Brent Adamson's Blog, page 26

6 Principles to Make the Most of Your Sales Metrics

Has your sales team met its quarterly target? A metric can tell you that.

But, why did your sales team miss its quarterly target? That’s something a metric cannot tell you.

Most sales organizations spend a considerable amount of time reporting various performance and productivity metrics. That said, they often struggle to use the data and information to understand the underlying causes of performance gaps. As a result, metrics seldom inform sales strategy and business decisions.

SEC finds that the best companies handle metrics slightly differently—they draw on clearly identified data to “tell the story behind the metrics”. They use metrics not as a performance tool, but as a means to spot problems early in the achievement of goals and course correct, if needed.

We recently spoke with David Bespalko, Corporate VP, North America Commercial Operations at Beckman Coulter, Inc. and Scott Kolar, VP, Sales Operations at Lexis Nexis, who shared their approaches to making the most of sales metrics initiatives. Specifically, they focus on six guiding principles:  

Narrow the scope of metrics
Adopt relevant metrics based on changes in the sales environment
Gauge performance at different stages of the deal
Establish benchmarking criterion based on similarity of roles
Share customer feedback with sales
Use dashboards as performance indicators

SEC Members, read excerpts from our conversation with David and Scott to learn more on how their companies apply these guiding principles in their metric initiatives to drive sales strategy and performance.

Also, see how your sales metric selection, reporting frequency, and dashboard design compares to your peers in the results from SEC’s latest Sales Metrics Benchmarking Survey.

Being a Thought Leader is Not Enough

Through our research of what drives customer loyalty (willingness to buy, willingness to continue buying, willingness to recommend), thousands of our members’ end-customers have told us that the thing they value most is for a supplier to provide insight around  that customer’s business and educate them on how they can compete more successfully.  Customers want insight.

And at the SEC, we’ve been talking about the importance of providing insight during the commercial interaction for a while now.  Along these lines, one of the things we’ve strived to do, is to define the term insight as precisely as possible.  To discuss in detail what it is, but also, what it’s not.

We have to ensure that the collateral we build, the scripting we create, the messages our salespeople are pushing out into the marketplace in the name of insight…aren’t merely just thought leadership.  We shouldn’t be satisfied with just telling the customer what they could be doing – they’re likely already aware of these things anyway!  That’s traditional thought leadership.

Instead, our job should be to convey a story around what that customer is currently doing.  And how what they’re currently doing…is wrong!  

That’s how we can challenge customer thinking in an effective manner.  We have to disrupt that customer’s status quo.  Our goal should be to educate customers on how their current actions are costing them money, preventing them from making money or mitigating a certain set of risks.

Most salespeople we talk to are so excited to show customers the “new idea”, the “shiny new object” or the “new thing they could be doing”, but they never give that customer a reason to stop the thing they’re already doing.

So implicit in any good insight is a simple message: “Hey!  You’re doing it wrong!”.

To be clear, that message has to be conveyed politely, diplomatically, professionally, empathetically…these are certainly important nuances to doing this well.  But at the end of the day, we’ve got to be able to look our customers in the eye and say “what you’re doing right now, is wrong.”  Something that makes the customer want to change their behavior.

And that path to behavior change, should lead back to you and only you (not to you and your competition).

At its best, true commercial insight – insight that leads to a commercial result for us, the supplier – reaches beyond what is just traditional thought leadership.

SEC Members, to learn more about this type of sales messaging, see our newest research on Deconstructed World-Class Commercial Insights, which includes sample teaching pitches from select member organizations. Also be sure to register for our upcoming July 24th webinar on Creating Cutting-Edge Sales Messages.

Don’t Miss: Top Insights From the SEC Membership

Here at the Sales Executive Council, we’re all about the ideas that set best-in-class sales organizations apart. To that end, check out these comprehensive, one-page summaries of the top insights, advice, and tips sourced from your peers across the SEC membership on topics such as sales training, CRM, sales process, and account planning.

Talent Development

Generating Proactive Rep Demand for Training | See how ADP generated rep-driven advocacy for behavior change by building pre-training “buzz” and restricting access to training to make it more desirable.


Getting Reps to Assert Control of Sales Interactions | See how DuPont helped reps assert control of sales interactions by giving them a road map for how negotiations should unfold.


Improving Reps’ Questioning Skills | See how Oakwood used Detective Workshops to instill a questioning mindset in reps.


Using Realistic Role-Plays to Build Challenger Rep Skills | See how St. Jude Medical used customer ‘proxies’ as role-play partners to create practice scenarios that are high on realism, but low on risk to the company.


Getting Reps to Master New Skills in Two Days | See how Siemens improved reps’ retention of new skill training through experiential practice, using manager/rep coaching trips.  

Sales Tools

Using iPads and Tablets as Sales Tools | See how LexisNexis and ENDO Pharmaceuticals use tablet technology in sales and how they piloted it within their sales organizations.


Driving Sales Tool Adoption | See how W.W. Grainger used its tool pilot phase to map out the adoption behaviors of the entire sales force and identify the messaging strategies that maximize adoption of the tool.


Shifting to a Next-Generation CRM Strategy | See how NBC Universal created a CRM system that allows reps to easily share experiences and advice for working with particular customers, segments, sales pitches, and collateral.

Customer Management

Verifying Customer Readiness to Buy | See how ADP developed a tool that syncs seller activities with buyer signals—tangible actions that verify a customer’s readiness to move forward in the sale.


Transforming Your Sales Pitch into a Teaching Message | See how W.W. Grainger built a Commercial Teaching sales pitch and addressed challenges around adoption of the new pitch by its sales force.


Creating a Joint Account Planning Process | See how Cargill engaged key customers prior to building account plans, identifying in advance a mutually agreeable engagement strategy.


Increasing Deal Profitability with Deal Desks | See how NetApp and Life Technologies established Deal Desk functions tasked with advising and supporting field sales on deal economics.

Sales Force Management

Shielding Your Reps from Low-Priority Initiatives | See how Kodak screened all inbound requests with a rigorous set of filters to identify, prioritize, and ultimately select the most critical ones for reps.


Incentivizing Cross-Company Deal Collaboration | See how Dimension Data encouraged team selling on global opportunities using variable incentives.

The Death of the Solution Selling Era

We believe we are fast watching the death of the solution selling era. The era of discovering customer needs has passed; the era of teaching customer needs is upon us. If a customer has assessed their needs, you’re too late. That is the fatal flaw with the sales approach that has defined the solution selling era.

Solution selling, as a sales genre, is predicated on discovering customer needs and aligning your solution to those needs. The theory holds that the best reps show customers how their solution better meets the customer needs than any competitor solution. Sellers do this by discovering ways to link customer needs to supplier solutions through the use probing questions, which allow salespeople to clarify how their solution best aligns.

The Shifting Eras of Sales Over Time

Recent advances in how customers purchase are completely undermining this method.

In the solution selling hay-day of the 80s and 90s, customers had to involve suppliers early in a purchase consideration. As needs became clearer to customers, suppliers had to be called upon to explain solutions and offer ideas to customers. Those days are long gone, and customers no longer need salespeople like they once did.  

The amount of information customers have at their disposal has changed dramatically. Once a customer has understood their needs, they are able to quickly assess options and suppliers by tapping into social media, the internet, a network of purchasing consultants, subject matter experts, and industry influencers and quickly zero in on a solution. Compared to 10 years ago, it’s relatively easy for a customer to arrive at a set of requirements, a short list of suppliers, and an expected price all without supplier involvement.

Instead, our analysis and the considerable time we’ve spent with the world’s best salespeople have quickly led us realize the importance of teaching customers their needs has never been higher.

We look forward to entering this new era of selling solutions – the Insight Selling Era – with our members and sharing some of our findings along the way. SEC Members, please register for our upcoming teleconference on The End of the Solution Selling Era.

