Forum

Skip to content
Find location

Blogs

Archive for May, 2009

With so many people involved, how do you eliminate each person’s pet vendor for the service?

May 27th, 2009 by Forum Corporation

This question is from a webinar we recently held on Selling in Turbulent Times. For the entire presention, click here.

By Cindy Stuckey, Executive Vice President, Executive Consultant Leader

By “eliminate,” we will assume you mean a method that’s legal, okay?  

This question strikes us as a customer objection to doing business.  To handle any customer objection you must first understand what the buyer is objecting to and why.  Only after you completely understand the objection can you address it effectively. 

Here are some responses to the possible reasons for the objection: 

  • If it’s because the buyer knows her pet vendor meets or exceeds all requirements (technical, price, performance, and so on) and does not think your company or any other company can come close to meeting them, then you must provide evidence to support your capabilities.
  • If the pet vendor really is the only supplier who can meet the buying spec, or if it is the one that has the best qualifications, then you can try to influence the buying spec, encouraging the buyer (and others) to look at the bigger picture or consider some other mission-critical criteria on which you are very strong.
  • It it’s a matter of confidence in and comfort with the pet vendor because of a past or ongoing supplier relationship, you need to deliberately build the buyer’s confidence in your company.  This will take time.  Perhaps you could win a smaller contract to establish your reliability and let the customer get to know you better.  Remember that the way you sell has a direct impact on what the buyer believes about your company’s reliability and fit with his business.  Execute flawlessly on every commitment.  Bring insight and advice to every meeting.  Offer to invest in getting to know the prospect’s business better by offering a small amount of free consulting time.  Perhaps analyze a problem the prospect is facing and develop possible solutions.  Make sure the prospect meets others from your company, especially relevant experts and senior leaders.  Finally, find a way to arrange for the prospect to talk with a few of your best customers about you and your company.  (To entice your busy prospect to take this action consider creating an immediate benefit for her, such as a chance to network with peers in other companies to learn about common challenges and best practices.)  Add value for the prospect in every interaction.
  • If it’s a close personal relationship, find and win over a more senior manager whose decision can trump that of the buyer.  Perhaps bring in a senior leader from your own company to help with this.
  • If the buyer’s pet vendor is his wife’s sister, you should move on to other prospects now. 

In any case, the good news for you about the recession is that there is rarely only one decision maker now.  So, if your buyer has a pet vendor, find out who else has entered or will enter the buying decision.  Establish a position with them.  Then enlist their help in overcoming the bias toward the pet vendor. 

Relevant titles and sales tools from Forum’s sales and sales leadership learning library can be quickly adapted to the specific needs of a company’s sales force:  

  • Handling Customer Objections
  • Political Analysis and Account Action Planning Tools
  • Account Radar Tool
  • Conducting Conversations with Senior-Level Customers

Posted in Sales Alignment | 1 Comment »

What are some examples of ROI metrics?

May 22nd, 2009 by Forum Corporation

This question is from a webinar we recently held on Selling in Turbulent Times. For the entire presention, click here.

By Jeffrey Baker, Senior Methodology Consultant

Forum’s approach to ROI, or return on investment, is to start with what the customer company uses as its most important business metrics.  Often they include metrics that measure customer loyalty, employee engagement/retention, and revenue or financial impact.  There are often outcome measures, activity measures, and process measures.  They might include EBITDA, earnings per share, return on invested capital, market share, ACV (a consumer products company metric), or NPS (a customer loyalty metric).  Most suppliers do not impact these metrics directly; if they do, they are not the only ones who impact them.  So a supplier must demonstrate the “causal connection” between whatever is supplied and the way it contributes to customers’ business and financial results.  For example, one of the things Forum’s advisory and learning services business does is enable our customers’ employees to perform more effectively as a result of improving their skills and knowledge.  We can demonstrate the impact of our customers’ investment in our services with a dynamic business scorecard that establishes a clear line of sight from improving employee skills and performance on the job to achieving target results, such as sales quotas.  

Relevant titles and sales tools from Forum’s sales and sales leadership learning library can be quickly adapted to the specific needs of a company’s sales force: 

  • Exploring Customer Needs, Payoffs, and Consequences
  • Talking Business Results with Customers
  • Talking Business Strategy with Customers

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Recommendations for probing the client about risk concerns and potential new influencers

May 19th, 2009 by Forum Corporation

This question is from a webinar we recently held on Selling in Turbulent Times. For the entire presention, click here.

