Selling B2B products or services doesn’t involve any form of magic, black or any other colour. But it does require discipline and focus. There needs to be a process everybody understands, including the prospect. There needs to be attention to detail, with no stone unturned in the search for clarity. There must be teamwork – individuals don’t win B2B on their own.

Whenever the selling team loses that discipline, attention to detail, and teamwork, the proposal is in trouble. The buying team will be out of control, and difficult to influence. When buying teams aren’t counter balanced by effective selling teams they are likely to make very bad decisions. For examples of how bad they can be, see what a mess government procurement of IT can deliver.

That’s the MBA version of the theory at least. In reality life is more complex than that.

Selling B2B can seem so difficult because keeping everybody and everything in synch with the strategy and the process is close to impossible. Sods law says if something can go wrong, it will, and in B2B it always does.

The person leading the sale – the team’s front man – must take ownership of and control over the sales plan, and everybody contributing to it. In most cases, that person is the sales rep, which is both a problem, and an opportunity.

Giving responsibility for managing the corporate effort to the sales rep will be a tough ask for most managers. Reps have many great strengths. Unfortunately discipline and attention to detail are rarely amongst them. Hunters are rarely farmers but in B2B the sales lead needs to be a bit of both. Add the unfortunate fact that sales people rarely have MBA’s, or even training in major account management, and its easy to see delegation at this level as an accident waiting to happen. Such is the problem.

On the other hand a sales rep equipped with the right tools, and coaching in how to use them, can be highly effective. The motivation is obvious, and the other skills in communication and conversation are already honed. Equipping the motivated expert in communication and conversation with tools to help with strategy and process offers the opportunity. When the sales rep gets it right, first time, every time, the rest of the team can get on with its job. Everybody can be confident they have the best chance of winning, or exiting the negotiation early when they don’t.

This paradox can only be resolved when those right tools and coaching are available to the sales rep, 24X7, anywhere, anytime. S/he has to be able to monitor the process, and get ideas about next steps, as events occur. S/he can’t be constrained by internal issues – working around the buyer road blocks is difficult enough. S/he can’t wait for anybody to return a call. S/he needs to make decisions on the run, responding to stuff as it happens.

If only those tools and coaching existed, life would be simpler for everybody.

That’s why we were knocked out when Occulus came within our radar. This online service checks all the boxes. With Occulus the best practice identified through of hundreds of research projects is delivered to sales reps and their managers over the Internet. They have the very best process management tools at their fingertips whenever they need them.

Not surprisingly we decided to work with Occulus, helping our readers and consulting clients understand what they can achieve with its support, and how to implement it.

If this sounds like the tool set you need to get to the next level of sales operations excellence check out the online demo.

Work through one of your current sales opportunities and compare your own evaluation and forward plan with the ones you’ll get from Occulus.

We’re here to help if you’d like some advice on implementation.

How do sales people sell to other sales guys? You might think they get very technical, preening themselves with demonstrations of their intellect. You might think they brag about past achievements and future opportunities.

In each case you’d be right, but mostly they sell using stories. Sometimes those stories are true and others they’re fiction. They’re always direct and simple. Mostly about wins, but also be about failures. And they are always counter intuitive, illustrating a point the audience wouldn’t expect.

Sales pro’s selling to other sales pro’s are like stand up comedians. They have to be funny, to engage the audience in the bar. They have to be insightful, to add value. At least one side has to ring true. There’s always a hero, and a villain. No story makes sense without the opposing forces.

They call these narratives War Stories – reports back from the front line about what works and what doesn’t.

Why is this? Why can’t a simple explanation of fact do the trick? Why aren’t sales people like accountants, or lawyers, or HR professionals, or administrators?

Because sales people are a cynical bunch. They have to be. Nobody gets told the truth less often than the sales guy.

Those War Stories tell the truth, even when they’re fiction.

Sales Managers, more than anybody else, tell War Stories. Often that’s the only way to get their point across, to CEOs, and accountants, and the guys they’re supposed to manage.

What are War Stories like? How do they entertain, and inform, and coach? How do they make the point, without lecturing?

Check out our new Sales Stories From The Front Line, and hopefully you’ll understand.  Anybody with experience of sales operations will find lots to relate to, and smile at.

And while you’re here check out our eBook Succeeding in Sales Management and our individual sales management coaching tutorials.

