by Bill Poole | Sep 27, 2024 | Sales, Strategy
A lot has been written about making Rocks SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound), but I have yet to see it applied to the added context of the Sales Department. This blog was written to add this context in order to help sales departments set better rocks and sell more stuff!
Before we dive in, for the purposes of this blog, it helps to understand these different types of rocks by differentiating a couple of types of rocks that I see in sales:
- Building Rocks – Rocks that require the building of processes that likely result in new activity metrics
- Performing Rocks – Leveraging current processes to drive existing metrics
Building Rocks are about implementing new structures or processes, and performance Rocks are part of the normal “day job” of the sales or revenue team. I am not a huge fan of performance rocks, but there is a place for them. More on that later!
Also, some use the “R” as “Realistic,” but from my perspective, “Realistic” and “Achievable” are the same, so I go with “Relevant!”
Specific
The “S” component of SMART rocks is for “Specific,” which is pretty simple. A “Specific” Rock is crystal clear. In short: What needs to be accomplished? Who owns the Rock? When will it be complete?
When it comes to sales, one thing to consider is that the Rock may be cross-functional, so it is important that the right person owns the Rock. For example, most B2B businesses get leads through both sales and marketing. If implementing processes to get more leads is a Rock, the marketing person may not be the best person to own the Rock as the Revenue Leader may have a more comprehensive perspective. At a minimum, sales and marketing might be involved in building the Rock.
Examples of Specific Sales Rocks:
- Example 1- “Implement a process to reduce the average deal close time from 45 days to 35 days by the end of Q4, owned by the head of sales operations.”
- Example 2- “Generate 50 new Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) from the Northeast region by the end of Q4, owned by the CRO.”
Summary of Key Sales Considerations:
- Is it a cross-functional Rock that needs members of both sales and marketing?
- Are there key milestones to hit along the way?
Measurable
Rocks should always be measurable to ensure that the rock is focused on impact and that the success of the work done on the rock can be determined.
Sales is a very metric-heavy part of the business. While “measuring” Rocks in other departments might be binary (yes/no) from a completion perspective, try to avoid this when it comes to Sales Rocks so that there are measurable results from the Rock being complete.
Your Rock should target impacting the highest level (lagging or leading) metric on your scorecard to be impacted by the work on the Rock. Another way to think about this is to ensure that the metric the Rock targets is the lowest metric in the funnel that will be impacted. For context, here is an example of relatively standard metrics in the funnel for a generic sales process:
- # of MQL leads
- MQL>SQL conversion rates.
- SQL>Discover Conversion Rates
- Discover>Proposal Conversion rates
- Proposal win rates
These metrics are likely macro metrics to be tracked monthly or quarterly instead of activity metrics. Also, consider what outcome you are looking for. I have seen organizations have # of leads as a Rock when they really want more Sales-Qualified Leads (SQLs).
Here is a contrast of two different Rocks:
- Rock 1
- Owner: Marketing Leader
- Rock: Increase the # of leads
- Rock 2
- Owner: Revenue/Sales Leader
- Rock: Increase # of SQLs
These two Rocks would likely look different. Which one would work for you?
Summary of Key Sales Considerations:
- What is the highest-level leading/lagging metric (closest to the bottom of the funnel) you can use to measure the success of this Rock long-term by using trends in the monthly or quarterly scorecard?
- How can you ensure it’s more than a “yes/no” completion check?
Achievable
Your Rocks should stretch your team but remain realistic. Take stock of your resources and ask whether the goal is truly attainable.
For “Performance Rocks,” given the current processes in place now, consider if the Rock is realistic. For example, if your team is closing 50 deals per quarter, it’s unlikely they’ll jump to 100 overnight. An achievable Rock might be “Close 60 deals by the end of the quarter.”
Another consideration with that example is if you ask for better results than you usually expect from the team, what gives? Will it come at the expense of driving another metric? If so, that might be part of the plan for the Rock. If not, then why aren’t the better results expected each quarter?
