The next level down from Activity,Knowledge and Skills
Salesforce Management Tips and Issues November 25th, 2009Do you remember this blog???
Well, my client and I have been doing some more work on this. We reckoned that we needed to get down into a bit more detail and sub-divide some of these areas.
Activity
Here we had a discussion about what we think the activity targets should be.
Based around a week as follows, approximately:
1 day cold calling
1 day proposal writing
3 days meetings ( or if no meetings then calls to get meetings )
The target number of cold calling phone calls per week ( my recommendation is to go for researched, targeted phone calls rather than purely numbers based ) -should be say 30 per day? ( Any meaningful conversations to be followed up by a letter, so say 15 letters ? )
The target number of meetings per week – say 3 per day for 3 days = should be 9 ?? ( All appointments confirmed by email/letter )
The target number of proposals per week – should be, say, 6 ? ( All proposals to have summary of meeting, key needs and objectives, how we meet those needs/objectives, pricing and ideally ROI )
Knowledge
Here we divided knowledge up into various segments:
Company – ( The companies background/history, key philosophies and main strengths )
Products – ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company, 1. Telephony, 2. Computer Hardware – Switches, Routers, PC’s,
Servers 3. ????? TBD )
Services – ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company, 1. IT Support, 2. Billing Services – Lines, Minutes 3. ???? TBD etc)
Competition – ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company 1. ABC Ltd. 2. DEF Ltd. 3. GHI Ltd. 4. JKL Ltd. 5. ??? We would highlight thier strengths and weaknesses ).
Suppliers – ( The top 3 – say, for an ICT company 1. Cisco, 2. Microsoft, 3. HP )
Marketplace – e.g for an ICT company – Hosted Computing versus Premises Based, Virtualisation trends, Cloud computing trends ( SaaS etc )
Skills
Here we divided skills up into seperate areas:
Meeting structure ( as before )
Proposal structure ( eg summary of meeting, key needs and objectives, how we meet those needs/objectives, pricing and ideally ROI )
Presentation structure ( eg Intro, summary of needs/objectives, how we meet them, discussion, agreement on way forward )
Demo structure ( eg Understand what we need to prove, prove it, next step )
Questioning skills
Closing skills
Objection Handling
Negotiation Skills
Psychometric profiling ( this is an advanced selling skill )
With each of these areas we can either record achievement as a percentage of the target or mark each area out of 10 as before.
Now we had some way of focussing on the areas that needed to be addressed.
We could sit down amongst ourselves and give our own targets and also agree these with the salesperson.
Then we could write an action plan to address any areas of weakness or shortfall.
December 1st, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Activity, Skill and Knowledge the three ‘sisters’ remain at the core of Sales Performance. Even after 25 years of research, they remain constant, unshakable. Simply by measuring activity, skill and knowledge at BMAC Consultants we Predict with unerring accuracy future Sales Performance.
However, 25 years of research have shown that what we mean by Activity, Skill and Knowledge have changed dramatically. Sales ‘Activity’ in 2010 (I prefer MMX) MUST include web2.0 tools, if you let Sales Force Automation run your day, week, or month you will be a sales failure not a sales success.
Revenue Generating Activity today is not about Cold calls, First appointments and Thank You notes.
Managing a Sales Team last year, we measured “Net Cash Generation”, which had no correlation to cold calls, first appointments or Thank you notes!
Skills, well Closing is out, big time. If you are great at “Handling” Objections, then I bet you spend most of your time on the golf course in Sand Bunkers, I prefer the Green. The ways we meet, present and propose have all changed beyond recognition. Tele-presence meetings, PowerPoint without bullet points, managed ‘try before you buy’ demonstrations, and a four page Value Proposition to win a 17 Million pound Contract are part of Selling today.
If you only sell ‘Solutions’ to people with ‘Problems’, then you can still SPIN®.
However, you miss the biggest part of the Market, those who do not have problems but who are looking for ‘OPPORTUNITIES’, and that’s a completely different Sales Skill set!
Skilful Selling (i.e. Successful Selling) is still about Interactive Competence, except that with smarter, better-informed Buyers than ever, then Sales people need a broader, deeper range of behaviours than ever. In 2010 salespeople must be able to influence their Buyer’s thinking, their emotions and their actions. “Psycho” selling is gone, replaced by Neuroscience research into WHY and HOW people buy. ‘Stimulation’ and ‘Choice’ which can be tested by biometrics give us greater insight into Buyers and Successful Sales Behaviours than ever before.
Knowledge today is based on ‘self directed learning’. With web 2.0 it is inexcusable for a Professional Salesperson to be ignorant of their own products, their competitors products and their customers business. 90 minutes on the net, Google, facebook, twitter should give the basics. Training is sadly becoming outdated. Now we need to Train on how to Learn quickly!
Activity, Skill and Knowledge, the sisters, have two cousins Attitude and Strategy.
You cannot succeed on Attitude alone (watch ‘The Apprentice’ for proof),
yet you will not succeed without the ‘right’ Attitude!
I have seen more sales lost through poor or no strategy, than any other cause.
The only way you beat IBM, CICSO, Accenture, HP,
is by having a better Account and Opportunity Strategy than they do.
Activity, Skill, Knowledge, Attitude and Strategy; they still describe selling; it is what we mean, measure and develop that has changed.
December 1st, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Thanks for taking the time to write this Brian ! all very interesting stuff 😉
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