The products that have been launched recently sit in big buckets titled IOT, Cyber-Security, Managed Services, SD-WAN and of course UC (UCaaS, UCC, WCC).
Rich Tehrani has a nice read about AI and analytics transforming companies like Vodafone.
COLOTRAQ has a new IT Risk/Cyber-security Assessment and Planning Service. They even brought in some talent to delivery it in Victor Zamora.
MetTel launched a single SIM for IOT. One VAR I spoke with said that they are going to run with this to the end-user because it is a niche that is almost without competition.
Level3 consistently emails me about selling cyber-security, especially their DDoS Mitigation service.
EarthLink is still around? They launched a secure public Wi-Fi connections with Norton WiFi Privacy (basically VPN). Considering how often businesses use Starbucks, hotel, airport and other public wi-fi, this should be a no-brainer sale.
Panterra rolled out Streams, an ode to Slack, but integrated into a secure, encrypted full unified comms platform.
VZW has One Talk, one of the few mobile UC plays out there.
When TelePacific re-branded as TPx, the highlighted products were managed IT, security, UCaaS and SD-WAN.
Aryaka just rolled out a clientless SD-WAN: "SmartACCESS - the first-to-market SD-WAN for remote access, with built-in dynamic CDN." In the US, Content Delivery Networks are how a majority of users get their Netflix chill on.
Verizon announced that they are selling more MPLS due to SD-WAN. CenturyLink has said that SD-WAN is not a quick fix. So there is a lot of room for expertise and advising in these projects still.
AT&T says that enterprise clients want a hybrid solution to managed services. (Nothing new here). Some of the services will be outsourced to the likes of AT&T and some will remain in-house. That is the way it is for cloud as well - HYBRID, according to an Evolve IP survey. Private for mission-critical, Public (AWS, Azure, SaaS) for mass market stuff and VPS for DevOps. Pulling that together requires some expert help. Is that you?
All of these vendors are just waiting for Channel Partners to pickup the ball and run with it.
It will take more than the Twitter approach to launch. Twitter put there platform out there and waited to see what people would do with it. Years later, Twitter still has no idea what the business case or financial model is. Don't be Twitter!
It isn't about just throwing your toy into the yard so someone will stumble along to play with it.
We want to be spoon fed who IS buying it; why are they buying it; etc. (As I have written about ad nauseum.) It is all about the Stories! Ignoring this means that we will leave that toy alone on the ground over there.
I understand that channel partners have to innovate, change, transition, etc.
With network revenues steadily declining and telecom being a broken mess, partners spend all day selling bandwidth at lower rates - and lower commissions - and then having to navigate the many layers of Dante's Hell that is a carrier today to get it installed (and then fixed - yes I am talking to you ACC Business and GTT!)
In the midst of this mess, on-going consolidation and the accompanying musical chairs is making a partner's job harder, not easier.
Much of these products require new knowledge and some training. That is not time that is always available to partners. I know, Go Make Some Time before you become Extinct. You see, we'll have time when we are extinct.
Besides compelling stories, buyer profiles and the WHY, we will also need new sales skills. Selling dial-tone or network is replacement. Selling Cyber-Security or AI requires a different sales approach.
MSPs understand how to sell managed IT but some VARs do not. (Hence why they are still VARs!)
While many of these products allow a Partner to enter a green field with little competition, maybe the business model for the partner has to be demonstrated as well.
And maybe instead of launching more services, you figure out how to deliver on the ones you have. If you can't deliver the easy stuff (Network), I will never give you a shot at the complex!
Just some food for thought while you wait on the Channel.
]]>Someone I met in Vegas was a laid off CM who was discussing how exciting it was to launch her partner business. I hadn't heard from her and just checked on LinkedIn. She is back in the W-2 world of being a carrier channel manager.
Over the years I have met a handful of CMs who had been doing Agent business on the side to build up enough MRC (monthly recurring commissions) to make an easy slide over to the independent side.
There are a couple of executives to made the leap into master agencies by bring a deal in their back pocket big enough to start them off.
It takes a while to find a prospect, ink the deal, get it installed and then get paid. Number porting for anything voice and fiber installation for anything network can push out delivery dates. The other problem is that if you sell a 100MB pipe $995, after waiting 120 days for install and turn up, you get that commission check of $150. That isn't going to go far. You need to be selling deals every week. Not dabbling in it looking for a whale.
