Sales Mastery or Sales Enablement?

I've worked with thousands of sales people in many different industries. Professional selling is changing rapidly with technology-driven automation and commoditization resulting in more than one-third of sellers losing their jobs in the coming years.

Sales people need to fund themselves from the value they create rather than from the margins that the product or service delivers.

For any sales person to prosper in their career they need to move beyond being good at building relationships to also embrace the holy trinity of sales mastery:

• Lead with insight as a domain expert
• Create tangible business value for clients
• Leverage technology to be effective and efficient

Make no mistake, relationships alone are not enough. Buyers today are busy and stressed. They are not looking for new friends. They instead want greater value from fewer relationships. They care about how you can help them achieve their goals and manage their risks.

Lead with insight: Don't wait for your employer to hand you mythical silver bullets... you instead need to self-educate by researching and writing about the disruptive and transformative trends in your customer's world.

If you can't write then you can't sell.

There are four reasons to create and publish content:

1. Educate yourself and develop domain knowledge and expertise
2. Connect with industry leaders to build your sphere of influence
3. Attract clients and an audience to support your business goals
4. Build your personal brand evidencing credibility, value and insight

In an online world we are known by who we associate with (connections) and what we publish (insights). According to IDC research, 75% of buyers research the seller before engaging. What do they see when they view your profile? Do they see a credible domain expert worthy of trust and an investment of their time or do they see a mere salesperson? We must create own own narrative that sets us apart and earns engagement at the most senior levels. It is vitally important to publish thoughtful posts in your LinkedIn profile.

Creating business value: Move away from talking about who you are, what you do and how you do it to instead lead with why a conversation matters. What business outcomes can you deliver for them and what risks can you manage?

The language of business is numbers not words

Lead with why it is important and what it can do for them at a business level. Have evidence to support your claims. Know your best customers and why they decided to implement change within their organization. Understand their business case and the challenges they faced in change management. Bring this wisdom to new prospective clients and set an agenda that sets you apart from the competition.

Leverage technology: The best sales people combine proven old world practices with modern ways of executing. Building relationships and evidencing credentials and value can be done online. Buyers expect the sellers to arrive having done their research. Don't waste the customer's time asking them to educate you about publicly available information. Embrace a social selling framework to modernize the way you sell.

Social Selling Definition: The strategy and process of building quality networks online that attract clients and accelerates the speed of business and efficiency of selling, as achieved with a strong personal brand and human engagement through social listening, social publishing, social research, social engagement, and social collaboration.

Also use your company's CRM system better than anyone else. Work with marketing for lead nurturing with automation tools that keep prospects in your orbit without you annoying them or them wasting your time.

While sales individuals need to focus on 'sales mastery', the sales organization needs to focus on 'sales enablement'.

Sales Enablement

Most businesses do a good job in segmenting their markets, customers and products but what is often missed is the insidious impact of commoditization. Every product or service becomes a commodity over time as features that once differentiated drift back to parity as competitors catch up. According to Corporate Executive Board research, 86% of the time that sellers pitch their ‘compelling value,’ buyers perceive it as neither unique or compelling but merely features also offered by other suppliers. Every business needs to look at itself from the outside – how do customers really view us comparatively? If you sell a commodity, then face the awful truth rather than cling to expensive sales models where customers are unwilling to pay for the low value and high costs associated with a field sales force.

There is no such thing as a high margin commodity and the value they offer must stem from insight and wisdom rather than mere information and service. The first law of selling is that people buy from those they like and trust. They then seek best value and lowest risk. The key for every seller is to understand that ‘value’ and ‘risk’ are all defined by the customer. In selling, we are delegated down to people we sound like and this means that salespeople need to learn the language of leadership if they want to engage at senior levels. They need to be equipped to discuss the business case, delivering outcomes and managing risk.

If a product or service is a commodity then the sales model should be engineered accordingly; make it easy for the customer to obtain information, become convinced and then transact in a way that’s easiest for them including web, phone or channels. For products and services that actually are high value solutions then force the field sales team toward value through insight. Support them in developing domain expertise, genuine insights and business acumen to enable them to operate at a higher level. Product marketing needs to focus on differentiating what is being sold; and sales people need to differentiate by how they sell.

What are the critical elements of sales enablement and how do you create a framework for effective sales execution? There are three essential ingredients plus the catalyst of sales management leadership. The three ingredients are sales methodology, sales process and technology platform.

Few people can articulate the difference between methodologies and process yet these elements are distinctly different in complex B2B selling.

Methodology is the framework for formulating strategy and tactics to win; it’s also how you create your competitive deal strategy, identify risks, cover the political power base within the relationship map, and identify the best way to create compelling value for the buyer. But which methodology should you use? There are a number of well-proven methodologies including TAS, Miller Heiman, RSVPselling, and others. Success with methodology does not depend on which one you select but simply on how well you use it for opportunity coaching with the team.

Process is how you build a sales funnel and execute the sale; it’s how you qualify opportunities and progress through the deal stages with discovery, proposal, demonstration, closing, contracting, on-boarding and then doing win/loss reviews and case studies. Process steps need to be supported by the right tools such as a call planner, qualification tool, discovery questionnaire, proposal templates, win/loss review forms, and territory and account plan templates.

Platform is the technology you use to enable and automate your sales methodology and sales process. It is where you have a single source of truth about customers and opportunities. It must also be your coaching platform where there is transparency concerning pipeline depth and opportunity quality. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the ideal platform but CRM needs to be a strategy, not just a technology and reporting tool. To be implemented successfully, it must go beyond the mere functions of accounts, opportunities, pipeline and forecasting; it must instead enable the mapping of relationships and force discipline in deal stage progression with qualification scoring and action tracking. It must also include close plans with customer validation of critical dates. Finally, CRM needs to incorporate tight integration with both marketing, social (such as LinkedIn) and after sales support to provide a single view of the entire customer lifecycle from targeting, marketing, lead nurturing and selling through to account management, support, service, satisfaction and upselling.

This approach uses CRM to place customers at the heart of everything you do and provides the platform for being truly customer-centric. It also delivers transparency with deal quality and revenue predictability. It’s where sales people manage their opportunities and the tool that sales managers use to coach their people. This approach is designed to serve the sales people in improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Because it provides them with value and enables their manager to coach for improved win rates, they actually populate the systems with accurate and useful information.

When CRM is implemented with customers and sales people as the priority, and when it’s the platform for deal coaching and the enabler for sales process; then system success is assured. The synergistic outcome for management is accurate reporting and revenue predictability. The corollary of this is that CRM failure comes from implementing it as a reporting tool with poor alignment to sales methodology and sales processes. Many CRM implementation fail and it has nothing to do with the technology provider; here are the critical success factors for successful CRM:

• Obsessively focus on the system serving sales and customer support staff
• Integrate with social platforms such as LinkedIn and InsideView (for easy sales research and insight into Trigger Events)
• Integrate with marketing for lead nurturing (to build sales pipeline)
• Create a single view of customers and prospects (to be informed)
• Embed methodology and process coaching (qualify, call plan, close plan, etc.)
• Simplify reports and KPIs which can actually be managed (activities)
• Support customer lifecycle post sale (cases, complaints, renewals, etc.)

With accurate data in a CRM the next issue to decide is what metrics provide meaningful reporting. A common mistake made by management at all levels is to seek to manage by results. Jason Jordan writes insightfully on this topic in his book, Cracking The Sales Management Code, highlighting that only 17% of the 300+ possible sales metrics measured are actually manageable. As an example, you cannot manage revenue, but you can manage the activities that create it. Rather than command sales people to bring in more revenue, they need to be guided in which activities are most likely to create the type of revenue you are seeking. Managing activities is the key to delivering the right results and this leads us to the catalyst that brings methodology, process and platform technology together for successful sales enablement – the sales manager.

Sales management is without doubt the most important link in the revenue chain for any organization. The right sales manager creates emotional commitment and belief within their team, they coach and mentor for sales success, they develop the right strategies to focus effort where the team can competitively win and they drive the right conversations with the right roles within the right targeted prospects. They also create organizational alignment with upstream marketing and downstream delivery, support and service to build a business with quality customers.

Sales management leadership is the catalyst that brings it all together: people, process and technology within the right strategy and a culture of excellence in execution. The type of person capable of delivering all this is an engineer rather than a warrior, they have empathy yet hold people to account. But the best sales manager in the world cannot be successful if their boss has them endlessly in internal meetings and reporting up. The sales manager needs to be a coach rather than an administrator. She needs to spend more time in the field than in the office, and more time strategizing and reviewing opportunities with sales people than managing reports. A great coach does not jump in and take over, nor do they do the sales person’s job for them. They don’t feel the need to rescue people and instead understand that people are best motivated by reasons they themselves discover. They focus on planning and debriefing to create constant improvement.

The Holy Grail of sales enablement is the seamless integration of the right methodology, efficient sales process, all enabled by Social Selling and CRM technology used to coach sales people by an effective sales leader focused on strategy, execution and building a positive team culture.

The very best sales operations bring people, process and technology together to be obsessively customer-centric.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Kreg Steppe Winner

The 3 Pillars Of Modernised Selling

Gartner Research predicts that 85% of business-to-business (B2B) sales transactions will occur without human intervention in 2020. Andy Hoar from Forrester Research predicts that more than 1 million sales roles will be disappear in the USA alone with the same timeframe. This equates to approximately 22% of B2B sales positions being lost to the forces of commoditization or automation.

Up to one-third of B2B sales roles will become extinct within 5 years. But those who modernise the way they sell can protect their careers and prosper

Here is a personal example of where sales people add little value for the buyer. I just purchased a new sports car yesterday from a dealer that I never visited or spoke with... we engaged on the web and then negotiated via email. I did all my research online and from speaking with several car industry insiders I found in my network. With their insights I identified the two best times of the year to purchase and understood dealer margins and manufacturer rebate models. I honored the 'law on disinterest' and was willing to be patient.  

I avoided the dealer's sales process for up-selling by never walking into their showroom. When I finally talked with a sales person it was simply to give him my credit card details for the $1,000 deposit. I achieved a 14% discount on the normal drive away 'deal' which was 5% better than a 'private fleet' wholesale service that also provided me with their best price. 

The above example highlights how sales people (just like accountants, lawyers, engineers and other professions) are being disrupted by technology and uber-empowered buyers who start their journey with trusted relationships in their network and then research and compare value online.

Those sellers and businesses who modernize the way they operate, blending insightful human engagement with technology, will be the ones who prosper in the machine age. Here are the three things for companies and individuals to focus on to remain relevant and succeed.

