Selling and Sales Management in the Complex Selling Environment. World Class Health Care Sales Organizations focus their sales people on the right business, at the right time, with the right message. Forecasting accuracy has become more important in Medical Device and Formulary based pharmaceutical sales. Sales Managers in the highest performing health care companies conduct regular deal reviews. Do you? Most of the sales teams we work with, quite frankly, are very good at what they do. As a matter of fact, most sales teams in the health care space are very good. Even your competitors are very good at what they do. Many of our clients are seeing their ASP increase. However the sales organization has not necessarily changed the way they sell or how they position themselves. How do you compare to World Class Sales Organizations? This article describes what one of Miller Heiman's customers found. Interested in finding out how your company compares? Email us at and mention that you would like to participate in research for the Health Care Industry. Do you or your salespeople have a spray and pray approach to sales calls? This has been very much the approach in our industry. More sophisticated clinicians and less time to spend with reps demands that we become customer focused. Are you focused on your customer. Selling from the buyer’s point of view is nothing new at Miller Heiman—it’s been our underlying philosophy since our founding three decades ago. But thanks to the forces reshaping the global business landscape, adopting that mindset is more critical today than ever before. Consulting and professional services organizations don’t sell widgets. They sell widget knowledge. They don’t manufacture, but they help manufacturers gain efficiencies and competitive edge. But, as the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study suggests, this sector has opportunities to sell more of its services and generate higher revenues in ways salespeople and their managers may never have thought possible. The value of differentiation cannot be overemphasized. A successful differentiation strategy can help you overcome price competition and sell on value. In this issue, we feature tips that provide actionable advice for differentiating yourself to meet the needs and motivations of your prospects. Miller Heiman’s award winning Sales Performance Tips (formerly Miller Heiman eTips) have been helping serious sales professionals around the world win business since 1998. Carefully selected tips are featured in Miller Heiman’s newest white paper series “Best of Miller Heiman Sales Performance Tips”. Each paper includes 3 to 5 tips that address a pressing topic faced by sales professionals. As every sales professional knows “big deals” can determine the survival or demise of one’s career. And every sales leader knows a big deal can promise huge revenue infusions that can make or break a quarter. Further how you pursue and manage a big deal may well determine exactly how big it gets. We’ve barely crossed the threshold into autumn, but it’s time to think hard about next year. Although the change of calendars is still a few months away, right now is the right time for intensive growth planning and strategizing. That way, when January rolls around, you and your sales team can hit the ground running. No question about it: The business landscape is changing dramatically, and smart sales organizations need to change with it. Major trends—think of them as “megatrends”—in four key categories are driving that shift. categories are: • Demographic • Technological • Regulatory • Social If there’s one profession that’s plagued with myths and half-truths, it’s sales. And no group is more subject to misunderstanding than your organization’s top performers Let’s examine seven of the most common misconceptions about world-class salespeople. In this issue, we focus on a necessary exercise required of “hunters” and business development professionals that they dread doing – calling a prospect. With telemarketing on the rise and an increasing number of people screening their incoming calls, phoning a prospect and hoping to get an appointment with him or her require new techniques. This issue features three articles that focus on the critical steps required to be successful at prospecting in today’s selling environment; some helpful advice to win more business by pursuing only those opportunities that reflect the qualities of your ideal customers; and tips to help you identify and access the senior-level decision maker in your sale. It’s easy to identify the highest-performing sales organizations: Obviously, they’re the ones with the most sales. The real challenge is figuring out how they got there. How do these sales superstars maintain a consistent, comfortable distance between themselves and their competitors? How do they retain and increase market share? In other words, why do they excel? Exactly what is it that sets them apart from the rest of the pack? What do they do that the others don’t—or don’t do as well? Selling from the buyer’s point of view is nothing new at Miller Heiman—it’s been our underlying philosophy since our founding three decades ago. But thanks to the forces reshaping the global business landscape, adopting that mindset is more critical today than ever before. Not so long ago, every organization’s motto was: “Our workforce is our most important asset” Times have changed. “Today, every company’s most important asset is its existing customer base--especially .its largest or most strategic accounts” says Robert .B. Miller, co-founder of Reno, New-based Miller Heiman Inc. Stellar salespeople have always been the crown jewels of any successful company. But today, they’re almost as rare as real precious gems. That’s due to an emerging worldwide shortage of highly qualified sales professionals. “It’s not an overstatement to call it a [sales] talent crisis,” says Dario Priolo, executive Vice President of Corporate Development for Miller Heiman Inc. Like most sales leaders, you’ve probably thought about pursuing lucrative federal government