Darrell Amy's Blog, page 5

David Veech-How To Build Effective Marketing & Sales Processes

Boil business down to its most basic level and you have two things: people and processes. While marketing and sales teams are usually great with people, they are often like the wild west when it comes to process.

To help, I've invited David Veech to the conversation. David is a systems analysis and process improvement expert. From his time as an officer in the US Army to teaching at The Ohio State University and consulting with many companies as part of the C-Suite Advisors Team, he brings deep expertise that can benefit your marketing and sales team. He teaches organizations how to obliterate obstacles, accelerate innovation, and elevate performance by teaching leaders how to love, learn, and let go.

David Leech-How To Build Effective Marketing & Sales Processes

Boil business down to its most basic level and you have two things: people and processes. While marketing and sales teams are usually great with people, they are often like the wild west when it comes to process.

To help, I've invited David Veech to the conversation. David is a systems analysis and process improvement expert. From his time as an officer in the US Army to teaching at The Ohio State University and consulting with many companies as part of the C-Suite Advisors Team, he brings deep expertise that can benefit your marketing and sales team. He teaches organizations how to obliterate obstacles, accelerate innovation, and elevate performance by teaching leaders how to love, learn, and let go.

Mark Hunter-How To Sell To Ideal Prospects

One of the fastest ways to accelerate your growth is to sell to ideal prospects, the type of companies that are a great fit for your business. Mark Hunter, The Sales Hunter, clearly explains how to build an Ideal Client Profile in his book, High-Profit Prospecting. Mark also has a fantastic new book, A Mind For Sales. 

Today, you'll learn about the power of focusing your sales and marketing efforts on ideal clients along with helpful tips to get started.

J.J. Peterson-How To Rethink Your Sales Funnel

 

Right now isn't a time to press pause, it's time to pivot. This is true of how you do business. It's also true for your message across your entire sales funnel. To help us with this, we're joined today by J.J. Peterson, co-author of Marketing Made Simple and Chief of Teaching and Facilitation at StoryBrand.

You'll leave this episode with a clear vision for how to shift your message. You'll learn about the 5-stage sales funnel model beginning with a powerful one-liner that clearly explains how clients benefit from what you do. J.J. shares his research about story-based marketing. He also gives a beautiful overview of the StoryBrand framework. This is an episode you'll want to bookmark and come back to!

Stop Calling Them Customers, Start Calling Them Clients!

If you want profit, value, and client loyalty, stop calling them customers and start treating them like clients.

I hate the word customer.

Customers go to vendors to buy commodities. If I want toothpaste, I go to Walmart or Amazon. If I want 2X4’s, I go to Home Depot or Lowes. 

Clients go to trusted advisors to get value. If I need financial advice, I email my accountant. If I need legal advice, I call my attorney. If I have a security problem with my computer systems, I call my managed I.T. services provider. 

Price vs. Value

Customers are price-driven. Unless you offer the lowest price, they are not loyal. They will drop you in a heartbeat for a competitor with a lower price.

Clients are value-driven. They realize that the value doesn’t just come from the product you sell. It also comes from the services you wrap around the product, the advice you give, and their overall experience. 

Vendor vs. Partner

Customers see you as a vendor. They have a list of potential vendors. They go with what they feel is the absolute lowest price for the minimum value they require. They use RFP’s and bids.

Clients see you as a partner. They look to you for strategy. They see you as an extension of their team. You have a virtual seat at their strategy table. You become a critical, and even indispensable, part of their business.

One-and-Done vs. Loyal

Customers are one-and-done. On top of that, they are usually demanding and sometimes downright annoying.

Clients are Loyal

Clients see the value in a long-term relationship. There is give-and-take. They have high expectations, but they are also realistic. They trust you enough to know that you will make things right if something goes wrong.

Who Will You Go After? Customers or Clients?

Are there people who only want the commodity? Sure. But unless you’re a high-volume provider like Walmart, Amazon, or Home Depot, you’ll die trying to compete in this bloody arena. 

If you want profit and long-term relationships with people you like to serve, you need to go after clients.

How Do You Get Clients?

