20 Performance Management Best Practices

 

A report on performance management identified similarities and differences in performance management processes between industries. Many surveys and research have gone deeper into understanding how to make the most of your performance management. How employee performance evaluation is conducted went for an overhaul overnight when a large chunk was expected to work from home in 2020. With data playing a more significant role in the decision-making processes of organizations, it’s essential to identify a few performance review best practices that organizations can adopt. But before that, here’s a short primer on performance management and planning and how they mark an improvement over the traditional annual performance reviews.

What is Performance Management?

Performance management is more than performance appraisals. It is about planning, executing & then reviewing the plan. Managers in any organization must look at performance management best practices and multiple aspects of people management – from hiring and onboarding processes to employee offboarding. No matter the type of business or the organization’s size, these tasks must be performed in some capacity. These methods usually oversee employee productivity and outputs. Organizations can identify faults in their processes and success factors through employee performance evaluation.

Importance of Performance Management

Supervising the employees’ work and managing their performance can be tricky without adequate tools. Managers can struggle to get a clear picture of what is expected of the employees and what they are capable of.

Performance metrics track progress towards specific goals and keep a close eye on the health of teams and how they function. Getting these metrics right at the start is essential. Otherwise, organizations can measure the wrong attributes and end up worse off than before. Good performance metrics give factual data and results, which can be tracked against organizations’ overall goals and objectives. Annual performance review processes sorely lack this transparency, mainly because they are conducted after lengthy intervals. Meaningful performance metrics are based on an organization’s vision, mission, and objectives – translating them into specific team goals or individual ones promotes effective performance. Employees clearly understand what is expected of them and can pace their performance accordingly.

Performance Management Best Practices

Outdated performance management approaches hinder employees from reaching their full potential and strangle organizational growth. Employees thrive in an environment conducive to fairness, transparency, and continuous feedback. They make employees feel connected to the rest of the organization and motivate them to do their best work. Ongoing performance management is one of the frameworks that is being enthusiastically adopted by organizations and employees alike, and here are some performance reviews best practices.

1. Starting a performance management program with clear objectives and targets:

Creating an effective performance management program requires understanding what the organization wants to accomplish – in the short and long run. Clarifying the reason for a new process by asking questions about organizational priorities, nurturing leadership, streamlining processes, and improving retention and engagement can shed light on what the program should do and guide how the initiative unfolds.

2. Agile goal setting and the use of OKRs method:

Agile goals and the objective key results (OKRs) combination work well together and combine operational efficiency with strategic success. By regularly evaluating core deliverables, agile management processes make product scope changes – and OKRs represent the key results to be achieved, ensuring alignment with specific goals. Agile methodologies streamline the work process, and OKRs assist them by helping to share and achieve goals that are set. Both introduce meaningful principles into the system that promote collaboration and proactive iteration in work.

3. Align employee and organizational goals:

Organizational alignment differentiates high-performers from the rest – research by LSA Global supports it, too, as organizations, where employees are highly aligned with the vision are 72% more profitable and grow revenue 58% faster. Their scores in employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and retention are high too.

4. Understanding the purpose of performance management:

Organizations reluctant to give up annual reviews might think of performance reviews as a way to improve the bottom line in the next quarter. However, approaching the process with that mindset can alienate employees. Performance management should ensure that employees and teams get the resources necessary to succeed and provide them with the accountability to develop confidence in their abilities. All team members aligned on priorities ensure the organization’s values are practiced. Focusing on individual employees is essential for this system to progress quickly, as improving in some areas might be more critical than others.

5. Supplementing performance plans with goals:

A performance plan details the goals set for employees and outlines areas of growth, achievements, shortcomings, learning, and opportunities, among others. Managers can have discussions with their team members individually or as a group to help them align their goals with that of the organization. They show employees that their organization values long-term relationships, builds trust, and promotes long-term thinking. Being honest with the employees allows them to understand their weaknesses and ask for help. Admitting when wrong helps managers set an example for their team members and leads to the whole team communicating effectively.

6. Building trust between managers and team members:

Establishing trust between managers and employees requires an apparent show of goodwill. After all, managers are shown to be after their subordinates’ lives (according to pop culture, at least). Organizations can kickstart the process by giving managers autonomy to clear the issues their team members face so that the individuals know that their manager wants what is best for them. Taking care of problems leads to employees slowly speaking up on other aspects, and these suggestions can be discussed among the team members, and a consensus can be drawn.

