Benjamin Franklin is credited with first coining the phrase “time is money” and if your sales pipeline contains significant opportunities, you will understand this more than most.

So, in order to make the most of your selling time, you might want to ensure you have these three key dates fully under control

The date you started working on the deal

All organisations have an average sales cycle.  You might protest that for your company, your product or for the particular deal you are working on right now the term average sales cycle does not apply.

You might protest, but you would be wrong.  If you forget about the one or two deals that took forever to close and dismiss the one or two deals that landed on your doorstep with undue haste, everything else will fall into your organisation’s average sales cycle.

So, check how long you have been working on your significant opportunities: Are any of them far in excess of your average sales cycle time?  If they are and you don’t know why,  it could mean that something fundamental has changed from your original qualification of the opportunity and you don’t know what it is!

The date you last reviewed your significant opportunity plan

If you are really serious about winning your significant opportunity you will (no doubt) be running a professional and competitive sales campaign, including a significant opportunity plan.

This plan will ensure you understand the compelling event driving your customer’s decision to spend a significant amount of money with you (or your competition) and the timescales associated with it.  It will also ensure you (and the rest of your team) understand the motivations of the people you are selling to, how well you have qualified the opportunity and (most important of all) what you need to do to win.

All this stuff is great, but if the last time you reviewed, challenged and amended your significant opportunity plan was three months ago, you might find your chances of having the right winning strategy disappearing as the time slides by.

The date you are forecasting the deal to close

If you want to forecast your significant opportunities accurately then you have to really understand the customers decision making process AND their buying process cycle.

The main reason significant opportunities  “slip”  on sales forecasts is a lack of expert qualification and a lack of validation of the information you “think” you have qualified.

An understanding of what has to happen in the time between your customer saying “Yes” and an order or contract being placed in your hand is of paramount importance.  In addition, this period of time is the one during which most loss recovery plans are put into place by the competitors you “think” you have beaten.  So don’t forget to qualify this key date and validate your information on the customers buying process cycle with a reliable source.

If you get these three key dates under control, you will be managing your significant opportunities better than most of your competitors.  If you don’t, it’s not just time you’re likely to lose, as Benjamin Franklin predicted, it will be money as well.

A guest blog from Elaine Scott of compleo ltd (www.compleo.co) Website launch very (very) soon.  Food for thought and very good advice.

Is it time yet?

OK, so this is the time of year many of you will be asking yourselves shall I change jobs? Obviously from my perspective the answer is an overwhelming YES!  However, I think it’s worth looking at the motivation behind this thinking and worth asking yourself some key questions to understand whether or not you really should change jobs.

Most people assume that money is the prime motivator for changing jobs, especially if you are remaining in the same industry and/or role type. This is a fallacy and much research has been carried out (dating back to 1924 and the Hawthorne studies) to ascertain the primary motivators for individuals becoming disenchanted or even unhappy within their job, and thus looking for a new opportunity.

Money is of course a strong factor in our decision to accept a job and is often seen as the ‘value’ an employer places upon our unique skill set. However, when thinking about leaving it is not the first question we should ask ourselves, what that old cliché “money doesn’t make you happy”.

In deciding if the time is right to leave think about these questions and try to understand why you answer as you do! If you do not fully understand why you want to leave you will not know what to look for in your next role and may become disenchanted again very quickly!

• Do I look forward to going to work every morning?
• Is my job mentally stimulating for the most part of the day?
• Do I feel that my work is respected and appreciated?
• Are my efforts rewarded, am I told “well done”?
• Can I see a clear career path in my organisation?
• Am I given regular feedback and appraisals on my performance?
• Is there opportunity to learn new skills and/or receive training?
• Do I like and respect my peers and management team?
• Is my workload manageable and fair in comparison to my peers?
• Am I happy at work?

This is by no means an exhaustive list and isn’t in order of importance, as we all have variations in the relative important of these points. However, I would say if the answer is ‘No’ to more than 4 of the above points it is time to act!

However, before you rush into changing job discuss your concerns with your manager and then if there is no change in your working conditions that is the time to consider a new opportunity.

In asking yourself these questions you also need to understand what would make you say yes when asked them again? This will help you to choose the right job and organisation next time.

