Is The Economy Managing Your Business?

March 8th, 2010 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the March 7th, 2010 edition of BPI News!

In this issue, we talk about how to survive in this current economic environment and managing your business in a recession.

Call me at 617-532-0918 and lets discuss how the BPI Strategy Group can help you accelerate your business growth in 2010.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Walt

========================================================

Is The Economy Managing Your Business?

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

9 Key CEO Recession Tips to Successfully Guide Your Business Through the Next 12 Months

According to some experts, we’re gradually coming out of the recession.  According to others, we are still in it and will be for many more months.  No matter which of the experts is correct — will you make it? Is your business shrinking? Will you be here in 2011?

The stimulus package is not working. It did not address housing valuation issues, the small business lending issues or the small business new job creation issues.  So, what are you going to do? You could turn yourself into a bank and apply for TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) funds (no strings attached) or you can take control of your business and manage it!

Here are 9 key CEO recession tips to successfully guide your business through the next 12 months to help you manage your business.

1.      Make decisions. In a recession, thinking too long about anything . . . is a NO decision. Don’t kid yourself — time lost in a recession is wasted time. The recession is not waiting for you. It’s a downhill steamroller, so a key business action step to be successful is to analyze your next steps and then do it.

2.      Take action steps with speed. Once you have decided to make changes, move quickly. Time is more than money, it’s your survival.

3.      Cut costs. Where? Any overhead that does not directly or indirectly add corporate revenue should be cut such as company cars, tradeshows, direct mail that fails, after-hour parties, or travel to prospects who are not qualified.

4.      Choose new business verticals. Are you selling blue shoes to a red shoe market? Is your current business vertical not buying? Change. Adapt and become something different. Will your product or service work in a new industry? Do you know? If no, find out quick. Don’t go out without a fight. The best business verticals in a recession are Energy, Federal Government, Healthcare, Utilities, and Pharmaceuticals.

5.      Develop better marketing. Do you calculate marketing return on investment? Are you doing the same marketing you did last year? STOP! It’s a new world order. Don’t repeat poor marketing because you need leads. Develop new marketing based on the recession.

6.      Improve team productivity. You’re in a recession. If you have employees who are not working hard and are wasting time, money and office space, fire them. Are you running a business or a country club for the unemployable! This is not a time to pay Ringo (the loyal puppy dog down the hallway), John (the I am late all of the time service rep), George (the I will not cold call salesperson because I think I am too senior) and Paul (the son-in-law, you owe me manager). Employees need to work harder or employers should find someone who will.

7.      Generate better financials. Costs are up, revenues are down - do you know your numbers. If not, then the recession will eat you.

8.      Provide sales training. I know your sales team is made up of professionals but when was the last time your firm actually invested in professional sales skill training for your staff? This is a tough economy to be successful . . . everybody can use new training. Reading one book 5 years ago is not sales training.

9.      Act professional, not entrepreneurial. This is not a time to be emotional about your business. Yes, you have invested untold years of sweat and blood into the business. Stop loving your business, instead manage your business and make the tough decisions.

Follow these recommendations and you can weather the current economic storm. Ignore them or take too long pondering their value and you might not be here. . . next year.

What worked last year will probably not work this year. It’s up to you!

“Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson’s responsibility — it’s the company’s responsibility.” Paul DiModica

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy

Do You Have an Integrated Revenue Capture Business Model or Are Just You Just Scaring Prospects Away?

February 2nd, 2010 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the February 1, 2010 edition of BPI News!

In this issue, we talk about how to create an integrated revenue capture program.

Call me at 617-532-0918 and lets discuss how the BPI Strategy Group can help you accelerate your business growth in 2010.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Walt

========================================================

Do You Have an Integrated Revenue Capture Business Model or Are Just You Just Scaring Prospects Away?

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

* Are your sales costs increasing per sale?

* Does your marketing scare prospects away?

* Do you have products or services that no one is buying?

* Are your revenues down?

If so, then you may have a decentralized revenue capture approach where your strategy, marketing and sales process are not aligned as an integrated revenue capture program.

In my previous life, before starting this company and others, I was VP of Strategy Worldwide for an $800 million public company called Renaissance Worldwide. This was the company that bought Renaissance Solutions, the consulting company owned by David P. Norton, author of The Balanced Scorecard.

As VP of Strategy, I worked for the CEO and the board of directors to evaluate and make appropriate recommendations on the strategy, marketing and sales process of ten (10) operating business units we had. Our operating units included internet start-ups, acquired businesses, and organically grown divisions.

