March 27, 2023

8 effective tactics sales managers should use to NOT manage

8 effective tactics sales managers should use to NOT manage.

Increasing the effectiveness of sales management misses the point.

I’ve always maintained that a truly great person responsible for a team of sales professionals doesn’t ‘manage’ at all.

Traditional sales managers spend their time enacting what the sales discipline prescribes.

Their intent is to move the sales team up the learning curve on sales fundamentals to make sales individuals better; to improve their performance:

✔️ how to make a cold call.
✔️ how to spot a good lead.
✔️ how to manage their sales funnel more productively.
✔️ how to author a good sales proposal.
✔️ how to uncover customer needs.
✔️ how to overcome client objections.

Performing these practices may make the sales team more proficient at selling at least in terms of ‘textbook sales’ as practised by the sales herd, but conforming to these sales standards does nothing to make sales more effective in adding strategic value to an organization.

Furthermore, following best practices does nothing to help the organization standout in a crowd of competitors by offering long term relevant, compelling and unique value to their customers.

Sales management shouldn’t aspire to make salespeople get better; they should be held accountable for equipping them to transform the organization into a force that cannot be reckoned with in the market.

Sales management should be focused not on improvement but on transformation.

These 8 tactics will help sales managers assume their dutiful role as leaders of sales transformation.

#1. Define the strategic sales role.

Sales managers must take a different view of their role.

To NOT be merely a sales function, but to play a vital role in executing the strategic game plan of their organization and translating it into what it means specifically for sales.

As a sales manager, if you don’t understand the strategic direction of the organization intimately and be able to declare what it means to sales, you will never be able to define the strategic value sales must deliver.

#2. Focus on the longer term

Strategic value is not created by monthly myopia.

Raise your head and look beyond the immediate sales cycle. Balance the need for short term sales and creating long term customer loyalty.

Sales value is not synonymous with flogging products to clients in the moment; rather it is creating the environment where clients choose to transact with you forever.

#3. Pay for client relationship building.

The sales compensation plan needs a major overhaul in order to encourage sales behaviors that add strategic value.
A critical move in this regard is to reduce the emphasis on pushing products and add the client relationship building component.

In my role as president of an internet startup, I set the sales bonus plan at 40% for achieving product sales targets and 60% for establishing meaningful client relationships.

As the measurement tool for relationship building, I introduced what I called the Client Report Card where the client rated their salesperson on how effective they were at performing this task.

#4. Build teamwork with marketing.

Marketing is close to the strategy of the organization so it makes sense for sales to be closely aligned with the marketing team.

The benefits of a tight sales - marketing relationship are largely twofold:
▪️sales are afforded a unique insight into what strategic value they can add to the marketing effort.
▪️by building strong currency with marketing, sales is seen as a team that the marketers should support in terms of product training, advertising and promotion cover and sales tools.

#5. Enhance strategic skills.

An effective way for sales to add strategic value is to be competent at strategic thinking and to apply the skill to helping clients build their own strategic game plan.

This solidifies the salesperson as a strategic partner of the client with privileges to acquire business accordingly.

The ultimate proof of a salesperson providing strategic value to their client is having the salesperson invited to be part of the client’s strategic planning team.

#6. Recover from service blunders.

Making mistakes is (unfortunately) common in organizations, but if the right response is taken the OOPS! can be transformed into a WOW! by the salesperson with the result that client loyalty is actually enhanced.

In fact, service recovery is so effective, the client forgets that they were screwed over in the first place!

I hosted sales events that recognized sales recovery champions, it was that important to sales’ strategic value. After all what can be more important strategically than building client loyalty?

#7. Create lateral moves for high potential sales people.

Strategic value offered by any employee is in large measure a function of their breadth of experience in the organization. The more positions they have held the more value they can offer through a lens of what matters to other departments.
Even though no sales leader wants to part with their most valued employees, it’s necessary with long term value creation.

#8. Lose—YES LOSE!—a sale

For sales, adding strategic value boils down to doing what’s right for the client. PERIOD. Pushing the organization’s agenda by caring only about your quota and how many products are sold is counter productive to long term growth and survival.

It’s a bit perverse, but sales value increases when a sale is lost because it was the right thing to do for the client. The qualifier, of course, is that the salesperson fins a way to broker the sale even though it might require another supplier’s solution.

The principle at play is: lose the sale but NEVER lose the client!

