Recovering Your Economy

This week, I'm giving a talk called "Economic Recovery: Growing Revenue and Share During a Recovering Yet Volatile Economy" to a group of NSI partners in Redmond, Wash. These tend to be the larger-sized Microsoft partners, but the message is applicable for any size partner organization.

About 18 months ago, while we were helping our clients create their 2009 budgets, we asked them to create their revenue and expense pro formas, reduce projected sales by 25 percent, and then redo their pro formas again. This exercise was designed to help the clients gain a perspective on what changes or cost reductions they might need to make if expectations weren't met. This helped everyone manage their business well during the past year.

2010 will be a different year.

A recent USA Today headline got it right: "Key To This Earnings Season: Sales." And the deck reads, "Investors want to see profit growth that's not from cost cuts."

This clearly states the objective for 2010: Be aggressive and focus on earning market share and building your customer base. Specifically, the message of my talk will be around creating a culture of success -- what I call "brilliant execution" at all levels of the organization -- and focusing on being aggressive in sales and marketing.

I'll also talk about focusing on the little things: putting up signage on positive messages, celebrating wins and providing positive reinforcement every day. Why is this important? Sales teams are mentally tired, support and technical people are stressed out, and as the business climate improves, retention and development will be important. People might consider moving to other organizations where the internal climate seems more employee-friendly.

The other reason sales leaders must be more aggressive is that many of your competitors are still "sitting back," waiting for the economy to bring them out of the sales slump and recession they've experienced. My recommendation? Be proactive, not reactive.

Final note: If you're going to be in Charlotte, N.C. soon, join me Feb. 16 for the Sales Leadership Summit. Register by Feb. 5 and save! Sign up here.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on February 02, 20100 comments

Did You Exceed January's Sales Numbers?

If you think you did great in January, or that there's no more work to do, ask yourself: "What else could I have done? Why didn't I exceed my sales? Did I have enough top talent in place?" While short-term success is critical and must be your focus, a larger lesson needs to be considered.

In coaching our clients, we're more interested in looking at September's sales goals than January's. If your revenue curve for 2010 ramps up during the second half of the year, then you must actively recruit and hire now to ensure you have the necessary salespeople in place to achieve your objectives. Many sales leaders get caught in the trap of having to achieve increased levels of sales dollars with either not enough salespeople on the team or with increased expectations for the existing sales team's productivity levels (which might be below-par to begin with).

Sales management training will tell you to plan on unexpected sales force attrition. If, as a sales leader, you have set sales standards for your sales team, there may be "planned" reductions by way of you letting go of underperforming sales representatives. If it takes you 90 days to recruit a top performer and 90 to 120 days for those individuals to contribute at acceptable or quota levels, your organization could be short of overall quota attainment, putting the sales leader behind on a year-to-date basis.

Specifically, if you begin recruiting in February, using the hypothetical timeline above means an April hire and July/August sales production (consider summer month seasonality). Of course, this all assumes that you hire a top performer, that you train them properly, and that they become successful.

Though recruiting is 20 percent of the job focus for sales managers, it should be a consistent focus. Why? The top performers may not be looking when you believe you have opportunities open. Consider actively promoting your organization every 60 days using a variety of media.

For more guidance on this, consider joining other sales leaders at our one-and-a-half-day training workshop. Listen, learn and actively participate in our Sales Leadership Summit, which takes place Feb. 16 and 17 at Charlotte, N.C. Get all the details here.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on January 25, 20100 comments

Building a High-Performance Sales Culture

The role of the sales leader at this time of year is to focus on building or maintaining a great atmosphere of success, dedication and fun. All the marketing plans should be in place, sales systems completed and training planned for the next 90 days.

Here are several actions you should focus on:

1. A shared sense of mission or purpose. Your overall sales goals and "theme" for the year must be reinforced each day, each week, and in every way. Do you have your 2010 theme on posters in your sales areas? Does each salesperson have their "goalboards" hung in their cubes? (These are pictorials of where salespersons rank according to their sales/activity goals, and pictures of your annual sales trip or other goals they have based on their 2010 salesperson business plans.)
   