1. Sellers must be micro marketers with strong personal brands to leverage social platforms and create their own pipelines

People buy from those they like and trust but buyers are redefining the value of relationships. This is because they are time poor and don’t see value in sales relationships that merely provide information. Sellers today instead demand insight and value when investing their time. The best sales people therefore provide insight and innovation to serve as a partner who can help deliver transformation and manage the buyer’s risk.

For this reason, sales people must modify their LinkedIn profiles to become personal brand microsites where they publish insights to differentiate themselves from the competition. The modern approach to selling is to ‘attract and engage’ rather than ‘interrupt and push’. The best are engineers of value rather than warriors of persuasion. They use online platforms such as LinkedIn to evidence the business value they deliver and the personal values by which they operate. According to IDC, 70% of buyers research a seller online and this can be where the process of establishing trust and setting the right agenda occurs, well before the first conversation.

The current catch phrase for this is ‘social selling’, which I define beyond building a strong personal brand to also include: listening for trigger events (people changing roles, etc.), publishing relevant content to evidence credibility and attract clients, researching buyers, connecting and engaging in platforms such as LinkedIn, and then using technology to collaborate conveniently and cost effectively.

Social platforms and strong personal brands also play and important role in delivering outstanding customer experience and that is because, according to Corporate Visions research, buyers prefer to do business with the first to provide value through education and insight.

2. Customer experience is the single biggest factor in achieving competitive differentiation to attract customers who become loyal advocates

The way we sell is just as important as what we sell. Research done with 5,000 buyers by Corporate Executive Board was published in The Challenger Sale in 2012 and it revealed that customer loyalty was 38% derived equally from brand (company and product) and the features and capabilities offered; 9% of positive influence was from price, and a huge 53% of influence was from the ‘sales experience’ the buyer received.

Positive ‘sales experience’ was defined by offering a uniquely valuable perspective on the market, helping to navigate alternatives and avoid potential land mines, and educating on relevant trends and how to best manage risk. The sellers who thrive today understand this and focus on their individual buyer’s journey to provide valuable information and insights early in the buying cycle. They monitor in social media for trigger events and also attract and engage with appropriate content to identify the best time to engage.

Innovation is key in delivering best customer experience as you support multiple channels of social, mobile, websites, phone, field sales and resellers. When potential buyers are positively surprised by excellent service and convenient manner in which they can research, engage and transact; they become customers. Increasingly today however, a great buying experience does not always require a face-to-face sales person. This highlights part of the reason why field sales people must move to value and focus on where they can manage complexity and risk for clients in order to fund their roles.

3. Methodology, process and technology must all be integrated for sales enablement

The holy grail of sales enablement is to use the right methodology to drive repeatable quality processes inside CRM as a transparent coaching platform. Playbook concepts belong inside CRM to intuitively guide sales people in how to ask the right questions and create progression as they align with the buyer.

This is why sales and marketing must finally come together to map buyer’s journey to sales process and tools with a playbook approach to providing guidance and resources for every phase of the sale. This includes qualification, discovery, designing solutions, pricing and proposals, proving capability, negotiating, closing and onboarding clients. Technology can be used to help people easily transact while inside sales cost effectively steps-up where buyers want human interaction. 

Field sales must surrender commodity products and services to focus on high value solutions where there is both complexity and risk for the buyer. The role of field sales is to proactively create opportunities with early engagement that sets the right agenda. 

Every seller must modernise by embracing social to build personal brand and create leverage and reach. Every sales organisation must create exceptional customer experience as their sustainable point of competitive differentiation and also integrate methodology, process and technology to reduce cost while efficiently driving consistent execution of sales process across multiple channels and touch-points.

But it's easy to get it wrong. The 'private fleet' wholesale service I found online, when seeking to buy a new car, had an excellent website with good content and video animations to explain their value. However, their web to lead process was broken. I completed online enquiry forms twice without receiving any contact after receiving the automated email. When I phoned they were defensive about their broken 'web to lead' process. They found my details and then started asking me questions I had already responded to online. The sales person then tried to manoeuvre me into a corner to commit to buying if they ran the 'tender process' with multiple dealers. It was just like talking with a car salesman at a traditional dealer... no thanks.

There are other examples where customer experience is masterfully executed with well designed processes across multiple channels (social listening to Twitter, Facebook and other platform; web to lead nurturing, phone, SMS, e-mail, and face-to-face). What are the best and worst examples you've experienced and where have you seen the holy grail of sales enablement?

Note of thanks to Jonathan Farrington. This post is based upon a magazine article I wrote for Top Sales World Magazine, published in December 2015.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Pieter Musterd - Follow De Posthoornblazers

Simplification Is The New Sales Sophistication

We live in unprecedented times and if you are a student of history, or perhaps eschatology, the human narrative is accelerating at a mind-boggling rate. We need wisdom as we navigate change and the unintended consequences of embracing technologies and dismantling borders. Every profession, including sales, is subject to disruption and many will lose careers they once thought to be safe.

Design thinking is an essential prerequisite in entrepreneurship and for creating 'Customer eXperience' (CX) that makes the buyer's life easier and the sales person essential. Clarity in the role we play and the value we deliver has never been more important for creating a prosperous future and a better world.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" Leonardo da Vinci (1492)

The enemy of simplicity is not big data. The Information Age is now being usurped by The Machine Age with Artificial Intelligence (AI) upon us – yes, the scary science fiction kind. The ‘web of things’ is linking cars, appliances, machines, assets and people. Wearable Bluetooth and mobility tracking are combining with beacons to create geo-context and proximity alerts via wireless networks and satellite communications that are ubiquitous. Big data is being leveraged for micro predictive analytics. Social media has already democratized the internet and cloud computing is enabling the most complex of capabilities for the smallest of enterprises. Meta-algorithms are creating their own priorities and financial systems have a level of interdependency that no-one truly understands.

It all seems to be creating an ever-consuming life of it’s own with real human interaction being pushed into the back seat. We have never had more access to information yet we drown in the data and suffer from digital distraction , drinking from the proverbial fire-hose, incapable of digesting all that is overwhelming us. We seek clarity amidst all the voices clamouring for our attention – there are a thousand channels to watch yet nothing is on.

Everyone seeking to influence others, especially those in sales, strives for cut-through. Sadly, many attempts result in cliched sound bites or sensationalist claims that try to play to our fears. But how do we represent the value we offer in way that resonates with our audience?

John Singleton is legend in Australia. He pioneered advertising in this market. Think Crocodile Dundee meets Mad Men. John Singleton knew that the more information you give people, the more they need to think about; and the more benefits you throw at people, the more difficult it is for them to see the one compelling reason to take action.

"My job is to simplify the complex and make the simple compelling" John Singleton (1980)

Every great musician, chef and designer knows a secret... Less is more. Entrepreneurs, marketers and sales people alike all need to adopt this ethos. What are the few compelling reasons to focus on? All the rest is mere support for the real message or conversation. We need to lead with why a conversation matters rather than with who we are, what we do and how we do it. No-one cares enough to take action until they have a compelling reason ('why?').

"Logic makes people think; emotion makes them act." Zig Ziglar (1986)

One-third of sales opportunities are lost to 'Do Nothing' which manifests as the status-quo / current state prevailing, or other projects having higher priority for funds and resources, or an incumbent supplier seeming to be less risk and effort. Change requires motivation yet bombarding people with facts does little. We must avoid confusing 'supporting information' with the primary message. Features and not necessarily benefits and proof of out claims do not equate to reasons to go ahead.

People are best motivated by reasons they themselves discover

We must help our potential customers discover why they should change state and why we represent best value and lowest risk through our insights and expertise.

• How will you simplify your message to achieve cut-through in why a conversation matters?
• How will you simplify buyer experience to differentiate in the way you sell rather with what you sell?
• How will you take the vast array of data and myriad technology and tools to create elegant simplicity for your team, partners and customers?

Those who embrace technology and design thinking to drive simplicity will prosper. Never stop asking why things are currently done the way they are and reimagine engagement and processes to improve your customer's experience, and your own efficiency and market reach through automation and innovation.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Michael Heiss

The BIG Question Customers Want To Ask

Customer churn does massive damage to any business because a ‘leaky bucket’ of revenue destroys confidence and the ability to invest. Unhappy ex-clients also retard business development activities and undermine marketing efforts. The best businesses instead harness the power of their happy clients for advocacy, and they measure and reward their staff on creating brilliant ‘customer experience’. Measuring customer satisfaction with systems such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) are essential for astute business leaders who drive a customer-centric culture. 

Make no mistake; winning new customers is expensive and often difficult because empowered buyers are armed with research and they seek to commoditize seller ‘solutions’. Savvy buyers are also distrustful of ROI claims and sales messages when there is not an established positive relationship. On top of these factors, consensus-based decision making means that there are more who can say ‘no’ and there are, on average, five decision makers (or decision-making groups) who have to say 'yes'. The biggest competitor in complex enterprise selling is often apathy, the status quo / 'do nothing'.

Retention programs therefore deliver stronger return on investment and leverage the almost magical power of recurring [compound-curve] revenue streams. Selling to existing clients is comparatively easy compared with new account acquisition but how do you make sure customers don't fall prey to competitor? A simplistic approach is to 'stay close to them and sell more' but relationships today are not enough... we also need to create real value. Whether your customers ask you directly or not, here is their question that you need to address.

How can we derive greater value from fewer supplier relationships?

This question is what the smartest people inside your customer organizations are thinking. They understand that every supplier relationship costs time, effort and money to manage. They also know that concentrating their spending power should deliver better 'value' but they easily focus on price as the lever to pull. But sellers should set the agenda on value rather than price.

Get on the front foot, go disrupt yourself before your competitors do it to you. Deliver innovation for clients to reduce their costs and improve their businesses. Trade lower pricing with the requirement for customers to make greater revenue commitments and deliver advocacy (case studies, testimonials, etc.).

If you are an incumbent supplier with a customer that has upside revenue through greater scale or cross-selling other products and solutions. Secure a meeting their CEO and CFO on the basis that you are unhappy with the level of value they are receiving from you.  Tell them that they are missing an opportunity to derive greater value from fewer suppliers, and that you want to move from supplier to partner by investing to deliver for them with ... (supply chain improvements, greater access to IT systems, share executive insights, etc.).

Never take a customer for granted. There is always an opportunity to provide greater value without reducing price.

As proof of the fact that price is not the most important factor in the decision process for enterprise buyers. CEB research published in The Challenger Sale shows what buyers really value when making their buying decisions. Only 9% is price and 53% is the level of 'value-add' provided through education, insights and a partnering approach to delivering the required outcomes and managing risk.