7. Providing continuous performance feedback with actionable tips:

Managers who take time to help employees identify their strong points, and nudge them towards improving their future, foster a culture of learning and development where every team member can step in and help someone else and take the idea forward. The frequency of the performance feedback has to be consistent. Otherwise, employees can get confused about their job responsibilities & how they are performing on them.

8. Ensuring fair performance evaluation:

The environment of trust is built when every team member feels they are being treated fairly. Managers who air out matters and discuss them democratically help their team members understand their differences, appreciate each other’s strengths, and work towards achieving the goal as a whole. Regular formal and informal check-ins can make a huge difference to team members working on complex projects.

9. Conducting coaching sessions regularly:

Not everyone needs help all the time, but someone may undoubtedly do – and how organizations approach employee performance either assures or alienates employees from the overall mission. While seasoned employees may not have any issue calling out a tricky situation and asking for help, new joiners and first-time employees might panic, thinking they have to know about the issue and delay reporting. With constant coaching, managers can assure every member of the team about how their attitude towards problem-solving matters the most, and not full-fledged technical knowledge (which they can gain by interacting with their managers or more experienced colleagues).

10. Build trust between Leaders and Employees:

Managers and leaders can show that the organization is serious about helping individuals succeed by taking rapid action on employee complaints and issues. Insisting on two-way feedback can help leaders get their team members out of their shells and identify areas where they need help. Employees who get valuable pointers on their performance can also provide their opinions on the leadership style and issues they’ve been facing.

11. Monitoring progress toward performance targets:

Setting goals and identifying key results that indicate objective completion are good starting points, but a good performance management process insists on the ‘management’ part. By asking employees to identify their growth trajectory, organizations and managers should closely help their team members to stay on course. The responsibility also means taking a call on when to stop so that teams don’t get disillusioned.

12. Crafting a performance-aligned culture:

Aligning organizational goals with individual employees requires clear thought so that the vision and mission are easily understandable. Performance reviews without any benchmarks leave employees confused, as they have no idea what they should be aiming for. By persuading employees to look closely at the mission of the organization and its goals, managers can shift focus to the bigger picture and motivate their team members to contribute to a performance-oriented culture.

13. Work on documentation:

The regular meetings between managers and team members have been highlighted enough times. Still, these meetings can amount to nothing if no record is kept of points discussed or progress achieved. Managers must interact with multiple stakeholders and their team members, and the critical factors can be forgotten. With proper documentation, managers can balance recency bias and other hindrances – they will have a record of employee wins, shortcomings, areas of improvement and progress made, and more.

Maintaining such records can become cumbersome, where dedicated tools such as UpRaise for Employee Success come in. The tool is natively integrated with Jira, making the performance management process a breeze. Managers can set and monitor OKR from their Jira instance, and adding information about employees or coaching them on specific issues is as simple as raising a ticket. The tool allows managers to focus on the ‘how’s’ of the job rather than scratching their heads on concentrating on what needs to be done.

14. Training the leaders as much as the employees:

The culture of learning and development should apply to employees at all levels. Like individual team members can learn from their managers and other organizational leaders, the reverse can hold too. Organizations that encourage learning from one another can also introduce initiatives where most junior members of the organization’ mentor’ the seniors on the changes in culture and market perception and receive job-specific inputs from them in return. Not only does this reduce the stiffness in the workplace or workplace video calls, but it helps teams come together faster.

15. Identifying bottlenecks in performance management:

The standard approach to performance management has been to hold employees responsible for their growth and reward them at the end of the year if they succeed. The biggest drawback of this process is that the employees suffer consequences even if they give their 100%. The roles of managers have expanded since the pandemic, and they are now asked to find out reasons for failure rather than employees who may be causing the issue. From dealing with the hybrid or remote nature of work to tight deadlines, employees have more areas where they can go wrong. Managers who understand this and allow employees the leeway to err develop confidence in them, bringing down the error rate.

16. Recognizing performance frequently and rewarding it publicly:

Unlike the annual review, where employee compensation improves based on performance, the latest performance management processes insist on more events highlighting the inputs and differences made. Helping employees map their goals with their organization gives them the motivation to start, and constant recognition of good work keeps them engaged to learn more and perform better. Coupling it with monthly and quarterly rewards can give more mileage, as employees are now financially motivated to contribute better.

17. Having continuous development conversations:

One-on-one and group discussions that managers have with their team members can fuel growth. Teams that trust each member and are unafraid of admitting their weaknesses can get help from others, and managers can tailor a learning plan for them after discussing it with HR. Keeping these conversations open-ended also allows managers to learn and grow.

