C-Suite Network™

Categories
Best Practices Investing Management Marketing Personal Development Sales

The Secret of Selling … and Business: Mind the Value Gaps

Selling — and business — isn’t about what your customer says they want as much as it’s about what they value. Sure, translating from the first to the second takes skill, but that’s the reality. Customer value is at the heart of sales, marketing, customer experience, innovation, operations…everything in your business.

Value is the energy – the unseen force behind all business. Without value received in each direction, no transaction would take place. More profoundly, it drives every part of a customer’s buying process, like reading an advertisement, clicking on a web link, or agreeing to take a sales call. Nothing happens unless a prospect considers each next step worth his/her time. That is, they perceive a value gap: the expectation of a desirable outcome.

For most of the past decade, I’ve taken a deep dive into the craft of selling. However, I’ve always viewed selling not as a siloed corporate function but as a part of a bigger whole, combining my general management, value and pricing expertise with knowledge in sales and marketing. When you treat sales as its own silo, you leave a lot of potential growth and profits on the table.

Customers Buy…to Fill Value Gaps 

Selling skills and methodology training all takes different paths to the same goal: uncovering value gaps, then showing the customer to fill them. These could be gaps the customer understands and describes…or those they don’t know to ask for. The sellers that confine themselves to customer-described value gaps are the ones that look –and sell — like everyone else…and compete on price.

Your expertise in your product or solution means nothing if you aren’t also an expert in your customer’s business. Only then can you help your customer achieve creative, differentiated outcomes.

The Way We Sell Today Leaves Value Gaps Ignored.

Companies silo themselves into functions. This is both good and bad. Silos are centers of specialized expertise, but they are also fertile ground for tribal dysfunction (according to anthropologists who study organizations). Think of all of the functions in your own company who regularly contact your customer. Now think about how many value gaps those “non-sales” roles uncover on a daily basis, but don’t do anything with. Finally, ask yourself what value-creation opportunities you are wasting.

Everyone who comes in contact with a customer should be considered a seller. Then, every seller in your company needs to be attuned to looking for value gaps. More important than closing such gaps when they can: carrying any/all value insights “back to the hive”. When your organization gathers a more holistic view of a customer – and all their value gaps – you put yourself in a better position to compete.

Customers Don’t Help.

Selling companies aren’t the only ones who silo themselves. Even more important, customers try to buy in silos. For example, a piece of hospital lab equipment might be sold to the lab silo, assisted by resources in purchasing, contracting, and perhaps facilities. However, if that piece of equipment fails – or even worse, starts giving incorrect results – think of all of the silos who are impacted. The list includes doctors, nurses, patient records, billing, legal, scheduling (for re-tests), loss prevention, finance, administration…and of course, purchasing, contracting, and the lab silo. Think about it this way: when that equipment is running properly, all those departments are still impacted and are potential areas for innovation and value creation.

Most B2B offers deliver value company-wide, but many sellers are oblivious to anything outside of the conventional selling box. Business acumen helps sellers analyze how an offer benefits to other areas of the company. When all of your sellers have business acumen, they’re equipped to sell outside of a customer’s compartmentalized buying mentality.

Even if you don’t buy into lofty goals like feeding customer-focused innovation, think narrowly and tactically. Silo-limited customers with narrow buying processes lock salespeople into poorly differentiated selling processes. The same organization scheme that focuses on expertise and drives efficiency restricts a broad exploration of solution impacts. If your offer delivers out-of-single-silo results (most do), limiting yourself to within-silo selling is an act of self-commoditization.

If You Invest in Differentiating Your Product/Service, You Gotta Pay for it

When a business generates value for a customer through a differentiated offer (product, service, or solution), a sale is made. Generate enough value and the seller can charge more than their costs. They can then reward their employees for building differentiated products, forge strong relationships with valued suppliers, invest in even more differentiation, and yes, share profits with investors.

As you can see, focusing on value gaps closes a lot of loops in an organization. Your sales silo can strengthen those loops or break them. Unfortunately, some metrics make a sales organization still look good while still delivering profit/value dysfunction. I regularly see scoring systems which focus inside-the-sales-silo only, instead of holistically.

It’s About Uncovering and Closing Value Gaps.

By “it”, I don’t just mean sales. I mean “a world-class business”. All sellers (everyone who touches a customer) should participate in uncovering gaps. Every function in your company participates in closing gaps. Don’t let how you’ve siloed your organization stands in the way. And don’t let your customer’s silos limit the value you bring.

If you want to talk about it some more, contact me. As always, share and/or like if you found this article worth your time.

To your success!

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Sales

Sales Culture, Elevated.

This article is part three of a three-part series on the future of sales performance.

