8020 Pareto

8020 Sales Effectiveness

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 16:44:39 +0000

8o20 Sales Effectiveness Analysis

Based on many years of experience we have found that these are the most ‘common problems’ or ‘opportunities for improvement’.

Some of these will be of no concern to you, others might strike a chord and make you pause for thought. There will be others that you are not sure of the answer to. That is where we can help.

Using a simple but comprehensive methodology, we can analyse your current performance and effectiveness in each of these areas. This will produce a concise and clear report, detailing very objectively the current situation for each of these points and how, if appropriate, each area might be improved.

It takes one to two days of our time, and a few hours of yours. The cost? Less than you might spend on your next sales meeting. The biggest cost is NOT doing an analysis like this.

This may then lead on to further coaching and development activities.

NB: The use of the term ‘sales person’ is shorthand for any and all job roles involved in the process and purpose of wining business.

The 12 common areas of sales improvement

1. Unbalanced sales

How heavily do you rely on a few key customers for your sales revenue?

You ideally want a mix of customers and products and services. If 20% of your customers produce 80% of your sales, then this has a high degree of risk. Consider creating a greater mix of sales and sales opportunities:

No more than 30% of sales or pipeline opportunities from one customer.
30% of each quarters sales from either first customers or dormant existing customers.
30% from higher margin optional or newer products or services

A simple analysis should be able to tell you this, how you change it is slightly more complex, but not impossible.

2. Lead generation overspend

How cost-effective are your lead-generation and marketing activities?

You probably make quite a high investment in marketing activities that don’t actually seem to produce tangible or measurable results. Further tracking effectiveness of leads to cash might also be difficult to measure accurately. Advertising, whether print or web, is expensive and notoriously difficult to measure it’s effect. Word of mouth marketing, referral generation, networking, customer follow-up and development even more so.

For a quick ratio, simple take your total spend on lead generation activities for the last 12 months (advertising, web promotion, exhibitions, direct mail, etc) and divide it first by the number of NEW leads produced and the number of new customers it generated, and then by the value of the business done. Here a simplified example,

Marketing spend = £100,000.
Enquiries Leads for period 500 (each lead is costing you £200)
New customers = 100
Spend of these 100 new customers = £500,000

Therefore each new customer is costing you £1,000. This figure is in fact the profit margin of each new order/customer and then therefore selling to new customers in this way is actually costing not making money.

However, the secret of developing new business opportunities lies in two areas: making opportunity prospecting a constant and consistent focus and focus on the ROI analyse and especially the areas with much greater cost/reward return. In today’s tough marketing, reducing the amount of ‘luck’ is essential in new lead generation.

3. Sales roller-coaster

How consistent month to month sales results?

Your sales figures, particularly for new or first time customers resemble a ‘sales roller-coaster’ – good month/bad month etc. This could be for several reasons:

You are too reliant one or two sales people or customers that can skew your figures
You sales pipeline is not large enough and exposed to minor changes
Your sales pipeline is not qualified accurately enough and therefore opportunities tend to ‘slip’ on a regular basis.
Lack of ability to build solid sale opportunities, particularly with a sense of urgency.
Poor or inconsistent prospecting and ‘filling the funnel’ activity.

It is possible to analyse these causes and produce a series of measures to reduce the ‘feast and famine’ and end-of-year “dash to the line” for the annual sales target.

4. Inconsistent follow-up

Do you have an implemented ‘personal contact strategy’ for keeping in touch with your customer base, prospects and useful contacts?

Whether a customer or prospect, all contacts should be followed by telephone on planned and regular basis.

In many companies, there is poor consistency of planned or organised follow-up of past leads, customers and contacts, with many dormant contacts and customers not being contacted on a regular basis. The reality in many businesses is that 80% of contacts and customers are not contacted after six months. Sources of opportunities to be gained by better follow-up could include:

Old enquiries or leads that did not come to anything.
Lapsed or dormant customers
Existing customers that could buy additional products or services from you but don’t.
Contacts that might be able to offer you a referral, and you them.
Lost customers that you could re-bid or reconnect with.

Clearly email, letters and events are also good ways of keeping in touch, but a phone call is both personal and interactive.

5. Lack of sales differentiation

How well do you clearly know and can explain to customers what makes you different to your competitors?

You find it difficult to differentiate yourself and customers seem to have a ‘pre-occupation’ with price (“I could make more sales if we weren’t so expensive”). Consider these three points:

Are the main selling points (features, benefits, etc) also true for you main competitors?
Are sales messages adequately personalised and tailored to individual customers and each sales opportunity or proposal?
If they are cheaper alternatives in the market, how convincingly do you articulate how and why you are superior?

You should focus not on USP’s , but defining ‘comparative advantages’, tailored at the point of sales wherever possible.