For “Building Rocks,” does the Rock owner and their team have the capacity to build? Sales is different from other departments in the business because the sales team is directly connected to generating revenue. So, work on Sales Rocks should be reserved for roles in the sales organization that are non-quota bearing, as they take time away from sales reps revenue-generating activities.
Summary of Key Sales Considerations:
- Does this Rock elevate the expectations of your sales team? If so, why isn’t this always expected? What other metrics may be negatively impacted?
- Given sales quotas, is there bandwidth on the team to own and complete this Rock?
Relevant
Rocks need to be relevant to your company’s vision and longer-term goals. Each Rock should tie directly into a larger goal—ideally, one of the Measurables on the 3-Year Picture on your Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO™). For example, if your company’s goal is to increase market share in a specific region, a sales Rock might focus on acquiring new customers in that region.
Depending on your business, another test of relevancy is to ensure that you keep in mind the perspective of your Target Market or Ideal Client. For example, if there is a desire for the sales team to generate leads, are all leads treated equally, or might it be a good idea to target the Rock around getting ideal client leads?
Examples of Relevant Sales Rocks:
- If your company’s lagging metric is revenue growth, a relevant Rock for a business that is shifting focus to healthcare might be “Generate $500K in new revenue from the healthcare sector by Q4.”
- If improving customer retention is a company-wide focus, a sales Rock might be “Increase customer renewal rates by 5% by the end of the quarter.”
Summary of Key Sales Considerations:
- Does this Rock support a Measurable on the 3-Year Picture on your Leadership V/TO™?
- Does it align with the overall business vision?
- Is your Ideal Client considered in the context of the Rock?
Time Bound
The Rock should have a clear deadline or timeframe. Per EOS™, this will typically be the end of the quarter when you get together to plan out your next quarter. Every Rock needs a deadline, but it’s also important to consider how long it will take to build and implement it.
Sales Rocks often require infrastructure or systems that take time to build and implement, while the results may come later. Keep this in mind when setting timelines and expectations by considering how long it will take to build and implement the Rock and how long it will take for results to be realized.
One approach to this is for the Rock to be built this quarter, which will have a goal to affect a metric in 3 or 6 months.
Examples of Time-Bound Sales Rocks:
- “Implement a process in Q2 that will result in $200,000 of additional recurring revenue by the end of Q4.”
- “Complete 100 sales calls by October 31st, with weekly targets to track progress.”
Summary of Key Sales Considerations:
- What is the deadline for completing this Rock?
- When should the goal for results realistically be set for?
- Have you accounted for the time it takes to build and implement the solution?
Conclusion
Setting the right sales Rocks can transform your business. By making them SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound – you ensure your team focuses on the right goals, tracking progress, and aligned with the company’s long-term vision. As you plan your next quarter, apply the concepts in this blog to set and crush your Rocks!
by Bill Poole | Aug 5, 2024 | Sales
The Proven Process tool (aka Client Journey, or Client Experience) is an under-utilized tool. As many have said, the Proven Process is the “Front Stage.” These are the stages that your clients navigate with your business to maximize the value they will realize.
For differentiation, on the other side of the coin, the “Back Stage” is where you find your Core Processes, which are the internal processes in place to ensure your client seamlessly navigates their journey across your Proven Process. Especially for services-minded businesses, the Proven Process can be the most tangible tool to communicate how your clients will maximize the value delivered.
The Proven Process is a phenomenal sales tool. Here are 5 ways you can use your Proven Process to drive more sales:
- Validate your Proven Process
- Align around your Proven Process
- Use your Proven Process
- Measure your Proven Process
- Improve your Proven Process.
Below is some insight on all 5 of these.
Validate Your Proven Process
When was the last time you asked your IDEAL prospects and clients how they felt as they navigated their experience with your business? Gathering external feedback ensures you are focused in the right areas when assessing needs and communicating value in your proposals. This improves close rates for Ideal Prospects.
