What Really Creates Sales Excellence?

Dave Kurlan's blog raises this question in response to webinar invitations from Avitage and other companies. He makes good points, although I think it's hyperbole to suggest that these invitations "promise the solution to all of our sales problems".

His point is, "the only way to make them (sales people) better is through evaluation, training and development."

And I certainly agree that, "these (vendor) applications are far more effective when you've already worked with a sales force development expert, developed a sales process and developed your sales people."

But it also reminds me of the adage, "when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

We use Dave's assessments, believe completely in sales process and have documented our selling process since 1998. Sales development should be seen as a continuous process, not a periodic event as some organizations do.

But is that all there is to creating sales excellence, to improving sales effectiveness?

"Competent" means "the state of being adequately or well qualified." It is a function of skill, knowledge and ability. "Effective" means "producing or capable of producing a desired effect." We focus on supporting sales performance with information, knowledge, content, tools and assistance that indeed make sales people more effective.

Our customers who are involved with a complex sale tell us that to help their sales people shift from product providers to consultative sellers requires support to help them take their skills and awareness and actually execute to produce the desired sales results.

After they've hired the right horses, worked on development and implemented a sales process, their sales people need help conducting better conversations. This goes beyond ability and skill issues.

Often this requires a "four legged sales call" where SEs (pre-sales engineers), product managers or sales managers are brought in for conversation support.

For over 12 years, customers have asked us to help them with remediation (coaching), call preparation and physical delivery of key messages to customers. They tell us sellers need:

• Selling messaging and diagnostic questions, especially given expanding sales bags and a more competitive environment;
• Compelling and relevant content to deliver messages that support the customer's buying process;
• Knowledge aids that help sales people prepare for sales conversations quicker and easier;
• Selling tools and aids that help them engage customers more effectively, especially over the telephone, and communicate proof points relevant to the value they can provide a prospect;
• Convenient, opportunity specific coaching to assist with strategy and provide actionable next steps.

Avitage provides a process to build sales communications that are aligned to, and in support of, conversations that occur at each stage of the sales process, relevant to different stakeholder types, business needs, value points, competitive context and industry factors, among others.

This process supports an organization's training, marketing, coaching and sales communication needs with coordinated messages, shared content, and cost effective deployment.

The long-standing rap on sales training is that it's deployed as a periodic event and the benefits atrophy as early as 90 days out. But skills training without supporting selling information means sales people (each) have to figure it out for themselves, resulting in wasted time, opportunities and inconsistent selling.

To become a "trusted advisor" means sales professional have to have knowledge, and access to information, that makes them an advisor in the eyes of the customer.

Selling is fundamentally about communication. Communication is about delivery. Delivery today occurs in far more ways than face-to-face conversations. More selling over the phone, especially in the early stages of the process, require new engagement methods. Selling is more collaborative and it is necessary to bring experts to the customer in timely and cost effective ways. Web meetings and multimedia vignettes help here.

Sales people need to develop and cultivate leads. Multimedia vignettes help capture customer attention, and capitalize on that attention with compelling delivery of messages. Lead nurturing involves customer education. Customer portals with relevant (multimedia) content help here.

After the challenges of getting prospects to engage, the next biggest challenges involve accelerating the buying cycle, creating and demonstrating value, closing business -- not losing to "no decision". While skills are essential to this process, they are not sufficient. Knowledge, content and new delivery methods are also essential.

Comments

[Dave Kurlan]

Hi Jim,

Didn't mean to imply that an application like yours couldn't help. There were only two points I was attempting to make and apparently, I failed to make them effectively.

1) Too many webinar invitations are promising the same solution;
2) The applications, like yours, are best utilized after the competencies have been improved rather than before.

I agree with everything you said.