A Sales Playbook is your team's how-to-guide for successful sales in your company. My friend Kevin Quan, the CEO of CloseQuickly says it is like a sports playbook. It tells you what play to run in different situations or at different stages of the sale.

The level of complexity and detail included depends a lot on your company culture, how much material and scripting is needed or available to your team, and the experience level of your sales team(s). A Sales Playbook is your team's how-to-guide for successful sales in your company. My friend Kevin Quan, the CEO of CloseQuickly says it is like a sports playbook. It tells you what play to run in different situations or at different stages of the sale.

The level of complexity and detail included depends a lot on your company culture, how much material and scripting is needed or available to your team, and the experience level of your sales team(s). 

Every company has a different level of complexity in their selling process depending on how complex the buying process is, how complex the selling organization is, and how experienced the sellers are.  You may be solving a different problem than another organization.

1.  Prevent sellers from skipping critical steps

2.  Help the sales team follow the same process and use the CRM the same way

3.  Provide solutions to typical problems along the sale process

4.  Improve the quality of CRM information

5.  Help onboard new sales reps

6.  Provide specific scripting to improve outcomes

7.  Provide a coaching tool

Your Sales Playbook should solve the problems you have.   You will include the components most important to the team you have and the issues they are facing. Suppose you are writing a sales playbook for a complex business-to-business sale for an experienced team. In that case, your playbook will include very different things than a playbook designed for an inexperienced inside sales team with a simple deal or task.

In any case, your sales playbook should outline the selling/buying process. It should include the stages of the buying/selling process, the activities that happen at each stage, the questions to be asked/answered at each stage, and the content or tools available at each stage.  You might also consider the gates or requirements to move from one stage to another.

Your playbook might include common objections and answers.  It might include scripting for sequences for different purposes along the buyer journey.

If you have a complex sales organization, your playbook could map the handoff from marketing to the marketing or sales development rep, to the demo team to the sales rep, and finally to the delivery team.

Design your playbooks to solve the problems you have. Your Sales Playbook should solve the problems you have.   You will include the components most important to the team you have and the issues they are facing. Suppose you are writing a sales playbook for a complex business-to-business sale for an experienced team. In that case, your playbook will include very different things than a playbook designed for an inexperienced inside sales team with a simple deal or task.

In any case, your sales playbook should outline the selling/buying process. It should include the stages of the buying/selling process, the activities that happen at each stage, the questions to be asked/answered at each stage, and the content or tools available at each stage.  You might also consider the gates or requirements to move from one stage to another.

Your playbook might include common objections and answers.  It might include scripting for sequences for different purposes along the buyer journey.

If you have a complex sales organization, your playbook could map the handoff from marketing to the marketing or sales development rep, to the demo team to the sales rep, and finally to the delivery team.

Design your playbooks to solve the problems you have.

You may find you have several sales playbooks.  You might have one for each product. You could design one for each customer type. You could have a different one for your inside sales team and a different one for your senior account reps.  You could have a playbook for new business and a different one for growing accounts.  But, you will need to start somewhere, with your first playbook.

1.  An outline of the buying/selling process

2.  The questions that need to be asked/answered

3.  The activities that need to occur in each stage of the process outlined

4.  The process for moving from one stage to another

5.  The content available to help at each stage

6.  Solutions to the most common problems along the process1.  An outline of the buying/selling process

2.  The questions that need to be asked/answered

3.  The activities that need to occur in each stage of the process outlined

4.  The process for moving from one stage to another

5.  The content available to help at each stage

6.  Solutions to the most common problems along the process

Everyone has a different idea about the format of a playbook. A playbook can be a simple document that outlines the components listed above. It can live inside your CRM as notes and pop-ups. It can be in a SaaS program designed to created Playbooks.

1.  Decide what problem you are solving

2.  Develop the components listed in "What Should be in your First Playbook."

3.  Decide what tool will best support the components and users you have.

Making a playbook takes time and requires careful planning.  If you aren't sure how to do it, there are experts who can help you determine your process, select your tools, and input the data. Schedule a no cost, no obligation meeting with  a sales strategist to get you started. 

Selling can be overwhelming, so use tools that help you manage the work that needs to be done.  

Download the Funnel Graphic and the Daily Sales Worksheet.  

If you are selling to other businesses, you may find that you have a relatively straightforward sales process with few people involved in the decision. If, on the other hand, your solution is expensive, changes the way a company functions, and impacts many people and departments, you have what we call a complex sale. Complex sales typically take longer and include many more buyers. In fact, a B2B (business-to-business) complex sale could involve multiple departments and as many as 15 buyers in the process. With that many people involved, knowing the right thing to say to the right person is the way to have successful conversations.

Let's start at the beginning. When you begin selling may quickly realize differences across industries, companies, divisions, and buyers. Understanding your customer means understanding the industry, the company, the divisions, and the departments you are selling into. It also requires that you can relate to the buyers represented by each of those departments.   

