MANAGEMENT
Wins lead to more wins, so make sure they get on the board.
TOPIC 3:
HOW WILL WE WIN? (PLAN AND COMMIT) Whether at the start or end of the agenda, every QBR includes a fore- cast discussion…and commitment. This is where gut and reality combine. A manager must decide whether their rep’s plan delivers confidence. If the rep cannot commit to the quota you need – or the commitment feels more like a dream than a promise – you’ve got work to do. Questions include: • What deals are in your Commit? Most likely? Best case?
• For every single deal in Commit, walk through results to date and the plan to close.
• Cherry pick 10 percent to 20 percent of Commit deals to pres- sure test activity levels. Activity should include decision-maker roles, meeting cadence, call and email frequency, and responsive- ness of the prospect. A rep with low activity will obviously lose, but a rep with high activity and low prospect responsiveness will also lose. Dig in.
• When, inevitably, some Commit deals fall through, what Most Likely and Best Case deals will take their place? Are they getting sufficient attention?
• Where can the rep find new deals able to be opened and closed in the same quarter? We become so accustomed to the three- or six-month sales cycle that it can become a self-fulfill- ing prophecy.
If these questions seem to border on intimidating, they are. An ongoing challenge for managers is to probe enough to forecast accurately and coach effectively without frustrating their reps. Deal and activity question- ing has to be built on a foundation of trust – a manager’s trust about getting the straight story and a rep’s trust that a manager is there to help, not badger. You build trust over time, so
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managers will find a long pattern of effective one-on-ones will mean more effective, open QBRs. To support the manager’s need to understand selling activity, tools are emerging to automatically capture and summarize meeting cadence, email patterns, document flow, and call frequency. Sales managers should explore tools like this be- cause “trust, but verify” is a required sales mindset.
First-Line Manager Tips: • Learn the cadence of a successful deal. This starts with your com- pany’s sales process, but goes further into frequency of contact at each stage by the rep and, even more important, frequency of response by the prospect.
• Pressure test the forecast by mapping activity levels against committed deals. Even if your systems do not automatically capture activity levels, it’s worth probing and building your intu- ition. Our data shows two make- or-break trends: first, deals with insufficient activity get pushed instead of closing. And second, almost every rep spends exten- sive selling time on deals data science shows are unlikely to
SELLING TIP Complaints
If the customer has a beef, you urgently need to hear about it. Typically, complaint calls come in as follows: 1) Rep gets the call. 2) His supervisor gets the call. 3) The call comes through on the com- pany’s 800 number.
800-number availability can be a valuable early-warning service – but only if the call recipient follows through. Experience shows this doesn’t always happen. Do you check regularly to make sure 800-service com- plaint calls don’t fall through cracks in the system? P.S. The same is true of email and text messages – in fact, all the
responses available from social media. Don’t let any of them slip by your team.
— RAY DREYFACK
ever close. Your reps need your coaching…and, without data, you’ll be spouting platitudes.
IT’S TIME TO RUN A BETTER QBR Too many sales managers and reps think of QBRs as simple account reviews. They need to think of each QBR as the event where reps and sales management align on the territory plan and reps signal their ability to execute. Successful sales managers coach reps to analyze the past, pressure test their pipeline, and articulate clearly how they will exceed quota.
Since all of us in sales are goal oriented, I’ll give sales managers a concrete goal: your reps should look back on quarter after quarter of your QBRs and say, “They were the toughest meetings of my life, but I sold more and earned more because of them.”
Somrat Niyogi is vice president of busi- ness development at Clari. Prior to join- ing Clari, he founded and served as CEO of Stitch App (acquired by SugarCRM) and Miso (acquired by Dijit Media). Somrat earned his bachelor of science in computer science at the University of Texas at Austin. For more information, go to
www.clari.com.
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