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Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 - Volume 3

By Jim Dickie & Barry Trailer

Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance 2010 – Volume 3

Current Research Studies by CSO Insights

Sales Performance Optimization Topical Reports

2010 Survey of 3,000+ Firms

Key Trends Analysis Sales Management Analysis Sales Rep Hiring/Compensation Analysis Sales Process Analysis

Sell Cycle Analysis Core CRM Analysis Sales Strategy Analysis CRM 2.0 Usage Analysis

Sales Execution Analysis Sales & Marketing Alignment Analysis Account Management Analysis Recommendations Going Forward

Sales Management Optimization Key Trends Analysis

Telemarketing/Inside Sales Optimization Key Trends Analysis

Lead Generation Optimization Key Trends Analysis

Sales Compensation & Performance Management Key Trends Analysis

For more information on these studies go to CSO Insights Research

http://www.csoinsights.com/Publications


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Copyright © 2010 CSO Insights All Rights Reserved.

Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/. All trademarks are those of their respective companies.

Please feel free to post this document in its entirety in your blog or email it

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Thank you.

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Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance – Volume 3

Table of Contents

CSO Insights Sales Management eBook Project Overview .................................................................. 1

Mr. Kenneth R. Powell..................................... ......... .........................................................................2

Vice-President, World-Wide Sales Enablement, ADP

The fate of any sales organization lives and dies at the front-line sales leader level. Although it can be

the most rewarding job in sales, at times it can literally seem like trench warfare. The challenge today is

to find the best people to fill those positions and then surround those sales managers with all the

appropriate learning and resources, because the complexity of the markets we currently live in make

their jobs much more challenging than ever before.

Mr. Philip J. Garlick………………………..…………………………………………………………………………………………………10

President, OneSource Information Services

For the last two years we have been in a recessionary environment which has resulted in less budget

going around. That, in turn, has meant more competition for a smaller number of dollars and more

scrutiny on the buyer’s side in terms of making decisions. As economic conditions continue to influence

the world of sales, we need to ask ourselves what does this mean to the selling process; what will we

have to do differently?

Mr. Kevin M. Joyce…………………………………………….…………………………………………………………………………….19

Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Miranda Technologies

Any discussion about how to improve sales and marketing alignment needs to start with the realization

that historically these two disciplines have had little respect for each other. I use the metaphor of cats

and dogs; it's just not in their DNA to become completely intimate with and interdependent upon each

other and have their success based on each other. But the realities of the business world necessitate

that we make that happen anyway, so let me share some thoughts on how to make this work.


Mr. Robert Savage……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….....29

Co-Founder and President, Savage & Associates

We look for people with a good work ethic who possess a great attitude. There has to be a certain

amount of intellect and talent, but beyond that, they must possess great habits. We all have habits,

but are they good ones? Honing good habits to improve ourselves and getting rid of bad habits that

we all have at different stages in our lives is what helps us focus and really achieve.

Mr. Jim Dickie……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………40

Managing Partner, CSO Insights

The serious decline in sales performance over the past two years is causing CSOs and CEOs sleepless

nights wondering how to optimize the way we sell. Much of the focus has been on what salespeople

should do to increase their effectiveness. While this is certainly part of the equation, sales

management has to step up their game as well. One key area where many sales management teams

are underperforming is pipeline/forecast management, and this won't improve until we start doing

three things differently.

About CSO Insights……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………48

Sales Management 2.0 Optimizing Sales Performance – Volume 3

© CSO Insights CSOiCL67112 Page | 1

CSO Insights Sales Management eBook Project Overview

One of the great personal benefits of the benchmarking work we do here at CSO Insights is that we get to

tap into the wealth of experiences and wisdom of numerous sales and marketing thought leaders. In light

of the significant challenges surfaced from surveying over 3,000 companies worldwide during the course of

our 2010 Sales Performance Optimization (SPO) study, improving the effectiveness of our sales teams is

more critical today than ever. Because of this, we have committed to producing a series of eBooks to share

some of the knowledge our colleagues in the sales world have shared with us.

In each eBook we provide an overview of the key findings from our latest SPO research. We then present

a series of commentaries generated from interviews we conducted that profile the approaches that CSOs

and their teams are utilizing to effectively leverage people, process, technology, and knowledge to

improve sales results, even in tough economic times.

For the purposes of this eBook, we selected interviews that we felt covered a broad range of issues and

ideas that would be of interest to many sales and marketing executives for helping to optimize their

strategies this year and beyond. In future eBooks we will be taking specific topics such as territory and

compensation management, improving lead generation, hiring and developing new sales talent, optimizing

cross-selling and up-selling, effectively leveraging CRM technologies, more effectively engaging channel

partners, improving sales management via analytics, etc.

Through this continuing exchange of insights we hope to make this eBook series an ongoing educational

process for sales executives, versus a one-time learning event. If you have suggestions for topics you would

like to see covered, or if you have a story you are willing to share, please contact Jim Dickie, Managing

Partner at CSO Insights via email at [email protected] or phone 303-521-4410.

mailto:[email protected]



Kenneth R. Powell

Several years ago, three colleagues who didn't know one another each said the same thing to me: "You

really ought to meet Ken Powell—he is doing really innovative things." So I did, and they were right.

Ken is the Vice President of World-Wide Sales Enablement at Automatic Data Processing (ADP). ADP is

recognized as a world leader in business process outsourcing, as well as having one of the premiere

B2B sales forces globally. His mission is “Making Good Salespeople Great,” and he has spent his entire

professional career dedicated to that goal. Ken has held positions in front-line sales and sales

leadership, as well as senior roles in sales operations, marketing and sales training. In his current

position, Ken is responsible for the vision and execution of the overall sales enablement strategy for a

$9 billion dollar multinational business with 5,000 sales associates. He holds a BA in History from the

Ramapo College of New Jersey, an MBA in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of

Technology, and is completing his business coaching certification at Corporate Coach U. He is a

frequent speaker and author on sales effectiveness topics. I asked Ken to share some of his insights

related to sales leadership for this eBook.

Jim Dickie

The fate of any sales organization lives and dies at the front-line sales leader level. Although it can be

the most rewarding job in sales, at times it can literally seem like trench warfare. The challenge

today is to find the best people to fill those positions, and then surround those sales managers with

all the appropriate learning and resources, because the complexity of the markets we currently live

in make their jobs much more challenging than ever before.

At ADP, we take development of our sales leadership personnel very seriously. We have implemented

a number of programs over the years to identify the right sales leaders and then help them acquire the

right knowledge and skills to be effective in leading their teams. So let me share some of the concepts

that I feel are key to optimizing sales leadership performance.

http://www.adp.com/



Finding the Right Leaders

Any discussion on sales leadership needs to include asking the question, “Who should be a sales

manager?” Conventional wisdom would suggest that we take our top performing sales reps and move

them into a leadership role. But in sports there is an old adage that says the best player doesn't always

make the best coach. When I talk to my peers in other companies, over time we have found that adage

definitely holds true in terms of what we've seen in moving top performers into leadership roles.

There's a very specific profile of what makes a great sales person and a very specific profile around

what makes a great sales leader. And those attributes are very different. This realization may cause

you to reengineer the hiring process, not only around finding great sales associates but also around

finding great sales leaders. When you evaluate candidates today, I feel you should look for three

things: talent, fit and skills. Let’s consider each of these individually.

Talent is the behavioral DNA that someone has, that someone's born with. For example, an individual

may be someone who's very detail-oriented. That is an attribute they are born with—you can't teach

it. As part of the hiring process you first need to understand each individual’s innate competencies.

The second characteristic is fit. Here we need to assess the candidate and understand what kind of

corporate culture they will work well in. Do they thrive in a high-paced, fast energy environment,

juggling a million balls at once? Are they looking for a deliberate, methodical pace to what they do and

how they do it? Is individual recognition important to them, or are they more focused on the success of

the team? Are they self-directed and feel limited when others tell them what to do? The objective is to

determine the type of environment they best operate in and then how that compares to your

organization.

Lastly, there are learned skills that a sales candidate brings to the job that need to be factored into the

success equation. For a sales person this could include competencies they have developed in areas

such as listening, presentation skills, negotiation skills, etc., which they can leverage in effectively



selling for us. So as we look to bring these individuals on board, we should also be looking at their

competencies as related to being a future sales leader as well.

Traditional, behavioral-based interviews, which is predominantly the way that people still assess talent,

only hits on one of these elements: skills. To gain insights into talent and fit, you need to dig deeper.

One practice I would recommend to help with interviews is to use a competency assessment service.

There are several good options available. In general, these services first help you model your top

performers. Once you have defined what it is that inherently makes someone a great sales leader or a

great sales person at your firm, you can then leverage that to do an assessment of those attributes as

part of the interviewing process.

Using this approach, you can determine immediately where an individual stands regarding the first

element of the hiring process: talent assessment. An example of behavioral DNA that would separate a

leader from a high-performing sales person would be someone who's really self-motivated, not just

self-motivated; I would almost use the term “selfish. “

When someone is as selfish with their time as a sales person, it is actually a good thing because you

want them laser focused on driving their number. However, if someone is selfish with their time who is

a leader, it actually works counterproductively. In that case, they're more inwardly focused as opposed

to motivated to drive and mentor a sales team.

