Sales force automation (SFA) has been growing steadily over the past few years, and the folks at CRM Buyer predict that when the economy leaves its slump, SFA will surge.

Most apparently, SFA is making inroads with new price points and offerings for different verticals. Catering to specific industries is a smart move to stay competitive; the change in pricing was a bigger necessity. A Gartner analyst noted that many companies subscribing to SaaS SFA platforms are nearing the end of their contracts, and are both shopping around and negotiating lower prices for the service already in use. In addition, there’s been an emerging demand for role-based pricing.

Several CRM sectors have seen boosts with the downturn, and SFA is one of them—companies looking to do more with less money frequently turned to automated systems. However, the “more with less” motto is not a recession-era fad, as it’s always trendy to save money, so SFA is expected to do well after the economic decline.

With this expected increase in demand, new technologies are surfacing: Shadetree Technologies recently released an application that marries marketing automation and SFA. Whether or not more such apps emerge, SFA will likely see a boost through the purchase of marketing automation applications, as they work best in an SFA environment. And many SFA applications are getting service information integrations, which will help sales departments learn more about customers.

CRM Buyer did point out a slightly surprising absence: Facebook. While other enterprise systems are enjoying the information and opportunities created by social networking, SFA applications are eschewing them. LinkedIn still interests vendors because it maintains a professional tone throughout, but Facebook (and probably Twitter) are too unstructured and leisurely, and serve mostly as distraction.

By Lee B. Salz - President of Sales Dodo, LLC

Companies think that once the sales person agrees to join their company that the goal has been accomplished. The truth is that this is only one more step of the process and there is still much work to be done.

It’s a great day at Newman Industries today! For the last month, they have been actively recruiting a hot candidate to join their sales team. Today, Steven Harmon agreed to join them. They see him as a true rainmaker. The recruiter and sales manager share high-fives. Mission accomplished! Spike the ball in the end zone. The job is done! The competition was fierce for Steven, but Newman Industries won.

While Newman Industries was celebrating, Steven resigned his position with his present employer and enjoyed a celebratory dinner with his wife. That night, Steven lay in bed wondering if he made the right decision. He came to terms with his decision and looks forward to his first day at the company.

It’s 8:28am when Steven arrives for his first day at Newman Industries. He is excited while also apprehensive. When Steven walks into the office and introduces himself to the receptionist, he is surprised to hear, “Oh, I didn’t know we had a new person starting today. Who did you say you were here to see?” Steven brushes this off as it is not completely foreign for the receptionist not to be notified about a new employee joining a company.

The receptionist calls around and tells Steven that he is in the right place, but his manager Jamie has not arrived yet. Steven sits in the lobby as person after person walks by without saying a word.

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By Lee B. Salz - President of Sales Dodo, LLC

There is a little test that professional buyers give to every sales person. It is a test to see if they are confident in the price they presented. They call it the flinch test. Will you pass the test?

After a lengthy buying process, the time has come to submit pricing. Countless hours are spent formulating a glorious proposal that details your comprehensive solution. Proud of your accomplishment, you present the proposal to the buyer. Skipping the sections about your company and your solution, she flips right to the pricing page. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t think it would be this expensive!”

What happens next determines whether or not you will get the business. When I say “get” the business, there are two sides to consider. The obvious is whether or not the prospect will award the business to you. The less obvious is whether your company will agree to their desired price level. The negotiation may get to a point where the prospect says they want to award you the business, but at a price unacceptable to your company. If you’ve ever been there, it is painful to say the least. As a sales person, you have a responsibility to facilitate the process in a way that leads to a mutually acceptable conclusion.

There is a trade secret in the purchasing world. They call it the “flinch test.” This is the test Procurement Agents and other professional buyers give to sales people when they provide pricing. “Wow! You are 25% higher than your competition.” These pros are trained to react with surprise so that they can see if the sales person is confident in the price they have put forward. It is nothing more than a straightforward negotiation tactic. Often times, they overstate the price difference such that you can do some quick math and see that the differential is bogus. I can recall a time where I was told that we were 50% higher than the competition. When I reviewed the numbers, this meant that the competitor was losing 18% based on fixed costs that we both had. It was highly unlikely that the competitor was signing up for this kind of an account. When I asked the Procurement Agent about that figure again, he flinched and we ultimately won the business.

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By Jim Ward – President, BrainSell

Hired a person new to sales? Transitioning a promising employee to sales? Now what?

Let’s focus on business to business sales (B to B).

You may already have a training program for salespeople and if not, it’s probably a good idea to send them to a strategic and tactical sales training program.

Here’s the recipe I’ve followed over my career in sales and owning a number of businesses. And trust me, it’s been a learning process and continues to be.

One of my biggest fears is over-training. Just like training at the gym (not that I have any fear of this one for myself!), one can reverse the effects of what the training was intended. Creating a robotic, over cooked salesperson. One that can’t heal from the injury caused by over training. So use tactical training in moderation.

