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Sales Leaders – Manage Your 50% Minority4

by Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

In the past I have written about the propensity of sales leaders to accept and live with the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule. For example, 20% of your reps deliver 80% of your revenues, I know one team with 9 reps, where 2 sellers are responsible for 71% of the revenue. At one time, in the Shanto Principle I asked the question what if organizations could move the dial to 70/30, what would the impact be?

Companies continue to struggle with this reality, in many instances the 80/20 looks more like this:

20% – Top of the pack, consistently successful, adaptive and responsive to market movements, often spearheading the change in sales that are required to keep and win more business.
55% – Steady players, not always winning, or delivering 100% of plan, but put in a steady (just enough) effort to be in the 70% – 90% of plan zone. Room to improve, but bad enough to fire (although you have to wonder).
25% – Perennial underachievers. Steadily underperforming, while you don’t invest time in them, they are still part of the team. While you know you should fire them, you give in to the voice that says they are better than nothing, while I look for a replacement.

You may think that the above is a variation on the traditional A, B, and C player model, many do, which is a mistake.

I strongly suggest that you look at it more like:

A Players – The top 20%, Group 1

B Players – The top half of the 55%, Group 2

C Players – The bottom half of the 55%, Group 2 X Players – The bottom 25%, Group 3

I have always argued that leaders should focus their time and attention to the A players, show the most love to those you want to lose least. Show no time or attention to the C Players; the lack of attention clearly communicates that they either need to adopt and contribute, make their way up to B status, in order to get attention, or move on to organizations. The B’s need to be put on a path to achieve A status. NOTE: this is once the sales rep has been on-boarded, trained on your systems, and integrated into the process. This could be as little as three months, or as long as a year, but there does come a point where they need to deliver on their own. I still stand by this, but have ratcheted things up a bit, by encouraging you to not waste time, resources or emotion or keep that bottom 25%, the X Players. Rather than pretending that they are C players, suggesting some hope, when in fact they are a toxic waste in your sales organization, meaning you have to dump them ASAP.

Accepting the Status Quo, (yes, we do it too), is riskier than many sales leaders want to pretend, and here is why. Any way you slice it, the majority of the sales team is missing quota. It is true that more sales teams collectively are making quota, even while most individual contributors are not. What is the take away for those on the team who continuously are missing targets? Sales teams are like any other collective of people, there is a perception of majority rule, and if the majority is not making quota, then that soon becomes the norm. Not something sales leaders should encourage or tolerate, but by not acting quickly and strongly to end that, it soon becomes the norm, and worse.

If more than 50% of the team is not making quota, rationalizing becomes easy; “it’s not me, it’s the product”, “it’s the price”, “it’s the whatever”. “After all, look at all the people who are also in the same boat, it can’t be me”. Those few that are making quota, well they become the anomaly, the pack will stick together to comfort their own, and ostracise the others.

One of the top priorities of a sales leader, and their managers, has to be to ensure that at the minimum, more than half of the team exceeds their quota. This needs to be done across the whole organization, and by each front line manager locally with their teams; having a patch quilt of teams that do and don’t is not acceptable. While ultimately we want everyone to make their goal, this is a start; 50% plus of each team, and 50% plus of the whole organization.

How do you do that, a simple upward rotation is a good start. Not only do you heavily reward success, you simultaneously punish failure. Start with the of 10% rule, every year fire the bottom 10% of each team, not just the entire sales organization, but on each team managed by a front line manager; and if they have two teams, fire the bottom 10% from each team. Many are often reluctant to do this, telling me they can’t afford to have a vacant territory, if you ask me, the opposite is true, you can’t afford having territories run by these X Players. You can’t afford having your clients be attended to by these X Players. By the way, you don’t have to wait for the end of the year. If they are not executing the activities required to win, it will not take a year to realize things. One company I know fires those who are in the bottom 10% three months running. They are transactional, and can tell early, you may need to wait the year, or not. You just need to ensure that the period you choose allows for slumps and temporary factors that you can address and correct.

