Does your web site mirror your strategy?

Does your web site really serve to advance your business?

How well does your web site reflect your business strategy?  Does your web site proudly declare what you do and what you stand for?  Does it communicate why you are different...and better?  Are there 'calls to action'...that are easily found...and actioned...and measured? 

Many companies I meet answer 'NO' to the above questions.  Now many of the companies I meet are small to mid-sized businesses.   Many sell with a 'business to business' sales model and offer technology based solutions and services...and rely on their sales force.   Many have limited marketing resources and pump their dollars into fulfilling current business commitments - not building for the future.

How often have I heard...

• Our web site does not describe or showcase the products and services that we expect to fuel our growth over the next few years...
• Our market focus has changed and we have not updated our web site..
• We don't offer some of those services anymore...
• We need to get testimonials and publish them to the site..
• Our web site needs a complete refresh in terms of look and feel.  It was written 4 years ago and has not really been updated since...
• and on, and on.

Consider that in the current '2.0' world, the direct or channel sales force do not own the entire sales cycle the way they did, even a few short years ago.   Prospective customers visit your site, even before they contact you...and they start to form opinions - so is your site ready to deliver the message that you want?

Are you playing your strongest hand?

Here's another thought.  Often when I visit a web site, I check the 'news' or 'events' section to see what's new.  What has the company done recently that they are proud to share?  Have they announced new flagship customers, new products or services, industry presentations or presence at events, etc.  When the last entry on the news page is 2 years old, that raises a big warning flag for me.  Should it?

Consider the impressions your site creates.

And keep in mind that we have not even talked about SEO, web traffic, high impact calls to action, demand generation, page optimization, content management, etc. How do you want your web site to really perform for you?  Do you want your site to drive leads to your sales team to help build the top of the funnel? Do you want the web to nurture interest and help move along slower moving prospects while your sales team focuses on where they can have the most impact?  I'll cover more on this topic in a future post.

Your Sales Team and Your CEO – Alignment or Disconnect?

I recently read George Colony’s blog posting CEO’s Want Better Sales Forces.  George is CEO of Forrester Research.   George asked tech CEO’s if they are satisfied with how the sales force is advancing their strategy.   Generally CEO’s were not satisfied, citing that salesforces are 12 months + behind strategy and not effectively indentifying and articulating the alignment between market requirements and the full value of their available solution.

If you’re wrestling with some degree of CEO/Sales disconnect in your organization, here are a few steps you may be overlooking.

Consider the natural timeframes that each group is generally working in and bridge the
gap.  CEO’s and the senior executive team spend far more time working on long term strategy.  What kind of capabilities are required 3-5 years from now and what must be done NOW to build an organization to get there?  The executive team is focused on anticipating trends, and innovating to ensure they have differentiating solutions to enable them to continually improve their market osition.  The sales team  generally spends far less time discussing long term strategy, let alone acting on it.  Sales is focused on driving in revenue for the quarter and then the year.  Even when the CEO is focused on the next 12-18 months, the sales team is often focused on the quarter.  This drives different behavior and ultimately different results.

While CEO’s are compensated for building long term value, sales teams are rewarded for achieving and beating quarterly and annual quotas.  Sales teams generally focus on the solutions and services they can propose and close, in their time frames. 

Closing the sale - impact –What’s in it for the sales team to present the company’s longer term strategy when they are trying to close a sale this quarter?  Will sharing the company’s future help them close the sale (alignment of company and prospect’s interests) or will it potentially postpone the sale (prospect will wait to see) or does the sales rep consider it risky to introduce the topic if not asked.

Funnel building for the future – At what point should the sales funnel start including opportunities that align with the evolving strategy?  Will sales compensation plans be changing to align? Do the reps understand the impact and are they building their funnels
appropriately? Or will there be a late scramble?

Training – To the CEO, the longer term strategy may seem crystal clear, after all the CEO has been defining and refining it – it’s in his blood. If the sales people have only heard about it in an internal presentation, than they are prepared to present the story. And if they are not confident, they won’t naturally talk about it.   Educate your team.  And don’t just tell them – you won’t get the results.  Take the team through your process so that they really understand and believe in the direction.  That will help ensure the CEO gets the action he/she wants.

