Is your sales force getting the company to reach its strategic objectives? Most CEOs say NO. At the Forrester Research “Technology Sales Enablement Forum” in February George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, talked about the problems that sales faces, how CEOs would intend to fix the problems and how Sales Enablement can help.
CEOs say that there are five major problems faced by sales in achieving objectives: 1) keeping up, 2) calling too low, 3) presenting price and not value, 4) they have the wrong people in the sales organization and 5) sales is not growth oriented.
Problem 1: Keeping up – Speed at which sales is learning is not keeping up with company strategy, products & changing customer buying patterns.
Problem 2: Calling too low – Sales is not getting to the CIO & executive buyer and if they do, they are not prepared to have the executive level conversation.
Problem 3: Presenting Price – There is too much commodity selling going on and not enough value selling and outcome selling. Sales can’t effectively tell the story. Positioning is often based on competitive comparison thus the customer perception is that products/services are commodities and not differentiated value added.
Problem 4: Wrong People – George Colony says this is a cop out. It is not that companies have the wrong people in the sales organization, the real problem is that most companies do not prepare their sales people in the right way
Problem 5: Not growth oriented – CEO’s think sales people are not growth oriented because they don’t want a quota increase. DUH! Of course they don’t want their quota increased but it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to help the company grow.
CEOs say they have six approaches to fix their sales problems: 1) make sales more like engineering, 2) focus more on customers, 3) increase specialization, 4) improve sales technology, 5) bring in new skills, and 6) engender more creativity.
CEO fix 1: Make sales more like engineering – Don’t laugh. On the positive side this can mean more collaborative, creative and process oriented efforts. On the negative this can mean more structured, less flexiblity, less adaptive, less attention to deliverables.
CEO fix 2: More customer focus – This is key. More focus on customer need, problems and desired results. Sales people should be able to articulate what are the customers 3 biggest problems and which ones can we solve.
CEO fix 3: More specialization / verticalization – Reorganize the sales force around vertical markets, specific products or other specialized arenas. George Colony says this is a CEO cop out.
CEO fix 4: Better technology – Forrester Research did a study of 600 North America and EMEA companies which revealed a mediocre rating in the use and deployment of technology in sales. Ratings were C+ for technology utilization for most job requirements, C+ for technology deployed for key functions and a dismal D- for IT department provided technology. So maybe the need is not for more or better technology but for technology adoption, training and utilization.
CEO fix 5: Bring in new skills and new people – George Colony says this is another CEO cop out.
CEO fix 6: Engender more creativity – Creatively connect business strategy to customer needs. Focus on customer results and outcome. Forrester Research did a study of 1500 CEOs who ranked the importance of skills for sales people: Creativity ranked highest at 60%, followed by Integrity at 52%, Global Thinking at 35%, Influence at 30% and Openness at 28%.
CEO’s of small to mid-sized companies see themselves as the chief sales person for the company. This is both good and bad. If a message doesn’t work the CEO will retire it without sufficient data points or time to let a new message work. One problem that CEOs don’t recognize is that the CEO can carry a different message to customers than sales people can. Another problem is that different messages are required for different customers and different buyers within the same customer.
CEOs have high expectations for sales enablement within their company. They want sales enablement to be a trusted adviser to the CEO, to help sort inappropriate ideas from good ideas (use logic and provide alternatives), partner across the organization (with the CIO, marketing, HR, head of strategy, etc.), help the sales force know what the company/business strategy is, and take the company on a journey into technology with the proper use of Twitter, blogs, Facebook…