As this pruning takes place, especially as it becomes the declared policy, you’ll find that those in the middle of the pack begin to self-correct and do things that drive them ahead, realizing that as the bottom is lopped off, they either move higher or face being the next to go. This upward rotation pays dividends across the team, the C’s and B’s begin to move up, and the A’s realize they have company, and their personality trait kicks in, and they improve their game to maintain the gap with the B’s. Lifting your results to higher and higher levels. You may even find after a few years of this approach that you do more with less players; alternatively, expand products and markets with a more qualified and talented team.

Once you get to where more than 50% of the organization is making goal, the dynamic switches. Rather than people rationalizing why they are not making quota, after all those who are not are now in the minority, people look for ways to make and exceed quota, and begin to share their best practices. Majority rule! If you do find yourself in an enviable position where all you reps are making or exceeding goals, may still be a viable way of ensuring continuous improvement and growth.

This may seem a harsh route, but as leaders, that’s why we get the big bucks, for big decisions and big differences. Any way you look at it, it will never be as harsh as having to explain the alternative to the executive committee.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Stop making sales predictions and start executing0

by Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

As some of you may be aware, I have a monthly column on the Globe and Mail’s, usually the third Tuesday of each month. These pieces are unique from what I usually post here on The Pipeline. I will post links to these posts as I think they will be of interest to regular readers of this blog. As always, I invite you to share and comment on the articles on the Globe and Mail site, here, or both.

Enjoy: Stop making sales predictions and start executing

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Why Are You In Sales? – Sales eXchange 20020

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

At the end of this post I will ask you a specific question that I would love you to answer, and I thank you here in advance.

Two things happened this past week or 10 days that led to this week’s Sales eXchange being a bit different than the usual, and isn’t that what we always strive to be in sales. First is the fact that this is the 200th Sales eXchange post, and while I had given it much thought, someone asked if I will be marking the fact in any way. The person that asked me was a young person at an event I participated in recently. The event was organized to present young people with different options for their life after school.

One of the questions going into the event was “What do you want to be?” Some had very clear ideas, knowing exactly where they want to go. One young lady was determined to become a speech pathologist due to a friend she had in grade school. She structured her high school curriculum to set her up for a path of success in post-secondary school, and to her dream career. Others stated a number of different career plans, some very specific, marketing, finance, construction, software design, and more. Others were a bit more general, the young man who asked about the 200th post simply stated business. As an aside, it seems he had been spying my blog (and others) to glean ideas for his high school business class, at least someone is getting value at an early age. But in the end no one said they wanted to go into sales, not one.

Consider that according to the United States Department of Labor, there just under 14 million people employed in sales as of May 2012 in the USA. The same department pegs the number of lawyers at under 1 million, and software developers (systems and applications) also under 1 million. Yet fewer than a handful of institutions offer a degree in selling or sales.

There were a number of kids who talked about becoming lawyers, software developers, doctors, even golf pros, but not one said sales. Which begs the question that if no one sets out to become a sales professional, where the hell did we all come from? Are we progressing as a profession, or just a modern day version of post war refugee camps full of people making due while they find their next destination? Are we a repository of other professions outcasts, with the occasional diamond in the rough? After all, almost 50% of sellers do not make quota, this would not be tolerated in any other department.

So here is my ask – take a minute and think about where you are in sales as a career, how you got here, how you’re doing. Then take a minute and in the comment box below, tell me:

Why Are You In Sales?

Tibor Shanto

It Is Personal0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

One questionable piece of advice sellers are given is not to take “things personally”. While I understand the sentiment behind it, encouraging sellers to not go down a dark hole, there is something wrong with telling professional sales people, in fact professionals of any type, not to take it personally. The reality is that part of successful selling is conviction, not just in your ability to add value to the buyer, but and in how you sell. It is hard to have that and not be passionate about selling, and as soon as passion is involved, it also becomes personal.

