The Importance of Fun and Games in Sales 2.0: The Debut of “Make That Sale”

Keeping sales reps motivated — especially in today’s business world where no prospect has time for a sales call — is a key challenge for managers. Compensation, commission and bonuses alone are not enough to get sellers up in the morning, ready to take on another day of prospecting, qualifying and closing.

A day after kicking off the panel discussion on process and metrics at the Sales. 2.0 Conference East in Boston — a critical but more-geeky-than-fun topic — I got to be on the TV game show “Make that Sale.” Yes, you read that right: a game show for sales people. Competing for the coveted electronic device of the moment (an iPad), the contestants — some confident and practiced, others flustered and nervous — got on stage one at a time, as the audience enthusiastically chanted: “Make that Sale! Make that Sale! Make that Sale.” I was one of three “experts” (along with Will Wiegler from BigMachines and Garth Moulton, cofounder of Jigsaw [recently sold to salesforce.com]) on a panel of judges who rated each contestant’s performance on a scale of 1 to 10. The audience got to pick their favorites, and the contestants got to score themselves, too.

Many managers play into the fact that sales reps are naturally competitive and organize monthly or quarterly contests with prizes in order to boost short-term sales results. But the typical approach is to reward reps for being top sales person or selling the most of a certain product. Why not, instead, organize a skills-based contest that has longer-term impact?

Best-selling author Daniel Pink, who draws on research in psychology, economics and sociology, has many of us thinking about a different approach to motivation. Rather than always throwing money at the problem, how might we integrate mastery, autonomy and purpose — the real motivational factors Pink identifies in his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us — into our incentive plans? I submit that fun is an equally important motivator in a profession in which it’s commonplace to hear the word “no.”

This is exactly the premise of “Make that Sale,” which tests sales professionals’ mastery of core skills, such as presentation and story-telling, technology-usage and personalization, in a fun new way, using the popular and proven TV game-show format. The show is the brainchild of Gerhard Gschwandtner, the creative executive force behind Selling Power magazine, the Sales 2.0 conference and other market-leading media and events for chief sales officers. It is produced by the top-notch team at San Francisco-based DreamSimplicity.

Gerhard and DreamSimplicity’s Floyd Tucker took turns hosting three pilot episodes of the show: “Most Memorable Sales Story,” “Find That Prospect” and “Make that Elevator Pitch.” Three to four contestants competed in each time-limited contest. It was a blast to be on the judge’s panel, though, as on American Idol, we didn’t always agree. Will, the senior director of marketing for Big Machines and a jazz musician in his spare time, was, for the most part, detailed and spot on for a marketing guy critiquing sales performers. Sometimes, though, I gave him a hard time for being a little too brutally honest for sensitive sales types. Garth was the not-afraid-to-be different, quintessential iconoclast we know and love from his popular blog, Garth’s World. Not surprisingly, he showed a bit of favoritism for the nontraditional underdogs. Garth gets extra style points, though, for performing on the spot when Gerhard asked him to make his own elevator pitch in the final episode. The guy is seriously good.

Watch the show (link available later in July) to see which contestants won, how we scored them and how the audience’s favorites differed from the judges’.

What creative methods do you have for mixing it up and motivating reps? Are fun, skills-based contests part of your incentive plan?

Tags: "Make That Sale", compensation, contests, game show, incentives, Motivation, Sales 2.0

How to Get Prospects to Act: Another Perspective

Thanks to Jeff Weinberger, who wrote the Afterword for the book, Sales 2.0, for this guest post, which suggests that sales executives share something in common with sustainability and nonprofit professionals: we all need to establish a relationship with our buyers, prospective members or constituents, starting with raising awareness and culminating in purchase or action.

Jeff runs the green initiative for Cisco WebEx and works extensively with not-for-profit organizations. This post,  “Not Just Hammers”comes  from his blog, Disruptive Marketing.

