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Monthly Archives: April 2016

Chasing Your Fred

Well, last week we discussed how to find your “Fred,” your ideal customer.  If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to read it now = and perhaps my blog post following up on some of the questions I received.  This week, as promised, we’re going to talk about how to implement a sales strategy to win your Fred.

I will point out again, although I made it clear in the first article, that it’s still OK to accept non-Fred business IF IT’s PROFITABLE TO DO SO.  Fred selling is all about the pursuit and where you put your energies.  To review a bit, the three characteristics that determine your Fred are:  Demographics, Specific Contact Title or Role, and Attitude.  Now that we’ve got that straight, I’m going to assume that you’ve identified your Fred.  Now let’s put him in the crosshairs.

  1. Define your sales process for getting Fred. Here’s where it gets tricky.  Can you create a process to generate inbound Fred leads at the same time that you implement an outbound process?  Are there any specific steps that you need to insert in order to get a Fred’s attention?  One company with whom I’m familiar created a Fred-only inbound sales process.  They created a webinar that was strictly targeted to their Fred, so much so that it would be of little interest to others but high interest to Fred.  Then they built an ad campaign around driving their Freds to the webinar, with a payoff of a consultation call with their Fred that resulted in Fred joining their sales process.  Yep, it worked – but it took a lot of commitment on the part of their entire staff, marketing and sales.
  2. Decide how much of your sales force’s time is going to be spent going after Fred. I am a fan of balanced sales – salespeople need regularity in results to stay on an even emotional keel – so the first thing you should do is figure out how you’re going to dedicate your resources to chasing Fred.  Unless you’re really, really lucky, it won’t work out for your salespeople to be spending all of their time selling to Fred – so what is the appropriate mix?  Over the years (unless there are very, very few Freds), I’ve found that a 50/50 mix works nicely.  That means that you can simply take your existing sales activity metrics (you do have those, right?), and split them in half.  Hence, if your salespeople need to perform eight appointments per week, four should be with Freds, etc.
  3. Create Rules of Engagement. You need to define how to sell to Fred.  What level of effort are you going to make to get Fred?  What are acceptable parameters (price/profitability/terms) are you going to assign to Fred business?  This should be self-solving, since Freds are your most profitable customers, but you still need to guide the process.  This is also a good time to put some rules and parameters around non-Fred business so your sales force has a level of discipline about what they pursue and what they accept.
  4. Train, train, and train some more. Your Freds deserve the best – and that means the best selling effort you can give.  Think of your face time with Fred as your “Lightning Round,” the time that’s the highest potential reward.  How skilled are your salespeople?  Do they have the skills to correctly discover, define needs, success, and results with Fred?  Can they give a world class presentation that will show Fred why you are the only potential source?  In short, are your salespeople equipped for the job?  Training isn’t a one time thing, it’s an ongoing investment.
  5. Put your BEST people on Fred. One mistake that I see – particularly on the relationship building and servicing side – is that too many companies allow their weaker players to be in charge of their Fred relationships.  DON’T DO THAT.  If Freds are your key contributors, then your key people need to be in charge of every step in dealing with them.  Think of airline first class service here.  Do you think that airlines put their newest, least experienced and trained flight attendants in First Class?  Not hardly.  They put their very best people up there because they know that First Class passengers are spending the most, the most often.  Take your cue from them.
  6. Get EVERYONE on the same page. Everyone in your company needs to know what a Fred is, how you’re going to go after Fred, and how you plan to retain and build relationships with Fred.  That means that Marketing and Sales need to be aligned and on the same page.  It means that Service, Shipping, and other support departments need to be tuned to the idea that you go the extra mile for a Fred, and if Sales says, “this is a Fred,” that no other conversation needs to happen.

Like I said last week, yes, this is a lot of work.  That’s life.  Excellence isn’t easy, but it is profitable and this is how world class sales forces generate world class performance.  If you want to get past mediocrity or ‘acceptable’ results, Fred is Job One.