Certainly there are parts of the sales cycle that you can remove yourself somewhat from the emotions of the sale, usually during the prospecting stage, especially if you are a proactive rather than a passive prospector. When you first reach out to a potential buyer they don’t know you from Adam, and the goal is to get them engaged. Initial rejections are more situational than directed; meaning that they are not rejecting you as an individual, but what you represent, an interruption. But as you get engaged and are working through the sale, you get more emotionally involved, things do become a lot more personal.

It is that emotional involvement that often allows you to go deep with a buyer. Passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and it’s something you want your buyers to catch. After all, we are constantly reminded that people buy on emotion, then rationalize their decision, so it only helps if you are going to connect with the buyer on that level as well.

A more workable and realistic goal is to understand that you do need to get involved on a number of levels, that it does get personal, and that you need to be able to deal with and manage the outcomes whether they go your way or not. The ability to step back, assess the circumstance, and move on to the next sale. No different than the expectation and practice in professional sport.

By assessing the outcome you achieve a number of positives that help with the personal aspect. First you can evaluate how well you did execute you plan and process and understand why perhaps you lost the deal. I say perhaps, because there isn’t always a clear answer all nicely wrapped, if the result of the assessment is ambiguous, you will still have to deal with the outcome and move on.

But if the analysis of the deal and outcome are not ambiguous, then you are in a great position to learn, both what you want to repeat and to accentuate moving forward, and what to avoid and improve. While this may not take away the sting of a lost deal, it does help you benefit in some way, cope, and have a reason to give it another go with your new insight.

It is very much the emotion we bring at sellers that helps us win deals where most all other things are equal. It is precisely then that you need to go deep, and leave yourself open to disappointment, and yes it does become personal precisely because of that; and given the opportunity I would advise you to get emotionally involved and deal with the outcome win or lose. After all, they only give you the advice about it not being personal when you lose, it seems they are OK with it being personal when you win.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

What if you could defeat the Status Quo0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

All this week I have posted clips from a recent interview with Ago Cluytens, for his Coaching Masters Series. We dealt with a number of issues around selling to buyers who are traditionally referred to as being Status Quo. Being the weekend, I thought it a good time to post the whole interview for your weekend lounging pleasure.

Always interested in what you think, and whether you are more prepared to go forth and sell where many sellers and pundits fear to go. Take a look, and let me know.

If you enjoy this there are more on Ago’s site.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Apr 27th, 2013 Ability, Accountability, Action, Attitude, Business Acumen, Buying Process, Change Management, Client Life Cycle, Communication Strategy, Don't Wait, EDGE Sales Process, Emotion, Emotional Intelligence(EQ), Events, execution, Gap Selling, Interactive Selling, Interview, Leadership, Listening, Next Steps, Planning, Play to Win, Proactive Triggers, Sales Interview, Sales Leadership, Sales Process, Sell Better, Selling to Executives, Status Quo, Trigger Events, Triggers, Video

Accountability, Attitude, Change Management, Client Life Cycle, Commitment, Communication, Don't Wait, EDGE Sales Process, execution, how to sell better, Interview, Listening, Planning, Play to Win, Proactivity, Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., Sales Process, Sales Success, sell better, Selling to Executives, Trigger Event Selling, Trigger Events, Triggers, Video

3 A’s of Sales Success0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

People are always looking for the formula to sales success, so here’s the deal: there ain’t one! There are a number of things that when executed consistently will lead to more continuous and predictable success; those that tell you a otherwise are selling their book – there are no silver bullets – just work.

Having said that, there are some specific things that are consistently present in successful sales and successful sales people, let’s look at three that when combined can give you a powerful advantage:

Ability
Action
Accountability

Ability – While most sales professionals have ability, especially at the start of their initial success phase, it is often a filleting thing. As markets and clients change and evolve, so must your ability; at the same time as you have some success, you get drawn away from practicing those abilities that made you a success to begin with, strengthening your abilities in one part of the sale, while weakening them in others. This imbalance can come back to haunt us unless we proactively focus on always improving our abilities. I wish I had $100 for every time a sales person has told me that they know what they are doing, they have 15 or more years of experience. The fact is that if they have not delivered consistently better results, then it is likely that they have had the same year 15 times over, and it is time to focus on their ability. Probably the easiest of the three elements in this piece to address.