18. Asking for employee input and multiple-source feedback:

The process of goal setting and getting ready for the future is tiring, to say the least – the amount of planning involved can floor even the most vital strategic planners. That’s why leaders who involve employees in the process manage to get more out of the process. The collective effort of team members can spring up many better ideas that can be used to upgrade the performance management framework chosen.

19. Involving employees in designing performance management processes:

Typically, employees who set goals in frameworks like OKRs usually get no say in selecting the framework. Instead of deciding on the tool for performance management, leaders of the organization can conduct surveys or ask employees to send in their suggestions on performance management solutions. Leaders can evaluate agile methods by involving employees in the selection process and taking in their recommendations on tweaking it to suit the organization’s needs. Collaborating on the process makes employees invested in the outcome and focus on the goals they need to achieve. Top objectives visible to everyone ensure that the organization’s values are clear, encourage them to collaborate better, be responsible for their job duties, and chart a unique growth path that aligns with the abovementioned mission/vision.

20. Keeping things professional:

Maintaining the work-life balance has been an essential topic of discussion ever since working from home became a mandate. According to surveys, employees have voiced opinions that they’re ready to quit if that gets jeopardized. Combined with the need for constant feedback, managers can find themselves wondering what to convey and what not to. The general rule they can follow in such scenarios – is to establish an environment where team members feel OK to ask for help and provide assistance when that happens. Keeping track of the progress and the employee output can show interception opportunities, and having honest conversations around them can further understanding on both sides.

Wrapping up

Following the best practices in performance management is not a ‘check items off a list’ activity but a nuanced process that considers individual employees and their aspirations to create an achievable roadmap. Managers and leaders can ensure mutually beneficial growth by streamlining these goals and objectives within the organization.

https://tinyurl.com/4t26hn8c

Sales Process Model for Obtaining Major Commitments

 

This article presents a model for executive modeling of sales and how to track the progress. I hope to update it and do the next generation soon.

During the past couple of decades, I have refined my model for making large ‘sales.’ By this, I mean ‘sales’ in the generic sense, which is the act of convincing someone or an organization to give you something of significant value – presumably currency – in return for something offered. I sometimes refer to this as the “Ten Touch Sales Model.”

Examples of ‘sales’ might include:

• Corporate Sales
  • Products
  • Services
• Start-Up and Corporate Fund Raising
  • Venture Capital and Equity Placements
  • Debt Instruments
• Not-for-Profit Philanthropy
  • Scholarships, facilities, and endowments
  • Special designations (patrons, benefactors, …)
  • ‘Goodwill,’ Tax Benefits

• Government Contracts
  • Military
  • U.S. Government
  • Foreign Governments

These examples are where one party invests significant amounts of their resources – money, time, future compensation – in return for something so valued. These large ‘sales’ do not happen solely because of marketing, such as advertising, websites, brochures, and mailings. The scale of this transaction typically requires person-to-person interactions and an integrated strategic and tactical plan.

Having worked in the private, non-profit, and government sectors, I was initially surprised by how much the ‘sales’ activities are similar across quite diverse sectors. Seeking large donations for philanthropic activities at not-for-profits is nearly identical to fundraising for venture capital in a corporate setting. Convincing a potential customer to make a significant commitment to your products or services in the corporate environment is remarkably analogous to trying to launch new initiatives for government programs.

Typically, these ‘sales’ activities are complex and involve: person-to-person interactions, relationship building, education, removing obstacles, managing politics, and dealing with other parties that might influence the process.

My conviction is that by developing a simple yet robust model of this process, it is easier to manage and motivate ‘sales’ teams, develop action plans, and report on the results.

I initiated a variation of this 10 Touch ‘Sales’ Model when I was a university president and became involved in significant fundraising for the first time. I later refined that model while raising venture capital for Insitu and then again when we transitioned to product and services sales. I worked with my colleague, Steve Nordlund, while at Insitu to infuse some of his sales expertise into the model. Steve spent part of his career within the sales organization at IBM, and I am certain that some IBM concepts leaked into the model.

The model has its genesis from:

Making a Significant ‘Sale’ Requires 10 Touches

• Touch is defined as a significant, value-added interaction that results in a positive step forward.
• Each touch generally requires about 10 prior contacts.
• Every ‘sale’ requires a managed ‘campaign’ for success.

The box above is a simple model that implies that the sales team needs to develop and execute an approach plan for every key ‘sale.’ It is likely to take 10 touches to achieve success, and each touch is likely to take 10 contacts. It’s not an exact science, and the steps don’t happen uniformly. But after every major success, I found, in retrospect, that it takes about 10 touches with about 10 contacts per each touch to be successful.

