Dimensional Research recently reported an impressive 78 percent of employers planning to deploy tablets across their organization in the next year (83 percent of which chose the iPad). But oddly more than half have yet to define a clear implementation strategy.

“We talk to companies all the time where they literally purchased iPads for their team with no idea of what they were going to be doing with them,” said Matthew Suggs, vice president of enterprise sales at Mediafly Inc., a company that develops iPad sales tools.

With all the hype around the iPad, it’s easy to imagine the device as some sort of silver bullet for increasing sales. But unfortunately, an iPad alone won’t be a game changer for your team. Like most technology investments, a clear rollout strategy is needed to ensure management gets the most bang for their buck. So this week, I set out to find experts top tips for getting the most from their Apple upgrade.

1. Monitor and Adjust Usage

SAVO Group Senior Marketing Director Dan Schleifer said sales management should articulate clear usage goals for their iPad-equipped team and use the results to measure effectiveness. This “governance plan” should monitor such sales activities as deals closed, training materials opened and competitive analyses viewed. In the case of a new product launch, this information will ensure the team is correctly focusing their outside sales efforts. These events are often company’s biggest revenue growth initiative of the year, but also frequently fail in the field due to low adoption.

2. Go Beyond PowerPoint

The iPad’s vivid display is one of its most powerful assets. But UpSync Sales Vice President Gary Galush said just using the device to run standard PowerPoint presentations is a “missed opportunity.” His company– and solutions from MediaFly and Showpad– provide easy-to-use and deploy apps for making and sharing sales presentations in the field. These can draw on images, videos, PDFs, HTML 5 and other digital assets that are most relevant to client.

“It’s all about delivering the your brand’s message based on that specific customers’ needs,” said Meghan Lopresto, vice president of multichannel marketing and sales force analytics for The Cement Bloc.

3. Invest in a Custom Solution

Ease of use is one of the biggest drivers in ensuring your team will use their iPad for more than reading the newspaper. Many companies make the mistake of launching an app that handles one business problem, while other functions are still performed with varying tools.

“Companies that build a bunch of disparate apps find it’s not sustainable, then have to rebuild one platform and end up spending way more then they should,” Excellis Interactive Marketing Director Molly Maple said.

1. Check/Update It Often

Have it with you or have it easily accessible (i.e. via mobile access). Keep it up-to-date so that it reflects the changes in your selling environment. Reviewing the plan helps you see what you are missing; key players, articulating important aspects of your offering, responding to important opportunities and threats.

2. Have It in Your Sales Force Automation System

This enables you to easily refer to, review and update the plan. It also makes it visible to other members of the team so they can help you achieve your objectives.

3. Review It with Management

Getting management input helps you catch something you missed and keeps the plan fresh. Further, this enables you to get management support to get access to the resources needed as identified in your plan.

4. Use It in Your Quarterly Business Review

Rather than either starting from scratch to prepare your quarterly business review, or starting with an out of date plan from last quarter, using your current plan saves time. Many of our clients present their quarterly business reviews out of our territory and account planning apps, saving additional time.

The “Advance” is the analogous measure in sales. An Advance occurs when a potential buyer commits to do something specific in a specific time frame that moves the sale forward. If you earn more Advances and progress through the sales process more readily, you will win more sales. So, the Advance is the key leading indicator of sales success.

It is important to create a clear picture of the stages in the sales process and the key milestones within each stage. Management’s role is to use this to help the sales team navigate from one stage to the next; achieving more Advances more efficiently.

To track progress, you can create reports that show:

• Account, opportunity
• Stage in the sales process
• Most recent Advance
• Length of time in current stage
• Revenue produced
• Revenue potential

By measuring how your team manages the process and where they get stock, you can glean powerful insights. For example:

• Prospects to target and which to avoid
• Products that your team is having trouble selling
• “Stall points” in the sales process
• Who gets stuck more often and why

With this understanding in place, you can identify what solutions are needed, such as: adopting clear target prospect criteria (i.e. by product line), improving territory and strategic account management/ planning, leveraging best practices, providing coaching, training and/or selling tools.

Take these 5 steps:

1. Identify the stages and milestones in your sales process.
2. Train your team on how to most efficiently and effectively progress from step to step.
3. Measure Advances achieved.
4. Identify the top issues constraining progress through the sales process.
5. Provide solutions (see the paragraph directly above).

Use this clear measure of progress (the Advance) to drive sales success!

However, the effort is well worth it as it can dramatically:

• Increase sales
• Improve predictability / forecast accuracy
• Enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness
• Drive team effectiveness

The following process helps people rapidly embrace the adoption of new tools and methods. Missing any of these steps slows progress and increases time and cost. Though this process largely sequential, some steps can occur in parallel.