The words from here are Rohit’s: Hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

Three Cups of Tea is the name of a book written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I bring up the name of this book for two specific reasons:

1. Three Cups of Tea
2. The Last Chair

The concept of Three Cups of Tea, as related by Greg Mortensen, refers to the practice in Pakistan of building familiarity with a stranger over three cups of tea. Once a stranger has been invited to join a group for the third cup of tea, the bonding is strong and it lasts forever. For me, selling in a B2B situation is a bit like this.

The first cup of tea is when we are meeting a customer contact for the first time – at an event, through a cold-call or a warm introduction, through a referral etc.

The second cup of tea is when we start exploring more about the customer contact to find common ground and to understand their challenges that our product/service will solve, and the third cup of tea means that there is mutual comfort plus the openness to listen to solutions.

The difference though is that being invited to the third cup of tea in a selling situation doesn’t necessarily mean that the deal is done – it might actually be the slip between cup and lip. But anyways, this concept is useful to remember for those who are in the hurry to close the deal in the first call or meeting – it takes time to build a relationship and to provide effective solutions that solve customer’s problem.

The concept of The Last Chair relates to an anecdote that Greg mentions in the book. He is on a fund-raising tour to raise money to establish schools in Pakistan. At one such event organized in a mall, he had booked a room that could hold 100 people and he had arranged for that many chairs. However, only one person turned up in the room and he too sat in the last row.

Greg, though discouraged by the turnout, felt that he should honor this person and he gave his talk with as much passion as he would have done to a room full of people. At the end of the talk, the man left silently by the back exit door.

Greg went about folding up the chairs to return them back. When he came to the last chair – where the man was seated – he found an envelope with $20,000 (I don’t recollect the exact amount) in it. There was no note indicating the name of the silent donor.

To me, this incident taught me never to give up calling upon the last person on the calling list or to send out that last email that we think isn’t worth it. These can be so worthwhile that they might actually compensate for the entire effort.

So, I keep the concept of Three Cups of Tea and The Last Chair always in mind when approaching new selling situation.

If you could predict with absolute certainty the exact moment each opportunity in your sales pipeline would convert into an order,  wouldn’t life be marvelous:  If we all had a crystal ball wouldn’t sales forecasting be so much easier?

Forecasting is saying what you expect to happen and when you expect it to happen, it’s predicting the future.  Forecasts and predictions of the future are found everywhere we look; the weather, economics, the traffic, the odds in gambling, the odds of finding oil in a particular place, horoscopes in astrology and most of all in sales.

Sales forecasts can be based on judgmental methods; they can be based on reviewing events over a period of time, by statistical analysis and with equations.  Mathematical models, simulations, averages and linear projections can create forecasts and behavioural, cultural and personal opinions can challenge them.

Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s quote “never make forecasts, especially about the future,” might be wise advice.

However, if you work in sales, Sam’s quote is unlikely to be an escape route from having to say, “What you expect to happen in the future” when it applies to your order pipeline.  It’s impossible to get a forecast 100% correct every time, but does that mean it’s not worth trying to get it right at all, or are there things you can do to improve your odds of an accurate sales forecast?  Here are five things that might just help in getting your forecast closer to right than wrong:

1. Measure your accuracy.  If you work in an environment where your forecast accuracy is measured be grateful that someone is helping you improve your forecasting ability.  If you don’t, start to measure it yourself. Give yourself a (very quick) pat on the back for what you got right and then turn your attention to what you got wrong.  Take out any emotion or defence mechanisms around the things that were “out of your control” and rationally analyse what you would have done differently if you could turn back time to when you last updated your forecast.

2. Acknowledge that it’s important. A forecast is not an administration exercise, if you say you’re “doing your admin” when updating your forecast you may want to reassess your priorities.  Business growth plans; share prices and your and your colleagues’ future employment are all based on your company’s ability to obtain orders from your customers.  Being able to forecast when these orders will arrive, how much they will be worth and when they will be invoiced is one of the most important set of numbers in any business..

