Rick is a Field Rep for a printing services company. For 6 months, he's been tracking the President of a target firm to get a meeting. He finally gets the appointment and is let into his office. The office is so impressively decorated that Rick admits to being pretty intimidated.

Remembering that early on in his selling career, Rick was taught how to build rapport by looking around the room for the fishing picture or golf trophy. So Rick glances around the office, sees a picture on the gentleman's desk and says "Wow, a photo of you and John Madden with your arms around each other. That's a fantastic photo! How did you get a picture with John Madden, of course a NFL great."

The President of the company glares back at him and says "That's not John Madden, that's my wife."

• Doing some research
  Think 2-3 minutes on LinkedIn, Google, etc.
  
  
• Being prepared
  Being ableto speak to shared connections and recent company news
   
• Demonstrating that I'm a seller who won't waste your time
  I'm prepared to speak plainly. Maybe we're a fit, maybe not. Here's what I think I know about you and your company. Let's get to a go/no-go on qualification quickly and directly.

It kills me that this company actually has a pretty good tool that is VERY close to my social calling methodology and yet this sales person called me without any indication that they even looked at my LinkedIn profile. Their tool analyzes LinkedIn profiles! Killer. I'm actually shocked and I've seen plenty of sales mistakes.

...
This call may be the killer illustration of the fact that tools and technology are useless if people don't use them effectively -or don't use them at all! Here we have a (supposed) leader in the Sales 2.0 space letting their sales people call prospects without even using their own tools. If this sales person had used one ounce of the information available to them through their own tool this would have been a warm call. They turned any easy call into a stone cold call.

Sales people are pressured to contact too many accounts, and they don't have the time to actually do it right, no matter what tools are available. The whole way "sales" is set up and the job sales people are expected to do is the same as it has always been, but the process has totally changed. Seems to be a disconnect there.

If your recruiting process works so effectively, and your assessments are so predictive, and they save so much time and money and consistently identify top performers, then why don't more companies use them?

If we didn't have well-developed (putting it mildly) egos, then I don't believe we'd be in Sales. Fortunately, a well-developed (ok, big) ego, can be necessary in business success. Unfortunately, when in management and responsible for a team's success, ego needs to be shelved in order to take advantage of tools, processes and perspectives from other sources and experts in these areas.

Eventually, we call have to embrace our own "ego-management". Think of a ship's Captain in distress refusing help from the Coast Guard (professionals, experts in their field). The end result could very well be a sinking ship. Seeking out and tapping into resources is the sign of strength, not weakness.
 

It's always baffled me how some Managers will continue to hire people who just aren't the best fit for the position and the culture. Similarly, I've seen managers have great and expensive sales meetings to get the team motivated, and once they're back in the office, everyone goes back to the same routine and same processes. A better ROI would be to invest in re-evaluating your sales process and ensuring that your messaging and tools are geared towards how your buyers want to buy and not how you want to sell.
 

Fear of criticism from Senior Management, your team, fear of change, and fear that the people you hired and the processes you've implemented just aren't going to work. Fear can make a Manager become distracted. Sales Managers, and people in general, are not all-knowing and can't be experts on everything, contrary to what we may think about ourselves.
 

Tenured entitlement is when a Rep has some special status (either based on past performance, longevity with the company or a relationship with management). They are separated from the roles & responsibilities of the rest of the team and not held to the same standards.
 

From the individual Sales Reps the overwhelming answer was:
"It's not fair! I'll never be #1 on this team."

I reached out to a Sales Manager colleague to discuss the problem. Here's what they shared:
"These people are very necessary, doing their thing, making their number, but they are working in a vacuum. The market is changing and our sales tactics need to change with it. I should be able to use these people as role models, instead, they are road blocks to change and difficult to manage."

• You start to hear the grumbling: How come we have to do this and Mr. Special doesn't?
• New hires are de-motivated. Even if they do become #1, Mr. Special will be standing next to them as they accept their award.
  
• And what about Mr. Special? He knows he's coasting and is probably bored to death! Even worse he is set apart from the rest of the team and instead of being admired, isn't liked.
   

You are my go to guy, but the reality is, I need more productivity out of the entire team. You included. What will it take for me to motivate you to get to that level again?

Chad: The term Sales 2.0 is getting a lot of buzz and attention - what is the buzz is all about and why is it important?

Trish: The buzz is all about the buzz....every once in a while the next great thing comes along and right now the next great thing is Sales 2.0. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a Sales 2.0 advocate but when you peel away all the layers, 2.0 is nothing more than the effective integration of people, process and technology.