contracts. But if you have ever responded to a government Request for Proposal (RFP), you may have found it overwhelming in its technical detail, loaded with obscure criteria you weren’t sure you could meet, and filled with prices so low that you doubted you could break even. Sales professionals admit that nearly half of all opportunities are lost as a direct result of not winning the approval of the senior decision-maker. Miller Heiman research shows that senior-level executives say that most sales professionals are ineffective at getting them to say “yes” to their proposals. Research also revealed that scrutiny involved with approving proposals has intensified while buying processes have become more complex, with decision-making responsibility moving higher in the organization to the executive level, making it more difficult to sell. One of the most crucial roles in a sales organization is that of the sales manager, and it is one that is constantly overlooked. Sales organizations cannot plan for stability and continued existence without strong sales managers who take on the roles as conduits of information, cheerleaders for progress, and coaches for improvement. Miller Heiman’s award-winning Sales Performance Tips (formerly Miller Heiman eTips) have been helping serious sales professionals around the world win business since 998. Miller Heiman’s newest white paper series “Best of Miller Heiman Sales Performance Tips” includes carefully selected tips that address a pressing topic faced by sales professionals. Salespeople in the finance and insurance industry are likely to have a healthy funnel this year. According to the 2008 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study, these organizations were 36 percent more likely than other organizations to agree that they consistently use comprehensive prospecting plans. Consider the role talent plays within a sales force: the hard-wired skills, the soft-wired skills. How do you know if you have the right people in your sales force? How do you know they’re doing the right things? How do you leverage the performance and the potential of your top performers? To help account managers direct sales activities toward the highest potential opportunities, McKesson ($60 billion pharmaceutical distributor) has created a scorecard that allows it to assign a “score” to each deal. The score changes over time as more information about the customer is learned. In order to progress a deal, the rep must obtain the right information about the customer. If not, the deal stalls and the rep must walk away. The beauty of the scorecard is that it subjects every deal to ongoing evaluation in order to ensure that resources are being appropriately deployed. Ten years ago, if you’d stopped a sales executive on the street to ask what he thought of forecasting, he would have said a forecast is a directional indicator, at best. But, businesses today are much more interconnected, and each department is dependent on each other for accurate information. As the business world continues to get more and more competitive, companies realize that they need to operate with much more precision. Forecasting can no longer just be the result of an individual gut-level reaction; it has to be precise. The best salespeople clearly understand the importance of knowing as much as possible about what their customers need, what they worry about and how they do business, according to Miller Heiman research. Standards and process permeate nearly every functional area in business, from accounting, finance and operations to IT, human resources and now, even marketing. And for good reason. Processes and standards enable management to control the controllable so they can focus attention and resources on the more difficult issues that stagnate sales and revenue and disappoint shareholders. Standard process drives predictability, consistency and efficiency, and when properly integrated across the organization, radically improves sales performance. How many times have you heard a salesperson describe his job as “helping to meet my customers’ needs”? It’s a sensible enough statement. But does it adequately describe how a successful sales professional will thrive in an age of commoditization – where a fast growing number of products and services have become indistinguishable from their competition, and the sale is strictly a matter of price? Like many account executives, I can look back on many training sessions in which I was urged to sell value. One of these courses that I attended had the descriptive (if not imaginative) title “How to sell at higher prices than your competitor.” While some of my professional development experiences were enjoyable and seemed highly valuable—at least while I was in the classroom—much training seemed ultimately irrelevant or ineffective when it came to my ‘real world’ challenges. New technologies and government regulations in the 980s and 990s permanently changed the way that many industries conduct business. Digital communications, global networking, outsourcing and the World Wide Web have transformed how products and services are designed, tested, manufactured and marketed. Many of the ups and downs of a company’s revenue stream can be smoothed out. Doing so, though, requires a fundamental change in how the organization prioritizes its sales activities. The typical sales process is like a funnel: At the bottom are the deals that are nearest to being closed, in the middle are other prospects in the works, and above the funnel are numerous promising leads that need further investigation. In this paper, Miller Heiman and Hoover’s have joined forces to provide sales best practices to our users. We’ve combined Miller Heiman’s proven sales methodologies and best-practices for successful cross-selling and up-selling with Hoover’s industry leading business information tools. Read on to learn how to create your own powerhouse sales program using the sales tools and business data from Miller Heiman and Hoover’s.
|
| Home |  |
Sitemap | |
Contact Us | ||
| Copyrights Reserved @ sellingtohospitals.com 2009 | ||||||