By Cindy Stuckey, Vice President, Executive Consultant Leader

Regarding risk, there are two approaches you might take, either in combination or separately: 

  • Make direct requests for information about risk:  Where are you most at risk?  For example, are you most concerned with losing top staff, cash flow, or competitive position? working with only one vendor? acquisitions not occurring? an insufficient pipeline of new products?  What keeps you awake at night?  What is your competition able to do that you aren’t?  What do your customers deeply need that you can’t supply or are at risk of failing to supply?  What critical resources are you at risk of losing?
  • Establish a common understanding with your prospect of the five fundamental elements of his business strategy:  customers and markets, competitors, resources and capabilities, company mission or vision, and strategic levers.  Then, probe to learn what challenges he faces in each area.  These challenges are risks to his business.  You will add the greatest value for the prospect by positioning your products and services in a way that reduces or eliminates the challenges, or that provides the prospect with a way to manage them himself.

Regarding potential influencers who are new to the buying decision …

Certainly, ask the prospective customer directly about his decision-making process.  Who else is involved in it?  Who will the purchase affect?  In what way?  Are these the known stakeholders?

Review the process for discovering risk in the paragraphs directly preceding this one.  After you have identified specific risks that your products/services address, determine who in the customer organization is responsible to manage each risk and who would be affected downstream if the risk is not managed well.  These are the people who will participate in the buying decision today.  Find a way to help these people better understand their own concerns and to demonstrate to them how your product/service eliminates/reduces risk or improves their ability to manage it.  Usually, but not always, the immediate buyer will appreciate your effort. 

Relevant titles and sales tools from Forum’s sales and sales leadership learning library can be quickly adapted to the specific needs of a company’s sales force:  

  • Developing a Questioning Strategy for a Sales Call
  • Using High-Gain Questions
  • Exploring Customer Needs, Payoffs, and Consequences
  • Talking Business Results with Customers
  • Talking Business Strategy with Customers
  • Client SWOT Analysis Tool

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Sales Alignment | No Comments »

High-impact questions you can ask a prospect that are related to the bad economy

May 15th, 2009 by Forum Corporation

This question is from a webinar we recently held on Selling in Turbulent Times. For the entire presention, click here.

By Jeffrey Baker, Senior Methodology Consultant

I offer these answers for those selling to business customers as opposed to consumers.  First, imagine your prospect has told you that only mission-critical expenditures will be approved and that she wants to understand how your product/service is critical to the company’s ongoing business.  This will help you keep a narrow focus for your questions.

Next, prepare a questioning strategy to gain an understanding from your prospect of the mission-critical elements of her business.  Ask general questions that are specific to the prospect’s business.  Then DO YOUR HOMEWORK to answer as many of these questions as you can (even partially), based on other sources of information, prior to your sales call.  This approach enables you to use your sales-call time to confirm your answers with your prospect, demonstrate your preparation for the call and your understanding of the prospect’s situation, earn the right to ask additional questions, and advance the sales process more quickly. 

  • How is the recession affecting your business, and what key actions/initiatives is your company taking in response to the recession’s effects?  Look for positive as well as adverse effects. 
  • What important metrics do senior leaders monitor now? 
  • What is your company doing differently now to stay close to your existing customers?  What is it doing to find and win new customers?
  • What are you customers’ greatest needs and concerns now?  What feedback are you getting from your customers now?
  • How has your company’s competitive position changed (or how is it changing) as a result of the recession?  In what ways is it more competitive?  Less competitive?
  • How has your company (or how have you) changed the way products and services are produced and delivered in response to the recession?
  • Is your company doing more or less innovation now?  Why?
  • Where is your company experiencing its greatest challenges now?  (Possible answers:  Obtaining new orders, converting orders to revenue, collecting receivables, increasing cash and/or cash flow and credit, reducing inventory, increasing stock turns, maintaining or reducing delivery time, utilization rates, employee productivity, getting leaders to take bold action, expanding capacity, quickly acquiring and integrating other businesses, and so on).  (Note:  Every suppliers’ products and services connect in some way to one or more of these challenges.) 

