How We Help Solve Challenges in B2B Sales and Marketing is Why Clients Choose Us
If you are concerned about these or other areas of your marketing, sales, consulting and customer facing departments give us a call.
We would be happy to explore if and how we may be able to help you. There is absolutely no obligation for us to explore your organization and potential needs.
What are the biggest challenges facing your business today?
- We go through long sell cycles and our prospects do nothing.
- Our marketing messages don’t seem to be connecting with our prospects.
- Our sales personnel use discounts to solve every customer objection, regardless if price is really the issue.
- We tell buyers our "value proposition" but they just don’t get it.
- Our pipeline is more like a “sewer line”.
- Our revenue and profit forecasts never match actual results.
- Getting everyone to follow the same ‘best practices’ is difficult.
- Ramping up new team members faster.
- Getting sales and marketing to work for the same team.
- I can’t find the good sales or consulting personnel I need to grow my business.
Challenge:
Our revenue and profit forecasts never match actual results
How We Help:
Improved revenue forecast accuracy.
Accuracy in revenue forecasting is a direct result of the objectivity applied about when opportunities will close. There are some key reasons and tactics which help improve revenue forecast accuracy. Examples include:
- Documenting key discussions between your personnel and the prospect about prospect issues/goals/needs. This documentation should be an accurate reflection of buyer needs and what next steps will take place and are agreed on. The key is negotiating with prospects what these steps are and the timing of them.
- At a certain point in working with prospects there is a need to document ALL of the steps needed for both the prospect and your company to complete their evaluation of your products and services.
- Once those steps are agreed on and documented, then a projected date of close is possible. This approach represents an OBJECTIVE view of when opportunities will close, NOT THE OPINION OF SALES PERSONNEL OR MANAGERS. Learn how to help personnel responsible for revenue generation accomplish these items.
Challenge:
Getting
everyone to follow the same "best practices" is difficult.
How We Help:
Widespread implementation of defined best practices.
Many "best practices" are found among individual performers, and particularly top performers, in all of our clients marketing and sales operations. The key is to determine the best practices for your specific organization that lead from prospect interest creation to closing an opportunity and then implementing them throughout your business.
The Vision Group has developed processes for sales, account management, customer service, consultants and maintenance renewal departments. Working with our clients to determine their specific best practices and integrating those with proven revenue generating processes produces a system that will become YOUR processes.
The Vision Group assists organizations in designing, documenting and running KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER programs to help all customer facing personnel understand and develop skills in executing these best practice processes.
Challenge:
Ramping up new team members faster.
How We Help:
Shortening start-up time for new sales or consultant personnel.
We have found a number of key elements which allow revenue generating personnel to become productive more quickly:
- On-boarding programs that provide a blend of product information and sales/consulting techniques and tactics. Our clients tell us the most effective on-boarding occurs when new personnel understand how clients use the capabilities of their company's products and services to solve business issues and enable their prospects to meet their departmental and corporate needs.
- On-boarding programs that orient and train new personnel how to employ consultative approaches and the techniques and tactics of these best practices when converting prospects to clients.
- On-boarding programs that develop key skills for new personnel involved in revenue generation, maintaining accounts, servicing accounts, and implementing programs.
- Reference materials that are not about what the products and services are, but how the products and services are used to solve problems, eliminate issues, and help prospects and customer meet their needs. These materials should document the conversations customer facing personnel can use in face to face and telephone meetings and calls.
Challenge:
Our marketing messages don't seem to be connecting with our prospects.
How We Help:
Market and message definition that begins with your customers' needs.
We work with clients to determine the organization and interdependence of your products and services with your target market or target customers. The process of doing this is straight forward, but requires a number of activities be done to ensure marketing messages connect with your prospects and customers. The determination of the following items should be done prior to implementing best practices and processes for sales and marketing operations.
- Understand and verify who the key personnel are in your prospect/customer target company.
- Determine and verify the objectives and problems they have within their departmental control.
- Determine and verify the reasons they are not able to meet their objectives or solve problems.
- Determine the features of your products and services that can help overcome the reasons that are determined, highlighting unique features.
- Transform the description of these features into verb based messages that help prospects/customers understand how their operations will change positively using these features.
- Determine the prospect's view of potential "Value Propositions" that can be explored and discussed with prospects.
This approach is not a feature/function discussion with prospects and customers, instead it is a conversation discussing their needs, how they do things operationally today, understanding the cost (negatives) of their current approach and then exploring better methods. These methods are potentially new capabilities your company provides to a prospect/customer.
Challenge:
Getting sales and marketing to work as a same team.