Before we dive in, let's clarify some vocabulary people use around this topic.

• Target Market: These are the companies that meet your demographic criteria. They may be the right size, geography, etc.
• Ideal Customer: These are companies that meet your psychographic as well as demographic criteria. They are ideal because they are the best fit with your solution.
• Buyer Persona or Avatar: A buyer persona or avatar describes each buyer involved in the buying process. 

When trying to understand your customer, sometimes it is easiest to start at the top. Begin by mapping out the demographics of the companies in the industries that you want to target for your sales and marketing campaigns. The narrower the target, the more specific the messaging can be, and the more effective the effort will be. So be as specific as you can.

Next, determine which divisions or departments are most likely to have the problem your product solves. The bigger the company, the more likely you will be selling to one division. Some kinds of solutions are more likely to be implemented across all divisions. You will need to research how your solution is most likely to be applied.

Next, consider how the buying process is likely to work and who is expected to be involved. In a complex sale, you may work with as many as 15 buyers across multiple departments. These buyers can have titles as diverse as CEO, Engineer, Project Manager, CIO, technician, or anything else you can imagine. 

You will probably need to include Attorney and Purchasing Agent into your list of titles.

Each industry and company may buy differently, but you will start to see consistencies across clients and industries. Start mapping it out: How is the process initiated?; Who does the research?; Who approves the solution?; How will it impact existing systems, and how will those people be involved?; How will the users be introduced?; What role will the purchasing department play?; and What will legal typically? 

The better you understand the typical buying process, the more successfully you will identify the buyers involved. Once you know who all the buyers are, be sure to speak to as many as it makes sense to communicate with. Relying on one buyer in a complex sale is a major red flag and is the cause of many lost sales.

Categorize the buyers by their relationship to the problem. How are they impacted day-to-day by the current reality? Does it make it difficult to do their job? Does it get them in trouble or result in complaints? A title can help you figure that out. For example, CEOs tend to care about company reputation, company growth, sock-holder issues, and ROI. While the people who manage and use the product care about ease of use, implementation, and features. Understanding the differences is the key to having the right conversation with the right person. The CEO will have a very different relationship to a problem than a technician will, for example.

Once you identify all the potential buyers, you can create an avatar or buyer persona for each.

Marketers initially used buyer personas for B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, so if you look up how to create one, it may suggest things that probably won't matter in a B2B sale. For example, the kind of car they drive, the neighborhood they live in, or how old their kids are probably won't help your B2B sales team. Age might matter, but only in so much as it might impact how they communicate (text or email). Focus instead on the business factors that will affect their decision.

Sometimes you will hear marketing talk about an ideal avatar or persona. But, from a sales perspective, that isn't very helpful. It is your responsibility to communicate with all of the buyers who influence a sale. So, you need to understand them all.

The only reason you might use an ideal avatar or persona is if you use that to decide the best entry into a company. That would be the person who is most likely to speak to you who can also influence the sale. It might also be the person who is most likely to research the problem, so marketing would want to create content to address that person. Otherwise, from a sales perspective, all the buyers matter.

I would also be wary of the concept of a decision-maker. Many people influence a purchase. They have different roles in the decision-making process, but they all have influence. Just because they aren't the final say doesn't mean they don't have a voice.

Sometimes we use the work Economic Buyer to refer to the person who can say "yes" when everyone else says "no" or "no" when everyone else says "yes." That is a valuable concept to prevent missing a critical buyer. However, that doesn't mean the other people involved in the decision are not influential. In most cases, as the team goes, so goes the economic buyer.

With all of that in mind, the task must seem daunting. Your job is to narrow your focus to the target market that makes the most sense and is most likely to need your solution. Once that is done, you can identify the buyers and the messaging that will resonate with each.

If you would like some help identifying your ideal customer or understanding your buyers, use the link below to schedule a call.

What comes to mind when thinking about a successful sales strategy?
We have all been in meetings talking about coming up with a successful sales strategy when someone says, “We can sit around planning forever, or we can just get going and do something.” And rightly so. Strategy without execution is a waste of time. But execution without strategy is like saying “Ready, Fire, Aim” or, more accurately, “Fire, Look—OMG!”

Let's do this right. Let's build your sales strategy. 

For most companies, 80% of revenue comes from 20% of clients. By reviewing your previous year, you can figure out which clients spend the most money, buy more than one product, are the easiest to work with, and have the shortest sales cycle. Figure out what your top clients do and make a list of those criteria. This will become your Ideal Customer Criteria. Dig into the demographics and psychographics of your ideal customer to create a complete profile for your reps.

An ideal customer profile provides guidelines for your sales reps that help them spend their time efficiently on prospects who are most likely to convert and deliver repeat business quickly.

