Managing a super star much less a group of lone rangers or rain makers can be a thankless and frustrating affair. Generally speaking these situations only advance the individual sales person and sub-optimize the total interest of the company.

Often managers get roped into believing: I’ll just let my superstar do whatever because they generate results. This is short term thinking and death to a high performing sales culture.

The highest performing companies are those who cultivate an elite world class selling mentality that reveres and respects the sales professional and constantly underscores their worth to an enterprise.

To optimize the company, sales team and individual sales professional here are a few hints:

1. Develop team & individual goals.
2. Create a culture where high performers are rewarded & recognized for sharing their knowledge.
3. Instill a learning environment where new ideas and best practices are reviewed and institutionalized.
4. Institute mentoring opportunities for your new and seasoned sales professionals to engage one another.
5. Catch a sales person doing something “good” and publicize it throughout the organization.
6. Underscore the principle that nothing happens until a sale is made, thus everyone in the company is involved and supportive of the sales effort.

Finally practice, play and work as a team and the results will follow!

He inquired if I could help him?

I asked, “How much time did he spend prospecting each week?”

He said,  “Maybe an hour on Friday afternoons, my important work for the week has been completed.”

I explain he had his priorities misaligned and he needed to put prospecting had the head of list each week. I suggested he set in his Outlook calendar or Google calendar a block of specific time and day that is sacred with no interruptions. Do not answer incoming calls, respond to emails, answer your door – just hunker down and prospect.

In today’s market place sales professionals must spend 20 – 50% of their waking hours filling their pipe line with new leads that turn into appointments and eventually become full fledge prospects and ultimately result in a sale.

There is no easy way around it!

If you are an owner, sales manager or sales professional focus on getting more appointments and keeping your sales funnel full of new opportunities.

This flow of potential customers will determine your success or failure in achieving your sales goals.  It’s not the big wins but the day to day wins that will will be the foundation for a solid sales pipeline. www.nealabc.com

One of my mentors and highly regarded business associates posed the notion that part of the current business dilemma we are experiencing today, has to do with unbridled greed and unethical business practices.

Possibly a subject left to discuss when times are better?

Doing the right thing is not restricted to when the timing is right, but rather a pattern of behavior honed over years of understanding the ethics and standards we follow in our society.

Without getting too preachy, I would suggest each of us examine our own sales process and reestablish the values, rules, and practices we as leaders convey to our entire enterprise.

 We often give sales professionals great latitude in dealing with customers and prospects, reconnecting them with your ethical foundation is the right thing to do and good business! Once a reputation is sullied, you all know how long it takes to recoup if ever.

Proper business ethics never go out of style! www.nealabc.com

Price has never been excluded from the equation. Perhaps there was a little less emphasis in the past, but always lurking near the surface.

Although we are in the most difficult economy in our lifetime hasn’t it always been about price, value and relationships?

Sales professionals can become pessimistic allowing the customer and themselves to obsess over price. World class sales professionals continue to dig deep and wide looking for opportunities to creatively bring value, innovation, cost reduction, and relationships to the sales process.

As owners, sales managers, and sales professionals we must all look introspectively and resist the tendency to fall prey to the price mantra.

Do you believe in your goods or services? If so challenge yourself to find the differentiators. Price will has always been and will always remain relative!  www.nealabc.com

After an initial defensive response, I pondered their observation and deduced we all must keep moving ahead never accepting the status quo. The notion that we are not a finished product unless we say so is thought provoking!

This is thought provoking for personal as well as professional endeavors.

For owners, sales managers, and sales professionals the question is are you keeping pace?

Are you remaining relevant to the needs, wants and desires of your customers?

Does the market place offer new opportunities that “old “perceptions are preventing you from taking advantage of? 

Pose these questions to your sales team, challenge them to think out of the box, encourage them to try new approaches, keep them relevant!   www.nealabc.com

Generating leads and following up on them is a tedious job yet a fundamental requirement for world class sales performance. Warm leads are precious and the process to turn them into initial appointments and true prospects needs to be consistent.

As the CEO or VP of Sales are you aware of the number of leads your sales people process each day, week, or month? Can you identify where the leads come from and how timely they are followed up on?

Statistics demonstrate that all too often sales people do not have enough leads at any one point in time to keep the pipeline filled; thus they have gaps or voids in the flow of legitimate prospects. Another critical issue is frequently sales professionals don’t follow up on “hot” leads in a timely fashion and loose the majority to competition.

Keeping your sales force focused on consistently generating leads and tracking their status via a CRM is one of the single most important task management can provide.   www.nealabc.com

All sales professionals have the same amount of time to sell (24hrs/7 days a week)? How they spend their precious time can make a big difference.

According to a survey conducted by CSO (Chief Sales Officer Insights) only 35.7% of the average sales person’s time is spent in face to face selling. Arguably the most important use of a sales professional’s time allocation.

Certainly there are other tasks: administration, quote preparation, generating leads, meetings, etc. that require an expenditure of time.

Are you aware and monitor where your and your team’s time is spent? Do you condone where the time is spent? Do you coach sales professionals to increase valuable face to face selling time?

One obvious area to examine is the use of technology (CRMs, laptops, cell phones, webinars, etc.) to reduce manual processes, thus increasing face to face sales time.  www.nealabc.com

This product “pushing” mentality, at least from the seller’s perspective is not in concert with today’s consultative sales approach. Customers want to engage in problem solving vs. product flash.

As a result, knowing your customer from their perspective is the only perspective that counts.

Management needs to help their sales professionals understand customer’s wants and needs both present and future. This requires more of an inquisitive approach, asking more probing questions and understanding the customer’s entire business proposition.

