Timothy Riesterer's Blog, page 22

CVI Perspectives: You’re Only as Good as Your Last Idea

By Conrad Smith, VP Consulting Services, Corporate Visions

Have you ever sold the big deal that eventually became the big customer and is now your company’s top account? Winning the big deal is one of the rewards of a sales effort done well. Long-lasting customer relationships are rewarded with repeat revenue. You achieve your quota, get rewarded with club trips, and your quota increases, which is good because your company is growing. It’s all a wonderful thing, until it isn’t.

The nightmare begins when you get the call informing you, “We decided to make a few changes.” In that moment, the relationship seems lost without reason. Your subconscious recalls that buying and consuming doesn’t always equal value and you remember from all your sales training and business experience that business value is different than product performance. Then you break into a cold sweat. Losing a big account is never a good thing.

We work with thousands of salespeople every year and when we ask why customers buy from them, we hear answers like “we’re embedded,” or “we’ve got long-standing relationships.” The one I like the most is, “it’s just too hard to change”. Getting a customer to change their status quo is far more difficult than it seems. In fact, 60 percent of customers will choose no decision when faced with a purchase decision. Changing vendors without business value is rare. If changing is so hard, why do some companies end long-standing relationships?

You only get credit for the value you create.

When you allow a competitor the opportunity to create, or re-create, the buying vision, you open the door to lose everything. When ideas stop flowing, when the relationship becomes stale, and when the focus comes off the customer, you create the opportunity for your customer to find better solutions elsewhere. Executives don’t wake up in the morning thinking that they’d like to expend the effort, energy, and expense of bringing on a new supplier. So you have to ask yourself: How is it that companies find themselves in a situation where their customer says they have to make a change?

Think about it. Your customer knows you, your company, your products or services, and your processes. They didn’t throw you out after the first trial or even after the first couple of years. They kept buying your solutions and services for years, perhaps decades, and then something changed. Or did it? Every business is searching for new ideas. Executives create initiatives to drive change throughout their organization. Every business is striving to create an unfair competitive advantage by bringing ideas to their organization to differentiate themselves in the market. Executives are going to find those ideas from within their organization, they’re going to seek ideas from their suppliers, or they will go to the market to find the ideas. You can either be part of the solution or stand by and watch as your competitors step up to the challenge. Embrace the expanding pie theory as you bring new ideas. Become fearless and forget about protecting your entrenched revenue. Your ideas will bring growth, not only for your customer but also to your organization. Look to change the way your customer is running their business versus how you can sell more of your product. Challenge yourself to create a list of ideas about business improvements. Constantly refresh the list. Don’t get stuck with trying to find the one big idea. Small ideas executed very well and focused on a specific improvement will end up having a big impact. And no matter what you do, always have the next idea ready.

Stay tuned for my follow-up piece on keeping your most important accounts coming back to your solutions.

Good luck and good selling.

To learn more about making a compelling business case to executives in your existing accounts—and about making an impact in new ones—check out this short whiteboard video: http://cvi.to/ElevateValue

You’re Only as Good as Your Last Idea

By Conrad Smith, VP Consulting Services, Corporate Visions

Have you ever sold the big deal that eventually became the big customer and is now your company’s top account? Winning the big deal is one of the rewards of a sales effort done well. Long-lasting customer relationships are rewarded with repeat revenue. You achieve your quota, get rewarded with club trips, and your quota increases, which is good because your company is growing. It’s all a wonderful thing, until it isn’t.

The nightmare begins when you get the call informing you, “We decided to make a few changes.” In that moment, the relationship seems lost without reason. Your subconscious recalls that buying and consuming doesn’t always equal value and you remember from all your sales training and business experience that business value is different than product performance. Then you break into a cold sweat. Losing a big account is never a good thing.

We work with thousands of salespeople every year and when we ask why customers buy from them, we hear answers like “we’re embedded,” or “we’ve got long-standing relationships.” The one I like the most is, “it’s just too hard to change”. Getting a customer to change their status quo is far more difficult than it seems. In fact, 60 percent of customers will choose no decision when faced with a purchase decision. Changing vendors without business value is rare. If changing is so hard, why do some companies end long-standing relationships?

You only get credit for the value you create.

When you allow a competitor the opportunity to create, or re-create, the buying vision, you open the door to lose everything. When ideas stop flowing, when the relationship becomes stale, and when the focus comes off the customer, you create the opportunity for your customer to find better solutions elsewhere. Executives don’t wake up in the morning thinking that they’d like to expend the effort, energy, and expense of bringing on a new supplier. So you have to ask yourself: How is it that companies find themselves in a situation where their customer says they have to make a change?

