Exec's Program #14: Sales Mastery

THE EXECUTIVE’S PROGRAM SESSION 14 MASTERING SALES

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PURPOSE AND LEARNING OBJECTIVES Purpose:To learn how top executives build and manage an effective “sales machine.”

Learning Objectives: To learn…

• Why a high performing sales team and sales department must be in place to drive growth • What a good sales team and sales department function look like

• How to build and manage an effective sales machine

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AGENDA 1. Orienteering and Recap 2. Why: Grow or Die 3. What: Bad Sales. Good Sales.

4. How: Steps to Build a Sales Machine 5. Summary 6. Reflection and assignment

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REMINDERS 1. Three classes after today.

2. Test prep: Review the slides, your notes, etc. Focus on the Step-by-Step slide.

3. Most important: Understand and get ready to implement!

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ASSIGNMENT 1. Use your calendar (I Musts, map all your time, set aside 3 hours for ON the business work) 2. Schedule 3 hours: –

Define your company’s core benefit (think about this) based on your target markets’ wants.

–

Decide who leads - sales or marketing?

–

Write a 3-month marketing plan to hit a measurable marketing KPI target. The activities you do to hit that target should align with your “X”.

Proprietary and Confidential to Renew LLC

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PART 1: ORIENTEERING AND RECAP

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ORIENTEERING: STEP-BY-STEP Session Topics

If you did just one thing…

The Habits

Have a morning routine! Use your calendar.

Strategic Planning

Write down your 5-year plan.

The AMP

Write down you AMP. Look to the Left!

Governance

Have a diverse group with authority (ideally a board) to give you feedback and holds you accountable to your plans.

Set 3 “I Musts” each week and map them to your calendar.

Start with your Guiding Statements, and KISS and use it (Coffee Stains) to set your annual plans.

Strategic plan is the input. Use the AMP to set quarterly and monthly OKRs. Chop up your goals into bite-size work that ultimately becomes weekly projects and I Musts.

Ask for their feedback! Follow your own rules – set the example. Everyone is watching you.

Execution

Build your binder! “I should write that down.” Write SOPs.

Management Teams

Have an org chart and use it to organize your company.

Meetings

Run great meetings! Use them to drive execution.

Reporting

Start measuring 5-10 KPIs for your company. Weekly or monthly. As you measure it, you will see improvements.

Intro to Finance

Close your books by the 10th and hold your finance meeting on the 15th. DO NOT ABDICATE this work. You are the co-CFO.

Financial Analysis Part 1 & 2

Calculate your monthly TvA and ratios and do a quick common size and trend analysis. Ask Why 7 times during your TvA meeting. Observe red flags in trends and common size.

Finance Part 3: Mastering Cash Flow

Build and use a 13-week Cash Flow. Update it every week.

Marketing Mastery

Focus and invest; Define and know your target market; know who serves who - marketing or sales; build marketing plans and drive a marketing battle rhythm. And measure it!

They are the treasure. Plan + Organized Team + PAs + SOPs + Battle Rhythm = Results!

Write PAs for those connected to you (your management team).

Use meetings to drive execute. Have P, O and A for every meeting.

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RECAP: MARKETING MASTERY STEPS 1.

Step 1: Clearly define and understand your target market (keep this fresh).

2.

Step 2: Choose your company’s core benefit. Align your company around this market strategy (keep this at the center).

3.

Step 3: Know who leads: marketing OR sales.

4.

Step 4: Build marketing plans. Have clear, time bound, objectivefocused marketing plans built around the 4Ps (marketing mix).

5.

Step 5: Drive marketing plans via a marketing battle rhythm (weekly and monthly meetings)

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RECAP: STEP 1 - KNOW YOUR TARGET MARKET

Get Specific “Thou shalt know thy customer”

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RECAP: STEP 2– CHOOSE A STRATEGY

Choose Your Focus Value to customer

Your one area Competitive zone

Time 10

RECAP: STEP 3 – KNOW WHO LEADS

Marketing and Sales Are Different Which leads?

