There are many ways to analyze a business and equally as many ways to break down the details around it. Recently, I asked my team to look back over the last few years to see if we could identify a pattern or somehow gather the ten most popular topics discussed with dealers.
Obviously there were thousands of conversations, articles and presentations to consider. After a fair amount of work we reduced it down to the following list and tried to arrange the topics in a logical order. I will briefly describe each situation and if appropriate, a solution or my personal thoughts for each. This month, I’ll review the first five of these ten most requested topics.
- Finding Your Way To The Future
- Building “Differentiation”
- Selling Deliverables Clients Will Buy
- Designing The Sales Organization
- Attracting High Quality Sales Talent
- Successful Compensation
- Sales Activity
- Sales Funnel Management
- Deal Strategies & The Close
- Understanding Forecast Ratios
1. Finding Your Way To The Future – This question usually pops up in our first conversation with a dealer principal. What they typically want to know is what I see as the prevailing profile for the copier business of the future. I do see so many distractions in our industry and things that can take a dealer down the wrong road. My advice is, whatever you do to get to the future, you must protect your core business while building the deliverables for the future.
At an industry trade show I heard one speaker talk about how the future was in 3D printing, and all of the opportunities that can create for a dealer. Another said that information workflow and big data was the key. I would simply say the bridge from today to a successful tomorrow must be built with a plan that protects today’s revenue and one that most likely includes technology services. Those services should be closely related to your current day offerings and allow you to expand your business into your current base and present a more comprehensive value to prospects. Managed Print and IT services are definitely part of it, but I see a complete comprehensive technology package coming where the deliverable of the future contains all technology in a single monthly invoice. The customer runs their entire technology platform from your program. If you can get there before your competition, you’ll enjoy a nice product life cycle and a little “first to market” profitability as well.
2. Building “Differentiation” – Differentiation is a non-stop topic. I have some really interesting conversations with dealers who tell me that they are disrupting their marketplace with deliverables that are way ahead of the competition. In most cases the disruption is between their ears and what they believe is highly competitive is nothing more than what I find in almost every dealership. Creating a real differentiation is going to take market research and I mean real market research where very smart people ask very smart questions to all levels of your customer base.
This has to be someone who really understands your industry and how to dig to find that missing element or hidden nugget that exposes your way in. It’s not from a manufacturer, a supply distributor or another dealer and you won’t get it from a workshop. You get the strategy for differentiation from your customers and prospects. It will be a program or deliverable that solves a problem that they may not even know they have. A company’s differentiation is often born when someone says, “That’s impossible and that just can’t be done!” Find that continual request from your marketplace and solve that problem.
3. Selling Deliverables Clients Will Buy – I once sent out a direct mail piece to 10,000 companies and offered a copier at full retail price and that direct mail campaign sold almost $150,000 worth of copier hardware. I know, direct mail had its time and most likely doesn’t work the way it used to, right?
You’re probably thinking that must have been a long time ago when one could get a full retail price for a copier. When the mailer went out is irrelevant, it’s all about selling something a client would want to buy. The facts are, most clients hate financial surprises and one of the biggest unknowns about copiers is, they really don’t know how much your device will cost them over the years. So I sold them the copier for full retail. I included all of the toner and maintenance they’d need for 3 years.
Their number one reason for making the purchase was, “They knew exactly what their financial risk was over the term and there were no surprises!” So were they buying a copier or were they buying predictability? You can answer the question.
4. Designing The Sales Organization – There’s no telling how many different ways I’ve been asked this question: How to design a sales organization. What they’re really saying is, “What is the best way to generate success using the sales reps we have or want to hire?” This question is answered easily if you’ve defined what your sales organization is expected to do. I’m not just talking about revenue total, I’m talking about the deeper purpose of a sales organization.
It’s very common for dealers to put out an annual revenue goal but it’s not that common for one to have defined the actual process and the talent that performs that the best. Most super sales reps ARE NOT phone prospectors, they’re simply not! Instead of dividing up your zip codes and putting moderate to weak talent on each territory, divide up your process and put high talent on each step of opportunity development.
A sales organization should be designed to create a sustainable flow of opportunity, large enough to attain a healthy annual growth percentage. It should include all of the necessary personnel, tools and components to accomplish a non-stop, steady flow of opportunity.
When you think about it, your sales organization design has to:
- Find new business
- Present your values and deliverables
- Execute discovery
- Interpret discovery into strategy
- Strategy into proposal
- Proposal into a close
- Close
Beef up any weak areas to ensure successful opportunity development. Once that’s built, set a realistic revenue growth number and go!
5. Attracting High Quality Sales Talent – This has got to be one of the most popular questions I’m asked. The answer is not that hard. Typically great sales reps ARE NOT OUT THERE LOOKING FOR A JOB, they’re employed and making a nice living. But one thing is in your favor, they’re coin operated so all you have to do is find out how much coin brings them to your business. Don’t be stingy.
You won’t attract them with a comp plan that offers them less than they make today—like most people they’re looking for an upward career move. I am not saying you have to have a large salary, I am saying you have to have a path for them to make six figures without climbing Mount Everest to get there.
Their personality is a strong one, they like themselves and they believe they’re worth a lot of money. The best profile you can hire is a closer and one that wants to make a lot of money. If they can see the path to the money, they won’t be afraid to work hard or long hours. If your compensation plan doesn’t have a path to above 100k, you’ll never get them and you’ll continually drive the revolving door for sales reps. The facts are, there are millions of mediocre sales reps out there. The higher quality sales reps are one in ten thousand, but they are out there.
I know, I know, you can’t pay that much, right? I would simply say you’re looking at it the wrong way. If you have four sales reps now, I would bet you $100 that three are failing, right? Take two of the salaries and create the base for your super hero and take the third salary and hire a telemarketer, a real telemarketer. Set appointments for the super hero and drive net new business appointments. When your super hero wins big, share the coin with your telemarketer also so everyone loves winning!
The good news is, this plan won’t cost you anymore than your current payroll does. Once they get a taste of the money, you won’t be able to stop them. Manage their success and then build a second team just like the first one.
Although these top ten most wanted topics were derived from a long list of questions and conversations, they remain as some of the most important questions I receive today. Continual analysis and improvement of your sales results, activity and process will always yield better sales results. I’ll review the rest of the five questions next month.
Happy selling.