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but you don’t get very far unless you take the second step (and then the third, and the fourth and so on…)

Not long ago I was having dinner with a friend who also spends time supporting not-for-profits and we were lamenting how hard it can be to get people in general (the general public, mass audiences, whatever you want to call it) to do the (sometimes simple) things it takes to make a big difference in the world, whether in human services, environmental protection or any number of other fields.

Which is the same challenge marketers face every day – how to get people to act, or specifically, express interest and buy.

How is this the same thing? When we talk about lead generation, demand generation, the marketing funnel, prospect and customer engagement and any number of other terms we use to describe the parts of the journey from first prospect contact to closed sale and beyond, we are really describing a journey of increasing commitment by the buyer to the seller (and, I hope by both to the on-going relationship)

Let me offer this as a way to think about the development of the buyer-seller relationship:

Start with Awareness. Someone in the market becomes aware that we offer a product or service that he or she may need. From the seller’s point-of-view, we become aware that there is a group of potential buyers in a target audience. One example of how we make this happen is advertising.

Then we move to Interest. That same prospect has determined that there is a potential that our offerings may meet some needs and is willing to explore further. We see positive response to our communication (regardless of vehicle) and become interested in pursuing the potential buyer. We provide information, marketing offers and other ways to engage and get this information.

Next is Motivation. Now the prospect has determined that she has a motivating need and that our offering can help. He or she now actively wants to pursue a purchase. And we see the possibility of turning the developing relationship into a source of revenue. We might offer a sales call.

And then comes Action. The prospect buys. We sell. We deliver.

Finally, at that point we have a developed Relationship. The customer wants to succeed with our offering, we want the same. We provide help and support to make that happen and cultivate on-going sales and other offers as we learn about more needs.

Granted, there’s a bit more complexity here and we all know it’s never that linear. And you probably label your process and funnel stages quite differently, but I have not found many people who’d disagree that Motivation precedes Action, that Interest precedes Motivation or that Awareness precedes Interest. It might all happen in an instant (think about the last time you bought a candy bar at a grocery store register display – “there’s chocolate”, “I like that”, “I’m hungry/craving”, “I’ll buy one”, granted not much of an on-going relationship there if you don’t count, as Ms. Morgenstern would have called it, the relationship between the chocolate and your hips!)

So, now back to the problem.

The problem, remember, is getting people to take the actions they might know are right, beneficial or helpful. For example, we know that recycling is good for the environment, but most of us don’t recycle much of what we could. The same can be said about the other small shifts we can all take to improve the environment, better support the not-for-profits we choose and act in a number of other ways that seem obvious to us (side note: I now see that this is true of preventative healthcare as much as sustainability)

I’ll spare this rant, but please consider there to be a long set of paragraphs aiming to debunk the economic view of people as rational beings and that all of this is a result of utility maximization. Suffice to say, it’s not.

Let’s look at how we convince people to do green acts, and participate in (volunteer, donate) not-for-profits.

Many not-for-profits (this is particularly true with ones focused on diseases and serving the under-privileged) try to generate Awareness. They want people to know about the cause or problem.

That’s an admirable goal, and an important step. But not nearly enough.

Once I know about your cause, why you think it’s important and how big the problem is (usually what I hear from these organizations), now I need a reason to move to interest. At this point, I am more likely than not to say something on the order of “that’s nice, I hope you solve that problem” and move on.

What we leave to chance is Interest, Motivation and Action.

So why don’t many organizations succeed at these steps? Mostly from not having built tools. Often, the question is asked “OK, I’m ready and willing – what do I do?” and without the tools in place, action is not possible

No sales organization would consider trying to get a prospect emotionally charged about their offering then just sit back and expect the prospect to show up with a contract, check, cash, whatever, in hand. There’s a process, there are specific actions every sales rep takes and tools they use to give their prospects as many ways as possible to close the deal.

Not-for-profits can learn a lot from their commercial counterparts.

And dare I say, many of those commercial counterparts can learn a lot about where their marketing is missing a step just by looking at their customer’s journey and on what parts they are not partnering.

I know from my work in sustainability and not-for-profits that we have lots of problems that need to be solved. Now.

