Upcoming OPM public workshop Feb 11
Sales Training:
You’ve probably been to many sales training workshops and sales seminars that present methods for winning sales. Sales tactics, different ways to approach a potential customer, and the kinds of questions you should ask are all important aspects of your personal development as a sales professional. You can never sharpen your skills too much when it comes to keeping your edge as a salesperson. It’s all about winning more sales!
Winning more sales overall:
It’s important to have the skills and experience to be able to win an individual sale, but have you considered your whole portfolio of sales opportunities? After all, the bottom line is the sum of all deals, so how can you grow your bottom line without getting too distracted by any one deal? Using a good CRM tool is essential, but that won’t necessarily help you decide how to manage your time most effectively.
How do you know which of your opportunities deserves your attention today?
Which of your many potential deals do you focus on first? The one that is easiest to close? The one that represents the most revenue? The one that you are most comfortable in selling?
Should you work primarily on new leads or business for existing customers? Should you spend your time fighting against your biggest competitors, or go after the low hanging fruit? How do you maximize your overall performance as a salesperson?
This is where OPM (Opportunity Portfolio Management) comes in: to help you build a framework for understanding your overall sales opportunity portfolio and prioritize your efforts to get the most out of it. It’s all about winning more sales overall!
There are still a few spots remaining for our next OPM Public Workshop next week, Thursday February 11, 2010, in Toronto.
Click here to learn more about OPM Sales Training
Click here to register for OPM Sales Methodology Public Workshop
The attendee feedback is in for the 1 day public SalesWays OPM Workshop held last month at the Skytek facilities in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, and by all accounts the event was a great success. Everyone involved felt it was a great course to help understand the fundamentals of the selling process, and how sales people need to manage their portfolio of opportunities to maximize the potential of success. Below is a quote from one of the attendees of the workshop that touches on some of the benefits gained from attending the course.
“We attended the SalesWays Workshop on October 28th. The course is excellent, and very different from other training courses. SalesWays OPM has a framework that will help us to standardize sales practices, and ensure that no business opportunity will fall through the cracks! I would highly recommend this course to anyone looking to improve sales.”
- Gerry Cellucci, Yorkland Controls
Good news – the next session is scheduling for January, in Toronto. Click here for more information!
We have begun a number of exciting new projects here at SalesWays recently that I wanted to share with the world.
For a long time now, we have been aware of the need for individual salespeople and small teams of salespeople to have an improved method for managing their sales opportunities. To date, we have aimed at helping sales people and sales organizations through education with our books (SADR, OPM), training courses (OPM), Sales Cycle Manager products, and CRM integrations.
Our existing suite of tools for the solo salesperson or small sales teams targeted Windows PCs (Sales Cycle Manager for Windows, Sales Cycle Manager for Excel) and Lotus Notes (Sales Cycle Manager for Lotus Notes). Our new project underway is to extend Sales Cycle Manager to mobile device platforms such as iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. SalesWays support for mobile devices such as BlackBerry has existed in some CRM integrations (eg. Ardexus MODE, Ardexus WebMODE), but will now be available to solo salespeople regardless of their CRM system.
As part of this new effort we are looking for talented, motivated developers who have experience developing mobile applications. Some of the key skills we are looking for are;
- Mobile Development (eg. Java (Eclipse), xCode, C++)
- Web development experience (eg. HTML5, Java, Javascript, Flash (Action script), ASP.NET, Perl/PHP/Python
- Relational database experience/knowledge (eg. MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, DB2)
- Knowledge or experience in building on-demand web based applications
If you are excited by the thought of developing cutting edge applications for business and would like to join us in our efforts, please check out our job posting at http://salesways.com/careers.php
Welcome to the new SalesWays web site!
Who are we? SalesWays represents new, breakthrough ideas on how sales people approach selling. Our patented sales methodology, SalesWays OPM, can be found at the core of our books, software, and sales training; helping salespeople treat their opportunities like an investment portfolio, ultimately spending less time on winning more business.
Our previous site focused on our first book, Sales Automation Done Right (SADR), which introduced an innovative selling methodology born from the idea of how the computer can radically improve sales effectiveness. The sales methodology has advanced much further, and now stands alone outside the sphere of technology. It has been the subject of a sales training course for over 3 years, refined over a decade across thousands of sales people.
Today, we have a widely available book, software programs, and training courses. We have a lot of exciting developments in the works:
- a second book, OPM, that will focus primarily on the sales method
- more software platforms
- additional training options
We look forward to connecting with sales professionals, trainers, and anyone generally interested in the process of selling!
