Innovations in Revenue Performance

By Thomas B. Cross - CEO TECHtionary.com & OCSForum.com This is a brief presentation on: - Challenges faced by sales manager of turnover of sales staff - the "hire-fire" cycle and the often negative impact on customers. - Communications challenges faced by sales executives in closing an enterprise or any sales with more than one decision-maker. In reality, this is any sale. - Solutions proven to 1) reduce the sales cycle, 2) reduce customer support costs, 3) increase customer satisfaction and 4) increase user service/product usability-acceptance. The animated presentation can be found at http://www.techtionary.com/sales Key Problems First, the never-ending challenge faced by sales manager of turnover of sales staff - the "hire-fire" cycle. One key point is that just adding more sales people does not by itself increase revenues and in fact, excessive churn in staff has proven to have a negative impact on customers. For anyone in sales management, the ultimate challenge is to predict, manage to and grow revenues. That's easy to say. The sales "ramp slope" (think of a ski slope in reverse) is both enigmatic and frustrating. The "perfect day" of ramp slope is when revenues ramp to 100% of forecast and beyond rapidly. The "perfect worse case storm" of sales ramp is 0% and continues forever. Somewhere in between these "perfect" situations is where sales execs, managers and C-level's live. The perpetual "hire-fire" cycle continues unabated unless solutions are found. Second, you will never know all the people involved in the sales decision process but you need to sell all of them. Here are some of the communications challenges faced by sales executives in closing an enterprise or any sales with more than one decision-maker. In reality, this is any sale. That is, there is a lot of communications between all the players and you don't know who they are. It often begins with an initial sales call with decision-maker. Next, the decision-maker & CIO talk or meet with others including finance, operations, etc. Even the smallest companies may involve consultants and procurement (or outside accountant) to review. This may include meetings with staff, consultants and legal. Then a final meeting or review by decision-maker, CIO and consultants. Finally, a closing call or meeting with decision-maker for a decision. The remainder of this will focus on potential solutions to this problem. Potential Solutions One viable solution are an online animated/video presentations which can be shared easily, quickly with greater quality, consistently and more accurately. The documented benefits of animated/video presentations are, among others, 1) getting everyone on the "same page" is proven to reduce the sales cycle by "two weeks" and 2) these tutorials can also significantly increase your sales close rate. In evaluating animated/video tutorials, numerous C-level sales consultants, have noted its three immediate benefits. First, when technology sales animations are presented, complex concepts such as telecommunications, internet, integrated access, outlook integration, VoIP/SIP, and many other complex systems are reduced to an easy-to-understand format. In a number of tests, a number of consultants noted that a "pictionary" presentation reduces the days customers require to evaluate the process. Second, support centers often receive large bursts of support calls, forcing many callers to give up their efforts to obtain explanations for their queries. One customer commented that "installation animations on Microsoft OCS, Polycom and others saved substantial amounts of time because support calls don't come in one-at-a-time." Calls don't come in just from people with computers, they come in from many places where laptops are not ideal but tutorials already have been built for portable devices. Next, customer support costs can "break-the-bank." It isn't the first or second phone call that causes support costs to skyrocket. These are the result of customer staff turnover and new-hires, one consultant added. These animations provide a pictorial approach that greatly reduces the number and length of such phone calls, thus saving thousands of dollars while at the same time providing cost-efficiency and insuring increased customer satisfaction. Third, when it comes to client satisfaction, customers seek a relationship with a vendor who will respond during the after-sale period. They want to be sure that new features can be added or changed as new services emerge. These animations easily meet these and other business challenges." A user who is convinced by such new animation tools for use in training is Cindy Johnson, Director of Technology, Lee County Schools, Sanford, North Carolina. "These tutorials virtually eliminate users' training problems. They reduce the hours of classroom time and problems with scheduling. They simplify how and when to provide classes for those who missed a training session." Summary of Findings During this brief presentation we discussed 1) hire-fire cycle, 2) communications challenges faced in all sales efforts and 3) potential solutions provided by animated-video tutorials. To summarize, animated-video tutorials are able to: 1) Reduce the impact of sales churn resulting from hire-fire cycle. 2) Reduce the sales cycle by improving "visualization" of product/service being sold. 3) Improve accuracy of presentation for all players in sales cycle such as manufacturer, channel partner(s), agents, customer and internal decision-makers. 4) Reduce customer confusion regarding customer support and provide training tutorials for use anywhere. 5) Increase user retention on product/service training. Bottom-line results - faster revenues, lower support costs and increase in immediate customer benefits as well as long-term customer satisfaction. Is the challenge so problematic that there is no solution? We recommend two options. Recommendations First, aside from quality HR screening in the hiring function, we think that effective, focused and timely sales training can have the most significant positive impact on revenues. With regard to technology sales and management skills, technical skills tests such as CTM-Communications Technology Manager, VoIP Business Executive and SIP Technology Executive courses are designed to "weed out the meek." Translated, this means that IF the sales exec or channel partner does not complete these courses successfully, they are not authorized to sell - end of story. In other words, if you don't pass the drivers license exam, you don't get to drive. If you don't pass the pilots exam, you don't get to fly. So why let people sell who don't have the right answers and are not even aware of what they don't know? They are wasting thousands of dollars of time and risking possible good client relationships when they don't know what the need to know and fall into that category so aptly referred to as "loose cannons". Doug Green, Editor and Publisher of Telecom Reseller News, the leading channel partner as well as enterprise publication said it best, "you can't sell what you don't know." So don't waste any money or worse, irreplaceable time, on people who don't know or what they clearly should know. Second, create and build tools to educate and inform customers instead of waiting for internal execs and channel partners to help educate the client for you. In other words, build tools that customers can "sell themselves" on your products. The days of traditional selling are over and there is a critical need to build compelling exciting tools that don't rely on the "hand waving" and "charm school" of the sales person. We know this works. We have built animated selling tutorials for channel partners that according to Mark Sharp, CEO of Vimenture "reduce the sales cycle by two weeks." These same tools can also increase your sales close rate percentage by a significant amount. You have just illustrated one of the more obvious problems no one ever wants to attack" noted Peter Meyer Executive Sales Advisor. He added, "There is an eternal gap between the hiring, training and firing. This repeats again and again forever. The key is determined and continuous training of the existing sales staff to continue on the upward revenue trend with, with new tools as those like TECHtionary has produced." This means you can sell more and sell it faster. The bottom-line for this program is - wasting money is one thing but to waste time is another. So, get going today. We can help. Email us, we can send tutorials that are proven to work.