Arm your team – Once your sales team are believers in the longer term strategy, are they ready for battle?  How do you want the strategy presented and shared? Are sales and marketing aligned? Does the sales team have the content needed to deliver and support the message - consistently?   Think sales presentations, proposals, dialogues, with both existing customers and prospects.

Is your digital strategy aligned?  Do your web sites, blogs, social media initiatives all support your strategy? Or will the sales team be out of step?

Selling high – With a sales team that can competently tall about their company’s future strategy – in the context of benefit to their customers - they have the opportunity to engage at higher levels in their customers and prospects organizations.  Are you equipping your sales teams? Can they step up?

I have talked to a lot of CEO’s and Presidents that tell me that their web site and collateral does not reflect where they are taking the company.    Yet they often expect the sales division to continue to deliver.   And having been the VP Sales in a number of companies, I know that the team has to continue to bring in the revenue – no excuses.  Think and talk it through.   The above are just a few of the questions that CEO’s and executive teams should be asking when they perceive that the sales
teams are not ideally aligned with the company strategy. 

Close the gap and accelerate your sales growth!

Building and leading a high performance sales team

Building and Leading a High Performance Sales Team

Here are 10 great ways to build a high performance sales team. Done right, they will yield both short and long term results. You will be better positioned to consistently achieve revenue goals and you will build a stronger, more committed sales team.

1. As a sales leader, get into the trenches with your team. Support them at every phase of the sales cycle – from initial calls, capability presentations and needs analysis through to preparing proposals, recommendation, pricing. Support them where they need it and work with them to transfer knowledge and boost their own capabilities for next time. Remember – you are in it together. Once they know you have their back, they will drive hard for results.

2. Inspire your team. Paint a vision of where you want the team to be, in addition to individual quota achievement. Set stretch goals and agree on how the team will celebrate when the goals are achieved. As a team, create the plan to get there. Lead the team to the goal. Share success along the way. Recognize everyone’s contribution. This is hard work – it’s not announcing a prize for the end of the quarter – it’s leading the team every step of the way and working through all the details to ensure success.

3. Challenge the team and lead them into uncharted territory – every team needs home runs. They help rally the team as well as showing that anything is possible. Home runs in terms of new business development could be opening new sales channels, signing a major new customer, a large multi year deal, new applications that were not considered before, opening international markets, licensing intellectual property in new ways, new revenue producing partnerships, successful new product launches, etc. Set challenging goals and work towards them – stretch the team’s thinking and raise the state of the art. The sales cycles are likely different. Hire specialized Business Development pros or change the sales structure or compensation to reward achievement of major milestones on the way to opening new revenue streams.

4. Leading and managing change. From the sales force’s perspective, change can hurt. Change in territories, swapping of accounts, change in compensation plans, increases in quotas, consolidation of business units, mergers and acquisitions, new products, new systems, etc, etc. Often changes are made for strategic reasons – need to strengthen sales of certain product lines, need to improve coverage on specific accounts, need to support new strategic initiatives including new product launches. As a great sales leader, you need to show the sales team the value of the change, the upside. And then lead them though it! Be extremely hands on. Show what they need to do in order to come out of the change cycle better positioned for continued success.

5. Reduce non-selling time. Your best sales pros are great at this – they don’t spend time on anything that does not advance an opportunity or enhance a relationship. At the other end of the range, reps need your guidance to ensure they are focused. Worst case, underperforming reps start work on non-selling activities thinking they are laying a foundation for future sales. I have seen reps spend time re-working company sales collateral for later use. Generally that’s not their job. Keep them focused on sales activity that matters. But go deeper. What is taking their time that they would like to stop doing or do more efficiently? Are they rewriting proposals because they can’t find the best standard? Are they writing reports that are not driving benefit?