1. CREATE URGENCY

• Identify user needs and how you help them do their job faster, easier , better
• Understand competing pressures area

Obstacles:

• Dismissing the approach because, “we tried it before and it didn’t work”
• Organizational arrogance
• Complacency due to lack of visible crisis, low performance standards and insufficient feedback perpetuates clinging to the status quo
• Thinking steps in this process can be skipped
• Not clarifying how the tool solves the problem and improves results

2. GATHER SPONSORSHIP

• Put together a leadership team with enough power to lead the change process
• Ensure the sponsorship group works together toward a common objective

Obstacles:

• Underestimating the challenges in engaging adoption and the importance of a strong, guiding coalition
• Trust issues among members of the sponsorship team
• Not addressing conflicting metrics, goals and agendas
• Cultural issues, including arrogance and the “not invented here” syndrome

3. DEVELOP A VISION AND STRATEGY

• Create a vision to guide the effort
• Develop strategies for achieving the vision
• Optional: establish a pilot group for testing and fine-tuning the approach
• Establish clear metrics and how / when they will be measured

Obstacles:

• Underestimating the importance of having  and selling a clear vision and reason for the change… and the role it plays in helping to direct, align and inspire action
• Failing to emphasize the value of individual and team learning for on-going success
• Cultural issues, i.e. taking short cuts or insufficient focus on any one initiative

4. COMMUNICATE THE OBJECTIVE

• Communicate the intended outcome and why you are excited about it
• Use every vehicle possible to constantly communicate
• Make sure sponsors and managers model the expected behavior

Obstacles:

• Not clarifying what each person needs to do, the support they will get and how performance will be measured
• Thinking you have communicated enough
• The sponsorship / management teams don’t examine their actions / “walk-the talk”
• Leadership loses enthusiasm for this project and moves on to the next new idea

5. ENSURE ACTION

• Have people use the new tools
• Remove obstacles that undermine adoption
• Encourage and reward risk-taking and nontraditional approaches
• Provide needed support and promote learning
• Monitor progress and act quickly to improve adoption

Obstacles:

• Allowing barriers and breakdowns to block use of new methods and tools
• Failure to examine existing systems and create new ones that support the vision and eliminate those that don’t
• Insufficient leadership engagement to generate broad based action
• Resistance to change and fear of undesirable consequences

6. PUBLICIZE SHORT-TERM WINS

• Measure performance and identify “wins”
• Engage management to enable success of the new approach
• Visibly recognize and reward people who achieved wins and made them possible

Obstacles:

• Failing to focus on short-term wins
• Lack of celebration, acknowledgement and rewards for those who achieve the wins
• Without feedback, the team assumes no progress has been made

7. BROADEN ADOPTION AND CHANGE

• Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
• Use increased credibility to change systems and procedures that don’t support the change
• Reinvigorate the process with new initiatives and change agents
• Hire, promote, and develop people / leaders who can implement the needed changes

Obstacles:

• Declaring victory too soon
• Not leveraging the progress already made to broaden adoption
• Failing to connect specific new behaviors and attitudes with improved performance
• Lacking the necessary leadership and management capabilities

You need this kind of process to ensure you get the results from new software tools that you are expecting!

This was informed by John Kotter’s Leading Change.

1. Analyze your business/ territory/strategic account
2. Understand what drives customers to buy
3. Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)
4. Determine your objectives
5. Develop strategies to accomplish your goals
6. Engage the resources you need
7. Create and work your plan

These articles explain how to do it:

How to Write a Sales Territory Plan

How to Write a Strategic Account Plan

They will enable you to make better use of your time and resources and produce better results, including:

• More Opportunities
• Shorter sales cycles
• Larger deal size
• Higher win rates

Good Selling!

Ron

Why create a new plan? Things change! You need to take into account:
• Changes in the economy and regulatory environment
• Changes in your industry/geography/vertical market
• New products/new technology
• How to improve your approach
• Incorporating new skills and tools

Good planning enables you to maximize the results from your territory/strategic account. By adopting and implementing good planning and selling methods, one of my clients:
• Increased Bookings by 43%
• Boosted Margins by 10%
• Improved Market Share by 53%
• Increased Productivity per Salesperson by 50%
• Grew Win/Loss Ratio by 131%

Having a plan enables you to manage a great deal of complexity. This includes understanding the market, focusing on the customer problems you can solve, selecting your best solution, and managing the internal and partner resources necessary to meet your objectives. It enables you to make the best use of your time and resources by connecting strategy to key tasks.

Using the plan, you make sure the tasks get implemented the time frame required to win. Through it, you give appropriate attention to the critical path – the steps that have the most impact on producing the result on time. Without a plan, it is easy to omit a key element and dramatically compromise your results. Further, it enables you to respond effectively to quick changes in your territory and accounts.

The bottom line is that you need a good plan backed with persistent effort to maximize your results in your territory and win competitive business opportunities.

It is exciting to be considered with a group including:

• Salesforce.com’s Data.com (formerly Jigsaw)
• InsideView
• Xobni

Check it out at www.topsalesawards.com and, if you feel so inclined, please vote.