Think about it. Your customer knows you, your company, your products or services, and your processes. They didn’t throw you out after the first trial or even after the first couple of years. They kept buying your solutions and services for years, perhaps decades, and then something changed. Or did it? Every business is searching for new ideas. Executives create initiatives to drive change throughout their organization. Every business is striving to create an unfair competitive advantage by bringing ideas to their organization to differentiate themselves in the market. Executives are going to find those ideas from within their organization, they’re going to seek ideas from their suppliers, or they will go to the market to find the ideas. You can either be part of the solution or stand by and watch as your competitors step up to the challenge. Embrace the expanding pie theory as you bring new ideas. Become fearless and forget about protecting your entrenched revenue. Your ideas will bring growth, not only for your customer but also to your organization. Look to change the way your customer is running their business versus how you can sell more of your product. Challenge yourself to create a list of ideas about business improvements. Constantly refresh the list. Don’t get stuck with trying to find the one big idea. Small ideas executed very well and focused on a specific improvement will end up having a big impact. And no matter what you do, always have the next idea ready.

Stay tuned for my follow-up piece on keeping your most important accounts coming back to your solutions.

Good luck and good selling.

To learn more about making a compelling business case to executives in your existing accounts—and about making an impact in new ones—check out this short whiteboard video: http://cvi.to/ElevateValue

CVI Perspectives: Do Sales People Really Know What Training They Need Most?

By Tim Riesterer, chief strategy officer, Corporate Visions

Many companies rely on asking salespeople what training they think they most need and want when planning their skills training program. Is it possible, however, that salespeople may not actually know what training is best for them? And, asking this question may actually lead your training plans astray?

I’ve talked before about the concept of “declared preferences” (what they say or feel) versus “revealed” preferences (what they actually do). It’s a concept most often referred to by behavioral economists to explain the discrepancies between opinion polls and actual behaviors.

Well, the same can possibly be said for salespeople’s ability to judge their needs training versus what the results of a behavioral outcomes-based assessment says they actually need most.

First a quick backstory: Last year, when we published our latest book, The Three Value Conversations (McGraw-Hill), we launched a parallel self-assessment tool aligned to the key skills and concepts detailed in the book.

Specifically, the assessment measures sales reps’ proficiency in three critical areas: creating value (differentiation skills), elevating value (executive conversation skills), and capturing value (negotiation skills). Since that time, nearly 300 sales professionals have taken the online behavioral assessment.

In each of the three value scenarios, we asked reps what selling challenge they felt was their biggest selling hurdle (from a list of six). And, then we compared their feelings with what their actual answers to the behavioral outcome survey indicated.

In each case, we found a discrepancy. The challenge reps believed was their biggest problem area did not correspond to the one that was indicated by their answers to the questions:

Create Value (Objective: Defeat the status quo and differentiate your solutions)

Participants declared : Illustrating a sharp contrast between a customer’s current state and a desired future state was their top challenge.
The data revealed, however : Creating and confirming urgency by stirring emotions is their actual top challenge.

Elevate Value (Objective: Make a business case that passes muster with executive buyers)

Participants declared : Winning access to executive buyers rather than being delegated down was their top challenge.
The data revealed , however: Identifying specific financial metrics that their solution will impact is their actual top challenge. 

Capture Value (Objective: Protect pricing and expand deal size during tense negotiations)

Participants declared : Getting customers to reveal underlying motivations was their top challenge.
The data revealed , however: Gaining agreement to mutually beneficial terms in response to your concession plan is their actual top challenge.

These findings hint at a natural contradiction between the results of personal opinion-based questions (declared preference) and behavioral outcomes-based questions (revealed preference).

In light of these results, you may be wondering: Is my team underperforming where I think (or they believe) they’re underperforming, or does my team have skills gaps I’ve either underestimated or haven’t even considered?

Only one way to find out: Have them take this short self-assessment to see where your team is performing well and where there may be room for improvement.

IBM, in Partnership with Corporate Visions, Named ATD Excellence in Practice Winner

PLEASANTON, Calif., April 4, 2016 — Corporate Visions’ work with IBM will be honored at the 2016 Association for Talent Development Conference & Exposition, May 22-25 in Denver. The leading marketing and sales messaging, content and skills training company, Corporate Visions Inc. is one of two training partners who, in partnership with IBM, will be recognized as a 2015 Excellence in Practice Awards winner. The other IBM training partner set to be honored is Alpharetta, Ga.-based FinListics Solutions.