This macro view allows specific products or services to create more value when connected to the customer’s situation. www.nealabc.com

Social Networking, Partner Relationship Management, and Portal Integration

Q: What are accelerators?

A: CRM Accelerators are free-of-charge, add-on solutions being developed for Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners. Accelerators add instant functionality to customers at no additional cost.

The vision around accelerators is consistent with Microsoft’s approach to business software. Accelerators are part of the rapid innovation Microsoft is providing to customers.

Q.  Will customers have to pay more for this new functionality?

A:  No. Building upon our promise to offer the CRM industry’s best price-to-value equation, the new CRM Accelerators are free to existing customers.  Customers will not be charged incremental fees to take advantage of them.  As with all incremental innovations to Microsoft Dynamics CRM since the delivery of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, CRM Accelerators are intended to provide new business benefit on a regular basis at no cost to the customer.

Q: What accelerators were announced on July 9^th, 2009, and what functionality do they add?

A: On Thursday, July 9^th, we announced three new solution accelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new accelerators include:

• Social Networking Accelerator
  • What:  Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers can now add Twitter as a channel to their CRM deployment.
  • How:  Allows businesses to
    • DISCOVER important conversations
    • IDENTIFY influential people, and
    • ENGAGE to drive successful customer service and sales operations.
• Which:  Currently, the accelerator will allow for Twitter integration, with additional social networks coming soon.
• Value:�
  • Drives customer satisfaction by improving responsiveness to customer needs
  • Increases pipeline opportunities by identifying new prospects
  • No additional cost for customers
  • Fast / easy deployment = fast time-to-value
  • No additional cost and fast deployment = great price-to-value equation

• Partner Relationship Management Accelerator
  • Allows businesses to distribute sales leads and centrally manage sales opportunities across channel partners, even extending integration to help automate business processes. The accelerator also includes extensions in to Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s sales force automation functionality.
  • Value:�
    • Centralizes sales and partner revenue channels on one system
    • Reduces overall maintenance costs associated with managing multiple systems
    • No additional cost for customers
    • Fast / easy deployment = fast time-to-value
    • No additional cost and fast deployment = great price-to-value equation

• Portal Integration Accelerator
  • Allows businesses to connect Microsoft Dynamics CRM to an organization’s portal and / or web experience through point-and-click configuration to extend business processes to the Web.
  • Examples:
  • Differentiation / Value:
    • Can expose any CRM entity to the web portal – not just contact, account and cases (more flexible than SF.com)
    • Customers can create as many portals as they need for different audiences at no additional cost (you need the external connector license but no other hidden charges – different from sf.com)
    • No additional cost for customers
    • Fast / easy deployment = fast time-to-value
    • No additional cost and fast deployment = great price-to-value equation

• �
  • �
    • Lead generation and capture via external web sites
    • Lead distribution to partner portals and extranets
    • Bi-directional information share and update capabilities, eg, project tasks and plans surfaced in SharePoint or 3rd party portal

Q: When will these accelerators be generally available?

A: The three new accelerators The new CRM Accelerators will be made available in the next few weeks. Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers and partners can download each of these solutions from http://crm.dynamics.com. To date, CRM Accelerators have exceeded 50,000 downloads to drive new customer value and partner innovation with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Q: How does the social accelerator differ from Salesforce.com’s offering?

A: SFDC describes the use of Twitter in the context of Service (eg, a notification of service outages or product issues) and outreach to affected customers. This is a very narrow view of how an organization could benefit from the conversations that take place on social networking sites.

The Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is built around the premise of managing conversations and perceptions which may be around brand, sales queries, product announcements, market segmentation, service cases – or a variety of other topics. In addition to the scale of applicability, it also offers a broad scope in analytics and dashboards that allow the organization to measure message effectiveness, map out the influencers and get early insight into developing trends (positive or negative) about the brand, all actionable from within CRM.

Q: Why are the accelerators newsworthy?

A: With Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators, customers and partners benefit from new functionality on a frequent basis. Unlike our competitors, we don’t nickel and dime our customers for this added functionality – Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers receive accelerators at no charge.

Q:  Are these the first accelerators you have introduced?

A:  No, accelerators were first introduced in July 2008 at WPC. In the last year, we have introduced more than 12 accelerators (including the three new ones being announced on July 8, 2009) that include Analytics, Event Management, eService, Notifications, Social Networking, PRM, Portal Integration, and others.  The CRM Accelerators give our customers additional functionality to drive productivity and effectiveness at no additional charge.   (Full list of accelerators: Analytics, eService, Event Management, Enterprise Search, Sales Methodologies, Extended Sales Forecasting, CRM Notifications, Business Productivity, Social Networking, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), and Portal Integration. More information is available at: http://www.codeplex.com/crmaccelerators.)

Q: How often do you plan to introduce new accelerators?

A: Microsoft is committed to delivering incremental innovation to Microsoft Dynamics CRM customers.  Since November 2008, more than 12 accelerators (including the three new ones being announced on July 8, 2009) that include Analytics, Event Management, eService, Notifications, Social Networking, PRM, Portal Integration, and others.  The CRM Accelerators give our customers additional functionality to drive productivity and effectiveness at no additional charge.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a new feature that enables users to access Microsoft Dynamics CRM data from a mobile Web browser on a Web-enabled mobile device. This feature must be installed on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server, and can work over the Internet if Microsoft Dynamics CRM is set up for Internet-facing deployment, or within a company intranet. It is available as a free download for English versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Once installed, users can view and modify Microsoft Dynamics CRM data from a web browser on their device.

Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM