The Sales Data Hub

Underlying trends

The trends that have had an effect on the way we deploy and use IT can be grouped into three subsets.

1.     Business Trends

Businesses and their structures have become more and more complex, in terms of both hierarchical organization and in terms of infrastructure.  There are more and more different systems that need to be taken into account.

2.     People Trends

Two trends to note here.  Firstly there has been an explosion in the use of social networking sites and their corresponding notifications, comments, discussions, posts, updates, etc.  Secondly, the emergence of the BYOD (bring your own device) trend, has resulted in a displacement of access points away from the computer to the mobile screen (tablets, phones).

3.     Offer / Solution Trends

Over the last two years APIs have become more generalized and there has also been a move towards homogenizing authentification modules.  At the same time, social networking has moved from the personal sphere, into the business sphere.  And, the standard functions of social business software are now usually free to use.

Experiences and conclusions: “solution” is a problematic word

During our work with our clients we have often noted the same comments coming from them, the users.  The single CRM solution is often inadequate.

·         CRMs are usually not sufficiently able to deal with the relationship aspects of complex sales.

·         The single solution is unrealistic, often combining complicated to use add-ons or bespoke developments.

·         An unbalanced situation between the needs of the company to have a database of sales relevant information and the users’ needs to have information that sheds light on their daily business.

·         The single database is a myth.  Individual users usually supplement the company database with excel charts, outlook contact lists, iPhone entries, etc.

Enter the Sales Data Hub

The Sales Data Hub refers to the real-life and workable solutions that many companies are choosing to deploy.  

It has 6 fundamental characteristics.

1.     It works using pivots and facets.

2.     It is multi-polar.

3.     Information is accessed where it was first input, in its native system.

4.     It links semantic value and added value.

5.     Relationship management is possible.

6.     It is dynamic.

The Sales Data Hub is a virtual unified system that brings together several interoperable systems.  Each of the participative systems maintains its functionalities and relevance and continues to be used each time it makes sense to do so.  It is accessible with today’s technologies.  It will enable companies to move to the next stage of commercial efficiency, by equipping their sales force with the tools they really need to do their jobs well.

Antoine de Septenville.

The myth of the ultimate decider

In sales, myths are created when concepts and models are used out of the context they were originally designed for. The concept of the Ultimate Decider is an example of this.

Selling to the small and medium enterprise

In small and medium size enterprises the Ultimate Decider can be found in the person of the owner or the CEO of the company. It is he/she who decides what is to be bought from whom. This person also has the power to commit the enterprise to spend the necessary funds needed to acquire goods and services.

Selling to the large enterprise

Sellers dealing with large enterprises often find, what Andy Paul in his book “Zero-Time Selling” calls the Actual Decision Maker. This person has the authority to decide what is bought from whom. However the authority to engage the enterprise to spend the necessary funds for the purchase lies with another person.

Sellers entering late in the buying journey are though faced with a dilemma. Should they trust the Actual Decision Maker that she/he is capable to get the signature for the purchasing contract of the supplier of his/her choice or should the seller follow the common wisdom of calling high and try to reach the person who has the power to engage the enterprise?

Especially for purchases with lower strategic value, the person with the signing authority is usually just approving the decision made by the Actual Decision Maker. The term Ultimate Decider is thus a misnomer in such situation. Trying to call on this person just slows down the sales cycle. Also the chances to revert a decision of the Actual Decision Maker are very slim.

When to call high

The person with the signing authority is usually of higher rank than the Actual Decision Maker. Especially for strategic deals the question though arises when to call this person.

Stephen J.  Bistritz and Nicolas A. Read in their book “Selling to the C-Suite” have introduced the notion of the Relevant Executive. The Relevant Executive is the person most affected by the problem for which you offer a solution and/or can profit the most from the offered solution.

Based on their research, they recommend that the Relevant Executive is either called after a successful implementation of a project or very early in the buying cycle. In the former case this is a very good moment to establish a relationship which might be beneficial for future deals. In the latter case the aim is to initiate a buying journey. At this point in time it is premature to solicit a purchasing decision. .

The first decision you can expect from a Relevant Executive is to acknowledge the existence of a problem or an opportunity that merits further investigation by the organization. The next decision in the buying journey is then about how to carry out information collection on possible solutions. Depending on how much the Relevant Executive is a “hands off” person, the management of the buying journey is can be passed to at this early stage to the person who later becomes the Actual Decision Maker. The hand over to the Actual Decision Maker may come later, at the screening and selecting of possible suppliers. The Relevant Executive keeps the right to engage the company in the actual purchase through his/her signature. As one can assume that the buying journey is delegated to a person who has the trust of the Relevant Executive, the act of signing is more of an approval than a decision.