Sales managers who are obsessed with efficiency aren’t doing their organization any favours; those who look at the job with a value bias are worth their weight in gold.

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 3.27.23 at 07:10 am by Roy Osing
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March 20, 2023

What’s the audacious (but simple) formula to take a startup to a BILLION in sales?

Is there a formula to take a startup to a BILLION in sales?

Yup. But it’s not just about sales. This is not a treatise on sales techniques; FAR FROM IT! In fact sales plays a minor role in what it takes to get a BILLION.

In my seventh book, “Audacious ’Unheard-of Ways’ I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES”, (https://www.bedifferentorbedead.com/blog/item/1328) I share with you the formula I discovered over my four-decade career as an entrepreneur, CMO and president.

I hope you check out my book for the details, but here are 8 snippets I hope will tweak your interest:

1. Business plan — You won’t make a dent in the BILLION if you spend all your time trying to perfect your plan to get your strategic intent ‘perfect’. I will show you how to develop my BILLION business plan that gets your end game ‘just about right’ and focuses on execution as the source to learn and tweak it on the run.

2. Tailor-made solutions — BILLION dollars in sales doesn’t come from a mass market solution marketing machine, rather a healthy mix of mass customized and individual tailor-made solutions with ME-NOW as the primary focus.
I will give you a step-by-step method of doing it based on what worked for me as CMO.

3. Premium pricing — Pricing on the journey to a BILLION is about being a premium price business where the value provided to its customers commands higher prices than the competition. Discount pricing is for commodity players with mediocre sales and margins.
I will share my pricing secrets with you and show you how to play the high-price, high-sales game.

4. Elegant delivery — A key component of the BILLION sales stream is how solutions are delivered to customers. Delivery systems must be flawless.
This is basic stuff. Customers expect to get what they’ve bought in a straightforward way and when delivery systems don’t work their dissatisfaction is often expressed by complaining to their friends or moving to another supplier.
I will show you in simple terms how to flawlessly execute your plan and ensure your customers get what they want when they want it.

5. Caring service — A business that is capable of a BILLION in sales cares about its customers.
They actually have a culture that has moved beyond the normal strategy of providing excellent customer service to one where employees treat their colleagues and customers with the respect and empathy they deserve.
I will explain in detail how I created a service strategy for the organizations I led and the success that I had.

6. Serving leadership — A BILLION in sales comes from frontline functions supported by serving leaders.
They understand that superlative performance and unmatched results come from well trained employees working with the right tools and ‘100 % uptime’ systems and processes and minimal barriers and roadblocks to doing their jobs the way they need to be done.
Leadership plays a vital role in the effectiveness of delivering results by spending time with the frontline and other key delivery systems personnel asking the simple question: “How can I help?” and serving them in any way they can.
My success as a leader came from a blueprint I developed for myself and I’m going to take you through it so you can reap the same rewards as I did.

7. A win-your-business-everyday attitude — A BILLION in sales requires an attitude and culture that takes nothing for granted in terms of customer loyalty. These businesses know that, with so much competition and alternatives for their customers, they must earn the right to serve their customers everyday.
And that if they do much as lose focus on that purpose, they could lose business in a heartbeat.
Employees are coached to assume that their customer’s business is always up in the air and that they must fight for it with every customer engagement.
My approach to building strong teams is unique, and in my book you will learn to not only have a strong turned-on team, but also to do it in an unheard-of way.

8. Reaction DNA — You don’t earn a BILLION by having a strategy that successfully plays out the way it was originally intended; there are always unexpected ‘body blows’ that strike, which requires a business to react ‘in the moment’ to take it in a new direction.
These businesses have reaction as a basic element of their DNA. They absorb body blows effectively, re-vector their strategy and retain their sales momentum.
There’s a formula to create the organizational ability to respond to unforeseen events that shock you, and I will unveil it for you in specific detail.

These snippets only scratch the surface in terms of what I did to successfully take a startup business to a BILLION in sales.

For the full reveal, check out my new book,

Cheers,
Roy
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• Posted 3.20.23 at 07:27 am by Roy Osing
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March 13, 2023

4 simple metrics that tell you how your business plan is performing

Source: Unsplash

4 simple metrics that tell you how your business plan is performing.

Now that you’ve created your business plan, how will you measure how well you are executing it?

How will you know if you are progressing to achieve your desired goals?

Performance management is the tool that tries to focus the energies of the organization on the desired outcomes.

The problem is, many people tend to mismanage performance by choosing too many metrics to measure.