Specifically, IBM and their training partners will be recognized in the area of Financial Selling Enablement for Sellers and Sales Leaders, part of the Sales Enablement category. The award recognizes practices that foster and enable world-class sales competencies and standards that guide and empower sales leaders and sales training professionals to develop the next generation of salespeople, according to the ATD website.

Conrad Smith, VP Consulting at Corporate Visions, said companies like IBM rely on Corporate Visions’ Executive Conversations skills training to build confidence and develop the critical competencies needed to deliver the right business conversation to the right business executive.

“IBM’s sellers apply five competencies to an active account to develop a more compelling conversation that’s in the right language for their targeted executive,” Smith said. “The five competencies include business knowledge, customer research, financial acumen, executive engagement and return on investment.”

Smith, who will co-present with IBM’s Dave Jenkins at the 2016 ATD Conference & Expo, added that on the strength of this engagement, Corporate Visions and IBM have been able to forge a true partnership that’s led to above average financial and organizational results.

According to ATD, past award winners in the category have demonstrated “clear and measurable results of achieving organizational goals, meeting a demonstrated need, having appropriate design values, and clearly aligning with other performance improvement initiatives.”

New Study with Persuasion Expert Reveals Leading with Insight Outperforms Traditional Sales Questioning Approaches

PLEASANTON, Calif., March 30, 2016 — Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, content and skills training company, announced results of an experiment that casts doubt on traditional sales training and coaching approaches. For the experiment, Corporate Visions contracted with Dr. Zakary Tormala, an expert in persuasion and messaging who created the research and conducted the study. Separately, Tormala is a social psychologist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The online experiment, involving more than 300 participants, aimed to measure the persuasive impact of three different sales messaging sequences that varied the presence and timing of insights and diagnostic questions. The study found that participants—by a statistically significant margin—were more positively influenced by a message when an insight came beforediagnostic questions instead of after them.

Specifically, participants were more willing to admit a greater degree of “need” and were more open to possible new solutions. Additionally, the experiment found that switching the order and asking diagnostic questions before delivering an insight produced no more persuasive power than just sharing an insight and skipping such questions altogether.

“These results fly in the face of many sales training programs and most sales coaching advice that recommends reps open their conversations by asking diagnostic-type questions,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy officer for Corporate Visions. “Our research confirms that sharing an insight first acts as an ‘anchoring effect’ that, in effect, gives the prospect permission to admit more pain and makes them more open to a persuasive message about a solution to that pain.

“You still need to ask questions to activate and engage the prospect in ‘trying on’ and taking ownership of the issue, but, the research clearly shows that these questions need to be asked after the insight is shared,” Riesterer adds.

To learn more about the study and its findings, download the research brief.

CVI Perspectives: Rethinking “Best Practices” and Whether They’re Really Best for You

By Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy Officer, Corporate Visions

With two sentences, the magazine Fast Company may have destroyed everything you’ve ever thought about so-called “best practices.” In a recent article they wrote:

“Best practices don’t make you the best. They make you the average of everyone else who follows them.”

Whoa. Mind blown!

There’s an entire industry of analysts who identify and report on best practices and thousands of subscribing companies and professionals who get those findings and attempt to imitate the recommendations.

Admittedly, there’s a deep-seated human instinct to play it safe and follow, rather than to be audacious and lead, at work here. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be paying tens of thousands of dollars to get the annual best practices reports. And, then paying even more to have those analysts come to your company and provide color commentary on their observations of other people’s work.

But, why is the reliance on best practices so pervasive? After all, those who adhere to best practices surely understand the importance of competitive differentiation. And certainly no one wants to look or sound or feel like carbon copies of their competition. So why are so many companies doing something that keeps them in lockstep with everyone else, potentially at the cost of one of the most important business goals—differentiation?

One of the strongest points in the article is that the term “best practices” is itself a misnomer, based on the creaky logic that what is “good” or “smart” now will remain so indefinitely. As the author notes, seldom are people willing to do the work to find out how long a practice actually stays the ‘best,’ or whether it’s applicable across various situations and contexts.

If you’re interested in how this applies to marketing and sales messaging… Download our award-winning eBook to discover why putting too much stock in best practices could be leading you astray.

CVI Perspectives: Is Your Content Marketing Hurting Your Bottom Line?

By Eric Nitschke, Senior Content Strategist, Corporate Visions

The “Law of Unintended Consequences” often rears its ugly head when our best plans result in side effects we never anticipated…and often really didn’t want.

While it’s bothersome and even harmful when it happens in your personal life, it can be devastating when unintended consequences in your content marketing and social selling actually hurt your company’s profitability.