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By Katherine Jones, Director of Marketing at NetSuite

Many CRM systems begin to struggle as business growth expands across borders and currencies, resulting in poor visibility across the entire business organization. Consider a global organization: sales information and results cover the territory, the country, the region, and then have to roll up together at corporate headquarters.

With typical sales force automation point systems, sales, forecasts, quotas and commission calculations cannot be accurately consolidated as they cross borders or continents. If your growth plans include crossing country borders, be sure to use these criteria in checking your potential vendors:

• Sales reps and sales management in each country need control of their orders, forecast, quota and commissions in appropriate local currency.
• Accurate currency translation for roll-up of subsidiary costs, revenue, and commissions to regional and corporate headquarters.

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Do you desire to increase your selling success?

If so, you need to read Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager, written by Lee B. Salz.

In his book, Salz provides sales people with an energy boost and an easy to implement sales tool kit. His book was inspired by the gap that exists between sales people and their managers; and Salz tackles this issue head on!

The book was written to help sales people and their managers remain competitive. Those who fail to adapt become extinct, just like the dodo bird of ages ago. Many laugh at the use of the word “dodo,” but there is nothing funny about a business losing its competitive edge due to unmanaged change.

In his book, he bridges the gap between sales people and their managers. The book empowers sales people by providing structure, guidance and support for them so they can create their own sales system which he refers to as sales architecture®. Told in a mentoring style, the book provides focus to an entire sales organization, helping them become self-sufficient and enabling them to perform at levels they never thought possible. It is with this new toolset that sales people learn to adapt and thrive.

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Lee B. Salz is President of Sales Dodo, LLC and author of “Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager.” He specializes in helping companies and their sales organizations adapt and thrive in the ever-changing world of business. Lee is available for keynote speaking, business consulting, and sales training. He can be reached via email at lsalz@salesdodo.com, his website at www.salesdodo.com or by phone at 763.416.4321.

Five Things You MUST Include In a CRM Software RFP

Your CRM software initiative is moving forward, and after extensive research and preliminary evaluations, you’ve narrowed it down to your short list of potential vendors. Now, the next step is to issue a request for proposal (RFP), a formal and often lengthy document that asks pointed and detailed questions about each provider’s CRM offerings.

Be prepared! The RFP process is complex, time-consuming, and even confusing at times, but one that is vital to ensuring the selection of the best possible solution for your business.

CRM requirements will vary greatly from one business to the next, so every RFP – even if submitted to the same vendor – will look quite different. However, there are certain elements that must be included in each and every CRM RFP, to ensure that your company gets the most value from its CRM investment.

Below are the five topics or items that can help drive the RFP process and steer your organization in the right direction:

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By Lee B. Salz - President of Sales Dodo, LLC

The falling-out between the Yankees and Joe Torre happens every day in business. Sales people can learn a lot from the experience.

This is the time of year when salespeople begin to reflect on their performance. Was it a good year? Was it a great year? Some will say they earned the dollars they desired, so it was a great year. Others will hang their hat on an account that they won and say it was a good year. However, as Joe Torre, former manager of the New York Yankees recently learned, employers have a single data point for measuring success that dwarfs all other statistics.

As the New York Yankees were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the rumors began to swirl that their manager, Joe Torre, was not got going to be asked to return as manager in 2008. He had just finished the last year of a three-year contract, which meant there were decisions to be made. Interestingly, many have said that his best managerial year was 2007, a year in which the team was eliminated early in the post-season. As manager of the Yankees, he took the team to the post-season every one of the twelve years while at the helm. No other team is enjoying a streak of this magnitude, but it wasn’t enough for team executives.

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Jim Ward - President, BrainSell

Are you using Opportunity Management and Sales Forecasting within your business?  What are the reasons for Sales Forecasting?

Most companies use forecasting to predict any number of business critical decisions. Will you make quota, what needs to be done to adjust sales efforts to meet quota, will you need more resources, will you need additional investment, will you need to adjust production capacity. All of these resulting decisions rely on the accurate projection of the “sales forecast”.

Opportunity management on the other hand is the sub process to forecasting. It’s what allows a forecast to be honed and to be accurate.  Typically Opportunity Management is used in longer sales cycles.  The better you know your sales process, stages and steps toward a successful sale, the better controls you can maintain in your opportunity management system.

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At A Glance
Company: RLE Technologies
Location: Fort Collins, CO
Industry: Manufacturing
Challenges: RLE needed an integrated, Web-based solution for sales order processing, CRM and help desk functionality with an intuitive user interface

Before turning to NetSuite in February, RLE Technologies – which manufactures water leak detection and web-enabled monitoring products – found itself in an IT quandary. The company had been using Great Plains software with its pervasive database; however, with Microsoft’s recent efforts to migrate users to SQL Server and .Net, RLE was facing massive upgrade costs.

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