What is your experience is working with clients to be one of the fewer suppliers delivering greater value? How have you used this strategy to out-fox the competition in the best interests of your client?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Josh Tidsbury Follow Questioning

Lack Of Emotion Kills Sales. Why Facts Paralyse

Anthony Robbins teaches that selling is about changing someone's emotional state. I agree and add that selling is first and foremost about the transference of belief. Another sales legend, Zig Zigar, passed away in 2012 and he taught me that logic and facts makes people think but emotion is what makes them act.

Professional selling can be compared with being a musician... endless personal rejection requiring a deep well of determination and you have to give your all to be successful... no holding back! At the heart of success is an authentic passion for making a positive difference in how we communicate and make a positive difference in the lives of our customers.

Passionate belief is the foundation on which success is built for entrepreneurs, sales people and those in the performing arts

We've all seen it on American Idol or Australia's Got Talent or The Voice – Keith Urban telling the contestant that they "didn't really sell it" or Simon Cowell on X Factor saying: "I didn't believe you." The greatest songs take us somewhere emotionally because they tell a story of love, tragedy, redemption... they reach in and tear our hearts out or lift us to heaven with happiness.

Johnny Cash is an amazing example of being authentic and he learned his lesson about being authentic during his first and only record company audition. He was performing gospel music but didn't really believe in the lyrics he was singing. It was disingenuous and the record company executive challenged him to sing about what he really believed. The darkness that tempered his belief in God was one the reasons that Johnny Cash dressed in black. This scene starring Joaquin Phoenix portrays exactly what happened. Watch the transformation...

We don't need to be all 'sunshine and light' to cause people to act. Numbers and facts are important for supporting a decision and building a business case but too much information simply causes the person say 'let me think about it'. The music video below has had >65,000,000 views and presents important facts in a way that evokes emotion. Watch this and shed a tear... another performance will lift your spirits at the end of this post.

Emotion has far more impact than 'production values' in any performance. Passion takes you further than mere professionalism. Yes, you've got to be able entertain and sing pitch-perfect... but that's just the ticket to the dance concert. It's ability to tell powerful true stories and transfer emotion that creates Grammy winners and sales legends.

You've got to believe in yourself, especially when others don't. Don't let the song inside you go unsung or as Wayne Dyer profoundly puts it: "Don't die with your music still inside of you." Stop telling and start selling what you passionately believe. Show it and dare to wear your heart on your sleeve!

As you put emotion into your message be sure to lead with why your audience should care. Have purpose in what you do by Leading with insight, building relationships of trust and creating real value

We must stop leading with who we are, what we do and how we do it and instead "lead with why". Simon Sinek masterfully communicates the importance of this, even with bad sound equipment. 

Why should someone meet with you? What do you believe and why should it be important to them?  What's the difference you you can make in their life or business?

Pharrell is another performer who gets the concept of building in a unique differentiator and it won him a Grammy in 2015. His productions with N.E.R.D. cemented his prowess as a producer blending rock, funk and hip hop. He didn't sound like anybody else that came before: the hybrid synergy created an 'original' sound. Differentiating your product and service in sales is paramount. You can differentiate your own selling style by pulling from old school and new school approaches.

Pharrell understands the Ogilvy "one-word" brand equity. Just check out his signature hat by Los Angeles hat designer Nick Fouquet. The hat has become an icon as has his sound. Some sales people I know wear a pocket square or rock a theme color for their company. I'm not suggesting a gimmick but if it's an authentic point of flair it may make sense. In no case am I the arbiter of business fashion but I can equate his hat to something that makes you say: 'wow, how cool'! What part of your solution, product or service stands out from the crowd? How can you work to uniquely differentiate yourself in the marketplace?

The last piece that makes Pharrell a master salesperson and performer is his ability to be a super networker. He is one of the most connected men in the entire music industry. His productions were in such hot demand because he helped pioneer a new technology called Reason by PropellerHead software that made tapestries of sound against canvases and mash-ups all digitally emulating analogue capabilities. He pushed the software to the limit and everyone wanted one of his tracks as a backdrop. You need to become a super networker in your industry, test out cutting edge software for B2B lead generation, trigger event tracking, drip campaigns and marketing automation and push the envelope as a B2B content marketer with LinkedIn Publisher. Think to yourself: What would Pharrell do here? How might he innovate?

Now it's your turn: What's your song inside? What metaphorical music is dying to get out? What other parallels do you see between music and selling?  How do you embrace positive emotion to cause others to act?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Dima Doskoch - Souls reflection (Autoportrait)

The Closing Myth (Sales Pressure Traps)

I often ask senior executives what they think the biggest weakness is within their sales team. A common answer is that their sales people need to get better at closing. But here is the thing I've learned from three decades in the trenches...

The perceived problem is rarely the real problem – inability to close is usually a symptom of deeper issues.

In both complex enterprise selling and simple or transactional selling (with one decision-maker) there is a universal truth that must be embraced if we are to improve results –opening is far more important than closing.

Opening is the most important phase of the sale because the way we initiate the relationship determines the likelihood of success. The two critical issues in opening are 1) selecting the correct role to engage within the customer organisation, and 2) creating a conversation that provides value (through insights) for them.

1) Opening the corporate relationship with the right person

A common mistake in selling is to engage with the people who most easily agree to take a call or meet face-to-face. Inbound leads often come from recommenders and information gatherers who act for others. These people are keen to obtain information but can quickly become blockers who seek to deny us access to the real decision making power-base. We must carefully select the right entry point into every opportunity and by definition this decision-driver will often be difficult to reach.

If you are already engaged at the wrong level and struggling to elevate your conversations in an account, these questions that can earn the right to go higher.

• “What is the business outcome this initiative has to deliver at a business case level?”
• “What are the biggest risks in this project and what is your strategy to manage those risks?”

These questions also set the right agenda when engaging a real decision-maker because leaders care about delivering results and managing risk. The business case and change management issues always figure high in their thinking. But how do you open a conversation when you are proactively reaching out to a senior customer executive? 

2) Setting the right agenda on value through insight

No senior leader worth engaging is interested in us, our company or our products, services and ‘solutions’. They instead care about their own results, stakeholders and career. Although we are wired to talk about ourselves, what we do and how we do it; we must instead lead with why a conversation should matter to the other person.

We can create conversations of insight and value by truly understanding our best customers and the disruptive market trends that are relevant to our new potential clients. Selling strategically also means engaging early and the most senior level possible, setting an agenda that creates a positive bias toward us while engineering the requirements and their process in a way that makes it difficult for the competition.

The best sellers are sponsored down into the buyer’s organisation by the leader to then develop inside knowledge and support where closing becomes a natural next step of partnership rather than a white knuckle adventure filled with misplaced hope and reliance on luck.

Here is a 2 minute interview I did with John Smibert on closing.

The 3 prerequisites for closing

Asking for the customer’s business must be earned and only attempted after the buyer has signalled they are ready to take that next step. The seller should never attempt to close until these three areas are covered, or to use a baseball metaphor, don't run for home plate until these three bases have been covered:

1. Establish trust and rapport (by being authentic and transparent).
2. Agree compelling business value (as defined by them).
3. Understand their timing and priorities (and their process for evaluation, selection and procurement if in complex enterprise environments).

Many sales people make the mistake of pressuring their potential client when the buyer isn't in a position to commit to the purchase. Managers often push their sales people to offer discounts on one hand and threats of a price increase on the other if the buyer fails the meet the seller’s deadline. I’ve seen sales managers instruct sales people to go and sit in the customer’s lobby for days until the purchase order is secured... desperation is the worst way to attempt a close. 

The bottom line in closing

Difficulty in closing is almost always a symptom of not managing the sale properly. Closing must be earned and objections are usually evidence of the fact that the seller has made mistakes by pushing before trust and value has been established and without the necessary understanding of the customer’s timing, priorities and processes.

All managers need to know that they cannot ‘manage by results’ and must instead focus on driving activities and actions while coaching strategy and skills. Ask the right questions of your sales people right at the beginning of the quarter and help them identify and execute the right actions that create progression of the sale. Firing-up the blow-torch with just days to go for hitting sales targets, after neglecting the inputs that create success, is a sure-fire way to damage relationships, undermine credibility and drive-down price and margin.

Special note of thanks to Jonathan Farrington for allowing me to base this blog post on a magazine article I wrote for Top Sales Magazine, published in March 2016. FREE subscription to Top Sales here.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by: Hugo A. Quintero G. Follow Venus Fly Trap - "King Henry"

The V Myth (Value Traps For Sellers)

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber is one of the most important business books you can read. He masterfully explains the myth of entrepreneurship where competent practitioners fool themselves in believing that their technical knowledge and skills automatically translate into being good business people. Chefs rarely make good restaurant owners, Good pilots rarely run airlines well, being a carpenter does not quality you to run a building business.

In my 35 years in business and professional selling, I've seen many fall into a similar trap with the product, service or solution they seek to sell in their markets...

The V-Myth

The features of what is being sold equate to benefits and value for buyers

Software sales people are often the worst offenders, showing potential buyers endless screens, menus, reports, tabs, or even lines of code; wrongly thinking that the amount of functionality builds perceptions of value. But the reality is that over-emphasis of features and functions can actually create price concerns in the mind of the buyer... "Wow, that looks complicated; how will our people use that without lots of training." Or "Upgrades and administration looks complex; our IT team is already stretched."

Sellers can easily fall into the trap of 'projecting value' on the basis that every aspect of what they offer can create a benefit for the client. "Feature - Function - Advantage - Benefit"... Really? Here is what the legendary Neil Rackham taught me about 'client benefits... "It's only a benefit if it solves a specific problem, acknowledged by the customer as being important."

"Value is in the eye of the buyer, not on the lips of the seller.

Sellers need to develop relationships of trust to be effective in their roles, but buyers are not lonely and looking for new friends. Buyers are instead busy and they need value from every interaction. Providing mere information is not enough; sellers need to provide genuine insights that educate and shape the way in which the buyer views their problems and opportunities. The very best sales people therefore focus on ‘value creation’ rather than ‘value projection’. They lead with insight and then ask well conceived questions designed to help them understand how the buyer defines value and how they assess risk.

The key to creating value is to understand the language of business and the language of leaders.

1. The language of business is numbers, evidenced within a thorough and compelling business case! The basic equation for value is: Business Value = Benefit minus Cost and this is why it’s so important to ensure all ‘benefits’ are expressed in monetized form wherever possible. Yes it’s true that not all benefits save or make money for our customer. As examples; less stress or risk, improved productivity, less risk in non-critical areas… all of these can be difficult to justify in financial terms. But the language of business is nevertheless numbers, not words, so always ask yourself: How does this benefit drop to their bottom line or improve their balance sheet.
2. The language of leaders is 'delivering outcomes and managing risk'. This is the currency of their brand... their ability to make the important things happen within their organization, for their customers and stake-holders.