6. Sales conviction

Do your sales team believe in what they are selling and your prices?

It might be that even your own sales people are not convinced about the value and price of what you sell. This makes it difficult to convince your customers accordingly. They are often the biggest critics of your product and prices. This attitude is often given away unconsciously during their dealings with customers and leads to a lack of urgency and enthusiasm, reflected in a prolonged sales cycled and many ‘sleeping’ opportunities.

7. Poor use of sales time

How much time is actually spent with customers, talking to customers or working directly on business development activities?

In many cases, sales people spend less than 30% of their time with customers or working on new business opportunities, for whatever reasons. These reasons might be real and seemingly legitimate – travelling time, paperwork, internal meetings, and so on. But they can also arise from poor time management by individual sales people and business development specialists: Lack of prioritisation, delegation, procrastination, goal setting and setting daily and weekly objectives and time plans.

8. Sales productivity

Can you differentiate between your best sales people and the most productive?

Unless you carry out regular sales ratio analysis, it can be difficult to really understand individual sales effectiveness. Sales productivity is structure around three main dynamics: Activity, Value and Conversion. These three factors interact to create sales results. Any desired improvement is sales, must be accompanied by an improvement in one or more of these elements. Measuring these on a regular basis allows both management and individuals to implement sales improvement goals and more practical activity plans. Setting higher sales targets will not itself produce great results, unless sales people know how and where to chasnge their behaviour and activity.

9. Customer development

How well you maximise individual customer potential through up-selling and cross-selling?

It is likely that your customers, even good ones, are only spending a percentage of their potential business with you, that is sales or customer orders are for single products or type of product, and often do not result in other business or repeat orders.

In many businesses, customer value, potential or cross-selling activities are not a core part of monthly sales analysis or reporting. Often sales activity is focused heavily at new customer acquisition rather than customer development.

10. In-effective sales pipeline reviews

How well does your sales reporting, qualification and pipeline management contribute to improving sales effectiveness?

Most experienced sales professionals are skilled at managing the ‘pipeline review’ discussion. Their optimism around ‘stalled; deals can be compelling and of course they are very skilled at telling people what they want to hear. A good review should provide both manager and salespeople with quick and accurate analysis, with clear actions agreed to progress each opportunity and result improved conversion ‘to plan’. This also includes the correct utilisation of sales tracking and CRM tools, something that often suffers from very low adoption rates amongst sales manager, sales people and account managers.

11. Lack of real sales skills development

How confident are you that the money you are spending on sales training is delivering additional sales revenue?

Short-burst or one-off training can definitely have a motivational effect and create a lift in sales activity. For more sustained results, your sales training should be thought of as skills development and extend beyond simple classroom learning. This might start with a simple skills needs analysis, linked to business requirements. Group training should done regularly and supported by other activities such as:

Online and e-learning
Personal development projects
Accompanied call coaching
Mentoring
In-depth product and market knowledge testing

This approach, combined with a ‘before and after’ series of measurements will improve not only the skills, behaviours and motivation of your teams, but also allow you quantify the improvements gained.

12. Wide variance in sales performance

What is the gap between the highest and lowest performing sales people?

It is not unusual for 80% of sales to be achieved by the top 20% of sales people. You may have three groups of sales people in your organisation:

Those performing above target on a consistent basis.
Inconsistent or average results – ‘perform when pushed’
Struggling.

Whilst you might be able to write names easily against each category, understanding the causes and what to do about is a perennial question.

“Nearly all sales people can increase their sales results by 20% – if you know how”

Summary

Element	Probe
Unbalanced sales portfolio	How heavily do you rely on a few key customers for your sales revenue?
Lead generation overspend	How cost-effective are your lead-generation and marketing activities?
Sales roller-coaster	How consistent month to month sales results?
Inconsistent follow-up	Do you have an implemented ‘personal contact strategy’ for keeping in touch with your customer base, prospects and useful contacts?
Lack of differentiation	How well do you clearly know and can explain to customers what makes you different to your competitors?
Sales conviction	Do your sales team believe in what they are selling and your prices?
Poor use of sales time	How much time is actually spent with customers, talking to customers or working directly on business development activities?
Sales productivity	Can you differentiate between your best sales people and the most productive?
Customer development	How well you maximise individual customer potential through up-selling and cross-selling?
In-effective sales pipeline reviews	How well does your sales reporting, qualification and pipeline management contribute to improving sales effectiveness?
Lack of real sales skills development	How confident are you that the money you are spending on sales training is delivering additional revenue?
Wide variance in sales performance	What is the gap between the highest and lowest performing sales people?

