Sales Effectiveness

Turning Anxiety Into Advantage

by Sridhar Ramanathan

My fellow consulting firm owners and corporate exec buddies often ask me, “Aren’t you nervous about being self-employed and supporting a family of six on an unpredictable salary?” The answer is “yes.”

In the early days of my practice, I found myself very worried about the up and down nature of consulting after I’d grown so accustomed to the steady paychecks over my twelve year tenure at HP. Now after being in business for seven years, I actually find anxiety to be a very useful leadership tool.

This isn’t entirely an original insight. Andy Grove warned us long ago with his book Only The Paranoid Survive. My point is that it doesn’t have to be scary and painful if you embrace anxiety as another useful emotion like anger, frustration, etc and put it to good work such as in driving change in an organization. Here are just a few thoughts on how anxiety has worked for me and how it could work for you as well.

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Posted March 23, 2008 | Permalink

Competing against Mr. Do Nothing

by Sridhar Ramanathan

So often my clients find their #1 competitor is actually the customer doing nothing. That’s right. It’s not the direct competitor or a substitute option or even a homegrown solution that cinches the deal but rather inertia or doing nothing that wins. This can be especially frustrating and expensive when a sales team has invested a lot of resources to pursue a deal in good faith. And there are real opportunity costs for resources such as demo equipment, sale rep and SE time, travel, and executive relationship credibility. So the question is: how can you compete more effectively against Mr. Do Nothing? Here are some tips that have proven effective.

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Posted November 12, 2007 | Permalink

Selling to the CFO – A Dinner Conversation

by Sridhar Ramanathan

“Make it a double” barked Chris to the bartender to be heard above the restaurant din.

“Guess your boss came down on you pretty hard, huh?” said Jo.

“Well, I’m angry with myself more than anyone else for not being able to keep a two hundred thousand deal from evaporating” replied Chris.

“That’s why I wanted to buy you a drink, Jo” said Chris with a note of humility.

“I know you’re CFO of a publicly traded company and I figured you could coach me. You know…how to sell someone like you” whispered Chris as he began sipping his martini.

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Posted March 4, 2007 | Permalink

The Power of No

by Sridhar Ramanathan

One of the most powerful statements you can make to someone is “no.” It can immediately trigger some strong reactions ranging from quiet resentment to outright rage. In my little kids, it can trigger a tantrum. We let our kids watch thirty minutes of the movie “Cars” last night and boy were they unhappy when we said “no” to more movie time. So clearly it’s a powerful word. But is there a more effective of way of saying “no” without triggering all the sound and fury that comes along with it? Here are a few stories and suggestions I want to pass along.

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Posted February 19, 2007 | Permalink

Trust – The Key to Sales

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Two ebooks showed up in my intray this week that I would consider must-reads. Coincidentally, the central message in both books was that trust is essential to sales.

Seth Godin, author of bestselling marketing books, writes in the RainToday’s The One Piece of Advice You Can’t Sell that “there is only one thing that matters when you’re selling professional services. Only one. Does the person who is buying from you (and her boss!) trust you?” I would contend that this is true for selling anything from services to software.

Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch, writes in Eight Critical Success Factors for Lead Generation that “customers regularly illustrate the need for sales people who call on them to understand both their business and their needs while being sensitive to the pressures under which they operate. Sales people who meet these criteria become known as trusted advisors, and trusted advisors get the sale.” Brian goes on to show how marketing is here to create conversations with prospective customers that build trust by delivering value over time.

Posted August 12, 2006 | Permalink

Lead Generation for the Complex Sale

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Brian Carroll’s new book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, is a must read if you are looking for ways to drive more and better quality leads for your sales team year round. I liked Brian's holistic approach which encompasses people, process and tool investments necesary for effective lead generation. And he even cites Elise Bauer, Pacifica Group partner, on the topic of thought leadership, a critical ingredient in delivering value in each customer communication.

I’ll highlight three of Brian’s contributions which I most appreciated:

• Universal lead definition – bring sales and marketing leaders together to agree on criteria for a “sales ready” lead then hold both accountable for execution.
• Multi-modal – build a portfolio of different approaches (e.g. email, web, phone calls, PR, events, direct mail, referrals, etc.) so you have a steady stream of actionable leads.
• Lead nurturing – engage prospects with relevant, timely, and enticing information from the first point of contact to contract. It’s about conversations not campaigns.

If you take these three concepts (and more) that Brian talks about, you’ll have a lead generation machine in place that will produce far better results from your sales and marketing efforts.