So while I understand the side hustle on being a partner, I don't know how anyone can look at it and call it easy.
An Agent is often described as a lifestyle business, too. Sure there is flexibility and monthly recurring commissions help, but you only get to eat what you kill. Time off comes with an opportunity cost.
That lack of a guaranteed check accompanied by those luxurious benefits are usually the deterrent to a switch from CM to partner.
]]>Since most product markets are flat (think broadband, cellular, voice, TV), the race is on to take customers away. Without a better mouse trap, it is all about price.
In an industry (ours), where technology is painted as the product and we mainly sell replacement products (SIP Trunks for POTS and PRI, Ethernet for T1, 4G for DSL), the price compression happens quickly. This means less commission and less income for the partners (agents).
Despite this dilemma and the revenue decline it has caused carriers that has resulted in industry consolidation, carriers have not done enough Product Market/Fit testing. Once again they go wide instead of deep. (At least EarthLink went deep into Retail.)
Money is only left in verticals and specialization. HIPAA and other compliance allow for a discussion about business needs, not cost savings. Talking about business needs, outcomes, and pain points are how you move away from the RFP process.
Selling into verticals means that you can speak their language; bring best practices (or at least anecdotes); and word of mouth is louder in a silo.
This is just part one of several to come on how partners can make more margin.
]]>In the SpiceWorks IT Buyer guide, "IT pros at small companies are often both the business and IT decision makers." And no one reads your brochures. Interesting that IT buyers don't trust social media.
A CompTIA SMB study "identified the "sweet spot" of the SMB market to be companies with 10 to 99 employees. Those companies represent a 20% slice of the overall market. But it's a big slice in terms of sheer numbers: 1.8 million businesses fit the sweet spot description."
Another interesting point from CompTIA's study: "CompTIA breaks down the SMB market into three subcategories, the largest of which is "budget conscious" companies that represent 78% of the estimated nine million U.S. small businesses. Herbert said much of what that segment spends on IT boils down to break/fix services and other items such as web design."
"Healthcare IT professionals believe their data is safer in the cloud than on premises according to a survey released by Evolve IP." [source] They mean private cloud though. "Other key results of the survey showed that, on average, healthcare organizations have between two and three services (2.75 average) in the cloud." If you want to sell to healthcare, UCaaS, data backup and retrieval and hosted email (Exchange, Office365, whatever).
Bonus material from my friend at MOJO Marketing, whose CEO spoke at MSP World: Anatomy of a Wildly Successful Digital Marketing Campaign.
]]>That is a lot of noise. That is a lot of email begging for attention.
We have a sales problem. Cold calling, cold emailing, spam, robo-dialing, call centers, direct mail, pop-ups, etc. have created an audience that has gotten really good at ignoring people.
Buyers complete more than half the sales process before talking to a salesperson. Why? Because no one wants to talk to a salesperson. No one wants to be added to the list. No one wants to be sold, but they want to buy. And for non-logical reasons.
All these vendors looking to the channel for sales. But are channel partners looking for new vendors? Not really. Unless your product is in demand. And most aren't.
Not only that most companies do ZERO marketing. No branding. No PR. No anything. This not only doesn't help demand, it stifles lead generation and even hampers building trust, the number one requirement for sales.
People ask friends on social networks for recommendations. They aren't looking in the yellow pages. They aren't even Googling it. They don't see billboards, because they are watching their phones instead! They don't get newspapers. News now comes on the mobile or as a trend on a social network or in a social media feed. That has turned it all around. It makes everyone a Publisher; everyone is a media company. (Seth Godin said that a few years ago!)
So the vendors will turn to more master agencies, who quite frankly have too many vendors also. The portfolios if printed would be a Sears catalog or a copy of War and Peace!! That doesn't solve the Noise-Attention-Demand problem either!
Despite what YOU want or need quota or revenue wise, not everyone will want to offer your product. There has to be some alignment. Either they already sell something similar or the customer base is your target market. Unfortunately, no one wants to identify a small target market. It has to be 1-1000 or Everyone! Or Wall Street and VCs will not give you more money.
