Sales Webinar | Your 2014 Plan - Close This Performance Gap
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Sales managers are the linch-pin of the sales organization. When sales management fails, sales fails. The TAS Group's Matt Close, EVP Sales, shines the light on the challenges facing front line sales managers, what that's costing sales organizations, and the insights this critical role needs to optimize Sales Performance Management. Your 2014 Plan hinges on getting this right.
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Sales Webinar | Your 2014 Plan - Close This Performance Gap
- 1. Your 2014 Plan: Close This Performance Gap Matt Close, EVP Sales Maureen Blandford, VP Marketing
- 3. Matt Close Executive Vice President Sales Maureen Blandford Vice President Marketing
- 4. Sales Managers Are Under Massive Time Pressure Travel Plan Territories Close Deals Sales Forecast Manage Pipeline Report to HQ Read Reports CRM Compliance Sales Coaching
- 5. Sales Managers Are Under Massive Time Pressure Travel Plan Territories How vulnerable is your sales performance? Close Deals You can’t manage what you can’t see. Sales Forecast Manage Pipeline Report to HQ Read Reports CRM Compliance Sales Coaching
- 6. POLL How confident are you in your 2014 Plan: Travel Plan Territories Close Deals •We know it’s solid and we’re confident. • We feel pretty good about it. Not completely confident. • What 2014 plan? Sales Forecast Manage Pipeline Report to HQ Read Reports CRM Compliance Sales Coaching
- 7. How do you reduce sales performance risk? Use of Analytics 10x Top Performers Low Performers Sales Analytics Top performers are 10x more likely to use analytics1 Sales Productivity +88% Coaching No Coaching Coaching Coaching can improve sales productivity by 88%2 Source: 1 IBM/MIT; 2 SEC/CEB
- 8. Top Performers Use Analytics 5x More Than Low Performers For Sales & Marketing The Ratio Is 10x Tendency to apply Tendency to apply Intuition Analytics Financial Management & Budgeting 22 Operations & Production Strategy & Business Development Top Performers Sales & Marketing 10:1 Low Performers Customer Service 1.1 Low Performer Average -2 0 Customer Experience Management 0 1 2 3 4 5 76 5.4 Top Performer Average 98 10 11 Application of Analytics Score: 1 Indicates equally likely to apply Intuition and Analytics Source: Analytics: The New Path to Value, a joint MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM Institute for Business Value Study 12 13
- 9. It takes 68% longer to Lose a sale than to Win WINNING SALES CYCLE +68% LOSING SALES CYCLE 106 All Deals 178 137 $250k+ 212 111 $100k - $250k 197 Lost 98 $50k - $100k Won 160 <$50k 93 141 0 50 100 150 200 250 Duration of Won & Lost Sales Cycles in Days Source: Dealmaker Index Study You can gain deep insight from smart sales analytics
- 10. POLL Win/Loss Rate: Travel Plan Territories Close Deals • Our win rate is already Excellent. • Our win rate is OK … it could be better. • We’d like to spend less time on losing deals. to HQ Sales Forecast Manage Pipeline Report Read Reports CRM Compliance Sales Coaching
- 11. But Most Analytics Projects Fail Project Complete? No 55% Yes 45% 55% of Analytics Projects Never Finish Almost 100% Run Over Budget Source: Infochimps / CSC 2013
- 12. It doesn’t have to be that way … Project Complete? No 55% Yes 45% How to Succeed Fix the Scope $ Add Business Context 55% of Analytics Projects Never Finish Almost 100% Run Over Budget Embed Expertise
- 13. 10 Elements for Great Sales Analytics Start With Questions Apply to Business Outcomes Embed in Daily Processes Goal Related Sales Domain Specific Visualize Results Available to Everyone Integrates With CRM Identify Insights Mobile & Cloud
- 14. Data Visualization is Critical
- 15. POLL Coaching: Travel Plan Territories Close Deals • Coaching is important; it’s at the core of what we do. • Coaching is important; we’re just not that good at it. • We can’t get our sales managers to coach. Manage Pipeline Report to HQ • We just don’t get Sales Forecast the coaching thing. Read Reports CRM Compliance Sales Coaching