Posted June 17, 2006 | Permalink

Paranoia – A Virtue among Top Sales Reps

by Sridhar Ramanathan

I heard the word “paranoid” used three times this last week by three different clients of ours – 2 sales VP and a #1 enterprise software rep. Each told us independently and without prompting that their top sales reps were paranoid when it came to closing deals. I was intrigued by the choice of the word “paranoid” and so dug deeper. Here are some insights I gleaned from them and pass along to you.

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Posted June 4, 2006 | Permalink

When to Bring an Executive Along on a Sales Call

by Sridhar Ramanathan

This week one of my client’s Sales VP’s said to me “don’t sales reps know how best to use me in a sales situation?” Well, I’m sorry to say that there’s very little guidance most reps get when it comes to using their executives most effectively in a sales pursuit. Yet we’ve seen that high performing reps seem to have a knack for engaging executives at the right time. Here are three reasons that great reps cite for bringing an exec into their deal.

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Posted May 20, 2006 | Permalink

Practice Makes Perfect…and Quota

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Babe Ruth is legendary for having an extraordinary number of both home runs and strike outs. He took more risks, more often, in order to get more results. Similarly, sales reps need more “at bats” or “practice” hitting home runs even if it means more strike outs. I want to emphasize the importance of practice in addition to traditional sales training methods such as live instructor led training, self-paced online e-learning, and simulations. We’ve had experience with Chief Learning Officers and sales training managers at Cisco, Documentum, Siebel, Sybase, Interwoven, and others. One best practice we see is the extensive use of hands-on practice. Here are three methods to hands-on practice for your sales training manager or sales operations person to consider implementing. Best of all, these practices do not take time out of field.

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Posted May 14, 2006 | Permalink

Product Demos that Wow!

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Product demonstrations (demos) are one of the key deliverables of product marketing, especially for software companies. Yet somehow they get far less attention than, say, a PR campaign or lead generation when it comes to funding and executive attention. With five years now under our belt, we’ve seen loads of product demos from the very bad to the ones that really wowed us.

Peter Cohan, founder of The Second Derivative, specializes in creating demos that wow. Here are the top ten biggest mistakes that he cites:

• Be unclear on the customer’s needs: “the harbor cruise”
• Present a linear demo from beginning to end: “where is this going…?”
• Start with a corporate overview: “death by corporate overview…”
• Don’t reconfirm the time constraints: “sorry, we’re out of time…”
• Show as many features as possible: “…and another thing you can do is…”
• Show the same demo, regardless of the customer’s depth of Interest: “one for all…”
• Let questions interrupt and take control of your demo: “but what about…?”
• Let bugs and crashes consume you: “gee, it’s never done that before…”
• Limit the time you show your big pay-off screen: “Ta-da… any questions?”
• Avoid summarizing: “and the next thing is…”

So what are the best practices? We include here Peter’s article in full entitled The Great Demo! Top Ten List. You might also check out the website for the annual Demo conference. This is a forum where new companies and products are launched, and demos are strictly limited to six minutes. It's a good place to get ideas for demos that wow. Now here's Peter's article:

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Posted March 26, 2006 | Permalink

Land and Expand

by Sridhar Ramanathan

With software sales cycles taking 9-12 months, it’s no wonder companies are looking at new ways to shorten sales cycles and reduce selling costs. One strategy that’s working well for our clients is the “land and expand’ approach. Just like the Apollo moon rover, the idea here is to the land into an account and expand from your initial base. Here’s a three-step process for a “land and expand” approach.

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Posted March 13, 2006 | Permalink

Selling to the Committee

by Sridhar Ramanathan

If you think sales cycles just seem to be getting longer not shorter these days, you’re not alone. Marketing News has a nice article entitled “It Takes a Committee to Buy Into B-to-B”. The article cites a SiriusDecisions statistic that says “In 2005, 3.5 more people on average were involved in making a purchasing decision than in 2001.” This can include roles such as gatekeeper, champion, influencer, user, executive, economic buyer, and so on. Plus decision-making seems to be moving up the chain rather than down. Why? It’s about risk. No one wants to make a bad purchase.

The key to selling to the “committee” or team of stakeholders is to nurture many relationships over time. Both sales and marketing play a role from the very first customer contact to ongoing touches with all these stakeholders. The Marketing News article elaborates on how to nurture relationships, and can be found on Brian Carroll’s blog. Brian is CEO of InTouch Inc, a lead generation services company and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. I encourage you to checkout his book and the Marketing News article.