It is important to note that most channels supply demand with sales activities, BUT THEY DO NOT DRIVE DEMAND! They do not create demand in the buyers. That is supposed to be done by the vendors like IBM, HP, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon Wireless, AT&T.
These named vendors are some of the biggest spenders on advertising. Effective is a different story. Branding or awareness campaigns are not lead generation.
The problem is all Marketing.
Peter Drucker said "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only two-basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." Later he added, "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself... The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous."
Cable broadband did that. Microsoft a few times. Apple. Cisco for a little while. Now, who does that?
The Product-Market Fit is ignored. The Customer isn't even included in any of the product launch. It's like, "Well, there are similar products out there, so we need one." Whether or not there is a customer for that product. Any innovation added? Not a new feature but actual innovation? Probably not.
When Amazon launched Chime, the response was OOOH! Then it was: "That's a crowded space." But Amazon will take friction out of some of the sales process. It will also eliminated some margin for many players in that space.
The companies in the price and spiff war, have failed in all areas of marketing. They have basically given up. I'm kind of tired of the Race to Zero.
Think about cellular phone plans. For most people, it is about good enough. Not the best. That is the problem VZW faces right now. The best just can't command the same premium anymore.
Think about Internet. Broadband is good enough. Except when it is down or congested. Except when your speeds or throughput suck. But for many people buying Internet for their business, it is good enough.
For most people, it is about good enough. They go with Cheaper because no one has explained the Value.
When the master agency has 24 VoIP/UC vendors, I dare anyone to explain the Value of one over the other. Or the specific difference in service offerings.
I already see it happening with SD-WAN. It is the MPLS replacement with broadband IP-VPN. We have been there and done that, but again price, because we don't know how to market.
And why do we choose to market the technology as the product???????
Even with security, where is the demand? Every enterprise needs it. Companies get hacked every day. But the cost benefit analysis says we will risk it. Not much demand.
The channel cannot manufacture demand. That isn't what they do. They sell to people who want to buy. And they sell them what the customer wants, not needs.
And quite frankly, especially in voice, the channel sells the cheapest.
Basically we are all in the insurance sales game now. Think about that.
And it is all the fault of the vendors. For NOT positioning better. For lack of Product-Market fit. For not branding, lousy stories, lack of marketing and then following all that up with having no floor on the pricing. It's a complete business disaster.
]]>They are jumping on the bandwagon for a number of reasons.
One is Consolidation. The new landscape of Ethernet is cable and ILEC. The CLECs are mostly all gone. You have to expand the catalog beyond just network operators and VoIP.
The other reason is price pressure. Pricing across all telecom products - mobile, bandwidth, Ethernet, VoIP - has been declining about 3-10% year over year, creating a problem for the operators and partners. When pricing craters, you have to sell more and more and more to maintain the same commission level. At some point, just selling network isn't going to work because you can't close enough deals or even fill a funnel fast enough.
When 1GB pricing is less than what 10MB pipes were just six years ago, think about how much you have to sell and how fast.
Even the current price war in VoIP/UC isn't helping. Because there isn't enough Demand for UC - the demand is for POTS replacement and dial-tone - the price per seat has dropped. It hovers just below $20 right now.
I understand that the customer wants the cheapest price - and it is easier to take the order when you find the lowest price - but you have also just lowered your commission.
Providers are starting to cut commission points when they lower the price. Partners and Channel Managers aren't happy. Well, then sell it at rack rate.
So carriers consolidation means fewer vendors and pricing compression means less overall commission. More vendors are needed. Luckily over 600+ vendors have entered the space in the last three years while more than one-quarter of the partner channel have moved on. Retirement, M&A, and business shift/pivot have resulted in a lot less sales partners at a time when there are so many more vendors to choose from.But to be realistic choosing a UC vendor among the 2000+ available is like picking Red Delicious apples at the grocery store. They all look the same. How many do you want to smell and test for firmness before you pick one?
The cloud computing piece, as we found out two weeks ago, is owned by Amazon. AWS and S3 are hosting about one-third of the web!!!! Rackspace, CenturyLink, Azure, Google Compute, IBM/Soft Layer and the others haven't really stepped up their marketing game (even in the wake of Amazon's outage.)