As part of any assessment process you need to make sure you are focusing on multiple attributes that

are meaningful for how your company operates. Assessment service providers can help you identify

these. Aligning a potential hire to those attributes provides good insight into if and how that candidate

could be successful working for your company. One individual might show potential for being a great

sales associate, another might be a future sales leader, while a third might be a pre-sales engineer, and

so forth. Bringing science to the hiring process helps ensure you have a solid population of great sales

talent as well as future sales leadership talent in place.



Sales Leadership Development

But identifying the right people who have the potential to be successful sales leaders is not enough.

You have to ensure they are successful. As a general observation, I believe that sales organizations, on

the whole, grossly under-invest in and under-develop their sales leaders. The dollars that are spent on

these individuals, versus sales rep development, is alarmingly disproportionate. I often see the Pareto

principle applied where 80% of the dollars are spent on sales associates versus 20% on leaders.

Personally, I feel the allocation should be weighted more heavily toward the leaders. The reason is

simple. If I can significantly impact the ability of one leader—who in turn is managing a team of seven

sales associates—then I can potentially improve the performance of eight people. Making sure sales

leaders excel at coaching and mentoring raises the performance bar for everyone who reports to that

leader.

To invest those dollars wisely, you need to have dedicated resources in charge of sales leadership

development. That person’s or those people’s goal should be to build and foster the talent pipeline by

ensuring you have the right amount and the right type of development opportunities for your sales

leadership team.

As you start to evaluate candidates who will move from selling into managing, a number of factors

need to be considered. First, since they are going to be leading others, they need to have a track record

of success that gives them credibility with the salespeople on their team. Based on this, performance-

wise they should have been over quota for a certain period of time to be considered.

In addition, they should come with recommendations for the position. We all consider references

when we hire someone from the outside. What I am advocating is that someone, such as their senior

sales leader, needs to have enough confidence in their abilities to recommend them for a management

position.



Next, you should again conduct a skill-based assessment to determine how this person stacks up to the

competencies they will need in their new role as a sales manager. And while this is helpful, you still

need to see how the person matches up to what they look like on paper, so a thorough interviewing

process is still required.

If this sounds like a lot of effort, it is. But you are making a key decision when you move someone into

a sales leadership role. Pick the right individual, and they can help ensure the success of their entire

team. But if you pick someone who can't do the job, the success of their team is now in jeopardy.

Leadership Development Phases

Once candidates are identified, I feel it is in everyone's best interest to let them explore leadership

without being forced to make a decision to jump into management. We should give them a chance to

put a toe in the water, understand what leadership entails, and find out if this is the right career move

for them.

To facilitate this, you might offer a few selected training opportunities, a workshop around aspects of

sales leadership, one-on-one coaching time with an experienced sales manager to learn the pluses and

minuses of the job, etc. After that exposure, ask them for, at least, a soft commitment as to whether

they do or do not want to continue forward to becoming a leader.

If you and they agree that this is the right career choice, then you need to make sure they have the

right skills to be successful. Any sales leadership program should have two focuses: managing your

people and managing your process.

With the people category, depending on your firm, you may want to include topics such as providing

effective feedback, coaching, transitioning to leadership, time management, introduction to

interviewing, day in the life of a sales leader, etc.



With managing your process you may choose to focus on sales rep management protocols, one-on-one

mentoring approaches, and pipeline and forecast data analysis, etc.

I personally believe in a phased approach to training. Delivering training over time allows sales

managers to learn new skills, integrate them into their workflow, and then learn a few more. So after

your initial training program, you may want to offer advanced sales leadership education on topics like

hiring top talent, performance management, building a winning team culture, handling difficult

conversations, etc.

In the sales process area you could move into areas such as sales forecasting, territory design,

managing a strategic sales process, business acumen, leveraging channels, and so on. You don't need

to develop all the training yourself. There are a number of resources you can subscribe to that provide

sales managers with meaningful content.

As with any type of development program, once the course work is completed, you need to monitor

the performance of these front-line sales leaders and look to ensure they are applying those lessons in

their day-to-day workflow. You also need to consider what type of help these sales managers will need

to move into higher level sales leadership positions.

If first-line sales managers show ability as strategic thinkers, they should become candidates for further

advancement. To prepare them for those roles, you should be looking to offer development programs

on topics such as staffing and succession planning, personal brand, and leading through leaders. On the

process side we focus on financial acumen, trend analysis, budgeting, selling expense management,

competition and market analysis, maximizing partnerships, etc.

Based on the challenges sales organizations face today, and the rapid rate of change we are all

experiencing, personal development should be an ongoing process. Even those in the most senior sales

leadership positions can benefit from becoming more effective in areas like talent management and

innovation, strategic planning, running a business and leading change.



Individualized Development

Other leaders I have talked to often want to know what makes up the timeframe for the various phases

of a successful sales leadership program. I tell them that Phase One is six to twelve months before a

person receives their first leadership assignment. But, I also add that they should not get hung up on

timeframes because one of the things that we've recognized the need for, and are doing more work

around, is individual development plans.

Standard timeframes are good measuring sticks for the 80% of the population that generally matches

up to it. Personally, I would recommend considering an individualized approach to development. If a

candidate shows you they have the ability, either through their performance or through their capability

to accelerate their learning, then you should encourage and promote and fast-track those individuals.

To facilitate this, you should develop specific milestones and accomplishments that need to be

adhered to in order to complete a sales leadership development program; become certified, if you will.

The certification should include a balance of knowledge and skills as well as performance. As long is

someone is progressing at the appropriate pace, you should keep investing in them.

I know what I am advocating requires a big commitment, but at ADP we personally have seen a

significant return on our investment. If the performance of your sales leadership team is optimized,

they will be able to generate the maximum performance out of their teams. It does take a big increase

in sales productivity to generate the funds to cost justify the types of programs I have been proposing.

Recommendations

If I were going to give recommendations to other organizations regarding the development of their

sales leadership teams, first I would reinforce a point I made earlier: not all top performers make great

sales leaders. Because of this fact, an investment in a selection tool that models the behaviors of their

top performing sales leaders and hiring according to those profiles is critical.



Second, the focus of the investments and support services you provide needs to be on helping

individual contributors become great coaches. When you say coaches, I think that term is often

misused. From a leadership perspective, coaching in its truest sense is really about helping drive

performance, helping people identify performance gaps through self-exploration and ensuring the skill

set you need gets developed above all others.

Third, the individualized component of learning today is something that we don't do enough about, but

we all need to. The traditional university style of learning where there is a laundry list of classes that

the associate or sales leader has to take is antiquated, and it should be replaced with an approach that

identifies performance and skill gaps for each individual and then provides that individual with a

personalized curriculum that closes the gaps and increases their effectiveness.

Finally, the ideas I have been exploring here are not a “nice to do,” but rather a “must do.” If we don’t

invest in ensuring that sales leadership teams, from first-line sales managers up to the top sales

executive, have the skills and support services in place to make them as effective as possible, we will

be hard pressed for them to get the top performance from the teams under them.

To receive additional Sales Management 2.0 insights,

or to download previous eBook volumes, go to CSO Insights eBooks

http://info.csoinsights.com/SubscribetoCSOInsightsInformation.html?source=ebook&campaignid=70130000000X60Y



Philip J. Garlick

Individuals can ascend to the executive suite through a variety of different paths, but I have always had

a personal affinity for those who came up through the sales ranks. This is probably why I enjoy

interacting with Philip Garlick. When I first met Phil over a decade ago, he was Vice President of Global

Sales and Support for OneSource Information Services, a leading player in the sales/business

intelligence marketplace. Phil has since gone on to assume the role of President at OneSource, adding

the responsibilities for strategic direction, business development, and overall management of the firm.

Still, his roots in the world of sales at OneSource—and prior to that in various sales and marketing

positions for Wang UK and Grand Metropolitan—are evident when you talk to him about the

challenges facing businesses today. Phil holds a Master's degree in economics from Manchester

University, UK, which is another reason I asked Phil to share his thoughts on sales effectiveness in

turbulent times for this eBook.

Jim Dickie

For the last two years we have been in a recessionary environment which has resulted in less budget

going around. That, in turn, has meant more competition for a smaller number of dollars and more

scrutiny on the buyer’s side in terms of making decisions. As economic conditions continue to

influence the world of sales, we need to ask ourselves what does this mean to the selling process;

what will we have to do differently?

The New Selling Realities

In talking to our clients around the world, and in fact just looking at our own experiences at

OneSource, it is clear that there are two new realities for sales. The first is related to who companies

sell to. A few years ago, as a salesperson, you might have been able to find a champion within an

http://www.onesource.com/



account in your territory, determined his/her needs, provided a proposal, and had the deal approved.

These instances are happening far less frequently today, if they are happening at all.

