I'm not a great one for the telly, but I do like the Masterchef series.
The amateur chefs have bags of enthusiasm as their family or friends have told them they are great, and the so-called ‘professionals’ want to up their game to prove to themselves or their employers that they are worth investing in.
The theme from start to finish is to challenge the budding Tom Kitchin’s and Andrew Fairlie’s until an outright winner is found.
Eventually, our chefs will start to create great results, but usually not before making a total hash of one or more dishes. One of the most common mistakes seems to be trying to add too many ingredients to one dish in an attempt to show the judges how much they have learned.
Using the right tools
Company CEOs and board members are spoiled for choice with events such as GlobalScot, or the Masterclass series run by Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Development International, and partners. This is great, as it challenges and develops senior management, and encourages new thinking.
I've been very fortunate to have had some of the best account management training bestowed upon me, particularly in my BT days, but over time I've developed my own toolkit of techniques which I think works best for each situation using the Masterchef analogy - use the minimum amount of ingredients, flavours and presentation for maximum effect.
Asking the right questions
So, as a company owner, director, CEO, how do you motivate, train and retain your business development people?
Are you one of the 'old school' guys or girls who believe in the motto 'the beatings will continue until morale improves'? Are your good people on commission sales only?
I'll almost guarantee that all of your metrics are internally focused.
- How many visits have your people done this week?
- What revenue has come in?
- What is your visit plan for next week?
- When will this quote be an order?
While these are all valid questions, this is basic stuff, like Monica's technical challenge on Masterchef. The real question is how do you raise the bar and be like Tom Kitchin?
The right questions for our stakeholders are:
- will it work for our people?
- are we going to fill the gap in our sales pipeline quickly enough to meet our targets?
- what will make an immediate difference?
To use the MasterChef analogy, what is it going to 'taste' like?
Missing from a large number of account development plans is proper qualification of sales leads and real detailed knowledge of the customers' intentions. The common CRM systems in use, such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, are very 'inward looking' tools.
In other words, the system has probably been inputted with data according to what your senior management team have deemed important.
Choosing the right focus
A couple of expressions I like, credited to legendary sales trainer Dermot Bradley, are along the lines of 'If you are going to have to lose, then lose fast', and 'the biggest waste of sales people’s time is the deals they lose'.
In other words, don't mess around with leads which you are not going to win. In strategic sales terms you will recognise this as qualification of opportunities.
Dermot is also credited with developing the SCOTSMAN® qualification technique, which, in my personal opinion falls into the box marked "best tools ever invented".
Unlike CRM systems, SCOTSMAN® faces outward, and concentrates on what your customer has said, done, or agreed to do for you – known as commitment based selling.
The tool guides the business development and other account plan stakeholders, and builds a picture of where you are in the sales cycle based on a series of agreed commitments with the customer. Depending on your sales strategy, opportunities can be prioritised, brought forward, pushed back, stalled depending on what your competitors are up to at the time.
Next steps
The UK rights to the official SCOTSMAN® tools are now with Advance of York who I understand have plug-in's for Salesforce and MS Dynamics CRM systems. If you're looking to improve your staff's selling skills, your first port of call should be to make use of SCOTSMAN®, as well as the following resources.
Also, if you are considering putting people forward for formal training, please get in touch with your Scottish Enterprise account manager who can provide expert advice and support.
Like our Masterchef contestants, the last thing we want our Scottish companies to hear from their clients is 'the person leaving the contest today will be ...'.