These two factors above ensure that the customer is committed to purchase and here are some questions worth asking your potential client once you've established trust:

• Where do you see the potential value in working with us?
• What needs to be achieved at a business level with this initiative and where do you see the risks?

Once buyers are committed to change they then usually seek Value For Money (VFM) as they evaluate their options. Beyond Return On Investment (ROI) or Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), they usually have a weighted selection criteria to determine the best supplier.  Here is my formula for defining Value For Money (VFM). Is it Fit For Purpose (FFP) and from the supplier with the Lowest Risk Profile (LRP). Risk is an important factor often missed by sellers when they seek to show value for money. How does all of this compare with Total Cost of Ownership (or perhaps Payback Period)?

Think about this formula as you engage with customers who make comparative decisions, contrasting you with your competition. It is essential that we meet the exact requirements and also be perceived as representing the lowest risk. These two factors are then weighed against the total cost of ownership but take the effort to really understand how they assess this internally; don't make assumptions.

All of your assertions concerning value and risk need to be considered from the customer’s point of view… after all, the market determines the price and only the customer is qualified to call something a solution and determine the value to their business.

Once value is identified, you can then focus on crafting a value proposition which is unique and compelling in the way it delivers and manages risk. The way we sell is more important than what we sell and this is the essence of competitive differentiation.

It is usually best to position as the supplier in the 'Goldilocks Zone'. Big enough to deliver but small enough for them to be an important customer and have influence

Differentiation is essential because customers always have a choice of suppliers who can do the job for them. Whether you are selling soap or semiconductors, widgets or ideas, products or services, bundled value or real solutions – your value proposition must be compelling.

The solution must go beyond mere features of your product or service because the real problem is almost never uniquely solved by one particular product over another. Rather than the product you sell, maybe the customer actually needs a reliable supply-chain, prompt service, effective change management or something else. The product or service you sell is not a solution until it is fully aligned with addressing the real problems and delivering genuine business value.

Every product, service or solution is only worth what the market will pay for it. Your value proposition must therefore be focused on specific and tangible benefits for the customer, and directly linked to the resolution of their specific problems or opportunities – the bigger the better. Features do not necessarily equate to benefits or represent genuine value for the customer. The most powerful differentiated value propositions usually include your people, expertise and methodologies; not just your product and service. Government buyers assess value from a blend of functionality (fit for purpose) and perceived risk; price is then included in the equation to ultimately determine value for money.

Individuals and organizations universally seek best value and lowest risk. The cheapest product or solution can be perceived as higher risk and inferior value. Value is defined by the buyer, not the seller. Comparative perceptions are determinative so when seeking to identify and leverage your unique value, ask yourself the following:

• What do we offer that is of business value to the prospective customer, aligned to their specific needs and delivering tangible benefits?
• Is our product, service or solution part of a strong business case?
• How does the buyer prioritize projects and are we aligned with the required return on investment, payback period or net present value calculation?
• Who and what is the competition, and what are our comparative strengths and weaknesses?

Beyond these things, what combination of the following represents a compelling overall value proposition compared with the competition?

• Product or service features enabling business benefits
  • Service offerings that reduce risk and deliver business value
• Individual and team skills and proven domain expertise, industry knowledge and methodologies that assure successful delivery and cultural fit with the customer
• Business model or geographic presence enabling lower risk or providing better efficiency

The market determines price and only the customer is qualified to assess value for money. Everything we sell must help customers improve revenue and/or margin; or reduce cost, time or effort; or reduce their serious risk.

How can you create value for your customers? What insights do your offer? What business outcomes can you help them deliver? What risks can you help them manage?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: GotCredit - Value

Nine Conversations For Sales Leaders

I first met Bernadette McClelland online as a result of the LinkedIn experiment I was undergoing by posting a blog a day for 90 days. We had a couple of conversations and she followed up by sending me a copy of Seth Godin’s book ‘What To Do When It’s Your Turn’.  That engagement resulted in us being part of a collaborative effort to elevate the profession of selling here in Australia through the formation of the Sales Masterminds Australasia with John Smibert.

Shortly afterwards I read Bernadette’s published book, ’The Art of Commercial Conversations - When It’s Your Turn To Make A Difference’ and what struck me is that it addresses nine (9) commercial conversations that all salespeople, business owners and sales leaders must have, not just with their customers, but also with themselves.

Her book is based on the innovative and trailblazing ‘Conscious Selling Model’ - a model that has been designed based on us now being in the Connection Economy and we know we are all deserving of a new discussion that helps us better adapt and align. 

Her model highlights three areas of leadership needed today for all salespeople - Personal Leadership and the approach to market salespeople need to take, Thought Leadership and the focus of commercial conversations and Sales Leadership which peels back the layers on what a salesperson’s intention must be to become a cutting edge modern day seller.

What I thought was extremely beneficial for my readers was the following ‘Manifesto for Conscious Sellers’ based on her nine commercial conversations.

• CONVICTION - The Art of Rebellion - It’s more than loving what we do. It’s having the courage to be seen, to rebel, to take our turn, to change our rules, to step outside our fears and love what we bring to the table.
• CONNECT - The Art of Mindfulness - It’s more than kumbaya and yogis. It’s the opportunity to centre ourselves in a busy and noisy world so we can stand grounded and confident and be present to our buyer.
• CONTACT - The Art of Social - It’s more than a playground where we go to play. It’s the auditorium where we have the opportunity to team up, play our hearts out and be seen by those who will pay to see us.
• CONTENT - The Art of Story - It’s more than features, advantages and benefits. It’s the ability to tell a story that captivates, and spread that story to the world through messages that create value.
• CONSULT - The Art of Tension - It’s more than asking questions. It’s creating a space to get personal, to be bold, to push the boundaries for all the right reasons and to create change in our clients’ worlds.
• CONTEXT - The Art of Meaning - It’s not about what you think it’s about. Its essence is in interpretation, variation, listening for understanding and being prepared to get it wrong.
• CONTRACT - The Art of The Ask - It’s not about closing the deal. It’s about learning to say yes and learning to say no, and understanding the magic that happens in between.
• CONSPIRE - The Art of Collaboration - It’s not about keeping in touch, customer service or moments of truth. It’s about working together, joint ventures and collaboration.
• CONTRIBUTE - The Art of The Start - It’s not about the money or the profits or shareholders. It’s about the meaning and the purpose and the stakeholders.

To finish up, Bernadette also adds by asking this question: 

'How Relevant Are You?

Just like anything in nature, if something is not growing and contributing, then it is dying. Business is no different. Business is a living organism and anyone who thinks differently will die the death of a thousand extinct sellers. Just like Willy Loman in ‘Death of a Salesman’, if you aren’t making change happen, developing personally, or being self motivated, people won’t believe in you. It’s not as simple as Willy thought, “about being likeable through fakery, looking good, charming people and cracking jokes.” People know when you are faking it. People buy people. If you’re not for real, they won’t buy you. People want the real deal and the human element.'

Today, it’s all about measuring your relevance in the market through ideas you have for your customer’s growth, in addition to the level of connection you have with your buyers. But more than that, it’s about contribution - to your customers and for your customers, and the five word formula found in the intention of one simple question, ‘How Can I Help You?’

Bernadette McClelland leads the conversation around Conscious Selling. She successfully works with SMB’s and sales teams around the world to help them differentiate themselves when they don’t know how or when they’re not making their numbers and they don’t know why. You can visit her website here  orpurchase a copy of her book here.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by: Bernadette McClelland

Jaw-Dropping Marketing That You Won't Believe

Have you ever wondered if we will look back at this period in time and shake our heads in disbelief... how did we allow technology to make us dumber and create societal disengagement. If you had a career in sales... how did I allow the product to be the message?

Every bad idea seemed good at the time

 Do we now live in the age of digital narcissism? Are we witnessing the destruction of good manners and etiquette? Is written language being butchered by social media shorthand? Is the facade of 'social following' masking the absence of human connection? Is the avalanche of content across our screens driving digital distraction and destroying our ability to ponder and learn?

This short clip from Mad Men is more documentary that entertainment... and the advertisements below it are from the same era. They will make your jaw drop with laughter or anger... yet they are all 100% real. The appalling thing is that these types of ads are still happening today in many third world countries! 

How anyone can look themselves in the mirror while they sell a product that kills their customers is beyond me. Advertising reflects the values of society and wow we have changed. I never knew that my dad wore his business shirt and tie to bed so my mother knew who deserved breakfast in bed the next morning!

But at least wives had Pep to get them ready for the evening after a day of house work... I think I am digging a hole I may never escape from...

And for the children in the home who were not satisfied with second-hand cigarette smoke, there was always cocaine gum to stop the whining and get them off to sleep...

Or maybe beer flavoured breast milk to help them sleep through the night... not to mention the nutritional benefits of hops and malt. Who would have ever known that beer is an appetizing and stimulating tonic?

And to get them going in the morning, nothing works better than a massive sugar hit... adding caffein is all the better.

No-one in marketing or sales should push anything they don't believe in. Here is a brilliant example of how marketing and sales can make products attractive to consumers. It highlights how the talent of those who know how to influence can be used for good.

Make sure you believe in what your product, service or solution does for your clients. Be a force for good in world and be clear about the positive difference you make for all stakeholders. Then transfer emotion rather than information.

Click here to see why the power of belief is truly amazing

Join the conversation here. How do you make sure your sales and marketing efforts are completely ethical and that they will remain so after the passage of time?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Is LinkedIn The World's #1 Blog Platform?

Top Sales World is the world's leading magazine and online community for those in professional sales. Once a year they publish their list of the top 50 sales and marketing bloggers globally. Last year when I reviewed the list I was struck by the fact that not one awarded author was primarily publishing on LinkedIn – the biggest blogging platform in the world.

"But if the world's #1 Blogging platform is LinkedIn, why has no-one who publishes exclusively on their platform been recognised as a leading blogger?"

That's exactly what I thought and last year I set the goal of being the first author to be be independently recognised as one of the world's best bloggers while publishing exclusively on the LinkedIn platform. Today that goal was achieved when Top Sales World recognised me in the 2016 global Top 50 bloggers in the field of sales and marketing. Click on the image below to see the full list.

I asked Jonathan Farrington at Top Sales World if anyone else in the Top 50 blogged exclusively in LinkedIn and he responded by telling me I was the only one. But why is this the case when LinkedIn boasts well over 400 million members with more that 1 million who actively publish more than 150,000 posts a week. Beyond these staggering numbers, consider these reasons for why authors should embrace the platform:

• It can reach an audience based on context and relevance with their powerful Pulse Channels and intelligent mobile apps to enhance content readership and interactive engagement. Below are the free subscription channels along with the audience numbers.