FIQ – Fred Inspired Questions

Wow.  I feel like Lloyd Bridges in “Airplane.”  I definitely picked the wrong week to discontinue the Hot Question in the Navigator Newsletter.  Yesterday’s article on Fred provoked quite a few questions emailed to me, and I’d have had enough material for a couple of months.  But alas, the Hot Question is no more, but those questions need to be answered.  So let’s answer them here, and call them “Fred Inspired Questions.”

This was the most common:  Troy, are you saying that we should only sell and accept business from our Freds?  No.  I’m not saying that.  What I am saying is that those accounts that we pursue with dogged determination, the accounts we chase, emphasize in our prospecting – those accounts should be our Freds.  Accept business from acceptably profitable accounts, but don’t put the same effort into them that you put into a Fred.  I’m constantly amazed at the misallocation of time and resources that I see out there.  Two years ago I was in a client’s sales meeting in Wisconsin, and the SALES MANAGER was discussing an account that she had been chasing for over two months.  The account was tiny – so small that it shouldn’t have even been accepted, much less pursued, and it only would have accounted for 15% of one week’s expectation from a rep – but there she was, explaining her sales methodology, chasing it like it was a Fred.  Pure stupidity.  If you have salespeople doing that, STOP.

Is it possible to have multiple Freds?  Yes.  I do, in fact.  I have my Freds, and then I have a second type of Fred – the executive directors of trade associations that have a high percentage of Freds as members, and that are likely to book me to speak in front of them.  If you chase multiple verticals of equal profitability, for instance, you’ll have different Freds for different salespeople.  The key is to make sure that all of your Freds are your MOST DESIRABLE customers.

You said that a big portion of being a Fred is attitudinal.  How can you learn that except through selling efforts?  This is the key.  Many times, you can’t.  That’s why it’s important to develop a quick qualifying process….and I’m getting ahead of next week’s article.  Sometimes you can find out the attitude of a Fred by the types of articles that they read of the events that they attend.

Who should be involved in choosing a Fred?  Well, first of all, Freds choose themselves – they rise to the top of your company’s profitability rankings.  That said, this is an important enough topic that all key managers and the salespeople should be involved in defining your Fred.  If all the key managers are involved in the process, then all the key managers will be on the same page – and when the sales department says, “This is a Fred,” everyone knows that that means to the company.

Have you ever had a Fred that was actually named Fred?  Yes, I have, and it always gave me a little chuckle.

There are more, but most of them centered around how to find Freds, how to sell to them, etc., and if I answered that here it would spoil the next column.  Here was the second most common:

Troy, what’s your Fred?  This is the one I debated over the most.  Telling everyone what my Fred is would discourage non-Fred business, and that’s the last thing I want to do.  Truth be told, few companies could survive, thrive, and grow without a lot of non-Freds surrounding some really good Fred business.  My company is included in that.  Still, I don’t like to be asked a question and not answer it, and my Fred – and my methodology for getting there – can add a lot to your knowledge of this issue.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  I’m going to make you work for it.  I’ve put another blog post up entitled, “My Fred.”  However, this one is password protected.  When you click on the headline you will be asked to put in a password.  Your password is TROYSFRED.  Put that in, and you can read who my Fred is, and how I got there.  CLICK HERE.

Who’s Your Freddy?

I’ve been consulting with business owners, sales managers, and training salespeople for a dozen years now.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember what it was like to have a job working for someone else.  But if there’s anything I’ve discovered in that twelve years, it’s that those business owners, sales managers, and salespeople have an incredibly difficult time with defining their “Fred.”

