Merry Dealmess

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone. May any deals you've been waiting on get closed last minute and fall into this quarter's budget.

Looking for BDMs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane

I'm currently recruiting Senior BDMs in the software sales space, Microsoft and Oracle products, specifically ERP, CRM, BI and Document Management. Previous experience a must. Roles have uncapped commission with OTEs ranging from $260k-$360k depending on breadth and depth of experience.

Click here to see the job on LinkedIn

or

Click here to see the job on Seek

How to Write a Stand Out Sales CV

As a recruiter I read through CVs for people applying for revenue generating roles on a daily basis. It continues to astounds me how people who can put a sales pitch together for a client, can't work out what to put on their CV.

The problem is compounded with the fact that candidates often think I'm in the business of finding jobs for people. If that was the service I was providing, I would be charging for it. (n.b. in Australia it is against the law to charge someone for finding them a job. You can charge for services like CV writing, but not for submitting candidates for roles).

My job is finding the best employee I can for my client or prospect. It boggles my mind even more when I have a sales manager or director apply for a job and get annoyed that I didn't submit the CV to my client. If they were on the other side of the fence receiving a CV (and a hefty invoice) from me, they would be annoyed that the candidate had absolutely no relevant experience.

With all this in mind, I thought I would put together a little guide on how to craft a CV that sells you and your skills as the best solution to fit company's problem (i.e. the vacancy). This is not a guide for submitting CVs to Recruiters but just in general what a CV needs to contain to help win you that job.

First imagine you are putting together a brief or a marketing document for your client. What would it contain? Well a CV is very much a marketing document and the same sort of information is needed.

This is how your document should start:

• Easily accessible contact information (with multiple methods of contact) should be prominently displayed on the first page so that who ever is reading it doesn't need to flip to the end to find your number or e-mail. Also include relevant social media links (i.e. LinkedIn).
• This first part should also include your address. Often if I'm recruiting for a client in an inconvenient location, the first CVs I will look at are from people who live close by. This can't be you if you don't include your location.
• An executive summary that highlights WHY they should interview you. This is not a summary of your career history but a summary of what skills you have as compared to what they are looking for, with specific measurable indicators. E.g. "Successfully built a pipeline of worth of $2M RFPs in 6 months from a zero base" or "Currently selling IT solutions involving Global Transformation projects for MNCs with an average deal size of $20M and an annual target of $60M TCVs"
• An outline of what will be contained in the document - i.e. A list of what jobs you worked, for what company and for how long so that your entire career history can be seen at a glance.

If this takes more than one page you are making a major mistake, especially if you are applying for a job and I haven't headhunted you. The first thing I do after I open the CV of an unknown candidate is scroll down to find the last job. If I have to scroll through 3 pages of "skills" and "summaries" to get to this vital information it reflects poorly on you.

Why am I first looking at your most recent job? If you're applying to be a Mega Deals BDM and you're last job was a cashier at Coles I would be wasting my time looking at anything else. If you think I'm joking I get something like this at least once a week. As a headhunter my job is to find someone already doing the job for a competitor who wants to move companies.

Next is a question - where do you put your education? If you've recently completed an MBA it's worth showing that off. As a result put the degree you have, where you obtained it and the year you finished (or are finishing). Otherwise I would strongly recommend putting your education at the back. I've had clients specify that my candidates have a degree in the job description and yet never bring it up when the candidate I sent them comes straight from a competitor.

Now it's time for your work history - the most important part of a CV. Your last job should have the most information (unless it was a short contract or incredibly brief stint), followed by a little less for your second, less still for your third and much less for everything else. If your career spans over 15 years, you can start grouping jobs together, e.g. "10 years various entry level sales experience" followed by a list, e.g. "1986-1990 AM at IBM; 1990-1992 Senior AM at Oracle; 1992-1997 Key AM at SAP".

Your entire CV should be no longer than 3-4 pages. It is a marketing document not a proposal or an RFP. It's there to sell you and should be enough to close the employer on a meeting with you. The reason CVs tend to blow-out to 10+ pages is people spending too much time on their experience.

Each job needs to be structured in a very orderly way. Use bold, underlined or increased font size to identify the company you worked for and what role you worked. Next to these two put the dates you worked. It doesn't matter what is first, the date or the company/title but put them next to each other rather than line after line.
Underneath put a brief sentence that describes what the company does, or if it's big what divison you worked for.

e.g.--
Microsoft - Senior Account Manager - 2009-Present
Microsoft Cloud Solutions division (e.g. Office 365, Dynamics CRM & Sharepoint on the Cloud)
------

Short, easy to read and easy to find when scrolling through a page.

Now it's time for "responsibilities". I'm very torn about this because everyone in the industry should know what a BDM or AM does, there is no need to write things like "closing sales". Duties should highlight how much of the sales cycle you look after. It should show how much you cover of all of the following: make go-to-market and marketing material, prospect, identify opportunities, cold call, account plan, account manage, relationship manage, visit clients or sell on the phone, put together bids and proposals, put together RFPs and tenders, gather requirements, create pre-sales architecture, manage service delivery, up-sell existing clients & customer retention.

