Bad news for HR and engineering mangers is of course good news for talented employees, who are in greater demand and yes, good news for sales folks. This rise of attrition is the most definitive indicator, even if a lagging one, of improving demand in the marketplace and therefore increasing chances of revenue. So for all of us sales folks who’ve struggled – hopefully playing the hardworking ant – in the downturn, finally some good news seems on the horizon. Whilst the rising tide of a growing economy will pick up all of our boats, it’s likely to do better for those of who go don’t forget the basics.

One such basic is the ACB selling technique – yep ACB not ABC.  Most sales funnels can be divided into three regions – a large hopper – the top most portion, where in you are drawing a large number of leads (C), the narrowing mid-section (B) which are leads likely to convert into real deals and finally the narrow neck (A) which convert into paying customers.

In the downturn, we all (grasshoppers at one level) likely chased every little deal – however inconsequential – if it looked like it would close (the As). And in the little time left between trying to close deals we tried to move those active prospects (the Bs) to the next step.  And how many of us were truly ants continuing to work the leads (Cs), that were still early and likely to take a while to even become prospects (Bs) before fructifying into a real paying customer?

The ACB method eschews a linear traversal of the sales pipeline from the highest probability (A) deals to the lowest (C). Instead you

• work the As first and once done with them or having parked them at a logical break point,
• move on to your Cs – this way you ensure a steady flow of prospects B. Given the size of C and usually their state of uncertainty, allocate a finite amount of time each day to it – or at least a minimum fixed amount of time each week,
• finally work on your B’s to help move them forward from being prospects to paying customers.

The key here is to work on your Cs (leads) every day – as the As and Bs will demand and get the time they need. However, the longer we go without working the Cs, the greater the probability that the pipeline will dry up with Bs shrinking and the As won’t be too far behind.

The simplest way I’ve found to work the ACB system is to set aside some time each day, usually 30 minutes would do the job to follow up on the Cs. Others have done it three days a week. It could be the first thing in the morning, if that’s when your leads are available, or mid-day just before lunch or your afternoon break, so that there’s a fixed time that doesn’t squeezed out – you treat it like a standing meeting – one that you cannot excuse yourself from.   So get started today and you can discover what works for you as long as you cover all  your Cs once each week. Happy hunting!

It’s not as though a fourteen year old doesn’t have enough pressure in her life between trying to fit in with peers, other parents expectation of their kids, and all the emotional upheavals that comes with high school. My own childhood must have been so terrible, I have no recollection of what it – or at the very least high school examinations – were like.

So you’d have found me this weekend sitting with my daughter, trying to help her prepare for the first exam – Social Studies. This includes history, geography, civics, economics and disaster management (the last three somehow seem to be related). We got the idea of doing a mock test or two, so that she feels comfortable with the whole exercise.

Editing out all episodes of parental gnashing of teeth or screaming, occasional storming away from the study table by the child in question, we finally devised a three step process for her to do well in her exams. As we reviewed it one last time, I realized these exact same 3 steps would likely help all of us as marketers and sales folks do better with our prospects and customers. So here they are!

LISTEN CAREFULLY
(in my daughter’s case it was Read the Question Carefully) Many of us – my daughter and myself included – have a tendency to jump to answer a question we’ve just read or heard. But all too often we hear what we want to, rather than what the customer or prospect is actually asking.  So when a customer says “What about support?” it’s better that we stop and pause, to actually understand his question before answering the question. This way you are less likely to develop a taste for leather – which otherwise might be necessary if we frequently keeping putting our foot in our mouths!

OUTLINE
When my daughter needs to figure out how short or long an answer she should give to a question, she’s learnt now to check for how many marks the question carries. In real life such clear indicators don’t always appear. So rather than stumble, repeat yourself or worse yet ramble endlessly, in response to a customer question, it is always useful to outline in your mind or even on a piece of paper – the two or four points that you want to touch upon in your answer.

When you observe experienced sales hands, you will notice them use phrases such as “That’s an excellent question” or “I am really glad you brought that up.” These aren’t meant merely to make the customer feel good (thought that never hurts) but a harmless stalling tactic, to get their outlines done (largely in their heads). Such outlining and the pause that precedes it allows them to present a coherent and to-the-point response to the customers question.

USE PLAIN ENGLISH
Even when you know the answer to a question and have it neatly outlined in your head, as my daughter found out, you can be misunderstood. Unlike my daughter, who’s still trying to master grammar, we don’t have any excuse for not making perfect sense. Yet all too often we flub this – because we tend to couch our answers in jargon rather than in plain English.

So rather than say “Our widget’s or sonar-powered hyper-performance will result in a 4X ROI” if you can phrase it as “For less than $2 a day, the machine will pay for itself in 3 months” or something equally simple in plain English you are more likely to be understood and therefore successful.