OK, full disclosure – I don’t remember where I got this expression but I’ve been using it for a long time.  “Fred” is my shorthand name for my ideal target client.  Not a client that I will accept, mind you – but the ideal target for me.  I can ask the toughest questions of my clients and get the straightest answers – but when I ask my clients to define their Fred (and I explain what Fred means), I get weasel words.  Why?  I think it’s because we want to leave ourselves a lot of opportunities to accept non-Fred business (non-ideal business), and that’s where we go wrong.  If you want to succeed in sales, figure out your Fred.  Let’s take a deep dive into this.

Figure out who your BEST customers are.  Notice that I said “Best,” and not “Biggest.”  That’s because the two are not necessarily the same customer.  What attributes do you assign to your best customers?  I’d suggest that measurements like Profit, Growth, and Time/Labor Spent to Service would be big attributes.  A customer that is profitable for you, grows well, and has an acceptable amount of TLS is your ideal client.  Feel free to use your own measurements here, but I’d advise you not to use gross revenue as your measurement – we’ve all seen high volume customers that weren’t profitable, didn’t grow, and required an extraordinary TLS to keep.

Your best customers will have some common elements, whether that be demographics (size/location/industry) or attitudinal and cultural, or some combination of the two.  Start writing them down on paper – you can always revise them.  The key is to make your window fairly narrow – remember, we’re talking about your IDEAL business, not the business you ACCEPT.

Don’t just settle for demographics; remember the WHO.  What I mean by the “WHO” is this:  I might describe my typical client as a business-to-business company from $5 million to $500 million.  That’s a big window.  But then I have to apply the “Who,” as in, “A business to business company, from $5 million to $500 million, WHO has a sales force and intends to use that sales force as a key growth driver.”  The “WHO” defines the attitude and culture.  This works on an individual level, too.

A while back, I challenged a new-car dealer friend of mine to define his Fred.  He said, “Well, Troy, you’re probably my Fred.  You’re mid-40s, you’re successful and have disposable income, and you’re into cars.”  Yep, on the demographics alone, I was his Fred.  But the WHO knocked me out.

I said, “Nonsense.  The newest vehicle I’ve ever owned is a 2004.  Attitudinally, I hate the idea of taking the depreciation of a new car and I don’t like car payments.  My driver right now is a 1996 Impala SS – which I absolutely love.  My wife also doesn’t buy new cars.  Worse, we do most of our own maintenance so you don’t get revenue through the service department, and we have no kids to buy for.”

So I helped him with the WHO:  “Your ideal customer is probably mid-30s to mid-50s, married, likes new cars and trades every 3 years or so, has a family that also drives their own cars, and has no interest in getting dirty working on their own cars, so you get steady income in the service department, right?”  He agreed.  Now he thinks in terms of the WHO.

Individualize your Fred.  OK, so now we’ve got the demographics and the attitude.  We’re still not done, because for all you B2B types, you have defined your Fred in terms of companies.  The problem is that you don’t sell to companies.  You’d look pretty silly making a sales presentation to a brick building.  You sell to PEOPLE.  So, now, who’s your Fred?  Look at your company “Freds.”  Who is your key point of contact within those companies?  Again, I’m betting you’ll find some commonalities.  Remember, your point of entry into a company determines your chances of success at selling to them; where do you need to enter?  Most likely it’s at the top of whatever department buys and uses your products and services.  Don’t just settle for an ideal COMPANY as your Fred, or even a COMPANY with an ATTITUDE (the WHO), define it all the way down to the PERSON or the TITLE.  If you do not define your Fred this far, you will never have success finding more Freds.  PERIOD.

So, now that you’ve defined your Fred, what do you do?  Well, you will…….have to read my article next week, because that’s when I’m going to deal with this.  You have enough work to keep you busy until then, just doing the above exercise.

To CRM….and How.

Of the questions I’m asked in my training programs, one of the easiest to answer is, “Troy, should we have a CRM program?”  My only decision is whether to answer, “Yes,” “Hell, yes,” or “Only if you want to succeed in this century.”  In this day and age, if you don’t have some sort of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, you’re going to lose business, both new and existing, to companies that do.