At the heart of content marketing and social selling is the basic premise that to get closer to your customers’ hearts and wallets, you should align your content and social strategies with what you see and read on social media. Social listening, monitoring blog comments, and tracking analyst reports are all good tactics to stay aware of trends and topics that are top of mind with your customers and prospects. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences come when you count on those customer comments and analyst reports to drive profitable sales.

Classic economic studies point to customer “declared preference” versus “revealed preference” as a real-life buying trend. The idea is that people will say one thing when nothing is on the line, and then behave in a completely opposite way when money and personal reputation are at stake. That’s principle applies to social media. Sure, customers may hint at certain thoughts and ideas on social networking sites and collaboration portals, but when it comes right down to it, they’ll only buy if you present a compelling value.

The other exposure to social listening comes from the influx of data and information that show up in 140-character headlines and sleek infographics. Don’t be fooled: Most of these data points are based on analyst surveys, news headlines, and Google searches. So while they’re interesting data points, they’re essentially worthless without greater context and analysis. Even worse—they’re the same data points your competitors have access to.

The result of basing your messaging and content on well-thumbed analyst reports and buzzy topics? A lack of differentiation, leaving you in a competitive bake-off that does nothing but commoditize your product and force a combative negotiation for your sellers that could end in excessive discounting and eventually hurt your bottom line.

How can you create content marketing and social selling strategies that can fuel profitable engagements? Focus your stories and content around the unconsidered needs of your customers—the challenges or missed opportunities they didn’t know about and didn’t realize could hurt them. Speak to these needs to show them they’re focusing on lower-order, tactical issues instead of the ones that will definitely impact them down the road.

The best way to do that? Assemble a cross-functional team to dig deeper into finding new, emerging threats, challenges, obligations, and opportunities that your prospect may not realize exist, or whose size and speed of impact on her business she’s underappreciated.

Your job isn’t necessarily to tell them they’re focusing too much time, money or effort on the wrong problem. Rather, it’s to use the conversation to point out how their problem is really just a symptom of a different and larger problem. That’s the conversation that will make you truly different, helping you drive buying decisions and avoid the unintended consequence of a commoditized message.

Corporate Visions Named Top 20 Sales Training Company by TrainingIndustry.com

TrainingIndustry.com’s annual list honors the best providers of training services and technologies  

PLEASANTON, Calif. – February 25, 2016 – Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, content and training company, today announced it has been named to TrainingIndustry.com’s Top 20 Sales Training Companies again this year. The prestigious annual list recognizes the best providers in the sales training marketplace.

The 2016 honorees represent the top sales training companies that provide outstanding service, boasting a proven track record of delivering superior sales training and improving the impact of the sales organization. Nominees for this year’s list were evaluated based on the following criteria:

Industry recognition and impact on the sales training industry
Innovation in the sales training market
Company size and growth potential
Breadth of service offering
Strengths of clients served
Geographic reach

“The companies considered for the 2016 Top 20 Sales Training Companies list are some of the most impressive we’ve ever evaluated,” said Ken Taylor, president, Training Industry, Inc. “This year’s list continues to highlight the best providers of sales training, one of the segments in the training industry that is very open to innovation even though the majority of its services are delivered through instructor-led training.”

Throughout 2015, Corporate Visions took a number of steps to strengthen its sales training leadership, including:

Introducing Virtual Coach™, a platform allowing salespeople to access video-based, deal stage-specific reinforcement content inside their CRM, driving higher skills training adoption in the field, and providing skills coaching even when managers don’t.


Launching online, modular versions of its popular instructor-led skills training, starting with the company’s business and financial acumen course called Executive Conversations. The remaining skills training will be available virtually by end of Q2 2016 to meet demand for flexible formats and custom learning paths.


Publishing a new book, The Three Value Conversations , which was just named the top sales book of 2015 by Top Sales World. This continues the company’s track record of thought leadership in sales messaging and customer conversation skills. The book, a follow-up to Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, helps sales professionals create, elevate and capture more value in their deals.


Expanding the research and science-based foundation of its sales skills training by conducting four original sales conversation effectiveness experiments (here’s an example) with Dr. Zakary Tormala, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And, collaborating with Dr. Margaret Neale, a renowned negotiations researcher at Stanford, on the company’s new negotiations skills training program.

“Corporate Visions is dedicated helping marketing and salespeople with the messaging, content and skills training required to have more effective conversations that move customers off their status quo, and ultimately close more profitable deals,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy officer for Corporate Visions. “We are constantly looking for new ways to bolster our training portfolio through original research, new offerings, and solutions updates, and to be recognized as a top sales training company by TrainingIndustry.com is validation of our efforts.”

