EXECUTION!

Wes Welker dropped a pass that him right in the hands. Had he made the catch, it would have given the Patriots a first down on their 20 with only four minutes and thirty second to go, leading by 2.

The Patriots lost.

With only 4 minutes to go and only one time out, the Giants were pinned on their 10 yard line, when Marion Manningham made an unbelievable catch down the sidelines for 45 yards. It was unreal.

The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI

The key to success . . . execution. Those who execute, and get it done win. Those who don’t, well don’t.

Success is that simple. Don’t believe me, ask Welker or Manningham.

Nuff said!

Last week, I wrote a post about the information sale and the importance of being an expert. In it, I shared how being an expert and having more information is the key to successful sales. Here is the key quote from that post:

Information selling is quickly becoming a must. It’s no longer a secret weapon of great sales people. Customers and clients are busy. They won’t give up their time for a “pitch.” They don’t want to do the work themselves. They don’t want to add anything else to their plate. They want sales people to bring a lot more to the table than just a “pitch.”

What makes information selling interesting is it requires a tremendous amount of information. Sales people have to know more than just their product. They have to be experts . . .

To be an expert and have the amount of information required to be successful in the “information sale” sales people are going to need help. That help will need to come from marketing and sales operations.

A new role or division needs to be created within marketing. This new role will be solely responsible for providing sales with the teaching materials required for the information sale. This role will be heavily research dependent. It will be their job to provide sales with deep, robust industry information including; where the market is headed, what’s influencing the market, what’s changing, what’s getting old and what’s coming down the pike and more. This role will need to be THE company’s industry thought leader. The role will need to supply sales and its prospects with all the data and teaching material they can.

The role will have to provide more than data. It will need to be creative. It will need to find information and solutions customers are unaware of. It has to find and provide information that is new, fresh and impacting. The role should look and feel like an internal Gartner Group. If done correctly, the company and its sales people will be percieved as a go to resource for critical, strategic decisions customers and prospects make around your products and services.

Supporting sales no longer means providing slick, glossy, product sheets or spec sheets. It’s no longer about providing a cool flash based website.  More than ever, marketing has to bring some substance to the table. Marketing needs to teach the sales team to teach the customer.

Marketing, start thinking like this:

Create videos that shed light on a major external factor such as; a Senate bill, government mandate, new study or economic indicator and how that information could effect their business and the industry as a whole.

Do a study or survey regularly to get the pulse of the industry or it’s clients and publish the results on your website. Then provide an ebook or white paper on how to capitalize on the current industry sentiment.

Produce a monthly “state of the industry” newsletter highlighting what is going in the industry and how it is affecting your customers and their customers.

Do bi-weekly “how to” webinars targeting key industry challenges and how to solve them.

Create a “company college” or resource page on the website and load it up with useful industry information and resources; videos, ebooks, white-papers, links, book recommendations, webinars, podcasts etc. Establish your site as the place to go to LEARN more about what is going in the industry with the products and services you sell AND about the business challenges your company solves.

Teach sales how to use all the information you uncover.

Sales has to change. The information sale is demanding it. Therefore, it’s time for marketing to change. It’s time for marketing to bring some substance to the table. There is still room for flash in marketing, but NOT until there is substance. The substance is, valuable, relevant information your customers DON’T have.

Build a research department. Hire some industry experts, and start teaching your sales team and your customers.

Maybe we should call it the information identification and dissemination department? Nah, but that’s what they need to do. The market is demanding it!

This is a follow up to my post last week where I wrote about the information sale and the importance of being an expert.

Getting this information takes an incredible amount of time and effort and this is why the role of marketing and sales operations needs to change.

Great is an end game. Once achieved, it’s over. Then what?

Better is infinite. It’s not a static. It can be achieved, but once achieved it calls out to be achieved again. Better is continuous.