- 16. Sales Coaching Improves Performance Coaching Improves Productivity1 +88% Coaching Increases Customer Loyalty2 +56% Source: 1 SEC/CEB, 2 Gallup
- 17. The Sales Coaching Paradox Resource Sales Support Initiatives Sales Coaching Importance Sales Coaching is recognized as Important, but Resource is Not applied Source: Sales Management Association
- 18. Sales Managers Don’t Coach More than 5% of Time Coaching? Yes 27% No 73% 73% of Managers Spend <5% of their time Coaching Source: Sales Management Association
- 19. Why Sales Managers Don’t Coach 100% 50% 47% 23% 0% Don’t Value Coaching 26% 2% Not Enough Don’t Know Sales Reps Time How/What to Coach Don’t Ask 2% Other Source: Sales Management Association
- 20. Why Sales Managers Don’t Coach 100% 50% How can smart automation empower the sales manager? 47% 23% 0% Don’t Value Coaching 26% 2% Not Enough Don’t Know Sales Reps Time How/What to Coach Don’t Ask 2% Other Source: Sales Management Association
- 21. 10 Rules for Great Sales Coaching Collaborative Regular Cadence Elicit Critical Thinking Praise Good Insight Consistent Framework Be Objective & Curious Adopt Buyer’s Perspective Don’t Take Over Look for Evidence Document Actions
- 22. But … What if you could do it right …? Use of Analytics 10x Top Performers Low Performers Sales Analytics Top performers are 10x more likely to use analytics1 Sales Productivity +88% Coaching No Coaching Coaching Coaching can improve sales productivity by 88%2 Source: 1 IBM/MIT; 2 SEC/CEB
- 23. Analyze. Visualize. Coach. How vulnerable is your sales performance? You can’t manage what you can’t see. Get expert sales insights using smart sales analytics. Built-in sales expertise and automated coachingdrives focus to improve sales performance.
- 24. Analyze. Visualize. Coach. The problem is not information overload – the problem is a deficit in insight
- 26. Join Us for Upcoming Webinars January 7 : Maximizing Revenue from Your Big Accounts
- 27. www.thetasgroup.com US 866.570.3836 UK +44(0)1189 880 151 International +353(0) 1 6788 900 info@thetasgroup.com Twitter: @thetasgroup
- 28. Thank You
- 29. Your 2014 Plan: Close This Performance Gap Matt Close, EVP Sales Maureen Blandford, VP Marketing
Editor's Notes
- Maureen: Wow. Crazy time of year. How do any of us ever spare the time to figure out if you're getting the best out of your team? And what are the sales performances to that? Matt - you live in this space every day.Matt: Absolutely as a sales leader myself and in the unique position of what I do everyday – call on sales leaders to help them with their sales team’s success, I see this everyday. The pace and the demands only increase everyday. MB: We all can relate to the pressures facing sales managers, right? But, Matt, talk to us about what the material impacts are here. MC:Sales managers are key to the success of your plan…how they are able to understand their business, identify areas of strength and weakness and act upon that data are crucial. I was speaking with an SVP of sales the other day and he touched on an important issue, the problem isn’t that we can’t measure our business. The problem is that there is almost too much measurement…the key is knowing what is truly important to affect the performance of your sales team and ultimately your organization’s performance.When sale management fails to do this well, sales performance fails.But sales managers do not have enough time to spend on the business of managing their sales business.Bouncing from task to task, managing up, out and wide, the life of a sales manager can be quite difficult. Often remote from their sellers, and relying on weekly calls and reports from their CRM systems, these managers find it difficult to identify, interpret and influence the important factors that predict sales success or failure.
