sales
A very good friend of mine, who has been in sales for longer than I have, shared a recent story with me. We go way back – in fact we were at primary school together – and we have stayed in touch over the last 50 years (or so).
My friend represents several overseas companies in the UK in a technical and sales capacity. One of his principals was considering introducing “lean” approaches to improve efficiency. Typical of a “lean” approach is the setting of KPI’s.
They felt “efficient” meant quoting within 48 hours of a customer request. In this technical market, this can be pushing it and my friend wanted to stress that a better measurement was quotation effectiveness/conversion rate, rather than just a quick turnaround which often resulted in poor quality proposals being created. This KPI does not include any measure of the quality of the response, or conversion rate to business, the ultimate measure of effectiveness.
This is an excerpt from his response to them:
What is the purpose of a quotation?
I suggest ”To provide information to the customer on the goods and services being offered against a specified requirement in such a way as to maximise the chance of winning the business, or if not successful then to leave the customer with the most positive impression of the company and it’s capabilities”
Points to consider.
A) In most cases time is the customer’s most precious asset. A quotation should have a clear logical layout, be easily understood and provide enough information for the customer to proceed with minimal additional effort to placing an order.
B) A quotation is part of the sales effort and should highlight the unique features and benefits of dealing with us. Where possible we should highlight a feature with specific relevance to the customer’s individual situation. e.g. offers of support with new product development or guarantees about in service reliability.
C) Our quotation will almost certainly be directly compared to that of our competitors. Does our quotation show us in the best light and portray us as professional and as a suitable business partner? An interesting exercise is to compare our typical quotation to our product catalogue and other printed company documents. Is the standard uniform across all documents?
D) Our quotation may well be evaluated by personnel who have little knowledge of our business and products and who may not have met any of our personnel. We need to ensure that the quotation leaves a positive impression with these people.
E) We need to give them confidence in placing an order with us. Changing suppliers may be considered a risky decision, so ambiguity is to be avoided at all costs and clarity on timing is particularly important:
e.g. “Within 3 working days of receipt of your purchase order we will issue a formal acknowledgment with the lead time. Where applicable, drawings for approval will be issued within 10 working days. On receipt of your approval the final order will entered into our production system.”
F) Points of contact. Include the names and contact numbers for all the of our people that they can discuss the quotation with and who / how to send the order to us.
G) Make the quotation easy to read and make the customer comfortable with the content. Use exactly the terminology and / or wording the client has used in their enquiry documents and address issues in the same order as they are listed in the enquiry documents.
H) Avoid ambiguity at all times. While it may seem tempting to avoid being definitive; commercially and technically clarity at an early stage can prevent misunderstandings and problems later.
I) On high value and complicated offers consider using numbered paragraphs, separate the technical and commercial content into two sections and provide an index.
Great advice and ideas on how to make your proposal easy to understand for your customer!
What suggestions do you have to share?
Posted in sales
I have this view of the world: marketing is focused on pixels and print and sales is focused on people. It’s a bit of a simplification but the point I am trying to make is sales is about people:people interaction and marketing is mainly people:non-people interaction.
So, when it comes to integrating social media into your business what strategy do you adopt? Over the last few years we’ve seen a significant increase in social media uptake by businesses – and for the most part they are failing. To me it seems that a lot of these businesses hand over social media to the marketing department, who then start to think in terms of ‘messages’ and ‘channels’ and see social media as just another channel to pump their messages down. But here’s the problem – most marketing departments aren’t used to the customer answering back – which is the whole point of social media. And they panic.
On the other hand sales folks are very happy to engage and converse with customers, prospect, well just about anyone in fact. So doesn’t it make more sense if the sales people are on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or whatever? But marketing get concerned about how this type of interaction may ‘dilute the brand’ or ‘not be consistent with our core values’. So in the end, the customer speaks and few are listening. And those that do listen are often worried about engaging.
Ideally get your sales team involved in social media – but not to push your product – but to grow your contacts, your influence and help people on-line with your knowledge. This will create far more of a buzz and help the business define its area of expertise and value to the market place.
Social media is best when it is used across the entire company to communicate. From stores, to dispatch, from finance to HR – social media is just another communication tool that can be used across the business.
Would you consider limiting the use of the phone, or email to just one department?
Then why limit the use of social media?
Long term readers of this blog will appreciate that I am fascinated by two things: one is about the process of how people make decisions, and the other is about how and why people are motivated to do things. This blog tends to look at those topics within the context of sales – but of course they are not limited to this.
My IFA (the excellent Andrew Stinchcomb of Integrity Financial) recently drew my attention to the book “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us” by Daniel H. Pink. And it really is a fascinating read.
Most organisations believe that it is a requirement to motivate sales people by commission. It’s pretty normal for our industry. Well research quoted in “Drive” would suggest that this is counter productive and counter intuitive.
Research undertaken by Deci (I won’t go into the details, you’ll have to read the book) comes to the following conclusion: “One who is interested in developing and enhancing intrinsic motivation in children, employees, students, etc, should not concentrate on external-control systems such as monetary rewards”
Now that’s quite a statement. Just think about it – commission, for the long term, doesn’t work. Rewarding the kids with money in return for doing those house-hold chores – doesn’t work. He goes on… “When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for that activity” Rewards can deliver a short-term boost – just like a jolt of caffeine – but the effect wears off – and worse, can reduce long term motivation for a project.
Now here’s an interesting point. That research is over 40 years old and clearly hasn’t changed the way we behave – for the most part – in how sales people are managed in the work place.
The research also implies that if the commission is taken away, people will be demotivated to a level below that at which they started. So, by paying commission in the first place we need to keep paying it – as taking it away will be detrimental. But the effect of paying the commission in the first place only has a short term effect, at best. Over time – and it’s quite a short time – the effect of having a commission scheme wears off.
So, what does motivate people? I suggest you read this book (and also ‘Punished by Rewards mentioned in another posting) for the answers…
Posted in sales