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5 B2B Sales Tips from Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”

April 24, 2012 in Prospecting, Sales Intelligence, Social Media for Sales, Social Media Tips, Social Selling, Uncategorized by Kevin Baldacci | 2 comments

Recently, I picked up an ancient and incredibly popular book: Sun Tzu’s Art of War. If you haven’t read it, I highly encourage you do as it only takes about an hour or so to read the book in its entirety.

There is no doubt B2B sales is in many cases, a battlefield (Do You Treat Your Sales Teams Like the Hunger Games?). Sales reps must become sales warriors and learn to train and strategize like that of Sun Tzu’s soldiers. Here are 5 excerpts from The Art of War that can teach us a thing or two about how to prepare and execute in B2B sales.

1. Know your prospects and know yourself

“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”

In this sense we are going to switch “enemy” with “potential prospect”. Knowing and understanding potential prospects is a crucial aspect of sales, however rarely executed correctly. The Aberdeen study on the Science of Sales Intelligence shows that 42% of companies have insufficient knowledge of the business needs of prospects.

One of the greatest tools a company can use in this case is sales intelligence. Sure, searching the web is a great resource, however, the Internet is simply becoming too large to find any real-time and accurate data. In one day, the Internet is filled with enough information to fill 168 million DVDs [Link]. Using tools such as connections and trigger alerts, a sales professional is delivered an incredible amount of real-time information to know and understand a potential prospect. In a word from Sun Tzu: in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.

2. Use preparation to swiftly overcome the competition

“To rely on rustics and not prepare is the greatest of crimes; to be prepared beforehand for any contingency is the greatest of virtues.”

In a Social Selling world, B2B buying decisions can start, move forward, and close business online or over the phone – without a single face-to-face meeting. According to a survey conducted by SiriusDecisions, 60% of the buyer’s journey is complete before it gets to sales. If a sales rep is not prepared with recommendations, comments, and referrals from people their prospect trusts, how will they be prepared to close a deal that happens online or over the phone?

Your prospects are out there talking, asking for advice and seeking solutions. If you do not prepare and seek out these people raising their hands for help, your competition will.

3. Choose Your Battles Wisely

“He who knows which battle he should engage in and which he should avoid, will win.”

You need to choose your battles wisely. There are battles you need to stay away from because they will suck up time and resources only to be shelved – just as there are buyers who you need to realize will never become your customers. It’s a simple fact of business; not everyone needs your product or service.

Part of being a salesperson is having to stay on top of your prospects and active sales opportunities. This means that you need to send emails, make phone calls and even connect with them online to stay top of mind with the decision makers.

As most experienced sales professionals know, buyers are busy and getting hit from all different angles addressing the needs of their company as well as being contacted by other sales people. If your buyer is not responding or continuing to blow you off, step back and reevaluate. Don’t be pushy. When you do enough of the right things, in time, the math will add up and the desired results will chase you.

This goes back to an earlier discussion in our blog a couple of weeks ago – Pushy or Persistent: Is There a Difference When it Comes to Salespeople?

4. sell with confidence and preparation

“The winner, after careful preparation, is confident he will win the war before he wages battle. The losers, without preparation, engage the enemy first, hoping they will win the fight.”

For a salesperson, the battlefield should not be the commission but the faith and passion he or she has for the product/service they are selling. A sales manager should lose hours of sleep if their sales reps are looking at the dollar signs for themselves rather than the value for the customer.

Sales professionals must prepare to the point where they know anything and everything about the prospect. They need to know the right person, with the right message, at the right time. Doing so will give them a point of confidence where they no longer become a sales rep but a trusted advisor.

5. Train Your Sales Reps to be sales warriors

“If officers are unaccustomed to rigorous [training] they will be worried and hesitant in battle; if generals are not thoroughly trained they will be inwardly quail when they face the enemy.”

As you can tell in his teachings, Sun Tzu often reiterates the importance of preparation – I don’t think he could stress its significance enough. Your company will not benefit if you do not hire the right people or train them properly. There are career sales people that have been trained for years that your reps will have to go up against and to compete.

Great sales leaders understand that in order to build a winning sales team you need to invest in them and teach them everything there is to know. Do not toss them into battle armed with only a week or two of training and their instincts. Even if a buyer might be interested in what you are offering, they are extremely busy and there is a good chance you don’t even know they are a prospect if you’re not actively listening. 70% of the buying process is happening online and in order to stay ahead your sales reps might need an edge over the competition.

