We hope you’ll read this and share this.

It’s a unique occasion when we get to step back from the day-to-day of supporting our members’ decisions and reflect on where we believe the world of sales is headed. In 2011, the SEC had thousands of interactions with sales executives around the globe, held dozens of conferences and intimate roundtable discussions with leading CSOs, and examined hundreds of thousands data points.

Given this, we’d like to share the fundamental shifts we expect to play out in increasingly significant ways in 2012.

Granted, it’s not a MECE list – there is overlap and implications shared throughout these trends, but we hope you’ll take a minute and reflect on how these trends are manifesting in your own organization, disagree if appropriate, and highlight trends you expect to see that we missed. It’s meant to be a reflective, but fun list. We look forward to your input! Read More »

For the past few years, we’ve been talking a lot about how to revamp an underperforming value proposition.

And for the past few years, sales leaders have been telling us – again and again – thanks, but no thanks. It’s not that revitalizing their flagging sales messages is not a top priority. It’s just that all the ways to do it sound so hard!

To be fair, re-vamping a value proposition is not for the light of heart. Consider some of the typical questions and discussion topics it requires: What do we stand for? Why are we in business? What makes us unique?

These are the fluffy, hold-hands-with-your-colleague type of questions that can get you canned when you’re tied to a number and you were expected to deliver it yesterday.

One Head of Sales Training summed it up nicely:  “The only thing worse than having to spend three days on an insane spiritual quest for a new value prop…is having to do it with marketing in the room screaming at you the whole time.” It’s no wonder so many of our members have such an allergic reaction to the idea. For most it’s a non-starter.

And in all honesty, we can’t blame you. Read More »

This year our sister program for heads of marketing ran a study aimed at understanding customer purchase decisions. As part of that study, we asked 1,512 customers from 18 participating companies questions about their decision process.

This survey produced a very surprising finding that not only underlines the competitive nature of B2B sales but also provides an easy way of assessing your sales force’s effectiveness.

First, as background, we asked respondents to indicate how far they had advanced in the purchase process before contacting a supplier’s sales force. It turns out that, across companies, customers are 57% of the way through the purchase process before ever contacting a supplier.

The data also revealed that your average purchaser does not contact very many suppliers. Across companies, customers typically consider no more than three suppliers at the early stages of a purchase (though procurement departments might in order to bring rigor to the process). And by the final stage, the number of suppliers considered falls to 1.7…so not even two companies.

That means that there is essentially a frontrunner and somebody who is being included merely to provide a point of comparison.   Read More »

(This is a guest post by Yi Kang of the Marketing Leadership Council,our sister program for heads of Marketing.)

One of the most unsettling aspects of customers’ purchase decisions is deciding whether or not they’re buying the right thing. Purchasers fret a lot less about whether they’ve bought the “best” over the “better” product than they do over whether they’ve eliminated “bad” product in favor of the “good”. Risk needs to be addressed, and addressed well.

Moreover, in any environment, risk left unspecified can turn into uncertainty, which is still risky, but worse.

Many companies believe that emphasizing positive differentiators is the key to winning business. This is true but insufficient. We forget that for the most part success is simply the absence of failure, as opposed to the celebration of pure technical genius.

It is this less inspiring definition that requires marketers and sales reps to focus on risk as much as they do their value proposition. Read More »

The elevator door opens, and there stands your dream prospect…it’s the chance you’ve been waiting for to close that huge deal. But that chance only lasts as long as the elevator ride itself, so you must be ready to quickly and succinctly get your point across.

The ‘elevator pitch’ has long been a staple in Sales’ lore. We’ve all heard the stories of the elevator pitch that got a rep a meeting with the senior decision-maker or helped close that big deal.

But new technology in elevator systems could make the elevator pitch a thing of the past…

New elevator systems now have the capabilities to route riders, sometimes according to rank and seniority. Read More »

(This post is the third and final piece in our three-part series about creating compelling sales messages.)

In my last post, we continued on our journey to craft a sales message that can move customer conversations beyond price and position the buying decision in favor of our solution as a supplier.

To recap, the Council suggests using a 3-step process to create this kind of sales message: Challenge Assumptions, Brainstorm Organizational Competencies, and Identify Your Differentiators.

We’ve already tackled steps 1 and 2 in previous posts – In this post, let’s talk about the third and final step: identifying your differentiators.  Here, the purpose is to prioritize those competencies underappreciated by customers where you outperform the competition.  The desired outcome is to uncover differentiators that are pressing enough to alter customer behavior.

Follow the identification process and activities presented below to vet your list of competencies (a list uncovered by completing the activities in Step 2) for true differentiators.

It’s worth repeating once again that our suggestion is to get key senior sales executives, a few high performing front line managers and sales reps, marketing folks, finance folks (anyone that would and should have a say in this matter) together in a room, and work to conclusion on the following activities:   Read More »

(This post is the second in a three-part series about creating compelling sales messages.)

In my post last week, we began a journey to craft a sales message that can move customer conversations beyond price and position the buying decision in favor of your solution as a supplier.

To recap, the Council suggests using a 3-step process to create this kind of sales message: 1) Challenge Assumptions, 2) Brainstorm Organizational Competencies, and 3) Identify Your Differentiators.

While last week’s post focused on Step 1 of the process, in this post, let’s talk about the second step – brainstorming organizational competencies.  Here, the purpose is to gather relevant competencies (or core company strengths) that are validated by business data and personal experience. The desired outcome is a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s competencies and supporting facts.

What you want to do is build consensus around your internal competencies before considering customer needs or the competition. This sequencing helps you find the value in what you do best and take vague value statements and mold them into a refined list of true company competencies.   Read More »

(This post is the first in a three-part series about creating compelling sales messages.)

“I’ve tried everything with customers, I talked about their needs, I tried using smart questions, I pitched features & benefits of our offering, I even led with our company’s values…and no matter what, the conversation keeps coming back to price…”

This is an all too familiar challenge voiced by sales reps across company and industry.  There’s no debate that the world of business-to-business sales has changed dramatically in recent years.  Companies are looking to sell bigger, more complex (and therefore more expensive) solutions…while customers are looking to squeeze every penny possible out of their suppliers.

The key question at play here: does a sales message exist for our company that can move customer conversations beyond price and position the buying decision in favor of our solution?

At the SEC we believe so, but you have to work to find it…

To build a compelling sales message, you need to understand what truly differentiates you as a supplier—those core competencies that the competition cannot easily imitate and which provide unrecognized value to your customers (at the Council, we refer to this as Commercial Teaching).  Armed with your differentiators, you’ll be able to leverage these in the sales interaction to positively change customer perceptions about the value of your solutions.

The Council suggests using a 3-step process to create this kind of sales message:   Read More »

Sir Winston Churchill guided the United Kingdom through the roughest times of World War II.  Known for his rhetorical abilities before becoming Prime Minister in 1940, Churchill’s words steadied the British public as well as focused their attention on what needed to be accomplished to ensure success.

As we approach the close to another tumultuous year, four quotes from Churchill come to mind to give us sales guidance, and even some encouragement. Read More »