When you combine your given revenue targets with the market strategy you’ve created based on an assessment of the past and current situation, you can generate realistic revenue goals for territories and individuals.

Now is time to think about what support your sales team needs to reach these goals. Get your marketing team, sales team, and product team together to work on a plan.

Handing your sales team new quotas with no basis, in reality, will leave all parties disappointed and frustrated.

Don’t go it alone. Let us help you get started with your sales strategy click here.

Do you go to a trade show, listen to a podcast, or read an article, then suddenly find yourself ready to implement something new? Do you get going in one direction then get sidetracked by something new and exciting? Does your team feel like you are continually changing your mind?

If you answer yes to those questions, then you have Entrepreneurial ADD. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I would say both. It is a good thing to be aware of trends and to look for new ideas. It is terrible if you are always going serpentine and never go in a straight line long enough to get anything done.

Successful entrepreneurs are creative, open to change, always moving forward, and continuously learning. Entrepreneurs that don't eventually get stuck in a rut and can't stay ahead of the market. Being open to new ideas and new opportunities is one of an entrepreneur's greatest strengths. It can also be a significant liability.

When your team feels like your company is one great big pinball machine, they can't make good decisions. They are always exhausted. They don't know what changes to embrace and what activities to prioritize. They feel like nothing stays the same, and nothing ever gets done.

There needs to be a balance between moving ahead and serpentine. (I can't help but think of that crazy scene in The In-Laws with Peter Falk and Alan Arkan. If you have never seen it, check out the video on YouTube).

So, how do you balance the search for new ideas with staying the course? One way is to start with a strong strategy. Nail down your vision, so everyone in the company understands what it will take to get you there. Be clear about your values. Live by them and hold your team to them. Then think about your mission. Decide why you exist and keep reminding yourself. 

It would be helpful to understand your market position, your ideal customer profile, and your value proposition as well. These things keep you focused on your customer to ensure that your changes are in line with their needs.

It is only natural that, as an entrepreneur, you get excited by the possibilities you see. Having a solid strategy will help you stay on track or make good decisions when it's time to pivot because your strategy will help you identify all of the things that need to change to make sure you are positioned to be successful in your pivot.

Use your strategy as your roadmap. It's OK to take detours, just be sure they won't take you too far off your charted path.

Consistent business growth is the result of careful planning and management.  What is often missing, however, is positioning. It is essential to position your company for growth. You do some of those things already. You position yourself by getting your product developed, hiring the right team, and getting the funding you need. Think about how to position your company in the market and with your customers. 

The three components of positioning for your sales team are Market Position, Ideal Customer Profile, and Value Proposition.  These things help you communicate the right message to the right people, so they know you are an option for them to consider.

If your business has been around any time at all, you have a position in the marketplace. Your "position" is how you are perceived.  The question is, have you positioned your company the way it needs to be positioned to grow?

Imagine you are trying to buy sports shoes and are looking at a wall of options trying to decide what to buy.  There are different brands, colors, and types.  Color and style might impact your decision, but you also perceive Nike vs. Adidas vs. New Balance differently.  Perhaps you are a serious runner and believe New Balance makes the best running shoes.  If you think that, it is because New Balance has worked hard to position themselves that way.

Do people perceive you the way you want to be perceived as a solution to their problem, in terms of quality or compared to your competitors?  People often have misperceptions about companies and products. It is your job to make your customer perceives you the way you want to be perceived.

Part of your positioning will have to do with the problem you solve, the quality and price of your product, and how you compare to your competitors.  There are other ways you can influence perception.  You can position your product as cutting-edge, the option that is easiest to use.  Think about your company values and how you want to be perceived.  You might want to position your company as he environmentally friendly option. You might want to position yourself as small and agile as compared to big and dependable.  Do your solutions solve one specific problem well, or does it do many things with one solution?

The clearer you are about your positioning in the marketplace, the easier it will be for your ideal customers to recognize you.  It will also be more effective when your salespeople talk about your product and your company to your ideal customer.

Your ideal customer is a subset of your target market.  They are companies that meet the demographic criteria of your target market and have additional qualities that make them ideal for you.  Those additional qualities may have to do with something we call psychographics.  Those are things that are not measurable, like revenue and the number of employees would be.  They are things like how they treat vendors and employees. How much turnover do they have, and how do they talk about people?  It might have to do with how they get their financing. It might be about values.

Here is the thing about your ideal customer that matters.  When you can identify and sell to your ideal customer, the sales cycle tends to be shorter, close ratios are higher, per purchase price are higher, relationships last longer, the customer is happier and more profitable.

When you sell to customers that are not your ideal, the opposite is true. Focus sales and marketing on your ideal customer for all the reasons stated above.  Since that makes the most sense, direct your message to your ideal customer.