Smart leaders have been thinking about this integration process for quite some time. What I like about the Sales 2.0 movement is that now it forces people to focus on the buyer as part of that equation. The challenge for sales and marketing executives has become "How do I effectively incorporate the needs of my buyer into my people, process and technology equation?"
 

Chad: I've spoken with many sales reps who think Sales 2.0 and social media are a waste of time - what is your response to them?

Trish: This is a tough one because I see both sides of the equation. If a business has not articulated a well thought out strategy then it says to the Sales Rep "Here, here's a bunch of other stuff that you need to think about and add to your to do list."

Let me break my answer into two segments starting with social media.

1. We believe, and we presented our thoughts on the topic at the Sales 2.0 Conference in Boston, that it is the responsibility of the corporation to figure out their social media strategy. Social media will deliver an ROI if and only if your buyer is participating in the medium. See our presentation Fishing Where Your Buyers Swim. You can tweet, Facebook. blog and text your ass off but if no one is listening...what does it get you? Figure out where your buyers go for information and then put all your eggs in only those social media basket/s.
   
   
2. As for Sales 2.0, for most organizations it means adding more technology to the mix. Before you do that, it is always good to ask "Have I maximized the technology I already have in place?" And, before you run out and buy the next bright shiny toy, have you thought through the process that will make you successful with it?
    

Chad: I believe inbound marketing can help sales reps create more value for their customers and prospects - how do you see inbound marketing influencing the sales profession?

Trish: Inbound marketing has come such a long way in the past two years. We are a Hubspot customer as well as a raving fans - so we have come a long way with inbound marketing ourselves. Smart Marketers really understand that the difference between dumping lists into a CRM and calling them "leads" and getting people who fit your Buyer Persona to raise their hands and engage with you is the key to success.

Great sales people have figured out how to marry the activity they get via inbound marketing with a well constructed outbound process. If your pipeline isn't robust, you can't sit and wait for buyers to self select. You need to go to them with a relevant story, arouse curiosity and then launch your sales process.
 

Chad: At The Bridge Group you track many different data points and trends - what are some of the most interesting trends you are seeing and what does it mean for sales professionals?

Trish: We have been around for 12 years and I have been in technology based inside sales for 30 so I can now say "Inside Sales is the wave of the future - finally!" We spent a lot of years building a business case for this mode of selling and sometimes it felt like the market would never see beyond "telemarketing". That has changed now and even the venture capital firms are requiring a sound Inside Sales strategy from their portfolio companies. Sales professionals must know how to leverage phone and web based selling to be successful in this day and age.
 

Chad: I read a lot of blogs on many subjects - what are some of your favorite blogs and why?

Trish: I read about 30 blogs a day so I will give you my top 3 - it goes without saying that yours is one as well!

Chad: How do you use social media at The Bridge Group and what kind of results have you seen?

Trish: We blog quite a bit and that drives a ton of traffic to our web site. We just closed one of our biggest deals ever and the company found us via our blog. I tweet and although I do not think my buyers are following me, it has certainly brought me fantastic relationships with vendors, analysts and other consultants.

Look, you can't put a price on having a great network and that is what social media brings you. It isn't about the activity it is about the relationships you develop as a result of that activity.
 

Chad: What is the one thing you recommend sales reps do or learn to stay competitive in an increasingly competitive marketplace?

Trish: Learn how to be relevant to your buyers. The days of vanilla selling are gone. You need to have an intimate knowledge of your buyer's day to day business life. If you make that kind of investment in learning, you will win!
 

Maybe sales reps don't operate by the same rules as all other humans. But I doubt it.  Would love to know for sure.  Anyone out there who's tried something other than a spiff to motivate sales?

Linda, last year Mike wrote about the Green Leads team-micro lending project. Can you share how that got started?

Linda: Mike and I are big believers in the "green" thing, hence the company name, and we were out on the west coast with our good friend Christopher Lochhead.  He introduced us to Kiva and we were addicted.  At first, we opened a personal account and started making micro loans, then we came up with the idea of sharing the idea with the company.  It started at one Friday night weekly meeting at the local pub.  Mike said "If you guys contribute to Kiva, we'll match it!".  A day later we had a Green Leads lending team.
 

How does the team participate in the Kiva lending process?

Linda: Every month the team donates from their commissions.  We also allocate SPIFFs that are specifically directed to Kiva.   We then send around some links to specific Kiva projects and people choose.  Nothing formal. Just "I like this guy, he's doing a fish farm" or something.
 