For now though, let the inevitable debate begin – are we witnessing the death of solution selling as a sales genre? How has the degree of information available to customer changed the purchase experience? How will the best sales organizations respond?

The Death of Solution Selling

We believe we are fast watching the death of solution selling. The era of discovering customer needs has passed; the era of teaching customer needs is upon us. If a customer has assessed their needs, you’re too late. That is the fatal flaw with solution selling.

Solution selling, made famous throughout the 1980s and 1990s, is predicated on discovering customer needs and aligning your solution to those needs. The theory holds that the best reps show customers how their solution better meets the customer needs than any competitor solution. Sellers do this by discovering ways to link customer needs to supplier solutions through the use probing questions, which allow salespeople to clarify how their solution best aligns.

The Shifting Eras of Sales Over Time

Recent advances in how customers purchase are completely undermining this method.

In the solution selling hay-day of the 80s and 90s, customers had to involve suppliers early in a purchase consideration. As needs became clearer to customers, suppliers had to be called upon to explain solutions and offer ideas to customers. Those days are long gone, and customers no longer need salespeople like they once did.  

The amount of information customers have at their disposal has changed dramatically. Once a customer has understood their needs, they are able to quickly assess options and suppliers by tapping into social media, the internet, a network of purchasing consultants, subject matter experts, and industry influencers and quickly zero in on a solution. Compared to 10 years ago, it’s relatively easy for a customer to arrive at a set of requirements, a short list of suppliers, and an expected price all without supplier involvement.

Instead, our analysis and the considerable time we’ve spent with the world’s best salespeople have quickly led us realize the importance of teaching customers their needs has never been higher.

We look forward to entering this new era of selling solutions – the Insight Selling Era – with our members and sharing some of our findings along the way. Members, please register for our upcoming teleconference on The End of the Solution Selling Era.

For now though, let the inevitable debate begin – are we witnessing the death of solution selling as a method? How has the degree of information available to customer changed the purchase experience? How will the best sales organizations respond?

Your Sales Process Starts Too Late

In today’s world of sales, by the time customers contact your reps, it’s a safe bet that it’s already too late for reps to have any influence over them or the outcome of the deal. Why? Customers have long since established their needs and their journey through the buying process is essentially complete.

The only certain thing reps have to look forward to at this point in the sale is getting hammered on price. In this customer-controlled, price-driven world of sales, reps are being relegated to a role of mere order fulfillment. As such, the only traditional sales “tactic” reps have left in their bag of tricks is discounting.

The culprit behind this shift in customer buying behavior: readily available information on supplier solutions from sources like the internet, consultants, peer organizations, and social media.Thanks to the  proliferation of information in recent years, customers no longer need to seek out supplier input as they have in the past. In fact, SEC research shows today’s customers have already determined their needs, picked a supplier, and settled on the price they want to pay before they even contact a supplier.

That being said, high performing reps continue to thrive despite this significant change in the sales environment. But how?  Our 2012 research found that the best reps are now getting in with customers ahead of the traditional sales funnel, shaping the nature of their demand by teaching with insight where customers learn.

Accordingly, it is now imperative that sales organizations begin supporting their reps at scale to shape customer demand should they want to ensure the success of their sales force in today’s marketplace. Microchip Technology, a U.S. based semi-conductor manufacturer, is one company that is taking the steps to do just this.

In an effort to better position its reps ahead of RFPs and to make certain they are in a position of influence with customers, Microchip includes a demand creation stage at the beginning of their sales process. Microchip’s “Stage Zero” sales process not only supports and encourages demand shaping activity at scale, but it also provides reps with a simplified framework for shaping customer demand.

As we found in our research this year, shaping customer demand is not easy and not all reps come equipped to execute the strategy on their own. More often than not, reps find the concept of shaping customer demand ahead of the sales funnel to be a challenging, ambiguous process that they are uncomfortable, if not incapable of, doing without guidance.