Thanks and Happy Holidays to you and yours!

You search the web and discover potential solutions to your problem.

You ask colleagues and post a question on your social media groups.

However, there are so many tools out there; it is hard to know which one will be best for you.

Don’t despair, there is help!

This help comes from five types of sources;

• Industry analysts
• Industry and technology sites and newsletters
• Platform and tool vendor sites
• Third party reviews
• User reviews, forums and social platforms

Industry analysts, such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc. have long been helpful in analyzing and positioning product offerings by segment. They provide a very helpful big picture view and help you shape your thinking re what to look for in a tool in a category.

Industry and technology review sites and newsletters provide valuable perspective, including overview and in-depth product reviews. These include Techcrunch, Cnet, PC and software magazine sites and industry newsletters, such as the one from Sandhill.com.

Platform vendors often provide marketplaces of tools that run in on their platform by category. Two examples of this are CRM vendors (i.e. Salesforce.com’s AppExchange) and the Apple Store. This makes it easy to find tools that do what you’re looking for. Most of them also provide user ratings. Tool vendors themselves often provide product positioning and comparisons as well as testimonials and case studies.

Another very helpful resource is third-party reviews. There are sites that review software tools in specific categories and sum up each tool’s strengths and where they best fit. A good example of this is SmartSellingTools.com .

Finally, there are user reviews, forums and user perspectives posted on social sites. Naturally these are very helpful, provided the user’s perspective is representative of your needs. It is often hard to know the person’s perspective and what issues they were trying to resolve.

As you go through this process, these resources help you deepen your understanding of what is out there and what criteria will enable you to make the best selection and produce the results you need. They make it much easier to make a good decision in a world of increasing choices.

1. Connect with buyers- respond quickly, engage them via video (live, on-line, in email).
2. Ensure sales and marketing align to identify, target and touch empowered buyers.
3. Engage users. Make it easy for the to get full value from the tool/method.
4. Identify and implement the critical few strategies and metrics that drive results.
5. Integrate in one place your tools and methods that drive results (i.e. your CRM).
   
6. Communicate across boundaries (internal functions, organizations).
   

In order to stay on top of these trends, I need to:

1. Use video more (prerecorded and live) because it brings back the person-to-person connection that is getting lost in today’s selling environment.
2. Build support connections  that are easy to generate (i.e. through networking, acquaintances) and expand my reach and impact- by being more active in LinkedIn, twitter… and facebook.
3. Participate in and help develop the value of online communities by delivering valuable content, asking questions that illuminate and sharing my experience.
4. Manage the conflicting priorities in a world that is moving at the “speed of thought.”

In order to gain the insights you need to create a winning plan, you must ask the right questions. Use this checklist as a guide. Use your plan in your strategic account reviews and to manage your account team.

1. Analyze your Target Account’s Business

Start with what is going on in your account’s business.

• What are the key trends in their industry?
• Who are their top prospects and customers?
• What are the top issues facing their customers?
• What are the critical trends in the geography?
• What is reflected in their financial reports and news about them?

2. Understand what is Driving the Account

You must understand their objectives and challenges.

• What are their strategic initiatives?
• What are the characteristics of their high-payoff customers/prospects?
• Are there verticals that they are winning in more than others? Why?
• What “pain” or business issues do they solve?
• What is their competitive position?
• What is their purchase history and decision-making process?

3. Clarify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT)

Conduct a SWOT analysis that examines how you can help this account.

• What Strengths can they benefit from? For example, a unique business model or capabilities.
• Which Weaknesses do you need to respond to? This includes the strengths of competitive and alternative solutions.
• Which Opportunities in the marketplace will you take advantage of… and help them take advantage of? How do you uniquely meet their compelling needs?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against? Consider competitive moves, changes in technology, industry and regulatory standards.

4. Determine your Selling Approach

Consolidate the above insights the critical strategies and actions necessary to succeed.

• How do you help them accomplish their strategic objectives?
• What is your unique selling (value) proposition?
• Based on your SWOT, what are the critical few strategies to win in the account?
• What type of opportunities will you concentrate on?
• How can you leverage your differentiators? (Sales approach can be a differentiator.)
• What is your strategy to leverage current successes?

5. Engage the Resources you Need

Enroll the people and gather the knowledge you need.

• Which internal resources have the skills/connections you need?
• Who inside the account can help you win?
• Are there external resources that can support you (partners, people “in the know”)?
• What additional product/industry information do you need? What sources can provide it?
• How could you improve your selling and account management skills?

6. Create and Work your Plan

Use your plan as a guide to proactively produce your intended results.

• What are the high-leverage actions?
• Which resources are needed for each task?
• What are the due dates and key milestones?
• Do you take action and update the plan on a regular basis?
• Are you engaging your management, internal and partner resources?

If you don’t plan your work, you can’t work your plan. Winging it is the best way to lose a big opportunity you could have won!

Good luck and Good Selling!