How do you get clients? As my friend Larry Levine likes to say, “Don’t be an empty suit.” To have clients instead of customers you need two things:

Authentic Relationships
Authentic Value

Authentic Relationships

You care about your clients. Their success matters. You take it personally, celebrating when they win and feeling their pain when they struggle. You also know them personally. Clients know your phone number. Sometimes they even text you with questions. You are part of their team.

Authentic Value

You know as much about their business and industry as you know about your own. You don’t just have product knowledge, you have business acumen. You bring great ideas to the table. You are a thought-leader. You invest the time to learn so you can truly help.

So, a few takeaways:

Stop calling them customers. You get what you expect. Don't expect loyal client relationships if you define them as customers.
Be a trusted advisor. As a company, invest in your people and your message. Educate your staff, your clients, and your prospects. Be the expert. As sales professionals, do the heavy work. Educate yourself so you can bring value to your clients.

What are the rewards? I think they are well worth the effort. Here are a few of the benefits of having clients vs. customers: profit, loyalty, competitive advantage, and referrals.

Strategies To Influence Buying Teams

If your company sells in the B2B space, chances are you sell to buying teams. Research in The Challenger Customer revealed that on average, there are over 6 people involved in a B2B buying decision.

When I started selling office technology in 1993, we were trained to go to the top-level decision-maker. Typically, the company owner would meet with me. At the very end, he or she would sign the order and then walk me over to the CFO’s office and instruct them to issue me a check or sign a lease.

Over the past 25 years, the landscape has evolved. In The Challenger Sale, Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon call this “the rise of the consensus sale.” These days companies are more risk-averse. Thus, the more people involved in the decision, the less risk.

Many B2B companies also offer more complex solutions than they did 25 years ago. In my case, 25 years ago I sold copiers and fax machines that we rolled into someone's office. Over the past few decades, these systems are now integrated with the network and business applications, involving IT, end-users, and all of the related security issues. As solutions have become more integrated, more people get involved.

Think about some of your recent sales—especially those to your Ideal Clients. How many decision-makers and influencers were involved? What were their titles and roles?

Here’s the challenge: your salespeople probably won’t get to meet face-to-face with every decision-maker and influencer in a deal. 

For those of us in sales, there is nothing worse than walking into a final presentation and seeing people there that you didn’t know were involved. Most of the time, these meetings don’t go well.

Ideally, we would get to meet with everyone on the buying team. However, if we can’t, we need a strategy to influence them.

What can you do to influence buyers that you don’t meet?

This is something that marketing and sales should work on together. 

When my team is conducting a Revenue Growth Workshop, we typically focus on attracting and retaining Ideal Clients. A core part of that strategy involves what we call the Ideal Client Experience. Simply put, how do we want our Ideal Clients to experience our company throughout the steps of the buying and client lifecycle. 

When it comes to the buying process, one of the core components of your Ideal Client Experience is considering how you will influence buying teams. The goal is for everyone to arrive at that final decision-making meeting excited about working with your company.

1. Consider What's Important To Each Decision-Maker and Influencer

To begin this process, think about the decision-makers and influencers that are typically involved in your deals. For each role:

What’s important to them?
What outcomes do they want that your product or service could address?
What questions do they have?
What objections do they typically have?

2. Create Content For Each Member of the Buying Team

Use this as a guide to begin to put together content that can get them excited. This could include videos, blog articles, special reports, buyer’s guides, and case studies. Make sure these are aimed squarely at the issues faced by this buyer or influencer.

3. Build This Into Your Sales Process

Next, establish a process by which your sales team will engage each of these people. This can be done virtually by social, email, and web meetings. Not every influencer engagement will go according to plan, but it is important to have a plan.

4. Train Your Team

Next, make sure your salespeople are trained. They need to understand the perspective of each decision-maker and influencer. They need to be familiar with the content and when to share it.

The more decision-makers and influencers involved, the more strategic you need to be. 

Does this take some work? Of course. As the great philosopher, Bruce Cockburn said, “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight.” Wrestling through this with your team will make them more effective. Executing this strategy will increase your win rate. And these days, we need every advantage we can get!

Podcast Episode: Jeff Bajorek-Keep Moving Forward

Salespeople and marketing professionals are going to be a vital part of moving economies and nations forward as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. Now is the time to build a strategy. 