Businesses are moving to SAAS, IAAS and other computing environments. Partners are in a position to offer assistance to businesses in this regard. It is uncharted territory for many, but the business model has shifted to wallet share. If you want to survive (and thrive), it is about getting more wallet share from the customer. That means selling them email, Office365, VoIP, colocation, security and more on top of the network and bandwidth that makes up the typical sale.
We have seen a number of press releases in the last 4 months about SD-WAN - mainly about SD-WAN providers signing up with carriers and with master agencies. SD-WAN the new UCaaS!!! This technology could be the next big thing, but they said the same think about IP Centrex (VoIP) over 15 years ago and about WebRTC.
Our biggest problem: We push Product. That's right. We are a bunch of Product Pushers. We would make ideal drug dealers because we don't create demand, we just push a product on someone who wants it.
We don't sell Solutions. We don't even offer Solutions. The vendors don't offer solutions either. They pimp products. It makes all of this really hard to sell.
]]>It is all about the Daily Activity. Your routines and habits determine your level of success. Tom Peters says, "Show me your calendar. I'll show you your priorities.
Sales Math is real. It takes X number of calls and Y number of emails plus Z number of other types of contacts (trade show, LinkedIn, lists) to fill a partner funnel. It takes Creative follow up to turn that into sales activity for channel managers. It takes J number of quotes to get K number of closed deals. Figure out those numbers and either increase traffic or increase conversion.
Sales is Helping. Period.
Most salespeople know what they have to do to be successful. Most won't put in that much effort. Sure sales is hard, but that's what you signed up for.
Sales Reluctance is real. Sales involves lots of rejection and losses. It is a huge bummer. Realize all of that is not them rejecting you. That fear of rejection is why people don't like to cold call.
]]>The same messaging to VSB, small and medium business just won't work, especially for UCaaS. The pain points are different. The buyer persona are different. As I have said before: when you say you sell into the 1-500 or 1-1000 employee space, that is several segments of the market.
Seth Godin has an excellent short post about Almost No One buys from you. There are 27 million businesses in the US. If you have 10K business customers, that is 0.037% of the market -- or almost no one.
So when you say "I sell to everyone", you are fooling yourself. You have customers. Profile them. Duplicate them. Engage them.
"We think we're designing and selling to everyone, but that doesn't match reality. It makes no sense at all to dumb down your best work to appeal to the longtime bystander ..." [or the critic or the shopper than doesn't want any of your features or who wants to pay as little as possible]
It isn't about a scatter shot approach to sales and marketing. It is about being an archer or a sniper.
Fiber network operators and fixed wireless providers know this better than other service providers because you can't sell what the fiber or tower don't touch. However, it is a lesson that CLECs never wanted to learn.
]]>The premise for the panel is as follows: "The way telecom, managed services, cloud, and hosting purchasing decisions are made is changing. Today, because IT influencers and decision makers are doing so much upfront research, often 70 percent or more of their decisions have already been made before you're even looped into the conversation. This can put you at a huge disadvantage if you haven't drawn their attention through market differentiation. Likewise, for those MSPs that have, this change in decision-making theory presents an opportunity to earn a seat at the table as a highly-differentiated trusted advisor. This session will detail how to ensure you get found early enough in the buyer's journey to matter, stand out from the crowd, command premium pricing, and attract world-class clients and talent."
As I have often written here, positioning, differentiation and USP are the key to value and standing out. We will discuss this during the session.
The IDEA Showcase Startup Event is Thursday at 4.
]]>In UC&C (and most software) "CIOs will be buying into the customer experience and not the technology," writes RingCentral's Sahil Rekhi."In 2017, CIOs will be buying communication solutions with a focus on experiences rather than technology; removing distinctions between communication, collaboration and productivity. Workplace communication and collaboration tools in the cloud will be made to create a unified and consistent experience across multiple devices, moving businesses away from a siloed approach to communications." Most ITSPs are not set up for the complete mobile experience yet, let alone a full UC&C CX (customer experience).
There are providers still trying to add analytics to call logs. Because we are still stuck on replacement instead of impact, outcome or experience. (One reason that Slack took off: UX!)
GOOD READS:
Fred Wilson's frank look at what will happen in 2017.