- MB: Sales managers can’t manage what they can’t see,MC:Right and sometimes, even if they can see the data, they don’t know how to find and interpret the most relevant metrics that influence future performance. They grapple to extract pertinent insights that tell them the absolute truth about their sales business – today, and into the future.
- MC: So – we’re asking about confidence in the plan. That doesn’t mean you think your number is a slam dunk, but it means you know you are addressing the right things So the question is, how do you what “the right things are???
- MB: So how do we reduce the risk in the plan? We know, according to a survey from IBM and MIT that analytics can be an effective way to improve sales performance. In fact Top Performing sales organization are 10 times more likely to be using analytics. MC: And the data supports investment in coaching is also compelling. According to CEB, coaching can improve sales productivity by 88%. If you know TAS, you know we’re all about coaching – so this isn’t a surprising stat for us. MB: But – isn’t the use of analytics interesting? So when you connect coaching with insights,the value of that discussion sky rockets…
- MC: Absolutely. Let’s look at this more closely.At organizations in every industry, in every part of the world, senior leaders wonder whether they are getting full value from the massive amounts of information they already have within their organizations. Questions about how to best achieve value from the data persist. Admittedly, we can get a little geeky about sales performance…but here is the bottom line…top performing sales & marketing organizations are 10 times more likely to be leveraging analytics than their low performing peers. These numbers are for the faint of heart…it is quite clear, analytics work…now, as a card carrying sales guy, I don’t always have the time to dig into all of the great data that systems serve up to me…
- Here is a great example of how the use of analytics data brought powerful insight to us in our business...MC: We have been working on optimizing and automating sales processes in our technology for over 8 years. As we applied our own analysis to this data, something slapped us in the head… Did you know that on average it take 68% longer to lose a deal that to win. Think about how much that costs - not just in deal pursuits – but also in the opportunity lost – when you are not chasing winning deals. Over that 8 years, We have analyzed millions of sales opportunities and this data shows the different length of time it takes to to win and lose a deal across different deal sizes. It is quite interesting…MB: So lets get a feel for where you all feel your organizations are performing in regards to win rate…
- <acknowledge poll>Debrief poll…interesting, I see that…MC: So how do you all KNOW that…is it gut feel? do you have a specific report? Have you personally gone and counted the days?Well, the data tells us that most of your companies are digging onto some kind of analytics project…
- MC: …but the dirty little secret is most analytics projects fail.In fact, according to a study by Infochimps, now part of CSC, most analytics projects fail. 55% don’t finish and almost 100% run over budget.MB: Help us understand what’s behind that. Specifically what’s the connection to sales performance gaps.
- MC: Yes, we do have a point of view on how to fix this for sales leadersIf a little is good, then a lot must be better…The most common reason for failure is inaccurate scope. People try to boil the ocean, and assume that more data is better. Unfortunately, that is not necessarily the case. Companies are making BIG bets on BIG data alone without any qualitative assessment that applies deep domain expertise. That has the potential to lead to BIG decisions being made with BIG confidence that is sadly misplaced. BIG Mistake.The message here is to focus on a narrow domain with a manageable data set. The second issue is lack of business context. Without the right business context it is hard to know what questions to ask – The third point is really an extension of the second. Expertise Matters: If you don't have business expertise, domain knowledge, experience and a ‘nose’ for what’s right then you can’t apply any human qualitative input – and that makes it hard to connect the dots.
