december 2016 Modern Selling MARKETING in the MICROSOFT DYNAMICS COMMUNITY

Transcription

1 december 2016 Modern Selling MARKETING in the MICROSOFT DYNAMICS COMMUNITY

2 this month s topic... modern selling Are people buying what you re selling? In today s modern selling world, what sort of process does it take to make closing the actual conclusion? According to HubSpot, if you build a sales process so strong, you never even have to use a closing technique. Quota will be within your reach month after month. A Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Bill Caskey explains further that the sales game is the same, but the rules h ave changed. What used to be make the sale is now about educating your customer, and it is a team effort between marketing and sales to get there. In this report, three seasoned Microsoft Dynamics sales professionals share their experiences and processes that work for them. In addition to noticing more of a blurry line between sales and marketing, you ll understand why self-education is of utmost importance in providing value to prospective buyers.

3 giuseppe ianni Sana Commerce Industry Knowledge Giuseppe Ianni is the director of business development at Sana Commerce and has been in the Microsoft Dynamics channel for more than 11 years. The first two years of his career were dedicated solely to educating himself on the industry. It was my day-to-day process to learn as much as possible about what our business offered and what our solutions did, Giuseppe shares. Not only did he study ecommerce solutions from front to back, but he also hit the phones, expanded his circle, and read up on industry reports from Forrester and Gartner. You can only fake it for so long. Your solution isn t unique. Anyone out there is offering the same thing. You need to bring that to the next level, Giuseppe continues, Don t just know your product, know your competitors solutions, know the industry, and don t make the mistake of just talking about yourself and your company. Giuseppe now spends more time on where the industry is going. He stresses the importance of educating yourself as a salesperson, but that it doesn t stop with you. Giuseppe explains, Today, it s more about educating people on what they will need. 90% of the market place needs to be educated on: 1» This is where you re at. 2» This is where you need to be. 3» This is how you get there. What s even more successful for Giuseppe than sales webinars is sharing industry stats and explaining how those align with the solution they offer. His team pinpoints a few industries and customer profiles to expand on and then makes that available via whitepaper. Giuseppe then utilizes LinkedIn and Twitter to share these resources with customers and prospects. When training new salespeople, Giuseppe gives them a three-stage baseline of a sales process: 1» Listen. 2» Ask leading questions. 3» Offer the solution. You can t very well show a solution if you don t listen and ask questions first. Giuseppe adds, You need to deliver value upfront by speaking to a customer s specific needs. Giuseppe concludes that as important as it is to meet your quota, you will be much more successful after you educate yourself on the solution and industry. Take the time to put education first and reap the benefits.

4 Patrick HoDo Red Maple Two-in-One Personality I really have to be two people, Patrick Hodo, explains about his role as CTO at Red Maple. Having sold technology for 19 years, Patrick has found a good balance between playing the geeky technical nerd (his words, not ours) and being an engaging teacher in the marketing and sales process. Prospects want and need to know the technical aspects of Red Maple s solution. It can get rather complicated, and as a result, Patrick helps close many sales in his role. He explains, One of our Partners said that companies usually bring in two people for sales calls, but I m proud to be a two-in-one personality. A few things have changed since Patrick began his career, one of which is the shift to making sales calls and demos over the internet instead of in person. You used to be onsite with the prospect, and it was easier to gauge the interest of your audience because you were face to face, says Patrick. During online demos, Patrick shares that he really has to work toward verbal feedback. It may be easier to show business processes but a little more difficult to engage with the customer personally. Conducting demos used to be about showing prospects what the software does, and it was up to the customer to figure out if it would work for them or not. The demos I do now are much more a perfect concept. Prospects want to see their data and processes. Patrick continues, There is a lot more preparation, but in a good way. When a customer can see their data and their process, it makes it easier to move forward. The only issue now is that with larger companies, no ONE person does the whole process. So, you have to be able to show how you can make one task easier and quicker, instead of one all-around process. That specific value proposition of streamlining tasks is what Patrick thinks is so unique about the Microsoft Dynamics channel. Technology solves problems, and if you can fix the problems with a solution for the prospect, the close should come naturally, Patrick shares. Gone are the days you can go in and say, What is it going to take to get you into software today? It doesn t work that way anymore. Price doesn t hold as much weight as answering if the software will work or not work for their business. Before addressing prospects challenges, Patrick shares that he and his team develop trust online by sharing industry trends in the areas they cover. We want customers to say, You guys know the business. Being known as a thought leader only helps us gain our customers and prospects trust, Patrick explains.

