The obvious way to validate the viability of a new technology or product requires a simple strategy: create critical mass in the market through “accelerated deal flow”.  Reinforcing this approach, VizQuest emphasizes that the core market development strategy at this point is indeed “deal-driven”.

This seems like a simple concept, so, what’s the problem?  Why do so many companies struggle with driving adoption of new products and services?  If you have a sufficiently attractive – and disruptive – innovation to bring to the table, surely it is indeed a question of “just” going out and closing a deal with a willing customer (and this is the fatal flaw…trivializing sales of new products).  In working with some of the World’s leading software companies, I experienced significant difficulties to make this strategy work.

At VizQuest, we engage with many companies who are challenged in early market customer capture. Proof that Early Market adoption is far from being a trivial feat.  Therefore, I want to examine in some detail the principal traps and how companies can avoid them. At least five potentially critical dangers lie in wait for unsuspecting companies, the first of which I shall address here:

Not Knowing How and Why the Customer Will Buy: Companies tend to act as if this is a time to sell to as many customers as possible, in order to build a reference list that will impress later adopters.  The typical approach is “pimp-my-product” marketing…lots of advertising, events, calls and emails into every company that has a pulse….minimal focus and no real understanding of why the customer would spend money on the product.  Unfortunately, by not segmenting the market and treating all comers as “early adopters”, they end up with the worst possible compromise:

1.)they get involved in extended sales cycles with mainly hesitant customers who end up requesting custom enhancements in return for small “pilot” contracts that take ages to close;

2.) they end up negotiating ugly deals that are unprofitable and lower the sales transaction value;

3.) they waste significant resources, money and time on prospects and leads that look attractive, but will never buy  – they are only appearing to be interested because some desperate marketing or sales person coerced them into a demo or webinar.

In cases where companies do attract a bona-fide visionary customer, they are often unsure how to manage the opportunity.  Thus, they jump through technical hoops to satisfy the customer’s aggressive requirements, but fail to get compensated for the value they deliver.  Assuming for a moment your company does have a solution that is adoptable – i.e., a disruptive solution that delivers rapid value to business in a significantly new way – then the main objectives are to prove (a) that the new category is indeed a hot one, and (b) that you are a player with leadership potential. The best way of achieving these goals is to find a few big company-making deals with visible customers who are willing to take a risk on your technology.  They believe it can garner for them a real and dramatic competitive advantage and have the financial strength to invest in this spend-thrift economic environment.

I will be delivering the other 4 key factors in New Product Adoption in follow on blog posts…please check in to Bottom Line Vine to learn more, or to comment.

Often times this is the first question I hear when talking to a new client.  The majority of sales managers are enthralled with a sales rep who possess a huge Rolodex.  The mental gyration a sales manager goes through upon finding out his new sales candidate has a huge Rolodex…’YEESSS’, then thoughts of huge promotions and retirement set in.  The winning lottery ticket has been bestowed upon them, now sales will become an effortless activity.  A few phone call, a signed PO, and open the flood gates, here comes revenue.

If the sales rep mentioned above, truly has meaningful relationships with clients who have purchased his technology in the past, how can he/she maintain ANY credibility by selling these people a competitive product.  “Hello prospect X.  I recently moved from company X to company Y.  I know I spend 4 years selling you on the features/benefits/ROI of product X, but now I think you should buy product Y”.   Does that person have any credibility at that point?  And, why would this rep leave their established (successful?), relationship laden position in the first place?

While it may seem like I am down on the idea of a Rolodex, you are right.  The real value to organizations is insider information.  How do you manage relationships, gather market intelligence, collect surveys, and dissect customer feedback in order to gain a real understanding of organizational and individual buying habits.

The challenge with this approach?  Your single sales rep, with the 30 year old, duct taped Rolodex isn’t going to have this information.  They may know the best place to the $9.99 prime rib special, but they are not going to have a complete understanding of an organizations technology platform, buying process and immediate needs across multiple business units.  They usually have one point of contact and are too concerned with pitching their product; they don’t take the time to gather information.

Organizations have evolved into the 21 century in almost all facets of business.  Why is sales, and the antiquated idea of finding the rep with the biggest Rolodex still prohibiting so many companies from hitting growth goals?

Check out the VizQuest sales factory, www.vizquest.com to recycle your Rolodex.