I think it's important to very briefly highlight which of these duties you are responsible for without going on for more than 1 or 2 sentences or bullet points.

The most important part of your time at any company is your key achievements. People trust your ability to close sales based on your past experience closing sales. So you need to list:

• Sales you've made that are significant (including the products/services sold, $ value of the deal and name of the company, if not the name at least a strong indicator, e.g. "Major Australian bank" or "Leading News organisation")
• Your YTD Sales (or pipeline)
• Your last few years results (and whether it's Financial or Calendar Years)

If you are not including these achievements on your CV you are going to lose out to people who are. Imagine you are selling a product to a client that will save them money on admin costs and you don't list HOW with specific examples and dollar values.

Even better would be showing case studies that highlight how you've helped people save money in the past. That's exactly what your career history is - a list of case studies where you were used a sales person.

As a summary this is what a good CV contains:

• Easily accessible contact information at the top of the CV
• A brief 1 page or less executive summary, including outline of work history
• A 2-3 page summary of career history
• Key achievements for each company you've worked for, which show how much revenue you are capable of billing, what products you've had experience selling and what kinds of clients you have experience selling to

Additional Tips:

• If you want to include "skills" put them at the end. For those recruiters that have massive databases and use key-word searches the computer reads the CV so it doesn't matter where the skills are. Headhunters don't care what "skills" are written on your CV, only what work you can prove you've done before.
• Don't include your hobbies, photos or any witty comments/statements
• Don't include a career statement or objective. Companies don't care what you want as an employee, they care what you can do for them.
• Don't include personal information that could be used to discriminate against you (marital status, religion, number of children, etc).
• If you're sending the CV for a particular job make sure your CV shows how you meet the key selection criteria. E.g. if you need experience winning new business in the Real Estate industry, include clients you've won in the Real Estate industry. If your CV is just going to a recruiter with no particular role in mind simply highlight your absolute best achievements.

Formatting Tips:

• Don't get too fancy with Word formatting - no columns, no text boxes, no dividers, no paragraph indenting, no tables and definitely no clip-art
• Use the [TAB] key instead of making heaps of spaces.
• Send .doc files, especially to recruiters. Don't send PDFs which can't be edited or any weird format which can't be opened. And don't send .docx files.

My final tip - if you're applying for a sales role you should be calling the recruiter. Would you land a sale from a cold lead by e-mailing them a proposal and an invoice? If you're interested in the role, pick up the phone and call, and keep trying till you get them.

Government IT Projects - Part 2

I recently wrote a post about Government IT Projects and talked about articles that came down on failed and expensive projects. And just the other day I read an article in the Herald about failed government IT projects. Schools IT scheme a 'stuff up'.

It's often the media and political opponents of the current administration that are the first to blame the government - as though the current leaders personally chose Project Managers and Vendors. In fact Government Projects in general are very prone to failure because of the nature of bureaucracy and red tape. In fact a consulting firm called Calleam Consulting has a global "Catalogue of Failure" also grouped by "Classic Mistakes" for failed government projects.

I think it's important to emphasise again - IT projects are generally prone to failure and the larger the project the more likely it is to be delivered late and over budget. In reading a recent article on Project Community Online about Mega Projects I discovered an interesting statistic - 65% of projects valued over $1B fail to meet their initial parameters often blowing out in budget and time by large amounts.

IT projects are emergent - the more parts that interact and the more people they have to interact with - the more unexpected properties emerge from the systems. It is perhaps a failure of modern day project management and IT development methodologies but there is no sure fire way to develop a solution that does what it's supposed to and at the same time estimate how much it will cost or how long it will take before it's done.

Often the sales person, deal maker or BDM who put the solution together gets the blame as the front face of the consulting firm when it is the fault of poor project management, project teams or lack of co-operation by the client. Often it's the project managers who get blamed and then sacked because the salesperson involved in the project over sold the consulting firms capabilities.

Next time you see the failure of your tax dollars to deliver an effective IT solution just remember - projects are hard to deliver. This failure should not encourage MORE oversight because it is the red tape that likely contributed to the failure. Like a commercial organisation, perhaps governments need to factor in risk in taking on any project and measure the cost-benefit or benefit-risk ratio and decide - is it worth putting the money in even if the project fails. It's also important to keep track of how many projects fail and why.

In the end the media is always going to make a big deal out of government failure and the opposition is always going to use it to win votes. But IT innovation is the way of the future. In my opinion it's worth taking the risk because the risk of getting left behind is worse.

Introduction to Sales - Part 6: Always Be Closing

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

In Retail, Telesales, Inside Sales, Car Sales or any sales with a short sales cycle the Always Be Closing (ABC) mantra is king. If you don't ask every prospect for the sale every time you risk losing a sale to the next salesperson they speak to.

In a Business Development or Account Management role sales cycles are longer. For many of my candidates in enterprise IT services sales, the sales cycles can last 6 months to a year. At that level it's no longer about closing but about moving the process along and keeping all stakeholders engaged.

But at that middle level, that's where the ABC mantra can get a bit ambiguous. The idea is that you always want to close on SOMETHING. And that something needs to make progress. Closing isn't just about getting them to agree to a deal and sign a contract but about all the little things that can get  you there. Sometimes you close on the idea of keeping you in mind, or accepting marketing collateral so that they remember you next time you call.

