Friday, September 20, 2013
Monday, September 16, 2013
Challenging the Organisation's Role in Sales
The Challenger Sale is not a “read once and succeed tomorrow” model. The deeper, organisational level stuff is really where The Challenger Sale can add value. Without going into detail about what the model is and what it means to be a Challenger Rep, I thought I’d outline a few of my favourite high level concepts from the book.
I have just finished reading “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. There is a fair amount of hype around this book and while there is a heap of excellent content and food for thought within, the cynical part of me surmises that it’s possibly primarily designed to sell CEB's Sales & Service consultative offerings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; that’s clever marketing!
I’m not a huge fan of prescriptive sales methodology. “Open up with this statement; lead the client to the punch line; show this slide now and that slide then and hey-presto, you’ll double your closure rate, guaranteed!” For me, sales should be more intuitive than that, customers just aren’t that easily manipulated. For this reason I approach most sales teachings with a healthy scepticism.
While there was a little of that in the book, it didn’t prescribe to the notion that simply improving a sales rep’s script and sending them out with a new set of presentation slides would somehow turn them into a selling superstar. If you’re hoping for that sort of a quick fix, this book isn’t for you.
I won’t go into what “The Challenger Model” is as far as trying to describe the nature of the model and the stats behind the research. The book does a pretty good job of outlining that in detail, including case studies demonstrating how companies have introduced the model and are making it work for them.
Instead I’ll try and frame some of the messages in the book, because the real gold nuggets for me were not so much about “The Model” itself, but in some of the more high level concepts that the book contained.
The Challenger Sale advocates examining the sales process through a company-wide angle lens. It encourages companies to dig into their collective knowledge and collate insights that can add value to their customers, over and above the price tag and a feature/benefit analysis of their product.
It stresses the need for sales and marketing teams to work together. Rather than seeing their roles as disparate, sales and marketing should be intertwined and focused on the mining and delivery of insight to their customer base.
During those meetings that are aimed at closing a deal, there is immense power in a sales rep’s ability to deliver information – something that challenges a customer’s pre-conceived ideas about their business or their industry – but the weight of the insight should be driven at an organisational level, not simply left up to the rep to discover and disseminate.
The book outlines a set of behaviours that CEB’s research shows to be necessary for effective sales. It highlights the fact that without constructive, ongoing and personalised coaching, sales reps are often left to their own devices and results can be unpredictable, or worse, completely predictable.
Over and above training for skills and knowledge, coaching for the right behaviours is an essential ingredient. (It could be said that coaching for the right behaviours should extend far deeper into a company than simply at the sales-training level).
The other essential ingredient is innovation; looking at a sale with a view to doing things in new ways and taking the time to really prepare, research and understand the sale and the prospect, so that empirical innovation can occur.
The authors challenge companies to have a close look at their messaging. Is their marketing material full of buzzwords that focus on their company, their history, their solution, how unique they are? Does it talk about how customer focused they are, how innovative they are?
This book invites all marketing executives to revisit the material they are producing and ask two questions.
“Ironically, the more we try to play up our differences, the more things sound the same. The utter sameness of language…we simply end up sounding like everyone else.”
I don’t agree with a one size fits all, prescriptive model for sales success, nor do I think this book is advocating it, although the hype around the book in some ways makes out that's what this is.
To me, it's moreover promoting the concept of an organisational push to better understand core competencies and competitive advantage and then arming everyone with the tools necessary to deliver that message to the customer.
I have just finished reading “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. There is a fair amount of hype around this book and while there is a heap of excellent content and food for thought within, the cynical part of me surmises that it’s possibly primarily designed to sell CEB's Sales & Service consultative offerings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that; that’s clever marketing!
I’m not a huge fan of prescriptive sales methodology. “Open up with this statement; lead the client to the punch line; show this slide now and that slide then and hey-presto, you’ll double your closure rate, guaranteed!” For me, sales should be more intuitive than that, customers just aren’t that easily manipulated. For this reason I approach most sales teachings with a healthy scepticism.
While there was a little of that in the book, it didn’t prescribe to the notion that simply improving a sales rep’s script and sending them out with a new set of presentation slides would somehow turn them into a selling superstar. If you’re hoping for that sort of a quick fix, this book isn’t for you.
I won’t go into what “The Challenger Model” is as far as trying to describe the nature of the model and the stats behind the research. The book does a pretty good job of outlining that in detail, including case studies demonstrating how companies have introduced the model and are making it work for them.
Instead I’ll try and frame some of the messages in the book, because the real gold nuggets for me were not so much about “The Model” itself, but in some of the more high level concepts that the book contained.
The Challenger Sale advocates examining the sales process through a company-wide angle lens. It encourages companies to dig into their collective knowledge and collate insights that can add value to their customers, over and above the price tag and a feature/benefit analysis of their product.
