When I started Smart Selling Tools five years ago, I focused mostly on CRM.  There were (and still are) more than 100 different CRM tools on the market. Since CRM is the platform for sales organizations, it’s important to have ways to compare offerings and to learn what to look for. That was then.

SaaS changed everything.

As the Internet gained popularity, and SaaS offerings (aka cloud computing) gained credibility, it opened the door for more innovation in the sales software space. It didn’t take long for entrepreneurs to realize that SaaS (Software as a Service) lowered the barriers to entry and eliminated much of the cost of doing business in the software world.  For one thing, it meant that software no longer has to be packaged, inventoried, or shipped.

You no longer have to have the financial or market development muscle of an established player to successfully introduce new sales software. The good and bad news for sales leaders is this; while there are a lot of great tools now to choose from, you have to take the time to learn about and budget for them.

To make both tasks easier, we’ve partnered with 6 world-class sales software providers for a one-of-a-kind event. We will give away more than 100K of sales software in our Sales Software Sweeps. 

My wish for this event is for sales leaders to learn about tools outside of CRM, and raise awareness of specialty software tools that can help you move more opportunities through the pipeline faster.

I encourage you to enter the sweeps for a chance to deploy powerful software tools at no cost. http://www.salessoftwaresweeps.com

Thanks go to: DocuSign, Qvidian, Front Row Solutions, OneSource, Sales Contest Builder, and IntroRocket

Packaged SFA and CRM systems have been around for nearly 30 years. Though they have changed in some ways (SaaS offerings, added functionality), they haven’t changed in FUNDAMENTAL ways. They are essentially still an interface to a database.

They rely on people entering, managing, viewing, cleaning, and massaging data. To get value from CRM systems, you must provide consistent feeding and nurturing. For salespeople, manual input and management of data is not an efficient use of time – not to mention that it doesn’t reflect the way humans work naturally.

Salesforce.com was perhaps innocently born of a desire to support sales organizations and to do it in a more affordable way, that is, as a service. But they have doubled down on CRM as a platform, piling on new functionality as a way to expand their reach across entire organizations.

Is it now simply using CRM as a way to package and sell database technology? And if so, has that gotten in the way of true innovation in sales productivity solutions?

Not to pick on Salesforce alone, there are well over a hundred CRM solutions that essentially follow the same database approach. For large organizations, the database approach is acceptable from an operational and IT perspective. Their back-end and front-end systems are all dependent on databases and they have the resources to integrate.

Smaller organizations on the other hand, are not as dependent on databases. They’re in the position to demand solutions that are; easiest to use, require the least amount of administrative time, and give back the most value (i.e. they actually help reps sell more).

Helping reps sell more should be the main focus of any CRM system. If that goal was fulfilled, we would not continue to see poor adoption, or begrudging usage, of CRM.

Is it time to look at the problem of managing revenue pipeline activities in a fundamentally new way?

Is CRM – as a platform for sales productivity – outdated?

As head of your sales or marketing organization, are you beginning to ask, “Do we need CRM or do we need something else?”

Join our new LinkedIn discussion: Does CRM really improve sales productivity?

It’s hard to get an appointment with qualified prospects. And when you do get a hard earned appointment, you don’t want to waste the opportunity.

I get that.

But if I’m the prospect, I don’t want to hear everything there is to know about your product or your company during our first meeting.

I don’t want you to give me every little detail.

I want to know a little about your company – just enough to gauge your viability.

I want to know a little about your products – just enough to understand why you think I might benefit.

I want to know a little about how you’ve helped other companies – just enough to see if you’re for real.

But mostly I want to do the talking. I want you to ask me questions – and not stupid ones either. Questions that no one has asked me before. Questions that get me thinking.

I can tell more by what you ask me than by what you tell me. At this point in the sales cycle, I don’t really care about you. I only care whether you care about me.

Earlier, last decade, a book was published that shook the dating world called, “He’s Just Not That Into You” (Harper Collins). As described on Amazon.com, the book “educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn’t like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship.”

I thought of this book recently when John, one of my client’s, shared his story with me. John consistently winds up in dead-end relationships. In fact, he often gets involved in several dead-end relationships at the same time! They unfold in pretty much the same way.

John finds a way to generate curiosity and earn trust. He’s persistent, responsive and attentive during the months that follow. Then finally, when John thinks he’s received all the right signals, he pops the question.

John is hurt when he hears “no” but the pain is greatest when he’s left hanging -when his calls go unanswered.

Why does this happen to John?

Because he has a habit of falling for the wrong mates prospects.

The wrong prospects are those that have a low probability of closing from the start. Just like a woman who forever falls for the bad-boy, or a man who focuses on looks at the sake of compatibility, John’s deals are doomed from the start because he gets involved with the wrong types.

