Brooke Green

Today’s Guest Blogger is my great friend Brooke Green, principal at Caskey Achievement Strategies.  Brooke is passionate about her work coaching sales teams and beloved by her clients. Thanks for joining us, Brooke!

I always find this time of year interesting. If you have any responsibility for revenue growth within your company, I’m sure you’ve been asked to create a sales plan for how you will make that happen. My experience is that most are searching for new revenue, inside new businesses. Why would you not concentrate on what’s already there? Your key accounts.

Often when I ask this question, the response is the same “Well, yeah, of course I’ll continue to work with my key accounts . . . .” Don’t they deserve to be more than an afterthought?

In our practice we teach a sales process that never stops. There will always be new problems to solve for your clients, new expertise for you to bring to the table, new relationships to develop. However, more often than not, once the initial hunt is over we forget that the process should continue. How do you remedy this?

Put your KEY ACCOUNTS on the top of your sales and business plan. Be strategic. Work on the business, not just in it. Ask yourself these questions:

1. Who within the business deserves to know me and utilize my expertise (that I don’t already know)?

2. Do I know where the business is going and how the problems that I solve will fit into the future?

3. Have I provided a platform for learning, brainstorming and feedback exchange on the work we are currently doing and the current state of the business?

4. Have I shared the future of my business, what our company is striving to do and how my key accounts can benefit?

5. What are the threats to the partnership? Am I ahead of them or woefully behind?

If you don’t have a sales strategy each year (or even quarter) for your KEY ACCOUNTS you are diminishing your value to them and leaving money on the table. I know that the hunt for new business is exciting. Don’t let your inclination to look for the new, give an opportunity for the existing to bite you in the rear end.

How do you keep your key clients top-of-mind? Please post a comment.

Chris Conrey

This month we are featuring ways to grow new business with your current best accounts. Today’s guest post comes from Chris Conrey,  CEO of Post Modern Sales .  Follow @conrey and learn more about Chris on LinkedIn. Thanks Chris!

You’ve got big accounts, big ones that fund more than their fair share of your revenue, or with more of your reputation at stake than you’d like to admit. But often the ones that are most important are the ones that lock you up the most and keep you up at night. Here are 6 things you’re doing right now that you can stop and stop worrying about.

1. You lower your rate – You worry so much about losing this client that the moment they mention your rate at all, you drop it down to a much lower level than your other clients, often lower than you should. This kills you in two ways; obviously you make less money, but you also are devaluing your product. You’re setting a price that you shouldn’t because you’d rather take that pain than face the confrontation of charging what you should.  Solution – Hold firm on your rate for all of your clients, regardless of size or fear. It will make your life easier when you have to deal with billing, and you’ll show confidence and that you value your own product.
2. You let them take liberties – If you aren’t bending over backwards lowering their rate, you’re giving them special treatment that makes you run around in circles with faster than usual deadlines, more flexibility than usual, different payment terms, and a willingness to push yourself beyond your usual limits. Solution – much like the price problem above, you’re in desperate need of building your confidence. Believe it or not, many clients will respect a little bit of pushback on crazy demands.
3. You take them for granted – You’ve had this account for so long and they’ve been on your books for so long that you’re just used to sending the invoice. And yet you’re not providing the same world-changing service that they saw when you first started. Eventually they realize this and you’re suddenly one key account down.
4. You don’t call for the close – This is more often for the key account you’re working on and haven’t sealed yet. You get awestruck and treat them like rockstars and your heroes instead of like your prospect and potential client. Much like an autograph-seeking teen at a Jusin Beiber concert you find yourself tongue tied and unable to get your message out, so you lose the deal to someone who remembers they are there to close to deal.
5. You sugar coat bad news – This one is common amongst salespeople regardless of how key the account is, but you’ll be way more afraid to put the bad news right on the table for your best clients. Knowing how much they contribute to your company’s bottom line (and your paycheck) makes it more likely that you are going to soften the blow. This leads to all sorts of problems later when they realize how bad it was and you didn’t tell them.
6. You let them hold you back – Your company is changing directions or shifting away from some services but you have this one big account who still wants it. So you keep doing it just for this one client, which holds the whole company back out of desire to win this big deal. This leads to your company doing sub-par work, and ultimately your reputation being tarnished when you don’t back up what you’re selling.

The common thread here is fear. Have confidence in your abilities and your team, and put a little backbone up. This will only strengthen things for you in the long run and allow for true growth.

It’s much more successful to grow your company if you regularly sell more business to key customers as well as getting new customers than if you focus too much effort on new customers and not enough on the ones you already have. Smart company leaders know this, but often they tell me that their company is not good at developing more sales with the existing customers. That situation is an internal business development problem, not just a sales problem. And the problem starts with “who’s responsible?” The answer to that question can be pretty complex.

As your company grows and more roles are differentiated, it’s important for the sales team to make clean hand-offs to the employees who fulfill the order, particularly if you sell services or products with services. As the sellers continue to go after new business, the fulfillment people are responsible to deliver everything that has been promised.  So a gap opens between the sellers and the harvesters in relationship to the customer. And in many companies, that gap widens over time.

On the customer side, people involved in the buying decision are not entirely (or at all!) the same people directly involved in receiving your services. On your side, the people who deliver are not necessarily the people involved in the sale.  Even if you  have some overlap in the buyers, sellers, and operations, new people will be involved from your company and the customer. Fulfillment may involve a whole new cast of characters on both sides and often operates at a lower level in the chain of command at the customer company.

Companies implement a variety of  business models to address these issues.  In the coming days, I’ll write about them and offer some examples of how I’ve seen them work or not work among our clients.  For example:

• Inside/Outside Sales:  The new account moves from the original sales rep to an inside sales team charged with selling repeat business.
• Account Managers or Project Managers:  The new account moves out of sales  and into operations.
• Executive Sponsor Programs: You match a non-sales executive from your company with a key executive from the customer to build an enduring relationship.
• Customer advisory board.  You engage key customers as advisors to your company.
• And of course, there’s always “we don’t have a plan,” or some undefined combination of the above.