So lets practice listening, outlining and using plain English – while my daughter and I go get ready for the science exam that’s coming up next.

Image by photographerpandora via Flickr

One of the biggest lessons that I learnt as an entrepreneur and marketer is to appreciate sales folks. Before you even think of snickering, reflect for moment. Which of us likes being rejected day after day, having to not merely tolerate but cultivate customers with idiosyncrasies you’d never accept in any other person. Add to this being the first person in the line of fire for the products failings and picking up the pieces after an exec or that product marketing guy walks out after lobbing a grenade at a customer meeting – the lot of a sales person is not easy. And if you happen to selling in a brutal market like India, you are ready to be canonized – it is not for the faint of heart. With all that said, if you are a sales person, you might as well be successful, for the pleasure of winning as much for the money.

Dave Brock, in his blog Partners in Excellence, recently spoke of the need for a simple sales process, one that we’d actually follow. Many companies that we work with at Zebu, have a sales process in place, however informal or archaic – even in startups that say they don’t! Yet we find organizations and sales teams struggling – not enough qualified leads, selling cycles taking too long and always, always the pricing pressures. And all this even without the recession. In every one of these cases, we’ve found it useful to go back to the basics. Which in our experience is following three steps, consistently.

1. Weekly review – plan for the week & month ahead
2. Daily execution – relentlessly work  your A, C and B lists
3. Sales Pipeline & Process – written SMART and living pipeline

1. Weekly Review
Twice a week, preferably on Friday evenings and Tuesday mornings, sit down to review your sales pipeline. Ideally with the whole sales team, if there’s less than 8 folks, in person (at least on Fridays) and plan for the week ahead. Typically we find reviewing by deal size and by sales person, what orders you’re likely to book, a good place to start. The review of what you will

• book that week (List A),
• book that month (List B) and
• be adding to your hopper (List C)

On Friday (or Saturdays if you work six days) before you go for that beer or break, having a plan for the week ahead helps. It allows the team to celebrate any wins they’ve had and more importantly recover from a bad week or big loss and focus on the future.

Tuesday mornings, leaves all of Monday to execute, without meetings and provides a chance to make any tweaks to Friday’s plan if there’s been any unforeseen changes or to put out any fires that may have popped up. It helps the sales manager figure out who or which deal might need help and what he needs to focus on as well. The two things the weekly review helps you do are

1. create a focused plan for the week/month ahead
2. understand and adjust for things that didn’t play out the way you reckoned the previous week

2. Daily Execution
This is the most critical step – the relentless daily doing. Start your day early, and work it in the order A, C, B – namely chase the important deals you plan to close that week, your List A. Do whatever is necessary for the first one on our A list. Don’t take your eye of the one you are  working on till you close it or get it to a logical decision point. Then move on to the second one on your A list and so on. Once done with your A list, then work your way through the C list – leads – generating, qualifying and moving them forward rather than on the B list. Some folks prefer to even sneak a few of the C list items between completing their A list items.

Most of us have , taught to work things in an A, B and then C order. And starting with the A list makes sense for all the logical reasons. However, given sales is a numbers game, if you don’t work through your C’s first, they’d never get any time on your calendar. Sooner or later your pipeline is going to run dry – even if marketing is doing lead generation for you, if you don’t build up a strong C list than can feed your B list. Work your B list, after you have done your share of C list pursuit. Again we’ve seen successful sales folks put in one hour (or two) each day into their Cs before moving on to the B. Alternately folks have done, so many C calls each day, before handling their B list. Regardless of how you work your actual day, the take away is ensure that no day goes by without your working your C list, regardless of the number of As or Bs you have on your plate.

3. The Sales Pipeline
Just as a CFO or controller would know (good ones always do), what their cash situation is at any time and where & when the big inflows or outlays will happen, every sales person should have a written down sales pipeline. This could be the one you created on the fly, at that first weekly meeting on a white board or a sheet of paper or good ol’ Excel. Or one that your sales manager has assiduously pulled together in your company’s fancy CRM tool. Either way it is a start. However rough or accurate your first sales pipeline is, the weekly reviews and daily execution, will clean it up pretty quick.

The important thing in your sales pipeline is to capture a finite set of specifics, that will help you slice & dice the data you have. These specifics are essentially your “sales process.” The sales process has only one purpose – to empower each sales person to accomplish their goals, in the shortest possible time on the best possible terms. It it allows the management to plan, forecast and help the sales team achieve their objectives, all the better.

Regardless of which step you start with, when executed consistently, these three steps will act to create a virtuous cycle, that will help you start selling better today.