5 kevin armstrong Tribridge Evolution of Grassroots Selling When Kevin Armstrong, vice president of sales at Tribridge, started his career in the late 90s, the role of sales looked a lot different than today s market. We got our education mainly via newspaper and business journals. It was what people refer to as grassroots selling; we paid for targeted contact lists, regularly conducted call blitzes, and smiled and dialed all day long. Back then, we had the information buyers required, unlike today with the internet being so pervasive, says Kevin. Research has stated that 57% of the selling process is done before prospects even reach out to you. So, you have to provide value quickly if you expect to be the one they will buy from. As Kevin recalls, salespeople used to be the the single source for pricelists and information, but now buyers are conducting their own online research. Kevin adds, Now, more than ever, salespeople need to identify the value they can provide to the process early on. A lot of that value comes from deep industry knowledge. Being exceptionally educated in an industry helps raise the personal value equation and gets you in the door. If you re a generalist in today s world, you re going to have challenges, says Kevin. Industry expertise can come from years of experience, and in the Microsoft Dynamics channel, most of the salespeople Kevin knows have been in the business for years. The deeper you are into your career, the more difficult it can be to reinvent yourself. Despite that, the salespeople who succeed in today s market must have the desire to learn and evolve in their approach, especially now that cloud has changed the decision making process, Kevin shares. A timely example of sales evolution is the recent launch of Dynamics 365, which Kevin calls a greater challenge than Y2K. Not only are you talking to buyers coming from the platform perspective (which brings on an entirely different conversation), but this is one product where Microsoft s marketing engine is ahead of development, Kevin adds. We are learning Dynamics 365 and coming up to speed at the same time as the Microsoft field. We are all assessing the differences between the Enterprise and Business Editions and making sure that we are educating buyers around the solution fit and potential functional gaps. When it comes down to it, people still buy from those they know and trust. For you to be a trusted advisor, you must eliminate risk for the buyer very early on.

6 nuggets advice of Kevin arms new reps with these golden nuggets of advice: Be the first to qualify, be credible, and earn the buyers trust. Qualification never stops. Be in the RIGHT deals. Walk away once you ve reached diminishing returns. Manage it by close ratio: close ratio high, revenue is there. Always understand the compelling event. Sales people can focus on budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT) all they want, but you have to articulate the difference it s going to make to a person s business: Make them more money, avoid risk, justify the expenditure and disruption to their business. Even though Dynamics 365 is in somewhat unchartered waters, Kevin is proactively ramping up his sales and marketing teams with 30-, 60- and 90-day sales readiness plans. These plans include ongoing conversations among sales reps and an internal consortium of resources, such as factsheets, videos and a company-wide frequently asked questions (FAQ) document. Kevin explains, It s easy for our sales team to understand the concepts of the solution, but how do they put it into reality? The entire team is gathering questions they hear from people every day and as we refine those answers, we will make the FAQ external-facing. Kevin feels fortunate to have what he calls the best marketing team in the business. He has been working with Eve Cline, vice president of marketing at Tribridge, for many years, and the duo has established an industry-focused structure that aligns perfectly with meeting their sales and marketing goals. When we aligned our sales efforts by four main industries, we decided to realign marketing that way as well. Each sales team has a marketing partner that covers the industry and thus has deep knowledge of that particular space, Kevin explains. This setup has led to more qualified leads because the credible industry professional is the first person engaging with the prospect. This has helped Tribridge establish that trust and provide value very early on in the engagement process. In addition to an effective sales and marketing structure, Kevin and his team use social media in many ways to get the word out about their webinars, discuss topical issues and identify relationships that can help further along any opportunity. Kevin recalls a great example, Via social media, we noticed that a person from one of our alliance partners was directly connected with a CFO of a company we had a demo scheduled with. We reached out to our alliance about the connection, educated him on the initiative, and he put in a good word for us before our demo. This solidified winning that deal before our meeting with the CFO.

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