Any of these methods can leave you vulnerable to the “who’s responsible” question. For today, here are six issues that you may need to assess and address:

• The natural drift of the relationship is from strong to weak and from strategic to tactical. Do you know how that’s working in your key accounts?
• Your Account Management team may not know how or when to escalate relationship issues that can impact future business. What can you do about that?
• Inside sales representatives become “order takers” rather than partners or strategic allies. How can you prevent it?
• The sales team maintains client relationships with inferior knowledge of how your fulfillment team is operating. How can you ensure great internal communication?
• Your policies on sales compensation, territories, new and repeat business, and who is responsible for the customer may be counterproductive to the results you want to achieve. Do you need to consider changes?

Building a long-term relationship for repeat business and new kinds of business with your key accounts requires a strategic, collaborative plan.  How does your company manage new business with key accounts?

For 2012, we’re planning a “theme of the month” approach on the blog.  January’s theme is new business with your best current accounts.  I’ve lined up a great list of guest bloggers to help explore this topic, starting today.

Please welcome Dave Cooke (@SalesCooke), CEO of Strategic Resource Group and an expert on how to grow key accounts.  Thanks for kicking off 2012 for us Dave!

The definition of business success is growth.  Increasing revenue drives most sales organizations.  However, there are two aspects of the growth formula that are often underlooked; or, at least, underemphasized– client retention and business development in existing accounts.

The most efficient channel for increases or improvements to profitable revenues is maintaining the business relationships you have and leveraging those relationships to offer and deliver more.

Your best customers are your most efficient channel for new business opportunities.  Yet, many organizations struggle to create and discover these opportunities.  For the most part it is because they have become so proficient at being satisfied with the existing relationship that they fail to understand or recognize how to
expand and build on it. 

The first place I would look for revenue expansion is with my best, favorite and most trusted clients.  Note, I would not be walking in simply trying to “sell them more,” I
would be working at discovering how I can become a better resource to them and what else I may be able to provide to improve or enhance their business.  Accomplishing this requires a focused strategic commitment to enhancing the relationship.

There are four steps to applying a business development strategy in your existing and key accounts:

1. Build a team and expand your contact base:
   Sales professionals are very proficient at knowing who their key contact
   is in an account.  Their traditional approach is to strengthen that single point of contact relationship to the fullest.  In a revenue expansion strategy
   that is not enough.  Instead of having a lot of connections over several companies, an effective business development strategy requires multiple connections throughout the organization at multiple contact points.  A single point of contact or a single contact point from your organization puts all relationships at risk. A strong business development strategy requires that your organization is connected into your key clients at multiple levels with multiple relationships sources, i.e. your CEO/Owner, VP of Sales, VP of Marketing, or Director of Customer Service, etc. having developed and leveraged relationships in your key accounts at similar valued levels.  Multiple relationships, at various organizational and functional levels, through varied contact points offer your organizational broader information, influence and insight.  This is a very powerful strategic tool.
2. Assign a knowledge holder for your key accounts: You can utilize a CRM to manage data and information; however, like a reporter, every key account requires a knowledge holder.  That knowledge holder is responsible for sharing the news of every single conversation with all others leveraging and developing relationships in that key account.  Sharing the information in a timely manner enables the team to make prompt strategic moves in that account and enables the team to be more engaged and proactive to news, information, and opportunity.
3. Create a metric and meeting rhythm for the team: Being on a key account team means nothing if people do not know their roles or accountabilities.  Every team member has accountabilities to the rest of the team for their role in building and expanding their relationship base in a key account.  They are also accountable for gathering and sharing information to the team in a timely manner through the “knowledge holder.” As a result, I would encourage everyone to establish a metric for “new relationships” and “impactful conversations” that is a measurable accountability tool.  Also, even if it is only a fifteen minute weekly huddle, all key account teams must connect, communicate, collaborate and strategize on a regular basis.
4. Pay attention to discover and create opportunity: You cannot create opportunity in an existing account just because it is a good idea – nobody cares what you want to accomplish or “sell”.  However,as you expand your relationship base within an account and become a more influential valued resource, the potential for the team to discover and create new business opportunities is enhanced significantly.  This is the value of a multi-faceted “deep and wide” business development strategy. More conversations, with more people, with diverse perspectives, opinions and needs provide a fantastic opportunity to add value.  The fundamental component of this strategy is found in creating a focused, disciplined, and intelligent process with a long-term commitment to its execution and development.

Businesses that grow best, grow intentionally.  Intention is the focused, disciplined, and
strategic application of a business development process that works.  The above business development process works best in your key accounts because you already have a valued relationship with them, you already have access to their team, and they already value what you are providing them.  To take this relationship to another level requires the commitment of a team, the productive gathering and sharing of information, and the ability to nimbly and deftly execute a timely growth strategy.  Nothing is more productive than growing within an existing account – the trick is coordinating the resources in order to accomplish it.

Our friends at The Geehan Group are launching Sean Geehan’s new book The B2B Executive Playbook in January.  They’ve got two great events coming up on January 9 and 10th.  On the 9th, a live luncheon event at Aileron in Dayton, Ohio, and on the 10th, a webinar 11 am – 12 noon EST.

The webinar is presented by Gary Vastola, Vice President Service Offering Marketing & Field Support at Xerox and Karen Posey, Senior Consultant, Geehan Group.  The title is Drive Exponential Growth through Account Based Innovation, and the registration fee of $25 includes a copy of Sean Geehan’s book.

Geehan Groups works primarily with large companies to implement executive sponsor programs.  But even smaller B2B companies can learn a lot from them about taking care of key accounts.  I think you’ll find it worth while.

More info and registration here.

We’re up to #9 on my list of The Top Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.

And the 9th way to lose is:  Your team is complacent.

