“Doing it right versus getting it done.”

“Doing it right versus getting it done.” ~ Tony Rodoni, EVP Commercial Sales at Salesforce

The start of Q4 has always made me reflect on my time at Salesforce and the specifically the morning of November 2, 2015.  It was the first day of Q4 and I was in the Salesforce office early that Monday morning. I had just completed some rough calculations of gap-to-quota versus pipeline coverage and I am sure I let out an audible gasp. I realized that I was screwed.  I simply did not have enough qualified pipeline to close out the year and deliver my revenue commitments to the business.

I looked around the empty office and I saw a whiteboard that had a simple 4 quadrant grid with the y-axis “Doing it Right” and the x-axis “Getting it Done”.  This had been drawn a week earlier by Tony Rodoni, our Salesforce EVP for Canada and it was quite honestly the best advice I have ever received from a manager.

Check out the diagram I recreated here (to the left) so its easy to follow the concept.  

Everyone knows that you want to be in the upper right quadrant, so the target is to deliver on revenue commitments while building a sustainable business.

The upper left quadrant is where the "one hit wonders" achieve momentary success, but cannot repeat quarter after quarter.

Note the following three key principles of what has driven so much success, for so many sales professionals at Salesforce:

1. Activity (i.e. talking to people on the phone)
2. Meetings (i.e. scheduling a Discovery meeting, to dive into a business problem)
3. Pipeline (i.e. building qualified opportunities, with a mutual evaluation plan)

And by default, building qualified pipeline always leads to ACV (Annual Contract Value), which all sounds easy right?

If you are in the dreaded Q4 slump, like I was back in 2015, its important to hit the preverbial reset button and get back to basics. Here are three suggestions that might help you uncover some client projects and close in the last 90 days of the year.

1. Review the Dead Opportunity Report

If this report does not exist, simply create a report listing all dead opps over the last 12 months, in your patch, and be sure to segment by reason lost or type. At Salesforce, it was more common that opportunities were lost to the dreaded competitor named "No Decision".

I have personally found that the reason many companies ultimately choose to not follow through with a project is that the business case was not strong enough, or the decision maker did not have a significant level personal value attached to benefits of solving the business problems. More on personal value later, as it's a really important concept to validate with a buyer.

Once you have access to the Dead Opportunity Report, its a great place to start looking at companies who completed an evaluation cycle in the past, and a simple review of Salesforce will afford you a view of past communications, conversations, decisions, and many other sales related artifacts. This collectively will help you catch up on the "why" and you can draw other conclusions by talking to your manager, solution engineers and anyone else in the ecosystem who may be able to also shed light on each of the dead opps.

Once you have completed your review of potential companies to call, its time to focus on what you are going to talk to them about when you get them on the phone and qualify if the problem still persists.

“A no today could mean not this opportunity or not right now. Don't give up so quickly.”

2. Build a Point of View (PoV) 

Now it's time to review any details you can find on the client's business issue(s), that were the point of focus for the rep who "lost" the previous pursuit. In addition, you will have to complete your own traditional research (SEC filings, annual reports, analyst reports, etc), which may help you identify strategic opportunities and/or threats to their business. The outcome of this research is that you should be able to identify several critical areas that your company can solve for, adding business value. Identifying real business value is key.

The challenge of only focus on the business value, is that it can often times seem to be one-dimensional. I believe that a step that many miss is failing to personalize the impact of solving a business issue and what that solution may mean to each employee from a personal value perspective. Identifying how your solution will drive personal value is also key.

Everyone has their own definition of how to build a PoV, and I will share some thoughts on the process that I have learned through taking many courses during my sales career - so more on that later.

3. Pick up the Phone (it makes you money)

At Salesforce, we would identify a minimum of 10 key line of business owners, or potential decision makers and build out a quick profile on each person. LinkedIn Navigator makes this part of the job so easy to confirm who you should be calling.

I personally would always start with the person(s) who was identified as the champion of the recent evaluation. Generally speaking, it should be a pretty easy warm call to make, and is a great place to start. Suggested discovery questions that I would often ask are:

1. Did you decide to proceed with another vendor? If yes, ask if have they been successful at solving the known (based on your research) problems? What value has been achieved?
2. If not, have the client talk about the business issues that originally were the reason for the valuation. Do the problems still exist? What is the impact of not solving the problems for the business? And the key question is to ask what is the personal impact/outcome for the individual, if the issue(s) can be solved?

Depending on the outcome of the call(s) with 10 key individuals, and you are able to confirm or expand upon your PoV, you should be able to demonstrate your persistence, and knowledge of their business and ideally schedule in-depth discovery meetings, bringing more experts from both their business and your organization.

How did Q4 end for me in 2015?

Well I ended up short of my ramp quota, which was disappointing as I had just joined the best sales organization in the world. However, focusing on "doing it right" set me up for a crushing Q1 and one of the best years in sales that I ever completed. So there was a a happy ending for certain.

Conclusion

"Hard work finds good luck." It's cliche and it's been said a million times, but Dave Borrelli at Salesforce in Toronto said this often to our teams, and I think we all believed it.

We have all worked with people who have good luck. Unfortunately I have seldom benefited from good luck. But I think working through tough patches, impossible quota's and "red accounts" have taught me that the 3 "p's" of sales (Preparation, Persistence, Perspiration) have always helped me find success for my clients.

Then the magic of selling truly begins...more on Evaluation Plans next time.