   
2. Clear and attainable goals. Everyone needs a quota, but high-performance sales teams have "stretch goals," as well. These must be realistic. Are your compensation plans or sales contests designed to reinforce the stretch goals?
   
   
3. Frequent objective feedback. A sales leader must find the time to coach, mentor and provide insights to keep their sales team focused and constantly improving. Reinforce the positive actions as well as the need to fix the areas that need to be improved. A great phrase you should always use: "If you had an opportunity to make that sale call over again, what, if anything, would you do differently?"
   
   
4. Positive rewards for appropriate performance. Do you have a first-quarter sales contest to start the year off properly? Having a yearly sales incentive trip is a must. Now is the time to design your second-quarter contest to build sales activity and required pipeline to ensure your summer will be successful.
   
   
5. Timely support and help when requested or needed. Sales leaders gain respect when they provide the atmosphere of "being there" for their team. When a salesperson walks into your office or calls you on the phone, your first response should be, "How can I help you?"

Remember, when you walk into your office each day, your body language, your attitude and your actions will be transferred to your team.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on January 19, 20101 comments

New Year, New Goals

Every holiday for the past 20-plus years, I have sat down with my wife to discuss the previous year and think about the upcoming year. We consider what we've accomplished and what we want to accomplish during the coming 12 months. Certainly, we've experienced difficult economic swings along with the positives. And always, there are new challenges.

We've saved these as written documents, and whenever I reread our goals from years past, it makes me appreciate life more fully. However, the most important thing to learn from this exercise is that there are no unrealistic goals -- only unrealistic timeframes.

As Acumen Management moves into our 13th year (yikes!), I thought I might share the various categories we use to focus ourselves. It's my hope that if you haven't created a formal one-, five- or 15-year plan, you'll consider it. Start with 2010 and build from there.

• Social: What will we do to have a full social life with friends? Dinner parties?
• Personal: What do I want to do this year? Travel?
• Physical: How will we continue to be healthy? Run two miles a day?
• Professional: What are my career goals? Gain a promotion?
• Financial: What are my objectives as they relate to money? Pay off the mortgage?
• House: What are our major projects? Build a backyard patio?
• Societal: How will I give back to society to make it a better place? Work in food banks?

One of the major issues to not only make the objectives or achievements about just you. In one of my keynotes, "The Passion of Impact," I address the need for personal and professional life balance. The real success lies in the ability to positively impact the lives of others, and how YOUR life will grow because of the feeling you get from helping someone else. Make this a better place or help someone make their lives more livable. Make that a part of your yearly plan, as well.

All the best in 2010, and think positive!

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on January 06, 20100 comments

Year-End Sales Strategy

It's Dec. 14 as I write this, meaning there are only 17 days left to exceed your numbers.

What? Well, if you count Saturdays and Sundays, you can still work to ensure that your year-end numbers will be hit. Maximizing time, increasing sales strategy sessions and focusing on every opportunity can make the difference at this time of year.

I can recall one year, on Dec. 27, we'd been told that a PO had been approved...but we hadn't received it by fax or mail. We called our contact who confirmed it was in purchasing and had been approved. We then asked him for the purchasing agent's name and phone number to follow up. When we called the purchasing agent, we learned that he was taking his year-end vacation time.

We were stuck, and our sales contact had neither the power nor idea to process the paper work.

In our strategy session, I brought up the movie "Watergate," which was about the investigative reporting of Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein after the Nixon presidential campaign break-in. The reporters had one contact, one phone number, but couldn't determine who that person worked for in the White House or what department they worked in.

What did they do? They started dialing all the telephone numbers that "surrounded" the number they had and began to put the pieces together. We decided to do the same thing.

After multiple attempts, eventually we found someone who actually answered their phone. After we explained our dilemma, the person we spoke to realized that she actually sat next to the purchasing agent we were looking for. She went over the person's desk, found the PO and faxed it to our salesperson. That PO was enough to put that salesperson over 100 percent for the year! 

It took some creativity, extra work and pushing the envelope, but the numbers count.

What are your stories of doing "extra' to win the business? Please share with all our readers by e-mailing me at [email protected]!