You’ve been so good for so long that your team expects that it will always be business as usual. You’re not scanning the market, not tracking old and new competitors, not learning every day about what’s going on in the lives of your customers.

Many growing companies are actually making a market, not taking a share of an existing market.  The more innovative and unusual your service or product, the more you are focused on a niche, the fewer your competitors, the more likely it is that you will experience a short-term success that you can’t sustain.

If you have been successful in bringing a new product or service (or product/service mix) to market, sooner or later other prospective competitors are going to challenge your dominance.  You will have painfully created a market–first persuading customers that your service is a great idea and then persuading them to buy from you.  When you hit a critical mass of customers, you will undoubtedly attract competitors.

Where will they come from?  Some will be new companies mimicking your business model.  Others will be diversified companies observing an opportunity that they’d missed.  Still others will be companies that have been very good at producing something that’s no longer valued in the market, and they are looking for a new thing that they can be good at.

There are ways to combat this tendency.  Here are a few:

• Conduct a Brand Promise Audit.  [This one-hour recorded how-to webinar is available to registered members of the Pier9 Premium resource site].  Review the marketing messages of your company and those of your competitors.  Revise your promises as required.
• Talk with your customers–those that you sold and those that you lost.  Be certain you understand what it is that people value about you and what it is that turns them away.
• Engage your team in bringing ideas and information forward.  The more individual employees who are engaging in social media platforms and knowledge bases, the more current your knowledge will be about trends that may not have even reached the “trend” stage yet.  Encourage your team to look for potential threats as well as opportunities.

Whenever you hold the position of “the best” for a period of time, you become vulnerable to many kinds of attacks.  You can’t afford for your team to become complacent about your #1 position.

I’ve been writing about 10 Ways You Can Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best. Here’s the seventh way: You are internally focused.

Some companies that are the best in their field are completely focused on sales and delivery plus R&D to develop new products and services. You may have the resources and the market share to sustain that approach, but you may be missing out on market feedback, which over time diminishes the strength of your message to the market. Your new products and services are invented inside, not in concert with your customers.

I have also worked with a number of teams who believe that no one in their field delivers the level of product and service that they do.  However, they have no evidence to support this claim.  When teams like this lose business,  they blame it on “politics” or “incumbents” or “price cutting,” but the truth is they don’t have any idea why they are losing.  They do not interact with their market enough to have a pulse on what’s changing.

Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intel, wrote a terrific book (published in 1999) called Only the Paranoid Survive.  It’s about the need for relentless pursuit of market information and preparation for unforeseen market disasters.  And Jim Collins and Morten Hansen’s newest book Great By Choice (published October 2011) looks at ten successful companies and their leaders who managed to greatly outpace their competition in chaotic and unpredictable markets.  “Paranoia” was a key ingredient in their success–hard-nosed, direct confrontation of all of the possible ways that things could go wrong.  The bottom line is that things will go wrong; things going wrong is a normal state.

So, do you have a deliberate paranoia mindset?  Do you encourage all of the bad news and weird news to come to your attention promptly?  Do you refuse to blame a messenger?  The more you are outwardly focused, the better you will understand how to be the best and convey to your prospective customers that you are the best company to meet their needs.

Reason #4 on my list of Ten Ways You Can Lose . . . Even if You Are the Best is:  Your message is stale.

Maybe you are the leading authority in your market space. Over time, it’s possible that your message to market has become wordy or pompous or old-fashioned. You run the risk that an inferior upstart will capture a new tagline or a new promise and appeal to your market.

A message gets wordy when you try to capture all the history of your product/service.  It gets pompous when you use a lot of big words to prove you’re the best.  And it gets old-fashioned when the market needs or interests or even buzz-words have changed and you’re not keeping up with the dialog.

The recent Old Spice campaign is a great example of rebranding a stale message.  This is a product that’s been around since about 1934, purchased by Proctor and Gamble in 1990.  It’s a totally fresh approach, linking “how you look” to “how you smell” and particularly appealing to women to buy the product for the man in their life.  The products are now called “man fresheners”  rather than “deodorants” or “after shave.”

With well-known sexy (and funny) spokesmen they introduced a campaign to interact directly with customers on the air in 2010.  Their August 2011 YouTube video has had almost 2 million views in less than 60 days and the Old Spice YouTube channel records more than 28 million with 289,000 subscribers. They’ve kept the connection with seafaring but the captains are much younger and sexier than in the past.  One of the products is now named “Old Spice Swagger.”  The campaign “I’m on a Horse” was one of the most viral campaigns in ad agency history.

It’s not only the message that was stale; so was the advertising approach.  The social media approach to the new Old Spice appeals to a much broader and younger audience and is an integral part of the new message.

So if they can take a stodgy old brand like Old Spice and remake it for today’s buyers, what could you do with your stale message?

Yesterday I wrote about how you can lose a sale because your story is just too complicated or you are trying to be all things to all people.

Today’s post is about reason #3  of my Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best:  Your Rules of Engagement are Too Rigid.

There’s a fine line between doing whatever a customer wants, even if it’s not your core business, and learning from customers how they would like to receive your products and services.

How you present training, customer service, information or intellectual content is one example.  People learn in different ways and they have different preferences for how they take in information.  Some like to listen; others to read; still others want video.  Some people prefer live interactions in real time; others like to absorb at their own pace on their own time.  Some people like the phone, others like text; some like email, others like chat.  If you don’t offer easy alternatives for customers to select, you will lose customers.

I worked with a client that manufactures substances that are applied to road surfaces.  This client did not apply the substances that they sold; they only shipped them and then trained their customers on how to apply.  But eventually, they had to get into the business of doing the applications for those customers who demanded it.  Too many customers simply wanted them to do the entire job, and they found themselves leaving money on the table.  This company frequently–in fact perhaps always– had the best solution at a reasonable price for their prospective customer.  But they discovered that they were losing on some cases because the customer didn’t want to do the application, they didn’t want to learn it–even if that was the most cost-effective way.  The customers wanted greater simplicity, not less cost.