• It has unrivalled reach within the more than 400 million members. The average post is viewed by professionals in 21 industries and 9 countries.
• It maps the business social graph with deep analytics and reporting
• It engages a community in discussion while providing incredible detail about those who like, share, comment and engage in collaborative conversation.
• It is simple to use and elegantly designed for PC, laptop, tablet and mobile devices
• About 45% of readers are in the upper ranks of their industries and this includes managers, directors, vice presidents and CEOs.

These are the factors that convinced me 24 months ago to stop blogging on my own website and go all-in on LinkedIn. I decided that I needed to go and be where my clients are [LinkedIn] and surrendered the desire to capture contact details for a mailing list or newsletter... I had an epiphany:

"I must stop seeking to 'interrupt and push' with sales and marketing and instead 'attract and engage' through relevant insights and high value content."

This meant that I chose to allow my potential clients to be in complete control. I allowed them to choose whether to contact me based of the value I provided in advance of me ever charging them a fee or attempting to pitch my value or services.  So, what were the results and do 'social selling' strategies actually work? Hell yeah!!!!!

I have attracted 85,000 followers of my LinkedIn blog and incredible connections in just 24 months. I have more clients than I can cope with. I've been recognised as the #1 influencer on professional selling in Asia-Pacific. I have been paid to speak at numerous events as a direct result of my LinkedIn publishing and activity.

I have also been recognised as a Top 50 blogger globally using LinkedIn exclusively and I am in negotiation for new book publishing contracts. When I took a white paper I wrote and re-purposed it to be LinkedIn blog post,it received in excess of 235,000 reads. Click on the image below to see the power of moving away from a website where this content received less than 100 reads as a white paper and onto LinkedIn where the audience and customers are.

I've adopted an altruistic approach where I freely provide my insights and intellectual property and avoided any form of 'click-bait'. I am well on my way to one million reads of my content and 100,000 followers in LinkedIn. But publishing content is not just important for authors. Here are four reasons for sales people to write content with their managers and marketing department supporting them with ideation, proof-reading, editing and publishing tools:

1. Educate yourself and develop domain knowledge and expertise
2. Connect with industry leaders to build your sphere of influence
3. Attract clients and an audience to support your business goals
4. Build your personal brand evidencing credibility, value and insight

In an online world we are known by who we are connected to and what we publish. According to IDC research, 75% of buyers research the seller before engaging. What do they see when they view your profile? We want people to see a credible domain expert worthy of trust and an investment of  time. We must also create a strong personal brand and here is how to begin.

The 'Updates' section of LinkedIn is also very powerful, and scheduling tools such as Buffer make the process easy for sharing other people’s articles, blogs, research, infographics and Tweets. Content can easily be sourced by identifying influencers in the market and individual content capture and scheduling is as simple as clicking a button in the web browser.

Sales people must consciously associate themselves with leaders who are respected by their potential clients and transform their LinkedIn profile to be a personal brand micro site instead of an online CV. Connect with leaders admired by your clients and then share their content as a 'content aggregator' who adds your own insights... working with other people's content is the easiest way to begin your content publishing journey.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Warrior of Persuasion or Engineer of Value?

The world of sales is tough and seems to be getting tougher.  I recently had a conversation with John Smibert, the most influential person in professional selling in Australia, concerning the emerging challenges facing B2B sellers in 2016 and I provide recommendations on how we need to respond in order to succeed.

The global economy will continue to be flat for years to come and the lack of economic confidence, combined with significant changes in the way buyers execute their procurement research and vendor engagement, means that sellers must continually adapt the way they sell. 

Warriors of Persuasion must learn to become Engineers of Value.

The challenges we face in 2016 and beyond include the fact that the customer are becoming more risk adverse - they are applying committee based decision-making to achieve consensus. Average deal sizes are also getting smaller which means sellers must figure out how drive greater efficiency to achieve sales quota. Other factors include the need for sales and marketing to come together to create superb 'buyer experience' mapped against the buyer's journey with fewer sales people and better uses of technology.

Watch or read the full interview below. This will be of value to the CEO, CFO, CSO, CMO, sales leaders and their teams in order to build and execute their sales and revenue strategy.

Interview Transcript

John: Tony, it’s early in the year of 2016 - you've talked a lot about challenges through 2015, and how the B2B sales world is changing and there’s more and more challenges. What do you see as the key challenges we’re going to face in the next 12 months?

Tony: Well, I think economically the economy, the Western world economy is going to be pretty tough for the next few years, maybe as long as five to seven years. I don’t think there’s going to be a big recession or anything, but I just think every purchasing decision inside an organisation is going to get scrutinised.

John: It’s just limping along, the economy, isn’t it?

Tony: It is. When you combine that with some other trends that are just remaining with us, buyers tend to be very risk-averse and sceptical of the claims made by sellers. Increasingly inside organisations they’re also looking for consensus, and the reality is there’s more than five people or five buying groups in big organisations involved in every decision.

John: Well, The Challenger Sale research indicates 5.4 is the average, right, in medium to large corporates.

Tony: Yes, it’s true. And it’s not 5.4 people, it’s 5.4 committees or bunches of people with competing agendas. And increasingly what happens is that the old model of selling, where you track down those individual buyer personas and craft and tailor your message to them, so that when they all sit around that boardroom table at a later date, they go “Yes, we know this supplier, we’re comfortable – let’s go ahead.” That’s not the case today. They may know us, but they can’t reach agreement internally, they can’t achieve consensus internally, they don’t want to cross-fund each other’s initiatives with who’s deriving the greatest benefits.

John: That’s the key message coming out of The Challenger Customer book that I’ve just read.

Tony: Exactly, which actually is a really brilliant book. Consensus based decision-making, distrust of ROI, all of those things are making it incredibly difficult to sell. The thing we need to do is we need to modernise our whole approach and get focused on leading with insight and value. People have known this for ages, but we need to make it a reality for salespeople so that they can help customers focus on outcomes and managing risk as the way of differentiating in how they sell.

John:  And from my understanding, we need to get very good at helping organisations make a decision by working with them in a collaborative way and understanding how those decisions are made inside organisations.

Tony:  Yes, it’s true.

John: Dealing with the right people that are going to make it happen internally.

Tony:  Correct. Well - in Corporate Executive Board Challenger speak - it’s look for the mobiliser, look for the change agent inside the buyer organisation, but help them build a compelling business case that can achieve consensus within the group internally. It’s not so much about being a warrior of persuasion in selling, we need to be engineers of value and do the engineering and partnership with the customer.

John: So, you see that as a key change in the way we approach the B2B business of selling in the next 12 months.

Tony: Yes. And in many, many instances we’re just going to have to get over the fact that average deal sizes are going to be smaller, and that we need to invest in longer-term relationships with our customers, that those revenues will come over the medium and long term; we’re not going to get huge revenue hits upfront with people anymore. That’s part of how the delivery of cloud software is changing things as well.

John: Yes, I understand that, and I think that’s going to apply not just in software but in lots of different industries.

Tony: Yes. And the last thing is we need to get good at creating customer experience that supports buyer journey, so sales and marketing need to finally, finally come together and start to think about that. I think there’ll be fewer field salespeople, but there’ll be lots of different sales roles inside organisations, as we make sure that we map how the buyer is evaluating and going to market and looking.

John: So, the alliance or collaboration or whatever you call it between sales and marketing is going to become more and more critical is what you’re saying, around that buyer journey.

Tony: Very much so, yes.

John:  Okay. Good advice. It’s going to be interesting for a lot of people out there, to work out how they change their strategy and adapt to be able to work in that environment. I look forward to learning more from you as we all go through that process.

Tony: Thanks, John!

John:  Thanks, Tony!

This article appears here within one of the planet's top 50 blogs on sales and marketing and the only top 50 blog within LinkedIn. Thanks John Smibert for the video interview and transcript which can also be found on on the Strategic Selling Group website where he interviews sales thought leaders from around the world. 

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Hans Splinter - Viking

CRM Truth – Insights From Jason Jordan

Last week I was speaking at a conference in London for Top Sales World along withJason Jordan who is the legendary co-author of Cracking The Sales Management Code. In his book he highlights the insanity of what many seek to measure and manage within their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. This is not a beat-up of CRM because...

Without a well implemented CRM, you have no chance of being truly customer centric. Nor can you create awesome customer experience and properly manage customer lifecycle without a good CRM

Both Jason and I therefore believe in the value of CRM but we are equally intrigued by the fact that so many implementations fail. Jason has been kind enough to share his thoughts here on why, and how to ensure success. The rest of this post (in italics) is from the keyboard of Jason Jordan. 

It has been 15 years since Gartner famously reported in 2001 that 50% of all CRM implementations were considered failures, and various studies since then affirm the fact that sales forces are still not satisfied with CRM. In fact, we work with some of the most successful sales forces in the world, and all of them are working intensely to improve CRM’s impact on their businesses. So why do we remain so vexed by this software? Why do the smartest and most motivated executives on the planet still rub their foreheads and wrinkle their brows when they consider their next steps with CRM?

When conducting the research for our book Cracking the Sales Management Code, we spent several years observing how company measure and manage their sales forces. This gave us unique insights into the intersection between the technology of CRM and the practices of sales management. We believe that sales will continue to battle with CRM until we fundamentally shift our thinking in four key ways.

It’s Not About Managing Customer Relationships

We continue to use the moniker ‘CRM’ for our sales force’s software, as though we’re using it to manage our customer relationships. If we’re honest with ourselves, we actually use these systems to manage our sales forces. Sure there are customers on the other side of our salespeople, but we really want the software to automate important selling tasks like aligning territories, managing pipelines, winning opportunities, and generating forecasts. For these purposes, we prefer the somewhat abandoned term Sales Force Automation (SFA) to CRM, because it describes what we’re really trying to do. It’s a subtle change, but if we started calling this software what it is, then we could begin to think more specifically about what we are building it to do.

It’s Not About ROI

One of the most cited measures of CRM failure is a low return on investment. In our opinion, ROI analyses should no longer be required to justify CRM’s place in the sales force. ROI analyses were developed to help evaluate competing alternatives for capital investment, but CRM is no longer an investment alternative. CRM is now corporate infrastructure that’s required to operate a sales force, just like e-mail, mobile phones, and laptops. Try searching the web for articles on the “ROI of e-mail.” You’ll find no results, because e-mail is not an investment – it’s an expense. So is CRM. We are at least a decade removed from the time when CRM was a strategic investment that required careful consideration and justification. Let’s disregard the ROI calculations for CRM and start looking for more meaningful ways to measure its business impact.