Is there anything which makes the sales manager happy – apart from the usual sex drugs and rock and roll, that is?

Sales Managers are mostly sharp tongued cynics with an attitude. They have to be. Few people get told the whole truth less often. They have to read between the lines and work with what they find there.

The sales manager spends his, or her, life between the rock of the CEO’s quarterly numbers and the hard place of customer contracts. The job is a constant battle between the certainty of the revenue target and the uncertainty of the sales forecast.

Weighted %age probabilities make sense on the front line, but mean nothing to analysts and bank managers. Typical metrics – like activity rates, win loss ratios, revenue per head, days sales outstanding, time to order, calls per order – give bean counters perfect ways to measure an imperfect world, and call the sales manager to account for the differences.

Solve that problem and you’ll make any sales manager happy. But how can you solve that problem?

By being right, first time, every time.

Recognise when deals are too tough to win, or not worth the cost of sale, and qualify out early. Don’t waste time, money, or other peoples trust, chasing rainbows.

Recognise which deals can be won and commit early. Figure out your strategy, organise your plan, marshall your resources, recruit a coach, and manage your way to the win.

That’s how to make your sales manager happy. Reduce the uncertainty. Use your experience and skills to qualify the opportunity and then win it.

Our Front Office Box and Successful Sales Management blogs suggest ideas for reducing the uncertainty in any sales deal. Our Succeeding in Sales Management tutorials explain processes and tools you can implement to stay in control of your funnel or pipeline.

Your sales strategy is simply a playbook – what the sports coaches call the predetermined moves you’ll make in particular circumstances set by the opposition.

For a sports playbook you need to understand and stay within the rules of the game. You need to research the opposition’s past performances, seeing how they exploit weaknesses. You need to organise your own resources to counter the other team’s moves. And you need to play to your strengths when its your turn with the ball.

Selling is no different.

Of course it isn’t a game. It’s more serious than that. But the philosophy is the same.

Anybody with a responsibility for winning business can develop their own unique sales strategy.

Management and Marketing can’t do it. They don’t understand the particular chemistry of individual customers with particular hot buttons, and the moves the competition will make.

But you sales professionals can. You are on the street. You can feel the vibes. You know which strings to pull and what happens.

Just like sports coaches, you can do the thinking up front. Put your experience to work. Figure the angles and the plays. Write your own playbook of strategies and tactics which work for you.

That’s your sales strategy – your unique sales proposition – your USP.

If you’d appreciate some help? If you’d like a coach? If you’re not quite sure of how to manage your own destiny?

Check out our tutorial The Why’s and How’s of Sales Strategy which explains how figuring the plays out before the game starts wins you more business, at better prices, with less effort.

Where can sales managers go for training? And where can they access coaching – in the philosophies, strategies, processes and tools they need to get the most out of their sales team?

Usually, the best sales people get promoted to sales manager. They know a lot about selling, obviously, but rarely know much about management. That’s where the challenge starts. There are plenty of training courses in management, and probably even more in selling, but not in sales management. And sales management is different.

The sales management job mostly involves bridging the cultural divide between company management and revenue producers. Management believes all business activity can be measured, and assessed. Sales professionals know selling successfully involves an unfathomable combination of humility, tenacity, art, science and good fortune. The two philosophies are like oil and water, not mixing.

Where can sales managers find the insight to accelerate the learning curve? How much more effective could they be, more quickly? How much more value could they bring to the business? How much less stressful could the promotion be? If there was a coach to guide them?

The answer to all these questions is quite a lot.

A few pearls of wisdom from hardened professionals. Some tips on approach. Some processes and tools to deploy. Some empathy and some motivation. These are all gems of knowledge a coach can provide.

But where can you find them? That’s not obvious to me. I wouldn’t know where to look.

That’s why we produced our Sales Management tutorials – short, no nonsense, explanations of both the challenges, and the solutions – for anybody interested in solving the sales management puzzle – bridging the gap between sales and management.

If you are a CEO wanting your team leaders to integrate with your management team. If you are a sales manager struggling to bridge the gap. If you are an experienced sales professional wanting to persuade somebody you can make the step up? There’s something here for you.

The Successful Sales Management series is available for download here. Individual papers are relatively short – you can read each of them while you take a coffee break. They’re on topic – there’s no padding, just straight forward explanations and descriptions. They’re genuine insight into the experience of veteran sales managers. As far as possible they are generic – applicable across industries and businesses. They combine philosophy with strategy, tactics, processes and tools, and templates you can use to implement the ideas you’ll develop.