3. Be honest. An accurate forecast depends on an honest appraisal of your sales pipeline, the less honest view you take, the less accuracy you will be rewarded with.  If you want to make your sale pipeline look better than it is, it’s not very difficult to achieve, just be over optimistic about when your orders will arrive and what value they will be.   It might keep “the management” away from you, albeit for a very short period of time, but the only person you are really fooling is yourself.  If your pipeline doesn’t look great, be honest and focus on making it better.

4. Learn and improve. Accurate forecasting is a skill; there is no foolproof methodology or perfect model.  If there was we would all know about it, I wouldn’t have written this and you wouldn’t be reading it.  Like any skill, the more we learn from our past successes, our past mistakes and the harder we work at it, the better we get.  So apply the learning techniques and the purposeful practice* to forecasting that you would to any other skill you want to improve your abilities in.

5.  Take responsibility. It’s your forecast, you own it and you’re responsible for its accuracy, it can’t be delegated, allocated or transferred to someone else.  If your forecasting systems are not up to scratch, then find a way round them, through or over them: whatever you do don’t let them stand between you and having an accurate forecast.

This is particularly true for those in the sales leadership positions. It doesn’t matter if your forecast is an aggregation of ten, a hundred or even a thousand other peoples’ forecasts; it is still your responsibility.

Of all the factors involved in accurate forecasting, buying into the fact that you are 100% responsible for your own forecast is probably the most important. Forecasting accurately is hard work, it demands time and attention and a real desire to get it right.

Samuel Goldwyn might not have been interested in forecasting the future, but then again he was in the movies, he could make the future whatever he wanted it to be!

* Acknowledgement to Matthew Syed for the use of the term “Purposeful Practice” from his book “Bounce”

Alignment, Alignment, Alignment

One of the biggest challenges in any business is the alignment of objectives with structures, processes and activity, to support the execution of their chosen strategy

Alignment provides clarity, ensures precious time and money is allocated to the right areas, that internal conflict is minimised and that people can focus and take action on the important and not get distracted by the urgent.

The apocryphal quotation attributed to the Janitor of when asked “what he was doing” whilst John F Kennedy was touring NASA in the early 1960’s of replying “I’m part of a team that’s sending a man to the moon” might not be altogether true, but it’s a good inspirational example of perfect organisational alignment

So, if you have communicated your objectives, and launched your strategy, but your results are still the same, the question you should ask yourself, is how aligned are all the areas of your business in support of your strategy?

Here are five things you may want to consider

1. The Plan: Take a look at the strategy; is it driven by a realistic objective? A strategy does not and cannot operate in isolation it has to be informed by a measurable, achievable, realistic and tangible objective. It also should be designed not only to achieve short- term results but also to build a long-term sustainable advantage in your chosen market place. Are the objective and the strategy aligned to begin with?

2. Interlock: Are the various groups that you need to operate in an aligned manner, all facing towards the same objective, embracing the same values and supporting each other’s efforts? Or are they running to achieve a set of objectives that are focused on achieving their own targets? Are they recognised and rewarded against executing the strategy and the collective organisational objectives or are they operating in a silo. If you haven’t interlocked all the separate divisional plans before finalising your objective and announcing your strategy, the result is likely to be that internal conflict wins over alignment in the battle for peoples attention

3. Structure and People: It is conventional wisdom that strategy drives structure and for most part I personally believe this to be true. However, it does not matter what structure you come up with, if the people populating the structure don’t have the desire and the ability to execute the strategy.  Never underestimate the roles that collective apathy and/or willful insubordination can play in undermining the successful execution of a plan. So before you stood up and launched your plan, did you prepare the structure and assess the people? Leaving it until afterwards is too late. When that happens your strategy gets mugged by organisational change the first day it steps out onto the street and it very rarely recovers from the beating it takes.

4. Objectives & Communication: In my experience, this is where one of the major cracks in alignment occurs and it’s so easily avoidable. The bottom line is this. If you want people to be aligned, you have to tell them what you want them to do, what results you expect from them and when you expect them. Furthermore, if you want to hold to your company values, you have to even poke into the sacrosanct area of “How” and give some “guidance” on “how” you would like them to do it.

