Managing Sales Opportunities

Managing Sales Opportunities
For complex logistics solutions sales, the customer is often not a single decision-maker. This means the sales process can be prolonged and complex. The justification for any major initiative now receives intense scrutiny, often resulting in extended sales cycles, numerous selling hurdles, and deferred decisions. In order to train salespeople to deal as business consultants, or strategic orchestrators, when dealing with complex sales, you must teach salespeople the following:

1) Teach salespeople to choose target accounts, based upon many criteria. These criteria include such factors as the size of the account, the level of contact they have at the company, or whether there is an existing relationship with our employer that they can leverage.
2) I encourage them to develop a close relationship with people at more than one level of the decision-making group.
3) Teach them to think conceptually in order to discuss the high-level concerns of upper management, as well as to think practically to solve the nuts and bolts problems associated with moving freight efficiently.
4) Teach salespeople to ask targeted questions, in order to learn about the needs of a customer, using a diagnostic, consultative approach. This approach allows the customer to address more concerns than simply the issue that initially drew attention to the company as a target.
5) When we determine needs that we can satisfy, we begin develop a solution with the customer, using our existing suite of services and standardized IT systems, where possible. Teach salespeople that over-customization does damage to profit margins. It is why most third-party logistics companies now face declining profit margins.
6) Teach the salespeople to work towards closing the sale through insuring that the customer takes part and “buys in” through each step of the solution development.
7) Teach that as the relationship matures into the retention phase, the account becomes very profitable if it is retained. Good account management is important to avoiding the “customer churn” that many transportation companies experience.

The decision to buy is the result of a long process of investigation, consideration, and review. To be able to market and sell effectively and to make the best use of your resources, it is important to understand how your customers and prospects buy and to recognize which stage of the cycle they are currently in. Although your customers and prospects may vary in size, most companies share a common buying cycle. The buying cycle typically moves through four key stages:
Identify a business need.
Research a solution.
Design and evaluate different solutions.
Purchase

The important measures to consider are the conversion ratio, the quality of business wins and account retention. Sales and Marketing activity needs to go beyond stimulating interest. It has to play a crucial part in all stages of the process through closure and account retention.

Place greater emphasis on the whole sales process, ensuring that all parties communicate with consistent messages that adapt to different stages of the buying cycle. The process of managing sales opportunities with long sales cycles recognizes the role and relative importance of different influencers and decision-makers.

To drive the sale toward conclusion you need to develop a program that successfully builds relationships before, during and after the sale. You must also continue to qualify the process all the way through. If the process works properly, the final negotiations are more of a formality than a sales pitch. The decision has often already been made. The initial contact, discovery, the proposal and discussions, presentations, and explanation of the implementation process have all contributed to a sales process in which the decision-makers recognize the value of what your company has to offer.

Create a Core Value Proposition
The purpose of a value proposition is to identify and satisfy an unmet need in your target market. Examples might include:
To help customers increase their revenue
To help customers decrease their costs
To help customers increase their profitability
Effective value propositions create a strong differential between you and your competitors. They also help to align your business operations more closely to customer needs. It is essential for the sales team to create a unique value proposition that fits individual customers’ specific needs. To be successful, you need to present the value that means the most to each individual at the time the decision is being made.

Speak to All Decision-Makers
Develop close relationships with people at more than one level of the decision-making group. Train salespeople to think conceptually in order to discuss the high-level concerns of upper management, as well as to think practically to solve the nuts and bolts problems associated with moving freight efficiently. The objective is to ensure that your communications build understanding among all decision-makers. When the decision-makers are working as a team in your favor, you stand a better chance of obtaining the business. Each decision-maker will have his or her own agenda. However, you should encourage a collaborative decision-making process that recognizes your company’s wider contribution to the customer’s overall success.

Customer Input
The lines between companies and their customers are becoming increasingly blurred. Customers should interact easily and participate in product development and other processes. You should adopt an approach to customer relationships that encourages friendly cooperation and involvement, rather than the traditional supplier/buyer relationship. This approach can help position your company as an influential trusted resource.

Everyone is a Salesperson
Every point of contact between your company and the prospective customer is an opportunity to reinforce what you stand for, what you deliver, and how you differentiate yourself from competitors. Every employee at your company should act as if it is “their job” to help resolve the problems of the customer. Cross-functional teams assigned to larger accounts have been shown to help with working out issues that may require resources and/or agreement across several departments. Even in the absence of such teams, all employees should be coached in how to help customers by actively listening to them, in order to help solve their problems. Internal communications should therefore feature the same messages that you use in external communications.