This model creates a simple mental image and allows us to directly address some conceptual issues in such a ‘sale’:

• It involves ‘touching’ or human contact. Many sales teams would rather rely on sales collateral, advertising, or websites. This will not work for significant or complex sales, and one might say, “It’s a body contact sport.” Fundamentally, complex sales are accomplished by solving customers’ problems with your products or services. Hence, engaging customers to understand their business or situation is critical.
• Relationship Building. Beyond the human contact, sustainable relationship building must occur and will pay dividends post-sale. Many factors play into relationship building, so it cannot be computed or forced. Individual chemistry, backgrounds, common skills, areas of understanding, style, and personality all play into establishing and building customer relationships. People like to invest, buy, and donate to people they like.
• Planning is needed. It is a complicated, multi-step process that requires a strategic and tactical plan. Additionally, major (touches) and minor (contacts) activities need to be cohesively integrated. The timing for engaging with the right content and deliverables for customer interactions – touches and contacts – is the key ingredient of the plan.
• Teamwork is required. It will be difficult to accomplish 10 touches times 10 contacts with only one person. In fact, it’s preferable to share the load among a variety of players to maximize the probability of success.
• No Home Runs. It is unlikely that success can be achieved with just 1 touch … the baseball analogy is an out-of-the-park home run on the first pitch. In fact, in my professional career, I don’t recall running into a situation where I, or even a colleague, made the “perfect sales pitch,” and someone wrote a significant check on the spot. It just doesn’t happen. But for some reason, many organize their approach expecting this to be the case.
• Focus Required. The sales model implies that there are so many activities that the sales organization requires focus. In fact, it reinforces the concept of a sales funnel. That is, the sales process starts out with many leads. At each step in the maturity of the sales pipeline cycle, it is essential to leave some these leads behind, thereby allowing more focus for the remaining potential customers with the always-constrained sales resources. The ideal process, therefore, effectively and efficiently narrows the potential customers down to the final set of those who eventually become customers.

Discussing and Reporting

A major benefit of the 10 Touch ‘Sales’ Model is that it provides an excellent framework for discussing and reporting on the status of the sales effort. My experience is that without such a framework and vocabulary, it’s difficult to discuss the progress on a particular sales approach. A common frame of reference allows a better discussion about the sales process and assures that everyone is on the same page, consistent with the mental model described above.

For example, when a salesperson or other colleague is getting ready to call on a potential customer, one can say, “Good luck! Hope you get to Touch 2.” This reinforces the need to build a relationship but also to maintain patience. Home runs don’t happen, and the harder one pushes for it, in my humble experience, the less likely it will happen.

As the relationship evolves and a series of contacts and touches are utilized, it’s helpful to remind those in the business development, sales & marketing, development & fundraising roles that a lot of activity must be done to accomplish the large ‘sale.’ Every day should be filled with actions to support the contacts to support the touches.

I also find the 10 Touch ‘Sales’ Model a useful way to track and report progress for various stakeholders like other employees and board members. To the right is a hyperlinked picture of a typical chart we used for the board and executive council, meaning the highest ranking VPs reporting to the CEO.

In this chart, we list all the opportunities vertically in rows, and in the middle, one clearly observes the 10 touches status as green horizontal bars. The farther the bar stretches to the right, the higher the touch level. At a glance, it is easy to see the relative maturity of the sales pipeline.

I remember at several board meetings when we reviewed the pipeline chart that some board members remembered the ‘shape’ of these lines from meeting to meeting. One remarked: Line item ‘x’ has been at Touch 5 for a long time, how come it hasn’t matured over the past 3 months? Another comment I remember was something like: Wasn’t line item ‘y’ at a Touch 7 last month, why is it down to a Touch 5?

We had interesting answers for each, but notice how it created an opportunity for a productive conversation. The fundamental understanding of 10 touches along with a pictorial representation made it easy to see the status of the sales pipeline and identify issues at the strategic and tactical levels.

Other columns in this Microsoft Excel chart include the Customer Segment, the Opportunity Name, Customer Activity Status, P-Go, P-Win, Point-of-Contact (POC) or Project Lead, and the Contract Values.

Customer Activity Status is basically a color-coded cell – blue, green, yellow, or red – used to give an overall indication if the trends are going well with the customer and the expected speed of closing a deal. For example: Ahead of Expectations, Proceeding as Expected, Some Warning Signs, or Stalled/In Trouble.

P-Go is the probability that a customer program or project will go forward, meaning the customer secures funding, gets required approvals, and completes the tender process.