Here’s a list of the individual tutorials, with links to the download pages.

Success in Sales Management mostly explains the challenges of getting the job and how to win the promotion, and keep it.

The Whys and Hows of Sales Strategy details the benefits of developing and maintaining a sales strategy and includes a case study and a template on which you can base your own.

Principles of Professional Selling suggests counter intuitive rules which run counter to what you’ll see and here elsewhere, but result from real experience – not hearsay and BS.

Learn to Love Your Price describes tactics for handling price in the sales process. Price isn’t a problem – it’s a tool to help you win the business once you’ve understood our thinking.

Sales Management Processes and Tools explains the various roles in the organisation’s hierarchy and suggests processes and tools management can use to drive results from sales teams.

Sales Probability and Process Management combines sales process with sales forecasting using milestones and weighted probabilities to make forecasts more meaningful and the sales pipeline more manageable.

If there’s one single secret sale professionals use to win more business at better prices, it’s sales qualification which we explain in Sales Qualification – The Secret Sauce.

Well, what are you waiting for? Download our tutorials now and Up Your Game, starting in the morning. You’ll be more effective, more efficient, and more confident, with this insight to help you and your team to do a better job.

Professional buyers can teach sales people a lot about selling. In fact sales people can learn a lot about selling, when they’re buying for themselves. But there’s one aspect of buying sales people will not learn on their own – the supply chains professional buyers build.

Supply chains are interesting, because they seem to contradict the standard business practice. They’re built on co-operation, as opposed to competition. Every partner in the chain is dependent on all the others. Nobody succeeds unless everybody succeeds. They’re also exclusive clubs. Each member is the very best at its individual role.

Buyers achieve their ultimate goal – the most value at the lowest cost, with the risk managed by somebody else – when they put together consortia of suppliers, each of whom is the best in his business, prepared to collaborate in satisfying the end customer.

Sellers are keen to take any opportunity going, especially in times like these we face in 2012. Markets are short on buyers and long on sellers. Nobody want’s to walk away from business they might win. It’s natural, when a buyer says “I’m looking for” the sales rep responds with “we can do that” regardless of how good they are at doing it. In any sales opportunity most of the competing suppliers will be selling “we can do that”.

Sales people can up their game when they understand buyers. Knowing why their company is the very best at “that” and presenting it credibly, they’ll shine through the fog of competitors claims.

There’s an opportunity here for the sales guy who puts in some extra effort. Understanding all the dimensions of the buyers requirement, and positioning the proposal as “the very best at some part of it”, helps the offer stand out from the crowd.

Competitors will readily understand the maximum value at lowest cost element. The part they’ll be less likely to translate into their own thinking is the “best of breed” concept. The fact they “can” do something isn’t a qualifier for winning the business. The fact they can do it better than anybody else is.

Finding that “something we’re the very best at” isn’t necessarily as difficult as it sounds. Just asking the right questions will usually uncover several hidden influences. Asking those questions in the three agendas will reveal hot buttons the competition might not discover. Selling as the only vendor to understand a particular want, and being the very best at satisfying it, is usually the secret sauce.

So which are those three agendas hiding the hot buttons others won’t discover?

The Business Imperative

There’s something driving the change in the business. What is it – a defence against competitive pressure, or an offensive initiative. What will reduce the risk of failure

The Business Case

There’s always a business case. Return on Investment and or cost justification – no matter how notional – will be part of the final decision. So will cash flow, and risk. Amateurs assume the business case is about cost. Professionals understand the other sides of the coin.

The Personal Agenda

There’s always a personal agenda. It might be the buyer’s. It might be the CEO’s. It might be any number of other influencers’, but there is always a personal agenda.

Sales professionals who’s offer is as good as the others in two dimensions and the very best in the other have a competitive advantage. When they’re as good in the others in two dimensions and the very best in the personal agenda, they’re dealing from a stacked deck.

On the other hand the “we can do that” rep is simply there making up the numbers.

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Will we see systems for automating sales management soon? With today’s competitive markets, and corporate demands for more performance at lower costs, there has to be a compelling business case.

