations that master this strategy will have a competitive advantage in the way they engage and communicate with customers. They will also lower selling costs. 

Real Time vs. On Demand Communications

Despite my high interest in the Red Sox, I've watched only a few of the playoff and World Series games in real time. House guests and the need to get up early have forced me to record the games and view them at another time.

Almost all of the TV viewing in our family these days is time shifted.

This got me thinking about sales communications. We tend to rely heavily on real time communication methods: meetings, phone conversations, even email is quasi real time. I find if people don't view my email the day I sent it, the chances are pretty good it's going to get lost in the email backlog.

For all of us, real time is precious. Sales professionals need to master on demand communication methods to reach customers when real time conversations are not possible.

Two methods we are working with and developing proficiencies around are:

• Customer portals
• Multimedia vignettes (streaming audio graphic programs)

Rather than stuffing documents into emails which are sent throughout a 3 to 6 month sales cycle (longer if we start before customers are ready to consider a solution), we're creating portals for each customer.

Portals allow us to manage our collateral and messages in more convenient ways for customers. If they don't view one piece of collateral when we first invite them, they can still find and see it at a time that is more convenient for them. It makes our content easier for them to find and to share with colleagues. It allows us to know when (how often) a customer views content. Finally, in the aggregate, we're beginning to get some interesting data on collateral usage.

Multimedia vignettes are narrated PowerPoint shows. We tailor them to each customer and situation. We attach relevant collateral to shows, a concept we refer to as "merchandising our messages". By this we mean we use the narrated shows to explain key messages and introduce supporting collateral.

Links to shows are easy for customers to recieve, view and share. Multimedia truly brings messages to life and allows us to control the quality and consistency of message delivery, especially when they are passed around the organization.

We may not always be able to meet in real time with key customer contacts, but on demand programs are the next best thing. For customers who are not ready for a direct conversation, they are the best way to reach them.

Re-consider PowerPoint -- It's not just a presentation tool

I love this idea, that it's not "just PowerPoint" anymore. I think PowerPoint offers organizations untapped potential for improved sales messaging, knowledge sharing, and customer communications.

A better PowerPoint strategy can drive significant content production efficiencies, rapid development and turnaround times, easy content tailoring, the ability to scale content requirements, and dramatically lower production costs compared to documents.

PowerPoint is where the corporate communication process starts. When we stop thinking of it as a presentation tool, and think of it as a business graphic development tool to create visual support for conversations, a new world of possibilities opens.

How Important is PowerPoint to Your Sales Organization?

Several years ago we conducted a survey of 10 technology companies asking them what percent of the hits to their marketing and sales intranet were for the data type PowerPoint. For each company, the answer was between 55% and 62%.

In each company, PowerPoint represented less than 10% of the total content they managed (typically less than 6%). This provides a glimpse of the potential. 6% of content (volume) is responsible for 60% of usage.

I'd really like to know what these numbers are at your company. Please comment to this entry, or email me if you want to keep it private.

• Percent of hits for PowerPoint
• PowerPoint as a percent of totoal documents being managed

Critical Roles for PowerPoint

1. PowerPoint can provide visual support for sales conversations in the complex sale.

Sales communication is all about how we deliver our messages to customers. Meetings are more effective and efficient when important and complex ideas are supported by visuals.

This not only helps the person delivering the messages, it makes it easier for customers to understand key ideas. It shortens time spent on each topic. If your sales conversations are conducted over the telephone, visual support is even more important.

Most sales organizations haven't begun to tap the potential of web meetings using web conferencing technology. Over 8 years of working in this area, I am convinced part of the problem is companies haven't developed the visual assets that are needed to support this type of sales conversation. So web meetings are used in limited ways during a presentation or (software) demonstration stage of the sales process.

2. Compared with document creation, PowerPoint is a low cost, rapid development tool.

3. A key to effective messaging is being clear and succinct. Most PowerPoint shows need improvement in this area. But I think it's easier to improve PowerPoint shows than documents in this regard.

4. Just as PowePoint provides visual support for live conversations, it can be the visual base for recorded audio narration. Narrated PowerPoint creates an experience similar to traditional video, but at a fraction of the time and cost required to produce video.

Companies and individuals should stop railing against PowerPoint and learn how to capitalize on its full potential.

Sales Conversations -- Set Up the Listening

I spent the day yesterday with my executive coaches from GAP International. This group works with executives and their organizations to create "breakthrough organizations". A breakthrough is an extraordinary and important outcome for which the way of achieving it is not known. It is not predictable from a projection of the current state of the business.

The GAP concept is, extraordinary results are produced by extraordinary actions. Extraordinary actions are produced by extraordinary thinking. Most people, most of the time, take ordinary and predictable actions based upon "business-as-usual" thinking.

Therefore, to create breakthrough outcomes, and especially to create an organization that consistently produces extraordinary outcomes, requires a transformation in people's thinking. The "access" to this thinking is people's language.