Sales Automation Done Right (SADR) is Now Available as an eBook
The world of eCommerce is truly amazing. It took SalesWays Press several months to publish the paper version of Sales Automation Done Right and arrange distribution through Amazon.Com. Publishing the eBook version was much easier.
The first task was finding a reliable partner to convert the manuscript into the forms required by the eBook stores we had targeted to distribute. These are MobiPocket, a French company acquired by Amazon a couple of years ago; eReader, a subsidiary of Motricity and the Palm Software Store (operated by eReader). MobiPocket has its own proprietary format for text and illustrations, as does eReader.
We chose Scribe, based in Philadelphia and Miami to do the conversions. David Rech, Andy Brown and their teams worked with us to ensure that the book’s vital illustrations would be faithfully reproduced and usable on small PDA and smart phone screens. Scribe accomplished this by the use of magnified images that can be scrolled left and right, up and down to view all the information. They worked with us to create a system of hot links between chapters, sections and to illustrations to allow readers to move quickly to the information they need. They did a great job!
We worked with Jeremie Le Proust in Paris to upload the book into the MobiPocket eBook Store, and to solve a humorous problem that evolved over their use of the “customers who bought this book also bought” category. It seemed that the first few purchasers of SADR were also interested in purchasing other material that didn’t quite fit the same genre. We were hesitant to move forward with an inappropriate association linked to our book. We explained our position to Jeremie and he readily fixed it.
We worked with Jim Harvey, the head of content and developer services at Motricity to keep our project on track with eReader, and with Sarah Janoch at Publishing Dimensions, who manages the product library for eReader. Sarah helped us clear the last hurdles and publish versions on eReader and the Palm Store just as 1996 came to an end.
Some books are too valuable to leave at home on the shelf. The obvious problem is that most are too heavy and too bulky to carry around all of the time. The best example for medical professionals is the PDR, the phone book sized Physician’s Desk Reference that lists critical information about pharmaceuticals and drug interactions. Until eBooks arrived, these were impossible to carry around. Now they live comfortably in smart phones, PDAs and notebook computers, always available for reference at a moment’s notice. As eBooks, they can be digitally searched, bookmarked and notated without damaging the pages. Information links can make them even more useful.
SADR is the PDR for sales professionals. The paper version is not as big, but still too bulky to easily carry around all of the time. SADR is my CRM and sales automation bible. I refer to its glossary of CRM terminology frequently, and have book marks in about fifty places to help me when I’m planning marketing campaigns, plotting selling strategies, managing opportunities and looking for ideas.
To celebrate the publication of our first eBook, SalesWays is offering free registration codes for our SalesCycle Manager Software for Palm and Windows to purchasers of the eBook from any of the three publishers. Download a trial version of the software from the SalesWays Store, and send us the information requested in the registration instructions along with a copy of your sales receipt. As always, the Excel version is already available free of charge.
The combination of the SADR eBook and Sales Cycle Manager software is the perfect combination to empower you to unleash the potential of the SalesWays methodology and apply it to your personal needs.
Opportunity Portfolio Management (OPM) is the sales training course using the methods and ideas that are mostly (but not entirely) described in my first book, Sales Automation Done Right. Most of the analytical stuff from OPM is encapsulated in a range of mature SalesWays software products bearing the Sales Cycle Manager name.
Sales Automation Done Right has a chapter on new technologies that are having a huge impact on selling. The point that I tried to make here was that good sales methodology developed with technology in mind would fit all the diverse new technology tools that are springing up so quickly. Two important ones are mobile computing and subscription CRM. We’ll talk about mobile in a future entry, but right now, I’m pleased to say that Sales Cycle Manager is now available for Salesforce.com on their AppExchange platform.
On page 248 of SADR, I show the Sales Advisor Dashboard embedded in Salesforce.com. I must admit that we did this in 2003, before Salesforce.com had fully developed their AppExchange technology. We saw the potential here and literally hacked our stuff in. That experiment proved that the methodology fitted well within the Salesforce.com CRM framework.
But now AppExchange is here, and is a wonderful way for third party developers to make their material available to Salesforce.com users. The technology is solid, has the backing of Salesforce, and the marketing message to show what’s available—this should be a win-win situation for both Salesforce and their partner community.
I did an audio-visual presentation on the new AppExchange product, which you may be interested in seeing here.
Jeffrey Barrie was instrumental in getting me to finish writing “Sales Automation Done Right.” He has also spearheaded the effort of getting the book, our software, and the SalesWays web site translated into Russian, where he is leading a major initiative to promote SalesWays methodology in that country. His story is fascinating, and I’m posting a blog entry that he recently penned for the Palm Addicts web site that tells of how he and I originally connected over five years ago.