To make this process easier, I've created a small flow chart that shows you how to close every phone call:

Connecting on LinkedIn or E-mailing brochures or marketing information should be the last resort and the client will often accept and then completely forget. The idea is that next time you call they will remember who you are if they taken even the most cursory glance at the information.

Next time you call it can be to ask a question, see if they want a free promotion or product, drop off a Christmas gift, ask for their expertise or call to just touch base. They are more likely to remember you if your last interaction involved a concession from them.

This tactic also works on getting past the gatekeeper. First ask for their help, see if they can organise a conversation between you and the required party. If they won't put you through or give you their direct line, ask if you can send a proposal to them and if they could pass it on to the required party. If they say no to that, ask if they might know anyone they can refer you to.

In essence, you can consider it a 'close' if they have agreed to any proposal from you - no matter how minor. It's called the foot in the door technique. Next time you ask for a little more and use the previous situation to build rapport.

Read Part 5 (Getting Past the Gatekeeper)

Cloud Security Reality vs The Sales Pitch

Sales people are often given the features of their product that they need to pitch to clients only to find out that the product simply can't do what is claimed. Cloud security is certainly not the first time this has ever happened, but it's just hit the media.

This article in the Herald titled "Cloud Security Evaporates in Testing" described how security firm "Pure Hacking" discovered that they could gain "'domain administrator' access over the unnamed cloud provider's network at the company's request."

"[They were] able to identify typical web 
application vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (code injection where malicious scripts are injected into trusted web sites), as well as 
more critical cloud security flaws, such as a lack of access controls that enables an attacker to gain unauthorised access to other users' web application accounts."

Considering how much cloud solutions have been in the media you would think this sort of study would be done *before* doing full product launches. Perhaps that's not possible and maybe this is why we need early adopters. But I'm continually surprised by the difference between actual capabilities of a product or service and what sales people are actually told. As sales people reading this, think about this - were you told to assure your clients that your cloud solutions were 100% secure? Did you have any actual evidence to back up that this was the case?

No wonder a lot of CIOs out there are sceptical about the security of new products. Ultimately though a lot of the sales people I speak to said they were aware of potential un-known security issues of public cloud and co-location. In general they have been recommending private or on-premise alternative solutions to clients who had mission critical and secure data concerns, though pointing out the obvious problem - the cost savings will not be as drastic.

What are your personal USPs?

I speak to senior BDMs on a daily basis about the possibility of making a move or about potential roles in IT sales. Many of them are selling solutions valued in the millions and often tens of millions. When I do a more formal interview I ask them all one question - "What are your USPs as a salesperson?"

Invariably I get these two from almost everyone:
 - Strong communication skills
 - Ability to build strong relationships

Let's face it, you wouldn't be selling at the level you are if those two were not your key strengths. But I wouldn't consider them UNIQUE Selling Points. I've heard USP pitches from many companies about their products and from many sales people about their abilities and everyone seems to confuse unique selling points with strengths.

Your strengths are the reason that your product or service is worth buying. Your USPs are the reason someone should buy from you instead of someone else. When it comes to your company, you should know the answer to questions like: Why should I take your $3000/day enterprise architects to run with this project, instead of someone else's $3000/day enterprise architects? Why should I take your 5 year service contract with a $5M TCV instead of your competitors?

But when a company is choosing who to hire you should be able to answer a similar question about yourself: Why would I hire you instead of someone with identical experience?

The problem comes to me all the time. A sales person thinks they are the greatest and that they can definitely sell XYZ company's solution yet they've never sold anything like it before and worse they are competing against people who have. So why on earth would they hire you? And if you are interviewing for a role you are likely competing with people who look exactly like you on paper. If the best you have to differentiate yourself is "Strong communication skills" or "Strong relationship building skills", you will lose out.

So go deeper with your answer. WHY do you build better relationships than other sales people? Why are you more likely to get facetime with a decision maker than someone else? Why are you more effective in communicating with people than other sales people? Why do you understand technical people, c-level stakeholders and internal & external stakeholders?

Here are some good answers to these questions:
"I started by career in a technical capacity, but I've also run my own successful business so I intricately understand both technical and also business critical thinking."

"My address book is filled with the phone numbers of CIOs and CEOs of multiple blue-chip companies with whom I regularly have dinner and play golf"

"I just understand how things work. When you take a reference from one of my clients they will back me up in saying that I understood their business, their needs and their pain points and that I picked all this up quickly"

Your USPs just have to be 'unique enough' that the person you're competing with for that role isn't going to have the same abilities, reach or understanding. So what are your personal USPs? Imagine you were sitting opposite Bill Gates, Larry Page, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch or perhaps a new up-and-coming CEO and entrepreneur. Why would they be stupid not to hire you to grow their business?

Introduction to Sales - Part 5: Getting Past the Gatekeeper

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

What exactly is a gatekeeper? And how do you go about getting past one?

Ultimately the people in a business capable of buying your product or service are fairly high up the food chain. Managers and directors are either assigned budgets on which they have a discretionary spend or have the authority to approach the procurement team for purchase orders.