Jeff Bajorek, co-host of The Why and The Buy podcast joins Darrell Amy for an open conversation about how to keep moving forward. You'll get practical ideas to reformat your strategy and message to thrive in the next season.

The Three Overlooked P's of Sales Prospecting

Jeb Blount, the author of Fanatical Prospecting, famously said the number one reason for empty pipelines is “failure to prospect.” While prospecting has always been important, in today's challenging market, prospecting is more important than ever.

When it comes to prospecting, most sales leaders focus on activity, insisting that their sales reps make more calls. While activity is critical, there are three important things to consider when building out a prospecting program that drives revenue growth: priorities, process, and practice.

Priorities: Focus On Ideal Clients

If you do not tell your sales team who to pursue, they will typically go after the easiest targets. Most of the time, these are not your ideal clients. 

Ideal clients are companies that are a perfect fit for your organization. They value what you do. They have the potential to buy all of the products and services you offer, not just one. You enjoy working with them. They are loyal.

Ideal clients have the potential to transform your business, driving significant revenue growth across multiple products and services. In the second session of a Revenue Growth Workshop, we unpack the 10-year value of an ideal client versus a regular client is typically 20X to 30X. 

Here’s the obvious problem: if you don’t prospect for ideal clients, you won’t add more ideal clients. Thus, you’ll miss out on the opportunity to bring on ideal clients that can really move your revenue forward.

Smart sales leaders identify ideal prospects, develop a target account program, and hold reps accountable to make sure 100% of target accounts are covered with consistent prospecting. This should be a non-negotiable in sales teams. Unfortunately, for many teams, prospecting to ideal target accounts is often an afterthought.

Process: Build a Prospecting Process

Boil any business down to its basics and you have two things: people and processes. Functions like finance, H.R., and operations have detailed processes. However, when it comes to sales prospecting, most companies are like the wild west. We hire “great salespeople” and tell them to go make some calls. Then we wonder why the pipeline is empty.

Sales prospecting may be the most important function of driving revenue. Without prospecting, nothing happens. Thus, this should be an area of focus when it comes to process.

Salesforce.com tells us that it takes 6 to 8 touches to get an appointment with a cold prospect. This tells me that we need more than “one-and-done” prospecting. The days should be over where a sales rep makes a call and tells the manager, “They’re not interested.” This is especially true of your ideal clients.

Instead of asking sales reps to make calls, we should be requiring them to initiate a process. In today’s world, this means a series of touches using multiple media such as phone (yes, the telephone!), email, social, and now video. 

First, the prospecting process should be documented like any other process in your business. The steps and tactics should be documented and continually reviewed by the sales team. 
Second, the process should include the message. What are the outcomes that your ideal prospects desire? Make sure these talking points are part of your prospecting process.
Third, the process can be automated. Sales sequence technology allows reps to initiate a sequence of emails, call reminders, and social touch reminders that roll out over a period of time. A growing number of sales sequence tools make this possible. Automating the process boosts productivity and enables the fourth key: metrics.
Fourth, prospecting must be measurable. Sales prospecting is far too important to a company’s results for this not to be done. The old days of, “How many calls did you make?” followed by a gross exaggeration by a rep are over. Instead, activity should be measured by hard results such as tasks completed inside the automated prospecting sequence.

Practice: Continually Train and Coach Prospecting Skills

Professional golfers go to the driving range. Professional baseball players go to the batting cage. Professional salespeople practice their prospecting skills.

Prospecting requires a core skill set. Reps need to know how to approach the call, what to say, and how to handle the inevitable brush offs. This requires practice.

The best model for this that I’ve seen is Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. In this book, he gives a detailed plan for the core skill set required to prospect effectively. These skills need to be practiced—over and over again. 

Every month sales teams should carve out time to role-play. This is like hitting the driving range with a golf coach. The hours you spend on the driving range are what make your golf handicap drop. The hours you invest in practicing prospecting are what make your appointments, funnel, and sales board increase.

This is the time to get back to fundamentals. Don’t just tell your reps to prospect. Set priorities around target accounts. Build a process. Then, practice, over and over again.