Everyone is a Salesperson

A lot of people at a transportation/logistics company affect the customer experience and the perception that a customer has of the firm. The overall customer experience is often not managed well. The customer is then required to apply extra effort to navigate the organization to get things done, or get issues resolved. The more choices a transportation/logistics consumer has, the more pressure companies should feel to offer quality customer service.

Although it is good for customers to have a single point of contact (for simplicity), every employee at your company should act as if it is “their job” to help resolve the problems of the customer. Cross-functional teams assigned to larger accounts have been shown to help with working out issues that may require resources and/or agreement across several departments. Even in the absence of such teams, all employees should be coached in how to help customers by actively listening to them, in order to help solve their problems.

The brain changes as a function of where an individual puts his or her attention. It is the power of focus, sometimes referred to as attention density. Attention continually reshapes the patterns of the brain. People who practice a specialty every day literally think differently, through different sets of connections, than people who don’t practice the specialty.

Sales professionals have profound differences in perception from people in other functions, such as finance, operations, solutions, legal, marketing and human resources that cause them to see the world in a different way. One difference is the tendency for salespeople to see themselves as customer advocates. This is a tendency that should be shared across all of the functions of every company. Salespeople and managers should help to teach others at their company to become customer advocates. Everyone should focus on meeting the needs of the customer.

In addition, we should employ the same sales techniques used to gain insight into customers to gain insight into our fellow employees. Every one of us is a salesperson and everyone else is a consumer of our ideas and personality. Find out about other people at your company and be genuinely interested in them and their motivations, if you want them to take your ideas seriously. There is no substitute for being genuinely interested in what others think and feel. We should all practice listening to the ideas and opinions of others.

I don’t believe that a salesperson who is truly concerned about their customer’s needs has to be at odds with the people at their work who are trying to develop, price and produce the company’s product. Rather, salespeople should help others to put themselves in the place of the customer, by offering their insights in a way that does not convey a pride of ownership of the ideas. After all, they got the ideas from the customer. All everyone has to do is be willing to actively listen and be willing to work together to solve problems. The ultimate responsibility for securing customers may lie with the salespeople, but the gain (or loss) to your company that results from your level of success in retaining customers will be felt by all.

Over-Customization

Logistics companies have seen their profits shrinking over the past few years. In addition to the economic recession, there is another major reason why third-party logistics firms are experiencing declining profits. The industry’s business model consists of custom-tailoring technology solutions to the customer’s request and approaching new projects with all new designs and implementation. For this reason, the industry is trapped in a competitive, downward spiral of expensive project-by-project customization and declining profit margins.

Third-party logistics providers need to relax this customer-centric business model. To do this, they need to step away from the project-based approach in favor of a product-based model. Logistics companies need to define the services offered by their company, keeping them clearly differentiated and so more profitable. Bundling services is only a good idea if the company gets paid adequately for the all of the services that they bundle. By adopting a more disciplined and strategic approach to customization of their services, third-party logistics firms can pay more attention to their bottom line. They can reduce the complexity and cost that is generated by trying to be everything to every customer and so make their own company more profitable.

In the past, third-party logistics firms have been inefficient users of IT. For instance, poor integration of acquisitions and unnecessary use of outsourcing are reasons why some third-party logistics firms continue to support multiple IT platforms. This is a costly mistake. Unless these companies consolidate their IT systems, they will continue to face unnecessarily high cost structures and complexity.

Third-party logistics firms can take steps to solve these problems by providing customers with targeted responses to customers’ real needs that fall within the logistic firm’s domain of expertise. This approach requires training third-party logistics firms’ sales forces in diagnostic, consultative sales. It also requires admitting when your firm’s services cannot address all of the customer’s needs. Finally, third-party logistics firms should develop modular, high-value, IT-intensive products that sit on top of a common, company-wide IT infrastructure.

Economic hard times require innovation for companies to survive. You should put talented, imaginative people in an environment where they can introduce the kinds of ideas that will shake up the competition. However, you should also know when to “stick to your knitting”. Concentrate on what your company does best. Spend money to put only the best ideas into practice. Companies are often better off with only a small amount of innovation and a focus on operating efficiently.