The way to balance flexibility with replicable process is to ask your customers, listen to what they say, and request a debrief every time you lose a deal that you expected to win.  Sometimes the reasons will surprise you and give you ideas for improvement.

Have you ever lost a deal because the customer wanted a different method of delivery?  Did it change your business?

On my list of 10 ways to lose (even when you’re the best), reason #2 is “Your story is too complex.”

Complexity in the sales story is a common flaw of young companies as they are growing.  You’re afraid to turn away any business, so you try to do almost anything that any prospect wants you to do.  Big mistake!  First off, it doesn’t work, and it will cost you money and anguish before you finally learn that hard lesson.  But also, it confuses your customers, making them afraid to buy from you, and leaving them unable to make a case for you to others who sit at the Buyers’ Table.  Large companies also fall into this trap as they add more products, services, and divisions.  Without careful management, these decisions dilute your brand and frighten your prospective customers.

A couple of examples.  One variation of this theme is the company that can do many things well, but these things are incompatible for various reasons.  Some time ago I worked with an early stage software development company that had a software product to feed data to a mobile handheld device, before this became commonplace.  This product could be used to develop and play digital games.  It could teach repairmen to fix office machines on site.  And it could help early responders find people who had been trapped in rubble from some natural disaster.  All interesting applications, for sure.  But the people who buy lifesaving equipment are a little freaked to buy it from gamers, and many prospects were worried about how much time, energy, and service would be devoted to their solution as opposed to the others which they didn’t want or need.  Too confusing.

Another variation is overkill in the marketing materials.  Several companies in the education industry have this problem; they offer so many reasons that their solution is the right one that school officials and school boards become overwhelmed.  What is the primary purpose, the primary benefit to the schools?  Cost savings?  Teacher support?  Better learning?  Improved assessment?  Up-to-date technology? Engagement with parents? Administrative services?  In some cases all of these benefits accrue to the buyers, but it’s a rare buying group that can comprehend it.  They need a simple story about a few salient points.

Two ways to help solve the complexity problem:

1. Simplify your business.  Make some hard decisions about your core business and target market.  Learn to say no to opportunities that don’t fit your Target Filter.  If you have several equally important lines of business, sell some off or market them through a strategic alliance.  Don’t allow your customers to be confused about who you are and what you do.
2. Simplify your story.  If you have a well-defined product or service that is by nature complex or solves multiple problems, work hard to craft a clear and simple message.  Remember that old five-paragraph theme you learned in Freshman Comp:  an introduction, three main points, and a conclusion.  Learn from your current customers what are the benefits they most value, and use that knowledge to keep it simple.

Have you ever had to simplify your story?  How did you do it?

Remember The Pretenders’ song “Brass in Pocket (I’m Special)?” [Go ahead--watch it! But come back, OK?]

There’s a sales lesson in those lyrics.

Yesterday I posted on Ten Ways to Lose . . . Even When You’re the Best.  And the first way is when your service is too specialized.

“I’m special.”  “There’s no one like me.”

If you are the only company that does what you do, you have a serious problem.  You don’t have a market.  It is not generally a good circumstance to have no competitors.  In fact, it means you have create a market before you can even sell into that market.

“I’m gonna make you, make you, make you notice.”

How are you going to get noticed?  It takes a lot of work  with a new service that people aren’t thinking about.  There are lots of business services that we know we need–accounting, legal, telecommunications, insurance, office equipment, and on and on.  But what about services that come out of the blue?  One that comes to mind is “spend management,” pioneered by our client Ariba.   It’s big business now but was almost unheard of as a business service even ten years ago.

“Gotta have some of your attention, give it to me.”

How do you get in the door?  Who is your lead buyer?  Is anyone looking for what you are selling?  Who will pay attention? These are critical questions for the highly specialized company.  Your cost of sale is extremely high, your sales cycle is long, and your close rate is abysmal.

What can you do?  Companies that have successfully brought an entirely new service to market have effectively invented their new market.  Here are some strategies to consider:

• Aggressive thought leadership.  You’ll need to leverage all of your intellectual assets–especially those of your employees–to educate your potential customers.  White papers, newsletters, an informative blog, webinars (live and recorded) case studies of early adopters–all will be important to bring your concept to the attention of the new market that you are creating.
• Superior content strategy. Not only will you need to develop rich content to educate your buyers, you’ll need to get it out in public systematically and through multiple channels.  Make a plan for how to balance the social media sites with the sites you own (your website, your blog, your opt-in newsletter list).  What is the content you will post, what will you push, what will you pull, and how will you encourage your audience to react?  Don’t forget the live events either–executive briefings (ideally held at your location if it’s nice enough).
• Marketing/Sales Integration.  Far too many companies have a black hole between marketing and sales functions. But you simply can’t afford it.  What the sales team learns in conversations with prospects needs to be fed back into marketing, and both teams need to be on board with strategy and tactics.  You can’t market an unknown service with brochures.  You need dramatic, exuberant, visible tactics!

Have you ever been too special?  What did you do about it?

Image courtesy P5 Blog p5.blogspot.com

We’re pleased to announce a new series of online courses dedicated to helping small companies implement The Whale Hunters practices and processes.

A lot of you have said you’d like to have some help from us, but you don’t want or need or can’t afford a full-fledged consulting engagement right now. Nevertheless, you are seeking direction and accountability, which you are not getting simply from our books and materials.

So, here we go!  We’ve got four six-week online courses underway, with the first one starting October 31st.  (Boo!):

Whale Hunting Online 101: Build Your Tools–Starts October 31
Whale Hunting Online 102: Build Your Processes–Starts January 9
Whale Hunting Online 201: The Trust Cycle–Starts March 12
Whale Hunting 201: New Business with Key Accounts–Starts May 7

These courses will take place within our premiere Pier9 learning environment, powered by the internationally recognized “Moodle” learning management platform.  The courses feature weekly webinars, audio, video and print course materials, assignments, and feedback from key presenters, plus the key component of a discussion forum led by your host (that’s me!) in which I’ll answer questions and review your work in progress.