If you can show the value of what your selling to the right person, then they will weigh up whether or not to spend the money they have available to them on your product or service, or if it could be better utilised elsewhere.

As for CEOs and Owners, ultimately money they spend on your products is money that interferes directly with how much they earn. So they are the only people who can make very top level decisions.

As a result there is no point in selling to a receptions, secretary or assistant because no matter how good or useful your product is it won't benefit them. Yet they stand between you and a conversation with the decision maker to show them why they should buy from you. They are "the gatekeeper".

In my mind there are 5 methods for getting past the gatekeeper that should be utilised in this order:

1. Have the decision maker approach you for your services
2. Get introduced through a mutual 3rd party
3. Have the direct contact details of the decision maker
4. Have the gatekeeper help you out and position you in a positive way to the decision maker
5. Convince the gatekeeper that you're someone important, so much so that it would jeopardise their job to make you wait

1-2 are a little advanced for an introduction to sales and I'm certainly not experienced enough with them to advise anyone. They involve marketing, networking and developing a personal brand. Option 3 can be purchased, can be acquired through networking or you can use 4-5 to obtain it. Most of the time when you enter a new market 4-5 are your best options.

For a good introduction to getting around the gatekeeper try my blog-post on the Top 4 Methods I've Heard for Getting Past the Gatekeeper.


Read Part 4 (The Sales Call)

Read Part 6 (Always Be Closing)

Introduction to Sales - Part 4: The Sales Call

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

So it's time to make your first call. If it's literally the first sales call you've ever made you are going to be nervous. The two things you need to keep in mind are 1) Just do it, and 2) Keep up the momentum.

By "Just do it" I mean that without thinking you pick up the phone and you dial the number and just clear your mind till the person answers. It's a bit like throwing yourself in the deep end.

By "Keep up the momentum" I mean don't stop at 1 call, or 5 calls or 10 calls. Just keep calling one straight after the other until you have no one left on the list you were given or developed during your research. Depending on the size of your market your research phase should give you up to 100 companies to call.

If your market is particularly small and there's only a few dozen then you need to really make sure each call is effective and I would suggest tapping your network to get an introduction so that it's a 'warm' call rather than a 'cold' call.

So how do you start? The conversation should flow fairly naturally and you should try solicit help from the first person you speak to. Try "Hi [Repeat Their Name], I'm hoping you can help me with something, would you be able to tell me who looks after XYZ" or "Hi [Name], would you be able to tell me who the XYZ Manager is at ABC Company?".

Here is a simple flowchart for getting a hold of the right person:

Now it's time to start selling. I recently did a LinkedIn poll which prompted a discussion about the best way to start a sales call. The general consensus was not to waste time with platitudes such as asking how they are. This is a good time to consider your "elevator pitch" from previous sessions and it should include a direct value proposition - How will your product or service help the prospect a) Make Money, b) Save Money, c) Stay Competitive, d) Remain up-to-date with legislation or emerging technologies, e) increase efficiency, f) network with similar people, g) any other major benefit of the product.

Ultimately all other benefits link into a) Make Money or b) Save Money but will need to be tweaked depending on which decision maker you are speaking to (see Part 3 - Research).

Open the call by introducing yourself - "This is Joe Blogs from XYZ". The next thing you say will depend very much on your market and you may vary it depending on who you speak to and their tone but here are potential things to follow up with:

• "I Appreciate you are very busy, so I will only take a moment of your time."
• "Have I called at a good time?" (This can come AFTER your value proposition if you can explain it in less than 5 seconds)
• "We haven't spoken before" (this let's them know that they don't have to pretend to know you"

Immediately after this you have 3 options:

• "At XYZ we provide a Super Named Product that can save your company up to 30% on administration costs." (Then pause and wait for them to ask "What is it?", "How does it work?" or "tell me about it". Sometimes they'll just say "OK" and you'll have to go on selling.)
• "Would it be alright if I asked you 3 questions to determine if my product can help increase revenue by 5%?" (assuming they say yes ask your 3 qualifying questions)
• "Would you be interested in finding out about a product that can could reduce your maintenance costs by $1M over 5 years?"

From here you want to get into a brief conversation with the client about how it works. E.g. "Our lightbulbs use innovative technology to reduce your energy bill by half each month". This is where your elevator pitch comes in.

After you've told them about the product and briefly how it works you need to close. If you're a telesales person you need to close on sending them information they can look at while you explain the product in more detail (hoping to get them to fill out an order form while you're on the phone). If you're a BDM you want the person to agree to meet with you so that you can show them how your product will achieve the benefit their looking for.

Read Part 3 (Research)

Introduction to Sales - Part 3: Research

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

So you've started in sales and you know nothing. Nothing about your product, nothing about your customers, nothing about your prospects, nothing about your competitors and nothing about your market. If you're lucky your one-week induction course covered some of this.

