Field Readiness (Tools and Training)

Is your sales team able to effectively compete? How knowledgeable about the competitive landscape and solution alternatives are sales reps?  Do reps exactly understand what problems their product or service offering solves and do they know how to communicate these to prospects?  Do reps know whom they need to speak with to increase successful conversion?  What is the buying process of your sweetspot prospect base?  What is the message your company is standing behind, what do your competitors do better than you, what do you do the same as your competitors and what do you have that's unique.  Where do you win?

What tools do your reps need to make them smarter, faster and more productive?  Have you been asking for more sales revenue growth but haven't changed or added sufficient action plans in this year's business plan?  Why would result expectations be any different?  This is Field Readiness.  The whole company must stand behind sales efforts from Finance through Marketing and Product Development to Customer Service and Legal. Operations needs to be the enabler that pulls it all together. 

Let's talk about sales optimization...this is the concept of the "value of each hour".  Your annual sales revenue can be broken down into hourly chunks.  This is what your team produces per hour in sales. Imagine taking your team off selling efforts for a number of hours per month times 12.  That is serious and real revenue loss.  Very expensive isn't it?  Well, consider your reps either being disrupted because they have inefficient workflow systems that slowwww them dowwwn.  Consider that your $100K+ per year reps are doing prep work that support people can do for much less $$.  Refocusing reps on high value yielding activities can give back more selling time.  Segmenting your sales force to align with customer demographics with appropriate compensation plans and quotas will give you more efficient sales coverage plus more effective sales reps with a better understanding of their assigned demographic.  Simplifying complicated processess for lead generation, customer/prospect follow up, communications, demos, RFPs, fulfillment and delivery, customer retention, and capturing data will add to selling time and lead to increased sales revenue.

Strategic pricing, (Finance) targeted product packages (Product Marketing), predesigned and customer centric collateral (Marketing) will increase conversion rates through more competitive offerings, demographic-relevant products and powerful messaging.  Reasonable and streamlined legal clauses in your sales contract, competitive advantages with customer service capability, case studies and third party references to provide credibility and timely executive accessability and flexibility will help your reps win. 

Have you implemented a CRM tool?  If so, do you actualy use it to capture data, measure productivity and drive sales?  Have the screens been optimally designed to be user friendly and provide a sensible workflow for reps?  Is it the dashboard your reps work from daily to keep them on track?  Is reporting providing enough relevant daily visibility to reps and managers to identify opportunities?

Sales methodology needs to be streamlined and address either a consultative or transactional approach depending on the offering. Sales training either at the front line manager level or internal trainers or outsourced training needs to address this for uniformity.  I teach reps to be in tune with the following concept: ...once basic sales steps are performed and you have a willing listener willing to go the next step either face to face or on the phone, it's a matter of getting the prospect to think the problem you just uncovered is huge enough to fix.  Most reps try to present solution once the prospect has admitted to pain.  Unfortunately, customers don't perceive all pain as needing to be solved by spending money on a solution.  This is where forecasted sales stall.  Reps need to learn to introduce indirect costs that pain is actually causing and this magnification of the pain is what the prospect hadn't considered.  This creates sense of urgency to take action.  Then, what selling really is beyond identifying pain, is to influence prospects to take action now.  Are your reps equipped to do this?  Well, your budget and quota depend on it. Nothing else will matter if you can't do this well.

Rep certification for various training modules (which can be done online) such as product knowledge, competitive differentiators, using the CRM, selling methodology and contract policy will ensure your selling teams are up to speed. 

Field Readiness is about equipping your band or army with the right plan, the right offerings and tools to give them a fighting chance to win.......Happy Holidays to all!