What benefits have you noticed?

Linda: Most good comes from good...someone said that.  In our case, we've seen some of the most sales-quota-dollar-pinching-sales guys donating the most and being the most compassionate.  It's great.  We have one guy who used to be a wooden toy craftsman before getting into technology.  He asked to fund a carpenter.

The great thing about it all is that it's perpetual.  As the folks we loan money to pay it back, we can use the money again to fund another project.  It's an annuity.  It's a Green Leads fund of good will.

Our 1% model is all about getting the most bang for the buck. We take just a fraction of salesforce.com's time, product, and equity, and give it to social-change organizations so they can amplify their impact.

Much has been written lately about lengthening sales cycles and the preference of prospects not to engage with sales reps until much later in the buying cycle. It is accepted as an idea whose time has come and heavily supported with a wealth of statistics.

Some of the highest profile minds in Marketing are responding to this trend with a renewed call to improve the development of online content, lead scoring and analytics; better understand the buyer persona and to continue to enhance automated marketing programs to provide more product/price/comparative/competitive and benefit/ROI information, for prospects to peruse at their leisure. There is a stampede onto the bandwagon to keep your sales reps away from prospects until they have basically made up their mind about what they want.

There is a misguided perception that the way to win the hearts and minds of your prospects is to leave them in peace to develop their own conclusions based on what they think they know about you.

Years from now, management will look back at this "Slap Yourself On the Top of Your Head", moment in time and ask, "What were we thinking?"
 

So, What Are You Thinking?

A prospect who would rather not engage with sales teams is nothing new, just a current example of why response rates for hard and soft offers have always been different.

Keeping Your Sales People Away From Your Prospects is a TERRIBLE Idea.

Why Are Sales Teams Not Screaming "Bloody Murder"?

Ironically, along with all the leading edge marketing thinking, the role of the Sales Rep has been pigeon-holed into an outdated and inconsistent cliché "The Closer". In a world where the buying cycle is stretching out past the foreseeable horizon, Sales Reps still live and die by the quarterly revenue goal. To meet these goals they can't afford the time to engage anyone who isn't ready to buy. That's half the reason that Sales Reps are happy to wait to engage.

The other half of the reason is that sales people put themselves on the line. It's not a pleasant thing to expose yourself over and over to the responses of people who don't want to talk to you. So, while it's not to the credit of sales people to be willing to sit back and wait for people who WANT to talk to them, it's understandable. It's not acceptable though and unless your sales people are willing to put themselves on the line to make a personal contact with your prospects, your revenue will suffer.

Current stats all point to a failure of many nurturing programs to translate raw leads into sales and the timing and distribution of new content seems to be the leading solution, but the removal of personal sales contact is probably at least partly to blame.

The role of a Sales Rep shouldn't be diminished, but it needs to evolve. The challenge facing sales teams is to approach your prospects with enough knowledge and skill to serve the needs of both the buyer and seller. The new Sales Rep is the voice of your marketing program and will subtly take ownership of the sales process by ensuring that your prospects are not cherry picking information, but actually absorbing the right information that will lead them to make the choice to buy from you.

PowerSteering provides Enterprise SaaS Project and Portfolio Management software to help large organizations manage IT, New Product Development, Six Sigma and other strategic initiatives. They were recently recognized by Forrester Research as a leader in IT and Business-Driven PPM.

Linda, I'm starting to be concerned about the view that Marketing is responsible for a prospect until they are scored as "sales ready".  My take is that it is a slippery slope that could result in lost deals.  If a prospect is in my nurture process and my competitor is fully engaged in their sales process, I think I am at a distinct disadvantage.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think it is fantastic that Marketing wants to assume more responsibility, but as a salesperson shouldn't I be the one to determine when a lead is "sales ready"?  As a salesperson, my job is to convert interest to opportunity.  Why delay that process?

Linda: Trish, I share your concern!  In fact, I think we're already at the point where some sales organizations feel they no longer have to do outbound prospecting.  Their skills in this area are starting to become rusty because they are not used to it.
 

So where do you draw the line?  What's your vision for a best practice and how does it work within your Sales organization?

Linda: Internally, we don't use the terms sales ready or marketing ready.  It just adds a level of complexity to the process that we don't need.  We agreed on basic qualification parameters and we adhere to those. And when necessary, we revisit those qualification criteria.