Unfortunately while many companies teach people how to sell and a bit about what their products they don't give them a guide to or an option for 'research'. This is quite common - "the best way to learn about your market is to make some calls". And that's true - that is literally the best way to learn about your market. But there is a good way to get a head start and make your first few calls effective - research your product, competitors, market, industry and target clients. There is such a thing as being over-prepared, and you can spend so much time researching that you never get around to making a call. But whilst your employer might throw you in the deep end, you can do some research on your own time.

First of all find out how big your competitor base is and how your industry sector is split up. Find your top 4-5 competitors on a large scale and your top 4-5 competitors in your market niche. What are their "USPs" (Unique Selling Points)? How do they separate themselves? If your biggest competitor is market ignorance what solutions are people using now that yours could compliment or replace?

Now learn about your target market. Who is the best person to speak to in each of your target companies? Is it a C-Level Exec? Is it a manager? A director? Are there external 3rd party suppliers they might use that could use your services? When you know who the target person is find out where they go to get information about your product? Are there conferences they attend? What are their biggest pain points? Where could they generate more revenue or use cost savings? Is there a list somewhere or a director of companies in your target market? Can you visit business parks or office buildings and write down details of what companies are there?

Speak to your product and services teams and find out more about your product. While you're at it speak to marketing. And then search your product online and see what people have to say about it. Find out what the best and worst features of your product are. Can you frame negative features in a good way? E.g. because it's known to fail mention how you have an outstanding technical support team. Now how do these features benefit the customer?

List the key benefits of your product as an expression of what is important to your prospect. If you are speaking to managers they need to look good to directors. If you're speaking to directors they need to look good to the C-Suite. If you're speaking to the C-Suite they need to look good to shareholders. If you're speaking to shareholders they want the business to be profitable. How does your benefit help your target person achieve their goals?

Now that you've done this research you can be prepared to answer a lot of questions from potential clients and hopefully highlight the benefits of your product to the point where they will meet with you and eventually buy from you.

Read Part 2 (Go-to-Market Strategy)

Read Part 4 (Making the Sales Call)

Government IT Projects

In reading this article "Ombudsmen Lashes Out at Inept [IT] Projects" the first thought on my mind was the typical reminder of inefficient government bureaucracy and red tape.

Then I remembered the recent failure by Harvey Norman to implement SAP for a second time. It was a Multi-Million dollar project that had to be scrapped for a second time after it had already cost the company large amounts of money.

And it occurred to me - large scale IT implementations are difficult. It doesn't matter if it's a small company, a global business or a government department; it's hard no matter what. The difficulty of the execution is simple - IT systems are emergent. Large amounts of complex parts interact with people (further complex parts) and come together to form something that is often greater than the sum of its parts. The best IT solutions are ones that have been built and then re-build from scratch or started off simple and gradually had more components added. Unfortunately for businesses that rely on IT infrastructure to do business that's just not possible.

So why does the government get so much flack for failed projects?

The question more related to this blog - how do these expectations relate to selling solutions into the government space? Often this results in long tender and bid processes with multi-faceted multi-vendor solutions required to solve horrible regulatory restrictions. Yet government tenders are often a lucrative source of income for companies large and small alike.

I think that with a truly tailor made IT solution it could be possible to streamline operations in all government departments and deliver a solution that can actually remove red tape. The big question, how do you approach such an entity with the idea of real, practical change?

Introduction to Sales - Part 2: Go-To-Market Strategy

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

There is a good chance that if you’re new to sales you have little-to-no control over the overall sales strategy for your territory. In my opinion this is a massive shame. People who are simply given a list of clients to call or worse a copy of the yellow pages or an internet connection and told to “go get-‘em”, are in a terrible disadvantage to people given guidance and strategic direction. Sure you might be taught tactics like ‘how to close’ or ‘how to get past the gatekeeper’ or ‘offer a value proposition’, but these things mean nothing long term and don’t help with the big picture.

But even as a novice you do have control over how you’re going to go after new business. The problem is strategy takes time to implement and if you need to get quick wins on the board to avoid getting fired you might not have the time.

As a recruiter I’ve been tasked to find people who can develop a “go-to-market” strategy and then execute it. The one thing I’ve learned from this is the difference between a Salesperson and a Business Development person. It is the fine balance between long-term goals and quick wins. The things below are what I’ve learned from the people who have been successful in their industries.

The first element to strategy is “brand”. Does the company have a brand? Do you have a brand? You need to become an expert in your field, working for a company with expertise in the field, providing a value add product or service to your clients. The best way to convey that is with a consistent corporate identity. Marketing Collateral that looks the same as your website, that looks the same as your business card that looks the same as any formal documents (briefs, proposals, etc).

With your personal brand you need to have a solid LinkedIn profile, a solid bio on your company website and an ‘elevator pitch’. This great article at the Harvard Business Review covers how to have a good elevator pitch http://www.alumni.hbs.edu/careers/pitch/. This is the pitch you use when someone asks ‘what you do’ and even when you are making a sales call. My ‘Pitch’ as designed in their suggested style is: 80 words – 20 second estimated speaking time – 15 repeated words. So mine clearly needs a bit of work to be punchier and make better use of the short time I have, by not repeating myself.