Posted February 25, 2006 | Permalink

Power Up Your Weekly Sales Concall

by Sridhar Ramanathan

What do sales reps dislike almost as much as cold calling? The dreaded weekly sales conference call. Sales reps would much rather be visiting with prospects then reporting their weekly results on these calls. Plus over 90% of the call may not concern them at all so it feels like a waste of their time. Nevertheless, sales managers need these calls as part of running a high performance sales force. Here are five best practices that we’ve seen as we deal with many VPs of Sales in technology companies.

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Posted February 21, 2006 | Permalink

Turning Evaluations into Sales Advantages

by Sridhar Ramanathan

One of the big chunks of time and risks in any software sales cycle is a proof-of-concept or evaluation phase on the customer’s site. Virtually all of our clients have this as part of their sales cycle and most dread them. Here are some best practices we’ve gleaned to help make these a valuable sales tool as opposed to liability.

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Posted February 16, 2006 | Permalink

Attention Sales VPs--Make Account Plans Count

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Sales managers ride the delicate balance of empowerment and control. That means giving sales reps plenty of latitude to make their quota numbers yet demanding reps deliver important administrative items such as pipeline reporting, forecasts, keeping the sales force automation system up to date, and account plans. Sales reps who love the hunt will resist these mundane tasks because it makes them “too visible” to management and therefore more susceptible to criticism. But if you strongly dislike being surprised by reps when their promised deals don’t materialize, then you’ll find that account plans are a welcome aid. A good account plan will minimize surprises and maximize success.

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Posted December 20, 2005 | Permalink

Forecasts Are Never Right

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Most sales executives and CEOs I know rely heavily on sales forecasts as an indicator of business health. What surprises me is how often they’re surprised that sales forecasts are wrong. Forecasts are never right. The process of forecasting should help businesses focus on the key assumptions and metrics that drive business performance.

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Posted December 8, 2005 | Permalink

Unsung Heroes of Business Growth – The Field Engineer

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Every company has heroes. They are employees who go to great lengths to ensure their customer’s satisfaction and success. And in most technology companies the Field Engineer, sometimes called Systems Engineer (SE), is often the one who saves the day on specific customer sales or situations. Big kudos usually goes to the sales rep and very little to the SE who made it happen technically. Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, however is so committed to his SEs and partner SEs that he has a VP in charge of their development and productivity. Accenture, IBM, EDS, HP, and all the major systems integrators spend millions of dollars on their SE workforce. Why? Field engineers are simply essential to business growth. And they’re often the best source of new business with existing customers. Here’s a primer on SEs and how to win with them.

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Posted December 4, 2005 | Permalink

Sales and Marketing - A Sibling Rivalry or Business Partnership?

by Sridhar Ramanathan

Sometimes sibling rivalry is a good thing. It can actually push kids to carve out their identities more distinctly and to perform better. The same is true in the business world. CEOs often encourage some healthy tension to push the organization to higher levels of performance. Between Sales and Marketing, for instance, you want Sales to push Marketing to define winning products while Marketing should be pushing Sales to keep prices up despite pleas for deep discounts. The same tension exists between Engineering and Support. Support would love more design for supportability built in, and Engineering would love not to worry about documentation and supportability needs.

But sometimes sibling rivalry goes too far. Often I hear CEOs of technology companies talk about the virtual fist fights between Sales and Marketing when it comes to handoffs. Having one VP of Sales & Marketing, unfortunately, does not always remedy the issue. In fact, some of the conflicts between the silos directly lead to longer cycle times between first customer contact and final contract. This clearly hurts revenue growth. So the problem statement then is: how do I ensure the best, fastest handoffs between Sales and Marketing? What’s the right goal congruence between the two functions?

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Posted June 4, 2005 | Permalink

Guide to Hiring an Enterprise Software Sales Rep

by Sridhar Ramanathan

What should you look for in an outside, direct sales rep selling enterprise software/services for a complex product? Here is a cheat sheet with interview questions for screening candidates:

Metrics:

• Tell me about your quota performance over the last five years? Why did you achieve or not achieve targets? Look for successful track record.
  
• How do you define success besides achieving quota? Look for things like relationship building, consultative selling, leadership/influence in the company.
  
• How do you track progress against your quota targets on a daily, weekly, quarterly basis? Look for results orientation versus purely activity based metrics.