Related to this quote from Sun Tzu:

History of the Sun Tzu’s Art of War

Military greats and business leaders alike have hailed The Art of War. Former U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell said, “I’ve read the Chinese classic The Art of War written by Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu has been studied for hundreds of years. He continues to give inspiration to soldiers and politicians. So every American soldier in the army knows of his works. We require our soldiers to read it.”

Today, Sun Tzu’s appeal has extended beyond the military realm into the world of business. IBM, XEROX, 3M, and many other corporate giants use the teachings of Sun Tzu in their training of executives because business by definition deals with competition.

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Social Selling Tactics that Work – Recap

April 12, 2012 in Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Koka Sexton | No comments

“Social” anything is the hot topic in every industry and sales is no exception. Social selling is here and it can pay enormous dividends for sales teams looking to hit and exceed their sales quotas. For this roundtable, we have gathered SalesGurus who understand social selling and provide real tactics and real stories of social selling results.

In this event, attendees discussed:

- Social selling tips and tactics that are proven to work

- Advice on how to get started without compromising time

- Tools and other applications that can make a positive difference

- Social selling success stories

Read the rest of this entry »

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6 Simple Steps on Preparing for Your Next Sales Meeting and How Technology Can Improve This

April 12, 2012 in Prospecting, Sales 2.0, Sales Data, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling, Software Tools, Technology by Kevin Baldacci | 1 comment

The days of asking a buyer the question, “So, what do you do?” are long gone. With so much information on the Internet these days, why is a buyer going to be perfectly fine with a meeting or phone call from a sales rep who didn’t take the extra steps to even look at their website?

Buyers expect you to know everything about their company in and out. Why? Because a buyer want a sales professional who understands their business and how it can be improved. You’ve booked the appointment with them because you know their business and believe you can help them, right? Well, please don’t ask that question otherwise you can kindly escort yourself out the door.

Preparation for a sales meeting is the beginning of the second half for sales professionals. The way you come out of that locker room is most likely going to determine the outcome of the game. With today’s buyers changing more than ever, you need to be on your A game.

According to the respondents of a recent survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan (“Americas 2010 Sales Leadership Priorities Survey”), one of the major challenges business-to-business salespeople face is responding to changing customer requirements. 

6 steps of preparation for today’s sales professional

To increase deals closed and meeting acceptance rates, you need to prepare. As the great Sun Tzu said in his book “The Art of War“:

“To rely on rustics and not prepare is the greatest of crimes; to be prepared beforehand for any contingency is the greatest of virtues.” 

Combining the Internet with social media, here are 6 simple steps on sufficiently preparing for your next sales meeting:

  1. Visit the website and all social media profiles before the meeting. The website is there for the basic information, however, it is critical to view the social world of your account. Social media will give you a window into the day-to-day activities of the company.
  2. Check out the latest press releases to see all of their recent announcements (product launches, new executive changes, mergers or acquisitions, new partnerships). What direction is the company heading? (Usually new press releases will be on their website)
  3. Using a search engine, perform a search on each key executive’s names. You’ll discover what organizations they’re involved in, where they speak, maybe even what they do for leisure activities. Also, take a look at their social media profiles (if they have any). Like the company social profile, this will give you a look into their day-to-day activities. Maybe they went to a rival university or enjoy the same hobbies as you. This will give your meeting a little more personality.
  4. Perform a search for all news of the company (Google News is a good search engine). Also search Google for the company’s name plus the word “competitor,” to see who their competitors are (if you don’t already know) and what’s going on with them.
  5. Read the company blog. The company blog is the voice of the corporation. Most likely, they are writing on the basis of thought-leadership in their industry or information about their company (press releases, product announcements, events, etc.).
  6. Finally, an underused section: go to the “Careers” or “Jobs” section of their site to see what jobs they’re hiring for. Do the open positions offer further insight on what departments are lacking? (increases in production, what software systems they use, what they are looking for in an employee etc.)?

Doing these things will shed light on who you’re working with. You’ll be surprised at the things you can learn leveraging just Google and the company’s website.

increase preparation productivity and close more deals with technology

If you are using the previous 6 steps to prepare for a sales meeting, I can guarantee you are already on your way to closing more deals. However, what if I was to say you can accomplish these steps in only 4 steps? Like any other tedious action-item, technology can increase your productivity and help you close more deals than ever before.