I’ve met a lot of great sales people. They know they are great. But, they really aren’t, because they aren’t trying to get better. “I’ve been doing this for years.” “I know this stuff.” “What can some blog teach me.” “I’ve read all the books, there is nothing new.” These are the sayings of the great. Of course, because they’ve arrived. They will make their numbers, they will be one of the best on the team. They’re great, remember.

Those who think they are great rarely get better.

I am a good skier. I’ve been doing it for years. I’m a PSIA Level 2 Certified ski instructor. To almost every person on the mountain I’m a great skier. Not to me. Between this year and last year, I crossed a chasm. I changed something in my skiing that has taken me to an entirely different level. I’ve gotten better. I’m 44 in April and I ski better now than I’ve ever skied in my life. I ski faster and more in control. I can ski more terrain. I can ski it better and more aggressively. It was a frickin’ awesome feeling to cross the chasm and get to the next level. It took a long time. It was hard. I wondered sometimes if I was going to be able to do it. Today, I am a better skier than I have ever been in my life.

(This video was taken when I was 38, 6 years ago. When I look at it now, I cringe. I see all the mistakes and flaws. I’ll put up a new one soon and we’ll see if you can tell a difference)

Am I a great skier now? NO!  Thank god, that would mean my journey is over. I’m a better skier and that is awesome. It means my next journey is just beginning. I’m going to get even better.

Are you a great sales person? If so, I am sorry.

Are you a better sales person? No? Then start now. If yes, great! Enjoy it for the day. Because tomorrow, you’re new goal kicks in. — Getting better!

We all have a pretty good idea if our sales team is good or bad. Most of us just look at the numbers. If the team is making them, they are good. If they aren’t they need help. Assessing sales teams usually goes something like that. It’s the old “gut” check.

The problem with the “gut check” is it doesn’t give us much more information. The team is good or not, that’s all it tells us. What the gut doesn’t do is tell us why the team is good or not. It doesn’t tell us where the opportunities are to get better and grow, good or bad.

To give you more than a “GUT” feel we’ve created a sales organization assessment tool for you to get real insight into your sales organizations effectiveness and where its strengths and weaknesses are.

It’s free and only takes 10 minutes.

Go on, click here to take the assessment and find out how good your sales organization really is . . . and where you might be able to get just a little bit better:  A Sales Guy Sales Organization Effectiveness Assessment

Your gut will thank us!

In no way do I get satisfaction in the pain or woes of others. So Kodak’s apparent demise does not make me happy. I feel for the company and it’s thousands of employees. Rochester New York is most likely going to change forever over the next 10 years and I feel the people and the city.

Disclaimer aside, Kodak’s woes mark something positive. They mark change. Film, the core of Kodak’s business for almost 131 years, has joined the horse and carriage, buggy whips, typewriters, records, record players, tapes, tape players, dvd’s and dvd players (shit any type of physical music and music player), and other forgotten human advancements in the land of outmoded technology. Kodak’s demise marks the end of another era. It marks the end of another physical technology and the triumph of digital. It also marks progress. Kodak’s demise is a stark reminder that change and progress are inevitable, that time marches on and waits for no one.

Will Kodak as a company carry on? Will they be able to reinvent themselves? It’s a tall order.  I don’t know if they can. Too many companies just can’t make the transition.  To this day, I can’t figure our why the typewriter company Smith and Corona didn’t become the worlds leading manufacturer of computer keyboards and mice and let a start-up like Logitec own the space.

What I do know is the message in Kodak’s woes is crystal clear, nothing stands still and progress is inevitable. To me that’s a good thing. Imagine if we all still needed buggy whips.

The beginning of the year in sales always starts with a number. Then it moves to getting to the number. Sales leadership spends a lot of time going through plans, setting quota, preparing for Q1, looking at the pipeline, etc. Everyone is looking forward and the management process on making the number begins.

What is often missed however, is a good solid understanding of what the team is going to need to make the number. I’m not sure why this is missed so often, but it is.