The impact of corporate culture

As we have shown in a previouspost, the way decisions are made is also strongly influenced by the corporate culture prevailing at the purchasing enterprise. So it can well be that the Relevant Executive role is limited to initiating the decision making process about whether the problem merits attention and whether a solution is to be purchased.

Conclusion

It seems thus that when selling to large enterprises, the Ultimate Decider is a myth. Chasing after this phantom will thus just delay or even derail your sales campaign.

What is your experience with the concept of the Ultimate Decider?

Christian Maurer

RIIM CONF' 2012

Yesterday was the 7th edition of the RIIM CONF’ (relationship intelligence and influence management conference).  Opinion leaders, experts in sales, network specialists and international business people gathered in the Cercle National des Armées in Paris to share their ideas on relationships and networking in complex sales, global accounts and differing cultures.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing some of the key ideas from the speakers on this blog.  Today, I’ll give a general outline of the speakers, to whet your appetites.

The day started with François Fleith, from Alcatel-Lucent, who spoke about the need to understand and manage relationships when working with large accounts in the public sector.  He told us of the all too real possibility of eliminating deals as “no go” too soon in the process, due to a lack of technical ability, while relationships and networks can save the day and help both sides of the deal develop new products and therefore new business opportunities.

Serge Papo, President and co-founder of Nomination, demonstrated how important it is to follow decision makers as they make career changes.  He used illustrations from Nomination’s own business case studies and during a live demonstration let us see the “musical chairs” in some large companies.

Christian Maurer, co-author of this blog, spoke about the myth of the ultimate decisionmaker.  He drew on his experience as an independent sales and business consultant to show how there are influencers working behind the scenes in every decision, and also how the role and positioning of the decision maker changes with the company culture.

Jean-François Ruiz, co-founder of PowerOn showed how to use social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to for new business development in a B2B context.  He gave a concrete example of recent work PowerOn has done to develop leads and sales for a client using the technique “collaborative white book”.

Hervé Debaecker, Chief Methodologist from Perfluence, spoke about the need to manage the relationship capital of a company.  Based on years of experience and feedback from many clients, he gave approaches to doing this and ways that a sales team in a complex sales situation can work together to manage their ecosystem.

Matthieu Aubusson and Sébastien Leroyer from PricewaterhouseCoopers spoke about strategic value selling.  Matthieu started with a precise and informed description of what exactly is strategic value selling and how to go about ensuring your company provides it.  Sébastien continued by sharing information from PwC about the reality of what companies are actually doing versus what they should be.

Antoine de Septenville, Chief Technology Officer from Perfluence, introduced the Sales Data Hub.  He spoke about recent and continuing trends in IT, in sales, and in data management systems.  Using “pivots & facettes” he showed how it is possible to combine several systems to answer a company’s particular needs.

Sophie Galoo from ADP-GSI showed how to bring value to clients by enlarging the shared ecosystem.  She told us how ADP-GSI has moved very quickly from working alone as an HR specialist, to now working within and managing their ecosystem, including their partners and competitors in their scope.  She laid out the essential question that anyone embarking on this route will need to ask themselves.

Then two speakers shared their insights into different cultures and how these affect the networks and relationships.  Sam Wellington from Safran spoke about Brazil.  Starting from a historical perspective he showed how networks in Brazil are created and maintained.  Jean-Michel Terrier from Altair gave his experiences of working with Asian cultures, notably China and Japan.  He was able to draw comparisons between these cultures, the Anglo-Saxon culture and the French culture.

The day finished with a round table chaired by Christian Maurer with the following experts.

David Gotchac from E-DEAL, Thomas Cochin from Microsoft Dynamics, Khalid Madarbokus from Oracle and Hervé Debaecker from Perfluence.  They discussed the triangle of people, processes and tools, and the efficiency of CRMs to manage this.  The question of how to achieve high adoption of any tool was raised along with the importance of good change management.  The general conclusion was that any IT system should be sales method agnostic and that users would adopt it if / when they could see that it served their own best interests.

Special thanks for

Matthieu and Sébastien from PwC, who stepped up at the eleventh hour and gave a remarkably solid presentation.

Sam, who came from Brazil not just for us but it was very appreciated.

Apologies to

Sophie, who had her presentation cut short.  About half the audience came to complain to me in person.

As I get in the blog posts from the speakers I’ll add links to their posts to this page.

Please feel free to comment and share your ideas on this.

Cate Farrall