Marketing Leads

7 Variables

Sales Leads

Cheap

Price

Expensive

Many customers

Market Size

Few customers

Simple

Complexity of the product

Complex

High

Fit and finish

Low

B2C

Type of customer

B2B

Single transaction

Customer lifetime

Long lifetime

Low

Level of customer engagement

High

Source: Leslie's’ Compass 11

RECAP: STEP 4 – BUILD MARKETING PLANS

Build Marketing “Plans” with Targets •Functionality •Quality •Branding •Packaging •Sizes •Services

•List price •Discounts •Bundling •Credit terms

Product

Price Target Market

Promotion •Advertising •Sales force •Publicity (PR) •Sales promotions

Place •Sales channels •Inventory •Logistics •Distribution

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RECAP: STEP 5 – DRIVE YOUR BATTLE RHYTHM ❑ Weekly Marketing Meeting – project management ❑ Monthly Marketing Meeting – TvA ❑ Marketing KPIs –lead generation – is it working?

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BUILDING MARKETING PLANS You know your target market and have chosen a focus – the core benefit you will do better than your competitors

2.

You have selected a marketing mix (4Ps) – price, product, place, promotions

3.

But the market changed! You might not have been exactly right.

4.

Choose one of the 4Ps, change/enhance it: set a measurable target.

5.

Build the plan: CS, FS, CFC, Barriers, Initiatives (OKRs)

6.

Drive your marketing meeting battle rhythm (meetings) to execute the plan.

Your one area Value to customer

1.

Competitive zone

Time

3 2

7.

Measure the results and refine.

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1

4

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PROJECT PLANS Workstream

Lead and Team

Q1

Q2

Q3

Q4

80% of SMART Goals Completed

Meetings KPIs Initiative 1

SMART Objective

Target = # Actual = #

Target = # Actual = #

Target = # Actual = #

Target = # Actual = #

Target = # Actual = #

MoM Sales Growth, etc.

Grow X product by 25%

Initiative 2 Initiative 3 Initiative 4

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PART 2: WHY DOES SALES MATTERS

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Sales is an early indicator of business success or failure.

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PART 3: WHAT GOOD SALES LOOKS LIKE

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BAD SALES •

There is no written description from of the ideal sales experience (no sales strategy).

•

There are no regular sales meetings.

•

The company does not have a persistent or disciplined sales lead or sales team.

•

Sales team and strategy is not gender smart.

•

There are no sales tools to track new, current and past customers (the pipeline) or points of sales.

•

There is no sales system to engage, follow-up, close, fulfill and follow-up (again) with customers.

•

There are no sales metrics being tracked.

•

There is no formal sales training.

•

Opportunities are all in someone's head.

•

Sales growth is flat of declining.

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GOOD SALES •

The Executive has described in detail the ideal customer experience.

•

There is a disciplined and persistent person or team running sales.

•

The sales strategy & team are gender smart.

•

The sales system is written down and followed.

•

There is a sales pipeline that is religiously updated and reviewed.

•

Each day, week and month sales metrics are reported to management.

•

Every week there is a well-run, and very focused sales meeting to update the pipeline/KPIs.

•

The sales teams’ compensation is aligned to sales targets.

•

Customers are deeply revered: their satisfaction is paramount.

•

Customer feedback is gathered, documented and reviewed by management and new initiatives are implemented to improve scores.

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PART 4: HOW TO BUILD A SALES MACHINE

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CAUTION AND WISDOM

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BUILDING A TOP PERFORMING SALES DEPARTMENT 1.

Step 1: Know your target market (last session)

2.

Step 2: Use the right strategy (Leslie’s Compass – last session)

3.

Step 3: Define your sales system (i.e., SOP)

4.

Step 4: Build your sales team

5.

Step 5: Set your targets (KPIs) and manage your sales

Starting Here

machine (tools and the sales meeting) like an enraged warrior.

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STEP 3: DEFINE THE SALES SYSTEM 1.

Write down (2-3 pages), what the ideal customer experience should be. Be specific.

2.

Evaluate it •

Gut Check: Would I enjoy buying from me?

Probably NO!

•

Evaluate the entire process against your sales strategy – i.e., gap analysis

3.

Optimize it •

•

•

Are there bottlenecks or black holes?

Eliminate noise. Plug holes Can we make it easier for them to say “yes!”?

Example goals:

A. Basic: To deliver what you promised. This is about trust.

B. Good: To get your customers to come back to you! It costs 6-7 times more money to acquire new customers than to retain existing ones*.

C. Great: To get your customer talking about you to others. Referrals drive most sales of successful companies led by successful

executives

Can we make it easier for them, overall?

*Bain & Company, (research done by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company).

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SALES SYSTEM: EXAMPLE B2C Manage Distribution and Experience • B2C is more about designing and obsessing about the customers’ ideal experience, and then having your marketing and branding put that into their mind.

