Executive Road-show - Executive Peer-to-Peer “Top Opportunity Visits”!

By: Dennis J. Chapman Sr., President and CEO, The Chapman Group

Maybe not so clever an idea…

“Engage with those key influencers within your accounts/prospects who can make the decision!”

…Or maybe it is a clever idea, if senior business leaders have not recently engaged with them!

What is known is that executives like working with peer executives who can bring value through their authority, experience, and willingness to help solve problems. Often, while unfortunate, sales representatives are viewed as sales representatives, selling products and/or services and not solving problems by senior business leaders. This perception sometimes inhibits their ability to connect to, or even meet with decision makers.

One of the most efficient and effective practices to help sales opportunities close now is to work with your key contact and develop a situation (one that offers value to the prospect’s senior business leader) for your senior management team to be placed in front of your key decision makers. One recommended initiative is what is referred to as the “Executive road-show” - a “get-in-the-field” and focus on re-qualifying and closing business NOW!

THE WAR ROOM

By: John Cangiano, Senior Partner, The Chapman Group

Why use a war room to monitor strategy and tactics, especially if we have an automated CRM initiative in place? All too often things fall through the cracks since we don’t have time to interact and review things with our team. What we need is a central point of focus and a defined process to enable all members of the team to exceed their current value.  To achieve this we need to integrate management accountability with individual responsibility and adeptness, to maximize the contributions of the team.  At the same time, it is important to consider the corporate, individual, and team goals of those associated with the sales process.  Utilizing a central location (war room) will allow for a strong focus – it’s visible and will act as a reminder that we need to manage, measure, and focus on high-value activities to achieve revenue results.

The war room is a place to collaborate and interact with other sales leaders and team members.  It is a place where we can manage activities, as well as results, and relate activities to desired results.  How do we create and utilize a war room, keeping in mind that it is a room that allows management to focus on the right activities to achieve results as opposed to just managing results? The following initiatives and actions could have your war room up and running by days end.

[CLICK FOR MORE] File Format is Adobe PDF

Weed & Feed Your Accounts - Which Accounts Will Make Your Year!

By: Carl Schwartz, Senior Partner, The Chapman Group

As good human beings, we are taught to treat all people the same. We have been told that “all customers should receive the same level of service”. However, as sales people, we know that if we follow this adage, we are prone to go out of business! As a territory-based sales rep, you are given a portfolio of accounts that are truly unequal. The best sales reps intuitively understand this and focus their sales efforts accordingly. In other words, they spend time where there is greater Return On their Efforts (ROE). As we hunt for those accounts that will provide a greater return, we must weed and feed our portfolio. To do this we must honestly answer a few simple questions about our accounts, to better segment our efforts. By asking questions and applying a simple rating algorithm to the answers you will find that you can easily segment your accounts to focus on developing your greatest potential. These accounts will, in turn, be the “right customers” that will provide you your potential bumper-crop this year.

So what are these few simple questions that will help me better segment my accounts? These questions typically come from the following areas of your account intelligence: financial data, product usage, opportunity, strategic value, competitive situation, and account loyalty. In some cases, you will have to internally mine your organization or your account’s organization to be able to effectively answer these questions. We have found that to identify the “right” accounts to focus on you must compare your accounts to each other in some or all of the following:  

[CLICK FOR MORE] File Format is Adobe PDF

“Big Bang” Marketing – Execute a Focused Campaign to Your Best Lead Source

By: Lisa Chapman, Consultant, The Chapman Group

What is “Big Bang” marketing? How can our organization utilize “Big Bang” marketing? The concept of “Big Bang” marketing was first introduced in the book “Bang! Get Your Message Heard in a Noisy World” by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. In the book, the authors explain that “Big Bang” marketing is something that changes our way of thinking. “A big bang disrupts. It is about ideas that are simply too outrageous, too different, too polarizing to go unnoticed” (Bang!, p. 6).

So, as marketers, how do we create and execute such a campaign that has a dramatic, lasting effect on our audience and will encourage them to do business with us? While I may not be able to tell you the exact campaign to run, I can provide you with a few tips to help make your campaign one that cannot be ignored.

1.    Assess and determine where your best leads have come from (source)

Before you can determine how to market your products and/or services, you must first understand who you should be marketing to. In order to identify your target audience, you need to assess where your best leads have come from and profile those companies / individuals. Combine the attributes of current leads and clients with those of ideal leads and clients.  Here are some things to consider when profiling where your best leads have come from:

[CLICK FOR MORE] File Format is Adobe PDF

Incentives Rule - Extended 4^th Quarter Promotion

By: Al Sneddon, Director of Sales, The Chapman Group

Summer is almost over and with Labor Day right around the corner it is time to think about driving home business in the all important 4^th quarter. With vacations over and people refocusing on business, now is the time to ensure that your sales team is delivering the revenue and sales that is needed to meet or exceed your goals.

This fourth quarter also includes the month of September. Here are a couple of ideas to institute, and get your team excited and motivated for the end of year push.

1. Put into play visible tracking and performance displays. Let the entire team see how they are doing opposite their counterparts. In addition, make it visible for the entire organization to see how the sales team is doing opposite their goals.

[CLICK FOR MORE] File Format is Adobe PDF

Sales Advisor 2006: What’s still to come in 2006!

·         Top 10 Reasons Strategic Account Management Programs Stall

·         Eliminating Blue Sky Sales Forecasts - Accuracy is the name of the game!

·         What Should My Sales Team Look Like - Right Resources / Right Structure!

·         What Can I do Now to Make 2007 the Best Sales Year Ever?