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. HQNHTN8GWN7Q

Posted by Ken Thoreson on December 14, 20090 comments

Sales Having a Problem? A Holiday Gift

During the last week, after many conversations with various organizations and spending some time monitoring my LinkedIn groups, I've noticed that many people are concerned with 2010. After talking to various individuals and probing some chat rooms, I realized that, as usual, the critical success factor that many are finding missing is consistent sales.

However, what was causing the lack of volume or profitability in sales was unique to each organization. I heard comments regarding marketing, lack of salespeople, no sales training, compensation plans not working, no leads, salespeople not working hard enough to win, etc. The list could go on.

What are your problems? Send me an e-mail at [email protected] with your No. 1 problem, and I'll attempt to give you a few quick ideas that might help. Think of it as a holiday gift to all my readers! HQNHTN8GWN7Q

Meanwhile, since there's no one answer for each situation, try to do some self-inspection and then go here. What's there? A list of almost 30 past columns I've written on a variety of sales and sales management topics.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on December 07, 20090 comments

90 Days to Better Sales: A Few Tips

At the recent Atlanta Sales Leadership Summit, we held breakout sessions titled "What Can We Do Now To Boost Sales in the Next 90 Days?" I've compiled the following list of tips from the various teams that participated. As always, the key is to "execute brilliantly."

If you have questions or have other ideas you'd like to add to the list, send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I'll compile them for next week's blog.

1. Conduct a thorough customer review and determine what you've sold to each client -- and what you have not sold to each client. Create a specific action plan to contact each customer with a special offering to show them your "other services or products." Make the plan easy (i.e., contact 10 a week). This is a great sales meeting idea.
   
   
2. Create a weekly Blitz Day program, either by telephone or by cold-calling teams in selected areas of your territory. Set up a contest for the most "hits" and make it fun.
   
   
3. Put more executives on every face-to-face sales call. Team selling will improve sales; more ears and eyes on every prospect leads to better strategy.
   
   
4. Increase sales skills and product knowledge. Schedule intense training to improve objection handling, selling your firm and closing skills. An increase level of product knowledge builds confidence.
   
   
5. Conduct a companywide contest with a focus on generating referrals. Create teams of sales, support and customer service personnel. The team with the highest number of referrals wins!
   
   
6. Create new marketing campaigns with "special packages" (year-ending or new year offerings). Work your vendors for "specials."
   
   
7. Create a 90-day sales contest with a weekend hotel/dinner package. This could be for the highest percentage of quota for the period, sales or new customers.
   
   
8. Host two executive forums with an "expert" to speak on business challenges (i.e., CPA, ROI on project management, business management ideas).
   
   
9. Increase your focus on securing your existing opportunities. Make sure you have a visible list (on a whiteboard, for example) of the top 10 sales opportunities and hold strategy sessions with multiple people discussing each opportunity.
   
   
10.  Create a Customer Appreciation Event at your office. Invite every customer, user and selected prospects to this event. Give tours and promote existing packages and new packages. (See No. 1.)

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on November 30, 20090 comments

Sour Cream Rises to the Top

In challenging times, average sales managers tend to get exposed -- they can't hide. So why is the average tenure of a sales leader less than 18 months?

The reason for failure is simply that many sales leaders don't fully understand what their real job is, or have never been trained effectively to lead, manage and motivate their organizations.

The Top Sales Experts Roundtable, which takes place this Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 11 a.m. Eastern time, will address the challenges of sales management with a prescriptive approach to defining the duties and responsibilities of the position. I and four of the top sales leadership coaches in the world will discuss what really separates top sales leaders from the sour cream.

I'll be joined by Dave Brock, founder and CEO of Partners in Excellence; Steven Rosen, founder and CEO of Star Results; Danita Bye, founder and CEO of Sales Growth Specialists; and Jonathan Farrington, chairman of The Sales Corporation.

So are you ready for 2010? The sales "holy grail" of sustainable increases in revenue and profits --achieved consistently, reliably and by design -- is achievable. Join us to discover how! Reserve your complimentary spot at the roundtable here.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on November 16, 20090 comments

Keeping Your Sales Team Fine-Tuned

In challenging times, the mental strength of our sales teams is key. Positive reinforcement and recognition are important factors in building a high-performance team. Sales compensation and great sales management are important, but now Top Sales Experts is making it easier for you.