• It is about creating the steps, from the moment they think about purchasing your product or service, to when they come back again and tell

everyone about it.

• Your Sales System Goal: Market share, distribution, customers loyalty and diehard fans.

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SALES SYSTEM: EXAMPLE B2B Manage the Pipeline and Experience

Your Sales System Goal: Higher conversion of prospects to clients, larger contracts, repeat customer

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SALES SYSTEM: REMINDER

Sales is Retaining Same

Hard

Easiest

Main point:

Customer

It’s always easier to sell more of the same to existing customers.

Hardest

Hard

Don’t mess up your current orders / customers.

Different Different

Product or Service

Same

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SALES SYSTEM: KPIS Sales is A Funnel

Used For: • Benchmarking • Spotting cracks • Improvement testing • Setting targets • Forecasting

Make sure this data is genderdisaggregated!

Are there differences?

Find out why!

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SALES SYSTEM: HINT - 13 TOUCH POINTS Sales is Persistence

Source: Microsoft https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2013/10/why-it-takes-7-to13-touches-to-deliver-a-qualified-sales-lead-part1/ 30

BE GENDER SMART IN YOUR SALES! Women want relationships, not transactions.

•

Women value trust and want to be heard and taken seriously.

•

They are more receptive to sales offers after establishing a positive relationship.

•

Ask questions and listen to their needs before presenting a solution.

Women care about values.

•

Women care about values, sustainability and ESG topics.

•

Women buy more sustainable products!

Focus groups are a powerful tool to gain customer insights for gender-smart sales!

Women are careful decision-makers.

•

Women tend to want more information than men do and prefer more time to decide on significant purchasing decisions.

Women are risk-conscious.

•

They’re more likely than men to sacrifice a potential upside in exchange for lower risk or less debt.

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ADD WOMEN TO YOUR SALES TEAM! • Recent research shows that women succeed in sales by excelling at different capabilities than men.

The research looked at performance of 500+ salespeople across several industries.

• Both high-performing women and high-performing men used all 7 capabilities to some extent. But highperforming women were more likely to emphasize connecting, shaping solutions, and collaborating, while high-performing men relied more on improving and driving outcomes.

• ➔ Case for gender-balances sales teams

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CASE STUDY: GENDER SMART SALES

Imagine you’re the sales team at METAD. What ideas do you have to make sales gender smart?

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CASE STUDY: GENDER SMART SALES Some ideas for gender smart sales: Women want relationships, not transactions.

•

Story telling: o “The METAD story begins with our grandmother, Muluemebet Emiru, who in 1934 became Africa’s first female pilot.”

o Story of the family business •

Ask questions: o How do you like your coffee? o What is important to you…? o Would you like to visit our farm and see how we grow our coffee? o Would you like to learn more about our sustainability certification?

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CASE STUDY: GENDER SMART SALES Women care about values.

•

Emphasize the METAD story, the family business, company values the community in which the coffee is produced, sustainability certificates.

•

Role of women in the company and supply chain!

METAD’s initiatives to empower women: o ”At the farm about 70% of our workers are women. At our headquarters it’s about 50%. There are challenges, for example when female supervisors are not taken seriously by male workers, but we are actively tackling these challenges and promoting gender equality.” o “We are educating families about equal rights, and in partnership with some of our buyers, we are encouraging husbands, brothers and fathers to register their wives, sisters and daughters on the land documentation. Women are doing a lot of the work, and we, along with our buyers, are willing to pay a premium for families who are willing to recognize equal rights.”

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CASE STUDY: GENDER SMART SALES Women buy more sustainable products.

•

METAD’s sustainability certification

•

METAD’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):

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CASE STUDY: GENDER SMART SALES Women are careful decision-makers.

•

Take time to answer all their questions

•

Ask them what additional information they need

•

Give them space to make a decision

Women are risk-conscious.

•

Keep this in mind when offering payment / credit options

•

Anything else that comes to mind?

Conduct focus group discussions to obtain feedback from different customer segments!

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STEP 4: BUILD THE SALES TEAM Build a Persistent, Driven, Incentivized Team • Compensation: The team’s pay should be closely aligned with sales performance.

• Characteristics: – Competitive – very numbers driven.

– They should be highly disciplined; keeping count of every sales lead, status of that lead, dollar value of that lead, last contacted, client information, etc. This can be a CRM or an Excel file. Check it weekly.

– They should be very process driven. There should be following steps to close a sale.