In parts 1 and 2, I wrote that:

  • CRM alone not enough; in fact, many companies have found it’s the tail that wags the dog.
  • Process, and even more importantly, methodology are real difference-makers. Coaching process and methodology makes performance improvement sustainable.

In this article, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the coaching that drives long term sales success. Sustaining world-class performance is about sales culture; culture that ingrains process into the operating rhythm of the organization. Process and methodology do no good unless they are internalized by a sales organization, and the process of internalizing establishes a strong sales culture. When a methodology becomes the default go-to-customer approach for your organization, it enables the three goals of a sales system:

  1. Drive deal-winning behaviors, not simple activity-based measures.
  2. Re-vector at-risk deals, identifying and mitigating risks with opportunities.
  3. Replicate winning across, raising the performance of all sellers in the team.

Dynamic coaching culture

CSO Insights has conducted extensive research supporting the value of a dynamic coaching culture.  The research shows that companies whose coaching culture captures analytics from successful sales, refines sales data into define winning sales behaviors – then supports sales leaders as they coach those behaviors across the sales force outperform their peers.  Dynamic coaching culture is different than simple coaching:  there is a closed loop between results and how process and methodology is emphasized by the organization.  This loop drives self-sustainment and continuous improvement.

Dynamic coaching cultures experience far superior outcomes than average sales organizations:

  • A higher percentage of these companies meet revenue plan.
  • More reps make quota. The gains come from across the sales force, not just a few high performers
  • Win rates are higher. This means forecasts are more accurate
  • Late loss rates are lower. Fewer of those resource-sucking late losses that ruin sales productivity
  • Staff turnover is lower. Lose fewer of the people you want to keep, rehab more of the marginal performers, converting them to keepers.

A robust self-sustaining coaching culture builds the foundation for two things:

  1. Sales performance. The outcomes above are worthwhile goals in themselves, but…
  2. Self-sustaining culture (manager bench strength, coaching acumen, leadership succession/career path). Building a sales culture to last means building sales careers worth having.

The Past, Present and Future of Dynamic Coaching

Let’s look at where we’ve been, and where we’ve led our industry: coaching on CRM-resident tools.

I’ve worked with Miller Heiman Group (and its predecessor, Miller Heiman) tools for almost 30 years. Success in my business is all about delivering outcomes for clients. The reason Miller Heiman Group is the largest in the B2B space is that we’re the partner sales organizations keep engaged with longer…we have the least leaky bucket…growing our clients is how we grow.

Based upon thousands of client engagements, I can tell you with absolute conviction that the key to long-term success is in not conducting training events, but executing long term change in selling behavior organization-wide.  A successful engagement is almost universally the one with a robust component of sales manager coaching, where front line managers become the primary change agents.

The gold standard of coaching is personally diagnosed and delivered by the front-line sales manager (FSM).  This kind of coaching is high-touch, requiring not only discipline by the FSM, but a corporate capability in developing coaches and prioritizing coaching activity over the many other demands on an FSMs time.

While manager-delivered coaching is preferable, it is not always available at the right time for every deal.  We have also noticed that a large proportion of coaching is on a core set of selling behaviors.  That is, managers tend to diagnose and coach the same behaviors over and over.  With the right methodology and the right CRM system (one that helps track deal-moving behaviors, not meaningless activities), an intelligent coaching platform is possible.

Where you can go:

  • Instead of manager-initiated intervention, how about system-led?
    • Not today’s activity-based prompts. Selling behavior-based prompts…seller actions that moves deals, not activity that occupies selling time
  • A rules engine, based upon 40 years of Miller Heiman Group expertise, which can diagnose those repetitive selling
  • AI/big data capabilities which can take it even further.

Where are You?  Where Do You Want to Go?

When you’re tracking and managing to activities, today’s CRM can work just fine.  On the other hand, when you’re trying to establish a rigorous selling culture with a consistent management cadence, you can more efficiently accomplish the three goals of a world-class sales system::

  1. Drive winning selling actions. This means actions, not activities.
  2. Change deal outcomes more rapidly identify at-risk opportunities and figure out how to re-vector them toward success.
  3. Replicate success. Learn what behaviors predict success in your business, and turn them into a rules engine for your sales tool to automatically recommend.

We Can Take You There

Miller Heiman Group has leveraged over 40 years of sales performance expertise into a powerful set of tools.  They have bundled methodology with a dynamic coaching application, which can be freestanding or integrated with a CRM system. It helps front line sales leaders by lightening the routinized part of their coaching load, allowing them to concentrate their time on higher level opportunity strategy.  Sellers become more effective by building sound selling behavior habits.  Finally, senior sales leaders see improved results, and have insight-producing analytics into how to improve sales even more.

I’m excited about this new capability, and am thrilled to offer it to clients. Contact me to discuss whether we might drive winning actions, change deal outcomes, and replicate success in your organization.