If you have a positive and open culture, this clarity will allow people to get aligned first and then come back to you and tell you they have come up with an even better “how”. If that happens breathe easy, you have good people and they are aligned

5. Leadership: If you set the objectives and the strategy is your plan, then it’s not just your job to launch it, the execution is as much your responsibility as anyone else’s. So be prepared to tackle the stuff that isn’t working and be gracious enough to credit your teams with the success for what is going well

If it’s all working splendidly, congratulations you’ve either got your alignment spot on; you’re very lucky or even better still, both. If it’s not then alignment is the first thing to check out and potentially easiest to repair.

However, if like John F Kennedy you’ve got it cracked down to the level of the Janitor, relax, you will not only have a successful and happy organisation; you’ll have a very clean one too!

More often than not these days, many of the business conversations I have contain the question “are you on Linkedin”?   Whilst the core of the conversation will have been on some aspect of sales effectiveness, operational efficiency or organisational design, (given that they are my areas of expertise), the topics of on line presence and social media always seems to creep in.

I often find myself discussing the merits of websites, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin as business enablers and networking tools.  The ups and downs of blogging and sites such as Posterous and BlogSpot also seem to feature heavily in conversations.

Most of the people I discuss these topics with agree that a coordinated approach to an on-line presence is a good idea and that not all mediums are suitable for all businesses.  I also find that when I mention “Audioboo” as one of the options, the majority of people say to me “what’s Audioboo”?  So this blog will attempt to answer that question.

Audioboo is an application (developed by a British company of the same name) that allows you to record audio and share it via the web.  You can forward the recording as a web-link, place it on a website or on a social media site (such as your status bar on Linkedin) or simply direct people to your profile on Audioboo’s own site (www.audioboo.fm).

The technology works on Iphone and Android devices and will soon be available for Blackberry, Nokia and Windows mobile.  Using the application is very simple, you just download the application onto your mobile and set your account up on the Audioboo website.

Once you have completed these steps you can record your own “boos” (“boo” is the name given to a recording), choose to follow and listen to “boos” that interest you, or as mentioned earlier link your own “boos” to social media sites that you might already be using.  You can download “boos’ to your mobile device, (just as you would a podcast) and people can choose to download yours.  Best of all it is free to use, with a five-minute limit on recording time and a 50Mb limit on uploads.

The prospect of making a recording and releasing it into cyber-space might appear daunting and I know that most of us suffer from the, “do I really sound like that” syndrome.  However, as someone who has used Audioboo for both business and personal recordings, I can assure you it gets easier with a bit of practice (and it can be good fun)!

For any business that regularly blogs, an application like Audioboo can bring the blog to life, allowing audiences not only to read the text, but also to listen to the author of the blog articulate their own words.

The fact that It’s home grown British technology makes me a bit of a fan, but also because it’s simple to install and easy to use.  Additionally, it adds a different dimension to how you can communicate with your customer base, your colleagues and your target market.

From a commercial perspective I have no association with Audioboo, they don’t even know I am blogging (and recording a “boo”) about their technology, but I do have a vested interest in doing so.

Hopefully the next time I mention Audioboo in a conversation, the answer might be, “ah, Audioboo, I know all about that”.

At which point I can just say, “have you got a business card”?

www.audioboo.fm/johnpc_ltd

This article was intially written as a guest blog for www.glooblog.com

There lies the time management challenge between keeping a small business website’s content up to date and relevant and focusing on delivering on your commitments to your customers.

Not that there is any doubt which of these activities takes priority in terms of time management, it’s customers first, each and every time.

The last few months have been hectic (in an entirely good way), with the continuing work with Imerja (www.imerja.com) and the launch of www.salesoptimisation.org (with David Breen and Paul Taylor),

In addittion, I have been working on the formation of Compleo ltd (with Elaine Scott) and managing further new business coming the way of johnpc ltd

All these things have made major demands on my time, but have been exciting, interesting, and enjoyable.

In some cases they have really tested my ability to learn new skills rapidly, which is something I had not done for a while if truth be known.

So, note to self on making sure my personal time management strategy includes keeping on top of the www.johnpc.co.uk website.

Maybe posting a blog about why it has not had the right level of care and attention recently might be a good idea: what do you think?

