Salesman’s Checklist Can Lower Your Competitive Death Rate

Teams Using “Cheat Sheets” Always Produce Better Results

There was a recent story in the Washington Post by Ceci Connolly claiming that surgical teams following a basic cockpit-style checklist in the operating room, from confirming the patient's name to discussing expected blood loss, reduced the rate of deaths and complications by more than a third. I claim that your sales “death rate” can also drop dramatically if you take a lesson from pilots and now, surgeons, and use a checklist of your own during sales calls.
Connolly’s theory is that the human brain can't remember everything, so it's best to focus on the complicated challenges and leave the simple reminders to a cheat sheet. A salesman’s checklist is a cheat sheet...a basic form of pre-call planning. The sales call can get intense and dynamic. The professional salesperson must focus 100% on what the customer is saying. Listening skills are a salesperson’s most important attribute. You can’t listen effectively if your brain is working overtime to think of the next question you want to ask, or trying to figure out how to get the sales call back on the road and out of the ditch. Here are some ideas:
-Plan and write down your opening statement. Make it a “killer” question or phrase that grabs attention and focuses the client on the problem.
-Ask why it is important to solve this problem.
-Uncover the decision criteria. Rank them in order of importance.

-What is the decision process? Who is involved? (Get introduced to the people you don’t know that have a role in making it happen).
-Has the budget been approved?
-Which other solution providers are competing?
-Interest rate being used to arrive at NPV and IRR
-Carrying cost of inventory/Cost of capital
-Other financial ground rules?
I think you get the idea. Write them all down. If you are involved in complex sales for expensive things, it’s likely that you make sales calls with a team of subject matter experts. Involve them in the checklist planning and execution. That way the team stays more coordinated during the call.
You will get the most out of your sales call checklist if you build it around the potential problems that the customer may be having. Most problems tend to fall into what I call my “basic dozen categories”. Here they are:

1) Profitability
2) Cost
3) Productivity
4) Competition
5) Quality
6) Ease of Operation
7) Reliability
8) Credibility
9) Safety
10) Morale
11) Customer Satisfaction
12) Reputation/image

Think of the basic dozen as a “checklist for a checklist”. Build your checklist around these categories and your sales call death rate will decrease dramatically.

Good selling!!

How to Run a Constructive and Helpful Sales Account Plan Review – Part 2

In the last post, I promised to cover the broad Account Planning categories one might cover and the type of questions one might ask. A sales coach, like a good salesman, learns more and teaches better by asking well planned, insightful questions and letting the team do most of the talking.

ACCOUNT OVERVIEW
Start here - even if YOU know the state of the account. You want the team to be able to articulate it and challenge their thinking.

• Where are we with this account and where should this planning session focus?
• Describe the customer's business model. What are the customer’s longer term goals (24 to 36 months)? Growth strategies? Productivity Initiatives? New product launches?
• How is their financial health? Drill into the balance sheet and income statement. Spending patterns/trends? Financial Ratios? Cash position?
• Where is the customer’s “pain”? How bad is it? Do we understand it? Can we solve it?
• What does their vendor/service provider portfolio look like? Who are the outside “trusted advisers”?
• What would this customer say about us?

INDUSTRY OVERVIEW
• Describe the macro sector trends and economic factors most impacting the customer.
• What significant events have taken place on the customer's competitive landscape (recent loss of market share to a new competitor or disruptive emergent technology)?
• How is the customer doing in the eyes of its end customers and its suppliers?

RELATIONSHIP OVERVIEW
• Who are the key contacts in the relationship?
• Who are our main executive sponsors? What are our goals with each?
• What key relationships have not yet been established? What actions are being taken to close those gaps?
• How are you leveraging alliances/partners to introduce us to new decision makers and influencers in the account?
• Who are the competition’s champions in the account and how do we convert or neutralize them?
• Are we considered a trusted advisor/partner? If yes, how are we leveraging this? What must be done?

COMPETITIVE STRATEGY
• Who are our chief competitors?
• What are the competitor’s goals in the account? What are their key messages?
• What is our competitive strategy? What are our key competitive messages? How are you going to fight them off?

OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS
• (For the top three opportunities) who is the customer executive sponsor? Rate your relationship with him/her. What should it be?
• What other long term opportunities may exist that have not been identified?
• Is this customer aware of our complete portfolio of products and services?
• Describe your strategy to create new opportunities.

PAST PERFORMANCE
• For each key current project, how would the customer assess our performance? What actions are needed?
• Describe what value we have created for the customer in the last 6 months. Can we “dollarize” it? Is the customer aware of it?

TEAM ALIGNMENT
• How often does the sales team get together and work the account issues? Is our whole company supporting you (shipping, pricing, customer support, call center, billing, etc)? What alignment issues need to be resolved with other parts of our company?
• What can I do (as a sales leader) to support you?
• What investments and resources are required for the priority opportunities? Any special needs? Exceptions? How can I help?

