Category Archives: Sales Management

Let’s Put Marketing On Commission!

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My friend, Dan McDade, President ofPointClear, has been leading an interesting discussion at Focus. He asked me the question, “would sales people be willing to share commissions with marketing if marketing was perceived to have done a better job for sales?” (it’s a good discussion, I recommend reading it.)

My immediate reaction was, “Isn’t marketing’s job to be supporting sales? Why do we need to pay them some of sales’ commissions if they do their job well?” I still maintain that position, but Dan’s question started me thinking. What would happen if we put marketing on a commission plan, what if we made them more accountable for the results they produced?

What if we came up with metrics that were closely aligned with sales-perhaps shared with sales and put every marketing person on commission? Would that drive greater cooperation? Would it eliminate the silo’s? Market and sales are both accountable for generating revenue and growing the company. Aligning everyone in marketing and sales around similar goals and objectives could only be good.

What metrics would we put in place? Clearly some level of revenue metric. Probably we’d look at some sort of lead quality metric. What about the nurturing programs that marketing conducts? How would we measure those? What about the other marketing deliverables used to support sales-clearly we don’t want to incent people on quantity, but we do want to look at some sort of metric around good quality collateral that really helps sales and is meaningful to customers.

Another thing we might do is align marketing and sales teams together-for example the marketing people supporting the financial sectors, with the sales people selling in those sectors. Likewise in manufacturing, health and so forth. Perhaps we can put these team on some sort of shared goals. Many sales people have shared goals with other sales people, so we can design a system that would bring marketing into the team. It might be very powerful.

I’m certain that we can design some metrics-some individual, some team oriented that can get sales people and marketing people to work more collaboratively. I think this should be done.

Now what about commission? I’m all for paying marketing people commission. Frankly, I would put everyone in an organization around some sort of “commission” or incentive program. But, there’s no reason to take that commission away from sales people. It’s easy to design a commission program for marketing. We use the same principles we do for sales people.

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Performance Management Starts With Looking In The Mirror

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Performance management is a hot issue. Sales leaders and business managers constantly strive to get the highest levels of performance from their people and teams. We coach, provide tools and systems, create processes, measure and reward. All of these are important, but I think we tend to overlook another important factor-our own performance. To maximize performance in the organization we have to first look at ourselves and how we perform.

The personal example each of us sets as a leader is a starting point. It we expect our people to use the CRM system or our sales process, yet we don’t use it ourselves, why should our sales people use them? If we expect our sales people to plan and prepare for sales calls, yet we go along and shoot from the lip, what behaviors would we expect? If we ask our people for reports (say call reports), yet we never read them, what kind of message do we send to our people.

But it doesn’t stop with the personal example we set. It goes much deeper. It goes to accountability. We hold our people accountable for producing results. Yes, it all rolls up to us, so in some ways we share accountability. But as managers we are accountable for our people’s success. What are we doing to help our people be successful? Are we coaching them, developing them as we should, are we addressing performance issues? Are we fighting for them-getting the resources they need, promoting them within the organization, protecting them from the organization.

Do we trust them? What do we do, every day, to earn their trust.

Do we talk about “them” when they don’t meet the goals, then claiming their success for ourselves. Do we constantly recognize them and are we proud of their success, publicizing it to the organization. When there is a failure to we share the responsibility or start playing the blame game.

Our our behaviors and values aligned with the expectations that we have about our people and performance? If we expect teamwork, are we team players-not just with our people, but with others in the organization? If we expect integrity, do we meet our commitments, is our own behavior above reproach?

Performance management is not about getting “them” to perform at the highest levels. It starts with examining ourselves, making sure that we are performing at the highest possible level. That everything we expect is aligned with our own personal behaviors and performance.

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Are Your Sales And Marketing Strategies Aligned?

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“Why would you even pose that question Dave? Of course our sales strategy is aligned with our marketing strategy!” Then immediately following this statement, we start talking about the “silo’s.” Or we talk about lead quality, or it’s something else. All the signs that sales and marketing may be aligned-but not in sync. But there are changes that put even more stress in the already difficult task of aligning sales and marketing.