P-Win is the probability that if the project goes forward, the customer will select you. So, the expected value of the opportunity is the P-Go times the P-Win times the size of the initial contract.

Under Contract Values, we usually kept columns for the projected size of an initial contract, amount of potential revenue this year, and long-term potential sales for this opportunity.

Statistics teaches us that the expected value of any particular opportunity is not likely to be useful because you never actually receive the expected value of a contract. You either win it, or you don’t. But over a large enough number of opportunities and with sufficiently good estimates for the probabilities, the sum of the expected values will trend toward a meaningful estimate of the expected value of the collection of opportunities.

The second Pipeline chart example was adapted for selling software. This report was actually exported from SalesForce.com into MS Excel with some macros. The first column denotes a new opportunity; the ‘Status’ column has some special purpose, in this case, the gray blocks refer to customers waiting for a new software feature; the ‘Stage’ column is auto-generated by the Milestone/Touch Stage number saved with the opportunity; the up arrow, horizontal arrow, and black dot reflect how many days since a Milestone number has improved with a number alongside; and, the Activities column shows the number of various contacts to that customer in the past 45 days where 1 gets a check and more a star.

Assessing Step Levels

I personally view scaling to the touch level steps to be relative to a level of effort toward closing a deal. Touch 1 is when a prospect is qualified, and Touch 10 is when the contract has been awarded and signed and the opportunity is virtually certain of turning into revenue. One can think of reporting on the touches as being a linear progression toward an assessment of percent to complete. However, common steps are required in each sector of the 10-touch process, as depicted in the hyperlinked chart at the right.

The first band of touches (1 through 3) is typically for qualifying the prospect, defining the customer problem or pain. And then, validate that you have a valid solution and that the customer is likely to find funds for such a solution. The second range (4 through 6) is generally where the hard work is done to shape the customer. The decision-makers are validated, relationships are built with key influencers, and technical obstacles/issues/unknowns are removed or mitigated. Finally, the third zone (7 through 10) is where we drive toward closure. Funding is secured, commitment is gained, and the contracting approach is finalized.

In the early steps, it’s important to assess this particular opportunity. One of the worst things is to believe a customer has the potential to close a deal, expend incredible amounts of effort trying to get to closure, and then discover that a deal isn’t going to happen and that this was a knowable outcome early on. It would be a horrendous waste of time, but the opportunity cost is likely to be even larger. That is, the wasted time prevents spending time pursuing leads/prospects that have a higher probability of closure.

Best Practices

During my many years of leading sales, development/fundraising, and financing teams, I encountered many best practices. Here is a summary:

• Building Strategic and Tactical Plans. Every significant ‘sales’ opportunity requires a well-thought-out battle plan. The biggest opportunities are entitled to a full-fledged ‘war room’ with postings on the wall, full-time staff support, daily 8 am status updates, and team members flowing in and out as necessary. Smaller opportunities still need a planning cycle, and it’s up to the leadership to determine the level of effort for each opportunity. Some of the key aspects of these plans include:
  • Identifying all of the ‘touch’ points, ‘contacts’ interfaces, and key influencers.
  • Developing relationship maps for each of the key people within the influence chain.
  • Laying out any supporting activities that are needed, such as marketing, trade shows, and white papers.
• Secure Funding for the Customer. Many times when making a ‘sale’ to an organization, the key person on the other side would like to buy your product or service but isn’t able to obtain the funds. The reasons could be an organizational priority, lack of visibility of the particular problem being solved, organizational log jambs, need for government approvals, or sometimes even that your particular customer contact doesn’t know how to get the money or exert influence within his/her organization. A sales team must solve all these issues and even help educate the customer on steps that need to be taken on his/her side.
• Touch People Matching. One necessary trick in the bag is to determine who should make each contact/touch based on the plans above, the relationship maps, the hierarchies, and relationship impedance matching. Every sales process requires this to be carefully tuned and orchestrated.
  • For example, when involved in fundraising for the university, I was generally involved in the ‘heavy lifting’ at about Touch 4 and Touch 9. This gave the development team the opportunity to ‘build up’ the meeting with me so that it could be significant. If I made every call, contact, and touch, it wouldn’t be as special. It means when I help make ‘the ask,’ it can also be impactful.
  • In contrast, when doing fundraising for venture capital, the expectation is that I, as the CEO, am involved in most of the touches, contacts, and calls.
• Relationship Impedance Matching. This concept is mentioned above and is where we try to match personalities and dynamics between the participants in a particular touch opportunity.
  • Occasionally, sales teams and organizations rely too heavily on personnel titles and hierarchy to determine who makes particular calls and touches. For example, I am ‘good’ in sales calls, but I just do not sync with certain people. It would be better to not use me in situations where I could aggravate the sales process. So even though I was the CEO, I made it clear that we should always use the best person for each ‘touch’ interaction.
  • This is really hard to do in big companies because org charts rule the day. One could argue it’s harder in engineering-type companies where IQs are usually more dominant than EQs. This should be underscored for both large and small companies. And, as we know, it’s more than just aligning the right technical-to-technical contacts, having the CEO make a touch at the right time, etc. … it’s also the non-business chemistry. Our experience at Insitu was alma maters, college football, hometowns, and the like.