PS: The Compleo ltd website launch is due in a few weeks: watch out for us at www.compleo.co

If you use LinkedIn you are probably aware that the site has a search function.

The drop down search tab (top right hand side of your home page) lets you search for people, updates, jobs, companies, answers, stuff in your own, inbox and groups.

The search function is a great feature to help you find who or what you are looking for, but are you using it to help people find you?

If someone knows who you are and just wants to look at your profile, no problem, they can just select the people tab, put your name in the search engine and off they go.

Similarly, if it’s your company profile they want to look at, they can select “companies”, put in the name and your business should appear (if you have taken the time to set your company profile up on LinkedIn).

However, what if they don’t know who you are, but want to find someone who does what you do?

There is no doubt that the more detailed your own profile is, the more chance there is of someone finding you when they search for someone who does what you do. However, there is a way to significantly increase your chances of being found.

LinkedIn’s search facility works in the same way as any search engine. So it’s important to include the words and phrases in your own profile, that are going to match the words used by the people looking for someone who does what you do.

It operates in exactly the same way #tags are used on twitter to find tweets about specific subjects and keywords (for Search Engine Optimisation) are used to help search engines (such as Google or Yahoo) to find website content.

Therefore, the words you place in your profile are your own personal tags and SEO keywords.

These are the words the LinkedIn search engine will seek to match to the results they produce when (for example) customers are looking for suppliers and recruitment agencies are looking for candidates.

Try this little test. Select “people” in the search bar, then type in a phrase you think someone looking for what you do might use, e.g. IT Consultant, NLP Coach, Web Design or PR.

Ignore the list of companies that automatically appear under the bar and press search and see who appears.

A list of people will be shown to you (on a new page), keep going through the results to see where you appear. If you are near the top or in the first three pages, you probably have the right words in your profile.

If you are buried on page seventeen, you might want to spend some time amending your profile to include the relevant keywords and phrases. In other words “Search Engine Optimise” your own profile.

Mind you, that’s only if you want to be found. If you don’t, you probably wouldn’t be on LinkedIn would you?

Before I share the detail, I do recognise, that I put myself out there in terms of social media and networking in general, as such, I accept the risks associated with information about where I am, what I am saying and what I am doing all travelling across the Internet.

If, (as I am) you are on Twitter (two accounts), Foursquare, Linkedin, Posterous, Facebook, Audioboo, (two accounts) and have your own website,  (www.johnpc.co.uk) you can hardly complain about invasion of privacy: can you?

Shock 1: I chanced by an article that covered the story of how, without the permission of its users, Linkedin had started to share user information with third party organisations.  Furthermore, Linkedin had given itself permission to use your user content and images (including your photo) at a commercial level; called “third party sharing”.

Given that i did not get any calls from Hollywood executives eager to cast me in their next blockbuster and the Harvard Business Review have not contacted me asking if they could license my blogs: I decided to go into my account settings and remove this (Linkedin: self granted) sharing permission.

If you want to do the same, the link to the article and what to do is at the foot of this blog.

Shock 2: I was reading through the updates on my Facebook pages and saw this:

“All the phone numbers stored in your phone are now on Facebook. Go to the top right of the screen, click on ACCOUNT, click on EDIT FRIENDS, left side of screen and click CONTACTS. You will see all phone numbers (FB friends or not) are published that you have stored in your mobile phone. TO REMOVE, go to Right column, follow the “this page.” link, and hit the remove button. Please repost this on your status, so your friends can remove theirs”

First thing to say at this point is “thank you Emma”: if you had not posted that update, I would still be blissfully unaware of the fact that every name and number in my phone was right there on the page.

Now the argument (from Facebook) is that it makes it easier for you to search for friends who are in your phone that you may want to connect to on Facebook.  For my own part, I am happy to keep my phone directory to myself and work out who my friends are for myself.  So, thanks, but no thanks Facebook, these have now also been removed.

Going back to my opening point, I have no problem with info about me being out in cyber-space, (as long as it’s true) after all I put most of it out there and I know “the internet is written in ink”.

However, social media sites seem to be forgetting to tell us when the rules of the personal information game change, which is something we all need to watch out for: and of course (like any good network), to tell each other about when they do.