Just to clarify, in a B2B selling environment, a customer is a company or division of a company.  Often, there are multiple buyers involved in the decision to buy.  Some will be easier to work with than others, but you need to work with all of the buyers who are part of that buying decision.  The customer is the company, and the buyers are the individuals.

Focus your messaging on the buyers involved in the buying decisions for your ideal customers.

A value proposition is a way to communicate your proposed value to your customer (all of the buyers). It is the answer to these three questions. 

1.  How does your customer describe their problem?

2.  How do you solve that problem?

3.  Why is your solution the best one for your ideal customer?

Use the language your customer uses. If you use your vocabulary, they can't relate when you are talking to them.  You "miss the mark" with them.  Understand how they talk about their problem and start talking about it using the same words.

Focus on how you solve the problem (or help them achieve a goal). Your product itself is the least important part of this discussion until the buyer starts asking about the product's details.  To start, they only care that they have a problem, and you can solve it in a way that makes sense in their situation.

The final part of this is the "why you are the best solution" part.  To be clear, you are not the best solution for everyone.  You are the best solution for the specific problem your product was designed to solve in the environment your product was intended to work in.  Once a customer falls outside of those parameters, their likelihood of success with your product diminishes. So, you want to be sure that your language speaks to those customers who are most likely to be successful with your solution. 

If you have a very complex sale with multiple buyers with distinctly different jobs and perspectives on the problem, you may consider writing a value proposition for each buyer type.

Remember, you are proposing what you think your value is.  As you get to know each buyer, you will have a better understanding of what is important to them, and you will shift your language to speak more specifically to each person.

Position your company to achieve the growth you want by providing your sales team the tools they need to communicate with the right customer.  If they are selling to the wrong customers, it may be because you are positioned to attract the wrong customers. It might also be because your sellers aren't clear about who the right customer is. It might also be because you are pushing them to sell to anyone instead of focusing on the business you want.  Position your company for the business you want. If you do that, you will have shorter sales cycles, higher close ratios, higher per dollar sales, more repeat business, longer relationships, and more profitable customers. 

If you need some help with positioning, schedule some time with a Sales Strategist who can get you started.

A Sales Operating System is the infrastructure needed to run a sales organization. It includes the strategies, the frameworks, and the systems that support your sales. These are the things that provide structure, priorities, and focus for your team.

CEOs and founders often talk about sales as if it is a black hole. They feel like they drop leads in the top and hope something comes out the bottom. It shouldn't be that way! While there will always be some unpredictability in sales, the better your Sales Operating System is functioning, the more predictable and reliable your sales growth will be.

When people think of sales operations, they often think of sales enablement technology like SalesForce, OutReach, or Gong. Those tools support the sales operating system. They are not the system itself, and often you can't implement them until you design your Sales Operating System.

A Sales Operating System consists of strategies, frameworks, and systems that enable your sales team to work more effectively by focusing on the things that matter most. Your Sales Operating System starts with robust strategies that help set priorities that focus the team. The sales process you build supports the strategy. Then, leadership needs to manage using those systems to get the best results. You can always assess the strategies and systems and make changes when things aren't working, or the world around you changes.

An effective Sales Operating System has four components: Strategy and Frameworks, Systems and Processes, Management, and Assessment.

Your mission is to implement the system and frameworks that will support the strategy you have created to achieve your company's goals.

Sales is not a series of fortunate accidents; it results from well planned and executed strategies.

A strategy is the plan to get from where you are now to where you want to be. It's your roadmap or Google Map.

Strategies help achieve overall company goals, including sales goals, achieve individual goals, and to set and achieve goals in key accounts.

Often, for a strategy to be effective, we need some frameworks to help structure the pieces. One example is a SWOT analysis. It is a framework for analyzing your ability to achieve a strategy based on your current situation. Another way to think of a framework is a set of descriptions and rules that help us understand how things work. An excellent example of that is what I call a Sales Positioning Framework.  It includes your mission, how your company and product fit into the marketplace, who your ideal customer is, and a compelling value proposition. This framework is critical to bring a team together around what matters most. A sales communication framework is a useful tool because it sets up the guidelines around communicating with prospects and customers.

Strategy and frameworks are the highest level of your Sales Operating System. It tells you where you are going and why, and it sets parameters that help manage priorities.

The second component is the systems and processes. Your organization will achieve the strategic goals when you have functioning systems and processes that will support the behaviors required to achieve the goals. The more complex your selling environment, the more critical the systems and processes that support it are.

A process is a series of rules and steps that take you from start to finish. Most companies have a lead generation process, a sales process, a process for responding to RFPs, putting together proposals, and onboarding new clients. That set of rules and steps helps us make sure we don't miss anything important.

A system is a group of components that work together. The re: Sales Operating System includes strategies, frameworks, and processes as well as technology to support it. But in smaller bites, you may have a sales process and a communication framework that work together to create a system.