Now Is Not the Time To Shut Down Your Growth Engine

Now, more than ever, we need to keep our growth engines running. Sales must maintain activity levels. Marketing must keep the digital lights on. This is not the time to slow down or stop.

This past week I've talked with many leaders that are facing hard choices. I've seen some companies make the first cuts in sales and marketing. I understand there are hard choices to be made in this season. There may be some fat you can trim that should have been done months ago. But overall, I want to challenge businesses leaders: keep your growth engines running. 

Fortunately, it seems like the Small Business Administration is committed to keeping the American economic engine running. Low interest loans with favorable terms are available for leaders that have the guts to keep moving forward. 

We have to keep the growth engines running.

This crisis will pass. When it does, companies that kept their growth engines running will be ready to help. Companies that shut down their engines will scramble to get going again. Many of them will not have the resources to get restarted. 

Your Revenue Growth Engine is the sum total of your sales and marketing efforts. Together, these activities drive the lifeblood of your business: revenue.

Three Reasons To Keep Your Growth Engine Running
1. You Don’t Know When The Rebound Will Happen

Have you ever tried to time the stock market? That never works well for anyone. And even if you could time the market and get back in at the bottom, sales doesn’t work like that. In order to be there at the bottom, you have to be there. If you don’t have a sales team, you won’t be there and you’ll miss out on the rebound.

2. It’s Easier To Sustain Momentum Than Start Again From Zero

Your growth engine is more like a freight train than a race car. You can’t just go from a dead stop to 80 miles per hour. Revenue comes from relationships. Relationships are built and sustained over time. If you sideline your sales team, you can’t sustain relationships. If you turn off your digital marketing, you erode trust. Right now, we need to maintain momentum.

You might think you can restart when everyone comes out of their bunkers. The problem is that your revenue engine is like a freight train. It might take more resources to restart from a dead stop than it will to keep the train in motion. If you are able to restart from a dead stop, you might not be able to get in motion as fast as your competitors who kept their engines running.

3. It’s Our Patriotic Duty

Our government leadership have said that they prefer to help businesses keep people employed rather than pay out unemployment. It appears they are willing to help us weather this storm so we can come out strong. Why are they willing to help? If every businesses shutters their sales team and closed their digital doors, our economy will be in even worse shape, causing even more misery. We need to keep the engine running.

The Mindset of a Farmer

In sales, we talk about hunters and farmers. Hunting is fun because you see immediate results. If you have an opportunity to help someone right now, bag the deal.

Guess what? For the most part, we are farmers in this season. 

What do farmers do? They cultivate the soil, plant seeds, and maintain their equipment.

Plant Seeds

Right now we are planting seeds. No farmer would expect a harvest immediately. This comes in time. Any farmer that doesn’t plan seeds right now is living in fantasy land if they think they can harvest a crop in six months. Sales and marketing plant seeds by being present, communicating consistently, and sharing helpful ideas.

Cultivate The Ground

Farmers till the soil. It’s hard, unrewarding work. However, for seeds to grow and bear fruit, this work needs to be done. Sales cultivates relationships by staying in touch with prospects and clients, empathizing, and offering to help. Marketing cultivates the ground by sharing helpful ideas that build trust.

Maintain Your Equipment

Farmers use the winter to maintain their equipment. Tractors are serviced and cleaned. Implements are prepared for the rigors of the next season. Sales needs to take this time to sharpen their sales skills. Marketing needs to take this time to maintain the online presence. Harvest will come and the companies that take this season to maintain their equipment will be ready.

What Should We Do?

Here are some ideas to keep your growth engine running.

Sales: Maintain Activity Levels

Sales must remain active. While things were going well, you may have managed yourself or your sales team based on hunting metrics: sales results. During this season of planting and cultivating, you may need to grow manage and reward your team based on top-of-funnel activity. You might adjust your comp plan temporarily to reward reps based on calls, social touches, sequences launched, and periodic business reviews.

Train your reps. Invest in your team during the off season so they can hit field ready to win.

Marketing: Keep The Digital Lights On

Marketing must keep communicating. When you stop communicating, you cease to engage in the digital world. Right now while we are working from home, we are undeniably in a digital world. For years, marketing experts have been urging us to build and maintain a vibrant online presence because our buyers are digitally-enabled and socially-empowered. How true is this now?

