Recognition for this title to Seth Godin in his blog last Saturday. A Tufts grad, Seth has a knack for minimalism both in his blog content and in his persona. As I was reading his blog, immediately I thought of how important a statement this was for the sales people at most companies. And the reason for that are these disturbing facts below from a recent study at the Harvard Business School:
Highly capable & experienced salesmen and women consistently underperform related to their quota in the majority of companies, so there's got to be a reason for this.
So, I asked myself...
- Is it because the quotas were set too high?
- Is it because they did not receive enough marketing tools?
- Is it because of the lack of training?
I then answered with a solid "NO!"
- The majority of sales managers work collaboratively with their salespeople in the setting of quotas. There's no upside for either the salesperson or the manager to setting quotas that are consistenly stretched. If that were to occur, everyone loses...all of the time.
- Most Marketing content for Sales is unfortunately worthless. It's not focused on customer value, plus it's not easy to find, organize or use by most salespeople. As a result, most salespeople end up creating their own, which creates an even worse problem in that they waste very valuable and expensive time.
- Although the amount of actual sales (not product) training is a major weak link, it is not the primary reason. It's also an easy problem that you can fix immediately: For 2014, just double the amount of training time that you have planned. It still won't be enough, but it will be much better than what you currently have planned.
The real answer is...
As sales managers, where we fail in our training programs, is in the training of our salespeople to deliver effective Value Propositions.
- We deliver product reasonable well.
- We deliver product specifications even better
- We do a really bad job of getting prospects to understand our value
The #1 reason that B2B salespeople fail in reaching their quota is that they cannot deliver the value of their products or services to their prospects. Having said that, defining an effective Value Proposition that can be effectively delivered by a diverse group of salespeople is one of the most difficult sales and marketing tasks. Once it is done, however, it is also the most powerful tool in any salesperson's toolbox.
No better way to learn about how to create, train and deliver effective Value Propositions while improving your own sales management skills than from speakers such as Greg Flynn, the President of Brainshark , Mike Volpe, the SVP of Marketing from HubSpot and Zorian Rotenberg, VP of Sales & Marketing from Insight Squared who will be part of our upcoming Sales Management Boot Camp. To learn more...
- Click on the icon below for an outline of what takes place.
- You can also click HERE for a more detailed agenda
- Or just email me at jack@derbymanagement.com, for a 10 minute call