Smart software already makes operations more efficient, and cost effective in other applications. Many services which used to be personal and labour intensive are now almost fully automated. But the sales dimension is blue water when it comes to intelligent software helping sales guys do a better job.

CRM goes someway toward automated sales management. At least, it keeps customer records alongside opportunity details and in some cases offers sales pipeline forecasts. But it’s hardly automation. Most reps and managers report CRM causes more work and delivers little benefit. CRM records information, but doesn’t add insight.

The kind of automation sales managers need will help with the planning and review process. That’s the most time consuming part of the job. And it’s where the biggest and fastest returns can be found.

A pipeline review takes an hour or two. Senior sales people might need only one review a month, but their junior colleagues will benefit from weekly reviews. A typical mixed team of 10 reps might need 60 hours of review time each month. With preparation time and interruptions that’s getting close to half the sales manager’s time. It doesn’t leave a lot for internal meetings, travelling, coaching, resourcing and customer face time.

An automated system which can take reps through that review could offer big rewards.

Probably the biggest would be more effective, and happier, sales reps. The system would be a permanent coach, always there to help review, plan, strategise and respond to customer or competitor. It would be a repository of best practice, an online reference library, a source of new ideas and an additional motivator.

Knowing the reps have the best support available, the sales managers will have more time to work with the internal people in marketing, production, service and even finance. They’ll be more closely connected to what happens at the sharp end, and better placed to back the sales team up with customer experience.

The business would be much more predictable. The “C Suite” likes predictable – it makes those strategy and planning decisions so much easier, reducing business risk and stress.

Just like in many other cases the technologies making sales management automation a realistic prospect are the tablet computer, mobile broadband, and cloud computing.

All we need now is somebody to collect all the best practice information, write the software and provide the service.

Why do you need a sales strategy? Surely success in sales and sales management is all about tactics – individual responses to unique customer needs. No two customers, no two opportunities, and no two sales deals are the same. The only strategy any sales manager can make work is “whatever it takes”. Do whatever is necessary to win the sale, and ask forgiveness after.

When it comes to those final few interchanges “whatever it takes” makes sense. The cost of sale has already been spent. Any deal is better than a loss report.

But that’s only one part of what sales people and sales managers do. Most of their time is spent researching, cold calling, networking, discovering, probing, qualifying – finding out where there are deals and checking those are real opportunities.

For those parts of the job, a well constructed sales strategy makes a big difference. Research is better targeted, cold calls are more productive, sales resources are more cost effective, and sales performance is more predictable.

So what is a sales strategy and how can you decide which is the most likely to work for you?

Before you call in the consultants you might find some of the articles in our blogs helpful. At least they’ll give you a basic understanding and foundations for building your own strategy, to fit your business, in your market.

Here are links to a small selection.

The Difference Between Strategy and Tactics
Sales strategy isn’t something business owners and sales managers put at the top of the priority list. Perhaps because they don’t understand the difference between that strategy and sales tactics, or the importance of either in effective sales operations. Or how to develop an effective strategy. So how is a sales strategy different from sales tactics?

The Role of Your Value Proposition
What role does value proposition play in a sales strategy? Or maybe what is a sales strategy, and what is a value proposition, and why should anybody care? The answer to those questions depends on how much you enjoy kissing frogs.
You’ll remember the Brothers Grimm fairy tale where the princess kissed the frog, and the frog turned into a handsome prince who married her. The happy couple lived together in marital bliss for the rest of their lives.

The Role of Sales Process
Process is an essential element of sales strategy. In fact process is an essential element of any strategy. Do you have one in yours?
Most think of strategy in terms of what they want to do. They might even think of this in terms of value proposition – what they’re going to do for the customer. But, do they think about the how?

What is Your Sales Strategy, How Well Does It Work?
Sales strategy is the fundamental element of any business plan. Most advice on business planning misses it out, focusing on revenue, costs and cash instead. Presumably because the people giving that advice know nothing about selling and wouldn’t recognise a sales strategy if it bit them in the behind. But knowing how we’re going to turn prospects into satisfied customers is more important than anything else. Without that concept built into our operating model the business plan isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

10 Challenges – A Checklist For Your Strategy
Do you have a sales strategy checklist – a number of questions, or challenges, your strategy needs to address? Writing a strategy for selling, whether for a market, a team, or even an individual deal, can be tricky. There’s a danger of building incorrect assumptions into the thinking. Testing every assumption avoids that danger, or at least highlights any risks. A checklist will help you make sure every angle is covered.