“75% of IT buyers says sales doesn’t know enough about their industry.” (IDC: “The Buyer Speaks”) 

Here are four steps to finding out who’s who at an account and what’s going on using InsideView:

  1. Visit the company profile “Overview” as well as the social media profiles and blog in the “Buzz” section before the meeting. In one platform, you have the foundation as well as the social media profiles and blog. 
  2. Go to the “Smart Agent Results“ or “All News” to study and learn every aspect of the company and their recent announcements (product launches, new executive changes, mergers or acquisitions, new partnerships). Impress your prospect with the knowledge of everything that is happening with the company. Smart Agents scour the Internet daily and deliver it organized to sales professionals. Utilize every aspect of this state-of-the-art tool. 
  3. Go to the “People” section to see who’s who on the executive team. [NOTE: see what InsideView's personal profiles look like by checking out Darth Vader...you'll see what I mean] There is a world of information you can gather by doing so. Using Smart Connections you can see who in your personal network you are connected to. Also, check out their social profiles.
  4. Go to the “Competitors” and “Industry Profile” this is the final and probably the most important step. You will be presented with information you won’t be able to find anywhere else on the Internet: Challenges, Trends, Call Prep Questions and Size & Structure.

conclusion

As a sales professional, preparation is absolutely crucial prior to a sales meeting. By now in your sales career I’m sure this is nothing new. However, are you efficiently using your time to research all of the key criteria? The Internet is a great place to research and find all of the information you need. However, if you want to cut your productivity in half and find the right message in real-time, I suggest you take a look at a technology such as InsideView. As you can see, I was able to easily eliminate 2 of the 6 steps using InsideView. You can too.

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The Growing Chasm of Sales

April 3, 2012 in Sales 2.0, Sales Intelligence by Koka Sexton | 1 comment

I was at the opening day of the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco yesterday and had a great talk with Jim Keenan, you may know him as @keenan. He sent a tweet during the keynote session with his thoughts on why sales people are not embracing social media though all of the data is showing that leveraging social media for sales intelligence increases revenue.

 

I dont think he’s far off base. Sales people are developed to look for the deals they can get now and not building a pipeline that extends after a few months. For companies looking for revenue, this isnt a bad formula, you need sales to stay in business but it should be looked at with a longer telescope for real growth and social selling can help with that. Companies of all sizes are leveraging social media for marketing communication, some are even able to track revenue from it but it hasn’t scaled correctly out to the sales teams that can really make an impact.

 

The chasm is growing for sales

Keenan mentions some of this in his blog post The growing chasm between sales person 1.0 and sales person 2.0.

This post speaks directly to the content of the conference and his tweet about the adoption of social selling. The game is changed and companies need to figure it out. The ability to leverage technology to identify prospects and retain customers is not something magical, it’s as shift in how people want to do business with others. I’m not saying that phone calls and emails are dead, I’m saying that relevant conversations that turn contacts in your CRM into people you can connect with should be the directive, not the hope of a sales organization. Besides the traditional sales methods you are following and measuring, new metrics should be placed on how engaged your sales people are with tir prospects and customers.

As the chasm grows, more adaptive sales people are moving forward at a faster pace than their competitors that have not learned how to leverage sales intelligence. Knowing that a growing number of CxO or other executives are too busy to take calls and reply to email campaigns, the smart sales people are learning how to connect and engage with people in social networks that these people are spending their time in. Even if the sales person isn’t willing to communicate with their prospects in the social space, they can listen to their conversations to get a better understanding of WHO they are and form a better plan of how and what to communicate with them.

Companies that train their sales teams to think more long term when it comes to lead generation and customer retainment will reap larger rewards. A blog that a sales person writes today can generate leads for the next few years if written well. We heard during the keynote of the Sales 2.0 conference that there are sales managers that require their sales teams to blog on a reglar basis for this exact reason. Take this down to an individual sales rep level and you can see that what they post online in an answers forum or social network today can be seen by people trying to solve simular problems for a long time. This will drive relevant people to you as a sales person and it can be acted on to generate new business and be measured.

 

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Use Your Connections to Sell: How are you connected to Kevin Bacon?

