Have you purchased a vehicle lately? For most of us, we send 10 emails to sales managers at different dealerships and wait for the best price to come back. You know what you want and what you wanna pay. It’s a world of established demand – really just pure order fulfillment.

Now surely B2B solution selling isn’t that bad…or is it?

Well, our data show that core performers prefer selling into this world of established customer demand. Things are so easy when the customer calls us, knows what they want, and even gives us a sense of what they want to pay.

Read More »

Do your reps keep telling you they’re on the verge of closing deals, yet nothing ever seems to come in? Are the accounts you’re winning taking longer to close, but there’s no clear indication as to why?  Well, you are not alone.

Over the past year, member organizations have been telling us how they’ve been struggling with both extending sales cycle times and increasingly stalled business, but they’re not really sure what’s to blame. However, one trend has emerged across these conversations: reps and customers do not seem to be on the same page when it comes to gauging deal progress.

Typically, reps and mangers measure deal progress by the completion of sales activities (e.g. sales calls made, presentations given, meetings had with senior stakeholders, etc.). But, there’s one glaring problem with this approach: it doesn’t account for where the customer actually stands in the sale, and as a result, reps can easily engage contacts who are not ready to move forward with the deal. Read More »

When it comes to embracing new technology, sales reps often are the last to get on board. Attempts to introduce new technology often fail, as reps go back to their tried and tested ways of selling.

It’s no wonder, then, that reps’ recent interest in using iPads has caught most sales organizations by surprise. In fact, many companies are reporting that reps are proactively purchasing personal iPads to use in the field. Encouraged by the positive feedback from early adopters, a number of companies are in various stages of launching more pilots and arming their broader sales force with iPads, and some are even creating dedicated applications.

But, what makes the iPad such a powerful sales tool and why are reps so drawn to it?

3 Things Reps Love About iPads: Read More »

I’ve been getting a lot of questions on Sales and Marketing Integration of late, ranging from highly strategic questions like “how do Sales and Marketing get more aligned?” to more tactical questions like “who should own the lead generation process?”

The SEC has studied Sales and Marketing Integration quite a bit over the last few years, and whatever the question, the answer almost always leads back to two things:  Ownership and Leadership.

Ownership:

In every organization, there are some activities where ownership is clear (e.g. compensation and goal setting is most commonly owned by Sales, mix modeling is typically owned by Marketing, etc.).  However there are many capabilities that fall into a “grey area” where ownership is not always so cut and dry and require closer alignment between Sales and Marketing.

Last year, we set out to understand how dozens of B2B companies view 20 Sales and Marketing capabilities that fall into those “grey areas.”  We wanted to understand how companies view the importance, effectiveness, and ownership of the 20 capabilities and how that relates to the organization’s ability to achieve commercial outcomes like consistency of message, effective funnel management, increasing share of wallet, market share growth, customer loyalty, and so on.

And as we shared with you in a previous post, what mattered most is that Sales and Marketing agree on who OWNS each capability to begin with. Read More »

(This is a guest post by Matt Lind of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for heads of Customer Service and Contact Centers.)

On the SEC research team, we’re no strangers to data—in fact, we’re constantly collecting and analyzing all types of data to inform our research studies and help members benchmark their performance. But with more data available today than ever before, companies are increasingly finding themselves in a somewhat ironic position: they actually have more data than they (or more precisely, their systems) can handle.

“Big data”—or data sets so large that they become difficult to work with using typical database management tools—was the focus of a recent report released by The McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of consulting giant McKinsey & Co.

It’s an interesting phenomenon to ponder: essentially, the amount of data we’re collecting is fast outpacing the technology available to analyze it all. We’re reaching a point where the answers to (most) any question are ‘out there’ in the data—we just need to know how and where to find them.

The McKinsey report highlights the major benefits that businesses stand to gain from big data, but it also cites several issues that will need to be resolved before these gains can be fully realized. At the top of this list are issues concerning data policies, and we believe the focus for SEC members in the coming years will likely be around these data policies and the rules for how companies collect, store, and analyze information relating to their customers.   Read More »

When you ask a Sales Ops exec for a word or phrase to describe their role in the sales organization, you generally get one of two answers: 1) change agent, or 2) creator (as in, “I produce things for the sales team to use).  The irony lies in the massive variability of organizational composition – it seems we organize teams schizophrenically.