The first new reality is that as spending limits have been revised and reduced, purchase approvals now

involve more stakeholders, including more at senior management levels. This is making it more

challenging for sales to get sign-off on any expenditure related to purchasing new products or services.

And, in fact, if you miss involving certain stakeholders in the selling process, the end result can be that

the deal languishes in the world of no decision—forever.

The second reality is even more interesting to me, which is, more than ever, salespeople need to earn

the right to sell. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when you could pick up the phone,

call a business professional in a company, and get an appointment by asking for some time to come in

and learn more about their business. Well, today we live in an era where no one has spare time.

Customers are not going to invest time educating you; they expect you to be educated about their

world when you call them.

One could say these realities are short-term trends and once the economy gets back on track to

steady, predictable growth, selling will get easy again. Personally, I don't see that happening; I think

selling has fundamentally changed. I may be wrong, but since no one has a clear idea when things will

get better, the expectation from our boards and stockholders is to grow our business now—not

somewhere down the road—requires that we deal with these new realities.

The Informed Sales Force

The old adage “knowledge is power” is taking on a new meaning in the world of sales. To be successful

today, salespeople need a basic grounding in the markets they are selling into. At the broadest level,

they need to understand the industries they are focusing on and the challenges that firms in these

marketplaces collectively face.



They need to go deeper and understand each of the key players in those industries. Who competes

directly with whom? Who is growing, standing still, or declining? What are the individual external and

internal challenges that these companies are dealing with?

One of the key objectives is for salespeople to be able to determine, of all the accounts they could call

on, which ones should they call on. Sales reps need to focus on the best available opportunities. To

make these choices, they need to have a detailed understanding of their prospects in context to the

overall market. Without this level of understanding of the firms in their territories, it will be hard for

them to make intelligent choices as to where to best spend their time.

Assume you decide that ABC Company is an account on which you need to focus. We now get back to

the stakeholder issue; who inside of ABC Company do you need to call on and why would they agree to

meet with you? You need a strategy and a plan before you make that first call, and that is requiring

salespeople to have access to Business Intelligence (BI) to do so.

The Business Intelligence Access Challenge

In comparison with five or ten years ago, the amount of information that's available— largely for free

on the Web—is immense and expanding. This represents a potential asset for salespeople today, but

only if they can overcome four challenges. The first of these is time.

The research from CSO Insights shows that the amount of time salespeople can dedicate to selling

today is a precious resource. Yes, there is a lot of data available through the Internet, but having run

sales forces, I can tell you I don't want my people spending their time endlessly surfing the Web to find

the data they need. That task can too easily end up being a huge time sink.

The second issue we need to consider is that there is a huge difference between data and intelligence.

It is one thing to find a 100+ page analyst report on the Web. That is a wealth of data. But how do we

distill that volume of information down to the one or two pages of intelligence a salesperson needs to

know in order to integrate it into an account penetration strategy?



Assume for the moment that you can solve that problem. The third challenge is to determine how

current the information is. The markets we all sell into have become more volatile, and companies and

industries are changing more rapidly than ever before. So when you do glean a piece of business

intelligence, you have to do a relevancy checkpoint.

I'll give you a case in point. Let's say someone is trying to reach me as President of OneSource. That

sales person can get access to a lot of information about my firm and some on me. In many cases we

were the ones who put it there in the form of press releases, interviews, articles, and so forth. Because

of this, the information is accurate, but is it relevant? If a sales person calls me and uses a quote that I

made two years ago about my industry, business, goals and objectives, quite honestly, I consider

him/her uninformed and end the call.

This brings me to the fourth challenge: was I the right individual for that salesperson to reach out to in

the first place? If you go to our website, like most sites out there, as the company President I am

visible. Go to the Management Team page and there I am along with my direct reports. Also, on that

page is the 800 number to call.

Assume a news item hits the Internet where I am quoted as saying that OneSource wants to expand its

partnerships. Let's say you are a consulting firm that helps companies do that. Should you call me?

To be frank, while I may want us to optimize our partnering, as President I am not going to actually do

that. So wouldn't the best person for you to call be the person inside of OneSource that I have assigned

to solve that problem? And wouldn't you also be more effective in selling to OneSource if you knew the

other influencers further down the organizational chain that could make or break your sale?

This gets back to the issue of stakeholder identification. Business Intelligence (BI) is ultimately only

useful if you know the right people to share it with. Otherwise, it is meaningless.



The Business Intelligence Industry Evolution

I look at the challenges I just outlined in two ways. As a member of the BI industry, this is clearly an

opportunity for companies such as OneSource. If a BI firm can cost effectively collect, synthesize, and

share BI with its clients, along with information on contacts at all levels within the prospect firm to

whom the insights are meaningful, then it has a great opportunity to create clear value for its clients.

Knowing what to do is the easy part of the equation; how to do it is more challenging. Let’s consider

why. Of what I just said—collect, synthesize, share—on the surface “collect” appears to be the easiest.

Anyone with access to a browser can type in keywords and collect data. Some of the data, but not all of

the data.

The social media phenomenon represents another emerging information source, and we in the BI

space need to figure out new methods of data collection to effectively leverage that knowledge asset.

That is why, for example, our development team is focused on new methods to scrape, if you will, data

from sources like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, etc.

Here are a few examples to illustrate how mining social media can uncover opportunities for sales

reps. Let's say a manager of a company "tweets" that they are attending a computer security

conference and is interested in the session on blocking spam emails. If your firm sells email firewalls,

your sales person would want to contact this manager. Or if someone blogs that they are dissatisfied

with one of your competitor's level of service, this would be a perfect time to reach out to them about

how you could more effectively solve their problem. Or a manager updates their profile on a social

media site to show they have joined a sales training management group. If you work for a firm selling

sales training then this is a person you should meet.

Synthesizing Knowledge

Synthesizing what you gather then becomes the next challenge to overcome. To make sense of all the

pieces of data you can gather, BI firms need to enhance their information processing engines to



organize, index and then package and integrate what some might describe as the chaos of the Web

into meaningful intelligence.

To facilitate this, we have been investing heavily in a technology to support our new iSell offering

called sales triggers. The intent of triggers is to identify events that are taking place within a prospect

account in a marketplace in which the company operates or perhaps at the individual contact level.

Here is an example. Assume you are a sales person for an office furniture firm. You have done business

in the past outfitting offices for XYZ Bank. You could set up a trigger for a BI solution such as iSell to

monitor the Internet and look for specific types of events related to XYZ Bank. Each day, the

application acts like your personal research assistant, scouring the Internet for meaningful insights—no

effort required by you.

Our headquarters are in Concord, Massachusetts. So assume for the moment that the City of Concord

issues a building permit for XYZ Bank to build a new branch here. That is an event that would be posted

on the Internet, and the new generation of trigger event trackers would post and bring this

information to your attention.

While the bank may not have broken ground for the building of their new branch, that doesn't mean

that the buying process for outfitting the new office with furniture can't start. By letting you know that

certain events have occurred, you are in the position of being first to respond, and in sales that is

always a key advantage.

Share, Share, and Share

It would be great if the BI industry could share intelligence with you once and meet all your needs. But

it is not that simple. We have two areas we need to then focus on. The first involves another use of

triggers. In addition to being useful in uncovering new opportunities, they can also be an effective way

to monitor events that could derail existing opportunities.



If a merger or acquisition is announced that impacts one of your prospects, or they miss their quarterly

revenue goals, or one of your competitors makes an announcement regarding lower prices or new

capabilities, and so forth, trigger-event enabled BI tools notify your reps about those events. This

allows salespeople to not only identify new opportunities, but also assess risks related to existing

opportunities they are pursuing so they can take proactive steps to minimize the impact these might

have on closing a deal.

Immediacy of intelligence access is key. Because of this, BI applications must have the ability to send

information like this directly to mobile sales reps’ Blackberries or iPhones, so they are never out of

touch with what is happening in their territory.

A second aspect of ongoing sharing is related to contacts. If a stakeholder leaves the firm, if a new

executive comes in, if items such as phone, address, or email change, BI applications need to be able to

identify those events and notify the right rep. In addition, if the solutions are integrated into CRM, as

for example iSell is with Salesforce.com, then the contact records can be automatically updated, as

well.

A couple of decades ago, companies in my market space were, in reality, "list vendors." We provided

reps with lists of contacts and wished them well in turning the list into sales. Being a BI provider, as you

can see, is much more challenging. To be a real player today you have to provide much more value to

be meaningful to your clients, which requires more investments on our side. But if we are successful,

then the impact BI can have on sales success is significant.

ROI from BI

Clearly providing salespeople with the intelligence they need requires an investment on the part of

sales organizations. Whether you are a company with one sales rep or 1,001, you need to see a clear

return on investment for any expenditure you make in your sales teams.



When I talk to companies that are effectively leveraging BI, they all point to hard dollar benefits they

are achieving as a result. For instance, trigger events are helping firms generate more leads. Access to

intelligence about the companies reps are selling to is helping them come up with the strategies to

convert more leads into legitimate opportunities. Further access to better intelligence on the

competition is helping reps more effectively differentiate their offerings and avoid competitive losses.

