As I mentioned last week, there are certain skills that a sales representatives must possess to be able to close a deal. A number of skills are fairly easy to learn, while others aren’t quite as easy. Based on the tips from last week, I will show you how you or your employees can also be included among the best sellers.

Skills that can be learned quickly

Some people naturally possess certain skills that others do not have. Some people by nature are interested in their fellow man and this serves him/her well in their role as a sales representative. Some people might naturally possess communication skills, while others are less skilled in this area. Nevertheless skills such as these can be developed. In sales training courses you can learn how to best conduct sales meetings: from your posture to your tone of voice.

Skills that are more difficult to learn

Certain skills, however, are not as easy to obtain. You only possess product knowledge after many months of work experience, and sometimes only after many years. Only after you possess that knowledge, you can truly be productive. You can offer good information to the customer, answer his questions effectively and also ask the right questions. But even then sales meetings remain a challenge.

Inside and out

If, for example, you sell machines, it would be impossible to know every machine inside and out. There is still the chance that you are making your prospect a promise that later cannot be met; for example, when a product turns out to be unmakable. This means that you must disappoint your prospect, or that a product must be specially made; a product that has never been made before – with all of the costs that entails. Nevertheless there are tools with which you or your colleagues can quickly obtain product knowledge without the need for an extensive initial training programme. And without having risks being connected with this.

Safeguarding knowledge

By safeguarding knowledge using a configurator, every sales representative can make use of business information. Knowledge, therefore, does not absolutely have to be in people’s heads and transferred from one colleague to another. No, every sales representative has the same information. Imagine if your sales representatives could have this information at their disposal everywhere and at any time – on their PC, on their laptop, online and offline. Then they can immediately test whether a customer request is realistic, even if they are still so inexperienced.

Making knowledge available

Even more appealing is making knowledge available in an effective manner. In that way sales representatives not only configure products, but are also guided through the entire sales process (Guided Selling). A sales representative goes into a sales meeting and must find out the necessary information from his prospect. The sales person must, therefore, ask questions. What if your sales representative could be presented with a questionnaire on his laptop that he could follow throughout the sales meeting? Then your sales representative can answer the questions on the spot together with a prospect. In that way he can configure a product that fits perfectly with the prospect’s wishes and possibly even close the deal.

 
Sell more

You will find that sales are easier to close. Specifically because you ensure that all of the conditions are satisfied:

• you possess the basic skills to be able to sell: 
  - you possess good communication skills: you are not overly aggressive, you reassure the prospect, you enter into a dialogue and you focus on the prospect;
  - you demonstrate genuine interest.
• you have extended the basic skills with product knowledge (even if you don’t have this knowledge in your head):
  - you ask the right questions;
  - you know where your prospect’s obstacles are and how these obstacles must be exposed;
  - you know with which products and options these obstacles can be surmounted;
  - you know which options fit best within the total solution.

The result of this head start is a much smoother sales process. The prospect feels understood and gets the right offer. In that way, a deal comes within reach.

Would you like to see how this process works? Then take a look at this video!

Judith Steinmeier is Communication Manager at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Judith has a lot of contact with clients, she has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.

Why is it that one sales meeting goes completely differently from another? Obviously no two sales representatives are the same. They have different personalities and possibly offer different products. But even if they are selling the same product, one is often able to make the click happen with the customer much more easily than another. Why is that? And what can you learn from this if you yourself take on the sales role?

Sales and buying situations

You probably sometimes find yourself in situations in which you think: “I’m not being taken seriously as a buyer.” Whether it’s a situation in which you make a purchase as a consumer or on behalf of your company, one salesperson is not like another. And one sales meeting is not like another. For example, I can still clearly remember standing in a furniture store fully intending to make a purchase, but became dissuaded because of a ‘pushy’ salesman: “I’ll just buy my furniture from somebody else, then!” Similar situations occur in the business-to-business market.

Tips

What can you learn from this if you yourself take on the sales role? I have prepared a number of tips for sales representatives. Naturally these tips don’t guarantee success, but they do bring a deal much more closely in reach:

1. Demonstrate sincere interest in your prospect
Be well prepared before you come into contact with your prospect – either by telephone or face-to-face. That way you know what you can ask your prospect and you can better focus on the obstacles.

2. Ask the right questions
Ask the right questions so that your prospect knows that you understand him, that you are listening and that you know what you’re talking about. In short: it increases the degree to which you are trusted.