Start the new year with better sales meetings HERE.
PR trends in 2017. Content versus Attention versus Influencers = Viewers running away to the "Dark Social", "the amount of communication which occurs behind closed doors and messaging apps and private groups."
Sales Hacker's Top 10 Trends & Predictions Heading Into 2017.
This is a twofer: 5 lessons from the book LinkedIn's head of recruiting recommends to all new managers is a summary of Ryan Holiday's book.
Are you hiring? Good read on what to look for. I always say Attitude first, but this CEO says have a meal with the candidate and look for Gratitude and excitement.
MEDIA PAIN
Medium has laid off one-third its staff. Medium is a blogging/media platform founded by the same guy who founded Blogger, Odeo and twitter. He is having an issue with business models as the world of the Internet is based on free. No idea why he didn't try charging $9.99 per year per reader or some other nominal amount. It isn't a volume shop like Huffington or Buzzfeed. It has a targeted audience. But that is the problem: everyone uses the model that they see, not one designed specifically for their product.
As Seth Godin pointed out, "Newspapers won Pulitzer prizes for telling us things we didn't want to hear. We've responded by not buying newspapers any more." That is why we have click-bait, fake news, struggling newspapers and uneducated voters. It is all about the pageview, even in this content marketing world. Go figure!
RETAIL SUFFERS!
Sears is closing 150 more stores. Macys is closing stores. Retail had a bad holiday season - and the stock market is unforgiving. American Apparel is BK (and Amazon is trying to buy it.) Retail has to change. Big time. Also, malls have to re-think what they are to consumers.
Fast food is hiring robots and self-serve kiosks; retail is tanking. What will teenagers do for employment? What will many others do for employment in place of managers, buyers, maintenance, etc.
Ford is staying. Carrier is staying but they got tax breaks and other bonuses to do so. And they are going to automate those jobs out of existence. AI is replacing some fund managers. If you can't fix or code a robot, what will you do for a job?
]]>In any line of business - antibiotics, cardiac, anti-viral - it is rare that there is just one drug. So the drug companies fight to get on a formulary and stay there. The formulary is like making the provider list at a master agency or a VAD (like Tech Data). It is a win to be listed. Champagne is poured, but then the real work begins.
Reps then have to educate the doctors on their drug, its uses and effects. It is the doctors writing the orders, much like it is the agents and VARs presenting the quotes.
It is a lot of work to get your drug to the top of mind of a prescribing doctor. Lunch and Learns, leave behinds, studies and more are required for the doctor to trust the medicine. Then the doctor will get samples in order to test and measure.
It is no different for a carrier and the channel manager. The big difference is that for any drug there are clear indications for use.
"In medical terminology, an "indication" for a drug refers to the use of that drug for treating a particular disease. For example, diabetes is an indication for insulin. Another way of stating this relationship is that insulin is indicated for the treatment of diabetes." [medicinenet]
We don't have that in telecom. The indication of use is often vague, broad and unclear. It is probably why 2016 was the year where vendors had to start putting out case studies, which more often that not didn't make it any clearer.
The first thing in sales is to find the Pain. Then give the prognosis and provide a band-aid. Telecom doesn't really explain what pain they solve, what indicators should signal what service.
I was recently on a cloud webinar where the presenter listed every cloud service the company offered. Quickly but without ever clearly stating who would buy it and why.
DRAAS? Awesome another acronym!!! I'd rather be selling cyber-security/hacking insurance. I could sell more.
In 2017, try to talk about the pain and the indicators instead of the acronym, the fancy technology, the opportunity, the possible riches for selling some nebulous cloud service. We still have to go to the customer, explain this stuff, identify the pain, explain the solution. WE have to do that. So it would help if you would be a drug rep and provide the education, the sample, the studies. Thanks.
]]>RingCentral's channel head penned a post about the strategy to hit all the large master agencies. I see press releases every week of providers signing on with distributors, because that is what master agents are now. They even call themselves distributors. They are like a brokerage house of vendor contracts.
Agents used to get a reputation as commission shoppers, but in today's environment it is almost encouraged. The Agent Alliance was set up to help volume buy for master agents. To reduce risk by putting a lot deals through one good contract.