Action – There is a lot of talk in sales, all kinds of theory, but as I have said in the past, sales is all about Execution – everything else is just talk. The challenge is often not just the complete lack of action, but more of selective action. Many sales people do what they like and avoid those things they don’t, but to be a complete sales person, you need to take action right across the cycle. There is a lot of people who are good at planning, but then fail to act on it; as in other areas in life an OK plan one acts on leads to greater results than a perfect plan that is never executed. How many sales strategies, account and territory plans sit gathering dust on a shelf, right next to the last sales training manual, the one that focuses on execution. I know at times things can get daunting, I know at times we are prone to over analyse; but it is amazing how when you take action, steps to change the course of events, and put things into motion, the enormity of the challenge shrinks. I recently read about a marathoner who when asked what was the hardest part of daily training, replied “getting out the door”.

Accountability – If sales people had to buy excuses or rationalizations by the pound, many would either go broke – or better yet quit relying on them. Yes the product sucks, the market is down, buyers are hiding, Jupiter just doesn’t want to align with Mars, but none of that changes the fact that we alone are responsible for our own success. It is up to me to be resourceful and figure out how I can sell what I am paid to sell (legally and ethically) no matter what. While at times one can positively show that it is not their fault, that is not the issues, it is up to us to be accountable and figure how to overcome the hurdles and make the sale. If someone is not a buyer, either figure out what you can do to change that, or find someone who is – everything else is an excuse and avoiding the accountability that professional sales requires. As a friend once said “isn’t sales great, and if it was easy they wouldn’t need us!” Embrace accountability – realize sales success.

One last thing to keep in mind, each of these is in you power to impact, change or ignore.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

The Pipeline Guest Post – Zoe Maldonado

Cutting overhead costs is one of the best ways to help your business succeed. With many businesses, the expenses are far easier to control than the profits. Cutting overhead doesn’t only help you on a financial level, but it also simplifies the management of your business. Cutting overhead costs is extremely complex and depends on the industry that you’re in, but here are some good ways to get started.

Move key resources to the cloud

Cloud computing is a relatively recent development and has been adopted by many companies as an excellent way to save money and operate at peak efficiency. With cloud computing, you take advantage of an array of computers over a private or local network like the internet. You can use these computers just for data storage or to host and run your business software.

Cloud computing is inexpensive, secure and Eco-friendly. Taking advantage of cloud technology means that you won’t have to spend any money on your own network or multiple software licenses; and you don’t need to have space for your own data servers. This saves you on both your technology budget and your rent and storage. Cloud computing also enhances the efficiency of your business because it allows your sales staff to access files and data from anywhere in the world. This efficiency can easily translate directly into increased sales. In addition, new studies are showing that businesses using multi-tenant cloud data centers produce less carbon than businesses utilizing the same types of services in-house.

Process sales on the go

Mobile credit card processing is the wave of the future. Even the big box stores have started taking advantage of this technology, and for small business use it has many clear advantages. With mobile credit card processing technology you can take a payment from a credit or debit card anywhere you go. These types of services often have a small credit card reader you can attach to a tablet or smart phone in order to swipe customer’s cards and close the sale right away.

Ditch the office space

With all the mobile apps for businesses available today, a physical location isn’t even necessary for many business owners. If you find that your staff is mostly on the road, and that you can do your work from home, ditching the office space can be one of the most cost saving decisions you make. If you need a storefront office, you can always down-size and allow some of your employees to “work from anywhere”.

Hire independent contractors

Independent contractors are on an hourly basis and can’t claim the benefits most employees do. Of course, you need to follow the government’s guidelines on whether your staff qualifies as independent contractors, but many do. You may not be able to get them for as many hours, but the savings will pay off.

Ditch the land-lines

Phone systems are often one of the most expensive initial costs for a company, but this goes back to the olden days when phone systems were the core of a business. Consider switching to mobile phones if it’s at all possible, because this will not only save you a lot of money, but it will also enable your staff to be more accessible to clients. Land-line phone systems have expensive monthly costs and are chained to a desk, so if your sales staff moves around a lot, land-lines are virtually useless.