Another aspect of your brand is your ‘title’. If your boss allows you to be flexible with titles consider adopting a vanity title, e.g. ‘consultant’, ‘specialist’, ‘client relationship director’, ‘associate director, client engagement’. It’s easier to call the CxO of a company if you are the “General Manager for XYZ Services at ABC Company” rather than a ‘salesperson’.

Once you have a brand, marketing material, website, etc, you need to consider how you are going to go after your market. Think about this:

• Can you afford, or is it possible to do, a ‘lead generation campaign’? This is a way of getting your name into the market place through marketing tactics that mean clients call you or willingly input their names and contact details into your company’s database (e.g. in exchange for a free sample or report)
• Are you going to target an ‘industry vertical’ and become a specialist in that industry? If you sell widgets to the automotive industry, you need to understand where automotive companies have troubles, where they bleed money, where they can use more efficiency and why your widget can help them achieve that goal.
• Are you going to identify market triggers and wait for those before making contact with a company? E.g. A power failure in a particular suburb means you could call to discuss potential power continuation devices or data back-up, or redundant phone systems, whatever the case may be.
• Are you going to do market research first to find out about the industry and use that for lead generation?
• Are you going to sell a small service or product to ‘get your foot in the door’ and then grow the account with the client later?
• How are you going to map your target market? Will you have online tools with contact information or will you make cold calls to gather your initial information? How will you group and organise prospects? Where will the data be stored?
• How are you going to get referrals? Are you going to set-up a referral scheme or is your product so good that people will want to help each other by referring you?
• What is the maximum size solution you’re capable of delivering? Will you target those clients first because it takes longer to build relationships at that level? Or will you target the smaller solutions to develop a better understanding of the market first?
• How are you going to organize long-term efforts to win prospects? Some deals can take months or years to close. How are you going to keep track of which clients you’ve called and when you should try them again?

The answers to these questions help you to develop your go-to-market strategy. This will help you work out which clients to go after and how you plan to go after them. Picking up the yellow pages or even an online database of contacts and making calls is a tactic – cold calling. What is your strategy around that tactic? Do you plan to get to know an industry sector so well that you become an expert and consultant in that industry? Do you plan to spread your personal brand as far into the market as you can so that you get referrals? Do you plan to sell big deals or small deals? If big, can you sell it? Do you have stock? Do you have the understanding?

Knowing these things before you pick-up the phone to make a call can make a world of difference over the long-term. If your employer discourages you from doing these things then do them in your own time.

Read Part 1 (Inner Game of Selling)

Read Part 3 (Research)

50 Fastest Growing Tech Companies - Deloitte Report

Deloitte released their Fast 50 report for the booming IT industry. Key note from the report:

"Our analysis of the 2011 Technology Fast 50 shows the following highlights:

• The total revenue of the index is approximately $2.2 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 2010
• Half of the top 50 companies are based in NSW, with a further 19 based in Victoria
• Privately held companies dominate the index, with 44 being privately owned and six companies being listed companies, two of which appear in our top 10
• Internet companies lead the charge, with 23 companies being involved in the Internet industry –
• the highest ever total
• Twelve companies are involved in the communications/networking industry
• Software companies follow suit, comprising 11 of the winners, down from 15 companies in the prior year
• 25 of the companies have appeared in the winners’ list in previous years
• Average three-year revenue growth rate for this year’s winners is 209%, down from 425% in 2010."

Here's a link to the full Fast 50 Report from Deloitte.

For me there are two notable companies who have appeared on the report for a few years that don't get as much press attention as they should - M2 Communications and Atlassian Corporation. Two companies with exceptional growth that are real physical companies not based entirely online. Also noteworthy is Anittel who is on the list for its second year with amazing growth of over 1000%! They are the clear winner this year on the Deloitte report and just showcase how much there is to go after in the market.

It's interesting to me that there are a lot of online businesses like iSelect and RedBalloon that are mentioned and seem to be part of a massively growing industry. Meanwhile Software company TigerSpike are the highest ranked software company at #11. Considering the likes of HP and IBM have moved to expand on their software businesses I'm surprised there aren't more Australian Software vendors on there.

In fact the Software lead seems to be coming from foreign companies specialising in BPO and BPaaS. It suggests to me that there is definitely a skills shortage in Australia in terms of strong software development talent and that this is something IT sales people can definitely take advantage of.

Introduction to Sales - Part 1: The Inner Game of Selling

A friend of mine is starting a commission only sales job and he asked me to help him with getting started. So I thought I would share my insights to him and ask for any feedback from the people out there. This series of posts will focus on an introduction to selling and how to get started from a zero base with no previous experience.

Anything that is a "game" has two components. 1) the "outer game" or skills and techniques and 2) the "inner game" or the psychology associated with being successful. Many a tennis match has started 2 sets down and finished 3-2 because the leading player got over confident and relaxed his game. The losing player reached deep down and found the will to come back. Similarly football games are notorious for flipping 0-1 to 2-1 because the winning team gets too defensive and is quickly countered.

Even games like Chess have an inner game. Untimed they can last hours and out of frustration a player may stop thinking strategy and make a quick rash decision. Tournament Poker can last hours and cause players at the end to make large uncalculated gambles just to have the game finish. Many a person during a job search applies for job after job and finally ends up at a final interview with their dream employer and get pipped at the post by a better candidate. It's the will to keep going and start applying to new jobs despite the letdown that's needed to be successful.