My colleague, Steve Nordlund, has a cute anecdote: “I remember my meeting with a key admiral that ultimately championed us onto a certain class of ship in the US Navy. We were scheduled for 30 minutes, but the meeting actually went for an hour and a half. For all but 15 minutes, we talked about Apple computers after he saw my Mac laptop. Turned out, he was a closet Apple guy inside the DOD. He told me at the end of the meeting, he would get us on DDGs, and he did just that.” {Editor’s Note: This was Touch 3, and it still took us a full 10 touches, but the momentum was established.}

• Advisory Councils. I have used advisory councils to great effect. These are talented, experienced people with diverse backgrounds who can monitor the pulse of customer segments, give advice on positioning, arrange for meetings for the sales team, determine if customer communications are sufficient, and in the event of a problem, possibly intervene with the customer.
• Collecting Data Prior to Meetings. Prior to a major ‘touch,’ we try to use the opportunity’s relationship map and all our resources to determine the touch points and issues. It’s amazing how successful a meeting can be if the issues are successfully predicted and the materials are prepared that exactly address those concerns.
• Vocabulary. Although I have learned and adapted this approach using the terminology of ‘Touches’ and ‘Contacts,’ I have since evolved for my latest business endeavor and call them ‘Milestones’ and ‘Activities’ to increase clarity. The second pipeline example chart above reflects this update.
• Getting to a Quick No. It is important to trim down the opportunities to the one that is likely to close as soon as possible. Ten touches times 10 contacts per touch is a lot of activity that has to be organized. Disaster would be to get to the end and discover there is no match.

I remember when I was raising venture capital, and one friendly venture capital firm kept having me come back, make presentations, supply due diligence data, interface with colleagues, and channel my team to their issues. In the end, they said they didn’t want to make an investment because they don’t invest in that sector. Ouch! We wasted so much time. I asked them why they just didn’t tell me that at the start. They said, in effect, that they liked us and didn’t want to hurt our feelings. As can be imagined, their response was not appreciated.

Summary

Every organization in every sector needs to collect resources to execute its purpose. We have used the term ‘sales’ as the generic process for the collection of those resources. Herein a simple model is proposed and illustrated for discussing, reporting, organizing, and managing the ‘sales’ process.

https://tinyurl.com/bddhvr2f

Updated Sales Model with Seeq Process

This article is an addendum to the previous most popular posts on my site, The 10 Touch Sales Model. I modernized it to include my methodology as it has been adapted to my current venture, which is a SaaS software company with a hybrid Enterprise Sales and Product-Led Growth sales model

Updated Model

Initially, I used the term “touch” because the philanthropy field, where I first devised this model, used it, and the word reinforces the need for personal interactions. But I found the term didn’t encompass the business aspect, so I refined The 10 Touch Sales Model over the years. My latest update came as the CEO at Seeq, a software company that works with clients in large process industries like super-major oil companies, specialty manufacturing, and pharma & biotech. Although I’ve also used the terms stages and steps instead of touches in previous years, my current preference is the term milestone, which is more motivating to sales teams and more professional for business settings. It is also a better way to explain that moving from one milestone to the next is moving the ball to the next stage.

Another major change that I made was to start at Milestone 0 instead of 1. Think of M00 as the holding bin, the potential users. No contact has been made, but they remain possibilities. After M09, the client moves off the list because we received the purchase order.

During M00 to M02, the relationships are in the hands of marketing to qualify the leads. A sales exec picks up these accounts in M02 to further qualify the lead and decide if and when there is enough value to take the contract forward. To move to M03, however, the sales exec must receive approval because, at this point, the customer needs more assessment, and Seeq must invest engineering resources to support the initial decision-making process on the customer’s part. The accounts are further developed in M04 to M06. At M07, the RFP or acquisition process begins. The contract moves off the list once payment is made.