Masters pass through sales back and forth all the time. For example, Verizon deals typically go through one of the handful of platinum partners. Some of it has to do with quota and volume needed. Some of it has to do with the one-stop shop experience that they are portraying. Some of it has to do with programs like VZ, AT&T and Comcast needing experts to navigate the programs.
The masters look more and more like VADs such as AVNET or Tech Data. Large numbers of vendors are trying to get their SKUs in the catalog with the strategy of hope that this will be enough. That if we can just get in Jenne's catalog we will be sailing!
There is a big problem with that: sell through.
What happens after you ink the deal with the VAD?
These programs work great for a specific business. One type of business is specialty shop that offers a narrow niche of products, like Fireeye or Juniper (for people that don't want Cisco). Another is a vendor with demand created by the vendor in the buyers' realm, like IBM, Cisco, Comcast, Verizon or Microsoft.
In the case of Microsoft and IBM, software licensing for under 10K seats is a pain in the butt. Better to let a VAD handle that. It is what they are designed for. In the case of hardware like Cisco or APC, the VAD is like a warehouse and logistics partner. Microsoft and Cisco helped create demand by making a certification ecosystem that generated demand through experts who were married to that product line. (Very hard to duplicate.)
Now if you are just one of 20+ VoIP providers in a catalog, how does that help you? It is a commodity game at that rate. To a certain extent, you are hoping for name recognition. For example, if it is LSI, Panterra, RingCentral, 8x8, Vonage Business, Star2Star, Broadview, Broadvoice, ShoreTel, West, Evolve IP, Momentum and say an MSP reselling CoreDial underhis own label. How does a partner decide? Seriously. I would be curious how executives at the ITSPs think that decision tree goes.
Factors that may influence that decision include price, SPIFF, integration, feature set, the channel manager and past experience.
Most VARs have accounts with multiple VADs (TD, Ingram, D&H, Synnex), in case the gear is not in stock near the customer site. However, when moving to white-label or hosted solutions like email, backup, and even software licensing, VARs will be picking one vendor. They won't want to log into multiple systems to see the status of that client's email or license is. One portal. So now those huge numbers of VARs who would buy gear from you just shrank because they are picking a single source for hosting.
Agents don't want to become familiar with 20 provider systems and platforms. They want far less. The more familiar you are with a service and the environment around that vendor (quoting, features, ordering, support), the easier it is to sell. Less unknowns means comfort, means trust. Trust is required for sales. Remember that list of VoIP Providers? Name recognition - the brand - can convey trust.
There is an expensive and time consuming process for sell through. DSCI and TelePacific have been going through that since the merger. National road tours, webinars, numerous master agent events, expos like NextGen Cloud and Channel Partners, promotions, SPIFFs - to tell the story, to get your name in front of the partners. It isn't ink and done. It is ink, then go push that rock up the hill every single day! Hustlin' as Gary Vee says.
The other factor is sales friction. Personally, I never even consider selling cable because waiting 15 days for a site survey is total garbage, especially when the direct side gets it done in three days. There are carriers I won't work with because I have in the past and got burned. (I am not alone here.) The easier you are to do business with the better.
It is getting harder and harder to sell through channel because of a number of factors including industry consolidation; musical chairs; too many vendors not enough partners; Noise and Attention; the cost of sales acquisition during both a price war and a SPIFF war; and buyer budget constraints.
The noise of UCaas, SD-WAN, DDoS Mitigation and cyber-security are getting louder every day. To the point that it is just noise, not a resonating message, but more like when that car pulls up to you at the traffic light with the music blaring drowning out the music in your own car. So you roll up the windows to drown it out. Yeah, that's where we are.
]]>Usually the only KPI we look at is Quota.
Yet we know that daily activity is the most important factor for success. That includes number of contacts per day via email, social media, phone calls.
The speed at which we follow up from an inbound lead is directly related to success. "Since Harvard's study on response outcomes showed that sales reps that contacted leads within 1 hour were seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker, other studies have affirmed the findings." [source: salesforce]
Are you tracking new logos (new accounts) that are opened? Yes, we need to retain and grow current accounts (and that is another KPI to measure). In some sales organizations, different reps have different responsibilities: like retention and account growth would be different than a hunter looking for new business (new logos, new accounts).