And leveraging BI to build compelling business cases is reducing no decisions.

One factor to consider is that sometime over the next year I expect to see companies start to increase

hiring in sales, which always occurs at the beginning of an economic recovery. Having BI available to

the new sales professionals helps reduce the ramp-up time that it takes to get them fully productive.

One other factor is that cloud computing now makes BI accessible to a firm of any size. Any firm can

get cost effective access to the intelligence its sales teams need without having an internal information

technology staff and infrastructure.

Advice to Peers

Putting on my former Vice President of Sales hat, if I were talking to a group of my peers, what advice

would I give them? First, we need to start to invest in our sales teams if they are going to succeed

today. How I personally may have sold in the past is not how I should expect my salespeople to sell

going forward. As I said before, there are new realities at play.

Being in the BI solution space, I, of course, think firms such as OneSource have a key role to play in

helping sales teams meet those challenges. But sales executives need to be aware that not all BI

players are created equal. When looking for outside sources of intelligence, the advice I would give is

to focus on the steak, not the sizzle. At the end of the day, the measures of success from BI need to be

on the quality of the data and the intelligence your sales teams are going to get.

There is a lot of buzz in the BI space about intelligence delivery—giving users access to information via

smartphones, portals, and CRM systems. To me, more attention needs to be on information quality.



Someone may come up with a way to feed BI directly into your brain, but if the data lacks integrity—if

you cannot trust it because it's not reliable—then you don't have intelligence anymore.

BI is about accuracy; it's about currency; it's about timeliness; and it's about knowing you have a

source that delivers valuable content. This is the standard to which the BI space needs to be held

accountable.






Kevin M. Joyce

A lot of us talk about optimizing sales and marketing alignment, but I have not found anyone who has

focused more on making that a reality than Kevin Joyce. Kevin has more than 20 years of experience in

executive sales, marketing and business management, specializing in high-tech electronic imaging and

graphic arts businesses. He currently has worldwide responsibility for Montreal-based Miranda

Technologies' sales, marketing and strategic direction. Prior to that, Kevin spent six years in key

executive positions with Eastman Kodak, including Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company and Vice

President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing, Digital Printing Solutions. He has been a featured speaker

at such events as The CMO Summit, The SustainPro Conference, The Aprimo Accenture Marketing

Operations Excellence Forum, Revenue 50, and Advertising Week. He is a graduate of St. Michael’s

College with a BA in American Intellectual Studies and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s

Program for Executive Development. When I asked Kevin to share the lessons he has learned on how

to make sales and marketing work effectively together, he shared the following.

Jim Dickie

Any discussion about how to improve sales and marketing alignment needs to start with the

realization that, historically, these two disciplines have had little respect for each other. I use the

metaphor of cats and dogs; it's just not in their DNA to become completely intimate with and

interdependent upon each other and have their success based on each other. But the realities of the

business world necessitate that we make that happen anyway, so let me share some thoughts on

how to make this?

Laying the Foundation for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Sales and marketing alignment is a topic for which I have great passion. With my recent arrival at Miranda

Technologies, this is one of my top priorities. While successfully linking these functions in the past for

http://www.miranda.com/

http://www.miranda.com/



Fortune 500 companies, I believe the concepts can be successfully applied to any size organization, and I

am happy to share my thoughts and plans. Hopefully, they will be provocative enough to stimulate input

from peers who are also focusing on this challenge so all of us can get even better at it. Perhaps the best

way to start is to give you some background on where I am coming from, and how I got to where I am

today.

The first seven years of my 20-year career I spent in the sales organization. I was vice president of sales

for a high-tech semiconductor business selling circuit boards and then I went to an Israeli-based graphics

arts company, which also had a very sales-centric culture. I then spent about seven years in president and

general management roles where I had all functions reporting to me. It was only then that I started to see

the gaps existing between my sales organization and my marketing organization. It became clear that

these two groups needed to be more effectively aligned. But how do you do that?

I then went to Kodak. For the first three years I was running the geography of the Americas, which was

predominantly a sales-focused role. At Kodak, as with any large organization, if you want to optimize sales

performance you need to look beyond the sales organization. Sales can introduce process, good

forecasting, solid sales techniques, etc., but unless this is done in parallel with a marketing organization

that is intimate with what sales is doing, you will never get to where you need to be.

Based on this realization, after a few years in sales management I put my hand up and became the Chief

Marketing Officer (CMO) in order to introduce a sales-centric, market-centric approach to marketing at

Kodak. I served in that capacity for two years. We made progress, but in order to get to where we really

needed to be I decided to take things a step further.

My thought was why don't we have a person who understands sales, the regions, and the CMO role

manage both sales and marketing? I assumed that role for an additional two years at Kodak. This was by

no means an immediate fix, but in that role I had the opportunity to forge a new level of integration

between these two organizations, allowing me to field-test the concepts I had been developing over my

career.



Optimizing Forecast Credibility

Let me share the process I will be bringing into Miranda. The first thing that needs to happen is that you

must establish one forecasting language, one sales process and one operating rhythm for how the

organization works. The initial challenge is to build credibility inside the company so that when the data

comes in to a rep, to a district, to a region, to a VP, and all the way up the cycle to marketing, that people

can trust the data coming from sales.

The goal here is to create an environment where supply chain, finance, operations, research, etc., all use

the sales forecast as it is supplied by sales and marketing. The major benefit from this effort is that the

entire organization gets to the point where they believe the forecast as is without layers and layers of

second guessing, if you will. By getting a forecast that is truly reliable, discussions throughout the

company become primarily focused on what we should do versus worrying about what the data means.

This is a game changer for any company.

To support this you need to create a methodology where anybody can articulate two terms—two

probabilities—and know immediately where an opportunity is in the sales process and where we stand

from a competitive position on a deal. The goal should be that it literally only requires a 30-second

discussion to determine where we are so we can then focus on what we are going to do about the

situation. That was the first step.

Sales-Focusing Marketing

Once you have established credibility regarding the data from the sales organization, the next step is to

ensure marketing develops a better understanding of sales. This can be a challenge. Over the years I have

rarely found any marketing professionals who frequently look at the sales forecast or use the data they

were getting from the field.



To start to accomplish this, you need to require that the marketing organization become intimate with the

sales process and understand what a pipeline and a forecast from a rep or from a region really entails.

Part of this involves getting marketing proficient at utilizing the sales force automation system to look at

market trends; what pricing are used, where are deals getting stuck in the funnel, are the right tools

available to support each step of the sales process, etc. In the past I have mandated that marketing start

interpreting what the data tells them with regards to—is there a market issue, is there a product issue, or

is there a training issue we need to address?

In doing this, you will often find that the marketing process is not as disciplined as it needs to be in terms

of understanding market needs—what products your company should create, the commercialization of

those products, the management of those products throughout a life cycle, and so on. To become more

effective at this requires clearly differentiating who is responsible for thinking about the future and who is

responsible for managing the current situation. To facilitate this, I have found that it requires completely

reorganizing the marketing function and clearly redefining roles and responsibilities within that

organization.

The end result of all this is what I call the "Marketing Network." Where before there may have been a

marketing organization that everybody associated with MarCom, branding, or public relations, you now

have a more organized, cohesive team. As salespeople see strong business skills being created within the

marketing organization, that marketing is gaining insights by effectively interpreting the data, and that

proactive efforts are made to help salespeople or regions with issues, respect for each other increases

significantly. The cats and dogs start to get along.

As a result of this, you end up with an environment where marketing people contact sales about issues

that are going on in their area. As you instill a very strong sales sense into the marketing organization,

they begin to proactively create tools when they look into the pipeline and see an anomaly impacting

sales effectiveness. Perhaps sales is getting stuck at a specific point in the sales process, or they're staying

too long in a stage of the sales cycle, or they start to experience a very low win rate, etc. The key is to get



marketing to understand that it is their responsibility to recognize what is causing problems for sales, and

effectively deal with those issues.

So, you need to clean up sales, clean up marketing, and then the Holy Grail becomes how do we take this

macro function of sales and marketing and bring it all the way down to the sales rep?

The Holy Grail - Optimizing Sales & Marketing Alignment

With reference to which is the most important function to drive the success of an organization, I originally

would have said sales, because I started as a sales VP. If I had to do a split, I might have said 75% sales and

25% marketing. Today, I have reversed my thinking. I now feel that it should be 75% marketing and 25%

sales. The reasoning behind this is if the marketing organization is disciplined and really understands the

processes and tools required by a sales rep to achieve the highest probability of success, their efforts can

eliminate a lot of inefficiency and cost in the organization.

If marketing is doing their job, then the other 25% is great sales skills execution. It is not that I am

minimizing the importance of what sales needs to do, rather I fully appreciate the value that we are asking

marketing to do: serve as a very valuable resource to sales and spend their time doing what needs to be

done to help them sell.