It’s Not About User Adoption

Most of our clients are obsessed with ‘user adoption’ of their CRM tool, and it is a common metric of a successful implementation. It shouldn’t be. User adoption is an outcome of good CRM, not a measure of it. Someone once told me that when you lead a horse to water, your goal shouldn’t be to make the horse drink – it should be to make the horse thirsty. Similarly, when you lead a salesperson to a CRM, your goal shouldn’t be to make them use it – it should be to make them want to use it. Reporting ‘low user adoption’ implies that the salespeople are somehow to blame, when the underlying cause is a tool that isn’t compelling to sellers. How about tracking a metric like ‘Percentage of Reps Who Love Using CRM.” That would be a better measure of a successful implementation, because it would shift the business challenge from getting users to log in to providing users with irresistible and unavoidable functionality.

It’s Not About Technology

Since CRM has technology at its core, we fall into the trap of thinking better technology will solve our problems. But can it? Today’s CRM technology is astonishingly better than it was 15 years ago, but research says it’s just as big a failure from a business perspective as it was in the beginning. What we need is not another iteration of CRM technology (call it CRM 15.0) – what we really need is to teach sales forces what to do with CRM. It’s like we’ve taught millions of people how to get in and out of their cars, but we haven’t taught them how to drive. We’ve taught sellers how to log in, but we haven’t taught them how to use the data to win more deals. We’ve taught their managers how to log in too, but we haven’t taught them how to use the data to coach more effectively. CRM technology has become amazing over the last 15 years, but our business practices haven’t. It’s time to stop focusing on what’s on the computer screen and start focusing on what’s in the user’s head.

CRM has been with us for a long time, but it remains underleveraged because we are viewing CRM all wrong. We need to concede that we don’t really use it to manage customer relationships – we use it to manage our sales forces. Our goal shouldn’t be to achieve an ROI or to boost user adoption – it should be to provide an invaluable service to our sellers. And the focus shouldn’t be on revolutionizing the technology – it should be on revolutionizing the sales force’s ability to use the data it provides. If we can’t put CRM into the context in which it belongs, we’ll be reading the same research findings for the next 15 years… and beyond.

Thanks Jason for sharing your wisdom and here also are other blog posts I've written about CRM, some with other thought leaders:

• CRM's Dirty Secret
• CRM Must Evolve 
• CRM For Sales Enablement
• CRM Hijacks Customer Experience
• You Can't Manage Revenue in CRM (more wisdom from Jason Jordan) 
• Can You Function Without CRM?
• CRM Is Best As A Mash-up
• Is Your CRM a Graveyard of Information

I highly recommend you buy Jason's book, Cracking The Sales Management Code, the best ever written on effective sales management.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: David Blackwell - Promotion

Sell More By Going Beyond The Sales Process

Dave Stein is legend in the sales training industry and he has teamed-up with Steve Andersen to publish an essential book for anyone in business-to-business selling. I just finished reading Beyond The Sales Process and its timeless wisdom is wrapped within a modernized approach achieving sales success by intelligently creating value for customers.

"The customer is the only one qualified to call something a solution. The customer is also the one who defines and measures value" Tony Hughes

Just as with the best sales leaders, Dave Stein has always advocated sales people define ‘value’ through the eyes of the customer, but this book explains exactly how to do it by researching thoroughly and then engaging on the basis of insight and value. Dave and Steve make the very important point that alignment is more important than persuasion and they highlight the core reasons for an existing supplier being replaced or a seller failing to win. Here is an excerpt form the book.

In nearly every case where a provider was replaced, misalignment existed between the client’s performance challenges and the provider’s ability to drive changes that would address and overcome them. Sales performance initiatives fail for other reasons, as well:

• The supplier/seller is unwilling or unable to understand how their customer buys;
• The supplier/seller does not understand how the customer defines value;
• The supplier/seller does not understand what is motivating and putting pressure on the customer, particularly when it comes to their external drivers, business objectives and internal challenges;
• The supplier/seller cannot articulate business value to the customer;
• People in sales, account management, and sales leader roles are unsuited for their jobs;
• There is no overall methodology, with the relevant processes in place, to drive sales excellence, or the existing methodology is not widely complied with and adhered to;
• The supplier/seller has little or no understanding of the political forces within a customer’s organization; or
• The supplier/seller has little or no understanding of its own competitors.

If you’re a fan of Challenger Selling but have struggled with how to implement the concept of engaging on the basis of a provocative insights; then Beyond The Sales Process is the book for you. This is because the book leads with strategies for truly understanding a potential customer and then differentiation through the way you engage rather than with what you’re selling.

Dave and Steve know that the very best sales people today are engineers of value, not warriors of persuasion. These sellers research and prepare before engaging at the right level in the buyer’s organization as they create insightful conversations that lead to the collaborative creation of a business-case value.

Another brilliant aspect of the book is the concept of thinking beyond closing the sale to instead regard success as only occurring once the client is realizing the benefits of your product, service or solution… and with them being advocates for you in the market. 

If you only read one book in 2016 on business-to-business selling then this has to be it! Beyond The Sales Process is filled with actionable insights, illuminating case studies, and it is intelligently written from academic solid ground – logical, compelling and thought provoking. It enables any seller to create a winning sales process that goes beyond being customer centric to truly understand the world of the customers. The most successful companies have their customers as evangelists by creating alignment and value in partnership with the customer. The book answers these impotant questions:

• Why should your customers engage with you before they discover your value?
  • How do you create buyer alignment and remove the tension from the sales process?
• How do you create market advocates who extend your reach and influence to create greater success?

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: DVIDSHUB - Continuing Promise 2011

Should You Invest In LinkedIn Or CRM?

The world of business-to-business selling is changing and I recently had a conversation with John Smibert, one of the most influential people in professional selling globally, concerning the roles of LinkedIn and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

LinkedIn has the hearts and minds of salespeople because it helps them find the people they need to build pipeline and also the next employer to progress their career.

CRM, on the other hand, should be the engine for managing sales process but sadly is often a 'manage-up' reporting tool. Sales people are often reluctant to embrace CRM because they feel their contacts, relationships, prospects and pipeline belong to them personally more than they do for their employer.

But CRM can be transformational when it becomes the 'single source of truth' about prospects and clients to manage the entire customer lifecycle for marketing, sales, services, support and finance. The very best implement CRM as a coaching platform for sales managers with their people to review opportunity qualification and discovery, call plans, relationship mapping, sales stage progression with action tracking, close/win plans, and much more... all integrated within the CRM.

LinkedIn helps build opportunity pipeline. CRM manages sales opportunities. LinkedIn's Sales Navigator enables you to integrate the world's most powerful contact database and engagement platform to the leading CRM systems.

LinkedIn and CRM [should] solve different problems and both systems create value in their own right. Each organisation needs to understand how they can extract the best value. Watch this video interview and a full transcript is below. 

Interview

John: Hey, you've been a CEO of a CRM provider in recent years in Australia. And you would have seen lots of changes in the way CRM have been progressing. You’ve also see a lot of the problems with the implementations of CRM, and now you’re doing a lot of work with LinkedIn. I’m sensing LinkedIn is overlapping with CRM a lot. How do you see the relationship between LinkedIn and CRM, and how people are using LinkedIn now almost to do a CRM?

Tony: Yes, it’s very interesting, because there’s people asking the question “Will LinkedIn become the new CRM?”

John: I've heard that being asked.

Tony: Yes, and it’s an intriguing question. I know, for example, that Salesforce look at LinkedIn, and they’re a little bit worried about the way that LinkedIn is really moving into what they traditionally see is their space. There’s a few things that we know are true, and that is that LinkedIn has the heart, souls and minds of salespeople, and CRM does not. CRM is historically very much a reporting up managing tool for an organisation. And the way sales reps feel, the way they’re wired is their contacts and relationships and prospects and pipeline belong to them more than they do their employer.

John: Is that really true? I feel that a good sales guy represents his or her company.

Tony: Yes, he does. In inside sales maybe not so much, but certainly for field sales and business-to-business selling. Salespeople tend to feel the way they believe that they operate really is as a hired gun.

John: And it’s probably represented in the fact that a tenure in sales jobs tends to be only about, what, three years these days, on an average.

Tony: Yes, most.

John: And they therefore know they’re going to move on to another company.

Tony: Well, the statistics are really scary. It depends on whose numbers you believe, but anywhere from 40% to almost two-thirds of B2B salespeople don’t make the numbers every year, and a lot of it is not the fault of the salespeople. The way that organisations are doing territory planning and rolling out quotas, they have their blowtorch out on people, they expect them to get up to speed very quickly. So, you’re right; the way an employment contract is written is very much that those prospects are the property of the employer, not the employee.

John: Interesting to see whether it can be enforced though.

Tony: Well, you've got to honour the law of self-interest in any negotiation of putting together business models. So, my view is that what salespeople want to do is they want to build good quality pipeline. The biggest problem they face is, yes, they need to manage expectations of management internally, which they do through a CRM. But the biggest problem they’ve got is they need to build quality pipeline, and LinkedIn enables them to research, find and connect with people, monitor for trigger events, engage early at senior levels, stalk them, in essence, in social to find out what are their interests – I mean, at a business level, not at a Facebook, personal level – at the business level, find out what’s driving industry so they can go and connect with people.

John: LinkedIn is the best engagement tool I’ve ever seen – it’s brilliant for me.

Tony: It is incredible.

John: I can use LinkedIn to engage with anybody I want to target, and I can build a relationship well before I ever meet anybody.

Tony: Yes. And Sales Navigator, which is the highest level of subscription in LinkedIn at the moment, when you combine the power of LinkedIn Publisher for evidencing your credibility and building relevance for the markets that you target, with Sales Navigator for seeing social proximity, doing your research, see who’s connected to the people you’re targeting to get warm introductions – those things are incredibly powerful.

John: So, CRM providers, watch out? How should they be looking at this?

Tony: Well, I think CRM has a role in that CRM is ideal for sales process automation. People need to think about the sales methodology that they use inside their organisation, which is different to sales process. They need to enable their process within their CRM, and then use CRM as a coaching platform to create transparency and help people sell. The weak link in the revenue chain for organisations is sales management. They need to get out of their spreadsheets or the CRM systems, and coach their people.

John: Yes. And that’s the reason a lot of CRM implementation’s a fail, right? They’ve been put in for management, not for the sales guy.

Tony: Correct. The first rule of having a successful implementation of any technology, including LinkedIn or CRM, is serve the user, the user in this case being a field salesperson. And clearly LinkedIn serves the user really well – in their minds help them get their next job as well, so the law of self-interest is honoured – but it helps them build pipeline. They need to implement CRM in a way that helps them execute process.