FINANCIAL/REVENUE PLAN
• What are the expected revenues for the next month 12 months?
• What has changed with respect to the Financial Plan since our last review?
• What is the financial risk and exposure in this account?

NEXT STEPS
• What are the team’s top actions resulting from this review (let them tell you and write them down)?

To be effective, these reviews should take place every six to nine months for a top account. Getting Account Planning to stick as a sales discipline is hard work but the pay-offs are potentially huge.

Good Selling!

How to Run a Constructive and Helpful Sales Account Plan Review – Part 1

I like to think of an account plan review this way: Imagine you are giving your customer a chest X-ray. Imagine you are in there diagnosing what's working, not working, and where you can help.

Last week, I promised to layout the steps and the methods for running an effective Sales Account Plan Review. So, here we go by the numbers:

1) Purpose:
Be clear on your purpose with the sales team - are you reviewing the strategy, reviewing execution, or trying to help the sales team solve a particular problem? Could be all three. Be clear at the outset about the difference between an opportunity review (near term focus) and an account plan review (long team focus).

2) Preparation:
Consider sending some questions to the sales team in advance. That sends a powerful signal about your sincerity and your commitment to the discipline of account planning. The goal is collaboration. The output is creation and evolution of a better plan. You don’t want to simply poke holes in the plan of a team that is unprepared. That is a culture killer.

3) Elevate:
Keep the team focused on the long term view of the account. Poor account plan reviews focus on the near term sales opportunities. This is wrong. Don’t get the team drawn into deals in the pipeline and tactics. It may be appropriate to cover some major deals but only to determine if you need to schedule a deeper opportunity review later. Account strategy is more than a string of individual opportunity strategies.

4) Meeting Length:
For a key account, one should typically schedule 90 minutes. Give it the time it deserves. Give the sales team YOUR time.

5) Time Allocation/Approach
Allocate time to different parts of the plan depending on the planning needs of the account. For example, if we are weak on our relationship strategy, spend a lot of time on that. Account strategy also changes depending on if we are penetrating, growing share, or fighting off a competitor.

Next week, I will cover the broad account planning categories and the type of questions you might ask.

Good selling!

The “No-Quick-Fix” Approach to Delivering Results in Sales - Account Planning

Most companies can’t get Account Planning to stick as a sales discipline. They try. They hire consultants. They have big kick-off meetings and for a few weeks, everyone is excited. Soon, the excitment gives way to the daily pressures of phone calls, meetings, e-mails, travel (make your own list) and the enthusiasm fades like a cheap shoeshine. Worse, everyone gets cynical and realizes it was another management flavor-of-the-month initiative (cynicism is a huge culture-killer). Salesmen watch the leaders and the leaders are usually the first to drop the ball.

What goes wrong here? Leaders failed to lead. Leaders failed to make Account Planning important. Leaders, seeking a quick-fix, hired consultants to do what they themselves should be doing. As a result, they failed to connect the team to the rewards and benefits of a measure-twice-cut-once sales culture.

Salesmen are by nature, hard working and always on the run. A commonly heard objection to account planning is “I am too busy to bother with making charts for other people to inspect”.

Too busy?

Habit #7 in Steve Covey’s The 7 Habits is called “Sharpen the Saw.” Covey uses the analogy of a woodcutter who is sawing for several days straight without getting the tree down.
A passerby says, “What are you doing?”
The woodcutter snorts, “Don’t bother me, can’t you see I am busy cutting this tree down”.
The passerby shrugs, “Why don’t you try sharpening the saw?”
The woodcutter screams “I’m too damn busy to sharpen the saw!”

Rule #1: Don’t confuse being busy with being effective in the marketplace. What you are after is effectiveness.

Effectiveness. That’s a good word. Let’s look at it-

ef·fec tive·ness, n. The ability of a program, project or task to produce a specific desired effect or result that can be qualitatively measured.


Making it Stick - Three Simple Disciplines: Learn it. Teach it. Coach it.

If you want Account Planning to stick and you want to reap the reward of lower selling cost, higher revenue, better margins, stronger customer loyalty, and a more motivated and energized sales force, you must deeply embed Account Planning into your company culture.

Learn it: The sales leaders need to become students of the Account Planning discipline. They must agree on a vision for Account Planning and be aligned on its purpose and benefits. Then, and this is really important, they have to teach it.

Teach it: That’s right. The sales leaders, NOT THE CONSULTANTS, must teach. Why? Think of the message this sends to the organization about sincerity and commitment. “The boss is taking this seriously. I better pay attention.” Also, no one learns more than the teacher so it this is a powerful way to embed the discipline. Finally, and this is the hard one...coach it.

Coach it: Spending major time here pays off 10x the effort invested. Regular coaching around the account plan with the team and with the salesman is the best way a sales leader can help move the needle, not only on sales results, but on customer loyalty and employee engagement.

A good Account Planning process focuses on helping the team deliver results and to continually elevate their game. In my next post, I will lay out the steps and the methods for running an effective account plan review.

Good selling!