With more access to information than ever before, it’s become clear that customers no longer “need” supplier input to make informed purchase decisions.

SEC research shows, on average, customers are 57% of the way through their purchase decision before they make first contact with a supplier—which more often than not means the only thing suppliers are left to compete on is price. With that in mind, the ability for reps to get in early and shape customer demand has become a necessity in today’s world of sales. But how does your organization support reps’ efforts to shape demand?

We know that high performing sales reps have been doing this on their own for quite some time, but it’s been unclear as to how exactly they’ve been going about it—until now.

Our 2012 research shows that high performers’ success at shaping customer demand is attributed to four distinct behaviors, one of which is conducting non-traditional customer due diligence. By surfacing in-depth information about opportunities from outside experts, internal subject matter experts, operations teams, other sales people, partners, customer stakeholders, etc., the best reps cultivate a deep understanding of accounts. High performers then engage customers in the formative stages of their learning process with tailored insight developed from this understanding. Read More »

Let’s face it, getting your compensation plan right is a key factor to ensuring the success of your sales force as a whole. Not only is competitive pay the most important job attribute for attracting and retaining top sales talent, but how compensation plans are designed can also heavily influence how sellers approach important objectives for that year.

That being said, designing a compensation plan that’s right for your organization is no easy task—especially when you are determining the base/variable split for new sales talent. Having a well thought out variable pay plan during onboarding is paramount to the success of your new sellers as it can have a tremendous impact on initial productivity. Good variable pay plans for use during onboarding will:

• provide sellers with clear expectations and accountability at the beginning of their role.
• acclimate them to variable compensation and how it works in nature should it be a new concept to them.
• give them an early taste of what successful selling for your organization looks like.

The benefits of a properly designed plan don’t stop there—they also promote success in the long-term by providing sellers with the understanding of what they will need to continue doing from an activities standpoint to hit their quotas. Read More »

Several weeks ago we discussed four of the most popular apps from Salesforce.com’s AppExchange that Salesforce CRM users can download to help improve the functionality, efficiency, and effectiveness of their interfaces.

Given the popularity of the post, we decided to profile eleven more apps to help you sort through the myriad of options available for download. Our new CRM App resource breaks the apps down into in the following categories: Read More »

Does your company use Salesforce.com as your CRM? If so, you’re going to want to read this.

CRM, like many other initiatives companies roll out, is often plagued with adoption problems. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because, as valuable as CRM is to sales organizations, entering data into the system can be a pain for sellers. So not only do companies need to pick the right CRM system for their organization and make sure their reps see value in using it, but they also need to make it easy for reps to use.

One way Salesforce.com users are combating this issue is by supplementing their Salesforce interface with apps from Salesforce.com’s AppExchange. Not only can apps (also often referred to as plug-ins) do a lot of the heavy lifting for reps when it comes to data entry, but they can also increase the functionality, efficiency, and effectiveness of your CRM system as a whole.

Here are four of the hottest Salesforce apps that companies are integrating into their systems: Read More »

Buyers are outpacing supplier capabilities and becoming more efficient at pressuring on price—at least that’s the recurring theme the SEC is hearing in our recent conversations with members. But what’s enabling this behavior today’s buyers, and more importantly, what does it mean for your sales strategy?

The recent member conversations we’ve had suggest that customers have become more sophisticated at buying over the last several years due to:

• Economic pressures that have forced buyers to become increasingly risk averse and focused on cost—In response to the economic  uncertainty in the marketplace, customer organizations are relying more heavily on group buying, professionalized, process-driven procurement teams, and third-party consultants to help mitigate risk through well vetted purchases with higher levels of savings .
• Increased access to information— Internet access and vast technological advances over the past decade have created a much more transparent buying environment than what existed in the past. Customers can now easily find and access information about their industry, the competition, your product/solution, and your competitors’ products/solutions without spending a lot of time or money.

So what are the implications for sellers? Read More »

There’s no disputing the importance of developing a key accounts program, but getting it right from the get go, and then maintaining it, is easier said than done. In a recent member poll, 41% of companies indicated they were in the process of restructuring their key account programs.

With that in mind, one of the key drivers of overall key account program performance is making sure the right customers are in the program in the first place.

But, all too often, companies weigh their programs down with customers who don’t quite warrant the time or resources given to a key account.

Why? The traditional mechanisms companies use to select accounts are often unreliable due to internal biases and external factors. Some pitfalls that cause them to focus on the wrong accounts are: Read More »

The sales process of just a few years ago is no longer effective—that’s what we’re hearing in our recent discussions with members.  The culprit? A fundamental shift in the way customers are buying.

In an effort to mitigate the risks and complexities associated with today’s marketplace, customers now require much more consensus to make purchases.  Consequently, running the sales process of years passed is leading to extended cycle times, stalled business, and inaccurate forecasts.

Not surprisingly, a number of companies are planning to revamp their sales processes in the coming months to better align to these new buying conditions. But what does a successful sales process look like in today’s selling environment? Read More »

For companies that sell indirectly, mitigating risk in today’s environment is a key concern. One way organizations can do this is to ensure that company resources are only being invested in the right channel partners who exhibit long-term, relationship, and growth-focused behaviors.

But how do you properly incent these behaviors and determine who the right partners are to reward?

Companies often evaluate partner performance by simply measuring volume-based metrics. But as popular as this approach may be, it fails to capture how the partner is producing business and ultimately fails to provide insight on the nature of the relationship with that partner. As a result, companies may find themselves wasting resources on channel partners that do not warrant them. Read More »

Let’s face it—it’s hard to get sales metrics right. Not only is it important to measure the right metrics so that you have an accurate picture of how your sales force is performing, but you also need to get your sales people to care enough about metrics to use them. After all, it’s not unusual for reps to look at a dashboard packed with data and say, “OK, what am I supposed to do with this?”  This is why it’s paramount to present metrics to reps in a way that provides both insight and actionable next steps for improving their performance.

On our recent webinar Getting the Most from Your Sales Metrics, one of our panelists, Scott Kolar, VP of Sales Operations for LexisNexis, uses an interesting analogy to get reps to understand how to use metrics: approach metrics just like a professional golfer approaches the game of golf.

Professional golfers (and athletes in general) continuously look for ways to get better at what they do and constantly measure various aspects of their performance to do it. As Scott put it, “Think of a PGA tour player—ultimately they need to shoot a good score and that’s what counts in the end. It’s just like a sales person, ultimately the need to hit their goal.” Read More »