This past weekend I was visiting with my friend and former colleague who now works as a sales consultant for a large, specialty medical device company promoting capital equipment.  She shared some of the templates and tools she’s created in order to make hers and her clients’ jobs easier.  They were extremely impressive in usefulness and professionalism, and I could see immediately that she put many hours of her valuable time into creating them.

So I begged the question, “Doesn’t your company provide you with any of these things?” “No – nothing”, was her reply. In fact, the only sales tools she’s provided are clinical studies. Furthermore, the sales tools she created are being spread around the company like wild fire. Clearly the company’s internal and external customers (the sales force and the clients, respectively) desperately need them. 

The tools she made include process and procedure documents (with vital team information so customers can contact all the different people they need in order to effectively market, utilize and troubleshoot the device), Installation and Quick Start checklists, Calibration Log forms, directions on how to utilize a database for tracking outcomes, equipment and environmental parameters, and FDA approval ranges.

Wow!  Excuse me but what is marketing doing about this?

This is a classic example of organizational ineffectiveness.  This is not what you want your best sales talent to be doing – making their own vital resources for themselves and your customers instead of selling.  By not providing your sales force with effective tools you’ll leave them no choice but to create their own.  And who knows, maybe your best people will become so frustrated with your service they will jump ship along with your clients –ineffective!

So what are your marketing department’s tools for sales effectiveness?  Provide key sales tools, and you can directly improve effectiveness, customer loyalty and your company’s attractiveness in the market.

Provide your sales force with a comprehensive set of tools for selling

Using the example above, a clinical study serves one purpose: to provide evidence for the product/service.  A key tool, it will not get the job done all on its own.  In addition to data, create “rapport tools” that provide customers with extremely helpful information around their issues – such as a non-promotional and industry-relevant report or guide, for example.  This will warm prospects to your sales & marketing message more quickly. 

Improve sales conversions by providing “emotional tools” in the form of various case studies for your sales force to share and leave behind with customers.  Case studies help prospects relate to your message personally by helping them picture themselves benefiting from your product/service.

Tools that generate rapport, evidence and emotions improve sales effectiveness (online or offline).  Don’t just provide one of these tools!  Conversion rates will be weak if at all and your sales force will be depleted of motivation and performance.

Provide your sales force with tools for customer loyalty

The need for effective sales tools doesn’t stop at conversion!  Once your sales force has been successful at converting prospects to customers, you need to give them tools for customer loyalty.  To be clear, customer loyalty is earned as a result of providing positive customer experiences during every possible interaction with your company.

Because your sales people will be directly communicating with your customers, you will want to provide customer management protocols and interpersonal skills training.  You will also want to give your sales force the ability to pass along useful templates, ongoing education, lists, checklists, and procedures for how your customers can best work with your product, service and company (like my friend is forced to do nearly every day on her own!). 

Identify what these positive customer experiences and tools are as they specifically apply to your company (ask the sales team, I guarantee they will tell you!) and put them in the hands of your sales force.

Improve effectiveness; increase attractiveness!

Your sales force will be as successful as the tools you give them. If you improve sales effectiveness for conversion and retention, you will contribute to the overall effectiveness of the organization: the marketplace will see your company as an attractive place to work, do business, and emulate  performance!

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Over the course of my career in biopharmaceutical sales, I’ve learned much about people, leadership, success, failure, sales, management, problem solving, teams, and growth!

To kick off my first post on the Roxx Consulting blog, I’d like to share a few of the many lessons I’ve learned about my passion, organizational effectiveness, during my tenure in the biotechnology industry. 

Business lessons I will not forget:

1.  Customer Loyalty: Customer loyalty is to your business what vitamin D is to your body: you have to go out of your way to get it, and without it you cannot survive.

The pivotal words here are “go out of your way”.  Maybe it’s just me, but I’m easily dazzled when a business goes out of their way for my convenience.  I tell everyone in my circle about the fantastic experience I had as I complement the management there. 

Many business owners will nod their heads in agreement regarding “focusing on the customer” and, “improving the customer experience”; yet, they take minimal to no action! This is a far cry from going out of their way. Think of the missed opportunity for free advertising and gaining an edge on your competition!