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Posted May 4, 2005 | Permalink

Guide to Hiring an Inside Sales Rep

by Sridhar Ramanathan

A good inside rep is literally worth their weight in gold. Why? They fuel the whole lead generation process which results in sales downstream. That means a 10% improvement in productivity means 10% more pipeline and 10% more revenue. Simple as that. It’s worth paying a little extra to hire a talented, experienced inside sales rep. Our definition of “inside sales” is a role that is responsible for:

• Proactively contacting prospective customers on a target list
• Responding to inbound inquiries coming from the website, telephone, events, etc.
• Qualifying prospects against clear criteria
• Pitching the solution to verify interest and quality
• Pass qualified leads to Sales to close (some Inside reps may do this too depending on average product selling price).
• Provide reporting of progress against daily, weekly, quarterly goals

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Posted April 4, 2005 | Permalink

Taking Hoops Out of the Buying Process

by Sridhar Ramanathan

How hard do you make it for your customers to buy from you? One CEO participating in a customer focus group we ran told us “I don’t want to work so hard to give you my business.” She was a former customer. The criticism was directed at the order fulfillment/delivery phase of the process and not at the good selling that went into getting the CEO to the point of purchase. The statement struck me as a truism—ease of doing business is vital whether it’s a $3 meal at McDonalds or a $3M enterprise software purchase. Have you recently looked at what you put your customers through when buying your product or service? The changes you make might mean the difference between keeping a customer and losing one. Here are three examples of frustrating steps that can undo all the good will built up in the sales process leading up to a purchase:

What steps do you make a customer go through to buy from you?

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Posted February 4, 2005 | Permalink

The Bottom Line in Growing Top Line

by Sridhar Ramanathan

My enterprise software clients often complain about how brutal this economy is for closing deals, or why the sales process is torturously more difficult these days. The list of selling challenges grows longer ever day—decision-makers who really aren't, risk aversion causing paralysis, too many vendors chasing too few prospects, merger/acquisition activity has people focused on job preservation not ROI for the business, etc. There's one immutable reality in sales. Sales is a veritable "funnel." The more you put in, the more you get out. Even a small improvement in some key ratios will make a direct, immediate impact on sales. Let's look at three parameters in particular:

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Posted January 25, 2005 | Permalink

A Look Inside Inside Sales

by Sridhar Ramanathan

If you’re targeting the SMB, you already know that Inside Sales is one of the most efficient ways to reach your customers. But when was the last time you checked to see what’s happening in Inside Sales? All that most CEOs know is that Marketing is generating “leads” for Insides Sales which then hands off qualified prospects to Sales. For some products with low average selling price, Inside Sales may actually be responsible for closing sales. It’s worth your time to check it out because even a 10% improvement will result in 10% more Sales.
But what’s really happening inside Inside Sales? How do you know they’re firing on all cylinders?

First, let’s use a popular framework called AIDA. Marketing yields general “Awareness” but also “Interest” from specific inquiries (or “leads” as it’s sometimes loosely called). Inside Sales then qualifies them based on purchase intention, budget, urgency, solution fit, etc. An “interest” becomes “Desire” when the Inside Sales rep books a meeting with the customer prospect. After a qualification meeting, the output to Sales is a smaller list of qualified prospects they turn into sales or “Action.” The ratio of unqualified leads to qualified prospects is an important measure over time. Let’s look at some industry benchmarks for Inside Sales for IT software/services products.

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Posted August 6, 2004 | Permalink

Proof of Concept - a Golden Opportunity

by Sridhar Ramanathan

For every adversity there's a seed of opportunity. At least that's how I see the current challenges in the high technology sector. Keith Newman's article "Get your MoFo Rising" struck a chord with me having just finished advising my client, a collaborative services company, on how to exploit the trend towards Proof-of-Concept (POC) in pre-sales. Most enterprise software vendors see POC as slowing down the sales process and even anathema to building momentum towards closing the deal. That's the old wisdom.

Here's what I learned from interviewing 30 enterprise software vice presidents of sales. Virtually all of them saw POC as mandatory for the customer building the ROI case to purchase. It might surprise you to learn that over 75% of software buyers now demand a "try before buy" experience-not a demo but a working POC in their sandbox. This is especially true of the SMB who don't have much error margin these days for capital investments or expense items.

So why POC? From the customer perspective, the POC is used to prove ROI before buying. What do customers say they want from the numerator and denominator of ROI calculations?

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Posted August 26, 2002 | Permalink