Taken in this light, then, the identity crisis we’ve all experienced feels eminently solvable. If shifts in the B2B purchasing environment present an untenable situation, the obvious answer is to determine the root cause of these shifts and aim our creative change mechanisms in the right areas.

And yet when you ask sales ops leaders what exactly they’re examining these days, only 3 out of 20 of their regularly tracked metrics are aimed at the customer, precisely the root of the shifts.  How can we make adjustments if we’re blind to customer sentiment?   Read More »

When it comes to CRM, there’s nothing more frustrating than seeing inaccurate, out-of-date information—or even no information at all.  And as it turns out, in a recent SEC poll 48% of participants indicated that ensuring data quality was the most challenging aspect of CRM.

If the quality of data in your CRM system is unreliable, no one will rely on this heavily invested resource to improve customer interactions and enhance senior-level decision making.  So what can you do to ensure that you’re leveraging the right customer information, and that your reps are actually using CRM?

In order to really get the most out of your CRM system—and make sure that the data is accurate and valuable in the first place—companies have to recognize that the bigger hurdle is getting reps to want to use it. And that begins with designing the system to make sales reps more effective at their jobs and calling on managers to reinforce behaviors.

To make your reps want to use CRM, follow these three guidelines:   Read More »

With all of the SEC’s available resources, it can be tough to know where to begin—so why not get started with some Pharma fan-favorites?

We compiled a list of the most downloaded SEC resources that your peers in the Pharma industry are using to help them excel at their jobs.

Here are a few must-reads to add to your list:

Top 3 SEC Resources for Pharma Sales Professionals

1. Replicating the New High Performer

What it is: SEC Pharma members’ most popular download, this research details how a single rep profile—the “Challenger”—is five times more likely to be a high performer than the type of rep most companies are creating–the “Relationship Builder”.

Why your peers use it:

• To compare the sales rep “winning” profile to traditional rep behavior types
• To hire and train their teams on how to replicate Challenger™ behaviors and skills
• To equip managers to coach the Challenger behaviors

Read More »

(This is a guest post by Matt Lind of the Customer Contact Council, our sister program for heads of Customer Service and Contact Centers.)

If we’ve learned (or rather, confirmed) anything from our work with customer service organizations, it’s that customer service professionals have a healthy sense of humor about themselves and their jobs—even though they seem to get more than their fair share of ridicule.

Let’s face it, though. Despite the fact that we all strive to eliminate poor experiences that are frustrating for customers, from an outsider’s perspective these situations can be…well…absolutely hilarious. And it’s not just standup comedians and sitcoms that are leveraging the comedic fodder to be had; on the contrary, more and more companies are pushing customer service to differentiate themselves—and using some spectacularly bad examples to illustrate their competitors’ allegedly inferior service.

With that in mind, we’ve dug up a few customer service-related spoofs, pranks, and advertisements that are sure to keep you laughing…unless, of course, you’re that frustrated customer on the other end of the line:

1.   Diapers.com – Customer Service Experts
In a possible nod to the talking E*TRADE baby, Diapers.com gives new meaning to the phrase “putting yourself in the customer’s shoes” by staffing their call center with an army of helpful baby-agents. Sympathetic to the familiar plights of ordering formula and assembling tricycles, these junior customer service reps field calls in between naps—all while pulling off the impossible task of wearing nothing but a diaper at work.   Read More »

By Kirsten Robinson

Despite your best efforts, new tool adoption rates often fail to meet expectations. Whether due to a premature stall, or underwhelming impact, Sales Ops teams often find themselves asking—Why does this keep happening? Do we need to tweak or abandon this tool?

Most companies run tool pilots that focus solely on tool refinement. But W.W. Grainger also wanted to use its pilots to help create a roll-out plan that gets as many reps as possible on board. By segmenting reps into four types of adopters, based on how long it takes them to begin using a new tool, the company creates pilot plans that determine when and why pool adoption will plateau, and how the tool should be rolled out to the organization.

We spoke with Marty Rossman, Director of Sales Effectivenss at Grainger, about how the company maps out tool adoption and impact prior to wide-scale release, and how they sell the tool in phases to target different stages of adopters.

SEC members, learn more about Grainger’s adoption curve pilot plan, and read excerpts from our conversation with Marty.