Sales math helps to break down the daily activity needed. If it takes 1000 dials to contact 30 people, you need to make 1000 dials a month. If it takes 30 contacts to get 3 sales, you understand what the numbers mean.
"A new study from AG Salesworks & BridgeGroup estimates that reps should be generating roughly 32 opportunities per 1,000 outbound calls. Keep in mind that those numbers were for outbound prospecting, a term that tends to include many calls that are relatively cold. So keep an eye on those call logs." [source: salesforce]
"Persistence pays off. A National Sales Executive Association survey found that 48% of sales agents never follow up with leads a second time. This is significant since 10% of sales are closed on the fourth contact, and 80% are made on the fifth to 12th contact." Can you track follow up?
How about Contacts added to a drop campaign or monthly newsletter?
Of course, we have Sales Target, Closing ratios, quota, average sales size, and sales cycle to measure as well. We can also measure by product. What are they selling and to who, which will provide data for follow up contacts. For example, a follow up email can say that we have sold to 310 banks and most of them have bought not just bandwidth but also our managed security product. This is food for thought for prospects plus productive follow up email content.
What you measure you can manage is what Peter Drucker said. If you are spending the money on Salesforce CRM, you might as well get the most of it.
]]>Four things he has been saying really strikes me lately:
"Too many people are playing checkers when the game is chess." I think about all the me-too channel strategy going on that is NOT producing the results for the money and effort spent. In fact, it looks like people are just going through the motions.
Think about all the musical chairs that have occurred this year. What do you think all that personnel switching means?
"People are chasing cash not Happiness." In telecom, the chase is on for cash, instead of outcomes. It is all about short term goals.
"The bigger your Ambition, the more Patience and Work you need to deploy it." So many people want quick results with minimal effort. Sales is a different game today. So very different. (Go back to quote #1: It isn't checkers anymore!)
It takes 120 days to build out a fiber circuit to a new building. It takes AT&T 60 days to upgrade an existing pipe. Yet you don't even want to give your Program that long! How long do you think it will take to plan, recruit, on-board, build trust and get a sale? If you said 90 days, I just triple jumped your king.
Hustle is required. The one lesson I am learning is that we know what we have to do to be successful, but we don't want to work that hard to get there.
]]>I have run into quite a few companies that have never hired a consultant before. I figure that they are used to hiring bodies and managing bodies. They manage the hours you work; not the outcome of the work.
They do hire vendors, for example, a PR firm or a softswitch. On the one hand, with the softswitch they know exactly what they are buying. With the PR firm, it is more intangible. Both are managed differently.
Salespeople ideally are managed by outcome, but not really. Many salespeople do not hit quota nor do the perform the necessary daily activities. So no, they are not managed by results. The managers are managing bodies and hours.
If you rent a car, you don't want to own it or maintain it. You want it to get you around safely, while you have it. If you want, you can rent a better, faster, more luxurious car, but all you are doing is contracting for transportation during the prescribed hours.
That is how some consulting works. The consultant comes in for a set number of days or hours, bangs out the presentation, does some Q&A, sets a strategy, crafts a killer message, plans a product launch, then the company takes over from there. They hired for a specific function, a bunch of knowledge or guidance. This is not unlike hiring a lawyer or going to the doctor.
Consultants bill by the project or by the hour. Billing by the project is fine if there aren't any snags. In web design, there is usually scope creep and changes, which sink many a web design project - both for the designer and the customer.
When hourly billing, buyers may look for the cheapest supplier. That is when you know that they are buying hours, not outcomes. It might also be that they don't know what to look for when hiring that talent or skill.
We are moving to a freelancer economy - 40% of the population is now part of the connection economy. Managers are going to have to adjust to hiring tasks, projects, output, activity - as opposed to hiring bodies.
In a management webinar I am presenting, I am working towards re-adjusting managers' thinking towards salespeople. CRM was supposed to make sales activities more transparent - or at least trackable. It has been 16 years since Salesforce took off - and sales departments are still fighting CRM! And managers are not using the functionality to manage the funnel and the team.
Jim Rohn, a business philosopher, said, "You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour." True, but you get managed by the hour, not the output. In a world of big data and analytics, we still manage like there is still a wall phone.
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