3. Focus on the customer’s needs and not on the product to be offered
Your prospect doesn’t want only a product presentation; he is looking for a solution to his problem.

4. Enter into a dialogue. Don’t give a monologue
Obviously you will want to tell a few things about your solution and your company, but save this information for the right moments. There will be enough opportunities to provide this information, but in the meantime enter into a dialogue!

5. Know your product
You as a salesperson are expected to know what you’re talking about. Know your company, the products that you offer and know your prospect. Otherwise you will not be taken seriously.

6. Don’t be overly aggressive. Don’t put the customer under too much pressure.
Putting pressure on a prospect can be counter-productive. Make sure to convince your prospect of your solution by using other means.

7. Know (and if necessary: point out) what distinguishes you from the competition
The chance is good that your prospect also knows your competitor. So, know what distinguishes you from your competitor.

8. Be reassuring: discuss the experiences that other customers have had
Some purchases involve large sums of money. You can reassure your prospect, for example, by allowing the prospect to contact a reference.

9. Evaluate your own sales meetings: why does one lead to a deal while another does not?
If you do not evaluate, the chance is good that the reason why a deal did not work out will not be unearthed. If the reason is discovered, it can only help you learn and perhaps to score the next time.

10. Learn from your colleagues
Why does one sales rep close the deal while the other doesn’t? Talk to your colleagues. Perhaps your colleague has some useful tips for you or you can sit in on a sales meeting.

It is clear, therefore, that sales people must possess certain qualities. Next time, I’d like to look at acquiring these skills.

Do you have any other tips for sales representatives? Don’t hesitate to post them here! I am very interested in your experiences with regard to sales meetings.

Judith Steinmeier is Communication Manager at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Judith has a lot of contact with clients, she has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.

You appreciate being able to complete a quotation easily and your customer also appreciates receiving your quotation promptly. But is there a link between your reaction speed and your chances of success?

No price, no decision
Quotations are often a vital step between initial contact and an order – for the simple reason that most people will not buy a product before they know the price. This presents no problem at all in the case of a standard item. In shops the price is simply stated on a tag. The price is also often stated with the product in the case of online shops. If you want to sell a custom product, however, it is not possible to provide your customer with a price immediately. You first need to find out your customer’s specifications so that you can use these as a basis for determining a price. And that takes time. How important is your reaction speed – your response with a substantiated price – to your customer?

Reaction speed
Your reaction speed may be more important than you think. By responding quickly, you also give your customer the opportunity to make a quick decision. The slower you are to react, the more time you give your customer to look around for other suppliers or postpone the purchase. But what does a quick quotation cycle time mean in concrete terms?

An example
DVC produces promotional materials, including custom-made flags. All kinds of factors, such as material, dimensions, type of fastening, printing and the quantity, determine the price of the flag. The flags are sold by DVC itself, but also via dealers in the Netherlands and abroad. Before DVC worked with a Guided Selling system, its front office spoke to the customer on the telephone. The details for drawing up a quotation were noted down on a piece of paper and the back office ultimately drew up the quotation, after which there was another check to eliminate possible errors.

20% more orders
Since DVC has been working with a Guided Selling system, employees in the sales office have even been able to generate the quotation with the customer while on the telephone. The sales office employee asks the customer the necessary questions and, after finishing the conversation, can immediately send a quotation by e-mail. Quotations no longer need to be checked, as they are error-free from the start. This has led to a great deal of time being saved: the quotation cycle time has been reduced from 3 days to 3 minutes. DVC’s dealers are now also able to calculate their own quotations without having to get in touch with DVC's sales office. All this time that has been saved has resulted in the number of orders rising by 20%. Evidence enough to suggest that quotation cycle time is very important when it comes to a quotation’s chance of success.

For more information read DVC’s story here or watch the video here.

Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.

If you have experience with a classical product configurator, then you will most likely respond ‘no’ to the question above. After all, a configurator is intended to correctly configure products, and to generate bills of materials and routings based on rules and limitations.

Configurator and Guided Selling

Strictly speaking, you are right. But actually the question above is the wrong question. A better question is: “Can configurator technology be used by ETO companies?” Sofon uses configurator technology as a basis for Guided Selling. Guided Selling software can indeed offer a great deal of added value to the sales process of ETO companies. But how?

What does an ETO company do?

