The mission seems simple enough: engage customers with additional parts of our business.  We know there are additional ways to be partnering with these customers that can benefit both parties.  However, it always feels so difficult, often times, nearly impossible.  There seems to be these constant barriers to effectively cross-selling to our customers.  What gives?  If only we had the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) to help us.

Well, we aren’t claiming to be the IMF, but at the SEC we have been able to capture insights from our members about why cross-selling is so hard and what we can do to change that.  First, the rep-level impediments to cross-selling:

• The short-term focus versus the long-term focus
• Lack of knowledge of other products and divisions
• The giving up of control
• Time and effort spent coordinating with another division
• Lack of rewards for cross-selling

It’s certainly not an exhaustive list, and I’m sure you might want to add a few more.  But at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that there are some serious rep-level barriers to making cross-selling happen, effectively. Read More »

In a world where exceptional sales talent is essential and we’ve found the person with the right skill set and fit for the company (a Challenger Rep, SEC research would suggest), we still have to provide a supportive, seamless and robust onboarding period.  This is important for both the organization and the new sales professional.

While most would agree with these statements about the importance of onboarding, there often tends to be some common challenges sales organizations face in their onboarding programs.  Here are some of the most common onboarding pitfalls we’ve heard at the SEC:

1. Lack of standardization and confusion, both region to region and manager to manager
2. Information overload: new sales hires feel as if they are “drinking from the fire hose”
3. Content is dominated by policies and procedures: it’s important content to be sure, but dwarfs other content in a program
4. Increased productivity: the organization demands new reps need to be at “full” speed sooner than ever before

Now we can’t fix it all at once (and some of these may be more easily fixed than others), but we’ve seen member companies come up with some innovative ways to combat these onboarding challenges.   Read More »

Perhaps this is an image familiar to you:  It’s been decided that your sales force needs new selling skills and behaviors.  A great new sales training program and new sessions have been put into place.  It’s time for that first session.  The facilitator is at the front of the room and the sales reps are all in their seats.  You’re in the back, enjoying the view.  But before anything is said, you feel it; a little anxiety.  You spot a few cold looks and evil eyes from reps aimed at the facilitator.  You feel confident, but you are increasingly unsure about how this is going to go.  And then you see it…the line has been drawn in the sand, with your sales reps on one side and sales leadership and training on the other.  Gulp.

Sound familiar?  Are you thinking, been there done that?  Now, this is most likely not happening to everyone, all the time, but it’s a common situation we hear from our members.  And in today’s constantly changing B2B sales environment, the stakes have never been higher to get sales training right.  In fact, when we asked sales leaders where they would spend the next dollar if they had one, they put sales training at the top of the list.

This puts exceedingly high expectations on the training programs we are creating for our sales reps.  Often times, after a new program, we see the scenario above play out.  Or perhaps things go well early, but we fail to see the behavior change long-term.  But why?  Aren’t these the skills needed for future success?

There are two main reasons we don’t get the behavior change we invested in: Read More »

Our research on the Challenger Rep has taken hold in many organizations and with many sales leaders.  Many of these organizations sell directly to their end customer.  But there are many sales organizations out there that sell indirectly through partners and distributors (and of course those that have both direct and indirect sales channels).  How do the Challenger concepts relate to them?

Here, the questions often come at a fast and furious pace: “How does Challenger work in the indirect environment?  Who should I be teaching for differentiation?  How do I manage this effectively if we want to implement the Challenger approach?”

At the end of the day, here’s the big issue underlying all these questions: a lack of control of your partner’s sales force.  It can be a lot to expect them to sell your products and solutions in a differentiated way.

Now, it would be easy to say that it’s impossible to do or that we shouldn’t spend the time and the money.  But, there’s a major reason we shouldn’t do that: customers still require unique perspective on their business and need their assumptions “challenged” (in fact, this drives 53% of customer loyalty).

Knowing that we can’t ignore this changing sales environment, what can we do? Here’s a few ways to overcome the hurdles of implementing Challenger in the indirect channel:   Read More »

“I don’t have time for another one of these!  I’ve got to be in-front of my customer!”

Have you heard that from your sales force lately?  Maybe someone’s even said it today.  The “these” referenced above are the multiple internal tugs at a sales force’s time…things such as meetings, surveys, reviews and trainings that internal partners hold.

Why are these things so problematic? Because time spent fulfilling internal company requests is time NOT spent selling.

So how do you ensure that the sales force has time to achieve its primary objective of selling while still meeting the demand of valuable internal requests?

We profiled an organization that tackled this challenge head on…Schneider Electric (one of the world’s largest manufacturers of equipment for electrical distribution and industrial control and automation) came up with a pretty straight-forward solution: they put a communications screening process in place.  Read More »

As we’ve continued to meet with sales leaders across the globe about our research on the Challenger Rep, we always get a variety of reactions and responses as they think about how the research relates to their own experiences, teams and organization.  And quite often, a leader will make a statement about how Challenger correlates to their sales metrics – comments such as “You know, our metrics around activities don’t reinforce Challenger behaviors, they are more aligned to Hard Worker behaviors” or “my highest activity reps aren’t my highest performing reps.”

In fact, our 2011 Sales Metrics Benchmark Survey shows that 30% of respondents measure “customer appointments made per rep per month” as a rep performance metric.  But does this metric necessarily align to the Challenger behaviors?

It’s one of many interesting insights and questions our members ask when they see the research on the five sales rep profiles, including: Read More »

There are 21 NFL Hall of Fame coaches, yes, just 21.  As we start the playoff run of this NFL season, we are reminded that winning championships not only takes great players on the field, but also great coaches and leaders.

The question often asked is – are great coaches made or born?  Well, according to Vince Lombardi, “Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”

But, we still ask this same question in Sales – is a sales manager born a great coach or can a sales manager become a great coach?

The good news – our research at the Sales Executive Council shows we CAN make great coaches, which means there are more than just a few “Hall of Fame” sales coaches out there.

But now the question becomes, HOW do we foster successful coaching in our sales organizations?  What’s required to make “Hall of Fame” sales coaches?   Read More »