A lesson I have learned over the years is that by and large salespeople really don't know how to market

themselves. Maybe your very best salespeople might take it upon themselves to develop a marketing

strategy for a specific account or even for contacts within that account, but that is the exception versus

the rule.

Because of that, the challenge we need to put out to our marketing organizations is to create the

framework that would allow a sales rep for your firm to act like a Subway sandwich franchise. What do I

mean by this? Marketing at Subway helps drive sales execution. They do the analysis on what to sell and

how to sell it. Once a quarter the Subway franchise gets a new well-thought-out campaign. This includes



new promotions—perhaps new products—and marketing materials that the local store can customize

based on their location and clientele, etc. This brings a whole new level of sophistication to the

performance of that franchise.

That is what I want here at Miranda. To optimize our effectiveness I need sales to move away from

working off of handwritten lists of people to call, going through a trunk full of brochures to get an

appointment, walking in without a comprehensive strategy for how to discuss the potential of a $2M

capital equipment purchase, etc. Instead, I want them to invest the time needed to think about how to

have a much deeper relationship with their accounts and then execute those strategies.

To support that, you need a marketing organization that must stay intimate with what is going on in the

sales process and in the region so they are accessible for the salespeople to leverage. This increases the

level of sophistication of both organizations, and is what I externally call ‘smarketing’—sales and

marketing become integrated as one.

‘Smarketing’ in Action

Let me share with you what is different inside your company because of this. ‘Smarketing’ relies on a

disciplined approach regarding how people are expected to communicate their activity— by steps in the

sales process, by probability, by time, etc. As they do this at a high frequency, a minimum of four times a

month, the data starts to speak volumes.

The way it works today is that the data comes in on a monthly or quarterly basis; people look at it and

might say, “Oh my God, what happened here?” This alone is an improvement, but in most companies it

can take another three months to put the right changes in place. Basically, the best you have is two cycles

a year to react.

The next objective is to have marketing continuously speaking to sales, going out on calls, testing if their

data-driven premises are indeed coming true and, if not, to respond proactively—the canary in the coal



mine. At Miranda, I want us to have 12 cycles to react to the marketplace. Accomplishing this can give us

the opportunity to implement twice as many types of campaigns or initiatives and it can be achieved

when sales and marketing organizations are truly integrated.

When this happens you reduce the cost of sales and improve the productivity of the sales force. There is

one other thing you need to emphasize with the sales force, and that is the need to shorten the life cycle

of product introductions to assure they hit the window of the market in its sweet spot. It is the data that

the sales organization provides to marketing that gives them 75% of the insights for future products. So

feedback from sales to marketing is also imperative.

Dealing Effectively with Competition

I have a unique philosophy for dealing with the competition and it is a difficult one for some people to

accept. Let’s say that marketing analyzes the marketplace landscape and sees that we have three

competitors vying for deals against us. Against competitor A, the lead player in the market, we lose 75%

of the decisions. Against competitor B we split the deals 50/50. And finally, against competitor C we win

75% of the decisions.

Your ego may tell you that you need to go toe-to-toe with the market leader, competitor A. But that is the

wrong choice. Because we have a finite amount of time and a finite amount of resources, it is far more

valuable for us to focus on competitor C than on competitor A. Here is why. Our goal is to gain market

share, and we can do that very effectively by targeting competitor C for a while as we continue to refine

how we are going to beat competitor A.

That is the approach I have adopted. I want our organization to come up with our marketing strategy for

the year—data-driven—and create the tools needed to support that strategy. All of this comes out of this

‘smarketing’ process and it is then clear to everyone who we are going to go after. I have had a lot of

success with this model, but I will be honest and say it takes a lot of discipline. It is like telling the militia



not to shoot till you see the whites of their eyes. The instinct is just to go into that campaign even when

you know competitor A is there.

Transitioning to ‘Smarketing’

Smarketing requires a culture change. During the transition period you may well eliminate 25% of the

marketing organization. The reason for this is as you redefine the roles that people will have within the

marketing network, you will most likely see that within the marketing organization there is a lot of

duplicate effort. In the absence of a real disciplined approach as to who should do what, you

inadvertently create that overlap.

When there is not a crisp definition of what people should do, they will gravitate to what they want to do.

As a metaphor, I refer to this as ‘swarm ball.’ If you ever have any children that play soccer under the age

of 10, you know what I am talking about. The entire marketing organization basically swarms around the

ball and the ball is whatever the issue is at that moment.

When I share this image with the marketing organization as to how they operate, I make it clear that this

has to change. Like players on a professional soccer team they need to focus on consistently playing their

defined role. They have to transition from swarm ball to an environment where they're a wing; they're a

center; they're a goalie. They play that role and just trust that the ball is going to be passed along to them

at the appropriate moment, in the appropriate manner.

It may sound easy, but it is a very difficult thing to do. Internal culture changes have to take place. In the

past, I have had senior people where I had to sit down to say, “This is not your responsibility. I know you

like to do this but you have to do that. You may not like to do that as much, but that is the way it is. We’ll

try to move you into another role you really like to do but for now this is your role.”

It is a very challenging management issue to reset people’s minds. One useful practice I have found to

make this happen is to have workshops and do scenarios related to launching a product, for example.



During these sessions we spell out specifically who is responsible for this and who is responsible for that.

We walk away from the past and define the new ways of doing things going forward.

Recommendations Going Forward

In looking back at how I went about aligning sales and marketing, what advice would I give? The first thing

I have to say is that in the past I have used a serial approach when embarking upon this transformation. If

you are wondering which do I do first, sales or marketing? The answer is it doesn't have to happen that

way. With the right vision of integrating sales and marketing into a ‘smarketing’ organization, those tasks

can begin in parallel. Set expectations with each function and with each other on where you need to get

to and the value it brings to both of the organizations, and you can start moving them down the path at

the same time.

My next recommendation would be to make sure sales has a core understanding of the role of marketing

inside an organization and vice versa. And as part of that process, educate the sales force on how valuable

they are to marketing and how valuable marketing can be in terms of helping them make more money

each year.

Then take this even deeper and really train salespeople on marketing and train marketing people on sales.

For instance, in the past when we have conducted sales training courses I included our current marketing

people in those sessions.

Marketing people take part in the role-plays that salespeople are going through. They see firsthand what

the initial presentation look likes, what the value proposition is, how products are related to needs, etc.

As they go through the training, they clearly see where the problems are. For example, they may have

thought the value proposition was clear to everybody, and then they see that half of the salespeople are

struggling with it. In fact, some of them are actually building a case for something completely different.

Those insights are priceless.



To support all of this you need to effectively leverage technology. Over the years I have used a variety of

customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise marketing management (EMS) systems. I have

found the systems you select are less important than how you use them.

Once these systems are in place, the effort needs to focus on integrating them together to give marketing

more insight into the data. Without this a lot of manual interpretation of the data has to take place in

order to get to the ‘smarketing’ outcome. You need to develop middleware, with some level of the

intelligence into the data, so that marketing doesn't have to spend two days analyzing the figures every

month to come up with specific outcomes and have a dialog with sales.

So that is an overview of what I feel are the core concepts regarding optimizing sales and marketing

alignment. As I said before, hopefully this will stimulate some brainstorming on the part of other

companies and we can all share best practices to get great at ‘smarketing.’






Robert Savage

Robert Savage leads Savage & Associates; a financial services firm based in Toledo, Ohio, which was

founded by him and his late older brother, John F. Savage. Since 1993, Savage & Associates has been

recognized nine, and soon to be 10, years in a row as a Top 100 firm by the General Agency Manager’s

Association (GAMA) International, an organization made up of all the life insurance-based financial

services firms in the United States, including firms such as Equitable and Northwestern. This is

especially notable since Toledo is one of the smallest markets in America. GAMA International also

selects one person for their Management Hall of Fame each year. Bob Savage was inducted in 1999.

The Savage brothers received the local Entrepreneur of the Year Award presented by Ernst & Young,

Merrill Lynch, and INC Magazine. Bob’s other sales awards include being a four-time member of the

$10,000,000 Forum and a 26-year recipient of the National Sales Achievement Award. He also serves

on numerous community and corporate boards. I caught up with Bob for this interview as he returned

from speaking engagements in Singapore, Toronto, and Australia.

Barry Trailer

We look for people with a good work ethic who possess a great attitude. There has to be a certain

amount of intellect and talent, but beyond that, they must possess great habits. We all have habits,

but are they good ones? Honing good habits to improve ourselves, and getting rid of bad habits that

we all have at different stages in our lives, is what helps us focus and really achieve.

Our company is a bit unusual in several ways. First, we bring in young college graduates, usually about

five a year, and we teach them the financial services business. Second, every member of our

management team has personal clientele in addition to management duties, which is a very unusual

structure.

http://www.savageandassociates.com/



We teach our people to look at themselves as individual entrepreneurs. They can’t give great advice to

business people if they don’t see themselves in that category. We promote teamwork by having

everyone’s office be a similar size, whether you are a 24-year-old rookie just graduating from the

bullpen or our executive vice president. We have 50 offices and each one is distinctive. That is rare in

large service companies. We encourage individual office decoration because we believe that it is very

important that each office reflect its occupant so that the clients think of their chief financial advisor as

a distinct individual.