By listening carefully to the conversations people conduct, and specifically the language they use in conversations, we can identify people's thinking. This will indicate the kinds of actions they will take, and can even become a predictor of the results people will create. We can change individual and organizational behavior by changing people's thinking in very specific ways.

Our specific conversation yesterday related directly to my work with selling, and one of the principles we work on regularly: sales conversations can create value for customers and become a key differentiator and competitive advantage that will result in higher win rates and margins (less discounting).

The GAP consultants defined conversation as both speaking and listening. I get the speaking part, and that I am responsible for what I say and how I say it. What is a new idea for me is that I am also responsible for how I am heard! Let me say that again, I am responsible for the listening of my audience.

This means I must "set up the listening", "shape the way people listen", and "attend to how people hear what I say". This is a critical concept for sales professionals, as well as marketing, executives and any business communicators.

We always speak "into an environment". Environment is "the sum of all the conversations people are having." These conversations produce a background of ideas, biases, priorities, areas of focus, etc. that people bring to any conversation. We're always listening "from something". We are pre-disposed to hear certain things or certain ways.

Before we begin speaking into an environment, it helps to know what is shaping people's thinking.

This week my colleague and I had a conversation with a prospective customer that illustrates this directly. It was the third conversation with the customer, and we were about to start the discovery stage of our process. My colleague offered a classic checkpoint question toward the beginning of the conversation that initially seemed very appropriate: "Nancy, how did you feel about what we discussed in our previous conversation?"

Nancy's response was, in effect: "Well the ideas were very interesting, but of course I haven't had time to check out your competition and I have a lot more work to do before I can make any commitments ..."

What happened here? My colleague was simply looking for what might have resonated with her, to confirm we were discussing relevant issues, or if she had any questions. What was shaping her listening? "I'm talking with a couple of sales guys, sales guys are primarily interested in completing the sale (little to do with helping me with my business problems), and I've heard this kind of sales checkpoint, or trial close, question before".

How might we have "set up her listening"?

How about: "Nancy, as we discussed in our last meeting, we're committed to helping customers address their primary business and sales communications needs and opportunities. Before we ask you some questions to delve deeper into this, I want to make sure we're on the right track and focusing on the primary issues you want to address."

"We discussed "issue 1" and "issue 2" as two of your most important concerns (or opportunities). Could you share how you felt about our previous conversation on these issues, and are we focused on the right ones?"

This approach would have:

• Re-stated our commitment to her as our primary intent (continuing to build trust, separating us from typical "sales guys", and shaping her listening)
• Focused her onto the primary issues we uncovered, which she might not even have remembered from the previous conversation,
• Kept her from becoming defensive and going off on the tangent that mis-directed our conversation and required us to spend valuable time re-directing (as well as prevent the re-inforcement of her negative stereotype)

When we set up people's listening we impact accuracy and speed. The conversation is more accurate, focused and on topic. It is efficient, so we move quickly through the topics we want to cover, and avoid tangents and distractions that have to be repaired.

So, how do we set up the listening. First, start with your own listening. Tune in to your environment and the listening you are bringing to the conversation. Check in on your pre-dispositions. Clear your thinking to get aligned with your intent for the person and the call.

Next, get people "present". Make sure they are really with you and not still thinking about what immediately preceded, or another significant person distraction. Get their full and complete attention and don't begin until you have it. This seems especially important with conversations over the telephone.

Then, create context. Tell people what to listen for, and what not to listen for. I find a clear statement of my intent to be a good starting point. It builds empathy and opens up people's listening.

Sales conversations are the key to selling success in the complex, consultative, or solution oriented sale. Effective converstaions are the result of the sales professional taking responsibility for both their speaking and their audience's listening.

Sales Communications 1.0 vs. 2.0

The upcoming Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco October 29 & 30 has me thinking of the sales communication distinctions in this new era of selling with the web and multimedia resources.

Sales 2.0 conversations are characterized by a scientific approach to messaging, relevance through tailored messages and content, the impact of effective visual and multimedia content, and delivery using ALL appropriate delivery mechanisms.

Aligning organizations -- marketing and sales -- is best accomplished through a defined methodology. The complexity of today's sales conversations, and the flexibility required to adapt messages to stakeholders, buying stages and competive situations, necessitates a more scientific approach to sales messaging.

A defined and documented methodology makes it possible to delegate the creation of sales messaging to  individuals in marketing or cross-functional teams. It also provides a way to measure and manage quality and consistency across product or solution groups.

Burger King figured out years ago that consumers want to "have it your way". Sales professionals must address customer demands for relevant messages and content that delivers those messages.

Busy decision makers want sales professionals to simplify the delivery of complex messages. "Visual explanations" are not just to help the sales professional deliver complex messages, they help the customer "see" and understand messages. Audio explains complexity and nuance through the "voice of the expert". Together, audio and graphics help customer sponsors re-communicate important messages to colleagues.      

As communication content becomes richer, so too are the delivery vehicles: streaming multimedia shows, downloaded MP3 files, web conferencing, blogs, private websites (portals), cell phones and PDAs.