Sooooooo, if you’re an aspiring whale hunter; if you’ve gotten started but the process stalled or you want some feedback; if you want to bring some new people up to speed; if you want to put a toe in the whale hunting water — why not register for the first of these courses?

There’s much more information online here that outlines each week’s topics, tools, and outcomes.  In this first course, you’ll build all the tools you need to refine your market message, create the metrics that will define your ideal customer, find those customers through online research, locate warm introductions, understand what the buyers are afraid of, and prepare outstanding presentations.

This is a great way to manage your 2012 sales planning!  Plus, this course is priced at only $550, with a $55 early bird discount if you register by October 17–that’s a bargain at $495.

I look forward to working with you online to become a successful whale hunting company!

This post was originally published at BlogWorld

Many large companies have rigid policies prohibiting employees from any business-related social media activity. If that’s your practice, I recommend you reconsider.

The Whale Hunters business is helping  B2B companies accelerate their growth by selling bigger deals to bigger customers. Most of our clients have some kind of a complex sale, such as a software solution, a technology, a marketing plan or a training program, for a few examples. When they are selling into a large company, they find that many people are involved in the decision of what to buy and from whom or whether to buy or do it themselves in house.

One or two people will make the final decision but many more will influence that decision. Whoever ultimately decides will not choose a solution or a service provider that is not widely accepted among other internal influencers. The price of change is too high; the price of internal conflict is too painful.

The other influencers will make their recommendation based on their confidence in the capability and likeability of the people from your company with whom they would be interacting. So, they want to get to know these people. They want to check out the credentials of members of your project management team or your trainers or your customer service staff or your IT department or your graphic designers or whomever. They want to know their peers in your company.

Now here’s where social media comes in: they will look for your employees on LinkedIn and on Facebook and possibly on Twitter or JigSaw and they will check to see which employees contribute to your company’s blog or Facebook page or LinkedIn discussions. They will want to see a profile, work history, where people went to school, what kind of credentials they have. Especially on LinkedIn, they will explore whether your employees have received recommendations from past or current customers, supervisors, or co-workers. They will be interested to learn whether your employees are thought leaders; for example, do they comment on relevant industry blog posts, do they ask and/or answer questions on LinkedIn, and do they participate in special interest groups online. They’ll look to see how your employees are connected, to them and to others. They may ask to connect with members of your team.

If your employees are invisible online, or if their only presence is a personal presence, you will be at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to other competitors whose employees are visible and active online.

Of course you need policies and procedures, mostly guided by common sense. If you have a marketing team, someone there can draft policies and provide some training. If you’re smaller than that, find a blogger or a savvy GenY employee to take a lead. To start in a small, safe way, encourage your employees to create a LinkedIn profile. Teach them what a good one looks like, and help them get a professional headshot photo. Ask them to request recommendations. Show them how LinkedIn works, how to find groups, and how to participate appropriately. Make your expectations clear, and be explicit about how much time during business hours would be acceptable for professional social media activity. Even a limit of 10 minutes a day on LinkedIn will enable them to become well-connected (and LinkedIn won’t require a daily check-in).

The more your team “connects” with others, the more powerful your company will become in business development opportunities-more sales, bigger deals.

There’s a very funny commercial on these days about a woman calling the help line for her bank and reaching an overseas guy who calls himself Peggy.  There are a couple of permutations, but it’s all the same point.  Can you get the service you need?

I’ve had some occasions in the last couple of weeks to deal with the cable company customer service, resulting in new lessons learned.  And this isn’t a rant about Cox Cable; it’s a set of observations about customer service.

The first cable employee came to our house to install the service–cable, cable modem, and phone service.  He spent about 2 hours there and got us set up with both wired and wireless service.  Put the cable modem and router inside the wall panel and replaced the cover.  All looks well.  He leaves us with his cell number and the number of his dispatcher, should we have any trouble.

Well, we had trouble the first night (unfortunately Friday night) when the cable TV went out.  I called out installer guy but he could not come until morning.  So I called customer service, and they tried to get us reset remotely, but could not accomplish it.  However, the next morning the cable was working again, so we assumed it had been fixed and told the installer we did not need him.

Meantime, the cable went out a couple more times over the weekend but still came back on.  So we learned that we need a new box–the one we have is probably not a good one.

On Saturday, husband wanted to watch the Illinois football game, scheduled to be on the Big Ten channel (even in Phoenix).  Could not find that game.  Called cable company, and the service rep said they don’t offer the Big Ten “overflow” channels–have never had them.  Although we had just bought that service and had a channel guide in front of us with those channels listed–they just didn’t show up where they were supposed to.  Eventually, the service rep found the channel and directed us to it.  But he said, I’ve worked here three years and we’ve never had those channels.  And we’d never be showing a midwest game out here!  So much for his subject matter knowledge.  Big gap between sales (who promised those channels) and service (who can’t find them and doesn’t even know they’re there). P.S.  How often have we written about that gap here?

On Sunday, very early in the morning, the internet goes out–cable TV working, Internet not.  Called customer service; this person was not knowledgeable, tried to reset but couldn’t, and told me we’d need to have a technician on Monday.  I called again later, and talked to a much better prepared service rep, who finally diagnosed that the router was bad.  I was able to install a new router, and my Internet connection was restored.  But when I had had to turn the modem on and off, remove the battery etc., I discovered that the installer had not mounted the equipment inside the box but left it hanging by the cables.  The main modem connection was already dangerously loose!  And along the way, none of the wireless worked any more.  After I wasted a ridiculous amount of time trying to reset everything, we called Data Doctors and had a very well-prepared technician come to the house and put everything back together.

