The good news is that, as a firm, we’ve had a very busy Q1. With budgets in place, almost every customer we’ve worked with in the first quarter held either business or sales planning sessions to think through and create detailed tactical plans. In some cases, these plans focused on Q1, while the majority of them typically detailed just the first half of the year. Only in a few companies, did we bother to define the second half of the year except to note the general financial plan assumptions that led up to the 2010 budget.

All of this activity tells us that no one is sticking their neck out yet in the first couple of quarters of this year. The order booking environment continues to be cautionary, hiring is at a minimum and whatever hiring is in the works seems to be focused to bringing on a few experienced salespeople and one or two lead gen experts with heavy experience in online tactics. A couple of takeaways from these fifteen or so meetings we’ve had over the past ten weeks.

1. It’s Time to Update your Value Proposition
This is not a time to simply talk about the features and benefits of your products. It’s not that features and benefits are unimportant; it’s just that they’re a given, a baseline, a simple foundation of facts. The real sales and marketing discussion in 2010 needs to be consistent messaging as to your value proposition, and it needs to be detailed, robust and focused on metrics that relate directly to the business of your customers.

Features and benefits, are merely an “of course”. The real messaging that needs to be explored, detailed, rehearsed and driven into the vocabulary of every one of your salespeople must answer the question of “What’s the value that you bring me, the customer?”. Perhaps it’s time efficiency, maybe it’s direct cost savings, maybe there’s a defined balance sheet return, but one thing that we know from both from last year and now from this quarter is that the Value Prop needs to be clearly stated and become an integral part of your marketing pitch and sales vocabulary.

Try this at your next sales meeting. Once the meeting begins, have each of the sales reps simply write down their definition of your product’s value proposition and pass them in. It would be helpful to have the marketing people there also and go through the same exercise. Read them out loud and decide right then if (1) there’s consistency in the message and in the delivery, and (2) does the value proposition define true business impact for your customers? If it does not, you need to put an immediate correction plan together.

2. Firm Up Your 30-60-90’s
I know that we’ve said this before, but I’m going to emphasize it one more time. The tactics created and the results of Q2 typically define the entire year which often means that Q3 activities cannot make up for any tactical mistakes made during the first half of the year. More importantly, exiting a robust Q2 with strategies and tactics locked down provides a carefully organized flight plan that should take you through the dreaded valley of despair in August positioning you perfectly for the acceleration of Q4.

As a result, we strongly recommend bringing your entire sales team together during the first week of April to review their results for Q1, but, more importantly, to have each member of the sales team present their 30-60-90 day Key Account Plans to you and their peers. This is the reason that we hold our sales management boot camps during the last few days of Q1 and Q3 so that the managers can leave these intensive, firehose programs, return to their businesses and drill down with their troops the following week.

3. Figure Out Your 2010 Social Media Impact
Take a look at the following, and then answer these questions:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Do you still feel that social media for business applications is a fad?
How do you plan to use Facebook in your business?
How can you use YouTube as a core strategy in your sales training?
What are your plans to create your own customer community end?
And so on—
We have customers as diverse as Brainshark, Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and the Boston Police Department, who not only get social media, they’re out on the edge practicing it and innovating new applications frequently, while the majority of the companies that we come across only have an awareness, but not yet an incorporated plan. It’s time to jump on board and make sure that you’re not left at the station, and there are excellent guides that will cost effectively show you the way. Give us a call, and we’ll be happy to connect you.

Just a few ideas to assist you in driving results and exceeding your Q2 Plan

Have a successful close to the quarter, and please let me know when you find the lamb of March.

Good Selling

Jack