The last few weeks have been pretty unique – I know I have never experienced anything like what is happening right now in my entire career. Sure, there were the downturns in 2000, 2008, 2011, but those were nothing like what 2020 is bringing us right now. That said, one thing is certain – just like previous downturns, this will end and we will recover.
The world has changed drastically over the past few weeks in many ways. While things are moving slower than usual, it’s a great time to reconnect with customers (virtually, of course), educate yourself, and sharpen the skills you’ll be able to use when the freeze starts to thaw.
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sandberg
The ability to deliver the above is one, if not the, distinguishing characteristic of a great leader. Upon reading it, I began to think of what Sandberg’s definition of leadership meant for sales leaders.
During sales management training, I often tell sales managers they need to approach sales pipeline reviews with their sales reps like prosecutors in the courtroom. What exactly do I mean? To start, I’m not advocating that you look to “convict” your sales reps. Instead, I’m suggesting sales managers take an evidence-based approach to sales pipeline inspection. Doing so will remove the biases from conversations with sales reps, and make sales pipelines more accurate and data driven.
So, where do you find this evidence?
Sales Gauge, a leader in the sales training industry, today announced it has launched a new application for sales executives using Salesforce.com (SFDC). The app, which provides real-time insight into high value deals, is available at no charge on the SFDC AppExchange. In addition to full transparency into their sales pipelines, the new Sales Gauge High Value Trade Table app provides salespeople and managers a common language to discuss sales pipelines and forecasts.
Sales Gauge, a leader in the sales training industry, today announced it has launched a new application for sales executives using Salesforce.com (SFDC). The app, which provides real-time insight into high value deals, is available at no charge on the SFDC AppExchange. In addition to full transparency into their sales pipelines, the new Sales Gauge High Value Trade Table app provides salespeople and managers a common language to discuss sales pipelines and forecasts.
We have been talking a lot about using the High Value Trade Table (HVT) to close deals. Sales professionals taking our eLearning have found the deal simulator that provides them insight on how to read the score of their deals eye-opening. That said, each organization is unique and requires an in-depth look at the best structure for the HVT. Keep in mind that the HVT spreadsheet we provide in the resource tab gets you started but each company will have unique trades to identify and call out in order to advance their sales along.
The traditional sales model from which we have recognized up to 80% of our business is moving to the transactional sale and the higher end business is going to demand a consultative sales approach. This approach is going to shed light on the skills – or lack thereof – of today’s sales professionals. So it’s time to ask yourself: Do you have the skills to connect with executives in order to gain access to their team?
The title of this post leads you to believe that we are going to talk about time to close a deal or to make a deal. In this case I want you to think about time as a precious commodity that is fleeting and beats us every year: your finite amount of time to make quota. As the year begins with kickoff and planning, Q1 is over before we know it and Q2 is upon us. We quickly need to make up for the Q1 shortfall, which means we must double down on prospecting and get appointments that lead to follow-on investment by the customer.
While I recognize that baseball is not a sport that everyone follows, I wanted to share some insights from Billy Beane whose character was the main focus of the 2011 film, Moneyball. Billy was the keynote speaker at the 2017 Splunk Conference where he made a statement that is so applicable to the sales world that I have to share it with you...
How many times do we struggle to convince management and ourselves we have a good deal in the pipeline? Throughout our sales careers, we tend to get overly optimistic, convinced that we have this really great deal in the pipeline. We take our customers’ word as perfectly true each time and are surprised when we lose the deal, especially to no decision. In this post, we will introduce you to the process of building a scorecard and the High Value Trades (HVT) needed to effectively negotiate opportunities in the pipeline.
As sales professionals, we spend a lot of time focusing on the early and late stages of the pipeline. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
In the early stages of a deal, things are exciting and optimistic. As sales people, we are the most fervent of optimists, aren’t we? You reached out to a target prospect, managed to get to the CxO and now you have a meeting scheduled.