Here are some more general, high-impact questions: 

  • What are the mission-critical parts of your business?
  • What predictive indicators do you watch to monitor the health of your business?
  • Where are the greatest risks to your business now?
  • What keeps you awake at night?
  • If you could change one thing about your business to increase your competitive advantage, what would it be?
  • What one thing do most of your customers want from you that you have not been able to provide?
  • Who do you most rely on for advice and guidance in today’s uncertain times?
  • If you could magically cause all of your employees to do one thing differently, what would it be?

Relevant titles from Forum’s sales and sales leadership learning library can be quickly adapted to the specific needs of a company’s sales force: 

  • Developing a Questioning Strategy for a Sales Call
  • Using High-Gain Questions
  • Exploring Customer Needs, Payoffs, and Consequences
  • Talking Business Results with Customers
  • Talking Business Strategy with Customers

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Sales Alignment | No Comments »

2-6-2 Rule

May 13th, 2009 by Forum Corporation

By André Alphonso, Managing Director, Forum India

During the course of my working life I have been influenced by many mentors. One of these mentors shared with me what he called his “2-6-2 Rule.”  It changed my thinking.  Let me share it with you:

This mentor of mine was a medic in Vietnam.  After a battle he and his team would fly in on helicopter gunships to evacuate the wounded.  These gunships could carry only a few people.  In this dramatic and chaotic environment my mentor had to quickly assess the situation and then place people into three categories:  a) those people who would live without his help; b) those who would die regardless of whether he helped them or not; and c) those who would survive only because of his help.  His focus was then on evacuating the people in the last category first.

My mentor drew a parallel between his experience in Vietnam and what he observed about the way that leaders behave in their work with their people.  His 2-6-2 Rule essentially relates to any group of people in which 20 percent are high performers, 60 percent are performers in the middle, and 20 percent are low/marginal performers.  The top 20 percent of high performers perform well regardless of their manager; the 20 percent of low/marginal performers drag their feet regardless of their manager; the third and biggest group, the 60 percent in the middle, only improve their performance because of the skills and behaviours of their manager.  However, my mentor observed that most managers get it wrong, by putting their focus and energy into the 20 percent at the top and the 20 percent at the bottom.  The people in the biggest group of 60 percent in the middle are largely left to their own devices.  My own observations and experience with leaders over many years bears testament to this.  The real focus should of course be on the largest group:  focus on those individuals who will only improve because of the intervention of their manager.

In the June 2003 Harvard Business Review, Thomas DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan’s groundbreaking article “Let’s Hear It for B Players” very clearly brought out the importance of focusing on this middle 60 percent.  In July 2008, DeLong and Vijayaraghavan again wrote about the importance of B players in a weak economy:  particularly in difficult times these “supporting actors” supply the stability, knowledge, and ballast that boosts organizational resilience and performance.

If you are a leader, think about the week that just passed and where your focus and energy were directed:  to A, B or C players?  What have you done to support those who will only survive because of your help?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Growth & Leadership | No Comments »

Social Networking: A productive endeavor or an attractive distraction?

May 6th, 2009 by Forum Corporation

By Matthew Allen, Project Coordinator

There is no question that expanding both relationships and networks is an important activity for any sales leader.  However, as businesses attempt to deal with the forces of today’s economic climate, these two like-minded initiatives quickly jump from important to imperative. 

Countless studies implicitly connect these two actions (relationship building and network building) to customer retention and customer expansion.  Forum’s extensive research tells us that out of the hundreds of things sales organizations deal with regularly, finding and winning new customers along with keeping profitable customers are two of only 14 actions that have a statistically positive correlation with performance—in other words, these 14 actions differentiate top-performing sales organizations from moderate and low performers.  peoplethrucomputer2

So while it is clear that businesses must continue to invest in specific sales initiatives, the current economic crisis has siphoned business cash flows, leading to cuts in travel budgets and an increasingly watchful eye kept on “client expenses.”  As a result, traditional methods of expanding networks and relationships (attending trade shows, conferences, and face-to-face meetings) are quickly being replaced by webinars, podcasts, social networking … and even Twitter.