John would do better if he was pickier about the prospects he pursues. Instead, he’s too desperate.

If John listens to his gut, he knows when a prospect isn’t “the one”. But he pursues them anyway because they’re “available.” He goes into full seduction-mode to capture and build interest. It works for a while until the prospect breaks it off because John tries to take it to the next step and finds out - too late - that the prospect is Just Not That Into Him.

There are plenty of people out there that would kill to have a solution like the one John is offering. He just needs to trust his judgement and not set his sites on prospects that are out of his reach. That he can’t “close the deal” is not a reflection of his selling skills. It’s a reflection of him pursuing the wrong kind of people. As the Millionaire MatchMaker would say, John’s “picker” is off.

John just needs to re-calibrate his approach and he’ll have no problem sealing the deal.

If you’re a manager, there’s no doubt you measure reps’ performance to some extent, by the number of cold calls they make. We expect reps to barrel ahead and blast through the barriers. No excuses. But you know it can be difficult.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to think about the steps you can take to make their job easier.

You can start by recalling the last time a salesperson cold-called you.

Were you happy to take the call or did you have a visceral reaction the second you recognized it as a sales call?

Buyers react viscerally to cold-calls for a number of reasons. Here are two biggies:

1. The call is unexpected and therefore, an interruption in their day. The rep is wasting their time.
2. Based on past experience, they “know” the rep didn’t do any home-work and has no clue what they do.

Brainstorm with your reps during your next sales meeting. Think about what would convince you to accept a cold call and share that insight with them.

Here are a few questions to get you thinking:

• What would a sales rep have to do or say for you to welcome their cold-call?
• Are you more receptive to a call if you received an email in advance?
• What are the things reps do or say on a cold-call to you that you hate the most?
• How can your reps avoid those mistakes?

The new year allows us to start with a fresh slate in many ways. Beginning with a fresh look at how your reps can improve cold-calls is a good way to begin the year.

]]> http://www.smartsellingtools.com/blog/2011/12/why-do-you-hate-calls-from-salespeople/feed/ 4 http://www.smartsellingtools.com/blog/2011/12/sales-executives-dont-eat-everything-at-once/ http://www.smartsellingtools.com/blog/2011/12/sales-executives-dont-eat-everything-at-once/#comments Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:20:55 +0000 Nancy Nardin http://www.smartsellingtools.com/blog/?p=1294

I first wrote this blog post exactly one year ago. It got a lot of comments so I decided it was time to dust it off and update it. I’ve expanded the list to cover the top ten mistakes that will ensure your CRM implementation is a failure.

1. Make sure the main purpose of your CRM system is to track sales rep activities. You need a way to prove they aren’t doing enough to close sales.
2. Emphasize the reporting capabilities when explaining to your sales reps why they must log all activities. Also, forget to tell them how you’ll use the information and how it will help them in the long run.
3. Don’t analyze your sales and marketing processes before you pick your CRM Software.  That’s a lot of work and will just slow the process down.
4. Don’t bother defining key performance indicators (KPIs) that you intend to measure. The report templates your CRM comes with will provide all the information you need.
5. Don’t involve other departments.  CRM is intended to improve sales productivity. Other departments will have their own interests.  You don’t want those getting in the way of what you need to get done.
6. Dismiss reps’ complaints about the system. They’re just lazy and don’t want to be held accountable.
7. Accept the fact that reps will spend more time each day entering information and updating the system. It will leave less selling time, but the value of the data will be worth it.
8. Focus on collecting information about sales rep behavior,  not on uncovering business trends. The number of phone calls made is more important than knowing the average number of calls needed to close a deal.
9. Look for a CRM system that has the most features and capabilities. Functionality is more important than usability.
10. Ask around to find out what others think is the best CRM. Use their feedback to compile your shortlist. How different can their requirements be from yours? It’s enough to know which systems others swear by.

Have I missed any?

For a printable version, click here: Top Ten Ways to Screw Up Your CRM Decision

The only topic that solicits more comments across our blog, LinkedIn group and Twitter feed than “How to Select a CRM System” is “Why Won’t Reps Use Our CRM System?”

CRM systems have suffered from poor adoption ever since the day they evolved from their Salesforce Automation (SFA) roots. The focus of SFA was to digitize a Rolodex® to better keep track of prospect contact details and to make the completion of tasks easier with notes and reminders. Address books and tasks are obviously essential tools for a salesperson. For the most part, salespeople embraced SFA.

It was when SFA morphed into CRM that the focus began to shift away from tools that make a rep’s life easier to tools that provide much needed insight and reporting to management. At that point, CRM become a central repository of data on prospect and customer interactions. Because of its critical new role, management now requires reps to use the system in a way that works best for management –which translates to standardized and consistent data input.