And as a result people end up chasing many outcomes with little strategic payoff.

Organizations have data on almost everything, and therefore there is a tendency to measure too much in an effort to have all inclusive measurement.

Too little thought is given to choosing the critical few measures that relate to the success of the strategy.

If 80% of successful strategy execution can be ‘explained’ by measuring 3 outputs or activities, focus on measuring them as opposed to the other 100 that may be related to the strategy but are not critical to in achieving it.

My rule of thumb is to pick 3 or 4 key measures and focus everyone on these.

If your balanced scorecard doesn’t include the following metrics, you’re missing an amazing opportunity to know if you’re on track.

  ▪️ top line revenue as an expression of how the market is responding to the value you deliver;

  ▪️ the quality of the service experience as perceived by the customer;

  ▪️ the number of CRAP activities eliminated to free-up time and resources to take on new initiatives;

  ▪️ the number of dumb rules removed to make it easier for the customer to engage with your organization.

There are many more metrics that can be used , but these simple ones will show you whether or not your plan is being successfully implemented.

Cheers,
Roy
My 50+ Podcast Shows that will change your life.

Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 3.13.23 at 04:36 am by Roy Osing
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March 6, 2023

Why flogging cheap prices is a terrible strategy and should be stopped

Source: Unsplash

Why flogging cheap prices is a terrible strategy and should be stopped.

Why is competing on the basis of low prices actually bad marketing?

How is the game played?

▪️It can be a reaction to a short term dip in revenue, with the belief that lower prices will attract more business and prop revenues back up.

▪️It can be a vehicle to promote a particular product or service that is running below forecast. The intent is to get the customer’s attention with a slashed price and hope that sufficient sales volume will stimulate sales.

The most common play, however, is a ‘me too’ response to a competitor’s move. The competition drops their prices and the marketing analyst thinks they must match or undercut the competition to prevent customers from leaving.

At the end of the day, those who price cut trust that this strategy will make their business better off, that somehow they will gain a market advantage in the long run.

The irony of a business reducing their prices in response to a competitive move is that the business is really allowing the ‘bad guys’ to set their prices.

Why would any business allow their competition to set their prices? Does that make sense? Certainly not!

And the benefits of slashing prices, in any event, are illusory or short term at best. Sales revenue may spike up in the short term but it comes at the expense of lower margins unless costs can be reduced at the same time (which rarely happens).

Price cutting has no strategic value

Reducing prices never enhances your long term market position.

It contributes nothing to differentiate you.

It doesn’t make you special or unique in the eyes of the customer.

In fact it has the opposite effect. It shouts out your status as a commodity player who is interested in providing little more than low prices. Price floggers are a dime a dozen; you will not likely win this game. You might keep your head above water for a short time but sooner or later you will either hit the margin wall, or some gunslinger will come along and lower their prices again.

And the race to the bottom is on.

Stand-out marketing organizations learn to manage market share and profitability by maintaining prices higher than the competition.

Here are 3 actions you can take to avoid the price cutting game that leads everyone to the bottom.

▪️Set your priority to manage market share and profitability by focusing your efforts on high value customers where profitability is healthy. Let competitors have the low margin segments.

▪️Resist the temptation to lower prices across the board in favour of targeting price programs to specific vulnerable market segments. In the face of the competition entering long distance markets at prices 15-20% lower than incumbent telephone companies, flat rate packages (like 100 minutes for $10) were introduced for heavy users at a premium to the competition. It worked.

▪️Focus on creating additional value to support higher prices for your products and services. Offering product packages and added customer service features are ways to keep prices higher than the competition.

Stand-out marketing organizations are premium price suppliers and they win.

They are rewarded with fans who love them and spread their word to others because they’re worth it.

“The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about. “ — Seth Godin, marketing guru

Ponder these questions to see if you’re playing the price cutting game:
— What’s the conversation in your organization: is it about how to add value or reduce price?
— How frequently do you have special promotions that reduce prices?
— When you talk to your customers, what’s the main message: your low prices or your premium value?
— Do you offer product or service bundles with price discounts for buying more?
— How many initiatives do you regularly have to add value to your offerings and increase price?
— When you compare yourself with your competitors, is it mainly about price?

Price = $0.00 means you offer no value.

Is that really where you want to be?

Cheers,
Roy
My 50+ Podcast Shows that will change your life.

Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 3.6.23 at 05:13 am by Roy Osing
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