How We Help:
Better sales and marketing alignment
The best performing organizations are those with sales and marketing groups that agree on areas of common need and productivity. These areas or overlapping common goals and objectives are determined by following a few simple guidelines:
- Agree that marketing and sales are determined to focus on customer needs in both go-to-market demand generation programs and revenue generating conversations and buy/sell cycles.
- Jointly work to determine key customer needs that your organization can successfully address.
- Develop marketing and sales conversation programs jointly in task force(s).
- Agree on marketing plans, demand generation programs, collateral deliverables and how marketing materials will be used by revenue generating personnel.
- Meet at regular intervals to update materials and programs to enhance the effectiveness of existing materials as required by changing customer needs, market conditions or product offerings.
Challenge:
I can't find the good sales or consulting personnel I need to grow my business.
How We Help:
Develop lower performing sales reps into top performers.
Studies have shown only 10% to 15% of revenue generating personnel are naturally able to have intelligent conversations with their prospects about HOW your company’s products and services help them. These top performers are sometimes called eagles or naturals. Hiring strategies designed to attract only these top performers fail as there are too few of them. They simply aren't available.
The key is to develop teachable best practices which help the rest of your revenue generating personnel understand the techniques and tactics of the top performers. Once we document these 'best practices' then we transfer this knowledge to the entire staff of the revenue generating organization. These skills should be practiced as a regular part of departmental sessions or meetings to ensure that everyone understands and can execute the company's best practices.
Think of this developmental approach as like being an athlete. Athletes will mentally play their game or perform their sport in their heads prior to actually conducting the event. This mental exercise has been demonstrated to help them perform at a higher level. Revenue generating personnel's sport is having relevant and meaningful conversations with prospects/customers and determining if there is a mutual win/win to work together to determine if your products or services help them. These practice sessions are the opportunity to perfect conversations prior to or in anticipation of calling on prospects and customers.
Challenges:
Our sales personnel use discounts to solve every customer objection, regardless whether price is really the issue.
We tell buyers our value proposition but they just don’t get it.
How We Help:
Teachable processes that reduce price discounts and increase sales margins.
Traditional selling fundamentally encompasses revenue generating personnel showing up at a prospect/customer office and telling them everything they have been taught in their product education training, including the "value proposition". But, how credible is a sales person's opinion of the value resulting from the use of your products?
Think about this! If a sales person or consultant comes into your office and spends an hour telling you all of the features, and functions of their products, but, not HOW they could be used by you, what do you think? Research has show that this approach can result in increased objections. They may conclude:
- I don't need all of this!
- I don't understand how I would use it!
- This must be expensive!?
- This is too much! Will you discount it, if I don't need all of that?
- Wait a minute! Why don't you care what I think or need?
Instead, let's help revenue generating personnel understand and develop skills that result in prospects/customers realizing:
- The cost of doing things the way they do them currently.
- The value of using your capabilities and services.
- That choosing your product or service is a win/win decision and has value that exceeds the cost of acquiring your products and services.
Challenge:
We go through long sell cycles and our prospects do nothing.
How We Help: Improved sales performance
and increased close rates.
Helping revenue generating personnel understand how buyers make buying decisions and what criteria they assess to make decisions is crucial to successfully closing new clients and new business with existing clients. There are fundamentally four areas that key executives making buying decisions are concerned about. If your revenue generating personnel aren't sensitive to these concerns they will get out of alignment with these executives.
Along with customer facing and revenue generating personnel being aware and sensitive to buyer concerns is their ability and skills to execute steps in a buy/sell cycle that will result in a successful closing of an opportunity or finding out early that there is no sale possible.
When revenue generating personnel understand buyers and their concerns and skillfully responding to those concerns in a win/win situation throughout a buy/sell cycle, our customers tell us they see improved performance, increased close rates, and shorter sales cycles.
Challenge:
Our pipeline is more like a "sewer line".
How we help:
Objective pipeline milestones.
By defining a mutually agreed upon 'evaluation plan' with prospects or customers about what they and you need to know to buy your products and services provides clarity to opportunities in the pipeline. These evaluation plans include decision points or milestones that when completed in a mutually satisfactory manner, can result in moving an opportunity towards a successful conclusion for both parties.
This evaluation plan, when negotiated with objective measurement of each decision point or milestone, allows the determination of a statistically valid assessment of the quality of the individual sales territory pipeline. The cumulative sales pipeline of all individuals allows sales managers an ability to determine not only the current month's revenue forecast, but also the quality of the sales pipeline with sufficient notification to allow corrective action.
Accordingly, senior management is then allowed the capability to determine the size, quality, and needed corrective action to ensure successful revenue generation on a continuing basis.
Improve Sales Performance
Shorten Sales Cycles
Higher Sales Margins
Aligning Sales Marketing
Ramp-up New employees