Here are some ways to validate your Proven Process:
- Engage a third party to talk with your clients. At worst, you will confirm what you think you now know. But you will likely be surprised by what you learn!
- Send surveys to clients to gather their feedback on different stages of the proven process as appropriate.
- For businesses with very high customer lifetime value, a focus group can provide a lot of collective insight that you can use to improve delivery of services
Align Around the Proven Process
Your business should be aligned around your Proven Process from your client’s perspective. If all team members have this foundation, then all understand their role in ensuring that prospects and clients have a great experience. When team members understand what prospects and clients have done and will be doing as their journey transitions from department to department, it is extremely helpful to prospects, clients, and your team.
Here are some ideas to align around your Proven Process:
- Create a brand around it and launch it internally. Hang posters on the wall, including it in prospect/client-facing communications.
- Use your proven process to add context to any prospect/client-facing processes (sales, marketing, client delivery).
- Ensure the handoff from marketing is a seamless process, over-communicating and leveraging video so clients know where they are in your process and what is next.
- Set the client delivery team up for success by getting them what they need to deliver excellent service.
Use Your Proven Process!
A lot of proven processes are created at the launch of EOS and then decay on the V/TO. Don’t let this happen to you!
Here’s how to use it:
- Use it to communicate the path to value throughout the Sales Process. Prospects and clients enjoy clarity, and showing them where they are on a visual level can be extremely helpful.
- Closing tool – map how your client’s compelling event aligns with your proven process to ensure they know what is involved in them getting where they need to go.
- Qualifying tool – if a prospect doesn’t seem to fit with your proven process, then it may not be a good client.
Measure Your Proven Process
Most scorecards consist primarily of internal KPIs and metrics that do not measure how your clients navigate your business. Adding proven process KPIs to your scorecard helps you understand where to improve. These KPIs are not likely weekly scorecard metrics but are impactful to reflect back on a quarterly or monthly basis.
Here are some ideas to measure your Proven Process:
- Lots of stages are cross-functional. Measure all stages on your Leadership Scorecard and carry down the metrics that each department affects.
- Measure conversion rates. This is the percentage of prospects or clients who move to the next stage of the Proven Process. This idea might not apply to all stages, but it works for many of them.
- Measure your clients’ satisfaction. Understanding your client’s perspective on how they felt provides immediate actionable insight. Stages like onboarding are great opportunities to send clients a short survey to rate their experience and gather subjective feedback.
- Measure time in stages of the Proven Process where possible. This can have financial and client satisfaction implications. Measuring the time spent in a stage like onboarding allows you to improve internal processes to streamline the process and help your clients achieve results quicker.
Improve Your Proven Process
“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Winston Churchill
Once your Proven Process is implemented and you are measuring it, get it into a continuous improvement cycle!
Here are some ideas on improvement:
- Put it on your quarterly agenda to reflect back on metrics, pick a stage that needs to be improved, and set a cross-functional rock to improve it.
- Improve it in your normal Traction meeting cadence. Some insight gathered presents opportunities for immediate action and improvement. For example, a client survey might include a suggestion for something that can be improved with ease.
Download our Proven Process Checklist for more info.
by Bill Poole | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales
Not all that long ago, the decision to implement a CRM involved huge trade-offs. A CRM that was very functional from a sales standpoint had very limited functionality for the operations/customer service team. Customer service applications lacked sales functionality. Marketing automation applications were stand-alone and did not inherently integrate with the CRM.
There will always be trade-offs when making decisions, but CRMs have significantly evolved to enable functionality for the whole organization. As you might imagine, the benefits for each department are different.
Let’s dig into each department and look at some of the benefits that modern CRM offers today’s business.
Sales
The CRM benefits for sales make it a lot easier to convince the sales team to make a CRM change than it used to be!
- Improved win/lead conversion rates – That’s the big idea, right?
- Team productivity – Automation like templated content enables you to make more touches in less time while controlling the message.