Sales leaders, pull out your 2012 sales strategy right now. Go through it and take note of how much of it is dedicated to sales support and enablement. How much of the budget is allocated to sales improvement or support tools?  How much of the plan focuses on training? How much of the strategy focuses on value proposition development? How much of the strategy focuses on marketing and collateral support? How much of the plan DOESN’T focus on direct go to market and numbers making? If  the plan as good coverage in all of these things, you have a good plan. But if your plan is like most, it’s lacking in almost all of these areas.

The best thing sales leadership can do in 2012 is support the sales team. In order to do this, you have to build team support and enablement into your overall sales strategy. Like a go to market strategy, critical analysis is paramount.

Take a look at your plan for 2012 then ask a very simple question. What does my team need today, that they don’t have to make the number? Ask the question over and over. Each answer should then become an initiative. If the answer is nothing, unless you’ve already asked the question, your not being honest with yourself.

Sales teams are not ready made, out of the box organizations. They require care and feeding. The best organizations understand this.

Ask the team what they feel is missing. Ask them what they think would make it easier to make their number. Ask them what you could provide to accelerate sales. Get familiar with the team’s weaknesses and strengths. Identify initiatives that will offset the weaknesses and leverage the strengths. Getting to your number, growing sales, and moving product is more than setting revenue targets and creating motivational rewards and recognition. Getting to your number means getting the most out of your team and that requires support.

Know what your team is lacking, know where it is weak, know where it is strong. Know what could make it stronger and then give it what it needs.

What is your sales support and enablement strategy? Do you have one? You should!

This year the snow at Vail sucks. It’s the worst beginning of the season I can remember. The back bowls aren’t open. The snow is hard packed and icy. Brown spots are everywhere. I’m on my rock skis and can’t see when that will change.

I have the same client this year that I had last year and in spite of the poor conditions they are having a blast. Why? Because the experience is greater than the snow. Vail has built a phenomenal vacation experience. By doing so, they aren’t so reliant on great snow.

Vail has insulated itself from having to have a perfect product. Smart on their part, considering they can’t control the weather.

There is a great lesson here. Products won’t be perfect all the time. That’s OK, if we build a great experience around the product. Restaurant food isn’t going to be perfect every time. To most of us, it’s OK as long as the restaurant is fun and has a great experience. We want things to be perfect, but if they aren’t we’re OK, if there is more than just the core product.

This is lost on lots of businesses. Tremendous focus is put on the core product and everything else is forgotten.

Build and amazing experience around your product and it doesn’t have to be perfect all the time.  Build and amazing product without an amazing experience around it and pray to god its perfect. Because, if it’s not there is nothing left.

We choose for the main product, we stay, tell our friends, and come back for everything else.  Think beyond your product, it’s what makes the difference.

“100 Little Things”

One of my favorite restaurants is a little Mexican place in Utah called El Chubasco. I’ve often eaten there twice in a day, and once (it’s true) ate there three times.

It’s always crowded. Sometimes people wait outside, in the cold, even though there are plenty of alternatives within walking distance. So, what’s the secret? Why is it worth a drive and a wait?

No specific reason. The energy of owners Jill and Craig is certainly part of it, but most customers never encounter them. I think it’s the hand-fitted gestalt of thousands of little decisions made by caring management out to make a difference. Usually, when a business like this gets bigger or turns into a chain, marketers make what feel like smart compromises. The MBAs collide with the mystical, and the place gets boring. “Why do we need 14 free salsas when we can get away with six?” or “Perhaps we ought to stop handing out huge tumblers of water for free–our bottled water sales will go up.”

This turns out to be the secret of just about every really successful enterprise. Sure, you can copy one or two or even three of their competitive advantages and unique remarkable attributes, but no, it’s going to be really difficult to recreate the magic of countless little decisions. The scarcity happens because so many businesses don’t care enough or are too scared to invest the energy in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary.