As I’ve stated numerous times, this model must be adapted to each company. For example, at Seeq, our software is state-of-art, and as such, we have little competition. So, our process is streamlined, but we still have to go through each step and create the touches and pass each milestone. Other companies may need to spend more time countering what the competition can do.

Account Tracking

At Seeq, we use the above spreadsheet to track the progress of each account over the previous 30 days. We use this internally to track contracts daily, but we also share it with our Board every month, which provides transparency and an outside perspective. The green flag to the left identifies new accounts. In the Stage column, we have a green progress bar with a number that indicates the current milestone for that account. The symbols in the Duration column provide a visual indicator of the progress. A green vertical arrow indicates the account is moving forward, a yellow horizontal arrow shows a stalled process, and a black dot means that little to no activity has been made in the last 60 days for that account. The Activities column shows the number of contacts made toward the next milestone. The green checkmark signals that at least one contact was made in the past 30 days, and the gold star represents that more than one contact was made. The Amount column represents the initial commitment from the customer. The final right column contains the source of the contact if known.  

Here are some descriptions for the pipeline chart:

We also provide another tracking mechanism for the Board:

By looking at the past 6 months, 30 days, and the current accounts, we track progress over time. To ensure transparency, we provide as much information as possible.

Summary

Converting sales opportunities into actual customers, especially for large accounts, requires time, commitment, and a dedicated plan. No solution fits every situation, so use my model as the basis for a customized plan for your business. Read Managing and Growing Customer Accounts for my recommendations on maintaining and nurturing the relationship.

https://tinyurl.com/4knppttz

10 Critical Best Practices for Your Sales Force in This Crisis

Posted by Dave Kurlan

We are in week 6 of lockdown, week 8 of voluntary work-from-home, while adapting, guiding and directing companies who still need to sell their products and services to generate revenue.  At this point sales is about so much more than generating revenue for profit or to keep employees working.  For most companies, sales is now about generating revenue to survive, as we stare down a whole new way of doing business.  Forget uncertainty!  Where we are right now is downright scary.  But if the past 6 weeks have taught us anything, it's that with the right tools, strategies, mindset and tactics, we can adapt and even thrive.  For those who may read this after May 1, 2020, the following best practices are based on where we are as I write this on April 27, 2020. 

Everyone Has a Remote Sales Team - It's not just the geographically distributed sales teams anymore; it's everyone, and we need to consider the biggest challenges of leading remote sales teams:

• Not everyone is tech savvy, especially in some old-school industries like building products, industrial distribution, and historical face-to-face selling environments.  You must set proper expectations about using phone and video, require all meetings to be virtual instead of phone, and provide proper training on using video technology.
• Not everyone is well-suited for working from home.  I'm not talking about the ability to focus without distraction.  I'm talking about whether your salespeople have the DNA for working from home, independent of their team, and without supervision; whether they are self-starters and have the necessary time and organizational skills to work on their own for an extended period of time.  Working from home is not temporary.  This will continue even after the lockdown is in the rear view mirror because as long as kids are at home (no school, no summer camp), parents will be at home too and customers may not be ready to have outsiders visiting their offices and plants.  Also consider that some salespeople aren't able to handle the emotional disconnect from being isolated from friends, co-workers, families and customers.
• Daily Huddles - Despite years of yelling from the rooftops that sales leaders must lead a quick daily huddle with their teams, it didn't happen.  It just wasn't convenient - for the leaders!  And despite the proven benefits of such huddles, most resisted while some compromised and ran weekly huddles.  The resistance and compromises must end.  You must huddle with your team twice per day to keep them connected, share success stories and demonstrate that we are in this together.
• Coverage - salespeople will be able to cover their territories more efficiently than ever before.
• Cost - Having your salespeople sell remotely is much more cost-effective.

Motivation - Your salespeople are scared.  They are looking to you for reassurance, positivity, motivation, success stories, support, guidance, direction and hope.  They are afraid:

• Will they be able to make calls without offending people?
• Will they be able to schedule virtual meetings?
• Will they be able to sell over video/phone?
• Will they be able to close anything in the short term?
• Will they be able to keep their jobs?

Call Reports - I can't think of a single reason why you would waste salespeople's time by having them complete call reports.  Consider:

• They use same piece of hardware for virtual meetings and emails as they do to access your CRM application.  Gone are the days where they were on the road, on site with a customer, on sales calls, in a hotel or airport or home too late without enough time to update CRM.  No more excuse making.
• They must update CRM in real time,  as they complete each conversation, virtual meeting and call.  
• You must make real time updates a condition of continued employment.  In the current environment of 15% unemployment, this requirement has teeth.
• It's like spaghetti sauce - it's in there.  Everything you could possible ask for in a call report will be in the dashboard and/or reporting section of your CRM application.  Ditch the call reports.