My point about all of these experiences is that even with the best of intentions and a few seemingly very capable people, the cable company left us with a combination of hardware and software problems, which cost us a lot of time and eventually some additional money because we went elsewhere for a solution.  And we still need a new cable model and a new Internet modem.

Companies that really provide outstanding service pay much closer attention to training and to processes.  If you’re going to install the modem and the router on a wall, the process rule should be “you have to mount it.”  These companies make sure that every customer service representative knows all of the channels and knows not to argue about what the customer’s brand-new channel guide says!  And they make sure they everyone knows how to make the fix remotely–not just some of them.

I’m quite certain that is expensive training.  It takes a lot of time and a certain amount of experience, which is best acquired with a mentor.  Cable companies are in the top 10 of companies rated for worst customer service.  That’s in part because consumers have so few choices in any market.  But eventually cable companies will go the way of many other services that have been dis-intermediated, and consumers will get what we want.

So don’t be chintzy on your customer service training; it’s really your brand in the eyes of your customers.

Today’s post is a reminder that tomorrow–Tuesday, Sept. 27–I will interview Anthony Iannarino, author of The Sales Blog, about The Commodity Trap: How to Get Out and Stay Out.

If your products and services are not commodities, but your prospective customers are telling you that the lowest price is all that matters, Anthony thinks you are doing things wrong.  He’s the most articulate person I’ve ever heard on this topic of how to avoid becoming a commodity, full of wise, practical advice on specifically how to deal with the price issue.

For example, Anthony recently blogged about your dream client calling with the news that you are among their top three choices, and that they want you the most, but you’re priced higher than the other two.  They want you to discount your price.  Specifically, what should you do?  That’s the kind of situation we’ll be talking about tomorrow.

I hope you’ll join us!  Register here for call-in information.  There is no registration fee for this teleconference; long distance charges may apply.

We’ll be live at 9am Pacific (and Arizona); 10am Mountain; 11am Central; 12 noon Eastern.  The recording will be posted on The Whale Hunters Pier9 (Premium site) in our Expert Series archive and for a limited time will be available for Pier9 Basic members (basic membership is free–why not join today?)

Today’s guest post comes from Anthony Iannarino, President and Chief Sales Officer for SOLUTIONS Staffing, a best-in-class staffing firm, and the Director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy. He’s also the author of The Sales Blog

Companies spend time, effort, and money working to different their offerings from their many competitors. The more special their offering, the more value it creates, the greater its chances of being chosen by their clients. This differentiation also improves the margins the company earns by selling its offering and producing results.

Enter the salesperson. The deal in front of them is hot. They are competing against other firms, and they have used their company’s differentiation strategy to pull themselves out of the pack. But when all the numbers are entered into the spreadsheets, their offering isn’t the lowest price. In fact, it’s the highest of the three finalists.

Because the buyer really wants to buy from our not-so-fictional salesperson here, he
calls and says that he will sign the contract and give them the business if they can lower their price.

And this is the point at which the decision is made to commoditize the business.

It sounds like the decision is the buyer’s. He doesn’t value the differences in results that are created by paying more to obtain them. But it isn’t the buyer’s decision  to commoditize the business; it’s the seller’s.

The Slippery Slope

The slippery slope for salespeople and sales managers is allowing the business to be
commoditized and, over time, they allow the margins to be destroyed. In most
cases, the company’s ability to differentiate itself is predicated on having the margins necessary to produce a better result. Without the margins, the company not only loses the ability to differentiate—it often loses the ability to produce results.

Only later, after the lower price has been accepted and the work begins does the
lower price start to become problematic. The results promised aren’t produced, and the client isn’t satisfied. Then, based on the evidence, he says: “See? I knew I shouldn’t have paid more. You are all the same.”

This is why we don’t commoditize.

Protecting Pricing

To protect pricing, margins, and your ability to differentiate yourself and your offering, you have to resist becoming a commodity. Instead of accepting the business at the lower price, you have to make the case for the client paying a higher price (in all likelihood, the price they need to pay to get the result they really want).

It sounds something like this: “I understand that our price is higher than our competitors. That’s by design. I didn’t do a good job explaining how your greater investment is going to allow us to provide a far greater result and, ultimately, result in a lower cost. Can we get together and let me try to do better job explaining this and showing you how our price allows us to produce the results you need at a lower cost?”

The salesperson has the power to make a difference for both her client and her company here. She has the ability to resist being commoditized, and she has the ability to translate the price into value, shifting the decision from price to cost. By preventing the commoditization, she can protect the firm’s differentiation strategy and their ability to produce the results they sell.

Please join us!  I will interview Anthony on this topic (The Commodity Trap: How to Get Out and Stay Out) for The Whale Hunters Expert Series Call on Tuesday, September 27.  It’s a free call but you need to register here.

Today’s guest blogger is the inimitable Gini Dietrich, queen of Chicago, CEO of Arment Dietrich, and author of the wildly popular Spin Sucks blog. 

I’m a big believer in integration. Not integration from the perspective that you’re saying the same thing through every communication channel, but from a “breaking down the silos” point-of-view.

You see, marketing, public relations, advertising, HR, IT, customer service, and all of the other disciplines are supposed to work in tandem with sales. Not in silos, but together.

But it rarely happens that way, which is why we see the fatal silo mistake in B2B sales.

Consider this: You’re on the road, meeting with clients, prospecting for new business, and attending conferences, trade shows, and cocktail receptions.

You’re rocking your meetings and ready to get back to your desk in a couple of days to start closing some new deals and make your numbers for your year-end bonus.

Back in the office, your colleagues have created a campaign that integrates direct, email, public relations, and print advertising around a series of webinars. The webinars are created to generate leads that they’ll then hand over to you for conversion.

You get back to your desk and start closing the deals you started on the road. The webinar series finishes and you’re handed 1,000 new leads.

Which do you focus on first?