An ETO company produces solutions based on customer specification. The solutions are often unpredictable and unique. On product level you can hardly begin to determine in advance the rules regarding the product configuration. But is that the real problem from a sales perspective? No, that is not the real question. During the sale, it is not the product specification that is important, but the answering of two other questions. First, can and will I deliver what the customer requests? Second, at what price will I do that?

Guided Selling for ETO processes

Guided Selling enables you to ask the right questions and leads to the right answers. Moreover Guided Selling offers the ability to make a quotation or order at a profitable price. In that way the major risks and opportunities are addressed: avoiding the sale of infeasible solutions or loss-making orders, and increasing the opportunity of a profitable order.

Production specification

Does Sofon Guided Selling deliver the right production specification in that way? Usually not at ETO companies. But it does deliver the product specification with which Engineering can make the translation to the production specification. Can this not be automated? Possibly. But that question requires starting a standardization process. Many ETO companies have preceded you in that without cheating the customer. Want to know more? Just let us know!
 
Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process. 

As you saw in our latest blogs, there are different challenges in the sales process. Each step leads to new questions. That’s why a sales rep should be guided through the sales process (Guided Selling). In this blog I would like to elaborate on the fourth step in the sales process: from quotation to order in ERP. How do you get an order of an error-free and manufacturable product?

Manual or automated process?

 As soon as the quotation has become an order, all the order data need to be passed on to the ERP system. You can do this manually by copying data and entering them into ERP (with a great risk of error). Or you can integrate your product configurator with your ERP system.

Saving information only once

The great advantage of integration is that information does not need to be saved more than once, e.g. in your product configurator and in ERP. Information is entered only once. Shared information usually concerns article data, customer data, prices... Usually the ERP-system is leading. The other system is e.g. periodically brought up to date (immediately, every hour, day, week or month with these master data.

Preventing mistakes

Another advantage of integration is the prevention of mistakes. The integration with ERP makes sure that all order data are transferred fully into the ERP system, including bills of materials, routings and costs. In this way, the ERP system automatically receives all data required to permit production, delivery and invoicing to take place.

Integrations – daily business

Integrations are a daily business for Sofon. Not only integrations with ERP systems, but also with CRM, CAD and PDM systems. In fact, almost every Sofon implementation includes one or more Connectors.

Technological standards

Sofon makes integration with other systems possible based on various technological standards, such as XML, API’s and web services. ERP connectors are realized for e.g. SAP, Infor ERP LN/Baan, Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX, QAD MFG/Pro, Oracle and IFS. CRM connectors are available for Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Update.Seven and Siebel. Client-specific integrations have also been developed for various PDM systems such as Teamcenter and SmarTeam. Integrations for custom-made systems are also built regularly.
 
Do you have any questions about integration? Do not hesitate and post your question!

Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process. 

As you saw in our latest blogs, there are different challenges in the sales process. Each step leads to new questions. That’s why a sales rep should be guided through the sales process (Guided Selling). In this blog I would like to elaborate on the third step in the sales process: quotation generation. How do you quickly generate an error-free quotation?

Quotation generation

Companies that deliver customer-specific products and services do hardly ever receive orders without having first made one or more quotations. Making quotations is generally a time-consuming and labor-intensive task that is prone to errors. A task that often can only be realized with the help of experts, particularly in the case of custom products or services. How do you make sure that fewer experts are required in the quotation process, so that a quote is created fast and error-free?

Automatic document generation

By capturing all business knowledge, this information can be used by the sales team. It is no longer necessary to involve experts each time a new quotation is made. Searching in earlier quotations is also no longer needed. Quotations are no longer based on copied parts from old spreadsheets and word-processor files. Sales reps only answer a set of questions. The answers do not only lead to the necessary information to start production, but also to the content of a quotation. Of course all information and text needs to be kept up-to-date. But this now takes place in one place for the entire company. From that time on, every sales person will have access to correct and up-to-date information and mistakes will start to be a thing of the past. And that has positive effects:

• Your quotation (cycle) time reduces
The faster you issue a quotation, the more likely it is that you will close the deal. The faster the quotation is produced, the higher the margin you make on it. Although quotation times often cannot be calculated, they do account for a substantial portion of your costs. Reduce the hours required and the cycle time needed for making quotations! Your scoring rates will increase and you will realize considerable savings in the area of sales costs.

• Your quotations are error-free
Fewer errors in quotations are made when fewer parties are involved in the quotation process, a uniform working method is offered and knowledge is easily accessible. That is progress compared to the past, because errors are almost always to your disadvantage:

• Your prospect gets confused
• You cannot deliver what you promised
• Your pricing is incorrect:
- A quotation that is too expensive is rarely accepted
- A quotation with a price that has been calculated too low is accepted more frequently, but might not yield a profit.