But the next questions I’m peppered with are, “How should we do it?  What platform should we use?  Etc.”  To be honest, I seldom duck questions, but these questions I find quite duckable.  I beg off, saying that I’m not a tech guy, I’m a sales guy.  That’s true.  But, the sales function is the most important in making a CRM implementation work, so I’m going to break my own rule and give you my recommendations and opinions in this article.

What system should you use?  Whatever is easiest for you to install and implement.  My own preference, going back over 20 years now, is ACT!  I have found it consistently the easiest to buy, install, import data into, and use.  That said, there are other systems.  I have a good relationship with the people at esalestrack.com, and their system appears to be a good one.  If you’re really wanting to get basic, Microsoft offers an add-on to Outlook called “Business Contact Manager,” which can be a very good CRM system if used correctly.  Which brings us to the next point.

What makes CRM successful?  PARTICIPATION and MANAGEMENT.  If you want a CRM system to work successfully, your sales reps have to enter data on every customer contact.  This has to be managed and driven from the top, through sales management.  Further, ideally, everyone who has customer contact should be a participant in the CRM system.  That means customer service, tech support, etc. – anyone who can make an impact on that customer, good or bad, or who can gather data on that customer, should be a participant.

Why would sales reps want CRM?  Isn’t it just Big Brother?  That, dear manager, is where you can make the difference.  CRM can be an invaluable tool for the sales rep IF it is implemented and managed correctly.  CRM is never more valuable than when the sales rep can check his customer’s record right before a sales call and read that service had an interaction with the customer this morning, and what the result was.  CRM can be a launch pad for marketing support activities, as well, that can help the sales rep win more business and build stronger relationships.  If you only use it as an overseer tool, then sure, sales reps are going to rebel.

What technical capabilities should the CRM have?  When I say “techical capabilities,” I’m not talking about features that track data.  I’m talking about the actual interfaces of the program.  To me, there are two keys.  First, your CRM must offer some sort of sync package that allows it to ‘talk to’ your accounting package.  This allows salespeople full visibility to purchases, returns, billing, A/R status, etc.  Second, in this day and age, it must offer smartphone capability, preferably in real time, so that the salesperson can make the aforementioned smartphone check before a call, and enter the data on a smartphone after the call.  Finally, it should also sync with Outlook.  Yes, modern CRM systems have their own email and calendars, but let’s be real – Outlook is the standard that our customers use, and when we send meeting invitations, they’re Outlook invitations.

What should we be tracking?  Again, here’s where management comes into play.  First, understand this – the modern CRM systems are so feature-packed (much of it with features that are meaningless to a quality sales process) that even the best teams will struggle to use up to 40 or 50% of the software’s capabilities.  Don’t worry about maximizing everything on the software or your salespeople will rebel at the burden.  Instead, make sure that you have good field data – meaning the business-card information of each contact within your customer companies, plus meaningful user-defined data.  For instance, if your business works on contracts, you should be tracking contract expiration dates for your prospects and customers.  You should also track competitive data; i.e. who are they buying from and what are they buying?  The list can be long or short, depending on your industry.  Take a package and make it yours with good planning.  Yes, I can help with this.

You should also be tracking each interaction and activity with the customer.  Emails, calls, sales calls, service visits, etc. so that everyone who deals with that customer can have visibility to what everyone else is doing.  Use the Opportunity Management module to manage the proposal process.  Use Sales Statuses to track the movement of customers through the sales/buying process.

Finally, manage the program.  The Sales Manager must be diligent in creating standards for acceptable data, and manage to that.  Run Blank Fields reports to clean up customer data, and use the Opportunity Management tools to help you close sales (won or lost).  Yes, this does add work to everyone in the sales department, but managed well, it doesn’t have to be onerous, and the additional wins you’ll get will be worth it.

Disagree?  I have an open mind.  Email me at troy@troyharrison.com, and tell me your point of view.