About the author

Zoe Maldonado is a freelance writer and blogger for TechBreach who enjoys writing about all things mobile and electronic and spending time with her very active twin boys.

Mar 15th, 2013 Attitude, Change, execution, Guest Post, Leadership, Sales Leadership, Sales Strategy, Sales Tip

Attitude, Change, execution, Guest Post, how to sell better, Planning, Sales Success, sell better

Are You An Enabling Manager? – Sales eXchange 1900

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Probably the most important role in a sales organizations ability to ensure successful and consistent execution of their sales process is the front line sales manager. They are the ones that distill the central message down to the local team. They are the ones who ensure that the discipline and the measures that are required to succeed are implemented, adhered to and improved, both in day to day interactions with their team members, and in their design and delivery of the individual sales reps’ annual coaching plan. They are the ones who hold the individuals on their teams accountable for their activities, SOP’s, and the delivery of revenues/clients. No one in the organization is in a greater position to enable their team members to succeed.

The question then becomes, what are they enabling. As with parenting, enabling involves more than just providing, you need to be actively involved, you need to be actively setting the example. By this I don’t mean showing your people how to sell, but setting the example by adhering to the process yourself. How do we expect sales people to do all the things they need to do to succeed, including the mundane and trivial activities, if we don’t do ours as managers, if the manager can take shortcuts or deviate from the process, well why not the rep.

Many parents enable their kids by looking the other way when they find them doing things that could be negative or harmful, as o many sales managers. Some rationalize things by pointing to the fact that the rep is good, delivers the numbers, they don’t want to interfere. Unless you feel that your company’s processes are bogus, you could be missing a great opportunity for that same rep to improve, deliver more, or deliver their current success with less effort or time. By looking the other way you are letting the rep down and your team.

If you have reps who are not always delivering, the 80%-90% of goal reps, and they see that you are letting some people pick and choose, you are asking for more issues. One is that you don’t really care what they do or how they do, basically they are on their own till the end of month/quarter tally. In this vacuum of leadership and lack of support, two things happen; first, absent the manager’s involvement, they look around to see who is succeeding, and do what those successful sellers do; and as discussed above, they are not following the proven process, so they conclude that they don’t need to either, but since they lack the god given skill, they are doomed to stay where they are or even regress after a time. Second, these 80%-90% players looking to improve become great recruiting targets, often for no other reason than the opportunity to be coached, supported and enabled to be 100%+ players, something you can enable them to do here and now, just by getting active and involved.

Enabling takes planning, action, work, and accountability. Like many parents you can say that you enable your kids by letting them make their own choices, and deal with the outcome. Or you can actively engage, set parameters, expectations and an example, and in the process enable them to succeed, rather than enabling them to no succeed; both are enabled.

What’s in Your Pipeline
Tibor Shanto

Why Settle For Just One Thing?1

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Infographics are the rage these days, they leverage two powerful elements of communication; important “must know” and compelling information delivered via power of the pictures, where every picture is worth a 1,000 words. Sales people and organizations love to use these as a means of communicating big picture changes, where if buyers want to benefit or get ahead of the facts and trends represented, the choice is clear, “our product is designed to help you…..”

But here is a real challenge, while the marketing people who produced the infographic may have an appreciation for change, the sales people in those same organizations often resist change, especially in the way they sell, leaving the buyer with a mixed message. Mixed messages create doubt; doubt is a kissing cousin of risk, and no one likes risk (well at least 70% of the population don’t), especially buyers.

A big challenge for VP of Sales, and to a lesser degree the front line sales managers, is not so much convincing the market or buyers to commit to change, but to get their own sales teams to buy in. As for front line managers, many were promoted to the role due to their success in the field rather than their ability to manage; they then take this recognition as a cue to get their teams to do what they did; and they do, leading to little change in the way things are sold. This is why more than ever, the job of sales leaders is to lead change by “selling” their teams on the need to evolve their selling approach as fast as the market is changing, and certainly as fast as in the infographics they rely on.