8020 sales effectiveness analysis

Using a combination of existing sales data, one-to-one interviews, existing sales materials and written surveys we can produce a clear analysis of each of these areas with a short of recommendations for further investigation.

Strategies for Success. Richard Bandler and Chris Ellison.

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:10:39 +0000

Strategies for Success. Strategy Elicitation, Richard Bandler and Chris Ellison. Promo DVD coming soon.

Introduction to New Code Trainers Training

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:46:22 +0000

This months video was filmed at our 2009 New Code Trainers Training where John Grinder shares some interesting points as part of his opening.

Business networking skills

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 11:51:56 +0000

Business Networking Skills Workshop

Overview

Half day business workshop with personalised telephone coaching follow-up, with workbook, audio podcast and eBook.

Course Objectives:

This course will provide participants with the insight and skills to be more effective in both business and social situations that require advanced inter-personal and networking skills.

Who will benefit

It is ideal if you attend, or would like to attend, conferences, seminars, social events and other networking gatherings where it is essential you interact, create a positive and memorable impression and either reinforce or make new connections.

Background

It has long been held that “It is not what you know but who know.”. However, this unique workshop expands this principle into the “who knows you” ethos as key ingredient of success.

In addition it develops practical applications of the themes of ‘connections’, developed by Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point) and other leading business specialists: Are you a connector, mavern or ‘salesperson’; can you identify these types amongst those in your contacts or indeed in a room full of unknown people?

Peter Drucker once said: “More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than at any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.” Whilst this might not be as true as it once was, without doubt more quality business connections are made informally.

Therefore, the skills, concepts and ideas in this highly focused workshop and follow-up coaching session will help you achieve these quality business connections and are more important than they have ever been.

The approach is be to build on the strengths and personality you already have, as ‘being you’ is perhaps the most effective basis for business networking and building better connections.

Business Networking Skills: Benefits

Key learning points

The importance of networking, and different forms of networking situation, event.
Maximising the power of quality connections: Connectors, maverns and ‘salespeople’; the 150 theory.
To provide greater understanding of the dynamics of communication specific to networking.
Preparation – a simple checklist to increase your effectiveness from any networking or similar event.
To help you become more confident and assured when ‘working’ a room.
Practical tips and techniques to improve your influencing skills especially with people who are experts and in positions of authority.
The Four C model of effective informal communication:
- The first thirty seconds: Connecting – non-verbal communication skills verbal introductions and more.
- Conversing – developing engaging, relevant and interesting conversations on purpose using high-impact and leverage questions.
- Communicating; using the 30 second rule to encapsulate your point and making more impact through the use of stories, word images and metaphor.
- Confirming; gaining agreement, summarising and concluding a conversation.
Use effective follow-up to maintain active contacts and connections.
- How to position yourself as a centre of influence – the one who knows the movers and shakers.
- Follow-up – a simple checklist maximise the value of connections.

Learning reinforcement and follow-up

The course will be delivered with an interactive workbook for use on the day.

In addition all participants will receive a 30 minute audio podcast and online eBook summarising ‘Networking’ best practice.

Coaching

Following the workshop, all attendees will be offered a 30 minute telephone coaching session at a time to suit them.

Business Networking Skills Outline

Time	Title	Key elements
20 mins	Introductions	Introductions Review of personal objectives Networking questionnaire Small group exercises
20 mins	Networking, connecting and success	Why networking matters and what you are looking for from networking Thinking ‘connections’ not contacts The four ‘C’s’ Presentation and discussion
20 mins	Getting started; preparation	Pre-event checklist Controlling nerves Creating ‘capabilities statements – business and personal Presentation and discussion Preparation and practice sessions
30 mins	Communication dynamics 1	Working a room – developing your strategy Making the first approach – as if you are the host! 10 great ways to open a conversation 10 things not to do! Presentation and discussion Preparation and practice sessions
30 mins	Communication dynamics 2	Mastering high-impact and leverage questions Advanced encouraging, drawing out and active listening skills How to control a conversation without dominating it. Presentation and discussion Preparation and practice sessions
30 mins	Maximising value	Seven key follow-up actions Building your ‘150’ group Presentation and discussion
30 mins	Putting it all together and personal action plans	Question and answer session Do’s and don’ts summary Small group exercises

Business Networking Skills: Trainer

Graham Roberts-Phelps

Training style

The training is very practical and objective. Very clear and specific skills, models and techniques are covered and related directly to attendees personal learning objectives.

The goal is on improving things that are already working, not going over old ground. Participants will discuss and plan new approaches using real-life examples taken from their own situations.

Each module will feature high quality training presentations, group exercises and team activities and a high degree of participation and interaction.

About Graham Roberts-Phelps

Graham is a specialist training professional with a great deal of experience and expertise in all aspects networking and interpersonal skills. He is a qualified Master trainer of NLP, a practised and highly experienced networked and is involved with a number businesses with networking as a core marketing strategy.