Yes, that’s right:  the micro-messaging revolution has recently hit the corporate stage, where the immediacy of the connection and communication created by this free service lends itself to cost-efficient large-scale networking.  With the advancement of technology, building (and sustaining) a large professional network suggests that you are not only “LinkedIn,” but that you “tweet” every now and again as well.  For those of you who have yet to tap into this social media tool, a “tweet” is a short message that keeps your followers up to speed on what you are thinking or doing at any given moment.  

A growing number of companies, the likes of Dell, Southwest Airlines, and Zappos (the online shoe seller whose CEO’s Twitter followers have increased from 1,300 to 373,000 over the past year), use Twitter to foster communication among customers and employees alike.  (Dell recently reported that its Twitter account has led to more than $1 million in revenue.)  These three companies epitomize what it means to be customer focused, and they have begun to tap into social networking to increase visibility and strengthen both customer relationships and experience.

 A tech-savvy and nervous flyer friend of mine took his initiatory Southwest Airlines flight about 3 months ago and then received the following “tweet” from the airline:  “Hope you enjoyed your first-ever Southwest flight!  We can’t wait to see you onboard again.”  Using social networking as an additional tool to enhance the customer experience, these companies are building customer loyalty and providing customers with yet another reason to suggest their services to peers.

 blue-headA step beyond text-messaging, which requires you to address people individually, updates via Twitter are broadcasted to a person’s entire group of followers.  While I may be getting a bit ahead of myself, I believe that this dynamic interaction may very well be on its way to replacing e-mail for certain types of communication, such as client correspondence and general customer relations.

 Twitter is not all business, however.  Many “tweets” are not only personal, but downright trivial—what someone had as an afternoon snack or what songs make up her latest iPod playlist.  Being able to focus your efforts in the world of social networking is key to successful navigation.  Luckily, the ability to focus is an asset that you control, and it is the vital link between your social networking strategy and your end results.  

Twitter is just one example of a plethora of valuable social networking tools that not only drive traffic, but also have the potential to enhance relationships and expand networks.  Twitter, in particular, is taking off because it mirrors how people work and think … which is apparently 140 characters at a time!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customer Experience | No Comments »

The year was 1991…

May 1st, 2009 by Ed Boswell

The U.S. economy was in recession. I had just been assigned to one of our company’s plum customer accounts. No longer our largest account, it still had some cachet: it had been our first customer account some 20 years earlier. Since then, the account had generated millions of dollars of revenue. Recently, however, it was producing only average revenues. Yet I was confident that, given the opportunity, I could triple (yes, triple) our current sales in the account!

No sooner had I taken the assignment when disaster hit. In response to the impact of the worsening recession on their business, our customers embarked on a $2.5B cost-reduction program and declared a moratorium on acquiring, among other things, the kinds of products and services that I was selling. Forget about tripling sales in this account, I was facing no sales in this account for the foreseeable future.

Once I overcame my initial disappointment, I sought the advice of a retired sales executive whom I considered a mentor. He suggested that I use the moratorium to my advantage; that is, initiate a “listening tour” in the account—meeting with and learning from as many potential decision makers as I could fit into my schedule (given that I was now scrambling to meet my quota through sales to other accounts). These decision makers turned out to be more than happy to meet with me; many were glad to talk with someone outside their own company about their concerns and ideas. And they knew that I knew they couldn’t buy anything for the time being, so these meetings had the feel of a conversation about their businesses, their world, their hopes and dreams. I closed each meeting by thanking the decision maker for his or her time and asking if he or she could introduce me to two or three colleagues. The decision makers almost always obliged. Each meeting led to others.

Within 6 months, I received a call from an executive in this account whom I had not yet met. He’d been hearing my name as he discussed his cost-cutting ideas with others in his company. When I met this executive, he described an opportunity that had the potential to become the largest single contract in my own company’s history. Instead of being a casualty of the moratorium on spending, my company now had a chance to be part of a multi-million-dollar solution! Within a few months, we had not only signed this landmark contract, but also set up a separate line of business to sell and deliver similar solutions to other customers. My dream of tripling sales ended up being an extremely modest aspiration: annual sales in the account soared twenty-fold.

Moral of the story: prospective customers are potentially more willing to spend time with you in tough economic times. This gives you a fantastic opportunity to build your network and gain insights into their business without the pressure of selling them on a solution in the moment.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in learning | 4 Comments »