PS: Here is the link to the Linkedin reference: on third party sharing

http://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-pulled-a-facebook-and-messed-with-your-info-heres-how-to-fix-it-2011-8

Happy social networking and be careful out there

I believe this is a true statement, but I don’t think that he meant that a sales person was supposed to win every single opportunity that came their way, rather I think we can agree he meant those opportunities that we considered were winnable and therefore pursued – and then lost.

It is probably true to say that the biggest waste of resources occurs when a sales-person commits their own time, and those of their organisation, into trying to win a sale that does not come to fruition. 

For their own good then and for the good of their organisation, it is vital that the sales person is able to qualify which opportunities are winnable and those which are not as early as possible in the sales cycle.

The ideal scene of course would be that the sales person would be able to know without any error exactly which opportunities their organisation will win and those they will not up front. This may be impossible in practice but pre-sales qualification is all about moving as close to this ideal scene as humanly possible. This is sometimes easier said than done.

The reasons a sale might be won or lost may be an obvious reason, such as the product does or doesn’t perform a function that is deemed to be vital to the customer, or it might be something a bit more difficult to discover, such as having or not having a particular reference or having a better or worse one than someone else. 

Also, as much as companies purchasing departments may try and level the playing field for bidders, it is not unknown for a senior executive’s personal favourite to still find himself or herself the recipient of additional advantage.

To complicate matters further the ‘sands’ of the sale can be constantly shifting as you and your competitors try and move the goal-posts to suit your own particular offering – so the landscape of the sale may change as the customer re-evaluates their requirements as they spend more time learning about your and your competitors offerings.  In a nutshell then, pre-sales qualification can be extremely complicated and our questioning must also reveal areas where we might shift the sands and areas where our competitors could also do so the same.

The ability to formulate questions around all these areas without alienating yourself or your organisation, but at the same time actually getting the answers you require is the difference between the amateur and the professional salesperson. It is also something that good sales people get better and better at as time goes on.  After all, there is no worse feeling than getting to the end of a sale you have invested months of your and your colleagues time in, to find out that you were probably playing catch up all along.

It’s therefore important to know what you know and even more important to know what you don’t know and resist falling into the trap of assuming you know when you don’t.  This is the area where I think most sales people fall down: they get so excited about the opportunity to bid for a major piece of business in an important client that they get blinded by their own excitement and optimism.

I’m not suggesting that pessimism is a good thing, but I do think that a healthy sense of paranoia can get a sales person a lot further than unbridled enthusiasm.  Call it caution if you will; the cautious sales person will be looking for gaps in their knowledge, will be playing all sides of the game and anticipating the moves of the competition, whereas the super confident one may miss important pieces of the picture. There is a time and place for confidence and enthusiasm and a place for the exact opposite in every sale.

Final thoughts. 
Once you have committed yourself to bidding and the client knows it, you always lose a little bit of power, and depending upon your relationship with a client you might want to delay committing in order to get more information.  The phrase “before we decide to bid”, followed by a clinch making question can be very powerful, especially f you are in a position where the client needs or expects you to bid.

You may think that this can come over as arrogant (it can) and I’m not suggesting you use it all the time, but if you’ve done a good job you may have got the potential client in a position where they do want you to bid. 

When you use this phrase you will usually want to get some form of commitment from the client, so it’s not a phrase that you want to overuse. However, in the right hands with perfect timing and sincerity it can clarify areas of the sale faster than any other method. It can also backfire though so in some ways it’s safer to prime the CEO/MD to ask this kind of question when you involve them in the pre-sales qualification process.

Expanding upon this last point, if you feel you are weak in a particular area that is going to lose you the sale further down the line (or could potentially) then there is a lot to gain from calling a meeting with the client to explain your reasons for not bidding “at this stage”. I add the phrase “at this stage” because you always want to leave the door open.

Two things can happen: now that they are no longer under pressure from you and are probably respecting you for your honesty: 

(a) They may reveal that you are correct or (b) they may share with you why you are wrong, which they would be unlikely to do under any other circumstances.  Either way you win.

You can contact Roz and view her BlogSpot page at http://roz-bennetts.blogspot.com/