- Accurate Forecasting – When configured and used correctly, forecasting is simple!
- Rep Development- Reporting of the right metrics helps leaders take the right actions to develop individual reps.
Marketing
There was a time when marketing folks used to buy their own technology. Those days are gone:
- Improved lead flow – Segmentation allows you to hone and improve your message, and downstream, closed-loop reporting helps marketers know which tactics and messages are turning prospects into clients.
- ROI – Closed-loop reporting enables attribution to help with this age-old challenge
- Share of wallet – Marketing has always marketed to prospects. Managing clients in the same system allows you to market to your clients as well.
Client Success
Stand-alone client/customer success teams limited the visibility of the sales and marketing touchpoints of the prospect journey. No longer!:
- Customer/Client Sat – Having a 360-degree view of the client puts actionable insight in front of your Customer Success team.
- Productivity – Enhanced communication channels and built-in automation enable you to meet customers where they are and provide the correct response.
Admin/Finance
Integration and inherent back office functionality have recently brought admin and finance to the CRM party. How do they stand to gain?
- Billing/payment integrations and streamlined processes – Many CRMs go beyond the proposal and integrate contracting into the CRM.
- Billing accuracy – Automation reduces errors!
- View of history – Visibility marketing, sales, and client success interactions help support your AR team.
IT
Not only do IT teams support CRMs they also provide functionality to them.
- Departmental productivity/costs – Most CRMs reduce administrative reliance. Much of the admin is enabled at the departmental level by the users that know what they need, reducing the burden on IT.
- Security – New CRMs need to provide levels of security that were not previously imagined in old CRMs.
- Integration – New CRMs need less integration because of their Improved functionality. When integration is needed, new CRMs provide a lot more flexibility.
- Mobile enablement – Today’s mobile workforce enables IT to give users the access that they need on the go.
Leadership
A fully functional CRM is a huge asset from a strategic perspective:
- Business planning – When the CRM is humming, it is much easier to gauge future performance and to support strategic decision making.
- Cross-functional Alignment – When departments use different applications, there is less of a need to be aligned. However, that also increased the need for someone to pull everything together. A fully functional CRM promotes cross-functional alignment.
Conclusion
The evolution of CRMs has been a massive enabler to the success of a business that properly takes advantage of the opportunity. That said, the decision for the right CRM is more complex.
Ensuring that all departments are engaged when shaping your CRM requirements is imperative. When done correctly, implementing the right CRM can be a substantial competitive advantage, improving communications, streamlining processes, enabling data-driven decision-making, and enhancing customer experiences.
Continue to read more about CRMS:
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.
#ModernCRM #EmpowerYourOrganization #DriveSuccess #DataDrivenDecisions #StreamlineProcesses #CrossDepartmentalEngagement #Convergo
by Bill Poole | Aug 22, 2023 | Sales
Unlocking Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses by Overcoming Sales Barriers
Sales is a barrier to growth for a lot of entrepreneurial businesses. Understanding how to break through that barrier can be very challenging. How can you do it? Some common thoughts that go through your mind might be:
- Do I have the right people in place?
- Are we taking the right approach?
- Do I need to document my processes?
- Do I need to improve my scorecard?
Many of these things can be helpful, but acting on these questions may lead you down the wrong road because you may not be addressing the root cause of the problem. Many times, the challenges are more foundational.
Three questions you should ask yourself before acting on one of those questions are:
- Do I clearly understand my ideal client and the outcomes they want from their business?
- Are my uniques/differentiators/value proposition aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
- Is the path to realizing our value clear for my ideal clients?
Let’s explore these questions in more depth so that you can have a better understanding of what the root cause of your challenge might be.
Do I have a clear understanding of what my Ideal Clients want?
If your ideal client profile is too broad, it can weaken your message and make it challenging to reach your entire market. Honing your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has two huge benefits:
- It strengthens your message – a tighter ICP makes it easier to create a message that resonates.