In our kind of sales, it is important to get inside people’s heads and know exactly where they want to

go in life. We do that by asking penetrating questions about exactly where they are today, both

financially and personally. Once that is determined we ask more questions to determine their personal

dreams, goals, and objectives—where they see themselves in 10, 15, or 20 years.

Our job is then to take all that information and develop a financial superhighway that gets clients from

where they are, no matter where that is, to where they want to be. We help them figure out how to

get organized, overcome financial hardships, and have a successful financial path through life. We do

that with businesses as well as individuals.

Using our approach, a new mentee should become productive at the end of the fourth year at the

latest, and at the end of the third year in most cases. Every once in a while somebody will become

productive in two years. So our game plan is aimed at a three-year ramp up where a person is

mentored every day.

Our biggest investment is the enormous time we take and the patience we demonstrate in bringing in

our new people. We look at 23 candidates, mostly college juniors and seniors, for every person we

invite to join our firm. We spend an enormous amount of time in selection. The last thing we want is

for somebody to come in and have a bad experience. In an industry where bad experiences are

common, selection is key. And, if you can find the Larry Birds, Michael Jordans, and the Tiger Woods’,

you will win the ballgame.



A quick aside about athletes: we have had two great athletes come to work here. Athletes are very

common in our industry, but neither one of ours made it. There is certainly an argument that the

really great ones have so much natural talent when it comes to playing sports that they never had to

work at it. But when they had to do the blocking and tackling in our industry, they didn’t relate. I

completely ascribe to the theory that somebody who gets knocked down a lot learns to get up. That’s

the reality of what it takes. It’s not just great talent.

Ongoing recruiting is key to our business, so we develop relationships with many universities and

colleges. We ask the professors to let our younger people into their classrooms to talk about our

business. Our goal is to entice the students who are impressed by the career opportunity

demonstrated by our young associates to come by our office and visit. We talk about the greatness of

the industry and how we feel we can put them in a position to have a great walk through life. We are

looking for those who can walk through the woods and never see the shadows. That is what it takes to

be effective in our kind of business.

We know exactly the characteristics what we’re looking for: people with a history of success; people

with leadership abilities, who other people follow, who are assertive, honest, have a great work ethic,

and a sense of humor. We want people who are articulate and poised, who possess great

communication skills and who you’d like to spend time with. That is what we are looking for in our

business.

When I was in school in the late ‘50s, the education system thought there was only one form of

intelligence. The formal education system recognized that one form, and people who were good at it

got Ph.D.s. Having served on two university boards for a total of 19 years and working a lot with the

university community, we know today that there are many different forms of intellect. We are hunting

for people who are operative, who are first-rate communicators, and whom people have chosen to

follow during their college years.

Given our business needs, we’d rather have the person who was vice president of the student senate,

was president of his fraternity or her sorority, or the one who put together the yearbook. We need



people who help clients organize their money. They need to be leaders, not just theorists who

pontificate wonderful philosophies.

I don’t talk to candidates until the management team has interviewed them, and everyone agrees that

the selections make sense. When I talk with the candidates, I’m really not looking for talent. I assume

they have the talent or they would not have made it this far. I’m looking for character flaws,

personality flaws, or lack of compatibility with the kind of open space that we coordinate.

We have a true open door policy. When you walk out of here at night, every individual office door is

open. It’s a trusting relationship that is very unusual in business, but that’s the way we built our space

and we don’t want somebody who doesn’t fit in.

What we really offer our associates is independence. If they have intellect, a good work ethic, and

decent people skills, they’ll make a great living wherever they go. We can give them something very

few corporations offer: control of their own time. They can arrange their hours so they never have to

miss a kid’s ballgame or play. They can take five-week vacations in national parks every year if they

want. They can decide when they work and when they don’t. The reality is, by year’s end, they will be

putting in a lot more hours than people who work in typical corporate structures, but the beauty is

they can do it their way. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of freedom.

Investing in the Profession of Sales and Marketing

I was a trustee at the University of Toledo for 11 years. Five years ago, the president of the University

came to me and said that they wanted to develop an Advanced Sales and Marketing Center in the

College of Business. They wanted me to become involved, but I told them I would not do so while I

was a trustee.

Six months after I retired as a trustee, the president of the University approached me again, and after

consulting with our management team we agreed to sponsor what has become the Savage &



Associates Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing in the College of Business at the University of

Toledo.

In many ways our business structure is similar to a law firm—a service business that does not attempt

to accumulate cash reserves. For that reason we were not in a position to write a large corporate

check. Because of their great love for the University of Toledo we were able to get 26 of our associates

and a couple of our friends in the community to write checks. Collectively, we gave $600,000 to the

University to establish the Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing that bears our name. I continue

to be its strong advocate as we bring this Center to life.

Many professors think that people in sales skin somebody or take advantage of them—unfortunately,

that is part of our image in academia. But I smile at this because, having had a long career in sales, the

salespeople who I’ve known are the most creative and most helpful people in business. In fact, a major

common denominator amongst CEO’s of small- and medium-sized businesses is their background in

sales and communication. I think it’s important that we move sales into an academic environment.

We will all benefit when the future sales people are well prepared by a college of business to go out

and intelligently represent companies.

I’m very convinced that if we could crank out 1,000 sales majors a year who really understand the

communication process that is needed in business, every one of those people would get three job

offers. Every business has a never-ending need to attract and retain people who can articulate the

value proposition of their employer.

Here’s our vision for the Center for Advanced Sales and Marketing. Toledo is a town of 600,000

people. The environment in a town like this allows the members of the business community to know

each other fairly well. Thirty of us from different industries are involved in the Sales Center. In

developing the classes, at least once or twice a week the professors will call in a successful business

person that fits well into that particular part of their curriculum. The business person arrives, talks

with the class, shares his or her wisdom, which has been developed from hands-on experience, and

then answers student questions.



At the end of the courses, the students have all these wonderful, rich experiences from real life. When

you combine that experience with the professor’s ability to give them structured learning and insight

from an academic viewpoint, the students end up with the best of both worlds. This has not been done

much in the past. Now, though, a lot of places are beginning to look at it and are trying to get centers

started. We believe we can build this into a real model, at least in the Midwest and perhaps beyond.

Sales Excellence

Sales excellence depends on what you’re trying to market or sell. In our kind of business, the sales

person must totally understand the products that are solutions to people’s long-term financial

planning. They must communicate both on the human-value side and on the product side. We view

our people as specialists who help their clients prepare for the future and protect themselves from

life’s financial pitfalls.

Some people in our business are concerned about the threat of the Internet. I think the Internet will

work for a few analytic souls, who are data-driven decision makers—but only a very few. The Internet

gives you an enormous amount of data and information, but most people are not hunting for more

data and information. They are already inundated and overwhelmed by having too much data and

information. What they’re hunting for is knowledge and wisdom. Our job is to take all that data and

information and provide clients with the parts that apply to their personal or business lives. We help

them get organized in a way that makes their lives better. I tell people all the time, “We’re in the

wisdom business. None of us wants to know how the telephone works. We just want to know the

right phone number to call.”

Making Our Business Better

My view is that each associate should do whatever it takes to make Savage & Associates a far better

business. It seems strange to many people that our business with 130 associates does not have any

individual job descriptions. That is because we have a view of what each associate should do to make

Savage & Associates a far better and more effective business.



We have a sign that says it all. It is posted in our training area, as it has been for more than 25 years. It

says four things:

Do what’s right and avoid what’s wrong.

We all know right from wrong; nobody has to tell us that.

Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

The next time you’re in an argument and you’re about ready to knock somebody over with this great line you just thought of, imagine yourself on the other side of the table. Would you like that line to be delivered to you? If not, then be quiet.

Always do the very best you can.

That’s all anybody can expect. We all have been given gifts and talents. If we are doing the best we

can—that’s great.

Keep in touch with God. We have Jews and Moslems and 27 kinds of Christians here and we’ve never had anybody cause any trouble with the understanding of this point. We’ve also never had anybody object to it.

We hire two or three high school juniors every year. They work here for one year answering the

phones and greeting people. Probably 80% of our appointments are here in the office. Our doors

open at 7:30 a.m. and close at 6:30 p.m., so for 11 hours a day these young kids keep the doors open.

I am not involved in their selection. They just know that ‘Mr. Savage’ is the president. The first time I

bump into them, I look them right in the eye and ask, “Do you know what your number one job is?”

They look at me and it is clear they don’t have any idea. I tell them, “Your number one job is to smile

and to add to our business environment. We have the best business environment in Toledo and your

job is to make it better.”



Later, I’ll come around the corner and they’ll see me and have this kind of ‘overdone’ smile—as only

teenagers can do—which is very out of place, but over the next few weeks, as things get more relaxed,

the smile is very natural and very pleasant. I tell these young people that everybody has some

personal problems and concerns and they should leave them outside in the parking lot when they

enter our office. When they appear to be in a great mood it truly enhances our office and business

environment.