I also know most of them don’t look like nails. But let me suggest that we at least start showing people how to get hammers. And whatever other tools they need.

What tools do you supply your prospects who ready to buy – or move to the next step? What can your business learn from nonprofits, the sustainability or healthcare reform movements?

Tags: Action, Awareness, healthcare, Interest, marketing, Motivation, nonprofit, Sales 2.0, sustainability

Measurements and Morale: Is Your Sales Process De-motivating?

Thanks to Brent Holloway, Sales Manager at Verint Systems and Co-Author of Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology for this post.

A friend of mine who works for a leading Software-as-a-Service company told me that he used to be measured and compensated on the number of phone calls and emails he made every week, and that each sales person’s results were posted publicly.  My friend had relatively poor numbers in terms of phone calls and emails, but he was a high performer and consistently exceeded his quota.  From his perspective the reports did little to motivate, especially since there did not appear to be a correlation between sales reps’ phone and email activities and their quarterly bookings.

There appears to be a trend – perhaps economy-related – for managers to focus not just on sales results but also on the measurement of sales reps’ activities leading to sales. The intelligence gathered through these measurements, which come from a wide range of CRM reports or other databases and business analytics systems, could help improve performance. But are all these measurements having a negative impact on sales people?

Morale is an important but difficult to quantify component of a sales team’s success. Admittedly I have not done any formal studies in this area, but I am a practicing sales manager with observations to share.

I think that measuring salespeople or the team as a whole should include both the results (I.e. actual sales, number of products sold, average sales price, well as the leading indicators that produce those results (I.e. weekly pipeline development, number of new opportunities added to the forecast, conversion rate from lead to demo, etc.)  The latter enables us to be better managers and to give targeted coaching in the areas that each salesperson needs the most.  For example, let’s assume that Karen and Joe have similar sales results over the last two quarters.  With good sales process measurements, a manager may see that Karen has a high close rate but poor pipeline growth.  Joe on the other hand may do an excellent job of adding new opportunities to his pipeline but he may be less effective in converting those opportunities.  At the end of the quarter, their results may be the same, but armed with these more detailed sales process measurements, a manager could focus more coaching time on closing with Joe and on pipeline development with Karen.  I have found not only that one-on-one coaching is an effective tool for improving performance but also a morale booster.  Reps thrive on the attention and personalized advice.

I also believe that the need to maintain good relationships with our salespeople can be at odds with a management approach with too many measurements that could make them feel like micromanaged call center agents.  To prevent this, it is important for us to measure only what really matters, and to link how these measurements can help each salesperson be more successful.

In addition to actual sales, this is what I measure for each salesperson and at the combined team level:
• weekly and quarter-to-date pipeline development measured by the number of new opportunities added
• the combined value of those new opportunities
• the total value of each salesperson’s pipeline, which includes not just the new opportunities added but also the change in value of existing opportunities

These metrics are highly correlated to sales success for a quota carrying salesperson so I share them with my sales team once a week.  This information reveals trends and a rep’s performance relative to the rest of the team.  I find that good salespeople are competitive and want to know how they are doing relative to their peers, not just in terms of the final results, but also in the key activities that lead to those results.  In this way, peer pressure can improve results and measurements become a motivational factor.

The data to perform certain types of pre-sales measurements such as pipeline development or sales process conversion rates may not be readily accessible.  Since many CRM systems show the forecast as a snapshot in time, it is difficult to measure weekly or monthly trends.  To manage this issue I developed a dashboard spreadsheet in which I copy and paste a weekly forecast report from our CRM system into the spreadsheet. It then automatically calculates and graphs, at the individual and team levels, the weekly changes in closed sales, overall pipeline changes, the number of new opportunities added, and the value of those new opportunities over the course of each quarter.  Download a copy by accessing this site’s Resources section.

What is your perspective? Do you measure your reps on activity-related measurements like numbers of phone calls and e-mails? Are sales process measurements helping or hurting your sales reps’ morale and motivation to succeed?

Tags: analytics, Measurements, Metrics, Morale, Motivation, sales process