Seth is right, the magic happens in the magic of the countless little decisions. But, the scarcity doesn’t happen because so many business don’t care enough or are too scared to invest in so many seemingly meaningless little bits of being extraordinary. The scarcity happens because being extraordinary is no longer the goal.

When companies get “big” or become a chain the goal is no longer being extraordinary, it’s to be as profitable as possible. It’s not that businesses don’t care enough, or are too scared to invest, it’s they have a different goal. Carrying 22 free salsa’s will rarely be as profitable as carrying six. Does 22 salsa’s make for an extraordinary experience? Yes. But it also creates a lot of waste.

There is a curve to extraordinary user experience and profitability. At some point the return on investment of being extraordinary diminishes. (which I am not smart enough to demonstrate here, but I’m sure the MBA’s and the mystical can help. If any one in this community can help illustrate please share) Is being extraordinary profitable? Yes! Is it the most profitable? At some point, no. And that is why things change.

I love the small restaurant my self. I love the boutique ski clothing brands. I love the special attention of the extraordinary. But being extraordinary means targeting a passionate group, and moving away from the middle. When we move away from the middle, we reduce the pool of customers. Growth and expansion come from appealing to as many people as possible and 22 free salsas isn’t extraordinary to most people. They just want one good one.

When great restaurants like El Chubasco get big or become a chain, they haven’t stopped caring, they just change their goal from being as extraordinary as possible to being as profitable as possible and there is nothing wrong with that.

The 6 Biggest Changes in Today’s Sales Environment

Customers are super busy and don’t have time for you:

Email, smartphones, texting, cloud computing, etc. are supposed to make us all more productive. In many respects however, they’ve just made us busier. Constantly connected, customers and prospects are buried. The have more work than time to get things done. Customers and prospect are in constant priority mode, continually determining what is important and what isn’t.  And guess what? Your email, cold call or text message isn’t important. Neither is your new solution. Customers and prospects are so busy, even when they know they have a problem and know it needs to be fixed, if they can band-aid it they will. The just don’t have the time to address it.

According to Jill Konrath and her new book, Snap Selling, buyers are crazy-busy and have too much to do. Jill says; “When people have too much to do and impossible deadlines, it changes how they make decisions. And, it changes their expectations of you too.”  Jill is right.

To sell in this super, fast past environment it is critical to do as much of the work for you customer as possible. It takes heroic like creativity to capture their attention and you have to consider yourself their sales sherpa, becoming an indispensable sales resource.

Customers and prospects are busier today than they have ever been.

Relationships matter less:

Relationships matter less than they did before. According to the Sales Executive Council, sales reps fall into five distinct profiles; hard-workers, lone-wolves, reactive problem solvers, relationship builders and challengers.  According to the study relationship builders represent only 7% of high-performers. Traditional relationship builder characteristics of being generous, agreeable, supportive, available and service oriented prohibits the discovery of new, unique and transformative solutions. Relationship building is a circuitous route to the sale. It makes it difficult for problems to be identified and solved. Customers don’t have the time nor inclination to take a circuitous route. The want ideas now.

The days of “friendship” buying are dead.  All sales are becoming more complex. Customers are super busy, (see #1.) Achieving results as quickly as possible drives everything. Dinners, golf, lunches, boondoggles, and casual conversations are nice, but they don’t get the customer any closer to their goals.  Relationships only matter now if they allow you to teach and get customers to their goals.

Customers want to be taught, they want experts:

I had a customer explicitly tell me this a few years back and I never forgot it.  Customers want experts. They want their sales people to educate them on what is happening in the space. They want guidance in how to execute their strategy and how your products and services can help with that strategy.  Customers and prospects are too busy (see #1, again) to do it all themselves.  There is too much information coming at them to try, even if they weren’t. Today’s best sales people need to be “trusted filters” helping customers and prospects cut through the noise and provide them with the relevant information they need to achieve their goals. Today’s sales environments require sales people come to the table WITH ideas, ideas the customer may never have thought of. Sales reps need to lead their customers and the sale. This is done by being the expert and having information and knowledge customers and prospects don’t have.