Strategic sales management means learning to use tools, sales training and emotion to build energy into their sales organization. This easy-to-use program can do it for you. As a member of this worldwide group, I wanted to share this unique opportunity -- and it's free!

P.S.: There is no deadline for entries each month; all nominations received are carried forward. 

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on November 09, 20090 comments

Top 40 Sales Management Actions for 2010

In the past few blogs, we've been covering various topics to prepare sales leaders for 2010. The strategic sales leader is already thinking of compensation, sales training, budgeting, and hiring and recruiting for next year.

To help our clients fully understand all of the components of job sales management, we've compiled a whitepaper describing the purpose of and the steps necessary to build a high-performance sales organization. Below is an excerpt of the document (to download the entire article, go here):

A Prescriptive Approach To Defining the Duties and Responsibilities

The ideal sales manager acts as a sales leader, a catalyst for change and continuous improvement, and a positive force within the entire organization. They understand their priorities and their team and have a vision for the future.

The purpose of this document is to define key actions that the sales manager (SM) must take to be effective, describe the purpose of each action and explain why it's important. Note that the actions are not placed in any order of priority.

Sales Achievement

• Purpose: The top objective of sales management is to drive sales, capture new revenue, and exceed monthly sales and margin objectives. The purpose of the action list below is to keep the objective of sales achievement as a constant focus.
  
  
  • Perform sales strategy development with each salesperson on Monday morning, at a minimum, and in a formal one-on-one meeting during the week.
    
    
    • This action is to ensure the salesperson is focused, has effective strategies in place and is working on the right opportunities.
      
      
  • The sales leader must use strategic tools and questioning techniques to ensure the prospects are qualified and the strategy is valid. This will also teach the salesperson to use the same tool set, how to think strategically and to work smarter.
    
    
  • Attend key sales calls early in the sales process and help close sales opportunities.
    
    
    • This action is to help the SM better understand the opportunity and the people involved; when the SM is involved at the end of the sales process, a relationship with the prospect is initiated.
      
      
    • The SM's role is important in establishing company credibility, if required; early visitations will help the SM be a better coach.
      
      
  • Review pipeline analysis and qualification to ensure adequate values exist.
    
    
    • This action is critical because the SM must be looking 90 days beyond the current month to make sure sales and marketing pipelines carry the necessary sales opportunities in units and dollars to meet goal...

And finally, as a parting thought, check out the comment reader Donald R. Hacker recently gave in response to this document:

In the fourth paragraph of your Sept. 28 blog entry, you summed up the attitude of #4 as, and I paraphrase, "telling your team(mates) that we can still win." Nicely said! Leaders lead with attitude, followed by action. Such values cannot be merely taught; they must be caught! There must be buy-in to the principle that you can fail your way to success if you persevere. Perseverance takes character and character is earned through results-driven action. Albert Einstein said, "Genius is 90 percent perspiration, 10 percent inspiration." In this vein, I have observed that those considered lucky tend to be those who also work hard, persevere and do not give up until they create a new opportunity.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on November 03, 20090 comments

Cleaning the Table: Using Your Resources for New Business

These past five days, I've had relatives visiting -- and it's been great! We enjoyed lots of great food, golf and the beginning of fall in East Tennessee. My sister-in-law is very successful in sales and we spent many moments discussing her career and mine, and talking about everything from cold calling to various sales management topics. Even though she's considered a "top performer" in her industry, she's still focused on net-new business development -- one reason she's still a top performer!

She knows I enjoy cooking and has heard my keynote on creating your own personal menu, "The Passion of Impact." She felt that cold calling was her most challenging ingredient. But the more we talked, the more we realized that cold calling wasn't her biggest challenge -- it was time management. Or, more specifically, blocking out time. Because she's so busy, we explored a resource for prospecting that she has been overlooking. 