I believe we get what we ask for, so it’s very important for those of us in leadership positions to be very

clear about our expectations.

Mentoring

All our associates are generalists at the beginning. Once they move through the process, and by the

time they’ve been here seven or eight years, about half the people have become specialists. It’s very

interesting. When you get associates as young as we do, by the time they’re 30 years of age, they are

seasoned veterans and have a 30- or 35- or 40-year career ahead of them if they choose.

I think the greatest psychological reward from being a member of our management team is seeing new

people join us, develop confidence toward whatever their specialty becomes, and then truly become

expert in that phase of the financial business. These days, it is important that you become a real

expert in one thing, because our business is too complex for our people to remain generalists. As their

knowledge grows, other associates will bring them into cases that need their expertise. Today that is

how we generate a great deal of our business, especially in estate planning, pensions, financial

planning, and business insurance.

Our average marketing person, not including the clerical or staff people, joins us at age 21. Out of our

69 representatives, 54 of them joined us at age 21 and have been here an average of 17 years. In a

business that nationally is noted for having enormous turnover, that is an incredible record.



I think our turnover is low because we have great role models and mentors. We mentor very, very well

and it’s a huge part of our operations. In the first week somebody joins us, he or she is assigned a

mentor who’s not in management. The mentor is somebody who is successful, can tell the mentee

where everything is, and can answer any kind of question he or she has. The mentor becomes the big

brother or big sister who can help guide them by sharing their years of experience about our operation

so they have a smooth introduction to our organization. The mentors and mentees work extremely

closely together and in many cases become lifelong friends.

Our program includes a great deal of formal classroom education, which is taught by our management

team. They teach the new people everything they will need to know about each aspect of our business.

This includes basic financial planning, estate planning, pensions, and group insurance. We cover the

intricacies of different kinds of life insurance, the tremendous variety of investments, when they’re

appropriate and when they’re not.

In addition to teaching, the mentor’s job is to coach the new person about the reality of working with

clients and their expectations. If new associates did not grow up in a business household, then they

may never have been around business and may not know what to expect. The mentors usually take the

mentees along on client calls so that the mentees can watch them in action. It gives them an

opportunity to see successful people giving appropriate advice and doing successful things.

Sometimes we get personalities that don’t work well together. We change the mentor very quickly

when that happens, and continue to monitor the situation.

In our business, many people are called managers, which I think is an antiquated term. I believe we’re

all in the coaching business, and should think of ourselves every day as coaches. Nobody has ever

heard of a world manager, political manager, or a religious manager. The reality is, each day we all

follow world leaders, political leaders, and religious leaders. We are coaches and leaders and should

think of ourselves in those terms to be effective.



Perfect Practice Makes Perfect Performance

If you talk to anybody in the life insurance-based financial services industry, they’ll say you have 10

suspects, three prospects, and one sale. Twenty-five years ago, we said that was the dumbest thing in

the world.

We expect that if you meet one person, you’ll have one sale. You may not—and probably won’t—have

it now, but if you truly understand financial planning and it is clear you are concerned about your

customers and their financial future, you should eventually do some business.

If you are relatively bright, know your products and their proper solutions, and know how to

communicate effectively, almost everyone with whom you spend the proper amount of time should do

business with you. It may take five years, but the idea of not spending in-depth time with people to

help them understand what you offer is ridiculous. Our job is to create a high-quality environment

with all the people with whom we communicate so that they recommend us to their friends who are in

relatively similar circumstances.

Training people correctly is our business. If our organization can’t teach people the intricacies of the

financial services business and how to communicate, then we have no business at all.

Learning the Insight to Communicate Well

So far, we have not employed any particular technology on the sales side. We have a full-time

technical director whose job is to make all our technology work on an ongoing basis. But at this point,

we’re using technology to back up a lot of processes, including our financial planning reports, but we

do not use technology directly in sales. It is a tool that is very important and saves us an enormous

amount of preparatory time, but we only show the client the end result. That does not mean that

some day we won’t; we are walking our way along the technology curve, and we certainly see the

enormous potential of technology.



Leading by Example and Enthusiasm

I read a great deal, actually every night, and apply what I learn whenever I can. I’m one of those people

who get up early every morning and stays energized hoping to be a proper role model and a positive

force. One of the things I have done for 25 years, and continue to do, is give eight hours every week

trying to make Toledo, Ohio, a better place.

I think that is very important that all of us try to positively affect the towns and neighborhoods where

we reside. A community’s greatest resource is the talent of its leadership and we all have a huge

obligation to make things better. Every time we meet anyone, we can either lift them up a little, or

knock them down a little. I think it is important that we all become uplifting human beings. People

gravitate to others who smile, are pleasant, upbeat, and have positive things to say. No one likes to be

around complainers. The reality is, in a historical sense, most of us have very little to complain about.

I think our organization’s actions have been value-based because of the example set by our parents

and friends early in our lives, a long time ago. I am reminded of the story that is told of President

Franklin D. Roosevelt who, in the early ‘40s, flew over the Pacific to meet the Commanding General

Douglas MacArthur. The President was trying to entice the General to come back to America at a time

when he was hoping to win a third term. When his approach was not motivating the General to fly

back to the mainland, it is said that the President told him he should come back to see all the many

changes that had taken place over the years the General had been out of America. The General is

quoted as saying, “The things I believe in never change.” I am not sure of the accuracy of the quote,

but it is a compelling story.

The things that have made Savage & Associates one of the great financial services organizations over

the last 43 years are fundamental: quality people who are well educated and are trying to truly help

people understand and better prepare for life’s probable economic events and pitfalls.






Jim Dickie

Jim Dickie is the Managing Partner of CSO Insights, a research firm that specializes in benchmarking

how companies are leveraging people, process, and technology to optimize the way they market to,

sell to, and service customers. He has over 29 years of sales and marketing management experience.

Jim began his career with IBM and Sterling Software and then went on to launch two successful

software companies. Jim is also a contributing editor for CRM Magazine, CustomerThink,

SoftwareMag.com, a contributing author for the Harvard Business Review, and an often-requested

keynote speaker at sales effectiveness, sales management, CRM and Sales & Web 2.0 conferences. He

has authored several books on sales effectiveness and CRM, and is a board member for Baylor

University’s Center for Professional Selling. Outside of work, Jim is a Trustee and Past Board Chair for

The Morris Animal Foundation. For this interview I asked him to share insights on the challenges facing

the people leading our sales teams.

Kim Cameron

The serious decline in sales performance over the past two years is causing CSOs and CEOs sleepless

nights wondering how to optimize the way we sell. Much of the focus has been on what increase

sales rep effectiveness. While this is certainly part of the equation, sales management has to step up

their game as well. One key area where many sales management teams are underperforming is

pipeline/forecast management, and this won't change until we start doing three things.

The Sales Management Challenge

In the first quarter of 2010, we released the findings from our 16th annual Sales Performance

Optimization (SPO) study, which showed the largest year-to-year drop in percentage of reps making

quota—58.8% to 51.8%—and percentage of overall revenue plan attainment—85.9% to 78.9%—in the

history of the study. Yes, the economy was in shambles last year. But, is it that much better this year?

http://www.csoinsights.com/

http://www.csoinsights.com/Publications/Shop/Sales-Performance-Optimization

http://www.csoinsights.com/Publications/Shop/Sales-Performance-Optimization



0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

Coach reps on how to prioritize which accounts to pursue

Ensure that reps can communicate the impact of your offerings

Ensure reps have established contact with high level executives

Ensure reps have effectively differentiated your offerings

Ensure that reps identify all the key stakeholders to contact

Assist reps in qualifying out low quality opportunities early

Ensure reps are selling value to avoid excessive discounting

Assess opportunity before making resource commitments

Ensure reps develop strategic plans for all key accounts

Dynamically detect changes in the current pipeline/forecast

35%

36%

37%

39%

39%

41%

41%

42%

49%

51%

53%

49%

52%

47%

51%

48%

46%

48%

39%

42%

13%

15%

11%

15%

10%

12%

13%

10%

12%

7%

Sales Management Best Practices Execution Assessment

Needs Improvement Adequate Exceeds Expectations

Do any of us have confidence that the recovery is here, and that it is sustainable? It would be nice if it

was, but as a CSO it would be foolish to bet on it. So what do we do? That was the question that

prompted us to launch our first annual Sales Management Optimization (SMO) study this year. We had

625 firms take part, giving us feedback on what challenges the people leading our sales teams were

facing, and more importantly, what they were going to do about them.

When we kick off a new study, there is always a sense of uncertainty as to what we will find. As part of

the survey we gathered data on just over 100 metrics. One of the things that struck me, as we looked

to identify best practices in sales management, was that managers know what to do; they are just

having a hard time doing it. Let me share a chart with you to illustrate this.

http://www.csoinsights.com/Publications/Shop/sales-management-optimization



The sales management assessment chart shown above lists the top 10 practices that survey

participants identified which we, in turn, viewed from the perspective of how well these organizations

rated their ability to consistently and effectively execute each of these aspects of sales management.