 I am a consultant with dozens of potential clients at any given time, only a few of which get converted into paying customers. I am not a salesman, and need all the help I can get to “close” my opportunities. Several years ago, I surfed the Internet looking for Palm software that could help me manage my consulting opportunities. I searched PalmGear and Handango for hits on “CRM” and “sales automation,” came up with nine listings, and began downloading and testing them all out. The prices were all affordable, between $20 and $40, and they all seemed to have similar features.
  One, in particular, caught my attention because it not only offered to actually become my personal sales assistant, guide me through the important stages of each deal, and give me advice on what to do and when to do it along the way – but to thoroughly educate me on the whys and wherefores. There was an entire system in place: a sales methodology specially adapted to personal computers (and PDAs!), a 300 page book explaining it in language I could relate my needs to, and Palm software (with a Windows client) to use at first as a learning aid, and then to manage my own sales opportunities.
I’m pretty aggressive, and tend to come on too strong to perspective clients. The book calmed me down by instructing me to set the average time it took, from the time I met a client to the time he or she made a decision, into the system as the “length of the sales cycle.” It then broke that down into three parts: 50% of the time to “probe” the perspective client for information on his or her needs, 40% to “prove” that my solution was the most appropriate, and 10% to “close” the deal. Then it told me to assign high, medium or low marks to three questions: “will it happen” (is the customer really serious), “will I get it” (will he or she do it with me) and “when will it happen” (what’s the client’s decision deadline). With just these four factors, the software was able to prioritize my opportunities, advise me how to handle them, and in what order. There were other bells and whistles, but these were the basics.
I was so intrigued by all of this that I began writing to Keith Thompson, the inventor of the methodology and author of the book, and eventually met with him in Toronto. At that time the book was only about three quarters finished and a “beta” down load from his website. I kept bugging him to get the book finished, and to publish it in Palm readable format so that I could carry it with me as an easy reference. He said he’d get the book finished, but if I wanted a Palm version I’d have to do it myself. I took him up on that, found Scribe in Philadelphia to do the digital conversion I was amazed at how much more useful the result was than a paper book, with extensive hotlinks to chapters, subjects and illustrations, and the ability to bookmark and make page notes while working in parallel with the Palm software. I chose MobiPocket to publish the eBook in universaly PDA/Blackberry/smart phone format, and the whole package was really complete.
Reference books in digital format, when extensive linkages are included, become amazingly more productive than books on paper. This is especially true for dictionaries and thesauruses. Now, when I read eBooks on my Palm and find an unfamiliar word, it’s a matter of a stylus tap to find its definition or more about it. I rarely went to the trouble of doing that in my paper book days.
The company is Salesways, the book is Sales Automation Done Right by Keith Thompson and the software is Sales Cycle Manager, available on both PalmGear and Handango. I’ve gotten so involved with all of this that I’ve had all of it translated into Russian!
I wrote in an earlier post about my love/hate thing with Microsoft Excel. I hate it when it is used as a company wide solution for CRM, and I love it as a tool to analyze the data from a true CRM technology tool.
Well, I hope this one does not look like I’m backing off from my earlier statements. In sales automation done right, page 249, I deliberately introduced the idea that Excel could be used as a solid platform to use a lot of the sales methodology described in the book, in a sales automation application (SFA not CRM!) for the solo salesperson. The screen shot was from an early prototype Excel template in which we were testing out the ways that SADR handles the sales cycle.
I’m pleased to announce that SalesWays now offers a free beta release of the Excel Edition of Sales Cycle Manager, which should be downloadable as this post goes up. Many of the ways to characterize the sales cycle are just pure math. When did it start? When does it end? How much time in between? Calculate the three skill phases. Show where we are now in the cycle. Show the interactions that have happened. Excel is pretty good at doing that. When I thought about it, I figured that Excel could be a useful tool to get this done, so I mapped out a crude prototype and sent it to the SalesWays developers. They jazzed it up and it’s available for anyone to use—free of charge.
Although SalesWays can provide this free, I don’t want to downplay its power in managing a portfolio of opportunities. But this is a pure SFA product more oriented to the solo salesperson or small sales teams. It could be significantly better than the tools that they are currently using, and cheaper. It will certainly inject a dose of uniformity, consistency, and discipline into the way opportunities are managed.
Why give this away? Because we are so convinced that these new sales ideas can benefit everyone in selling that we are prepared to give it away to get it into as many hands as possible. It’s conceivable that we could create a ground swell of opinion to drive our more expansive enterprise software products and sales training programs into the organization.
If we find a firm following for this product, we will definitely consider ongoing development (adding SCMgr Expert functionality). Please try it and let us know what you think.
|
|