John: I don’t think LinkedIn are looking to replace a Salesforce.com or a Sugar, right?

Tony: Correct, correct.

John: So, it’s really looking at how do we, as an organisation in sales management, use both tools, and make sure we leverage them both, and make sure they work well together.

Tony: To me there is a role for both. And LinkedIn is incredibly powerful for monitoring trigger events, building connections, creating pipeline for, in essence, salespeople to become micro-marketers, and take responsibility for building their own pipeline. Once they’ve identified an opportunity, it belongs in CRM so you can manage that process.

John: Exactly. So, I think that’s cleared it up very much in my mind. Thanks, Tony – I think there'll be a lot of value for the viewers.

Tony: Thanks, John!

****************

Thanks John Smibert for the video interview and transcript which can also be found on on the Strategic Selling Group website where he interviews sales thought leaders from around the world. More of John Smibert's interviews with Tony Hughes:

• "The challenge of change in B2B sales"
• "Empowering salespeople with technology"
• "Be an influencer in your field"
• "The power of social in B2B sales"
• "If you can't write you can't sell"

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Garrett Coakley - Decisions, decisions

How To Generate Your Own Free Press Coverage

LinkedIn is the most powerful platform in the world for creating a strong personal brand with a network that transforms your professional life and business results.

If you're a consultant or own your own business, or if you are responsible for media and press coverage then this information will reveal how to gain direct access to those who can give your brand a rocket-ship ride.

LinkedIn has far more value to offer than merely helping with recruiting and selling

This may surprise you but you're reading this article on the number 1 publishing platform in the world. LinkedIn has well over 420,000,000 members (with two new people joining every second) and their publishing platform, Publisher and the Pulse Channels, have unrivalled reach and engagement. LinkedIn is the most important software for anyone in business because it enables them to research, connect and engage potential employees, customers, partners, investors; and also journalists, media personalities, producers, publication editors, conference organizers... everyone who matters in building a business.

Access to the media was once the exclusive domain of Public Relations (PR) agencies who built relationships and knew how to pitch a client's value for press coverage. PR agencies can still play a role today but usually because their clients lack the ability to write good content or don't have expertise in how to create a multi-channel marketing plan. Even for those who can cover these two prerequisites, many then don't understand the power of social platforms such as LinkedIn.

According to a survey by Arketi media group, almost 95% of journalists and editors are on LinkedIn and 62% rate it as their preferred professional networking platform

I recently caught-up with Alex Pirouz, founder of Linkfluencer which is the best online training for becoming masterful at using LinkedIn.  I highly recommend his online courses for mastering LinkedIn for both selling and also PR and building your brand.

According to Alex: "For far too long the traditional methods of getting media coverage have either been too expensive, difficult or just too time consuming. But with LinkedIn you can now start connecting and building relationships with hundreds of journalists and editors from around the world." 

Alex knows what he is talking about and has himself secured significant press coverage and guest journalist spots with The Huffington Post and other publications. Alex recommends that you "write down the top three publications you would like coverage in, identify the journalists with those publications and then connect and build a relationship with them on LinkedIn."

This simple strategy enabled Alex himself to be featured in over 50 media publications and he now writes for Huffington Post, Hubspot and Entrepreneur. According to Alex; "The best thing about this approach it is that we've never sent out a press release or made a cold call."

Anyone in business who neglects LinkedIn is asleep at the wheel. I have many articles about how to use social media here in my LinkedIn blog. This post covers the basics ofbuilding a strong personal brand.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Niuton may - PR

Microsoft Acquires LinkedIn - What It Means

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of LinkedIn for a record US$26.2 billion which makes it the biggest deal Microsoft has ever done. In my view there is no product or 'solution' overlap which makes it look like a good fit but only if Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, allows LinkedIn to operate as a stand-alone business unit just as they've done with Skype.

Acquiring LinkedIn is Satya Nadella's first big play to reinvigorate Microsoft's growth but although LinkedIn's shares rose more than 45% on the news, Microsoft dropped almost 3% (Image courtesy of Bloomberg).

This is probably because Microsoft acquisitions have a mixed track record in recent times with both Nokia and Yammer (business instant messaging collaboration) failing to deliver the intended results. Skype, on the other hand, has been largely left alone to continue as the video conferencing giant... LinkedIn should be managed the same way.

Microsoft's heritage and core value offering is integrated office productivity tools and LinkedIn fits the bill while also being a mature and elegant suite of cloud applications. Approximately 420 million professionals (including recruiters, sales professionals, entrepreneurs and marketers) all use LinkedIn to manage their professional networks and careers. But where is the potential benefit for the huge number of joint LinkedIn and Microsoft customers?

Value Driver #1: Microsoft CRM (Dynamics) and LinkedIn Integration. The roles of LinkedIn versus Dynamics (Microsoft Customer Relationship Management) are fundamentally different and this is because one enables people to build both their network and opportunity pipeline, and the other manages qualified opportunities and provides the database for executing lead-nurturing and customer experience.

LinkedIn has the hearts and minds of salespeople because it helps them find the people they need to build pipeline and also the next employer to progress their career.

CRM should be the engine for managing sales process and with real-time LinkedIn data, Dynamics has the capability to do this as the 'single source of truth' about prospects and clients to manage the entire customer lifecycle for marketing, sales, services, support and finance. The very best implement CRM as a coaching platform for sales managers with their people to review opportunity qualification and discovery, call plans, relationship mapping, sales stage progression with action tracking, close/win plans, and much more... all integrated within the CRM.

LinkedIn helps build opportunity pipeline and CRM manages sales process. Integrating the two creates an accurate real-time platform to deliver game-changing customer experience for the entire interaction lifecycle.

LinkedIn and Microsoft CRM create value in their own right but together there are genuine synergies. Could LinkedIn replace CRM? This video discussed that very question and here is the transcript.

Value Driver #2: Integrated Cloud Office Productivity: Google will be watching very closely as this acquisition could enable LinkedIn's InMail adoption to skyrocket if Microsoft intelligently leverages Office365 against Gmail's cloud mail dominance. Salesforce and other CRM vendors will also be worried about this acquisition and what it means for them competitively. Real-time data within CRM is massively important. Microsoft have other cloud application capabilities that start to bring everything together. These include cloud collaboration, messaging and mail.

Image courtesy of LinkedIn.

Value Driver #3: Customer Experience Platform. Outstanding 'customer experience' (CX) is what CRM, marketing automation, business intelligence, process automation, mobile, social engagement and other technologies are meant to enable. Microsoft has assured its relevance in the CRM arena with this acquisition and also brings and new dimension to professional 'productivity', in the office and working mobile. If Microsoft 'does no harm' to LinkedIn while they carefully create a strategy to become the world's leading customer experience platform, then the result will be good for shareholders and customers alike.

The verdict. Although Microsoft is paying top price, this acquisition makes sense if they can deliver the world's leading suite of solutions for creating customer experience. CX is more important CRM... it's already the next big thing. The biggest negative for LinkedIn members is that the acquisition almost certainly means there will be more advertising on the platform as they seek to recoup their investment... let's hope that LinkedIn does not become as cluttered with ads as Facebook.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo Source: CNBC screenshot

How Secure Is Your LinkedIn Account... Really?

Last month LinkedIn announced to the world that username and password data from 167,370,910 accounts had been obtained illegally from their site. Fortunately the data breach did not include credit card details and was directly associated with an earlier incident in 2012.

Ironically, the timing meant that Microsoft would have been in the middle of acquisition negotiations following due diligence. It was an opportunity for LinkedIn to show their values and culture... they passed with flying colors... but not everyone agrees with me.

LinkedIn immediately got on the front foot to protect their members and the LinkedIn brand. Here is LinkedIn's official statement on May 18, 2016. They also e-mailed all members who were potentially affected and forced password changes before those users could log back in.

Never seek to hide what can be discovered. Transparency and honesty is always best.

If you're wondering if you are one of the LinkedIn users impacted by this breach? Well, stop trying to figure it out and just change your password immediately. Seriously, change it right now. You should change passwords regularly on all online accounts as a matter of course.

The biggest risk does not come from hackers or cyber-criminals... you personally are actually the weakest link in the security chain.

Watch this video and you'll understand that the way users create and manage their passwords is the biggest security risk... and many use a common password across many platforms.

I discussed all this with a IT security expert, Olsi Selfo, and here is his advice based on years of experience working with some of the biggest banks in the world and cyber-security specialists from defence and other rigorous security environments.

The following is from Olsi Selfo.

It’s always a good idea to change your passwords regularly and to never, ever use the same password for two different accounts. And no, you shouldn’t paste all those different usernames and passwords into a plain text file so you can remember them. Instead, use a secure password manager that can sync your passwords across all devices and keep them safe but easily accessible.

LeakedSource published a table showing the most commonly used passwords on LinkedIn and it’s just as bad as you think it might be. The most commonly used password is “123456” and it was found on 753,305 accounts. The second most common password was “linkedin” which was used on 172,523 different accounts, and then “password” on 144,458 accounts. Login credentials - especially to social media sites - are a valuable commodity for 'black hat' hackers. One of Olsi's sources claims that '123456' appears more than a million times (1,135,936 to be precise) in another dump, a long way ahead of 'LinkedIn' with 207,000. The most common "base word" used in the passwords is, unsurprisingly “LinkedIn”.

Regularly changing your password is always a good idea and be proactive.

Voluntarily changing passwords manually on a regular basis is a goof idea but do not create passwords based on very simple and very predictable patterns. This means it is very predictable to hackers. Two-step verification is the next level of security to be considered.

Linkedin introduced 2-step verification using SMS. Although not immune against a determined hacker in a targeted attack, it is much better than nothing. What Linkedin really should do is to promote the existence of security risks better, and go beyond mere password changes. That really isn't enough with today's threat landscape.

Personally I recommend two-step verification as a good tradeoff between security and usability for most applications. I'll even admit that a single password might not be enough in all cases. So go ahead and configure 2FA wherever you can.

Hackers use stolen e-mail information to lure users into giving away more information including birth dates, credit card numbers and bank account access. In 2014, cyber criminals stole $16 billion from nearly 13 million consumers.

All the more reason, say experts, to regularly change passwords — even monthly. ‘And more importantly, you should also be thinking about one site, one password,’ said Lucy Millington, head of corporate security for Sophos Cyber Security. ‘So don’t re-use a password, don’t use the same password for the bank, as you do for retail shopping, as you do your email.’

So what’s a good password? Well, for starters, don’t include the names of your children, pets or home addresses—all information that could easily be found online. Instead, use abstract combinations of letters, numbers and characters that a criminal’s computer program couldn’t easily guess. Mixing languages is another way to throw off hacking programs. Running together the lyrics of a song could also help strengthen passwords.