- It allows you to be more effective with your limited sales and marketing budget – simply stated, investing the same amount on a smaller pool of more qualified prospects that your business is more optimized to serve yields better results.
Your ICP should include the high-level outcomes that Ideal Clients want from their business. This helps you align your offerings and also create messaging that hits the mark.
Are my differentiators/uniques aligned with the outcomes that my ideal clients want?
The ideal state is that you have some uniques or differentiators that directly align with your Ideal Clients’ desired outcomes. In its purest sense, if you uniquely position your services to satisfy your ideal clients’ desired outcomes, sales, and marketing can be like shooting fish in a barrel.
This is a lot harder in businesses that operate in a competitive market. The EOS™ 3 Uniques concept states that, while some companies might share a unique or two, the ideal state is that no other business offers all three.
If you are in a market that is challenging to differentiate, then clearly connecting your services to your Ideal Client’s desired outcomes might be the best thing you can do to differentiate.
Is the path to value clear for my ideal clients?
The path to value has a lot of interchangeable terms:
- Client Journey
- Proven Process in the EOS world
- Client Experience
Regardless of what you call it, the keys to leveraging the concept to win more are the same:
- Tightly integrate your uniques into the journey
- Make it clear how your Ideal Clients navigate their path to value
- Brand your Client Journey and use it as a tool to connect with your Ideal Clients
As Donald Miller says, “… if you confuse, you lose.” Clearly communicating your Ideal Client’s path to value will not only help you speak to prospects and clients, it will also help you align your team to deliver the journey that you desire.
Conclusion
This should help you better understand the root cause of your barrier to sales. If you are able to resolve these questions with good answers, then the next step is to look at your systems and people and build your growth assets.
Read more on how to identify your ideal client profile.
Make sure to download your “5 Steps for Scaling Sales and Growing Revenue” ebook.
#entrepreneurialbusiness #salesbarriers #idealclient
by Bill Poole | Jun 5, 2023 | Sales
B2B services organizations typically have goals to grow their business. The interesting thing is that they often miss the biggest opportunity to grow that is right under their nose. It is pretty hard to argue that it is a lot easier ot sell to current clients than to new ones. Most quoted statistics reference that it is 10x more expensive to sell to a new client than en existing one.
Five benefits to focusing on cross-selling to your clients.
- Increased revenue: Cross-selling allows B2B organizations to generate additional revenue streams by selling complementary or related services to existing customers. By offering a broader range of services, organizations can tap into new revenue opportunities without incurring significant customer acquisition costs.
- Deepening customer relationships: Cross-selling services is an effective strategy for strengthening relationships with existing customers. By expanding the range of services provided to a customer, B2B organizations deepen their engagement and become more embedded in the customer’s operations. This increases customer loyalty and reduces the likelihood of them seeking alternatives from competitors.
- Competitive advantage: Cross-selling can provide a competitive advantage by differentiating the B2B organization from its competitors. Offering a comprehensive suite of services that addresses a customer’s diverse needs can make the organization more appealing and valuable to customers. It positions the organization as a one-stop solution provider, giving them an edge over competitors who may offer a more limited range of services.
- Cost savings: Cross-selling to existing customers is generally more cost-effective than acquiring new customers. The B2B organization already has an established relationship with the customer, reducing the need for extensive marketing efforts and associated costs. Additionally, existing customers are more likely to be receptive to cross-selling efforts as they already trust the organization and value the existing services provided.
- Market expansion: Cross-selling services can open doors to new markets or customer segments. By identifying additional services that cater to different industries or sectors, B2B organizations can enter new markets with existing customers. This diversification reduces dependence on a single market segment and helps mitigate risks associated with market fluctuations.
Maximize Your Efforts
To maximize the effectiveness of cross-selling services, B2B organizations should focus on understanding their customer’s needs, developing a comprehensive service portfolio, training sales teams to identify cross-selling opportunities, and maintaining strong customer relationships through ongoing communication and support.
Download Your Cross-Selling Potential Questionnaire