The more systematic the activities in the sales arena are, the fewer the mistakes, and the more consistent the results. Make sure that the lead generation process is delivering qualified leads that are worth the seller's time. Make sure the handoff from marketing to sales is seamless. Don't let leads get lost in the handoff.

Establish a sales process and an opportunity management process to follow the leads from start to close. It is critical that sellers follow the sales process, making sure to communicate with all the buyers and to avoid skipping steps when possible. When the sales process breaks down, so do sales results.

Finally, don't leave hiring and onboarding to chance. Hiring the wrong people or not onboarding the hires properly is one of the biggest problems in sales organizations. It is expensive in terms of wasted resources, but more importantly, wasted opportunities.

Systems don't work well unless they are managed and reinforced. The world moves naturally from order to disorder, and your sales team is no different. Sellers will always do what is quickest and most comfortable, not necessarily what will get the results you want.

Salespeople are notorious for being independent, self-motivated, and extroverted. They tend to disdain processes and systems. Despite that, they are more effective when they follow systems and processes that support their success.

For those reasons, it is challenging to manage salespeople. What you can do is manage the processes and hold your sellers accountable for fulfilling certain expectations. The clearer the expectations and the more consistently they are reinforced, the more likely your salespeople will follow them. As soon as you stop managing and reinforcing the sales processes, sellers will stop following them.

Establish structure around team meetings, one-to-ones, coaching sessions, and funnel review. Set the expectations about what will happen before, during, and after meetings. Don't veer from the expectations. Once they know what to expect, they will learn how to prepare and will be prepared. If they aren't prepared, don't let them off the hook. Consistency around the right behaviors will improve results every time.

Finally, every system needs to be assessed. Do you have all the right components? Are they all working the way they should? What needs to change to get better results? If you have the right strategy and frameworks in place and the systems to support the strategy you have developed, you should start to see the results you need.

Some good indications that your Sales Operating System is working well are: there should be fewer fires to put out, close dates should be more accurate, close ratios should improve, sales cycles should shorten. Overall, sales should become more predictable, and most importantly, sales revenue should increase.

If that isn't happening, it's time to assess. Do you have the right strategy? Are you appropriately positioned in the market?  Is your messaging working?  Do your systems to support your strategy? Are you managing consistently?

Maybe it's time to make some changes. Do you need to revisit your strategy based on changes in the marketplace? Are your lead generation and sales strategy workable, or do they need to be adjusted?  Are the systems you set up efficient and easy to use and do they support the sales effort, or do they need to be improved?  And finally, do you have the right people in the right jobs to make this all work?

Like any system, your Sales Operating System needs to be continuously improved and changed as your situation changes.

Your Sales Operating System is unique to your company. It isn't plug and play, and there are no shortcuts.  You will need to create a sales operating system that meets the specific realities of your company. Once you build it, everyone who touches the system must understand it. The sales operating system isn't just for sales. Marketing, operations, accounting, and anyone else who interacts with the process needs to understand it and support it.

Once everyone understands it, set out the expectations about how everyone will interact with the system. Make sure they know the rules, the cadences, and the outcomes expected. No one is exempt. Set out the expectations, make sure everyone starts using the system. That means everyone is working toward the same strategies and goals. Everyone understands what their role is in achieving those goals. Everyone is following the process and using the systems.

Then it is critical to reinforce. If leadership indicates at any time that it is OK to skip steps or ignore the rules, people will. As a result, the system will fall apart, and the growth will stall, or sales will decline.

The sales operating system represents a cultural change in your organization, and that kind of change is never easy. So, the question for you is, can you do it and is it worth it?  If you want a predictable revenue stream, to manage the unmanageable, fewer mistakes and more sales revenue, then it is worth the effort it will take to create, implement, and reinforce your sales operating system.

If you would like some help getting started, schedule a no-cost, no-obligation call with a sales strategist.

One important lesson learned in 2020 is the importance of Key Account Management. When getting new business is as difficult as it was for many companies in 2020, maintaining and growing existing accounts is critical. But it's not just crucial in lean years. It is essential all the time. It doesn't make sense to bring in new business if you can't maintain existing customers. Customer retention is job one. That is especially true because getting more business from happy customers is easier, faster, and less expensive than bringing in new customers.

That makes Key Accounts that much more critical. Whether they are too big to lose or have great growth potential, your team should be actively managing those relationships. Does your team know how to manage your key accounts effectively?

According to CSO Insights, only 33% of companies have a formal Key Account Management Plan. That means the other 67% are randomly and ineffectively managing and growing key accounts. Having Key Account Plans in place drives revenue.

Identify and grow your most important accounts by using these account management guidelines.

The two primary reasons for selecting key accounts are current value and potential value.

In some companies, as much as 80% of revenue comes from a handful of customers. When that is the case, the impact of losing any of those accounts would be devastating. Even if your key accounts don't represent such a large percentage of revenue, maintaining and possibly growing those largest accounts is vital.