Buying is changing so quickly that it stresses all our strategies-both sales and marketing. Keeping the strategies in alignment is a challenge. We used to think of marketing and sales as sequential-marketing focused on the front end, sales focused on closing the deal. All those rules are changing. Better informed customers force us to change our sales and marketing strategies. Marketing and sales now have to work more closely through the entire customer engagement process.

In the new world of buying, sales must get engaged earlier than traditionally. Sales must engage customers in thinking about their businesses differently, getting them to imagine new possibilities. The customer may not have a defined need, but sales can help the customer think of new ways to grow. Marketing has to be involved in that process, working hand in hand with sales-with new materials to support sales in these discussions with customers. Marketing must continue nurturing the customer as they consider these new opportunities.

Marketing will be involved longer in the process. It’s no longer “provide the lead to sales, now it’s their responsibility.” Marketing must provide the tools to help sales better qualify and quantify the customer’s needs and requirements. Sales must have tools to help develop, communicate, and deliver differentiated value. Things like questioning guides, interview guides, justification guides-along with case studies and other materials.

In the future, marketing and sales will look like a basketball team. There will be defined roles and “plays,” but the organizations will need to be nimble in responding to changing situations-both in the markets and in individual sales situations.

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Selling Is About Change And Change Management

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I wonder why we never talk much about change and change management-except when it is happening to us. When it happens to us, we usually are very uncomfortable and resist it.

But at its core, isn’t sales really about change for our customers? As sales professionals we are facilitating our customers in changing what they do or how they operate. We are asking them to abandon what they are currently doing, convincing them to do something differently-hopefully to make them better or to allow them to address new opportunities.

As part of our sales process, how often do we talk to customers about change? Just as we are uncomfortable with change and tend to resist it, our customers face the same fears and uncertainty. It’s natural for people to react this way. Yet, instead of talking to customers about change, helping them understand and embrace it, we focus on our products, features, functions, and benefits. We leave it to our customers to deal with the C-word. Typically, we leave them alone to struggle with all the issues that change brings.

What would happen if we started focusing much of what we do when we sell on directly addressing concerns about change and change management? What if we started to understand why people resist change and worked to remove the fears and barriers? What if we helped them understand the value of changing? What if we put them at the center of identifying changes that should be made and in developing the plan for implementing change? What if instead of becoming victims of change, they become agents of change?

When people understand the reasons for change, when they understand the path to success in implementing change, when they are a part of making the critical decisions about change, their fear and resistance tend to disappear, replaced with enthusiasm and a clear vision of something that is making them and their organizations better and grow.

Sales professionals are agents of change. But we don’t talk about it. We aren’t trained in it. We’re pretty bad about helping our customers manage it. Maybe all this should change.

?

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Setting Up a Sales Base Camp: How Small Footholds Turn Into Huge Sales

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The analogies between selling and mountain climbing are used a lot, and for good reason: if you ever spend time with someone who has spent weeks and months dragging themselves up a mass of rock and ice, just to get a view from the top, then you start to see that there are some similarities in the mindset.

  • But while most of us think of the struggle and the summits, there is another part of climbing that should be familiar to salespeople – setting up a base camp.

Just as climbing teams know they can’t reach the top of any sizable mountain without the right resources close at hand, neither can most salespeople bring in the biggest accounts without a bit of help along the way. There just isn’t usually enough, in terms of public information, to complete most “C Level” sales. To crack into those circles, you need a foothold, someone who can point the way and give a bit of guidance when it matters.

  • In other words, if you want to do more than just make sales to lower-level managers, it makes sense to cultivate contacts in the companies you want to work with. Here’s how you can set up a sales base camp in just about any organization:

Start where you can start. Climbers don’t have the option to set up camp in a perfect spot – they just have to look for the first patch of flat ground and use it. It’s the same with your company contacts; while you would love to know the vice president of business development, your first inroad might be with a call to his assistant, or someone from a different department altogether. Whoever you can reach and forge a relationship with, start with them and move up.

Look for like minds. If you just can’t think of anyone in the organization you already know – or even someone you can make contact with – then why not befriend another salesperson that already works there? Simply let them know that you are trying to add his or her firm to your list of customers, and would appreciate any guidance. Given that most producers have been in that position before, you might be surprised at how helpful another sales rep will be.

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