The Sales Profession Comes Under Attack at this Year's Pivot to Profit

Three ways to invest in your sales team to empower sellers that achieve company objectives.

If you had the opportunity to attend this year's Pivot to Profit, you would have heard great sessions on the Supply Chain, Future technology, and how to move your Managed Service program forward. Still, you would have also listened to what sounded like an attack on the sales profession; many sessions had questions or comments about the sales team's effectiveness in the industry. These comments might be viewed as a "rip on salespeople" session, but I took it a different way; the integration industry is requiring a higher level of professionalism in the sales team than in the past. If your organization is asking your sellers to step up to a new level, here are three areas you can invest in today and keep them out of the P2P news.

First, have you defined the metrics you expect your sellers to achieve? I see many integrators that might have defined quotas for their salespeople. Still, they do not have good lead metrics that lead to their sellers hitting quotas, such as pipeline growth in managed services or specific products. I also see a lack of visibility into the customer experience that your organization and sellers might be delivering. You are asking your salespeople to step up to a new level without providing the metrics you would like to see improved giving them the destination without the road map.

Second, are you giving them easy-to-use tools that can enable them to be professional sellers? I see so many organizations upset that salespeople are not putting data here or there. Still, when I talk with the salesperson, I find out that they have to input the same data in multiple systems. If you want salespeople to put in good data valuable to your business, don't make them enter it in numerous areas.

Finally, you need to invest in creating professional sellers. You spend thousands of dollars and hours training your technical and operations folks on products and processes(This last week, my LinkedIn feed was filled with posts from the Crestron Masters 2022 training event), but when was the last time your organization sent a salesperson to an event that invested in their SALESMANSHIP?

It just so happens that I have the perfect remedy for this-- You can send them to one of our upcoming Corporate Sales Coaches sessions. The forthcoming sessions have been tailored for the integration industry, they have been amplified with the Revenueify RMR methodology, and unlike your labor rates- the prices have not increased in 2022.

It was clear at P2P that we are asking our Salespeople to do more than we have in the past; I agree whole heartily; let's be sure we are not asking them to leap without the proper tools.

Q4 2022 Revenueify and Corporate Sales Coaches Sessions

Customer Focused Selling-Foundations

• Week of October 10th or Week of November 14th

• Help your Sales Team drive new business, build stronger customer partnerships, and communicate the value of managed service programs

• Zoom Session broke out into 90-minute manageable sessions during the week

• Access to Revenueify ongoing reinforcement Learning Management System.

• More Information Here

Customer Focused Selling-Catalyst

• Week of October 17th or Week of December 5th

• Focuses on developing your salespeople beyond just responding and working with your customers on a consultative basis

• Create financial ROIs for your Managed Service Solutions and for your project sales. It helps your sellers to sell the way financial buyers buy solutions.

• Zoom Session broke out into 90-minute manageable sessions during the week

• Access to Revenueify ongoing reinforcement Learning Management System.

• More Information Here

3.5 Ways to Improve your As a Service Results

In the Spring 2022 issue of Integrate Journal from NSCA, they listed five reasons As-a-Service may not be working for integrators, and 3.5 of those reasons are due to not having a rock-solid sales process for your revenue team. As you look to overcome these revenue team-related reasons, here are 3.5 areas to focus on to start driving managed services and improved win rates for your organization.

1 - Does your team understand the key business reasons for your customer buying the solution that you are recommending? Most sellers focus on customers' needs like I need another conference room, but they don't ask the next question, "why do you need another conference room?" Getting to the business case is critical to selling managed services. In the Qualify and Assessment stages of your sales process, you should have defined questions for your sellers to ask to get to the real business cases of why your customers are buying their technology. You are on the right path if you can put the business case into a spreadsheet and create a financial ROI.

2 - Are you meeting with the correct key influencers? Sellers in the integration space have stuck with IT for years, but the financial decision makers are critical to selling more advanced solutions in the integration space. Taking your ROI from step number one and presenting it to the financial team will help you win more opportunities and allow you to start changing company habits of using capital to acquire technology.

3 - Are you painting a vivid vision of the experience you will deliver for your customers? When you can show a future state of what the customers' environment will feel like, how it will operate, and what the ongoing experience will be for their end users, it will set you apart from your competition. Putting your business case into an executive summary with a financial ROI and creating a vivid picture of the experience will create a higher success in your managed service and As-a-Service opportunity.

3.5 Bonus - Are you documenting an action plan to accomplish these three items and supporting it with a sales and marketing process that supports selling recurring revenue? The sale process for AV, Security, and Nurse Call is months long, and the transactions are generally significant. Having a documented Action Plan that Sales, marketing, engineering, and when the opportunity is won, the operations team can follow is essential in driving your reacquiring revenue.

It is rare that managed service and As-a-Service programs fail because of the deliverable or the experience. Most of the time, the organization does not know the value or how to communicate that value to customers, which is why you see the majority of these programs fail. Starting with these 3.5 areas will help train your revenue organization to finally move the needle on recurring revenue.

If you are ready to move beyond these 3.5 focus areas, reach out to us! We can help you with the next 3.5 areas to focus on :).

-Your Sales Process Sherpa--Revenueify

Is Your Greatest Salesperson Living Up To Their Potential? 4 Lead Metrics To Consider

Revenueify Sales Coaching

Every organization has at least one star sales rep that you can always count on to bring in revenue and close deals. Most managers leave these high performers alone, choosing to focus all of their efforts helping other sales reps improve. However, this approach could actually be holding your company back from greatness.

If you invested the same amount of time and effort in your high-performing sales reps as you do in your underperforming sales reps, how much more would you be able to bring in? Consider this example: your underperforming reps are only bringing in $500K in revenue each year, while your highest performing reps are bringing in $5 million. If you spend time with the underperforming rep to get them 10 percent better, they are still only bringing in $550K. If you focus on getting your highest performing reps 10 percent better, they are now bringing in $5.5 million. That's $450,000 more in top line revenue for your coaching efforts with the same time investment.

Coaching high performing reps takes a focus on lead metrics VS jus the tactics of selling, here are four lead metrics you can use to see if your reps are leaving money on the table.

Win Rate Past Initial Quote

Your highest performing sales rep probably already has one of the highest win rates in the company. But what does that win rate actually mean? Take a deeper look at their sales to see what types of wins are reflected in their metric. Where are clients going past the initial quote, and is there room for improvement here? Are these clients continuing to buy from your organization past the initial sale?

Take a look at the total won opportunities in the last 90 days and divide that by the amount of quotes they requested in the same time period. This will give you an idea of their effectiveness with their accounts.

Managed Service Attachment Rate

Managed Services are critical to most organizations success, especially with the supply chain constraints going on right now. In particular, managed services have high profit margins and should be offered to every customer. Check in with your highest performing sales reps to see what percentage of their proposals they are adding managed service to.

Take a look at total quotes in the last 90 days had managed services attached and divide that by the amount of total quotes sent out. This can help you gage to see if your top performers are driving these key solutions.

Assessments Completed vs. Quotes Completed

Busy sales reps can fall into the habit of taking customer orders rather than getting to the heart of the customer’s problem. Track the number of assessments your reps complete and then compare that to the total number of quotes completed. Ideally, every quote should come with an assessment to figure out what the customer needs and if there is an opportunity to upsell.

Track the amount of assessments in the last 90 days and divide that by the total amount of quoted opportunities. Consultative selling requires some level of assessment on the front end to truly solve problems for your customers. Many high performing reps get in the habit of responding VS driving experiences for your customers.