As a first step to getting to the right decision maker, a clear understanding of the roles must be established.  We like to categorize the ‘buyers’ as follows:

• Influencer- This person can help to open the door for your product/service.  They may have the ability to shape the thinking of the buyers.  Ultimately, they have little control over the buying process.
• Champion- Not the ultimate decision maker.  A person who will cooperate with you to collect inside information to win the deal.  They will coach you on how to win, and give you the critical information to shape the deal so you are in position to get the sale.
• Economic Buyer- This person has the budget, and in smaller companies is often also the decision maker.
• Decision maker- The person who will sign on the line, giving final approval to the purchase.  In the current economic environment, this is often the CEO in most small to mid size companies (in the context of selling a 10-20K+ deal).

Unless you start with the decision maker, most sales will have multiple people involved on the buying side.  The most important part of any sales cycle is getting the buyer and decision maker exposed to your offering as early as possible.  This is the only way for the sales person to control the sales process.  Otherwise, you become reliant on the influencer or champion to sell your product.  Through our observations, the win rate on these deals is less than a percentage point.

Think about all the time and energy you spend learning and preparing to sell your product.  After all this preparation, do you really want someone else selling on your behalf?  There is no way they will know answers to all the questions and be able to handle pushback the way you can!

The takeaway?  Look at your pipeline.  Who are you selling to?  Are you engaged at the right level and do you know the critical path to revenue.  If yes, are you currently engaged with all the people that are involved in the decision?  If no, you need to hit the panic button and create a plan to sell to the people who have the ability to buy your offering.

Next time, we will discuss how to get the right people engaged, early, in the sales cycle.

Once you know the lay of the land and have established a need for your good or service, including the key players in follow up calls, emails and reviews is critical.  This type of sales approach will shorten sales cycles, increase the quality and type of feedback and allow you (the sales rep) to properly access the sales opportunity.  With direct lines of communication to all constituents, the sales rep will be in a position to accurately assess viability and forecast the deal.

Including multiple decision makers, champions, influences and end users will allow a rep to:

1. Speed up the decision making process; feedback will be collective, immediate and accurate.
2. Establishing multiple points of contact will keep a deal going in the case of a layoff, vacation, sickness, side projects, etc.
3. The sales rep can sell direct to the key players.  You are not reliant on an unknown person to act as your salesperson.

How do you establish these relationships?  Create a people map of all the potential players involved in the deal.  Ask for referrals, emails, etc., from your initial point of contact.  This is a good way to test collaboration.  If they are unwilling to share this information, you need to reassess the opportunity.

Begin the process of introductions to the key individual, including:

1. The person with budget
2. The influencers
3. Any evaluators
4. Anyone else who can shape the decision related to buying your offering (if you do not know who this might be, you cannot accurate forecast the opportunity).

Take a look at your existing opportunities.  Do you have multiple points of contact?  Will the inclusion of additional decision makers’ speed up the sales cycle?  Are you truly dealing with the end decision maker?  How have you been able to validate this?  In our next entry, we will address how to validate you are engaged at the right level.

Do you set out to measure the conversion rates from email and phone campaigns to new business?  What is the typical conversion from a phone connection to a proposal?  From proposal to new business?

Surprisingly, the numbers behind the sales effort is a complete afterthought for most organizations.  This information, no matter how redundant and tedious it may seem, is the first indication of how effective a sales member, a sales campaign, a new product launch or a new message really is at engaging new prospects.

All too often, we talk to clients who have invested years of sales effort and millions of dollars attempting to sell and market to industries and individuals that yielded no ROI.  Astonishingly, they never have the metrics to understand where the sales effort is falling short.  Often, within 60 minutes of evaluating their success metrics, it becomes clear to everyone a need to shift their focus to other verticals and industries that are yielding new sales and revenue.

Measured correctly, a sales person can gauge their success based on conversion through each piece of the sales process.  The challenge?  Most organizations are not requiring their sales reps to track this information.  Many sales directors do not want to analyze numbers and trends.  Many don’t know what best in class metrics truly are.  Sales reps are left chasing bad opportunities.

In order to be considered best in class and run an effective sales organization, a company needs to accurately measure internal sales effectiveness.  Regardless of individual sales performance, a complete understanding of conversion rates will allow sales and marketing professional to gain an understanding of what messages, sales collateral, proposals, etc., are capturing the interest of potential customers.  Sales managers and reps alike will have better information on what accounts to pursue, and more importantly, what types of accounts will never lead to new business.

With VizQuest’s unique position in the market, we gain exposure into all types of sales organizations.  A universal area of challenge for sales/marketing groups is capturing relevant market intelligence and applying it to their sales effort.  Very few organizations leverage customer feedback to shape their technology offering, let alone, dictate the direction of their sales efforts.