Sadly, I know too many companies right now that are slowly dying because of their inability to implement effective customer management
systems. They are aware of the problem (poor customer service), they say they must do something (how about a new marketing campaign?), and then they do nothing to address the real issue. Big mistake. Eventually, their organizational ineffectiveness will consume them from the inside out (although it appears to be from the outside in).

2.  Time Strategies: Time strategies are the ultimate litmus test for top talent.

Time management is always a hot topic for discussion, as well as popular measure for performance. For as much attention as it gets, why is it not the star interview question or the first category on a performance appraisal?  It really should be. 

Effective time management reflects one’s ability for hardcore problem solving.  Because, as enjoyable as life is, each day presents it’s fair share of creative problem solving for our enhanced enjoyment. By now, we’ve all had the opportunity to “show our stuff” in this key area.           

So take a close look (and I mean a really close look; spend some time on this one) at that interviewee’s time strategies, or your
employees’ level of performance as it relates to navigating through daily problems.  I bet you’ll find that your top talent (you know, those who always seem to get results come hell or high-water) is a master time strategist aka problem solver.

If a position requires lifting heavy problems, hire a master time strategist!

3.  Sales and Marketing: It’s an entirely new ecosystem.  Adapt!

I come from the land of Sales Force Oz where big marketing budgets reign supreme and the sales force is treated like bronze (platinum in the earlier days) and handed expensive, yet typically ineffective, tools for sales conversion (although every now and then we would get a “winner” tool my teammates and I would jokingly ask, “Where’s the magic wand?  Can we expect that in our next quarterly shipment?)

It’s very different now. An expansive (and expensive!) sales force with elaborate brochures and a fancy pitch is no longer as effective as it once was more than a decade ago. Marketing and sales have officially converged online where information marketing – on the customer’s terms – is a basic requirement.

Here’s the good news: you can save sales and marketing dollars AND successfully grow your business!

4.  Team Leadership: Create many specialized “organelles” within your organization.

I think of teams much like the specialized organelles within a cell. Their job is to carry out advanced functions for the optimized performance of the whole (the organization and the cell, respectively).

What’s important to your organization?  Innovation?  Customer management? Fresh marketing content?  Put together a specialized team for each goal category verses suffering through organization-wide communication problems due to a lack of accountability. 

Create each team to function as an independent whole with a qualified leader, manager, and roles and responsibilities for each member as it pertains to that unit.  Measure performance and reap targeted results!

5.  Management:  Practice superior quality control by obliterating ineffective management early!

I’ve witnessed in awe how bad management slows results.  Awe because little-to-nothing is often done about it – bad managers are allowed to run rampant!  This is way too costly for an organization to tolerate.  Only the best people shouldbe managers.  “Best” meaning healthy-minded individuals with superior leadership ability.

If you know someone has an obnoxious ego or presents with a personality disorder, don’t promote him/her into management!  It will only get worse. You’ll reduce organizational effectiveness for achieving goals. 

Bad management is an insidious disease.  Cynicism is the side effect to look for in your people.  Identify and obliterate. The growth of your company depends on it!

6.  Leadership:  If leadership is results, then by all means…culture it!

Highly effective organizations ooze leadership.  It is developed from the top-down on an ongoing basis so that no matter what a person’s position or function, they can be depended upon as a leader in their unique role for producing results.

Some organizations take leadership development lightly or not at all.  Another mistake.  The truth is, leadership begins with the founding culture of the organization. That culture needs to be infused throughout the company through strategic development and used as a filter for hiring and retaining the right talent.

Continuously develop your people’s potential for leadership and you will optimize results and organizational growth!

7.  Executive Leadership: The marketplace has an affinity for effective organizations.

The more effective your company is at all the various business management functions, the more attractive you will be to the market. 

A top scientist seeking employment will experience an aversion to organizations known for high employee turnover.  Investors will be leery to invest in an organization with no real vision and true purpose to guide its people toward achieving critical milestones.  And no one will want to partner with a company that has bad managers chronically debilitating performance and results.

A word to the wise: your best marketing will not attract the market if your management is less than stellar.  Bad management will show up in you measure of customer loyalty and your slow demise will begin.

Improve effectiveness; increase attractiveness!

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