The punch line to this story is that management claimed to understand what discovery was and how important it was to an effective enterprise sales process, yet they consistently demonstrated through their actions that they thought discovery was really thorough qualification. I’m really passionate about discovery because in 20+ years of selling to the enterprise, I have never met a single top sales performer that didn’t fundamentally understand that effective discovery is the cornerstone of any successful sales engagement. I’ve been preaching the importance of a sound sales discovery process for years and have conducted numerous training sessions with sales teams to help mentor this area that is sorely lacking.

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The post Discovery-the missing piece of the enterprise sales puzzle first appeared on True Sales Results.

The best sales people view their sales efforts as a strategic investment of their time and resources-they are “CEOs” of their territory.  As such, they carefully and constantly assess where they will receive the best return on their investment. Expressed differently, they are constantly thinking about how they can maximize their earnings. The best way to do that is to develop an ideal customer profile that you qualify hard against. But it goes much deeper than the initial qualification step as great sales people can objectively ask themselves at the end of each step in the sales process “a go or no go question”. Top sales reps use their discernment skills to determine through initial qualification, discovery, and negotiation process whether it is a winnable deal and a deal that you want to win. They will walk from a sales opportunity that is not a good fit or not worth the resource investment.

Here is a real world anecdote that illustrates the importance of discernment. A small software start-up that I was working with was involved in a highly competitive and lengthy enterprise sales cycle with a F100 company. One of the key inflection points in the sales cycle was a multiple day off site strategy session with the prospective customer, which we were invited to participate in as one of the vendor finalists. The first day was filled with marathon technical sessions and a conference room that rotated with up to 25 people from the prospective customer’s end with different agendas. We were in the proverbial “hot seat” all day with rapid fire questions and various tests that we had to satisfy. At th eend of the day, we went to a nice dinner with the core project team including the key infleuncers and decision makers. We strategically placed our team around the table so that we paired up with our peers. I was siting next to the decision maker and the project manager along with our CEO. It was a wonderful meal accompanied by some delicious wine which both the decision maker and I were quite fond of. The dinner conversation tone was friendlier the fire drill session tone that we were in all day and afforded us the opportunity to bond and ask some questions with their guard down.

At the end of this marathon day, our team regrouped in the hotel for a debriefing on how the day had transpired. Our CEO took the lead and effectively said that the deal was lost and gave the rationale behind that assertion. My sales rep who was verbally liberated courtesy of the wine and exhaustion of the 15-16 hour day at this point, asked “What meeting were you in today?” Our entire team was exhausted and thankfully that question made us all laugh. We went on to share our interpretations of how the meeting went and the signals that we received during the day and dinner. We were able to convince the CEO that there was strong evidence that supported us being in a strong competitive position based on the feedback from the prospective customer and we decided to stay engaged in the evaluation. We went on to win a $1M+ deal with this customer and it was a seminal moment in the company’s history. The irony was that if the decision was purely left to the CEO (with poor sales discernment skills), the deal would have been lost as we would have cut bait.

The post Why is discernment important in sales? first appeared on True Sales Results.

1. Marketing is measured and rewarded on leads not revenue- How can you have alignment if the two groups are focused on different goals and results? The simple answer is that you can’t. The beauty of measuring and aligning marketing and sales purely on revenue is that you save a ton of time that is constantly spent debating the definition of a lead:-) At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter to sales people if marketing is generating 1000 leads or 1 lead. What does matter is that marketing is helping to provide the necessary air cover and finding the right leads that turn in to real opportunities which get converted in to sales.
2. Marketing is not held accountable- Many years back, I was a passionate sales director meeting for cocktails with an equally passionate marketing director that I worked with. He is one of the most exceptional marketing professionals that I have had the pleasure of working with. As a general rule, when I find people that are exceptional at what they do I tend to find ways to work with them again as evidenced by the fact that the aforementioned marketing gentleman and I have worked together at 4 different companies thus far and counting! During our cocktail conversation, he expressed tremendous frustration at not feeling appreciated by sales. He did work very hard at trying to understand what our needs were and help support them through his team and their efforts. He actually thinks very much like a sales person which is one of the reasons why he is so good at what he does. I explained that one of the things that always separated sales and marketing was the level of accountability that sales people were held to versus marketing. Sales people live in a quantifiable black and white world whereas marketing tends to live in shades of gray. Sales people have to meet and exceed certain revenue thresholds or they lose their jobs. What is the average tenure of a VP of Sales versus a VP of Marketing? How long are mediocre people tolerated in sales for? Marketing tends to have squishy goals with lots of caveats. Sales isn’t afforded that luxury. One of the best things that a company can do to foster better alignment between sales & marketing is to establish clear goals for marketing and hold them accountable. I trust that you will find sales “appreciating” marketing a lot more when they are measured and held accountable in the same ways that sales is.
3. Marketing does not spend enough time out in the field- One of the biggest frustrations for sales people is that they are on the front lines every day talking to prospects and customers. Sales people know what their competitors are doing that are winning deals. They know what the customers want in products and solutions that are missing in their products and costing them deals. Sales people know what the general market perception is of their company and whether they  are known or not. Marketing needs to proactively go out in the field with sales and learn firsthand how they can better help support sales to sell more effectively. Most marketing folks tend to be viewed as “ivory tower” types that very rarely leave the office  and spend quality time in the field in front of customers. To compound matters, these are the same types that constantly represent that they know what the customer wants or what the competitor’s tactics are. That information is typically outdated and undermines their credibility with sales.

The post Top 3 deadly sins in dysfunctional sales & marketing relationships first appeared on True Sales Results.