At the same time, companies often don't recognize the potential of smaller accounts. They focus on accounts with a considerable current value but don't recognize the potential revenue they may be missing. If they aren't getting the attention they deserve because they aren't currently in your top tier, it's time to fix that. Get your team well-positioned to recognize the growth potential of these accounts.

There are some companies that, despite size or potential, should be considered key accounts. If, for example, they have gravitas in the industry, being able to claim them as a client makes them valuable. Keeping these customers happy is important too, and since you don't want to lose them to a competitor, you should have a team and plan for these as well.

Sometimes the customers identified as key accounts are a drag on your company. Because they represent so much revenue, companies tend to hold on for dear life even if they are challenging to work with and unprofitable. Those companies should have a key account team focused on making them profitable accounts or successfully terminate the relationship.

There are two more considerations– profit and fit. Some large accounts are not profitable. You certainly don't want to grow or pursue accounts that aren't profitable unless you can change that. The only way to change that is through a concerted effort to build the relationship and improve satisfaction. 

Often the reason accounts aren't profitable is because they aren't a good fit. Either your solution doesn't solve their problem, or they aren't a good cultural fit with your company. When you select key accounts, you want to focus on companies that are a good fit, especially if your goal is to grow them. 

Key account plans are an investment of time and resources, so select key accounts carefully. 

The key account plan is the road map your team will use to shore up the relationship with your key accounts to retain, grow, or improve profitability. 

A Key Account plan has four parts

1.  Customer Story

2.  Opportunities

3.  Situation Assessment 

4.  Goals 

A Key Account Plan always starts with the account and ends with revenue potential. That may be a different perspective than you are used to, but it is the only way to grow an account over the long run effectively.

It is easy for sellers to forget the customer exists outside of their relationship. The company has goals, problems, initiatives, and priorities. The individuals inside the company have daily activities to perform, key results they are measured against, and problems they are trying to solve.

Those all exist for the customer whether or not they have anything to do with your solution, and they frame the conversation customers have with you. Key Account Teams are responsible for uncovering the customer's story and building a strategy around it.

What is happening at the highest levels of the client company? What initiatives or goals are they trying to achieve?  Are they achieving those goals?  What external factors are impacting the economy, the industry, or their customers? 

How do those things play out in the buyer's daily life?  How much of the published story is the individual buyer responsible for achieving?  What is the timeline?  What is getting in the way?  What are the individual buyers' goals and problems? What is their focus?

You cannot create an effective plan to improve a relationship if you don't understand the company's story and the individual buyers' stories. I'm not suggesting you need to know how many kids they have or how much money they have saved for retirement. I'm encouraging you to learn how their business life works, how it impacts them personally, and what problems they would most like to solve.

As you come to understand those things, you can determine how you and your company can help. Understanding where your solutions fit into the larger landscape allows you to position your team to have the most significant positive impact possible.

Too often, sellers focus on order-taking in key accounts. That means that sellers wait until a customer identifies and problem and then determines you might have a solution for them. That reactive way of handling account relationships will leave you vulnerable to the competition. The account team's job is to understand where your company fits into the landscape of goals initiatives and problems and offers the customer solutions or help planning solutions long before they are ready to buy.

Understanding your customers' story should help you identify what opportunities you have to help them achieve goals, work toward initiatives, and solve problems. Match up your solutions to the needs they have. Where do you fit?  Get as far ahead of their problems as possible. Build relationships that give you insight into what is coming in months or years from now.

Make a list of these opportunities as you identify them. This is where a good funnel comes into play. Of course, you want to list the opportunities that are ready to close. Then the ones you are working on. But you also want to list the ones you haven't qualified yet and the ones that are ideas that could happen 5 years from now. Get them all listed and organized so you know what work you need to do and what relationships you would need to build to close those opportunities.

The situation assessment is a survey of how well you are positioned in the account. There are three critical parts of positioning. Do you have relationships with all the people you need to know? How do the buyers perceive you?  Do you have the right solutions for the problems they are experiencing?

If it is indeed a key account, there are potentially dozens of people you need to build relationships with. Some have answers to critical questions. Some use your solution every day. Some manage the use of your solution. Some make sure everyone follows the process. They are the I dotters and T crossers that can interfere in the process. Are you well-positioned across the account, or are you counting on a few good relationships?

Sellers often make assumptions about how they are perceived. If no one is complaining, they must be happy, and we are well-positioned to make our next sale. Assumptions are dangerous. Check and recheck your credibility across all of your relationships. If you there are problems, your plan will need to include ways to improve those perceptions.

Even if you have the right relationships and the customer is happy, you still have to have the best solutions for their problems. Sometimes, a competitor may have an advantage in one area, but hopefully, the whole of your solution, including the way you help them solve problems will outweigh those advantages. If your solutions isn't the best for this customer, you need a plan to address that, or you need to be prepared to lose to your competitor at some point.