We are all resistant to change, but sales people as a group of professional seem more reluctant than most. I get a front line view of this when working with our clients. During the pre-program interviews Renbor conducts with participants in the program, most sales people, veterans and newbies, inevitably say something that sounds like:

“The way I look at it, if I can take away even one thing, it will be worthwhile.”

One thing? Are you kidding me, one thing? That’s all you aspire to, to learn one thing? Why, any more than would shatter your universe, require an upgrade in memory, or is it that just may require some real effort?

Even the weakest, most middle of the road, vanilla flavoured, beige program, has more than one thing the average sales person faced with a market of change resistant buyers could make use of, so why go into it with such diminished expectations? Is that the level of expectation and aspiration sellers bring to their sales as a whole? How will that effort hold up vs. the few sellers willing to go the distance?

What I hear is the person saying that they don’t want to make the effort involved in, if not improving to the way they sell, at least adding to their repertoire or enhancing things they are already doing. This is sad not just because it says something about the profession, but it falls short of buyers’ expectations. After all you are asking them to change, abandon a way of doing something they are already doing and commit to your product and your way of doing things. Buyers react to many things, one is the way they are being sold, and if the way you execute your sales contradicts the message you are selling, buyers will respond. Generally the response is in the form of an unspoken reduction in trust, a reaction to “do as I say, not as I do” sales approach. Being incongruent is not a good thing for sales people to be; preaching is ineffective enough to begin with, your behaviour and approach to selling contradicting the stuff you preach is just asking the buyer not to act.

For many, the line that even if they learn one thing it will have been worthwhile is a way of pretending they are open to learning something new, and willing to support the cause. But in reality what it communicates is their means of avoiding the effort involved in upgrading their skills and results.

Trying one thing is easy, pick the least offensive to your current sales compass, and its done, with little or no impact on you or the buyer. But even when stretching, the pattern is familiar, they try the one thing, it does not produce textbook results the first time, and now they have a means of, an excuse, for avoiding everything in the program. By being able to point to one thing that did not work, they conclude and rationalize that use that by extension nothing in the program works, which is why they don’t want to risk it on their buyers, so it’s back to same old.

Imagine if a pilot on your next flight, who has been flying for ten years took the same attitude when they first fly a new plane; or if a doctor you have been seeing took the same outlook and practice to new diagnosis, instruments and drugs. How long would you stay on the plane or go to the doctor? How long should a buyer stay with a seller who is not up-to-date in their thinking, and is asking you to take steps they themselves are reluctant to?

This is why follow-through is key to not just sales training success, but more importantly sustained behavioural change that allows your sales team to evolve and grow their skills. Follow-through is important for both the individual sales people and their front line managers; while many can sell, many are not comfortable with being agents of change. They need to understand that their role is not only to help their people sell better, but to lead change. This is why often the best ball players do not make the best coaches, but the reverse is often true. These coaches understand that their role is to challenge the norm, not drive conformity. This is why often the coaches who we felt were in our face about the wrong thing, in hindsight have the greatest positive impact on our selling approach. Most new military recruits hate their first drill sergeant, but always remember the impact that first one had on their success; specifically breaking old habits and instilling new ones, including the habit of change and adoption.

This is also why we get program participants to commit to three things they will put into practice the next morning after the program is delivered. No chance to waffle, pick and choose, make your selection, and then the manager and us can help make them make it happen daily and in the follow-through, using metrics and standards to drive action.

Change is hard work, it requires time, effort, commitment, and often resources, and in the case of your buyer, it involves spending money. I don’t like to work hard either, but I like the rewards it brings. Without the extra work we are left to enjoy what we know. In light of the fact that numerous sources point to the fact that only about 50% B2B sales people made quota over the last few years, how inviting is what we know versus the possibilities something new brings? Its just a question of will and effort.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Sales Tools Don’t Fail – Sales eXchange 1863

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Advancements in technology, and the access to information have come at a staggering rate over the last 25 years. In some cases the resulting gains in productivity and efficiency have been as great or greater; access to data and analysis, manufacturing and supply chain are a couple of examples. But some areas like sales, have lagged. Considering the upside presented by sales tools, and lately web 2.0 based apps, sales people should in theory be much more productive and efficient in executing their craft and improving their output, but they are not; the question is why.