I’ll bet I know the answer and it’s not the 1,000 new leads your marketing peers handed you.

So what’s the point?

Well, marketing has been told to integrate so they’re using all of the disciplines to promote the webinar series. And that’s where they’re held accountable and how they make their bonuses.

But they’re not integrating with you, nor are you integrating with them. You’re doing your job and they’re doing theirs. And those 1,000 potential customers? They’re left with a bad taste in their mouths.

Following are six ways to avoid this fatal mistake:

1. Lobby senior leadership to make total integration part of the bonus program for every employee.

2. Develop a team, made up of one person from each discipline, to work towards the same business goals and break down the silos.

3. Meet every other week (at a minimum) to discuss upcoming activities, goals, and review the dashboard that everyone reports in to.

4. Work with senior leadership to consistently convey the integration message and support the efforts of the team.

5. In the webinar example used above, work with your colleagues to determine how/when the series will be held and create a process for following up with the leads that are generated. It could be an email drip campaign or it can be personal phone calls. That’s up to you, but what’s important is the pre-determined process.

6. Create a system for complete transparency so people move out of their comfort boxes and are willing to work together, instead of in their silos.

In some ways, this is change management and, in others, you’re going to be asking senior leadership to do something out of the norm.

But if you think about all the time and energy you spend on the road and how many deals you close that way vs. creating a webinar series that generates hundreds or thousands of leads, where would you rather spend your time?

More on this topic of sales, marketing, and PR silos from Frank Strong, Chad Root, and me (Barbara Weaver Smith).

Today’s guest post is from Chad Root, President of Spearhead Marketing and Certified Partner of The Whale Hunters.

The biggest sales mistake I’ve seen is failure to invest in branding, advertising, public relations and web technology.

For companies that have historically been heavily invested in sales salaries, commissions or one-off trade-shows, proper marketing investment may require divesting in sales in order to invest in marketing.  Otherwise, marketing will always be seen an additional expense because it wasn’t in last year’s budget.

It becomes very clear that marketing has a higher return on investment for certain stages of business development than sales when you break down the desired outcomes:

B2B organizations should all desire an increase in each of the steps in this cycle.  So what is the best way to go about it?

Best Practice #1:  Get help with branding.

Does your company have a unified brand or do your individual salespeople have their own brands?  When you’re responsible for growing a business and not just your own commissions, clearly organizational success should be the goal.  Is this a sales challenge or a marketing challenge?  It’s a marketing challenge, yet many companies turn this over to salespeople.  Getting outside help on branding makes sense for many reasons.  One, it’s easier for others to compare you to your competition when they have an outside perspective.  Two, it’s not likely that you have the level of technical and creative talent on staff to pull off successful corporate identity, advertising, public relationships and web marketing initiatives.  Even very large companies with in-house agencies go outside for inspiration, innovation and specialized execution.  For more on this topic, view our SM-art Sales & Marketing introduction video.

Best Practice #2: Sales needs to be involved in nurturing new leads that come in through marketing channels.

Great sales people have both empathy and ego.  When it’s comes to ego, it can sometimes get in the way of nurturing new leads.  Attention salespeople: Set your ego aside just enough that you can be grateful that new leads are coming in the door.  Keep in mind, the lead will not be ready to buy today. Give marketing some direction on how to best nurture the lead along and make personal contact with the lead when the timing is right.

Best Practice #3: Encourage new ideas and creative ways to utilize marketing tools in the sales process. 

“How-to” videos, demonstration kits, online assessments, photo scrapbooks for project management, etc. These are all “marketing investments” that can have a huge impact on how many leads make it into the sales pipeline.

Best Practice #4: Teach your sales people to be Sales Professionals.

Sales pro’s are hard to find.  Just because you can cook, doesn’t make you a
chef.  We recommend The Whale Hunters because it’s centered on organizational success and will teach a salesperson how to be a valuable leader in their company and industry.

With a certified Whale Hunter running point, your business development cycle of closing sales  in your pipeline, maximizing lifetime client value and developing referrals will be a natural way of doing business.  Keep in mind, these steps also need marketing support.

For more on this topic, read Why Can’t Sales and Marketing Get Along?

For help creating a balanced sales and marketing budget to meet your company’s growth objectives while maximizing return on sales and marketing investment, contact Chad Root at Spearhead Sales & Marketing.

Spearhead Sales & Marketing
223 S. Main St.
Elkhart, IN 46516
574-294-6900
www.spearheadsalesmarketing.com
croot@spearheadsalesmarketing.com
Twitter:@chadroot

This post was originally published at BlogWorld on May 25th.

To be successful in B2B sales today AND tomorrow, you need to actively build your social media presence.  I assume since you are reading this blog that you already know that, or at least you are interested in knowing more.  But it frightens me how many small to midsize companies behave like ostriches when it comes to a serious evaluation of their social media strategy.

Here are five serious ways that you will be left behind:

1. Thought Leadership.  You are not actively engaged in developing a point of view about your industry on behalf of your company.  You and/or your employees are not publishing articles and white papers, or participating in online discussions, or asking and answering questions in the leading social media sites for your industry and/or your state and locale.  Therefore you will not become known as an industry leader and will increasingly be perceived as irrelevant.
2. Website.  It’s a marketing piece all about you.  It is not interactive, inviting visitors to participate in any way.  It doesn’t offer any links to unbiased information or free white papers or eBooks or any little way to promote extra value.  It just sits there, doing nothing for you.  Therefore, you are by definition losing ground to competitors who are upgrading their interactivity.
3. LinkedIn.  You have a minimal presence or none at all.  Only one or two of your employees are engaged here.  There is a lack of personal photos, complete profiles, and connections to other professionals.  You are not members of relevant industry groups.  If groups don’t exist, you haven’t taken leadership to create them and invite others.  Therefore, interested prospects will not find you, nor will you find them.
4. Google Alerts. You have not set “Google alerts” (they are free) to help you monitor what is being said about you personally, your company, your industry, and your key executives on the Internet.  You do not have any system to monitor the flow of industry information and where you may, or may not, fit into it.  Therefore you have no basis for an improved marketing strategy.
5. Opt-In e-mail List.  You are not actively building your list of friends, current customers, and prospects, so you have no reliable and inexpensive way to reach them with news, special offers, or simply thanks for their business.  Therefore you run the risk that your competitors have a much better list and the capacity to reach your customers and prospects regularly.