To make demand shaping a simple, tangible process for its reps, Microchip simplifies it into two steps within the first stage of the sales process entitled “Stage Zero”:

Research and Assess Prospect: Reps are to conduct due diligence on prospects to better understand potential areas of business concern or underperformance.
Create Curiosity/Opportunity Hypothesis: Reps form hypotheses on what prospects can be taught to gain their commercial interest.

These two straightforward steps enable any rep to collect the due diligence and develop the insight necessary to influence customer thinking in the formative stages of their learning process.

To make sure that reps are pursuing the right opportunities and to build manager tolerance to ambiguous, often prolonged rep demand shaping activity, Microchip also incorporates customer verifiers into each stage of “Stage Zero”. These verifiers not only prevent reps from wasting time on bad opportunities and getting ahead of customers in the sales process, but they also enable managers to track opportunity progress throughout the sales process, thereby enabling them to coach reps to shaping demand within specific opportunities.

SEC Members¸ to learn more about the mechanics of Microchips “Stage Zero” Sales Process and what customer verifiers they look for when shaping customer demand, make sure to check out the new best practice featured in this year’s study Getting in Early: Shaping Customer Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement.

Social Media: All Hype or Real Value?

One of the debates regarding social media’s role in the B2B sales world is the difficulty of dividing time between social media and cold calling. Skeptics believe that social media is good for information gathering, but doubt it can have any further impact. They see social media as a waste of time that would be better spent elsewhere.

The things naysayers generally do accept about social media include:

LinkedIn may generate good prospects more easily.
There may be good bits of information to reference during a cold call (if prospects ever accept your call).
Some see an opportunity to broadcast messages.

But what the skeptics don’t realize is that social media is fundamentally different than other ‘media’ developments that have occurred in the last 100 years. LinkedIn, Twitter and other online networks are not just another telephone or message sending device. Likewise, they are not Hoovers or a phonebook.  

High performers are using social media and social networking intelligently to establish and shape customer demand, get in earlier and find warmer leads. They target key decision-makers and influencers efficiently and choose the most effective social network. Social media will likely never replace the actual sale conversation, but research shows it is becoming less likely you will ever get that conversation without it.

Social media changes:

The quality of interaction reps can have
The number of interactions reps can have
The impact of geography on networking

Social media creates a change in the means of relationships and reps need to take advantage of this or risk losing out.

SEC research shows that buyers are almost 60% through the buying process before they begin to engage with suppliers and no amount of cold calling can change that. What can change the impact on you, the seller, is to become one of the people they learn from during that period. Social media provides the opportunity to do that. Finding the right customer stakeholders is the first step to commercial teaching. Gathering information on customers to understand their business and needs while beginning to teach them about their industry and your insights is the first step to a successful Challenger sale.

Getting in earlier and using Challenger methods actually reduces the need for cold calling for two reasons:

1)     If you are engaged with your customer community you can winnow your funnel to focus on likely wins.

2)     If you are teaching where your customers learn you are more likely to become a trusted advisor naturally and reduce the need to cold call.

Overall that reduces the time wasted on cold calls, allowing you to focus on leads that are already warm, and more likely to close. Social media can seem daunting, and it’s understandable that might create hesitation. The key is to go one step at a time, joining the networks, learning about the members and then beginning to teach what you already know to the people who want to learn from you.

SEC Members: Join our upcoming webinar for ideas about how social selling can work for you and access our guide to identifying helpful stakeholders in your target organization.

The Performance Management Trend You Haven’t Heard Of

Let’s face it-few things get as many eyes rolling as the topic of performance management. But it’s time to make this crucial driver of talent performance more fun and engaging…and the way to do that? By making it social.

With all the buzz about social media and cloud computing it is easy to miss how social performance management is transforming the way organizations approach talent management processes such as goal setting, awards and recognition, and performance reviews. Vendors in this space (such as Rypple, WorkSimple, and I love rewards) are offering easy to use, interactive platforms and web-based tools that facilitate employee interface and measure productivity in intuitive and fun ways.