6. Customize your support for each member of your sales team – you are working to enable their success! No two sales reps are the same in terms of strengths, funnel status, quota achievement, etc. Figure out what each one needs to get their performance up to the next level and deliver. One might need help crafting a winning proposal, another might need help in custom pricing, another might need your support in new business development. You might have a star that has met quota consistently year after year, yet could use assistance clearing internal obstacles, thus increasing effectiveness. If your sales team believes you are there for them and will do whatever it takes to ensure their success, you will in turn have their commitment.

7. Hire the best you can afford. This is easier when you are working for a name-brand company with deep pockets and reps want to move to you from the competition. But what if your one of thousands of mid-market companies and can pay good compensation, but not necessarily at the very top. How do you get the best people? You hire for proven sales talent, and you hire people that you believe can transfer their skills to your industry. You hire people on an upward career trajectory. You look for the right core competencies – the right character, the right cultural fit. And let them see your passion for the business!

8. Mediocre performers need to go. Sure you might say that some reps still make a positive cash flow contribution even if they are consistently well under quota. Will they ever get there? Do they have the internal drive to succeed? Anyone can recover from a slump, but if their bar is lower than your bar, than they don’t fit. And you risk showing the entire sales team that you accept this level of performance. And if they speak negatively about the company, than their time is up!

9. Refine your sales methodology. Ask tough questions.
o Is sales process being followed? If not why not?
o What could be improved?
o How well does the process align with prospect’ and customer’s buying cycle?
o Does the process make it easy for the customer to buy and does it accelerate the sales cycle for your reps.
o Do your reps have the skills to execute on the sales process?

10. And finally - set clear expectations on sales performance – leave no room for misinterpretation. This sounds too obvious, but expectations are not always as crystal clear as they should be. Expectations define what great sales performance looks like. Expectations reflect the overall sales methodology and cover a full range of activities from account planning to call activity to sales funnel metrics to quota achievement to being an overall ambassador for the company. Expectations enable you to more effectively lead and coach your sales team – both in recognition of overachievers and in coaching those reps that are not targeting to achieve quota. Celebrate the successes – particularly when a stretch goal has been achieved.


Comments? I welcome discussion!

In transition, but not for long.

It's been a few weeks since I left my role as VP Sales at Tenzing, and I'm getting really excited about the opportunities ahead.

Tenzing was a fabulous place to be and the company is well postioned to continue on its rapid growth trajectory. Tenzing has a great team and we earned the right to provide our services to high growth organizations across North America and around the world. Managed services and managed hosting - particularly for SaaS and e-commerce companies is a high potential sector and I look forward to evaluating opportunities in these sectors as I seek out my next gig. And leveraging the cloud - that's the icing!

Best of luck to all my former colleagues at Tenzing.

Avoiding the pitfalls of SLA Management: A lesson for SaaS Providers

Service Level Agreement (SLA) management is a challenging part of delivering business critical applications over the Internet. The development of a successul SLA requires Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers to do three things incredibly well:

1) Effectively define, mointor and report on key service deliverables.

2) Engage in sound risk analysis

3) Balance the conflicting demands of different clients against the need for consistency.

Tenzing's CTO Kelly Beardmore has written a complete white paper on SLA Management, entitled - Avoiding the pitfalls of SLA Management: A lesson for SaaS Providers. You've just read the opening paragraph. The complete whitepaper can be found on the Tenzing site at http://www.tenzing.com/resource-center.asp

At Tenzing, we have worked with many ISV's that have expanded their business through the delivery of their software through a hosted model. We've helped them re-architect their environments to handle substantial growth and ensure they meet the SLAs seemingly imposed on them by their enterprise accounts.

We have worked with many small software companies, that are in turn providing business critical applications to true Fortune 500 enterprise companies with well known brands. In many cases, when these software companies were much smaller, the SLAs were not seen as critical. Fast forward to present day - these companies are wildly successful, revenue is growing at tremendous rates, the services provided to their enterpise accounts is critical - measured in absolute dollars and percentage of revenue and profits - and SLA's suddenly carry big penalties for missing.

We're working with more and more ISV's to proactively manage SLA's.

If you're wrestling with SLA management, we would love a chance to dialogue with you. We've seen it before and we might be able to help you.

If you would like to weigh in with your comments, please post one or contact me.

Thanks