It is easy to get excited about potential or to throw out a goal for a percentage increase without taking the time to understand the customer's story and your positioning in the account. You can't grow an account if their situation won't allow for increased spending, or if you are not positioned to make the sale you are hoping to make. Your goals should be a result of the first two steps.

Revenue goals are the easiest to set. But they probably won't be achieved if other kinds of goals are not achieved first. It is good to have goals around helping them solve problems. While that may be as a result of selling them something, the focus is on the customer solving a problem or achieving a goal the perceive as important.

A second kind of goal that is important to have is relationship goals. Set goals around people you want to meet, relationships you want to improve or gaining access to higher levels in an organization. As you build the right relationships, achieving your revenue goals will be easier.

The third kind of goal is around satisfaction or perception. Do they see you as a partner or as a vendor? While it isn't critical to be seen as a partner in every relationship, if you are not perceived as a partner in your key accounts, you have work to do.

The rubber hits the road, as they say, with the action plan. I am a strong proponent of planning but planning just shows you what needs to be done. The strategy needs to be turned into an action plan and executed.

Based on all the work done above, make a list of near-term actions that need to take place to move your team toward the goals you have identified.

Don’t forget to include when the action will get done, and who is responsible for doing it. Making a list without providing deadlines and assignments won’t get you were you need to be.

You will need to create actions around research, relationships, selling and customer satisfaction.

Make a list of the research activities that need to be done.  Figure out who on your team is the right person to do that research or find someone who can do it.  Then figure out what order it needs to be done in and assign dates.  All the research about the company and the industry needs to be completed.  Research about the buyers and users, their problems and their goals needs to be done.  That is person to person research but is may not all be the seller’s job.  The customer success team, the engineers, the trainers, or designers may be better positioned to find this information.  Assign it to the right person and give them a timeline.

Building relationships is the most important part of key account management. You will rely on those relationships to both provide information and make buying decisions.  Everyone on the account team is responsible for building or improving relationships.  Even people on your accounting and legal team can make the overall relationship work better.

Make a list of all of the people that you interact with in that account.  Then add the people you should be interacting with.  Determine who will be responsible for those relationships and how they will accomplish the relationships goals you set out for them.  While you may not be able to set a date around the outcome, you can set timelines around the activities that need to happen to achieve the improved relationships.

It’s impossible to separate selling activity from research and relationship building, but because we have a team working on this together, we want to make sure that the seller is taking the critical steps to move opportunities forward.  That includes things like, mapping the decision process, determining specs, demos, and proposals. 

You have to get the selling work done to maintain credibility and to solve problems.  Research and relationship building are important but focus on the forest so much that you miss the trees.

Salespeople spend a lot of time doing activities, expending resources, and talking to customers, that don't result in improved relationships or closed deals. Having a key account plan will help prioritize activities for the seller and the rest of the team, so they are focused on the activities that are moving toward the long-term goals for this client. 

If you need help getting started on your key account plans, please schedule some time with an account strategist. There is no cost or obligation for this meeting.

The term pipeline has become the standard in the industry. We talk about a marketing funnel, but a sales pipeline. I prefer the word funnel. Here's why. A pipeline represents a steady flow of incoming leads like a faucet. Everything is just flowing through at the same velocity. While that sounds great, the flow through the pipeline depends on the volume of opportunities coming in the top, the velocity each flows through the funnel, and the percent that come out the bottom as closed business.

It would be glorious if leads kept flowing in at the same volume and through at the same velocity, and none got lost along the way. It just doesn't happen that way.  The pipeline representation of flow doesn't tell you enough about your current situation. For this construct to be useful, it needs to tell you at any time if the flow of leads is sufficient to close enough deals to hit your number.

A funnel is about ratios, and so, the shape matters. It's broad on the top because we all know that you have to put a lot of leads in to get a few deals out. When you look at it that way, it is clear that your sales funnel should always have exponentially more opportunities at the top than you expect to close. By looking at it that way, it is easier to conceptualize where how you are positioned at any given time, hit your goals, and where the problems lie. Let me explain.

A funnel typically has about five stages. CRMs often include many more stages than that, but experience has shown that too many stages dilute the process and cause confusion.  The stages most commonly used are:

1. Prospect
2. Qualify
3. Cultivate*
4. Close
5. Won/Lost

*I have seen stage three called: Solve, propose, verify, pursue, and cover the bases.

The goal is to have clearly defined stages with associated activities in each of those stages. Keep it simple so that it is easy to use. It is not necessary to make each activity a stage. It isn't uncommon to see a stage called "Submit Proposal."  That is not a stage; however, it is an activity that happens during one of the stages.