A professionally crafted survey captures the unique insights of your current customers as well as the needs of potential customers.  In our experience, people are more willing to share more complete and accurate information in a non threatening atmosphere like a survey than on a sales call.  Properly constructed and delivered, a survey is the right tool to gather these insights.

Good surveys will yield a 8-20% response rate (depending upon target audience).  Incenting the recipients with giveaways can further increase the response rate, yielding a response as high as 28%.

By gathering customer and prospect information, your sales team now has the ‘inside’ information to make a more compelling sales call.  Sales professionals can get away from pitching and focus on selling a solution to a problem.  Additionally, you can narrow your focus to key accounts, which by way of the survey, present the best potential sales opportunities for your team to win new business.

They drive growth, are always looking for results, and try to stay ahead of the competition.  Innovation, creativity, and resilience are just some of the attributes of these departments.  However, these departments are constantly butting heads.  They each have similar goals, share the credit of a good job, and share the blame in failure.  Rarely do they work together to define and execute goals.

What happens between them when the doors are closed?  Do they even interact?  Both departments are filled with results driven people.  Competition is in their nature.

Marketing is what you do to reach, engage, and interest prospects.  The sales process is everything done to close the sale and get a signed agreement or contract.  Both are necessities to capturing new customers.

By strategically combining efforts, businesses will experience successful growth and collaboration within their companies.  If the efforts are unbalanced, it can detour and inhibit growth.  Challenges from within the sales/marketing groups should not hinder an organizations growth.

For all but the largest organizations, a joined effort will influence comradely between the two groups; responsibilities will be shared, divided and acheived.  The mystery of what the other group is doing will be eliminated.  Cooperation will yield better and more closable opportunities.  Sales teams will have more time to close deals and bring in new customers.

We believe marketing and sales should work together to reach mutual goals.  Marketing needs to understand sales conversion rates.  Sales teams needs to utilize sales materials and leads the marketing group creates.   Marketing teams need to rely on sales groups to influence future material to help their efforts leading to better conversion on leads.  Poor communication leads to a culture of little change, hard feeling and stunted growth trajectories.  A company that has marketing and sales team in sync leads to new revenue faster, new customers and lower cost of total sale.

“You have to perform at a consistently higher level than others. That’s the mark of a true professional.”

Having worked and attended hundreds of trade shows, these events are akin to herding cats.  It is hard to keep exhibitors excited to talk to the next customer.  Attendees are looking for free knick knacks or tickets to the night’s event.  Most are likely hung-over, tired and aimlessly walking the aisles.

Unfortunately, for most exhibiting companies, these shows represent the bulk of their yearly leads.  The sales reps working the booths being the direct beneficiaries of these ‘leads’.   Why then, do I always leave trade shows wondering why the bulk of companies invested tens of thousands of dollars and man-hours for little or no return?

• Does a simple scan of my badge give you all the information about our conversation?
• How come nobody surveys me for information?
• Are all customers the same?
• Do we all have the same needs?
• Are we all the same size?
• Do we all have the same problems?
• Why do I constantly get pitched?  Sales 101 would dictate a few key questions could identify my interest in your product.  A quick note next to my information would then lead to a very productive sales call.
• Does my company even fit the profile of your typical customer?

Think about the last trade show you attended.  What stands out?  Can you remember anyone asking you about your company?  Do you remember a standout exhibit?  The answer is No.

Trade shows need to be about creatively capturing customer information and effective use of time.  No more late nights and drinks.  The same emphasis organizations place on internal sales execution and qualification needs to translate to the trade show floor.

Did your solution build itself?  Without building market awareness, do you have a pipeline of opportunities to sell your tool to?  Who is closing the deals?

Buyers have a finite budget to address a need or to solve a problem.  Sales/Marketing needs to exist to help (a) create awareness, (b) educate, (c) create preference (d) maintain loyalty and (e) make money.

Even if someone locates a company’s product with a Google search, downloads a trial and buys it – Marketing resources was necessary to have the appropriate results following an internet search.

What would the iPhone’s market share be without good marketing and an extensive sales channel?

It is not the best products that win the most business, it is the best marketed and sold products that generate the profits.

Buyers make emotional decisions to buy, then use logic to justify their decisions.  This is why you need a strong sales team.  The buyer knows many products could fill their need.  A good sales team knows how to build trust with the buyer, showing features that benefit the buyer.  Each sale requires this skill.  A win comes when the buyer sees the value to their company (or direct to them).  The sales rep has led the buyer to this conclusion.