CVI Perspectives: When You Know Too Much

By Rob Perrilleon, VP Consulting, Corporate Visions

Have you ever played the game Pictionary? If so, you’ve probably had the maddening experience of drawing a perfectly clear picture, but nobody on your team can guess what it is. What’s worse, while you draw clear pictures every time it’s your turn, your team mates always draw some mess of lines that looks nothing like their clue word. No wonder you’re behind!

So what’s going on, and what does that have to do with sales and marketing messaging?

The phenomenon is called the “Curse of Knowledge,” and it’s one of the most common obstacles to effective communication. The Curse of Knowledge has three parts:

First, it says that experts in a topic overestimate the expertise of their audience when talking about that topic. Secondly, the research shows that the more expert you are on a topic, the more you overestimate the knowledge level of your audience. Thirdly, even when experts are fully aware that their audience is not as knowledgeable as they are, they still can’t fully correct for the effect.

What does this look like in selling? The most flagrant offense is using your own company jargon. Hopefully you’re past that.

But what about when you’re discussing your solutions, or even having a higher-level business conversation about your industry? Many salespeople, in an attempt to build credibility and sound knowledgeable, overestimate the knowledge of their customer, and leave them confused.

I can just about guess what you’re saying now: Wait a minute. My customers know way more than I do. They’ve spent their career in the field, they have advanced degrees. They’re the experts here. I can’t possibly be the one with the curse of knowledge.

Valid points, but: What are they experts on, and what are you expert on? For starters, your customer is not an expert on your products and solutions. Don’t assume they know how your solutions work, or more importantly, what that means to them.

Your customer also has broader responsibilities than the one area you want to talk to them about. If you sell encryption software to a Chief Security Officer, they have to be knowledgeable about all aspects of information security, not just encryption. If you sell automation controls to a factory manager, they have to run the entire factory, and can’t have the depth you have about your products.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you should dumb down your message. You do have to establish your credibility. In fact, a certain amount of jargon can be used as an identifier that you belong to their group. (Linguists call this “in-group language”.) Just make sure that it is industry jargon, and not your company’s.

The key is to recognize where your expertise is, and how your expertise is different from that of your customer. You can then adjust your conversation to the right level of detail. When it comes to the topics your customer really cares about – the challenges that others like them are facing, how your solutions are different, and what that means to them – you may find that a little more detail will make your message easier to understand.

The Curse of Knowledge can make for some good laughs in the game of Pictionary. Even when you can’t get your team mates to understand your drawing, they do eventually get to see the answer and appreciate your efforts. In sales, you have a lot more to lose if you can’t get the customer to understand your message. So understand what expertise you can offer, and don’t miss your opportunity to add value by assuming the customer already knows the right answer.

https://dx.doi.org/10.1086%2F261651specific

Corporate Visions Launches Advanced Negotiation Skills Program for the Complex, Multi-Party Buying Cycle

New negotiation skills training helps salespeople protect premium pricing, communicate value and build buying consensus

PLEASANTON, Calif., Feb. 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Corporate Visions, Inc., the leading marketing and sales messaging, content and skills training company, today announced the launch of Capture Value™, an advanced negotiations skills training program designed for the complex, multi-party buying environment. Based on counterintuitive skills and research-backed techniques, this sales training program helps sellers turn their “low-power position” into a negotiating advantage, allowing them to capture more value for their deals.

http://corporatevisions.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Capture-Value-Video-for-Downloading.mp4

“Many of today’s skills courses teach reps to try and retake control and match the buyer’s power, but research shows that will actually have a negative outcome, including more no-deals,” said Tim Riesterer, chief strategy officer at Corporate Visions. “However, the same research showed that when sellers are able to use their low-power position creatively, leveraging counterintuitive skills and techniques, they create more value for both themselves and the buyer.”

Capture Value™ was developed in collaboration with Margaret A. Neale, renowned negotiations researcher, co-author of Getting (More of) What You Want, and distinguished professor of management at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The training is designed to specifically help address two major negotiation challenges all B2B salespeople face:  1) Buyers believe they have many alternatives, so how do you become the better alternative? And 2) the multi-party buyer environment creates difficulty, so how do you drive consensus while protecting value and pricing?

Capture Value™ is available in a blended learning model that includes pre-event eLearning for knowledge transfer, classroom application and virtual skills reinforcement designed to accelerate adoption and help salespeople apply the skills in real opportunities. The training program will soon be available as a modular, online course. In addition, companies can track business impact, behavior change and adoption with an after-training behavioral assessment and hard-dollar impact survey conducted by a third-party performance measurement company.