Thought Leadership as Sales Strategy

© Copyright 2012 The Sales Management Association.

14 June 2012

Presented by

Thought Leadership as Sales Strategy Building a Sales Force That Customers Find Credible

SMA Webcast

About The Sales Management Association

A global, cross-industry professional association for sales

operations and sales management.

Focused in providing research, case studies, training, peer

networking, and professional development to our membership.

Fostering a community of thought-leaders, service providers,

academics, and practitioners.

Learn More: www.salesmanagement.org

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© 2012 The Sales Management Association. All rights reserved.

http://www.salesmanagement.org/

Today’s Speakers: Jeff Baker and Adrian Logan

3 Slide 3

© 2012 The Sales Management Association. All rights reserved.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jeffrey-baker/8/7a3/423

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/adrian-logan/8/453/235

Agenda

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© 2012 The Forum Corporation. Used with permission by The Sales Management Association. All rights reserved.

• Welcome and Introductions

• Point of View Selling Overview

• Siemens Customer Case Study

• Advice for Sales Managers Implementing

Point of View Selling

• Questions and Answers

Increasingly Challenging Sales Environment

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Impact on Your Business

• Longer selling cycles

• Greater pressure on prices/lower profitability

• Higher cost of sales

INCREASED COMPLEXITY

OF MARKETS

VUCA: Volatility, Uncertainty,

Complexity, Ambiguity

GLOBAL, MORE

SOPHISTICATED

COMPETITORS

SMARTER, MORE

DEMANDING

BUYERS

Selling

Organisation

Polling Question

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Which one of the following describes your

sales organization’s strongest response to

today’s challenging selling environment?

oWorking harder

oWorking smarter

o Providing new incentives

oUsing thought leadership selling

oOther or no changes planned

The Customer Business Continuum

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Implementing Solutions

Sourcing Suppliers

Setting Needs and

Specifications

Analyzing & Selecting

Generating Options

Unit Planning

Enterprise Planning

Guiding the executive’s decision making allows you to get involved early in the

customer business planning process

Point of View Selling Traditional selling

Point of View Selling

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What?

What are the issues

we should address?

How?

What are the

possible solutions?

Who?

Who can best

deliver the right

solution?

A key to this approach is understanding how a senior level customer makes

decisions – including potential purchase decisions

Entry point for a

Point of View Selling-based

approach

Entry point for

traditional selling

Basic Needs of a City

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• Efficient transportation of people and goods

• Reliable and efficient supply of energy

• Health, security and comfort

• Low emissions

Requirements are drastically changing from siloed solutions

to interdependent and intelligent infrastructure solutions

Case Study: Energy Reduction Yields Cash

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City energy consumption growing

– Significant percent of budget

– Crowds out other programs

65,000 sets of traffic signals in city

– Significant energy consumption

– Annual maintenance expenses for frequent bulb replacements

Compare current energy use and annual maintenance to LEDs

Finance LED replacement using energy savings

Results:

– Zero cash expenditures by city to convert to LED

– Increased free cash flow in years following LED conversion

– “Green” success story

– Increased traffic safety due to reliability and longer life LED

"What we have achieved is something that will effectively cut our energy bills by

almost two-thirds, and which will also result in some of the latest technology being

installed on our network that will offer real benefits in maintenance and reliability.” - Chief Executive for the Integrated Transport Executive

How Does Point of View Selling Differ?

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Traditional Selling… Point of View Selling…

Respond to the customer’s point of

view

Lead with your point of view

Ask questions to uncover the

customer’s needs

Educate customers about their unseen

opportunities

Seek to understand known “pain

points”

Advocate capturing lost or hidden

value or identifying and mitigating risk

Meet budget constraints

Establish investment frameworks

Align with the customer

Challenge the customer

Assure the customer

Provoke the customer’s interest

Sources of Rep Credibility

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• The power of the point of view itself

• Industry knowledge and customer specific business

knowledge

• Business acumen

• Executive teaching skills: ability to quickly convey a

powerful idea linked specifically to relevant business value

driver

• Advanced dialogue skills to withstand the inevitable

challenges to the idea

• High confidence

Polling Question

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To what extent does your sales force

demonstrate these aspects of credibility

today?

o Our sales people are masterful now

o Our sales people are fairly good

o We have some of the basics in place

o We have a long way to go

o We are not going there

Implications For Sales Leaders

Developing New Skills

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Discovering needs

Solving problems

Matching product features and

benefits to customer needs

Thinking innovatively

Generating insight

Educating customers

Engaging in skillful dialogue

Testing validity of ideas

Point of View

Selling Traditional Selling

Ensuring your sales people are equipped with the necessary skills to develop

compelling points of view and educate customers

How Provocation Changes the Sales Cycle

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Source: “In a Downturn Provoke Your Customers.” Harvard Business Review, March 2009