Our internal group handles most of the leads we generate, but we do assign the customer leads directly to the Sales Reps.  We sell to large global organizations so new contacts within those organizations represent potential expansion value to us.  Our Sales Reps maintains the relationship with our customer, so it makes sense for them to leverage that knowledge to penetrate new groups, divisions etc.

We also send them leads for companies where they are already engaged in a sales cycle to ensure continuity of follow up  We want the Sales Rep to have immediate access to any contact that may impact the ongoing sales process.  It also eliminates the potential for Inside Sales to be calling into an existing opportunity.

Our goal is to have one point of contact for every Account at the relationship level and we try to facilitate this through marketing automation tools like Salesforce.com and Marketo.
 

At this event, and throughout the industry, there is much discussion about Sales and Marketing working together to build out lead definitions, scoring and nurture programs.  Conceptually, most companies are in agreement with this strategy.  What have you seen in terms of implementation?

Linda: Well, that is a bone of contention with me!  You never want Sales and Marketing to be silos, but when push comes to shove, there is only so much time in the day for collaboration.  At some point you have to draw a line in the sand and move forward with a strategy which of course can and should evolve through ongoing feedback.  The pundits preach nirvana, but you have to make sure that this doesn't come at the cost of sales and end up becoming a distraction from selling.  Practically speaking, it's already challenging just to get basic sales follow up data documented adequately.

The reality is that in the current environment, it's harder to sell than ever before.  That is what has created a lot of this backlash with Marketing owning more of the process.  As Marketers, we are trying to lighten the load for Sales.  We are trying to give them the bandwidth they need to focus on closing business in the current quarter.

1. Look at your go-to-market strategy, look at it again then look at it one more time. 
   If you have implemented the same strategy in the last three companies you have worked for, you might want to take some time to lift up your head and check out what has changed.  LOTS has and you want to be sure you are pushing the edge of the envelope with your sales and marketing strategy.
     
2. Get creative with the roles and responsibilities of your team. 
   Just because you have 8 field or inside sales reps it doesn't mean they all have to do the same job.  Figure out what your market dictates and how you can best serve your buyers then build your implementation around their requirements.  Focus your resources where they will have the most impact.
    
3. Bond with marketing. Marketing is the new black. 
   There has never been a better time to be a Marketing Executive (oh wait, maybe in the days of the internet bubble when the fish jumped into the boat but other than that, now is good!) Marketing is smarter, more communicative and better armed with knowledge and technology than ever before.  Make your Marketing counterpart your "work husband/wife" and spend as much time with them as you do with your team.  It will pay off!
    
4. Pay attention to what is important and not just what is urgent. 
   You got the job because you are smart, know the market and can sell the heck out of the product.  Share your knowledge!  Don't be holed up in your office pushing metrics around for your next board meeting. Get out there and coach your team.  If you haven't walked in their shoes lately then you can't bitch about how fast they walk.
    
5. Invest in technology intelligently. 
   Technology will not solve your problems. Only a great process that is executed flawlessly can solve your problems. So before you buy that next shiny new thing make sure you have defined, documented and communicated your sales process.  Then after you have done that, make sure that the technology you already have is being used to its utmost. OK, now you can look at the shiny new thing.
    
6. Do a better job at hiring. 
   Is your hiring process impeccable?  Would you consider your hiring process a science or an art?  Do you keep hiring people that you "feel good" about and then get frustrated when they don't perform?  Hiring is the most important thing you can do. Where does it fall on your priority list?  Is it a burden or a joy?  The answer to that question tells the tale.
    
7. Invest in success. 
   OK so you hired great people.  Don't assume they can figure out how to be successful.  Every driver needs a roadmap when they begin a new trip.  Look at your existing sales tools and rate them on a scale of 1 to 10.  If you are a 7 or below - invest!  How much time is wasted with Reps creating their own tools today?
    
8. Ask and ye shall receive. Don't be afraid to ask your team what they need to be more productive.
   They know and they will tell you.  Don't pay attention to the one-offs, but do pay attention when you see consistency.  If they need tools, give them tools.  If they need training, get them training.  Don't be the roadblock to productivity - be the road to success!
    

1. What activities you should allocate time for and in what proportion?
2. What does the right prospect look like?

• How did the deal unfold, number of meetings, people involved, roadblocks, accelerators, language, bet right down to cellular level.
   
• Why did they engage with you in the first place, did they engage right away, or did you have to nurture them for a while; if yes then how long, what did they respond to, what were they hoping to accomplish, why did they not engage right away.