Replicate and Reinforce Best Sales Practices Sales managers face two major challenges. First, they must ensure that the sales team is as productive as possible. Second, they must forecast the revenues and profits that the sales team is capable of achieving. The key to succeeding at both challenges is a consistent sales process, according to Jeffrey Seeley, CEO of the worldwide sales training firm Carew International. Sales process not only provides a context under which the sales manager can provide appropriate coaching to the sales team, but also leads long-term collaborative customer relationships that are the foundation of a predictable revenue stream. Advanced Selling with Macromedia Breeze by Adobe Effective Questioning – Gathering detailed, internal information about a customer’s firm - the kind of inside information that “fast tracks” a sale - generally involves multiple time-consuming sales calls. Because a Web conference can draw attendees from multiple organizations (even those located a continent away), you can pose questions about organizational structure, internal business processes, and so forth, and get responses, in real time, from multiple sources. Instant polls provide an unparalleled opportunity to assess whether the customer’s firm really needs your product and, more important, whether they’re ready to buy. Strategic Account Management – Every sales group has a handful of strategic accounts which make up the core of their business or which are the foundation for future growth. According to Sam Reese, CEO of the global sales training organization Miller Heiman, the ultimate goal of a strategic account relationship is to get your company’s experts involved in the customer’s strategic planning. Because a Web conference doesn’t demand that your company’s scarce resources travel to customer sites, you can bring more of your company’s expertise to bear in order to add value to your strategic customers. Management Coaching – The standard way that sales managers help sales reps learn better sales skills is to go on sales calls with them. However, if the sales manager is responsible for many reps, and those reps are scattered around a region, it’s difficult for even the best manager to have a thorough impact. However, when sales calls are conducted via Web conferencing, a manager can easily log into the session, assess the rep’s performance and provide instant coaching via the private chat feature – while the sales call is still in process. - by Geoff James Every sales professional knows that in-person, face-to-face meetings are an essential element of any sales process. However, what’s not generally understood is that Web conferencing can have a highly positive impact on the establishment and reinforcement of the best sales practices at the core of a sales process. While Web conferencing won’t replace traditional sales calls any time soon, it offers three unique capabilities: Sales managers can set up a Web conferencing environment where sales reps have everything needed to follow a pre-defined sales process. Sales managers can provide real-time coaching, while the Web conference is taking place, rather than after the fact, when it’s too late to influence the outcome of the call. Web conferences can be recorded and archived and then used as examples of what worked (and what didn’t) in various sales situations. Let’s see how this works in practice. According to Michael Bosworth and John Holland, co-authors of Customer Centric Selling (McGraw Hill, 2003), the most effective sales processes use a series of relevant questions, prepared especially for each type of decision-maker within the customer organization. These questions help the sales rep work with the customer to characterize the problem and then craft a solution that addresses that problem. To do this, Bosworth and Holland recommend creating a set of “sales prompters” - one for each type of decision maker - containing diagnostic questions that help customers articulate needs, and usage scenario questions that help customers visualize how those problems can best be solved. The problem with sales prompters, however, is that they can become ungainly during meetings that include different types of decision makers. Worst case, the rep can end up shuffling papers, looking for the right prompter to use with each decision maker. This is not a problem for experienced sales reps who are accustomed to changing gears during sales meetings. However, with the more unpredictable, junior sales reps, the simple mechanics of a sales process can be a real burden. That burden disappears when the sales call is conducted via Web conferencing. Rather than depending upon written materials, the sales manager sets up readable prompter scripts matching a wide variety of decision makers. Those prompters can then be displayed as necessary on the sales rep’s screen, along with links to supporting material, such as videos and canned presentations. More important, the sales manager can monitor the Web conference and provide real-time advice to the sales rep, at a point where that advice is likely to have the most positive impact (e.g., a typed message from the manager suggesting that the sales rep ask the CFO to get more specific about ROI requirements.) The ability to archive the Web conference can also help a sales team become more productive. This feature provides the sales rep with an exact record of what took place and what action items came out of the meeting. In addition, the sales manager can use the archived meeting as a coaching tool for the sales rep, replaying portions and providing additional suggestions for improved performance in the future. Finally, if the Web conference went particularly well, the sales manager now has a model to share with other members of the team, so that they can see, by example, how to use the sales process most effectively. - by Geoff James To try a 15-day trial of Macromedia’s Breeze web conferencing solution, click here.