Cultivating your existing clients for referrals or gaining access to targeted accounts via your current clients must be included in your sales plan. One idea I used to implement is scheduling, at a minimum, two calls a year to all my "old" clients to perform a quality-control check and see if they had other needs to service. But most importantly, I always asked, "Do you know anyone else we should be speaking with?" (After a few calls, they came to expect that question from me.) Schedule all of your clients into Outlook or whatever CRM tool you're using during the next few weeks and begin the process.

The other marketing activity we recommend is to schedule a "users conference" twice a year. These would include new product updates, client panels, industry or vendor teams, and a special speaker or program. One my clients does this and gets terrific results including not only "up-selling" existing clients, but inviting all of their existing prospects to the same event to let them be sold by their existing clients.

As sales mangers, our strategy is to focus our salespeople on closing every opportunity that is on the table. Tactically, that is correct. However, at this time of the year,   sales leadership must be focused on achieving the sales quotas for the first quarter of 2010. 

What are your ideas for cultivating your customers for more business? Comment below or send me an email at [email protected]. I'll collect your contributions and list them in the next blog.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted by Ken Thoreson on October 26, 20090 comments

Why Sales Certification Is Important in 2010

Last week, I received a call from a firm with 700 salespeople in a somewhat commodity market. The person I spoke to was in charge of the firm's sales training programs; we discussed a variety of programs we've created to develop sales certification programs for other sales training organizations. When I asked this person why he was considering the need for sales certification when most organizations are cutting back on sales training, he told me that in their tough industry, sales leadership felt that building a higher-quality sales team can separate the firm from the competition and add value to their sales offerings.

Adding sales value will be a critical success factor in 2010. This is true for organizations with five or fewer salespeople and certainly for those with more than 500.

With many clients, we simply work to install a three-week new-hire-on-board training program, and then build quarterly sales training programs that cover product/technical knowledge, sales skills, competition and company operations (CRM) industry awareness. These are designed to increase the professional value of the salesforce.

Sales certification takes this concept one step further. Sales certification requires a philosophical commitment from management to building a strong sales culture. It will result in more analytical sales data, less turnover, higher margins and long-term client relationships. A sales certification program requires sales team training, testing and validating that the training has been accepted and acted upon by the sales team.

This is the "inspect what you expect" approach we've written about before. We recommend to all our clients that twice a year (at minimum), each salesperson must be videotaped selling your company and your solutions and presenting a solutions recommendations or sales proposal. This not only allows sales management to access the skill levels of each salesperson, but it also builds a sales training library of the "best" sales training videos for each of the presentations.

Sales certification can also take it much further. In one situation, we hired professional actors to roleplay sales scenarios. Each salesperson had 30 minutes to read the sales scenario prior to walking into the sales situation in which the professional actors (a panel of three judges) evaluated the sales call. One note: The professional actor had a slightly different sales scenario. This forced the salesperson to react in real time -- just like a real sales call. Each sales call was videotaped and judged on a pass/fail basis. This pressure and need to perform added the edge to getting it right! We also did this in their account planning process each quarter.

The last piece of sales certification is a tie to sales compensation. As each phase of certification level is achieved -- you may have three to five levels of certification -- higher levels of compensation can be paid. We like to recommend a quarterly percentage bonus if 100 percent of QTD quota is achieved.

2010 won't be an easy year. The economy will still be fighting back, there will be worries of inflation and devaluing of the U.S. dollar, unemployment will still be high, and terrorist threats will still exist. Creating teamwork among quality salespeople will the way to ensure you sell your way out of the recession. In fact -- and this is our message for 2010 -- successful companies will have to create the policies, strategies and people to create their own opportunities and sell, sell, sell. Taking orders is a lost strategy. Sales leadership must set the discipline, accountability and control within their sales organizations to separate themselves from their competition with sales certification.

Ken Thoreson, president of Acumen Management Group Ltd., "operationalizes" sales management systems and processes that pull revenue out of the doldrums into the fresh zone. During the past 12 years, our consulting, advisory and platform services have illuminated, motivated and rejuvenated the sales efforts for partners throughout North America. Move up and move ahead! Acumen Management provides keynotes, consulting services and products designed to improve business performance. 3f4qb8v9ge

Posted on October 19, 20091 comments