Only with standardized and consistent data can they measure and then correlate performance with results. Lost in this quest for standardized reporting is the ability for a salesperson to adopt a method for recording activities and managing tasks that works best for them personally.

Forcing people to work in a style that’s contrary to their natural tendencies has several downsides, the biggest of which is non-compliance, or poor adoption. Others include lower productivity, lower job satisfaction and lower morale.

So how do you reconcile management’s need for standardized data with a sales rep’s need for individuality? Find a way for reps to comply with reporting requirements without having to change the way they normally work.

A company called Yesware offers one approach. Recognizing that email is the medium where most sales-relevant communication takes place, they introduced a product that lets reps use those email exchanges as a means to record prospecting activity in the CRM system.

In its simplest form, Yesware is a “skin” or menu that is over-laid on top of the Gmail interface. (Sorry Outlook users. The initial version is a Gmail only tool). The Yesware menu gives reps the ability to send emails from templates (which can be customized on the fly). The templates are selected from categories such as; prospecting, pipeline, objections, support and personal. When emails are sent, they’re logged into the appropriate record in the CRM system if the rep so chooses. This provides a means to standardize the way communication is logged without affecting the normal work-flow (other than to check a box).

The Yesware system offers other benefits as well. One of my favorites is the ability to see how your prospect engages with your message – when they open it, where they read it, even what platform they use. This tracking gives reps and managers key customer insights without the need for additional data entry such as; which messages resonate best, whether high-performing reps are communicating differently than lower performing reps or which follow-up is most critical based on prospect activity.

Yesware has found an innovative way for reps and managers to each get what they need in a way that is acceptable to both.

There’s no question that information needs to be collected and logged in a standardized way for it to be measurable and actionable. The question is how you can get reps to comply, without it negatively affecting their productivity or morale. Finding a way for activities to be logged in the normal course of a rep’s daily routine is a great place to start.

Yesware is a free application available to Gmail and Google Chrome users. Go to www.yesware.com to learn more.

Quick, how many jokes can you think of about engineers and salespeople?

We all know that engineers have certain, ahem, personality traits. And salespeople are known for their own, very different “personalities.” Jokes aside, it’s those special traits that make for great engineers and great salespeople.

But personality differences between technical and non-technical types can sometimes cause friction within an organization. What we need is an “Engineers are from Venus, Salespeople are from Mars” book to help us understand each other better.

There will be soon! Babette Ten Haken of Sales Aerobics for Engineers is about to release her book on the very subject.

Called “Do YOU Mean Business? Technical / Non-Technical  Collaboration, Business Development and YOU” the book walks readers through what a collaborative, cross-functional mindset looks like and how it can be adapted, adopted and applied to impact a company’s revenue stream.

I’ve been a big fan of Babette’s program for several years. Through the Sales Aerobics for Engineers program, she teaches engineers, IT and technical staff to be “who they are” with one significant advantage: the ability to “simultaneously translate” engineering and technical jargon and deliverables into sales and marketing terms and deliverables. This skill set translates into productive, collaborative internal working relationships which positively impact the bottom line.

Imagine how much more successful your company could be if engineers understood the language and nuances of sales and marketing better.

There’s no need to dread those Monday morning cross-functional, technical / non-technical meetings.Her program helps engineers learn about business development from the customer’s perspective as well as the perspective of colleagues in sales and marketing, seated across the table in those dreaded Monday meetings.

One of my favorite articles of hers is “Let’s play 20 questions: should the VP of Business Development run your next Engineering meeting?”

Engineers who master the art of sales and marketing are a highly valuable asset.  Imagine if 80% of your engineers had a good understanding of sales and marketing? Your company just might be that powerhouse you envision.

Check out Ten Haken’s unique program and watch for her book!

Even if you haven’t participated in one yourself, you’ve probably seen how they work from a TV show or commercial. I’m talking about those focus groups where a group of strangers sit in a conference room with a facilitator at one end and a mirrored wall at the other.

When we track our prospects’ actions online and through email, the same phenomenon takes place. Prospects know their website visit actions may be watched but they don’t know for sure. So they go along.

The minute you tell a prospect “I see that you were on our website a few minutes ago” the relationship changes. Use your website and email tracking software to gain knowledge about a prospect’s level of interest or the right time to call. Go ahead and pick up the phone when a hot prospect makes a return visit to your site. Just say the right thing.

The wrong thing:
“It’s Willy Loman from Wagner Co. I saw that you were on our site and I’m calling to see what’s up.” (Lest you think no one would say that, trust me. They do. I received this very voicemail recently albeit the names have been changed)

The right thing:
“It’s Zig Ziglar calling. The last time we spoke, you asked about our success kits. I’m calling because we’ve made some updates that would impact your success.“ (Voila! Perfect timing)

Use knowledge about your prospects actions to communicate at the right time about the right thing. Just don’t acknowledge the people behind the mirror.