When you first look down the list, you say, “Yes, that's what we should be doing!” But then you need

to stop to consider what the chart is telling in regards to how well we are doing these activities. Being

that these tasks are core to successful sales management, my first reaction was that we have way too

much red on this chart. And regarding the companies in the blue section, they may want to ask their

CEOs if they agree with this assessment. We just had a full 7% drop in reps making quota and in

percentage of overall plan attainment. I am betting most Boards of Directors don't consider that

"adequate."

How do we do what we know we need to do better? In a brainstorming session we had with our

advisory board, several participants focused on the first item on this chart: pipeline/forecast

management. When you consider the other nine items below that, they are all related to how effective

we are at adding opportunities into the pipeline and then closing deals in the forecast. How well are

we doing at this task? Not as well as we have in the past, and not nearly as well as we need to be

selling to hit our current year revenue targets.

Let me back-up my statement by sharing one other chart that shows the win, loss, no decision rates for

forecast deals from our 2006 study and our most recent 2010 SMO study. I’d like to point out that

these are forecast deals, which represent the opportunities sales has committed to close. These

should be the deals we have the most visibility into, and they also represent the sales projections that

finance, manufacturing, distribution, customer service, marketing, etc., should be using to make

planning decisions. What the chart shows us is that we have experienced a 5%+ drop in close rates

over the past five years.



0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

2010

2006

44.8%

50.1%

31.3%

30.3%

23.9%

19.6%

The Decline in Win Rates of Forecast Deals

% Wins

% Losses

% No Decisions

When we do strategy sessions I always find it useful to put this in perspective. Assume you have a 100-

person sales force, each rep has a $1M quota, and your average deal size is $50K. Under this

hypothetical model each rep needs to close 20 deals to hit plan. With a 45% win rate, a rep needs to

develop 44 opportunities to get 20 to close. What if I could get back up to the 2006 level of 50%? Now I

close 22 deals, or to put it another way, $100K more in revenues per rep.

I am not talking about finding more deals, which based on the tight marketing budgets available today

we would be hard pressed to do. I am talking about closing more of the deals we have already

identified. And if sales managers could just help their teams do that one thing, life would get a lot

easier. Unfortunately, there are road blocks in the way for most of us.

Formalize the Process

To begin with, I’ll paraphrase a well-known saying of John Chambers at Cisco: you can't manage what

you can't define. Of the companies we have surveyed, when asked to describe the type of sales



methodology they had in place, 52.9% reported random or informal processes. That is a huge problem

for sales managers.

If you don't have a common vocabulary for what a qualified opportunity looks like, if you don't have a

consistent view of what the steps in the sales cycle ought to be, if everyone gets to establish their own

criteria for determining the probability that a deal will close, etc., then how can a sales manager

effectively coach and mentor his or her team? If I have a group of seven reps I am managing, it is

almost like I need to speak seven different languages to communicate and find out what is going on in

their pipeline and their near-term forecast.

In the study we published in Harvard Business Review a couple years ago, we clearly showed that

formal process adoption has a direct impact on sales results. Get all your reps on the same page, train

them on a single way to engage and develop prospects, give them the right tools that support that

process, and win rates increase. So that is challenge number one—we need to bring more science to

the art of sales.

If companies need help doing this, then it is readily available. In checking our solution provider

database, I found we now have data on over 60 sales training firms, the vast majority of which get

good reviews from the companies we have benchmarked who are using their sales methodology and

process. While there is clearly a cost associated with any of these solutions, the cost of doing nothing

to address this first sales management challenge is much, much more.

Inspect the Process

Getting a formal sales process in place is just the first step. My dad was Chief of Armor at the Pentagon

in Washington, DC for five years. I remember walking into his office as a kid and seeing a plaque on his

desk that had a saying many of us are familiar with: “You can only expect what you inspect."

That to me is challenge number two for sales management. Are the troops doing what they were

trained to do? Once the process is in place, sales managers need to reinforce and enforce that process



to get it to stick. Otherwise, it is too easy for reps to slide back into old habits. We all look at each other

and we say, "That's obvious." But let me ask a question, what tools are we giving sales managers to

help them do this key task?

The SMO study found that on average sales managers have six people reporting to them. If they are

going to maximize their effectiveness, managers need to be able to coach/mentor by exception. By

that I mean knowing which reps need what help to advance which deals. To do this requires that

managers have clear visibility into the pipeline and the forecast, and far too often they don't.

Here is the challenge. About a third of the firms we surveyed said they track their sales

pipelines/forecast using spreadsheets and about another 45% said they use the opportunity

management capability in their CRM systems. Using either of these approaches, I can get pipeline or

forecast numbers with a few clicks of the mouse.

Let's take a scenario. At the beginning of the quarter I have $12M forecast for the Southern Region. At

the beginning of the last month of the quarter I again have $12M forecast. The question is, is that a

good thing or a bad thing? And the answer using this approach is that I don't know. To make that

determination I need to understand what has changed in the forecast. If $10M from the original

number has been dropped from the forecast and it has been replaced by $10M worth of new business

that is at much earlier stages of the sales cycle, I'd be more than a little nervous.

Very few companies have, what I would consider, a true sales analytics system in place. What is

needed is an application integrated into the opportunity management system that continually

monitors change. If a deal is moved from this quarter to next quarter, the projected dollar volume is

reduced, the close rate probably gets lowered, etc. The sales analytics engine detects that event and

notifies the appropriate manager. Armed with this knowledge, the manager now knows which reps to

work with and on what deals to get things back on track.

This to me is one of the key areas that CRM has to get much more sophisticated at to be truly useful to

sales managers. The good news is that this issue is being addressed today. Some of the core CRM



providers are increasing the analytics capabilities in their systems. There are also robust sales

performance management applications available as well. We have benchmarked sales organizations

using solutions from companies like Cloud9 Analytics, Birst, Right90, PivotLink, etc., that turbo-charge

this aspect of sales management.

Optimize the Process

So you get a process in place, you consistently monitor its adoption, are you done? You better not be.

Years ago I interviewed Kevin Kalkhoven when he was the Chair of JDS Uniphase. One observation he

made has always stuck in my mind from that conversation. When asked what was the biggest mistake

high-tech companies can make Kevin said, "The one thing that I can guarantee you is that the moment

you become fat, dumb, and happy in today's highly competitive marketplace–you are dead."

That statement directly applies to a company's sales process. It would be great if we could define a way

of selling, put it in place and just go execute. Unfortunately, the sales ecosystem we all live in is very

dynamic. The economy gets better or worse; a new competitor comes into the market or an old one

disappears; new government regulations make it harder to do business or easier, etc. Any of these

events can present a risk or an opportunity, and to minimize the damage or leverage a new advantage,

we need to be constantly modifying the process based on changes in the marketplace.

I'll go back and reinforce the ideas that Kevin Joyce, of Miranda Technologies, presented in the

interview we did with him. Continually optimizing the process requires a very high degree of sales and

marketing alignment, which is missing from too many companies.

Process optimization also requires another thing––consequences for not doing so. We are in the

process of conducting our annual Sales Compensation & Performance Management study. Based on

the early data, it is clear that few companies are linking sales manager compensation to getting

managers focused on how to continually improve how their sales teams sell. Rather, their commissions

and bonuses are tied to did you hit your number, regardless of what you did to hit it. In the long term, I

think that is a mistake.

http://cloud9analytics.com/

http://www.birst.com/index.shtml

http://www.right90.com/

http://www.pivotlink.com/



Final Thought

If I sound like I am being hard on sales managers that is not my intention. I have been a sales manager,

I have been a CSO—I know these are challenging positions. But we have to get better at these roles if

we are going to successfully lead our teams. And here is the crux of what I have been talking about.

If we look over the product development side of our business, the mandate to the person running that

function is very clear: debug the product! We expect them to do whatever it takes to deliver a high

quality offering to the market that has the right features to truly meet our customer's needs.

Well, the watch-words to the head of sales needs to be equally clear: debug the process! We need to

turn how we sell into the same kind of advantage as what we sell. If sales management can step up to

that challenge, they can take a leadership role in their market. If they fail to do so, they will be

constantly trying to play catch-up to a competitor who has accomplished this.






About CSO Insights

CSO Insights benchmarks the challenges faced by today’s sales and marketing organizations. We track

trends in the usage of people, process, technology and knowledge to improve sales effectiveness.

Research is the core of our business. Each year, we survey thousands of Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) to

learn the challenges they see as most critical. We also review offerings from solution providers to

retain our position as the experts on options for CSOs.

We write numerous articles and speak at major sales and marketing conferences to share what we’ve

learned from executives like you.

Founded by Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer, CSO Insights has served sales and marketing executives for

over 16 years. We offer only pragmatic suggestions, experienced-based example, and the kind of

insights you’ll want before your next executive strategy session or Board meeting!

To receive our monthly newsletter chocked full of best practices and thought

leadership articles, go to CSO Insights Newsletter

http://www.csoinsights.com/

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