The activities that happen in each stage are critical, but they aren't stages.  Your team will require a map that lays out the activities that occur in each stage.  That can reside in the CRM, in a playbook, or even an infographic.

The best thing about the sales funnel when it is designed and used well is that it makes accurate forecasting possible.

By defining the stages, so everyone on the team uses them the same way, you increase the level of predictability. Here are the definitions you could use:

Prospect: Your team is reaching out to people who have not yet indicated an interest.  You can prospect in existing accounts or new companies. In this stage, your team uses tools like cold outreach, introductions for referrers, social media, content, networking, and even advertising to build awareness and hopefully stimulate interest.

Qualify: The prospect has indicated some interest, but you still need to determine if there is a budget, a fit, and a timeline. During this stage, your team might exchange emails, get on the phone, or do a video meeting. They will be asking questions and giving some preliminary information to develop the interest and qualify the lead.

Cultivate: During this stage, your team is meeting with all buyers involved in the sale. They are confirming the fit and building interest. Cultivate is also when they will identify potential objections and work to move the sale forward on all fronts. During this stage, they should be gathering the information needed to create a proposal. This kind of work requires face-to-face or video meetings.

Close: During this stage, the sales rep focuses on finalizing the details and getting buyer commitment. Ideally, that would be a contract or agreement. Sometimes using an online signature tool can speed things up.

Won: This should be the most straightforward stage, but it may be the one where there is the most confusion. Different companies define Won differently. In some companies, a signed contract signifies a closed deal. In other companies, it might require an executed check. Whatever the case, at this point, the lead moves from sales to delivery. Although sales should still be in touch, looking for future business and seeking out referrals.

Once everyone on the team uses the funnel the same way, you will begin to see patterns. Those patterns will define the needed ratios to achieve sales goals. The patterns you will see are:

• Length of your sales cycle
• Close-ratio
• What factors influence velocity
• At what rate things fall out of the funnel

Once you understand those items for the team and individuals, you can begin to build ratios you can manage against.

In truth, a funnel functions more like a sieve than a pipeline or even a funnel. Everything that comes in the top of the funnel does not come out the other end in a closed deal. If you are moving through the sales process effectively, more things fall out of the funnel than close.

A typical expectation is that for every ten things that go in the top of the funnel, only one will close; a 10:1 ratio.

This is not a bad thing. During the prospecting process, your team will discover that some companies don't have a need. While qualifying, your team will find that some opportunities are not a good fit. While cultivating, it will be discovered that you aren't going to overcome all of the obstacles in every opportunity.

That is normal and allows the team to keep focusing on the opportunities that are the best fit, the most profitable, and the most likely to close. For each of those stages, an appropriate ratio will begin to come clear. It might look like this:

Prospect to Qualify = 10:5

Qualify to Cultivate = 5:2

Cultivate to Close is 2:1

Close to Won = 1:1

Here is what these ratios tell you. Let's say that for the leads in Qualify (they have shown an interest but not yet been qualified); there is a 5 to 1 chance they will close. If your average sales cycle is 5 months, then by looking at the number of leads in Qualify, you will know if there is any chance you will hit your numbers in 5 months.

Of course, each sale is unique, and these are just stats, so there is always a possibility that more or less will close. However, if you don't have 5 in Qualify for every close you need 5 months from now, you aren't likely to hit your goals.

By the time a lead is in Close, all the leads that were a poor fit or chose a different vendor are gone, leaving just the leads with a 90% chance of closing in the next 60 days. That is the revenue you should be able to forecast.

By consistently using and managing the funnel, you will see patterns that will help predict velocity and close ratios.  You will know what percent of leads fall out of the funnel at each stage.

If you watch closely, you will see trends when they are happening. 

For example, when there aren't enough leads coming in the top of the funnel, sellers tend to focus on leads that aren't a good fit and probably won't close. These opportunities bounce around in the funnel but don't move forward.  Sellers end up wasting time because they don't have anything to replace it if it falls away. If the funnel is full of leads, sellers will focus on leads that they can close and let go of the others.

So, if leads are bouncing around in the funnel for longer than your average sales cycle, it is time to find out what is going on.  If sellers are chasing unqualified leads because there is not enough in the top of the funnel, it's time to focus on the funnel. If they are bouncing around for another reason, training may solve the problem.

If your team is carefully trained to accurately maintain their funnels, you will be accurately forecasting and adjusting activities and priorities to make sure that you will hit your goals.

The best way to make sure that funnels are accurate is to do a monthly funnel review with your team. By doing that, your team knows you are serious about your commitment to accurately and effectively managing sales revenue. When you are serious about using your funnel and managing the funnel, you will see significant changes in your results. Now, you can set goals and know whether or not you are positioned to hit your goals and what you need to do to change your positioning to achieve success.

Want to talk about using your funnel to grow your business?   Schedule a Free Strategy Session below and I will guide you through it!