A New Role for Sales People – Customer Experience
Maybe 2012 is all about transitioning the role of revenue generation from sales people to web pages. Maybe the new sales tasks are all about Keywords, Content and Adwords auctions. Who needs the additional costs of sales operations when the customer simply wants the lowest price, and the reps and the managers, add no value.

Sales and Sales Management Tutorials
Want to know all about Sales Management? – Well you’re in the right place for real insight with individual tutorials costing less than cup of coffee and which you can read in the time it takes to drink your chosen brew. And if you want some software designed to help you implement our Sales Probability Process Management method you can get that here too.

Is there a role for sales and sales management in 2012 and beyond? The traditional sales tasks in prospecting, pitching and closing seem to be redundant now the Internet has enabled customers to do their own research, and marketing to do the pitching.

Maybe 2012 is all about transitioning the role of revenue generation from sales people to web pages. Maybe the new sales tasks are all about Keywords, Content and Adwords auctions. Who needs the additional costs of sales operations when the customer simply wants the lowest price, and the reps and the managers, add no value.

This isn’t a pretty picture for sales people, is it. We seem past our sell by date, redundant in our own time, like so many other professionals replaced by computers.

It’s time for sales people to sell to their own bosses, setting a new role for themselves, and equipping their companies with a new competitive advantage – customer experience.

As much as the bean counters try to commoditise products and services, they fail. Their mistake is believing buyers are only interested in price. But customers only ever buy on price when they don’t care what they’re buying.

In the vast majority of cases customer experience is as significant in the buying decision as price, if not more so. Buying on the Internet is a very sterile experience. There’s no enjoyment, and not much security. There’s very little advice, and a lot of risk. When businesses sacrifice customer experience in pursuit of lower costs they lose control of their markets. The reverse is true. When businesses invest in customer experience they increase control and as result achieve more sales, at higher prices and margins.

The new role for sales in 2012, when so much of the traditional tasks have been automated, needs to be customer experience. Sales people help customers feel good about buying decisions, and that’s what will make the difference between winners and losers in 2012 and beyond.

If your CEO doesn’t agree take her to your nearest Apple store, and ask her to tell you why Apple is the most successful technology company in the world, ever.

Related articles

• Customer Experience Whitepaper Identifies Three Key Strategies to Building and Creating Extraordinary Customer Experiences (prweb.com)

Do you think you have a sales problem?   If so you’re in good company.  And you’re also wrong.  You don’t have a sales problem.  You have a strategy problem.  The assumptions you made about market, and customers, and your operations don’t fit with reality. Rework the strategy, based on fact rather than assumptions, to solve what you see as a sales problem.

Most businesses these days have difficulty forecasting which deals will be won by the sales team, leading to problems forecasting revenue, and cash flow.  Uncertainty about income and cash turns into doubt, and doubt stops them investing – in people, product and growth.  Doubt about sales performance, revenue and cash gives everybody reason to hold back.  Not surprisingly, most people will describe such a situation as a sales problem.  But they’re wrong.

The inability to predict success in sales campaigns is a challenge, but the fault lies in one, or more, elements of sales strategy  - either the value proposition, the process, or the systems.

A value proposition  aligning your ability to add value with the needs of a defined market sets the sales rep up with the right messages for the right people.  On the other hand an aspiration to sell what you could do, as opposed to what only you can do, doesn’t.  Targeting sales people in places the competition is stronger can only end in tears.

A process aligning prospects needs with the vendors capability provides both with the opportunity to achieve their goals.  On the other hand demanding your process overrides the way customers want to work creates a confrontation neither party needs.  Insisting the customer does things the vendors way works for some major businesses, but not many, and not for long.

Systems collecting the right information, and putting it where the troops need to find it, equip sales and customer service teams to get their job right, first time, every time.  Unfortunately those systems usually get defined by the IT people who primarily answer to the accountants.  The people who most need information finish up collecting meaningless data whilst what they need to help customers buy isn’t available.

If sales operations isn’t delivering the goods for you don’t blame the guys doing the selling. Look in the mirror and make sure your strategy is working.

• Make sure your value proposition fits with what customers are buying.
• Get your process helping, not hindering, the alignment of a buy/sell collaboration.
• Stop your systems delivering to the accountants at the cost of the sales team’s efficiency.