He has been training, coaching and consulting since 1993, and has personally trained over 20,000 people, in 25 different countries, from hundreds of organisations. These span all industries and types of business.

In this time he has developed a unique series of modules and approaches based on what really works, as well as also writing more than ten books on sales, marketing, training and business.

Graham has conducted sales and customer service training and consulting for many different organisations, including Alico, Cisco, Safricom, Vodafone, O2, 3M, Sun Microsystems, EU patent office, Amadeus, Pegasus, Xchanging, My Family Care, Ambius, Travelsphere, Nortel, BT, AIG, Nationwide, Abbey, Apple, Thomson Reuters, Cosmos Travel, Intel, Gateway computers and many others including several web-based businesses, franchises and multi-national business.

Organised persistence – how to find new business stategically

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 10:23:24 +0000

Organised persistence

How to find new business stategically: sales prospecting step by step

Whatever your business, the first part of the sales process is probably the hardest – finding and developing new customers and business revenue opportunities. It is the activity that most people dislike, keep putting off or lack the relevant and latest skills, time or motivation to carry out to a sufficient level of activity. Organised Persistence Masterclass solves this.

Seven great benefits

Increase new business sales faster, easier and with less stress
Consistently and pro-actively find, qualify and convert new sales opportunities
Improved conversion of sales leads into qualified prospects and orders
Maximise up-selling and cross-selling opportunities with existing clients
Master proven and low-cost prospecting methods that get great results, including appointments with senior contacts.
More accurate sales forecasts, qualification and reporting
Tools to develop more business from existing customers through up-selling and cross-selling

Key principles

Good sales training such as this will certainly install new skills and lift motivation. However, we know from experience that effective prospecting is best with a structured, highly targeted and sustained approach. Our model achieves just this using a proven model and tools that can be applied over a period of time, supported by the Organised Persistence coach as required.

It is suitable for almost any size or type of business in any market. Built-in to the training programme is a ‘before and after’ analysis to measure the effectiveness of the training in terms of new business generated. This means that the only risk is not using Organised Persistence.

What is Organised Persistence?

Developed by Graham Roberts-Phelps, it is based on years of experience, hours of research with hundreds of different businesses and thousands of sales people. It is both a skill-set and structured process. Simply, Organised Persistence is a proven methodology for achieving and sustaining new business sales in a B2B environment.

Ten elements of the Organised Persistence methodology

Mindset
Set clear, written, sales-gain objectives
Create a WIT activity plan and daily prospecting routine
Prospecting and sourcing methods
High impact messages and advanced prospecting skills
Reporting and sales tracking
Linkedin – the secret weapon in your armoury
First meeting / sales pitch planning
Sharpen your pricing, proposals and pitch
Call-back closing techniques

“It’s not what you do, but how you do it that makes the difference.”

About Graham Roberts-Phelps

I specialise in helping companies, sell smarter, serve customers better,communicate clearer and focus sharper. I do this through business training, presenting and consulting.

Since 1993, I have personally trained and worked with over 20,000 people, in 25 different countries, from hundreds of organisations. I have also written over ten books on training and business. NLP Master trainer.

I also have a detailed knowledge and understanding of recruitment, training many hundreds of recruitment consultants and specialists in a range of organisations, as well has being a client. A telephone or email reference is available from a recruitment client.

NLP Magic Words

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:17:00 +0000

www.stevegjones.com NLP Magic Words Steve G. Jones Neuro Linguistic Programming

Who is Richard Bandler? What is NLP?

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:45:44 +0000

Richard Bandler is the co-creator of NLP (or Neuro Linguistic Programming). Through his nlp training seminars and self help products he has helped thousands of people around the world. His mind procedures, trance and hypnosis techniques make people think differently and feel differently, happy, become successful and changing their patterns to overcome phobias, anxiety and fear. Richard Bandler is one of the most influential thinkers of the XXIst Century the man who virtually founded the personal and self help industry and in the process transformed our understanding of the human mind. He has co-trained with Paul Mckenna and runs seminars with John la Valle Learn more about their nlp seminars in London through www.nlplifetraining.com or http

Richard Bandler: Welcome to Reality

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:03:02 +0000

A short extract fron the DVD set ‘Welcome to Reality’. You can buy the DVD from www.nlp-cds.co.uk

NLP Changing the Past

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:17:24 +0000

www.stevegjones.com Steve G. Jones NLP Changing the Past Steve G. Jones Neuro Linguistic Programming

Static Contraction – Anthony robbins

Graham Roberts-Phelps — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:39:44 +0000

www.staticcontraction.net – For more info on static contraction training .