So why should you consider social performance management?

Sales is an inherently social activity. The way we sell today is also collaborative in nature; just think of how crucial customer intelligence and CRM systems have become. But the traditional annual performance review process is precisely the opposite.  Commercial objectives are constantly changing and our reps receive constant feedback from customers and colleagues. Why wait an entire year to deliver feedback to your sales reps? Our goal should be to deliver feedback as soon as performance information is available and to coach your reps to act on it immediately.

Here are some of the benefits of taking the performance review social:

Real-time balanced feedback-web-based applications made easily accessible across platforms facilitate feedback on an on-going basis. Line managers can adjust performance targets, recommend coaching, and highlight individual and team wins in real-time.
Collaborative goal setting- customizable applications can facilitate goal planning in collaborative and social ways.
Engaging Millennials-intuitive tools for young reps joining your organization that are tech-savvy and expect a digital experience.
Transparency- social tools that ensure bottom-up feedback and foster a culture of greater transparency allow all sales employees to know what everyone is working on and what their goals are.
Added flexibility- these applications provide the freedom to schedule your reviews when they make sense and not when your HR organization tells you to. Have feedback or review conversations when they are most productive (when a rep is in danger of not meeting goal, at the end of a deal close, at the end of a quarter, etc.).
Fun and engaging performance management- employees are passionate about social performance management systems. Social systems make performance management easy to use, invite collaboration, and result in sales employees feeling empowered about their career development.

If creating an employment experience for your sales organization that helps you retain and attract the best talent is at the top of your priority list, then consider making performance management social.

What are your thoughts on social performance management systems? Any other benefits you’d add to the list?

Members check out the following SEC performance management resources:

Use the Career Planning Questionnaire to structure conversations with your reps around career aspirations for current and future roles.
The Performance Review Preparation Checklist will help you keep track of key activities to perform before initiating a performance review.
Remind your reps about general talent management guidelines summarized in the Performance Review Manager Cheatsheet.

The First 50 Challenger Implementations: What We’ve Learned

(This is the first in a series of three guest posts written by the SEC Solutions team. SEC Solutions helps members generate customized insights, tools, and training programs to improve the overall performance of the sales force. )

It’s now been three years since the SEC’s Challenger research was first introduced.  Today, the book is out, the buzz is building, and sales leaders continue to embrace the Challenger approach as the right answer to drive growth.  The mantra of “Teach, Tailor, Take Control” (with a healthy dose of constructive tension) has been embedded in many companies as the new language of sales.

CEB’s SEC Solutions team has now helped more than 50 organizations implement this new selling model, and we thought we’d share some of the insight we’ve picked up along the way. Our clients are seeing early returns on their investments:  big deals are being attributed directly to Challenger Selling in a matter of weeks after the classroom, and sales teams are highly engaged and energized by the new approach.  In fact, here are some video conversations with a couple of our customers, in which they talk about the specific impact Challenger has had on their organizations’ performance.

But there have also been lessons learned.  If this transformation (and there is no question about it, it is exactly that) is successful, it will be a multi-year journey for your sales team.  There will be early adopters, skeptics, and a learning curve for your organization that at times might feel very steep.  In the end though, your customers, partners, distributors, and sellers alike will thank you for taking action.

We’ll share more of these lessons over our series of posts, but here’s a bit of what we’ve learned so far:

No Silver Bullets:  Message, Message, Message Again…..

The “keystone” to this model lies in the teaching message that you are delivering to your customers.  That message will be hard to nail down.  Developing your Challenger message will be an iterative process, and won’t necessarily happen overnight.  The good news:  version 1.0 will likely be much better than what your teams are using today.  It will be important to create a feedback loop between sales and marketing so that you can continue to refine the teaching message and sharpen the insights.  Test it with customers.  Set expectations with sellers that it will be updated over time.  Here is how we are helping our members build the skills to create Challenger messages.