It stresses the need for sales and marketing teams to work together. Rather than seeing their roles as disparate, sales and marketing should be intertwined and focused on the mining and delivery of insight to their customer base.
During those meetings that are aimed at closing a deal, there is immense power in a sales rep’s ability to deliver information – something that challenges a customer’s pre-conceived ideas about their business or their industry – but the weight of the insight should be driven at an organisational level, not simply left up to the rep to discover and disseminate.
The book outlines a set of behaviours that CEB’s research shows to be necessary for effective sales. It highlights the fact that without constructive, ongoing and personalised coaching, sales reps are often left to their own devices and results can be unpredictable, or worse, completely predictable.
Over and above training for skills and knowledge, coaching for the right behaviours is an essential ingredient. (It could be said that coaching for the right behaviours should extend far deeper into a company than simply at the sales-training level).
The other essential ingredient is innovation; looking at a sale with a view to doing things in new ways and taking the time to really prepare, research and understand the sale and the prospect, so that empirical innovation can occur.
The authors challenge companies to have a close look at their messaging. Is their marketing material full of buzzwords that focus on their company, their history, their solution, how unique they are? Does it talk about how customer focused they are, how innovative they are?
This book invites all marketing executives to revisit the material they are producing and ask two questions.
- Why should customers buy from us over our competition?
- What truly makes us different from everyone else?
“Ironically, the more we try to play up our differences, the more things sound the same. The utter sameness of language…we simply end up sounding like everyone else.”
I don’t agree with a one size fits all, prescriptive model for sales success, nor do I think this book is advocating it, although the hype around the book in some ways makes out that's what this is.
To me, it's moreover promoting the concept of an organisational push to better understand core competencies and competitive advantage and then arming everyone with the tools necessary to deliver that message to the customer.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Monday, September 9, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
Twitter; my personal account of “then vs now”
Firstly, let me frame this with a disclaimer; I’m aware that I’m not uncovering anything earth shattering or new here. Seasoned Tweeters will yawn and scoff at my naivety. “You’re only just working this out now? And you say you’re in marketing?? Huh!”
Despite the danger of appearing ignorant, I’ll press on…
This little feathered beast called Twitter is quite compelling when you have a handle on getting the most out of it. Twitter’s charm revolves around being able to follow – and un-follow – whomever you like. You have the power to heavily tailor the type of information you see.
“Way to go Sherlock!” I hear you say.
I first tried Twitter back in 2008. The experience left me less than enthused; I could not see what the fuss was about. It felt predominately filled with 140 character batches of crud. Obviously I wasn’t following the right people. Perhaps I’d inadvertently wandered into the Twitter crèche. I understand the folly was probably mine; whatever the case, I dismissed it as more of a children’s toy than a valid social media platform.
My second attempt, having just set up a new account recently, has me far more committed to the experience.
I think the difference is due largely to the explosion of “content marketing” – there is now just so much information available online. People are putting enormous time and financial energy into generating “good content”.
Everyone is clamouring to make their voices heard and to be seen as a useful fountain of insightful information. Twitter first time around for me was uninspiring. Now it’s a go-to source of collated knowledge and viewpoint.
The other major difference is of course the devices available to interact with Twitter. 2008 for me was pre-Smartphone and pre-Tablet. Twitter lacks the all-important instant gratification component when you have to log onto a PC to get to your news feed.
Fast forward to 2013 and hello Flipboard! The moment I integrated my Twitter feed into Flipboard I “got it”. It turns a feed of 140 character posts garbled with #hashtags and TinyURLs into a glossy, pictorial adventure.
The caveat in all of this is the need to follow sources of material that matter most to you. Twitter is noisy. If you follow people who post a hundred retweets a day of information you find pointless the novelty of the experience will quickly wear thin. When you’re feeding on the good stuff though – following sources of relevant content – it can be very entertaining.
For anyone like me, who wrote Twitter off the first time they tried the platform, it’s perhaps worth giving it another go. Just be mindful to stay right out of the Twitter crèche…
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Strategic Themes
Strategic themes are building blocks that provide structure, boundaries, context, objectives and metrics to leaders and team members. They take direction from and rise to challenges sparked by mission goals, while feeding results and value through differentiation and enablement.
They span across all aspects of the business – financial, customer, internal process and organisational capacity. They are the elements that if excelled in, drive the success of the company.
Common strategic themes include concepts such as Growth, Excellence, Innovation, Sustainability; these high level concepts are most effective if they are further defined and distinguished to best serve the vision of the individual organisation.
They span across all aspects of the business – financial, customer, internal process and organisational capacity. They are the elements that if excelled in, drive the success of the company.
Common strategic themes include concepts such as Growth, Excellence, Innovation, Sustainability; these high level concepts are most effective if they are further defined and distinguished to best serve the vision of the individual organisation.
Monday, September 2, 2013
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