Pipeline -  The one thing that every salesperson can do right now is build pipeline.  My conversations with CEOs reveal two problems:  Delayed closes and insufficient pipelines to compensate so:

• Go on offense! Every salesperson - even account managers and farmers, should be all in, all hands on deck pipeline building mode right now.  If they won't do it you don't need them!  25 million people have already filed for unemployment in the US so 2.5 million are probably salespeople.  Unlike just three months ago when your salespeople were in the driver's seat, your salespeople can be replaced!
• Phones - They're being used as talking devices again!  We haven't witnessed this kind of reconnection with the phone since administrative assistants were replaced by automated voicemail systems.  Executives are taking and returning calls and you should not allow your salespeople to hide behind their monitors using emails to reach out when people are answering their cell phones!
• Viability - You need a comprehensive viability analysis of your pipeline to determine how much is high quality, how much is properly staged, and how much you will realistically win.  Without the viability analysis your forecast is a complete fabrication.

Coaching - Forget 50% of your time coaching!  It needs to be 75% of your time.  You have the time, even if you are responsible for personal accounts.  Every salesperson, every day, for a minimum of 30-minutes of one-on-one coaching to:

• Coach them up
• Coach them through opportunities
• Debrief completed calls
• Join them on calls (easier than ever)

KPI's -  It's time to rethink your KPI's:

• Focus on Pipeline Building KPI's!  Dials, Conversations and Virtual Meetings Scheduled. 
• Add KPI's for opportunities that advanced to the next stage, opportunities that were pushed back to a prior stage, and opportunities that are no longer valid.  Counting only the good stuff is head-in-the-sand leadership.

Targeting - It's more important than ever! 

• You may have lost entire Verticals (like travel/tourism), Segments (small specialty retail is a segment of retail) or Audiences (sales enablement and learning and development have been casualties). 
• Target the verticals, segments and audiences that you can sell to now, that are continuing to do business.
• Consider selling something different than what you usually sell to existing customers and seeking new customers for what you typically sell.
• Your competition may not have been affected in the same way that you were, especially if they have other channels, verticals, products and services than what you offer.  Will they be concentrating more or less of their efforts on your target market?
• Hard to Reach Opportunities are no longer hard to reach for territory salespeople.  They can reach them virtually!

Critical Skills - I can't be more clear about this and you have no option but to do something about this. If your salespeople continue to take a present/demo/quote/proposal-based approach to selling they will fail and the only business you will get will be low-margin business.  Only 15% of all salespeople have all four of the critical skills below as a strength: 

• A Consultative approach, based on listening and asking questions, is the only way to differentiate your salespeople from your competitors
• Value-Based selling, where your salespeople are the value, is the only way to maintain margins.  If you attempt to be competitive your only revenue will be low to no margin revenue and you will fail.  This is not talking about value; this is being the value.
• Thorough qualifying.  You can't afford for your salespeople to be wasting time on opportunities that are no longer viable; but they will if you don't require thorough qualifying and justification for pursuit, and add verification and accountability.
• Staged, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process that supports the consultative, value-based, approach.

Right-Sizing - I'm sorry but you can't put this off.  There is no way around this.  You must do this today, unless you got PPP funding, in which case you must do this at 60 days post-funding!  You must be able to generate more revenue with fewer salespeople

• Consider factors other than revenue and performance. 
• Also consider overhead (sales expenses other than commissions)
• Suitability for the role they are in (half of all salespeople are not well-suited for the roles they are in
• Suitability for working from home (see remote sales team above - 41% of all salespeople are not well-suited for working from home)
• Pipeline viability (see Pipeline above - 43% of all salespeople lack viable pipelines right now) 
• Critical skills for selling in this environment - (See critical skills above - 85% of all salespeople are lacking these skills)
• OMG's SmartSizing tool allows you to run a complete viability analysis on your sales organization to right-size it today.

Hire Salespeople - If you have the cash flow to hire salespeople, do it now.  This is the first time in about five years that good candidates are available and actively looking for their next home.  Just make sure:

• Don't make any mistakes in your rush to hire
• Use OMG's trusted, accurate, customizable (for the role) and predictive sales candidate assessment.
• Rework your sales recruiting process for the current times.  You need to get every aspect right from the ad you post to your onboarding.

Get Help!  Sure you want to be a superhero but Kryptonite brought Superman to his knees and the enemy we are fighting today is our version of Kryptonite. Don't be embarrassed to ask an expert for help.

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