The Manager is Still King

This is likely no surprise, but the first-line manager still holds the key to any significant change management effort in sales.  Managers must be prepared to sponsor and reinforce Challenger Selling.  We’ve narrowed the core management competencies down to a critical set of skills vital to sustain the transformation to Challenger Selling: coaching, innovation, management fundamentals, and selling skills.  Based on our learnings, we’ve built and now launched a new, year-long course for front-line sales managers focused on building these skills across your management team. Learn more about this new offering.

Teaching is Hard Work

Let’s face it, no matter how good the message, you still have to actually sell.  As you develop your message and train your teams, you will see early wins, both in terms of business impact and positive customer feedback.  But the message doesn’t sell itself.  Your sellers will have to work hard to learn the process of teaching customers.  Teaching is the part of the Challenger sales conversation that will feel the most different, and it will take practice.  Lots of practice.  Our team uses extensive role plays where sales people actually bring real life accounts into the classroom, develop specific teaching messages for each of those accounts, and practice delivering the messages with their peers.

Hopefully these have been useful tips if you are either considering or have already begun the Challenger journey.  We’ll check back in soon to share more implementation lessons.

Decoding Commercial Insight

What qualifies as insight? That is by far the most common question we’ve heard from members looking to implement commercial teaching in their organization. And rightly so, when you look at all the information surrounding us, it becomes difficult to identify what makes for world-class insight.

While looking up the definition of insight is helpful, we’ve tried to answer this question by explaining what it’s not—separating insight from some of other types of information conveyed through sales messages. We find this makes the distinction clear without having to resort to semantic nuances.

Starting on the outside of this diagram is General Information. This is the universe of information available to us and generally covers just about everything. We don’t process all of it as most is not immediately relevant. We simply know it to exist within our reach and often spend time filtering what might be relevant.

In arriving at an insight, our first hurdle is to be credible and actionable for it to capture the customer’s attention. The sales message must demonstrate an understanding of the customer’s world supported by real-world evidence. Without it, customers are likely to ignore or reject the message.

If the information is both credible and relevant, it lands in the next tier of Accepted Information. The problem is accepted information sounds like everyone else’s information. It doesn’t teach the customer anything new; rather, it confirms something that the customer already knew.

Therefore, the second hurdle to arriving at an insight is to be newsworthy. Without it, the customer is unlikely to do anything about the information, at least nothing they weren’t already doing.

Messages that are both credible and newsworthy fall in the next category of Thought Leadership. This is by far the most infamous of them all as most companies actively strive to be “thought leaders” in their industry, mistaking thought leadership with insight. And for good reason—information in this category teaches the customer something they wouldn’t have found out on their own. Except, it doesn’t really drive action—customers learn something new but don’t necessarily act on the information.

We find the third hurdle to insight is for it to be frame-breaking—it should disrupt the customer’s status quo by conveying a new idea while at the same time juxtaposing the cost of current behavior to the potential of alternate action, creating both an emotional and rational response from customers.

Overcoming this hurdle brings us closer to Insight—information that is frame-breaking, that clearly places the new idea over the current behavior, and forces the customer to take action. But, without the insight leading the customer exclusively to the supplier, it is just free consulting. The customer is free to take the idea out to bid, opening the opportunity up to competitors to win the business.

The final hurdle to arriving at an insight is for it to lead back to our unique capability that only we can offer to customers. Only when an insight leads back to us is it called Commercial Insight, as it makes us the sole supplier that can help the customer take action on that insight, better than anyone else.

Looking at your own sales messages, do you find yourself taking commercial insights to market? Or are you guilty of disguising other types of information, such as thought leadership, as insight?

SEC Members, to learn more, review our latest work on Shaping Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement. Also, register to attend the first in a series of day-long Challenger Workshop sessions on how to develop an organizational capability to build commercial insights.