There are a number of contributing factors, and all are in some way are connected to probably the most prominent factor, the inability of the purveyors of said technology, to effectively communicate to the users, the sales people, a compelling reason to adopt. While both vendors and the executives of sales organizations can be blamed, I would focus on the executive/leadership.

I hold the executives responsible, for one simple reason: they fail to do the very thing they demand from their teams daily – putting the clients’ interest first, show the client the upside and they’ll deal with you, put yourself first and you lose. The vendors fail because they only focus on part of the buying group, not the whole. Since the final decision and funding is with the executives, vendors spend a lot of time selling the executive, the visibility they will get, the great data collected, leading to valuable and actionable data, while ignoring the front line rep. But if the front line rep does not adopt, there is little visibility, insufficient or questionable input, leading to questionable output, analysis, action or the desired change; all leading to failed implementations.

Both vendors and the executive need to sell the front line reps on “what is in it for them”, the oldest rule in sales. Instead reps are told about all the ways these tools are going to make it easier to adhere to the process, give management a better inside view, provide data to other departments, make it easier for marketing to support the sales effort and customers, give CSR’s a complete view of the customer, and more. All good things, but none speak to how the tool’s will make it easier for the sales person to close deals, make quota, and make more money; which is “what’s in it for the rep”.

What’s ironic is that sales people have traditionally been early adopters of technology and tools that help them with any or all three of the things above; they were early users of the web, e-mail, and mobile phones. They will often take time to learn or relearn things when they believe it will make it easier for them to close more deals, make quota and money. Remember the effort many of us put in to learning how to write again when we bought our Palm Pilot in the 1990’s because it made selling easier, freed up time and resources used to sell more.

That has not changed, today you can see hundreds of tools and apps sales people seek out and adopt on their own in order to make sales gains. Just look at the growth in the BYOD movement, sales people willing to spend time and money on those things that help them make sales, quota and money.

Leaders need to practice what they preach and provide tools that first help sellers succeed, and in the process spin-off all the benefits they need. Providing tools that integrate into the sellers daily efforts, rather than distracting them. When a tool does require time and effort to learn, show the front line rep how it will help them succeed. Show them how the tool, app or whole new system will help them be more strategic, save them time and effort while enhancing their tactical execution; do that, and they will clamor for the tool. Tell them how it helps YOU with YOUR forecasts, job or help YOU cover your ass instead of theirs, and you can bet that same ass that you’ll have assure minimal use, mandated or not.

Another mistake some leaders make is going BIG right out of the gate, and assuming the gains before they happen. Rolling out a new SFA tool, with a steep learning curve, and using the new tool as a reason why reps should be able to sell more is not only counterproductive, but unnecessary. You can either introduce a tool in stages, aligning it with the team’s execution of the sale, allowing them to integrate as they benefit, then introduce the next phase, and so on, leading to a smooth and productive adoption.

The alternative is to introduce tools that make it easy to deliver value to the user, the executive, the organization as a whole, by helping reps do something they already do in a more productive way. An example would be Front Row Solutions. This app, which sees a 95% adoption rate, helps reps capture the outcome of a sales call (live or phone), in a few taps on their wireless phones. This helps them stay focused on their best opportunities, plan next steps, drive deals, evolve their execution and best practices, and more, all in a few easy seconds. In the process it produces some of the most actionable data for management and the rest of the organization.

In the end you can blame lack of adoption on failed roll-outs, the tools themselves, on reps reluctance, and more. But for me it comes down to bad selling; bad selling on the part of leadership. Failing to sell their customer, the front line rep on “what’s in it for them”, instead making it all about the leaders. What makes things worse is that same sloppy selling manifests itself right through the sales organization they lead, putting them at an even further disadvantage.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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