Managing the Opportunity Pipeline

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Point of View

Selling

Traditional

Selling

Responding to customer

trigger events

Confirming needs & budgets

Proposing solutions

Initiating new value conversation

Confirming value

Guiding decision framework

The cadence of the selling cycle changes in Point Of View Selling so requires a

shift in how sales leaders monitor the health of the sales opportunity pipeline

and help their sales people to find and advance deals


Obtaining Internal Support Resources

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Point of View

Selling

Traditional

Selling

Product expertise

Research about and positioning

against competition

Pricing support

Customer industry experts

Research and analysis of

customers’ business

Business case support

Point Of View Selling requires additional resources to support sales people

The Point of View Selling Approach is Appropriate In

Complex Selling Environments

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• Large-ticket, complex

solutions often involving

multiple products and

services

• Target buyer is an

executive who can find (not

just manage) budget

• Ultimately, the solution has

a significant impact on the

customer’s strategic

business objectives

Single

Product/

Service Offer

Full

Business

Solution

Bundled

Services/

Products

High

Medium

Low

Seller’s Knowledge of Client’s Business and Industry

Opportunity

for Educating

Client about

Business

Opportunities

and Risk

Low Medium High

TRANSACTIONAL

SELLING

CONSULTATIVE

SELLING

POV SELLING

Situations Where Point

of View Selling is

appropriate

From Educating to Provoking: Questions for Sales

Leaders to Consider

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Selected questions from Forum Corporation’s POV Selling Maturity Assessment*

1. Business Fit: The degree to which you have a sales strategy and value proposition

adequately focused on engaging senior level decision-makers and guiding their

thinking.

2. Compelling Points of View: The degree to which your sellers have available to

them fully developed and compelling points of view that they can use to educate and

engage senior-level buyers.

3. Foundational Skills: The degree to which your sales reps have the necessary

foundational business and selling skills for effective POV Selling

4. Advanced Selling Skills: The degree to which your sales reps have the necessary

skills required by sales people who engage in POV Selling

5. Sales Structure and Support : The degree to which your sales structure and

supporting resources are sufficient for the successful deployment of POV Selling

* contact Forum to arrange for a POVS Maturity Assessment for your sales organization


Leaders to Consider

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1. Business Fit:

– You are able to target customer decision makers who can find budget, not just manage

budget

– Your target buyers are interested in novel ideas for improving business performance

– Your solutions have a significant impact on a customer's business value drivers

– Your solutions and POVs are sufficiently differentiated so that you become the obvious

“supplier of choice.”

2. Compelling Points of View:

– You have client-ready POVs that educate the market about ways to generate or capture

new/more value and which differentiate you as industry experts.

– Your client-ready POVs allow the customer executive to quickly understand the

opportunity/risk that your idea addresses.

– Your POVs address quantitative business drivers (e.g., revenue, cost, quality, time) as well as

qualitative drivers (e.g., brand value, customer loyalty, employee engagement).

– Your POVs give an estimated range of the size of improvements that are possible for key

business drivers

– Your POVs compel immediate action from your customer


Leaders to Consider

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3. Foundational Skills: General Business Acumen, Industry Knowledge, Customer Business

Knowledge, Products and Services Knowledge, Consultative Selling or Solution Selling Skills

4. Advanced Selling Skills: Your sales reps:

– Can generate insight for creating new business value or managing major risks for customers

– Understand how an idea/point of view impacts relevant customer business value drivers and

performance

– Can develop methods to test with customer the validity of the new pov/idea

– Know who to go to in your company to help them develop new povs and create ways to test

validity with each customer

– Have the ability to develop and convey a brief and compelling narrative about a new point of

view.

– Can graphically illustrate (draw) essential ideas of the point of view

– Have the ability to develop and consider with customer viable solution options.

– Can influence the establishment of customer’s buying decision framework and criteria.

– Have the ability and confidence to guide the customer team through a complex decision

process


Leaders to Consider

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5. Sales Structure and Support:

– You will use POV Selling as a way to differentiate our company and our sellers in the

marketplace and/or for positioning new solutions

– You are prepared to redesign your selling processes and pipeline management process.

– You are prepared to establish a new resource model to support sales efforts (e.g., create

collateral material or provide subject matter expertise)

– You have internal resources who can develop new POVs (e.g., Marketing, Product

Development, Business Intelligence resources)

– Your performance measurement system and rewards systems can accurately measure and

reinforce POV selling (e.g., pipeline metrics, performance-based compensation metrics)

– Your Sales Managers are capable of coaching POV style selling skills

Your Questions

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?

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the critical strategies of their

organisation and accelerate results.

When you need to swiftly align your

people to tackle an opportunity or

tear down a roadblock, Forum is an

essential business asset.

www.forum.com

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Thought Leadership as Sales Strategy

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