Does you message need to change in the short term? Yes. (Some ideas here: Outcomes Clients Want During a Crisis: How To Shift Your Sales and Marketing Message In the Short Term.) But you must keep communicating and stay digitally engaged.

This season for marketing to plant, cultivate, and maintain the equipment. Keep communicating by sharing ideas on your blog and social media. Take this down time to improve the website and refresh you sales collateral. Have you put off investment in marketing automation and sales enablement? Now is a good time to get this infrastructure in place.

Keep Your Growth Engine Running

Some companies will stop their engines right now. Sales people will be laid off. Marketing will come to a grinding halt. This will be done in the attempt to survive and preserve salaries for core employees. Here's the challenge with this mindset: if you don't have a growth engine you won't have a company.

I implore you: find a way to keep your growth engine running. I realize hard choices need to be made in this season. However, the companies that shut down their growth engine will have a really hard time in the aftermath.

Companies that dig in, plant seeds, cultivate the ground, and maintain their equipment will be there to reap the harvest.

Outcomes Clients Want During a Crisis: How To Shift Your Sales and Marketing Message In the Short Term

Buyers don't buy products, they buy the outcomes products can deliver. (More on this.) Smart sales and marketing professionals always talk about outcomes they can deliver instead of the products they sell. Right now, there is one critical thing to realize: in this crisis, the desired outcomes just shifted.

Travel with me back to college. I think every course I took in business school talked about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The most basic needs are safety and then belonging. At the top of the pyramid are esteem and self actualization.

During normal times, the needs at the bottom of the pyramid are basically met, allowing decision makers to focus on the top of the pyramid. In personal terms, Maslow says we crave esteem and self actualization. In business terms, the corollary is that we want to improve our business. 

Thus, during normal times, most of our messaging is around the business outcomes we can deliver at the top of the pyramid:

Making businesses more successful
Driving new initiatives
Improving corporate culture
Streamlining processes

Here’s the challenge: the top of the pyramid is irrelevant if the needs at the bottom of the pyramid are not met. 

These are not normal times. During a crisis, everyone immediately shifts their focus to the bottom of the pyramid: safety and belonging.

In this present moment, buyers and clients are focused on needs at the bottom of the pyramid. This is true for themselves as individuals. This is also true for how buyers and clients look at their business.

In this present moment, the outcomes buyers and clients want are related to safety and belonging:

Safety

How do I keep our people safe?
How do we keep our revenue streams safe?
How can we keep our people employed?
How can we keep this ship afloat in the middle of this storm?
How can we operate in this environment? (What will the environment be in one week, one month, three months?)

Belonging

I’m scared but I need to keep a face of confidence.
How do I lead with authenticity while keeping a positive attitude?
How do I process my feelings of anxiety?
What do I do with the pressure and guilt when I’m having to lay off employees that trusted my company as the source of income for their families?

Well-trained salespeople been taught to lead with outcomes they can deliver and problems they can solve. Most of these have been at the top of the pyramid, aimed at how to make your clients more successful.

Effective marketers focus the message around the outcomes your buyer’s want, creating content and campaigns around things at the top of the hierarchy of needs. 

Guess what? Right now, the world has changed.

In the short term, we need to refocus our talk tracks and messages around outcomes near the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy:

What are the outcomes you can deliver that address a buyer’s need for safety?
What are the outcomes you can deliver that address their need for belonging?

This shift is critical and we need to make it quickly.

Your normal message about outcomes at the top of the hierarchy of needs is just noise right now. If you want to be heard, you need to shift, in the short term, to the bottom of the pyramid. Talk about outcomes you can deliver around safety and belonging.

How can your company help with basic needs? Some of the ways you can help might lead to sales. Other ways might simply help protect and enhance the relationships you have with your clients.

Remember, buyers don’t buy products, they buy outcomes. If you are able to communicate and deliver based on their desired outcomes during this crisis, you have an opportunity to be relevant. 

Take this question to your team: What outcomes can we deliver to help our clients with their basic needs around safety and belonging?

If you’d like some help with this, message me know. I’d be happy to brainstorm this with you or your team.