The number one thing to look at is your motivation for being in sales. If you're in sales you likely want to make money. Buy the "why" is so important. To the left you'll see Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. As you obtain each level of need and are satisfied you begin searching for the next level of need.

Once you have food, water, a roof over your head you start looking for safety. Once you have long term employment, a stable place to live and a stable life you look to expand your social life. This often manifests in buying the latest gadgets, toys or clothes. Once you have all the gadgets you feel the need to be considered important. Once your self-esteem is at it's highest you feel the need to do something worthwhile.

Do you need money so desperately that you don't know what you'll eat next week? Have you had such a successful career that you're now looking to do something important? Perhaps you've been around the block long enough now you just want to make a difference? At each instance you need to think about what's motivating you to get into sales.

The next thing you need to do is set a goal. If you're goal is "I just want to make a lot of money" you have nothing to aim for. The best sales people are the ones motivated by an immediate goal. "Pay off my credit card", "take that trip to Vietnam", "save up enough money to start my own business", "buy that house outright", etc. Once your goal is a tangible number every sales call you make contributes to your desire to get that number. If you can live and own that number all the hard work you put into making sales will make sense. It's also important to think 1 or 2 goals ahead. Often your immediate need ("pay off credit card") isn't as important to you as what you really want ("take that trip overseas").

The next thing you need to consider with sales is that it is not the most respected profession out there. You tell people you're in sales and they look at you like you need to get a real job. But remember - Sales & Marketing are the only reason the other people in your company have a job. They exist to produce, count, manage or talk about widgets because you're selling them. Never forget that as a sales person you are important and that people rely on you, much as they may not want to take a call from you.

If your company has a product or service that solves a problem or helps generate profit or achieves a goal then you are selling a solution. People love to buy but they hate being sold to and it's important to remember that when you cold-call or visit a prospect. If the person on the other end isn't receptive it's them that's missed out on an opportunity to save money for their business or to have a problem solved. If the product your selling is good then it is useful to someone - and your job is finding that someone and convincing them that it is worth it.

There are far more sales people out there than you would imagine, and they're making sales from $20 to $200,000,000. So there are prospects out there willing to buy. You just have to work out how to get a hold of them and convince them it's worth spending their money.

Read Part 2 (Go-To-Market Strategy)

Is Ninefold the only REAL Cloud provider in Australia?

Cloud has become a bit of a ubiquitous marketing term, rather than a practical term describing a real IT service. If anything accessible over the internet is 'in the cloud' then I've been accessing my personal e-mails 'on the cloud' since Hotmail and I watch videos 'on the cloud', I even read my news 'on the cloud'.

A company offering their own software suite aaS (as a Service) and calling themselves a 'cloud provider' (e.g. salesforce.com) is definitely jumping onto the bandwagon. When recruiting high-level candidates we often do personality testing which is accessed through a web-based applications and we get charged per-use, yet you don't see them calling it 'Testing as a Service'.

Then we get to the big vendors like CSC, Fujitsu, IBM, etc who offer on demand hardware and software, even the entirely ambiguous 'Platform as a Service' layer. They charge on a service model and allow burstable usage. Yet there's one problem, you can't approach one of those companies and get them to (almost) instantly provision a server for you, use it for a few days or weeks (or hours) for a project and then switch them off. With those vendors you are locked into multi-year contracts (often up to 5 years).

They also offer virtualised hardware and infrastructure hosted in their data centres which you access over the internet and instead of dedicated managed services or IaaS they call it 'Private Cloud'.

Ninefold on the other hand have this on the other hand have this on their website (http://ninefold.com/pricing):

Compute Micro 1CPU, 384MB RAM $0.002  hour

Similarly, Amazon have this on their website (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/):

Small (Default)  $0.12 per hour

 This is the ability to access servers in a truely elastic and expandable way. Imagine having a large scale project and being able to 'rent out' a virtual server for a short period of time to achieve your goals and only pay for the amount of time you need it? It's accessible over the internet, it's burstable to as much as you need and you don't need to purchase any equipment. This is what "Cloud Computing" is meant to be.

But is this what businesses really need? Many want to completely eliminate the "tech guys" from their business and have that handled all off-site so they can focus on their core business. For the average business Ninefold's solution may be too complex and they would prefer to have less flexibility but have it handled by an external company. So should we abandon the 'cloud' tag, or should truely elastic services be given a different title?

EDIT: On the Australian IT Industry Group someone pointed out ITonCloud (http://www.itoncloud.com/) to me. They offer month-to-month Managed Desktops and Hosted Applications on top of servers and DRaaS. There are SLAs in place with no long-term contracts. Is this an ideal hybrid between flexibility and managed IT?

3 Tips to Designing a Great Sales Compensation Plan

I read this great article at http://www.entrepreneur.com/ with Tips for designing a Sales Compensation Plan.

It's an excellent starting point as I think many commission and bonus structures are not designed to get the best sales people to join, but to pay as little commission as possible. Eventually someone paying sales people what their worth while engage a headhunter like myself to come along and poach that great talent.