The effective execution of Sales 2.0 communication principles will distinguish professional selling organizations from those who wing it. Initially, this will be a basis for competitive advantage. In the long run, we all will have to become proficient with new communication mediums.

Solution Selling Sequence

As I think about executing a complex sale, and the sales communication opportunities associated with it, I think through the following sequence:

The goal is to differentiate our company, create value for the customer through the sales engagement process, and thereby gain a competitive advantage that will result in higher sales, higher margins and a shorter selling cycle (which lowers selling costs).

This will be a transformative process, requiring innovative approaches. This isn't about fiddling around the edges of a selling program, unlesss it's already there.

To do this requires different sales behaviors and a different selling process that shifts sales people from product information providers, to consultative, solution specialists.

Execution differs from awareness. Awareness is knowing what to do, which is addressed by sales training and information, necessary but not sufficient. Execution is winning the business.

This is fundamentally a communication challenge. Communication is all about how we deliver customer relevant messages that demonstrate our unique and relevant value.

Sales execution therefore, is all about sales conversations. Not all conversations are conducted in person, face-to-face. Consider: telephone, email, third party delivery, websites, documents, PR, blogs, events, etc.

The complex sale requires a new and different conversation from the traditional, product sale (again, behavior change). It must be tailored to each stakeholder in the buying process. And this process has shifted from a single, knowledgeable buyer, to a committee of people with different understandings of the underlying problems, associated issues, options to consider, decision criteria and process, timeframe and urgency.

Complex messages must be made simple and consumable. This is more science than art.

Marketing must take a new role to support sales with sales messaging and content that enables sales conversations with quality, consistent messaging that simplifies the complex and creates value for customers.

For most organizations with multiple product managers, this is best done with a defined sales messaging methodology that is consistently applied across all product and marketing groups. It should be supported by a feedback and update process given the dynamic nature of messaging and the ever-changing marketplace.

Knowledge sharing, especially about "what to say, and how to say it", is a critical component of sales execution. This activity is downstream from intial training activity, but is critical for just-in-time sales coaching when complex messages are involved.

Message delivery means supporting ALL the "conversation methods" involved in the complex sale. Perhaps most important is the ability to enable customer sponsors to effectively carry our message on our behalf, without the benefit of sales training, messaging playbooks, or years of experience.

Multimedia programs assist both the real time sales coaching requirements of sales and customer sponsors, and customer delivery requirements. Mutlimedia captures and holds attention, can be a virtual clone of subject experts, explains complexity and nuance better than text, and motives action.

Traditional multimedia production methods don't meet today's requirements for: tailored, personalized and relevant programs, rapid deployment, low cost, high quality and volume.

A new publishing approach to building multimedia, similar to that used with the website development process, is required. This involves a defined methodolgoy that determines what content to build, and for which communication purposes. It requires a new process that defines how to build content so it meets the above requirements.

Marketing must develop a sales communication and multimedia strategy to support these objectives.

Marketing should execute this as a set of services they provide to sales. These services should help the complex sales professional become more like a marketer to: build their personal brand as a trusted advisor (thought leader) within accounts, uncover and diagnose needs and opportunities, educate customers to set decision criteria they can win, and reduct the time and resource sinks that lower sales productivity and motivation.

Marketing Sherpa Demand Generation Conference in Boston

Lead generation: for a product sale or solution sale?

Marketing is evolving so quickly these days, and Marketing Sherpa and their community are definitely on the forefront of thinking about and executing new ideas.

As I sat with 220+ people in Boston and listend to the tight, 30 minute presentations, I realized I was listening with what I would describe as "ears of the complex, solution selling organization." Although I got great ideas and it was a terrific conference, not all that I heard made sense in this context.

It became clear that these conversations must make a distinction between a (rather traditional) product oriented sale, and the marketing and selling programs that support it; and a solution and (often) target account sales process, and the way marketing must support that.

Demand gen for the product sale is about a "sales qualified lead" for a (relatively) volume sales model. The often disparaging comments about sales people expecting leads that are ready to sign the order, while funny and at the extreme, belies the business reality if you get in the shoes of someone with a significant montly quota. The selling model doesn't allow much for opportunity development. Looking for a "hot" lead is essential to sales productivity, meeting quota and keeping a job (feeding a family). I wish I had heard greater appreciation of that from speakers and audience alike.

While presenters did come from companies with a longer, complex sale, the distinction of how this impacted their lead gen programs wasn't clear. How does a "sales qualified lead" differ in these organizations?

Unisys and EMC both presented campaigns targeted at relatively few accounts -- 100 for the former, 24 for the later -- where marketing and sales actually collaborated to collect information from and about key stakeholders in accounts, and to execute lead generation campaigns that were highly successful. A good start. Next challenge is to figure out how to make this scaleable.

What I did hear at the conference is an appreciation for building content -- presumably you have to figure out the right messages first -- for the diffeent stages of the customer's buying process, as well as for buyer roles (stakeholders). But the recent Marketing Sherpa survy indicated 63% of the companies surveyed don't do this. This is still an opportunity to create a competitive advantage for those companies who do.