Predefined rules

Sofon quotation software ensures that each quotation is made in accordance with predefined rules. Quotations are only issued with an appropriate, competitive price. This increases your scoring rates and your margin and reduces the costs of failure. Sofon quotation software not only supports the generation of quotations, but also the quotation process. The appropriate individuals are informed automatically if they need to contribute to or approve the quotation. If several quotation versions must be produced, the various versions are captured in a central, easily accessible location.

Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process. 

As you saw in our latest blogs, there are different challenges in the sales process. Each step leads to new questions. That’s why a sales rep should be guided through the sales process (Guided Selling). In this blog I would like to elaborate on the second step in the sales process: product configuration. How does a good product configurator guide your sales reps (or dealers) through the sales process?

A good product configurator

However important personal relationships, contract selection and marketing may be, the essential factor in ensuring a successful sales transaction is a complete, correct and feasible product. Unless the right tools are available, many products can only be configured by specialists. A good product configurator enables you to configure complex products in no time and with a minimum amount of product knowledge. How is this possible?

From needs to product specifications

A good product configurator should offer the user (sales office, sales representative, dealer, end user) a clear questionnaire. By answering questions from the questionnaire the product is put together and the user is guided through the sales process: from translating needs into a complete product specification. Presented in a way that enables the prospect or customer to assess the description and configured in such a way that the bills of materials and routings can be used directly in production. In this way an error-free configuration leads to an error-free product.

Easy to maintain

A configurator should not only be extraordinarily powerful. It also has to be particularly easy for product specialists to maintain, without the need for in-depth IT knowledge. This means that product specialists can directly maintain product rules, prices, texts and illustrations. No knowledge transfer between product specialist and the IT department is necessary. This prevents duplicate work and miscommunication. Long cycle times (for e.g. processing changes) become a thing of the past.

Quotation version management

Product models or versions change rapidly. Version management ensures that information relating to successive models is stored. If a quotation has been produced based on an old model and your customer requests a new quotation, the old quotation can be checked against the new rules. You do not need to re-enter critical data. A check is carried out for any conflicts between the old and new rules. If options that were previously chosen are now no longer available, the relevant questions are asked again, enabling you to make a new choice when necessary.

Simplifying and speeding up the quotation process

At Sofon, product configuration is only a part of Guided Selling. Rather than offering countless tabs on which you have to search for the questions that remain to be answered, Sofon guides you through a questionnaire. In this way, you are never forced to revise your answers because they do not fit within subsequent choices. Nor are you constantly reminded of questions that you still have to answer. Any unnecessary questions and answers are not shown. The Sofon approach speeds up and – for complex configurations in particular – simplifies the process.

Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.  

As you saw in my latest blog, there are different challenges in the sales process. Each step leads to new questions. That’s why a sales rep must be guided through the sales process (Guided Selling). In this blog I would like to elaborate on the first step in the sales process: needs analysis.

Determining the needs of prospects

Selling can be seen as offering support to the customer. In other words, selling is not about proposing products, but about determining the needs of prospects, transforming those needs into a suitable solution and then offering this solution.

Eliminate uncertainties

Uncertainties are obstacles in the sales process. They arise when it is unclear to buyers whether a solution being offered will in fact meet their needs; whether the stated price is in fact the total price; and whether the vendor is actually in a position to deliver according to the specification. Being able to eliminate uncertainties more effectively or more quickly than your rivals largely strengthens your position on the market. Even if your price is higher than your competitor’s, the chance is good that your offer will be chosen if your offer is the one the prospect feels most confident about.

Configuration from the outside in

A distinguishment needs to be made between the functionality and technology of the product line: enabling you to think from the prospect’s perspective. The questions for drawing up the quotation, for example, are asked from the viewpoint of the prospect (desired functionality) rather than that of the sales representative (available technology). We call this “thinking from the outside in.” Once it is clear what the prospect wants, this is then converted into the proper products and into the proper product specifications.

Easy model maintenance

With Sofon, this information is defined in product models. Separating functionality and technology vastly simplifies the building of these models. The questionnaire for prospects is drawn up independently of technical product structures. As the relationship between functionality and technology can be defined much more flexibly, the traditional tension between commerce and technology is greatly reduced. The sales team gets its customer-oriented questionnaire, while the technology team gets its technical specification.