Retaining talent is hard enough and sales has some of the highest turnover around. If you rely on a New Business Development team to generate revenue for your company you have to remember how the best performers are motivated and engaged.

How do you open a sales call?

When making a cold call to a prospect how do you start your call? Let me know by answering this LinkedIn Poll: http://linkd.in/sQlvvO

Top 4 Ways of Getting Past the GateKeeper

As BDMs the last thing we want is to be considered a telesales person. We want to win accounts and have clients that will keep buying from us. So a big question is, how do you set-up a good relationship from the beggining? When I speak to IT BDMs and Account Managers I'm always curious how they go about 'getting past the gatekeeper', especially for C-Level contacts. This 'gatekeeper' interaction can frame the relationship with the C-Level boss and a lot of different approaches are taken.



From everything I've heard here are the top 4 I've heard:

4. Ask for the person by their first name and say nothing else - e.g. "John Please".

• Why it's Effective: This is effective because it communicates to the gatekeeper that your time is not to be wasted. You state what you want and leave a pause for the PA to fill, ideally with "I'll put you straight through".
• Drawbacks: In order for it to work you have to sound quite curt. Usually the PA has good rapport with the boss, and he might ask their opinion about various people he deals with. The trouble is they might tell the boss about how rude you were and it could ruin your chances
• Common Objections: A clever PA will answer this with "He's in a meeting right now, who may I ask is calling?" and then "and what was the call regarding?"

3. Tell them you've lost the bosses mobile number and you need it urgently - e.g. "I'm in the airport and I've lost my blackberry. I need to call John when I land in Sydney, can you give me his mobile number?"

• Why it's Effective: You claim that you already have the bosses mobile number and most people don't like calling someone a liar. You're also in a troubled spot because you need to call the boss but don't have his number and you really need the PAs help.
• Drawbacks: This is a typical one used by people in Delegate Telesales and unfortunately has gotten a bit over-used. Also it relies on the PA not asking you for your information and then telling the boss to expect a call from you - the Delegate people will often give a fake name and do anything to get the mobile. If you want to be that unscrupulous go ahead, but many people prefer not to leave a bad impression on the gatekeeper.
• Common Objections: "Why don't you leave your details with me and John can call you when you land?"

2. Play dumb and ask the PA for their help - There are a lot of ways to do this. You can use a stutter e.g. "J-j-john, p-p-p, John, P-p-please" or "I've just started a business and I'm really hoping to get a hold of John. I'm not sure what the best way to do this is, can you help me out?"

• Why it's Effective: You play to the pity card and you ask for help. It's useful because most people like to feel helpful.
• Drawbacks: You can get given the runaround because the PA thinks you're easy to get rid of.
• Common Objections: "Sorry, John is very busy." and "Why don't you speak to HR/procurement/etc".

1. Ask the PA to help you out and put your proposal in front of the boss - e.g. "Hi Jill, I'm hoping you can help me out with something. I have this solution that could save $1M/20%/Half of your costs and I was hoping to put it in front of John. If I e-mail it to you, would you be able to put it in front of him and arrange a call if he is interested?"

• Why it's Effective: If you can build up enough rapport to get the PA to help you they will usually try their best. Because they control their bosses diary they will make sure to allocate time for your proposal. If there is a real value proposition in there she will make sure the boss hears about it.
• Drawbacks: They say yes to putting the proposal in front of the boss but never do it.
• Common Objections: "I'm sorry, I don't think John would be interested" or "John is really busy at the moment so maybe try another time".

There are two main strategies here a) talk down to the PA so that you sound like such an important person that they can't give you the runaround or through up too many objections, or b) get the PA on side and see if they will help you out.

Ultimately different strategies work for different people. But having known a lot of PAs they all agree - they will put a good word in with the boss if you can get them on the side.

DRaaS - The Easy Cloud Sale?

When speaking to people who sell Cloud Solutions I often ask where they get the most traction. Their answer is invariably the same - Disaster Recovery. Everyone needs disaster recovery, but it's always seen as a blackhole expense.

It's kind of like insurane, when you're paying the premium you wonder why you even bother and when you're relying on the payout your thankful that you have it.

It should be simple - it's data you don't need access to most of the time and it takes up a lot of sapce. Plus no one likes doing boring tape backups and automated backups can fail. And if someone forgets to do the backup you're in a lot of trouble. Why not offload that risk onto a 3rd party?

However, in speaking to a security expert I found out that DR is often a weak IT security point for a lot of enterprises. While companies make heaps of strides to secure 'current' data, virtually no effort is made to provide the same security to their 'recovery' data. So if there are so many concerns out there about how 'secure' cloud technology is, why is DR such an easy sale?

Further this article in the SMH discusses the legal implications of storing your data overseas - http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/cloud/is-it-legal-to-send-your-data-overseas-20111011-1lic0.html

Australian data laws seem inadaquetly prepared to deal with the sudden onset of Infrastructure and Storage solutions in the cloud. Especially when many large companies have their datacentres in the likes of Singapore, do many companies even know where their data is stored?

All this begs the question again, why do CIOs seem so accepting of putting their DR 'in the cloud'?