Believe it or not, businesses evaluate your company during the sales
process and you may be eliminated without knowing it before you even submit
your final proposal. While this seems obvious, most businesses are
moving at 100 miles per hour and don't take the time to analyze how
they interact with potential customers during the sales process.
A couple of years ago, I did a consulting project for a client and
interviewed several of their customers as well as companies that took
their business elsewhere. There was a common theme among all companies
- during the sales process businesses evaluated potential vendors based on
the following criteria:
- Response time
- Quality of their response
- Company reputation
- Price
I was surprised how important the first two points were for these
companies. But when they explained their reasoning, it made perfect
sense. If a vendor takes a long time to respond during the
sales process, what will it be like when they have a signed contract?
I experienced this first hand when I was looking for a telesales
firm. I reached out to several firms via e-mail and phone. Only 1
firm actually got back to me and it took them over a week. These are
telesales firms specializing in sales! It blew my mind.
What are the common causes for a slow response? The main problems I've encountered are poor communication
and proposal management processes are non-existent.
Let's talk about communication first. The Internet and PDAs (Blackberry, Smart Phones, iPhone)
phones have significantly changed customer expectations. It is rarely
ok to wait even a day to respond to requests from potential customers.
Most businesses expect an initial response from potential suppliers
within a few hours. Companies that wait a day or more to acknowledge a
potential customer are usually out of the running before the race even
starts.
If your initial response is quick, the next hurdle is quickly
understanding the customer's requirements and providing a quality
proposal in a reasonable time frame. Most sales people either use one
of their past proposals as a starting point or send out an e-mail to
their colleagues requesting a proposal that closely meets the
customer's requirements. If a sales person's past proposal is solid,
no problem. The problem arises if their proposal is weak or they send out an e-mail asking colleagues for a proposal that meets the requirements. Their
colleagues are busy managing their own opportunities/customers and
typically don't respond for a day or more. Even if another sales
person does respond in a reasonable time frame, it usually takes
several e-mails to get the right information. As a result, it takes
much longer to produce a quality proposal than it should. If your
competitor responded in half the time, guess who'll win.
Techniques for Improving Sales
Let's talk about tools and processes that can help you improve your
sales win/loss ratio. If e-mail is a critical communication tool with
your customers, make sure your sales people can access their e-mail
from any computer (i.e. work computer, home computer, etc.) as well as
their mobile phone (i.e. Blackberry, Palm, Windows Mobile.
Most companies use POP mail which is included as part of a web hosting plan and is generally viewed as a free service. There is a reason POP
e-mail is free - it has many limitations. For example, your sales
people can only access all of their email from 1 computer. Another example is
your sales people cannot track email sent from their PDA. Also, POP mail is only stored on the laptop or desktop. If the computer is stolen or damaged beyond repair, your email is gone.
Microsoft's Exchange/Outlook
is business class e-mail service which allows your sales team to access
new and historical e-mail from any computer or a mobile device. You
can also share calendars allowing your team to efficiently schedule
meetings. From a peace of mind perspective, email is automatically backed up each night so you can easily access it should something happen to your computer. You can buy Exchange and install it on a server in your
building or buy it as a service. The latter method is usually priced
per person per month and is typically less than $15/person/month.
A tool such as Microsoft Exchange helps you stay in the game. The
next step is too quickly put your best foot forward. I suggest
implementing the following processes/tools:
- Typically a handful of proposals cover 80% or more of
your sales opportunities. Track success rates for your proposals and
identify the most successful proposals.
- Educate your sales people on your proposal library explaining when each proposal is appropriate
- Store the proposals on a secure Intranet (click on the following link if you aren't familiar with Intranets - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intranets)
so your sales people can access these documents whether they're in the
office, at home, or on the road. Using e-mail as a proposal distribution
mechanism is not effective for the reasons described above.
- Intranets give your sales team easy access to the proposal they need so that they can quickly get it to your potential customer.
- You
can buy the software and hardware to implement an Intranet (which takes
weeks or months) or you can buy it as a service and have it up and
running within a day or two.
Intranets sold as a service are typically less than $50/month. Web Ex's WebOffice, Microsoft's SharePoint and SMBLive (SharePoint on steroids) are three services I've used in the past.
If you have an alternative process that works well, please send me an email at johnk@19marketplace.com. I'm always interested in learning about other tools and techniques.