Elmar Erben is Director Sales Germany at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Elmar has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.

The sales process consists of several steps: from needs analysis to closing the deal. In this blog I will discuss these steps and the various questions that sales reps face in each phase. In the next blogs I will provide you with the answers, enabling you to make your sales process better, faster and easier.

Needs analysis

Let’s start at the beginning of the sales process. After some CRM actions – such as entering contact and opportunity data – needs analysis comes in the picture. What is it that the customer really wants? Needs analysis is crucial in the sales process because it is the basis for the selection and configuration of the product. But how do you know that you have written down all requirements to simplify the remaining steps in the  sales process?

Configuration

Once you have stored all your prospects’ needs, the next challenge is to translate these requirements into a product variant. This variant should not only meet the needs of your prospect, but the different parts must also match with each other and thus can be combined. In addition, it is important to find out whether a product is feasible. Your company must be able to produce the product and you also need a correct bill of material (BOM). If you are dealing with a customer wish that has not been produced previously ("Engineer to Order"), then it becomes a bit more complicated. In short: how do you ensure that you have a feasible product to offer to your prospect?

Making a quotation

The next hurdle has to be overcome by the sales staff: producing the quotation. How can you make an attractive quotation based on all the requirements? And by ‘attractive’ I mean a document that contains the right information, offers good readability, meets the needs of the prospect and contains matching illustrations and pictures in the right places. How do you do this?

Quotation versions

It is possible that your prospect is not satisfied with the latest version of the quotation. He would like to discuss the colour, the configuration or the price, and make changes if necessary. You want to maintain version management of the various quotes so you can document all changes individually and cope with the changing requirements. But how do you manage different quotation versions?

ERP system

Finally, if an order is placed, as is hopefully the case, the collected data should be transferred to an ERP system. In that way the automated sales process can be completed. But how do you avoid errors in production?

You will see that there are different challenges in the sales process. Each step leads to new questions. That’s why a sales rep must be guided through the sales process. For this reason Sofon speaks about Guided Selling. In my next blog I would like to elaborate on the steps above and I will try to answer the questions that arose. I look forward to your response…

Elmar Erben is Director Sales Germany at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Elmar has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.

Do you ever make a mistake? Of course, we all make mistakes. That’s only human and it’s alright to make mistakes. If you’ve made a mistake and can admit it to your client, this often even leads to an improvement in the relationship between you and your client. But how much did the mistake cost?

The costs of a mistake

Clearing up a mistake probably costs more than you think. I’ll give you an example and along with a bit of simple arithmetic. Say you sell a machine for EUR 50,000. You make a profit of 10% on this machine.

Sales price:        EUR 50,000,-
Costs:                  EUR 45,000,-
Profit:                    EUR 5,000,-

Say you forgot to bring an option along with the delivery. You should have known that this part was needed. An option that costs you EUR 2,500. You decide to deliver the option. Which makes a good impression. Your profit is halved:

Sales price:        EUR 50,000,-
Costs:                  EUR 45,000,-
Extra costs:         EUR 2,500
Profit:                   EUR 2,500,-

Profit?

But is your profit really halved? To clear up a mistake costs you far more! You have:

• held extra talks with your customer
• ordered extra parts
• planned an urgent order – that holds up the rest of production
• incurred extra transport and installation costs
• possibly made adjustment costs for the machine delivered

All in all, you probably doubled your costs compared to a normal delivery of the option:

Sales price:                 EUR 50,000,-
Costs:                          EUR 45,000,-
Extra costs:                 EUR 2,500
Unexpected costs:    EUR 2,500
Profit:                            EUR 0,-

Apart from that, you will probably have to deal with loss of profit for the option you would normally have been able to sell in a standard way. There’s a good chance that the machine you sold will earn you nothing.

No more forgetting questions

The most important cause of the abovementioned mistakes is that both you and your customer simply forget to ask certain questions. A Guided Selling system prevents these kinds of mistakes and guides you and possibly your client through a question and answer set up. In this way, all relevant questions are asked in a timely manner. This not only makes a more professional impression, but also prevents costly mistakes.

In practice

How do our customers work with this system? Read one of their stories here. For example, read how GEA Goedhart brought down the percentage of mistakes in complex project offers from 60% to almost 0%.

Marijn Schouten is Director Business Development at Sofon - supplier of sales support software. As Marijn has a lot of contact with clients, he has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.