Experts advise paying for credit monitoring to watch for suspicious activity. And be very suspicious of all incoming emails that could be phishing for more sensitive information.

‘A breach is inevitable,’ Payton said. ‘That information that you’ve entrusted someone else with is eventually going to be hacked.’ Experts say a moment of distraction and a click on a bad link can invite cyber-crooks a world away.”

Thanks Olsi for sharing your experience and provide such valuable advice!

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: Ken Yeung - President Obama at LinkedIn for Town Hall

What Is Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS)

What is software as a service (SaaS), and what do you need to know to decide whether it’s right for you? IT can be confusing and it’s full of acronyms; I just used one that most of us know.

I’m going to talk to you for a few minutes about software as a service, or SaaS, and The Cloud. The two go together, and it’s how you dramatically reduce your internal or contractor IT costs. Now, most of those people you’re paying now to support your IT systems don’t want you to know what I’m about to share. The best software today is delivered in The Cloud as a service. But what does software as a service really mean, and is The Cloud secure? These are questions I hear often. I’ve been in the enterprise software industry for decades, but I now work as a management consultant, providing trusted advice to those who run businesses.

Here’s what you need to know: it’s not as complicated as some would have you think. With software as a service someone else owns all of the headaches of running your software and hardware for a particular area of your business. It’s where the world is moving, and if you’re not already there then you’re behind. Modern software just needs a web browser installed on a local machine or tablet or mobile device, and the computing work is done on a server rather than locally on the individual’s computer that’s at a desk or in the field. This brings benefits that are huge: it reduces your cost for desktop and mobile device support, both hardware and software, and it keeps the data safe on server rather than on an individual’s machine, and that data is secure in a data centre.

But it’s not just that moving your software applications and storage to The Cloud reduces your costs, it also makes your business more agile. For 90% of you watching, your core business is not being a software development house; your core business is innovating products and services while creating best possible customer experience. The vast majority of in-house software projects are late, they deliver far less than they promise, and often the costs blow out to more than triple of what was originally estimated. Working with proven products that benefit from huge R&D and keep improving as the product is built out is the way to go.

But what about the risks? Is The Cloud secure? Some people find it comforting to see their own server in their own computer room, but any system can be hacked, and usually because of poor password practice or someone with a USB stick rather than poor software code or technical holes in the system. Whether your servers are on your own premises or being managed in a specialist data centre, it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is the level of security and in-built redundancy, and what I mean by that is what happens when the power goes out or a hard drive fails or there’s a communications network failure. Software as a service providers usually use the very best data centres to host their computers and applications, and they have serious security and in-built redundancy for uninterruptible power supply, and they work with telcos if networks have a problem. Most small business struggle to match these levels of secure reliability.

If you’re worried about having data in The Cloud, you don’t need to. All of your contacts are already in the cloud with LinkedIn, all of your financial transactions and personal wealth is managed in The Cloud with your bank. If you use Dropbox – which I do, I’ve used it for years for storage – it doesn’t matter if my laptop is stolen or a hard drive fails, I’ll never lose anything, I can recover all of those documents easily. Microsoft Office 365 is in The Cloud and it dramatically reduces support costs. Things like Skype are cloud applications, Google Docs, Oracle, SAP, NetSuite; there are hundreds of others that have moved their applications into the cloud, and customers want them to do it.

Click here for a post on keeping your data secure and why you are biggest security risk rather than external threats.

Don’t let your self-serving IT people convince you to stay on-premise with applications, unless they can convince you that there’s a compelling reason to do so. They’ll often talk about data residency and security concerns, but most software as a service providers can use a cloud hosting company who keeps the data local – just have a conversation with them.

If you’re frustrated with IT failing to deliver, endlessly asking for more time and more money, to only partially deliver what they originally promised, take the simple step of identifying which applications you can move into The Cloud most easily – it’s worth the effort. Email and Microsoft Office 365 is usually an easy place to start. You’ll free up working capital, you’ll reduce your real costs, and you’ll be a more agile business.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: JD Lasica - Software

Back To The Future Of Sales

I've been reading reams of predictions for selling and it seems that 99% are about social selling and predictive analytics. Peter Ostrow, from Aberdeen Sales Effectiveness Research, is however right on the money with this comment. “The traditional emotion-driven, gut-driven sales coaching that we so often see with reps and their bosses is going to be replaced – or at least augmented – by the use of pure analytics and data. We’re seeing a lot of movement in the marketplace where organizations are using data to drive a kind of coaching, training, sales effectiveness and career management that we’ve never seen before.”

But technology is not the message – it’s simply the medium because selling is about engagement and great sales management is about coaching in strategy and disciplined execution. The best sales managers will help their sales people become effective in building personal brand and leveraging big data analytics for better monitoring and targeting. Great leaders understand that a person’s personal brand is their most precious asset and that time is their most valuable resource.

2015 will be the year where big data analytics enables the intelligent application of sales effort and also when sellers will mature in using social media for brand building and effective early engagement to create valued conversations within communities. Here is where it all comes together most powerfully… social listening. That’s what matters most for B2B sellers – social analysis, social research and social listening for trigger events.

For brand-building in social, it’s not about the technology or broadcasting messages. Retweeting or reposting links to other people’s content is not enough. Yes there is value in being a content aggregator but only if the people who matter are following you. It’s all about connection through genuine insight. But resist the temptation to quickly seek to prospect or sell on the back of touch-points – this is a sure-fire way to cause people to disconnect.

Go back to the future... B2B is really H2H (human to human) selling so blend the old with the new. Study and embrace the time-honored traditions of solution selling, value selling and insight selling. Become a disciple of strategy gurus such Jim Holden and Art Jacobs. Embrace methodology leaders such as Keith Eades and Miller-Heiman. Then carefully think about how social and technology can be leveraged within your own process for creating pipeline and creating early engagement. If you’re a sales manager, go back to what matters most – helping your people have great conversations with senior people early in the buying/sales cycle.

But here is the most important ‘back to the future’ skill of all if you want to succeed in the world on business and commerce – learn how to write powerfully. The most effective method for doing this has always been reading... voraciously! Most people read one book a year but research shows the average Fortune 500 CXO reads somewhere on the order of 60. Read and write every day and discipline yourself to carve out 30 minute once or twice per day to read long form, especially. Turn off all the devices and digest an entire white paper, hard hitting news from The Economist, an inspirational biography on Churchill or book on military strategy. Reflect upon it. Apply its wisdom practically in your life and career. Remix it in your next LinkedIn Publisher posts drawing parallels. I love Stephen King's perspective and wholeheartedly stand by it as a permanent student of life, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

Being a good writer can be your key differentiator in the ever competitive markets of 2015 and beyond. Now imagine becoming a great one! Those who can write well, inoculate themselves against technology rendering their station obsolete. Cialdini would agree, that the art and science of influence must be accomplished on paper as well as with words. Hone your ability to logically create emotion, tell stories and convey insight online and on paper. We are all standing on the shoulder of giants so...

"Whoever tells the best story [still] wins!" - Annette Simmons

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main Image Photo by Flickr: JD Hancock

CRM Must Evolve To 'Customer Experience' Or Become Mere Back-end Database

Last year I was engaged to lead some round table forums with over 100 organizations across multiple cities in Australia. In the sessions we actively discussed the role of CRM in creating Customer eXperience (CX) and the half-day workshops were created by The Eventful Group who hold an annual major CRM conference where I have been a keynote speaker each year.

One common theme in the workshops I led was that CRM is a dirty word. CRM failure rates are claimed to be anywhere from 33% to 70%. This infographic from Dun and Bradstreet says it all.

Almost unanimously, people said that they positioned a CRM initiative internally as a system for creating a 'single source of the truth' or a '360 degree view of the customer'. That's smart because CEOs don't want yet another software system in their business but they do want the outcome it can deliver.

Some people say that people don't want to buy a drill, they want a hole. I disagree; people actually want their picture hanging on the wall. CRM is no different. CXOs want what the system can do for them and that must be the focus. But the single biggest mistake that enterprises make in implementing CRM systems is that they neglect their internal and external customers.

Every CRM should be implemented to serve sales people and customers, whether they be channel partners or end-users and consumers. The big questions must be: How will the system serve the sales person – how will it help them sell more effectively? Strategy is important but designing Customer eXperience (CX) is where you create clarity in use-cases and functional requirements. The devil is very much in the detail. The goal of any CRM implementation must be to serve internal and external users, rather than be a uber big brother reporting tool.

The delegates at the round table forums provided lots of interesting feedback and here are the things they believe need to be addressed to ensure success and long-term ROI for CX initiatives:

• Design and deliver a customer centric culture right across your business – produce a team culture that focuses on continuous learning and training, looking to continually evolve and improve
• Provide a clear and articulated vision with attainable values for the future – “live by them and not just preach them”
• Methods to change the engrained behaviors and habits of staff with years of experience who are “set in their ways” or who’ve said “we’ve tried that before and it didn’t work”
• Making the appropriate decisions without adverse impact on the end customer experience
• Remove the silos within your organization - organizations with siloed functions and departments work independently but have a significant impact on the overall customer experience
• Overcoming fear and intimidation – what if my team don’t follow the process – it could be catastrophic!!
• Committing everyone to customer centricity – how you get everyone moving in the same direction
• Engaging different generations to embrace new processes and technology available to them
• How providing clear up-stream - and down-stream communication of “why” the new processes are in place can influence usage and accuracy of data quality
• Coping with evolving systems’ training needs – upgrades, new developments and design changes
• Ensuring the customer focus from training and methodologies remain “top of mind” when staff are in their roles
• “Everyone is a customer” – using personal experiences, positive or negative, to apply within your own work
• Finding, attracting and retaining the right individuals for your business, when the skills aren’t always available

I certainly agree and here are my top 5 recommendations:

1. CRM must be strategy, not a technology
2. Design end-to-end customer [and channel partner] experience
3. Embrace the concept of mash-ups for best of breed capabilities
4. Design for sales process enablement and sales person efficiency
5. Ensure you're measuring the right things (inputs)

CRM failure rates are high so don't allow technology to hijack your customer relationship management strategy! Technology is merely an enabler of processes and service levels.

Real leadership is needed and executive commitment to CX (Customer eXperience) is essential... message to CEO: You need to change your job descprition; obsessively focus on CX rather than CRM.

If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' and ‘share’ buttons below. This article was originally published in LinkedIn here where you can comment. Also follow the award winning LinkedIn blog here or visit Tony’s leadership blog at his keynote speaker website: www.TonyHughes.com.au.

Main image photo by Flickr: Dallas Krentzel