You may not need a Facebook page.  You may not need a Twitter account.  Those channels depend highly on the nature of your business and where your audience is engaging online.  But even if you think today that your market is offline, I challenge you to think again and to investigate or ask your youngest, newest employee to investigate on your behalf.

Today’s communication channels will change, as did the mail, telegraph, telephone, cell phone, etc.  They will continue to evolve.  But the basic premise that you need to be connected will not change. If you’re not sufficiently connected, the steps you take today will pay you back many times over!

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Here’s the new part of this post.  The Whale Hunters offers you many examples of how to put your social media presence into practice.

Web | Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn
The Whale Hunters LinkedIn Group

This month’s Expert Series guest is Anthony Iannarino, sales coach and writer of The Sales Blog.  I’ve been following Anthony on Twitter for quite awhile (@iannarino) and have always found his comments right on point.  I subscribed to the blog and was expecially intrigued by his many, many posts about “price” and “cost.”

A lot of The Whale Hunters client companies believe they are playing in a totally price-driven market.  They do not see any opportunities to compete other than on price.  When they lose a deal, they assume they lost it on price.

The problems with that zero-sum game are that there are always limits to how low the market can drive prices (before vendors abandon the market) and that every vendor is vulnerable to price-cutting by any competitor at any time.

So, when I read Anthony’s blog, I find really good insights and explanations as to how company management and sales people can take positive steps to avoid the Commodity Trap.  His insights are completely consistent with Whale Hunting philsophy–increase your confidence through research, preparation, and hard work–know your market, your customers, and your competitors–and constantly seek to add value.

I recommend you subscribe to The Sales Blog, and by all means reserve your space for the Expert Series call, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 12 noon Eastern time (9 Pacific; 10 Mountain; 11 Central).

Given this wildly unstable economy, many of our clients and friends are reporting slower business than they expected this year while others are having a record year.  We wanted to take the pulse of our blog viewers and ask what you think end-of-year sales results will look like.  Your answers will help us plan relevant content for our webinars, Expert Series calls, newsletter articles, white papers, blog topics.  I’ll report in a few days.

If you want to increase your large account sales before year-end or prepare to do bigger business in 2012, please talk to us about how we can help.  Email info@thewhalehunters.com.

You can’t grow a business to more than $10 million in annual revenue without taking risks.  But how do you know when to take a risk?  Or which risk to take?

In the second day of the #OverTen campaign, we heard from four business leaders on the topic of risk management:  Here are links to their videos:

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh answers, “How do you know when a risk is worth taking?

What does it mean to really fail?  Michael R. Hunter, co-founder of EntourageMarketing responds.

Cynthia Figge, co-founder and COO of CSRHUB explains how to evaluate risk.

Why don’t women take more business risks?  Holly Buchanan, co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth, weighs in.

How about you–what’s your strategy for balancing risk and caution?

Yesterday we reported on Ginger Whitesell’s “OverTen” campaign aimed at encouraging small business owners–especially women–to set their sights on growing their companies to greater than $10 million in annual revenue.

Ginger has recruited some amazing business leaders to summarize their best advice in 30-60 second videos.

In case you missed them, here’s a recap of first five featured videos:

Why is small business growth important?  Holt Hackney (B2BBuzz) responds.

Indiana’s Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman says government doesn’t produce wealth; entrepreneurs do.

Do you want annual business revenues of Over Ten million? ChadRoot (Spearhead Marketing) weighs in.

Patrick Quinlan, RivetSoftware CEO, discusses maintaining performance while you grow from 20 to 500 employees.

Halpin Companies CEO Katharine Halpin believes in motivating employees as you grow.

Thanks to all of the busy leaders who have taken time to produce these videos for Ginger and The Whale Hunters.  We appreciate your help, and we share your passion for small business growth and prosperity.

What do you think about the OverTen campaign?  We’d love your comments!  And stay tuned for new videos each day this week!

Today’s post features Ginger Whitesell, marketing  and operations intern for The Whale Hunters and nonprofit entrepreneur.  Ginger is a senior at Arizona State University.  The Whale Hunters are pleased to sponsor the “Over Ten” campaign that Ginger conceived and carried out.  And thanks to all the leaders who contributed to the video collection!

A few months ago, I came across an article from the Daily Worth that outlined the value of “female” skills in the workplace. One link led to another, including Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s TED Talk and an older story from the Wall Street Journal. Finally, I arrived at another WSJ posting that discussed how women business owners hit a glass ceiling in generating annual revenues of over $1 million dollars. Rather than feeling disheartened, I became inspired to do what I could to change this trend, and “Over Ten” was born.

Over the course of the next two months, I recruited successful and passionate business
owners and executives to share their insights on how to proceed towards exponential revenue growth.

In a brief question-answer fashion, inspired leaders like Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh reflect via video on business growth in 30 to 60 seconds. Over Ten hopes to
demonstrate to women and business owners everywhere that significant business
growth is attainable.

As cofounder of a nonprofit, I consider myself an entrepreneur,
and like all small business enthusiasts, I can’t wait to get my hands on
anything that will propel me forward towards success. It is my profound hope
that the Over Ten campaign will provide businessmen and women alike with the
information they need to raise their annual revenues far beyond the $10 million
mark!

Go to http://vimeo.com/channels/overtengrowth to view day one of this 5 day series. Be sure to follow the entire list of #OverTen contributors at http://twitter.com/GingerSell/overten.