- Transition out: Follow up questions how does : Ask question based upon pulling back to the importance for frontline sales managers.MB: So here’s how we at TAS connect those dots. This could be a 30 minute talk in itself, What are your the top 3 or 4?MC: I know it’s a shocker, but let me change the rules…I think I’ll group a few together for the top three groups…Matt will answer 3 or 4 groupings…
- MC:I, like most adults, am extremely visual. Stating the obvious – the data on the left is not visual – the infographic on the left is very visual. So the moral of the story is reports are bad, pictures are good…There is just so much Big data around that it is really important to be able to visualize what that it means to your business. And that needs to be easy and quick.visual, gives us something very clear an straight forward to coach to with their people…MB: Ah, so you bring up coaching, the other extremely important part of this conversation, before we dig in deeper, lets see how you all are incorporating coaching into you day today
- MB ; Let’s do a quick poll to get your views on coaching…MC: Debrief the poll and transition into the importance of coaching slide
- MC: SO – according to some heavy hitters, coaching makes a big difference to our bottom lines.According to SEC/CEB, Coaching can improve sales productivity by 88%1And according to Gallup when sales coaching is effectively deployed, customer loyalty increases by 56%.This is not surprising given that according to CEB, 53% of customers see the ‘Purchase Experience’ as the primary driver of customer loyalty.
- MB: so if it’s so important are companies spending resources on it?MC: you would think so…Sales Management Association conducted a study looking at issues that are “important to sales force success” and examined the resource that was applied to those initiatives. The issues reviewed included things like account planning, best practice sharing, sales training, sales technology, lead generation, team selling etc. Then they mapped these on the chart here. The quadrants on the right included initiatives that were deemed to be important, and the quadrants on top indicated those that received support good resource. Sales Coaching stands alone, as being recognized as being high on the importance scale but not getting the attention and resource it deserves. This is worrying – given that we know that sales productivity can be improved by 88% when coaching is implemented.MB: So how much time do sales managers spend coaching if it …so we all know that even if an organization doesn’t support from the top, the BEST managers still do things, so how much time do sales managers truly spend coaching
- MB: According to a separate Sales Management Association study, most sales managers are spending less than 5% of their time on sales coaching.Perhaps given all of the time they are spending on all of the other activity we saw earlier, perhaps this is not a surprise. But it is still worrisome. So, making the link here if you haven’t already…coaching drives productivity by 88%, if your managers aren’t coaching, this is a big performance gapMC: Maureen you have spent the majority of your career working with sales leaders on how to empower their sales people, what are the key issues sales leaders run into that keep them from coaching?
- MB: What I have seen and it is expanded upon by a study by Sales Management association who looked at why Sales Managers don’t coach.The knowledge gap is clearly an issue. They don’t necessarily understand the value, and they certainly don’t have the knowledge to coach.So:
- We believe that technology and smart automation have an effective role to play. And we will discuss that later, but great coaching is where it’s at.
- MC: Maureen as you know, Donal Daly – CEO of The TAS Group recently wrote a blog post outlining these 10 elements of Great Sales Coaching – for those of you who want to dig deeper into this subject, please reach out to us and we’d love to share the link.You know, I have had the opportunity to work for some (Donal has a blog post we can point to here rather than going through them all.) I have had the opportunity to work for some GREAT coaches…couple three things they did amazingly well…Very Collaborative in their approach – sometimes they lead the conversation but ultimately you felt like you ended up feeling like you coached yourself and it was only later you realized the value of the conversation. In other words, they did not take over the dialogue.There was a regular cadence and consistent framework to the coaching conversation, so it was just how we did business.And I was always held accountable to the agreed upon outcomes of the conversation.
- MB: Bring it on home…But we know that there are ways to improve.As we started off today talking about how we are going to drive the confidence in our 2014 plans…it comes down to these two elements..We saw that top performing sales orgs are 10x more likely to be using analytics to drive their businesses.We have seen that coaching can drove up to an 88% increase in sales productivity.We also saw that analytics projects can be hard, and that raw data can be overwhelming for a frontline sales manager in the mix of all the things on their plates. It is now wonder that coaching can get pushed to the side.These marketplace issues have been our focus.Matt is now going to share with you our latest thinking to help for sales leaders close some performance gaps. Matt -
- Please use this positioning statement. Do not make invent new ways to position this. Consistency matters.