“Don’t mess with the system.”

– They should know your company and know your product better than anyone else.

– They should be trustworthy and exude trust.

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STEP 5: SET SALES TARGETS • Top down: Determine the sales to get to 10% and then 15% pretax margin (EBT) • Top-down / bottom-up: The annual budget

• Bottom up: Sales forecasts (see tool)

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STEP 5: MANAGE IT – THE PIPELINE Main Point:

• The sales pipeline is the main sales tool of the sales team (think the 13-week cash flow for the CFO, and the Legend for the CEO). This manages the 13 touch-points.

• For B2B it’s about higher conversion and movement through the pipeline.

• For B2C its about measuring distribution, market share and market expansion 40

STEP 5: MANAGE IT – THE DASHBOARD Main point: • Measure as much relevant sale information as you can (without going crazy).

• Use this to analyze the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts.

• Map the sales process. Have KPIs for each stage.

• Measure the marketing efforts: these show up in your sales KPIs.

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STEP 5: MANAGE IT – THE SALES MEETING Sales is Discipline • Purpose: To review and update the sales pipeline and make decisions about sales team’s priorities • Outcomes: – A review of marketing efforts and impact on sales KPIs (dashboard reviewed)

– Review of new prospects (leads identified) – Next steps for each current, top prospect (pipeline updated) • Agenda: 1.

Review next steps from last meeting

2.

Sales TvA (monthly) and KPIs

3.

New Prospects

4.

Review Current Pipeline and Update

Suggestions

5.

Next steps and close

Weekly: About 60 min Monthly: 120 min

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PART 5: DISCUSSION

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DISCUSSION 1.

What does your sales team look like? Is there a distinction between the sales and marketing in the team?

2.

What is the one thing our customers like the most?

3.

Who are we losing business to and why?

4.

What is the biggest obstacle to gaining new customers?

5.

What would help you sell more?

6.

Do they have a sales plan that is written down for the sales team?

7.

Does the whole organization understand the sales strategy?

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PART 5: SUMMARY

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SUMMARY

1.

Know who leads – marketing or sales

2.

Write down your customers’ ideal sales experience

3.

Have a sales system – pipeline or distribution

4.

Use, measure and track the pipeline and distribution system KPIs regularly and religiously

5.

Have a trustworthy, competitive and persistent person leading sales

6.

Run weekly and monthly sales meetings like a machine!

7.

Grow or….

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READING • HBR: Welcome to the Experience Economy – https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy • Asher: Great Sales Tests and Tools: – https://www.asherstrategies.com/ • CRM: Salesforce, Highrise, Excel

• Book: “Raving Fans”

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HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 1. Use your calendar (I Musts, map all your time, set aside 3 hours for ON the business work) 2. Schedule 3 hours: –

Write down the ideal sales experience for your target market / customer

–

Review your sales pipeline or distribution system

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FEEDBACK

Proprietary and Confidential to Renew LLC

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Thank you! www.renewstrategies.com

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WHY IS GENDER SMART PRODUCT DESIGN IMPORTANT? When a woman is involved in a car crash, • she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and • 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seatbelt usage, and crash intensity.

• She is also 17% more likely to die.

Have a guess: Why? And it has all to do with how the car is designed – and for whom. ➔ Cars have been designed using car crash-test dummies based on the “average” male.

Gender bias in product design is a huge problem 51

WHY IS GENDER SMART PRODUCT DESIGN IMPORTANT? Gender bias in product design is a huge problem •

Book Recommendation

Women who purchased a car have reported that the voicecommand system only listened to their husband, even though he was in the passenger seat. ➔ Voice recognition software "hears" male voices more easily than female ones.

➔ This can be dangerous, such as when a car’s voice command system fails to understand what a female driver is saying, or when the notes that a female health care provider dictates about a patient’s course of care are riddled with errors. ➔ This is because AI (artificial intelligence) assistants are trained on male biased data.

•

Also interesting: The formula to determine standard office temperature is based on the metabolic resting rate of the average man. This formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average 5 degrees too cold for women.

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PUSH VERSUS PULL MARKETING

Source: https://goo.gl/images/S0Q699

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SALES STRATEGY Examples Main point: Know who you are selling to. Align your strategy with your customer type.

Note: It’s hard to have two different types. If you do have two different systems.

Source: http://www.dwsassociates.com/marketing-tools/b2b-marketing/b2b-vs-b2c-marketing/

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