editorial How You Can Win in a Tougher Market CSO Insights just…

editorial



How You Can Win in a Tougher Market
CSO Insights just released their 2008 Sales Optimization Survey.
The report uncovers the growing challenges of chief sales officers.
Here are some of the key facts from this 226-page report.
Who generates your leads? Research shows that sales reps gener-       What will help is a best-practice sharing system that harnesses
ate 50.1 percent of sales leads, while only 28.3 percent are creat-   the collective intelligence of your sales organization. The
ed by marketing. When you drill down, you'll find that when the       SavoGroup.com can connect all reps with the best practices of
burden of lead generation is taken off the shoulders of sales reps,   your top performers. Lucidera and Business Objects offer
they are effective at reinvesting those hours into selling-related    better analytics that drive better decisions.
activities. Lesson: Don't make your salespeople chase after leads.
Generate leads for them and make them chase after deals.              Do you sweep failures under the rug? An astonishing 59.7 per-
Action Tip: SalesGenie.com offers 100 free sales leads.               cent of companies fail to perform win/loss reviews because
                                                                      they say it's hard to find an objective evaluator within the
What happens to the deals in your pipeline? Of the 1,500 sales        company. The Sales Executive Council has assembled great
organizations surveyed, 48.7 percent say that their reps close the    know-how for conducting effective win/loss reviews. More
deals in their pipeline forecast. They lose 30.1 percent, but 21.2    companies rely on third parties to outsource this task. Turn
percent end up a "no decision." It's not a sin to lose a sale; the    win/loss reviews into a powerful sales improvement engine.
big sin is to lose prospects to a "no decision." Why? Because
these salespeople were chasing garbage trucks thinking they           Do you hire reps that succeed? An astonishing 48.6 percent of
were loaded with money. World-class sales organizations use           sales leaders admit that they are unable to consistently hire
score-cards that determine the value of each opportunity. This        reps that succeed in selling. Yet these leaders admit that their
simple tool can cut the garbage from your pipeline in half.           success depends on finding top-quality reps. Such compa-
                                                                      nies as Caliper, H.R. Chally, CRI Hire, and Employee Con-
Do your salespeople research prospects before each call? A whopping   tinuum offer state-of-the-art resources that can dramatically
47.9 percent of sales leaders were not satisfied with their sales-    improve your hiring decisions.
people's research efforts. Salespeople know that browsing the
Internet siphons off too much selling time. What do world-            What's your goal? Sales leaders described their top three goals
class sales teams do? They tap into such smart lead manage-           for 2008 as follows: 1) increase revenues, 2) increase sales
ment resources as Hoovers.com, InsideView.com, and                    effectiveness, and 3) increase market share. What stands in
Generateinc.com. These services can give your salespeople             the way of reaching your goals? Chances are, it is not the lack of
critical information just before the call. Action tip: Convert        insight; it is more often the lack of awareness of possibilities.
research time into belly-to-belly selling time.

Do your salespeople sell value and avoid discounting? The survey
says 43.8 percent of the sales organizations need improve-                          gerhard gschwandtner, publisher
ment in these areas. Your CRM solution isn't going to help.                         gg@sellingpower.com

10   MARCH 2008 SELLING POWER                                                                                                  JEFF WEINER