March 30, 2012 in Sales Data, Sales Intelligence, Social Selling by Kevin Baldacci | No comments

Can you imagine the power of a sales professional who had the ability to see his network and fully utilize it with his sales cycle? Sales intelligence platforms have this ability…

The other day I was working in InsideView and landed on the company page of IBM. Through this sales intelligence platform, I am able to see all of the connections I have in the organization.  Specifically, I had connections to 175 people including 13 Vice Presidents and a couple Board Members. (Screenshot to the right)

Through LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends, fellow college alumni and professional relationships, InsideView is able to identify who YOU are connected to in companies across the board.

One of the concepts that had my mind racing was the degrees of separation – specifically the 6 Degrees of Separation… and Kevin Bacon.

The 6 Degrees of Separation…and Kevin Bacon

The 6 degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth. When I refer to the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it is the assumption that any individual involved in the Hollywood film industry can be linked through his or her film roles to Kevin Bacon within six steps. However, today’s social boom has brought us all closer than we had previously imagined…

In November 2011, Facebook’s data team released two papers which documented that amongst all Facebook users at the time of research (721 million users with 69 billion friendship links) there is an average distance of 4.74 degrees of separation.

Social networks have blown the phrase “it’s a small world” out of the water. A sales professional who understands and utilizes this concept in his/her sales cycle is destined for greatness.

Imagine a sales professional who had the power to fully utilize his connections…

In order to paint this picture of connections within a sales intelligence platform such as InsideView, I created a fictional connections page of people within my network that know Kevin Bacon. Let’s be creative and pretend Kevin Bacon is the Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales at a computer hardware company we’ll call Pegasus Technologies. Below is a screenshot of InsideView if was to have connections to Kevin Bacon. [Click the image below to enlarge]

Imagine YOU are trying to sell InsideView to Kevin Bacon…

Tom Benedict is a reference account and a Sales manager at Deere Marketing Group and both of you used to work at Vicar Technologies together. Vicar is a small, online payroll services company so chances are they probably knew each other at one point or know people within the company.

Koka Sexton works with you at InsideView and attended Faber College (if you don’t know where Faber College is try watching Animal House again…). Kevin is older than Koka by a few years so they didn’t attend Faber together but Koka always has some kind of a Faber paraphernalia around his desk.

Selling to Kevin Bacon

Now let’s conjure up a couple of emails if you were to reach out to Kevin Bacon using connections to him at Pegasus Technologies…

Since this a very unique story I went to the sales bullpen and brought in John Barrows, Co-Owner & Managing Partner at Kensei Partners – Sales Execution & Results. I emailed John this scenario who graciously obliged to helping me write Mr. Bacon a couple of emails:

An email to Kevin using the connection: Koka Sexton

Subject: Your Faber connections

Kevin,

There’s a group of Faber grads here at InsideView who rave about their time at school and how it set them on their paths for success. It looks like Faber had a similar impact on you based on your success. Connections like these make a difference when trying to break through the noise and get people’s attention. InsideView makes these connections and can give your reps the tools they need to find and close more business.

What’s the best way to get 15 minutes on your calendar to talk about how your team can leverage all their connections?

-John

An email to Kevin using the connection: Tom Benedict

Subject: Your time at Vicar Technologies

Kevin,

I noticed you used to work at Vicar Technologies around the same time as one of my friends, Tom Benedict. He told me about how great the product was but how it never got off the ground because their sales team didn’t have the tools to succeed.

We give VP’s of Sales and their reps the tools they need to leverage their connections and gain access to high level contacts in their target market so they can drive more business. 

What’s the best way to get 15 minutes on your calendar?

-John

In Conclusion…

John did a phenomenal job crafting an email based around the connections to Kevin Bacon. Using Koka and Tom’s connection to Kevin, he was able to effectively and personally reach out.

Smart Connections technology finds relationships through your colleagues, your previous employers, and your existing customers.

It is important to utilize all of your connections, specifically, by using technology such as sales intelligence. Social networking has brought people together from all over the world closer than ever before. Again, there is an average distance of 4.74 degrees of separation. As a sales professional, you need to be out there creating relationships and utilizing them to make it through the door. Sales intelligence is the tool to identify these crucial, professional relationships and build off of them.

About John Barrows

John Barrows is Co-Owner & Managing Partner at Kensei Partners, a sales training/consulting firm focused on execution and driving immediate results. With over 15 years of experience in various sales, executive and training roles John has established himself as a prominent trainer and consultant for companies like Salesforce.com, HP, NCR and many others around the world. Read more about his background here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows

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