The customer no longer leads the sale, the sales people do:

Once upon a time the customer or prospect led the sale.  Sales people built a strong relationship, pitched their wares, provided support, and the customer made choices. Today customers and prospects are too busy the don’t have the time do all the work.  They expect sales people to come the table with new ideas, approaches and techniques to solve their problems. Leadership is a critical skill for today’s sales people. They must be comfortable making customers uncomfortable. Sales reps need to be provocative. They need to take control of the sale for the customer. Today’s sale is led by the sales team. The customer is expecting it. Customers want and expect their sales people to lead the sale.

Social media matters:

Any sales person who, when asked if they’re on Twitter replies with; “I don’t care what someone had for lunch.” doesn’t get it.  Social media is not a toy, it’s a tool that is here to stay. Sales people need to understand the value of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, Gist, Yammer, blogging and more as real selling tools. Social media is about information, collaboration, and engagement.  Social media is a must in today’s selling world.  For today’s sales people, social media is a prospecting tool, a selling tool, a cold calling tool, a sharing tool, a research tool, etc.

If you’re looking for proof social media makes a difference, check this out. This poor cat is about to lose a client thanks to Twitter.

Today’s sales people need to learn how to use social media to drive their business. Embracing social media is no longer a nice to have, it’s a must in selling.

Technology matters: 

Don’t confuse technology with social media.  The applications and tools available to sales people today is massive. The days of the sales person’s rolodex and a client based CRM as the tools of the trade are far from over. Technology is absolutely reshaping the sales landscape. Cloud computing, the Internet, browser plugins, CRM applications, and mobile applications are giving sales people more tools to accelerate the sale, connect with customers, and prospects than ever before.

Technology is touching every aspect of the selling process, from prospecting emails with yesware, to customer and prospect research with Gist and Rapportive, to demonstration tools like Glance Networks and iMeet, to commission management systems like xactly.  The list of sales, sales enablement, and sales productivity technologies is immense. How many of these technologies are you familiar with; Echosign, KnowledgeVision, Lattice-Engines, Qvidian, WhiteBoard Selling, IntroMojo?

There is more technology designed to make selling more effective and efficient than ever before.  The key now, is to know what the technologies are and how to use them.

Sales is changing. We have to lead. What once worked, works no longer. Relationships are no longer enough. Social media matters. The tools of the past are no longer efficient. Our customers and prospects worlds are different and they expect more from us.

Do you see the change?

I saw this Smart Brief survey this morning in my email and it struck me. The blue line is something I’ve experienced in most of the organizations I’ve worked. Talk is more common than action. What strikes me the most about the results is, I believe if you were to ask most people they would say they don’t like environments where talking over action rules. I can’t prove this. However, my experience suggests, as does this survey, that cultures like this aren’t popular.

So why then, if we don’t like them, do they exist? — Risk aversion!

When we are afraid or are avoiding something, action is the perceived enemy. To avoid failure or risk we stop and talk. Talking keeps it present, it allows us to feel as though action is being taken. The more we talk, the more it appears real. Talking can even makes us feel as if we are taking action.  Hint: we’re not.

More talking than action is soft quitting. It’s quitting before you start. It’s avoiding the first step.  To avoid this, I like what the author of the piece said:

 Try breaking the big decisions into smaller, less risky ones and try to push forward smaller actions faster rather than larger actions more slowly. It’ll help you gain momentum and build a bias toward doing.

If you or your company is risk averse, reduce the risk by taking smaller actions. Find ways to make it more manageable and minimize your exposure. Find ways to take the first step. Because talking more isn’t going to help.

Forty two percent of people said their company talks too much and doesn’t take enough action. That’s too high! What action are you going to take to change it.

I’m curios to what this community thinks.  How would you rate your companies culture?