Twelve Rules of B2B Sales Productivity (an ode to the economic downturn in 12 parts)

When we combine the #1 issue for CEOs with today's economic downturn, what emerges are Twelve Rules of B2B Sales Productivity. Each by itself is a path to improved sales productivity. The most productive firms are those who live by a combination of all twelve:

Rule 1: focus on outcomes. Being busy isn't productive. Busy is about activities and inputs. Productivity is about outcomes.

Rule 2: give Sales Reps more time for selling. Automate away time-consuming tasks. Automatically report sales outcomes. Give Reps sales templates that get valuable information to prospects quickly.

Rule 3: enable repetition. It's the key to craftsmanship. Structure the sales process with clear exit criteria for each pre-sales milestone. Make best practices the easiest practices and they'll be the most repeated practices. Practice makes perfect.

Rule 4: measure prospect behavior. What people say matters less than what they do. The inflection in a prospect's voice can be misleading. Their behavior never is.

Rule 5: being helpful to prospects creates competitive advantage. For prospects, help is elusive and hard to find. Service them in timely, helpful, ways and they'll engage with you. Use measures of prospect behavior to do so.

Rule 6: detect trigger events. Use systems that detect triggers such as early stage business problems, prospect product research, and prospects' interests within the sales process.

Rule 7: help Reps invest their time and effort wisely. Give Reps feedback that lets them reach out to the right prospects, for the right reasons, at the right time.

Rule 8: conversations count. Deliver information and help to prospects in ways that yield synchronous communications. The more your prospects get to know and trust you, the higher the odds they'll do business with you.

Rule 9: good conversations count more. Measure prospect behavior in ways that disclose the outcomes of conversations. A Rep sends a prospect detailed answers to their questions (an input). Has the prospect read those answers? If so, how quickly upon receipt? These are desired outcomes. They are, also, leading indicators of the scope and pace of future sales.

Rule 10: speed matters, more than ever. Disseminate leading indicators quickly to your sales team. If your ability to sense and adapt to sales realities is faster than your competitors', you have an enormous advantage.

Rule 11: learn from patterns. Encourage learning. Provide training. Use aggregated metrics, based on prospect behavior, to see the effects on outcomes of small changes in sales practices. Make mistakes well, by making and correcting them fast. Learn more to earn more.

Rule 12: expect uncertainty. It's the new norm.


-----
These rules are my blending of our own experiences with the observations over the past year of pundits such as Neil Rackham, Jeffrey Gitomer, John Monoky, Verne Harnish, Chet Holmes, Victor Cheng, Greg Alexander, Jim Cecil, and Victoria Medvec. The wisdom is theirs. The blending is mine.

John Monoky's Take on Selling in Turbulent Times

John Monoky is an Adjunct Professor of Executive Education, Ross School of Business, UMich. He recently made a presentation to technology industry executives sponsored by the BC Technology Industry Association, BC Innovation Council + Sauder School of Business (UBC) on Selling in Turbulent Times. His key points:

• in a down economy, if sales growth is flat you're growing market share
• there's a heightened need to find creative ways to overcome customers' increased reluctance to buy
• there's a mis-match between the hardest sales to land (new products w/new customers) and who on the sales team is given the task of landing them (typically the newest members of the team)
• best practice companies have sources of customer info not coming from sales reps exclusively
• just because your sales team is busy doesn't mean they're productive - of the 220 working days available each year, typically only 90-130 of them are selling days

As a result, in his view, there is a pressing need for new methods and information that change what people do - that help them make different choices armed with important, new, information.

There's also, in his view, a need to change how, how productively, and how often the sales force sells. Too much time is now being committed to not selling. This requires new accountabilities for the base portion of Reps' compensation that reinforce behaviors + increase activities that seed sales.

Imagine Sales Reps Gaining a 6th Sense + Becoming More Productive

Information can have a dramatic effect on the choices people make. It's especially true when its relevance is apparent, and it's available without interrupting user behavior. When this happens, users make much smarter choices than ever before. They acquire a 6th Sense.

We're beavering away developing a choice-influencing tool (Amacus) designed to give Sales Reps a 6th Sense. We're watching Reps adopt it as a daily tool of choice. We're measuring how much more productive they become when armed with it. For a glimpse at how far we've progressed, see this summary. For a futuristic look at how such a 6th Sense can inform and affect daily user activities, see Pattie Maes' presentation at TED 2009, viewable here.

We're excited by the impacts Amacus has already had.

We're inspired by the possibilities of what remains to be accomplished.

We're encouraged by the conversations we're now having with others whose information will have an important role to play in the 6th Sense we're ultimately looking to give to Sales Reps.