Using the balanced scorecard approach, I identified that many of our business units had a decentralized revenue capture process because their departments were not linked to a common goal or aligned symbiotically to each other. Not that the management teams were consciously trying to build barriers of cooperation between departments, but it occurred due to their individual corporate goals, compensation plans and the team members inability to understand the other department’s functional operational attributes.

This lack of functional operational interdepartmental knowledge and lack of alignment forced departments, even with good intentions, to work as business silos.

Four Truths Many People Ignore

1. Corporate Strategy is based on research of what prospects will buy, not what you want to sell.

Just because you bought a company, created a new offering, or spent $10 million on development to create the greatest widget in the world, it does not mean you have a market for what you sell.

Buyers only care about themselves.

2. The marketing department ’s primary goal is to help generate qualified leads for sales . . . that’s it.

Yes branding, third-party analysis research and beautiful tradeshow booths are important, but they are just tools to ultimately increase revenue.

Marketing must have ROI or it is a wasted investment.

3. The sales department must sell new business.

Yes, selling existing customers is important, but to grow top line revenue where you will not be dependant on your existing customer’s ability to buy . . . you need to hunt for new business as a premeditated approach. By focusing on the lifetime value of deals, you can reduce sales capture costs.

Hunt Now or Be Eaten Later!

4. If your departments are not aligned together by goals, key performance indicators (KPI’s), compensation plans and parallel knowledge of the operational tasks of the other departments, then you have a decentralized revenue capture process.

Revenue capture is a company responsibility . . . not the sales departments.

Take The Revenue Capture Scorecard Alignment Test

Here is a quick assessment of a much larger assessment test we give to help you decide if your team is focused on revenue capture as an integrated group or if are they operating as independent silos.

1. Does your company create (or acquire) new products or services based on market demand?

__Yes   __No

2. Does your sales team have separate sales quotas for business from existing customers and business from new prospects?

__Yes   __No

3. Is your marketing department paid based on the number and the quality of their leads they generate?

__Yes   __No

4. Are your sales quotas or targets calculated based on mathematical demand models?

__Yes   __No

5. Do your senior marketing executive and your senior sales executive have a team metric then need to reach together?

__Yes   __No

6. Are your marketing managers paid based on corporate department sales increases?

__Yes   __No

7. As a business to business company (B2B), does the marketing department report to the VP of Sales?

__Yes   __No

8. Do the sales, marketing and strategy departments meet at least four times a year to discuss successes and failures to date and document action steps required by each?

__Yes   __No

9. Does your senior management team assign specific measurable metrics to the strategy, sales and the marketing department managers and is their performance discussed at executive meetings?

__Yes   __No

10. Are your sales team members evaluated on how quickly they follow-up on sales leads given to them by the marketing department?

__Yes   __No

11. Does your marketing department go on sales calls at least twice a year to understand the sales process?

__Yes   __No

12. Has your marketing team researched why prospects buy, why they don’t buy, and how your firm creates value?

__Yes   __No

13. Do you have a written corporate strategy for all department heads to review as needed as a corporate guideline?

__Yes   __No

14. Does the sales team have a written step-by-step sales process to guide the marketing department on what communication deceives they need create for each sales cycle step?

__Yes   __No

Scorecard Answers:  1. Yes; 2. Yes; 3. Yes; 4. Yes; 5. Yes; 6. Yes; 7. Yes; 8. Yes; 9. Yes; 10. Yes; 11. Yes; 12. Yes; 13. Yes; 14. Yes

“Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson’s responsibility — it’s the company’s responsibility.” Paul DiModica

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy

Aligning Strategic Decisions Based On Primary Problem Issues, Not Secondary Problem Effects

January 16th, 2010 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the January 15, 2010 edition of BPI News!

2010 is  here. I left the New Year’s Resolution article up a bit longer than normal to give you time to think about the critical business decisions you must make - those you have to make now and those still waiting to be made down the road.

In this edition, we discuss making some of the strategic decisions every CEO must make.

Call me at 617-532-0918 and lets discuss how the BPI Strategy Group can help you accelerate your business growth in 2010.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Walt

========================================================

Aligning Strategic Decisions Based On Primary Problem Issues, Not Secondary Problem Effects

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

Are you faced with answering questions like:

• Do you need to budget additional funding to hire more people?
• Do you need to hire more salespeople?
• Should you merge with a competitor?
• Should you expand into a new market?

Answers to each of these questions results in strategic decisions that have a company-wide effect on your operating business model. At times, they are made in a responsive manner where your judgment is adjusted to address your firm’s immediate business issues.

But aligning those business decisions with identified strategic goals can be difficult if your decision process is reactive to the causes and effects of daily corporate operations.

To run a company successfully, senior management must have the footwork of a professional athlete, the accounting savvy of a CPA and the sales skills of an international negotiator.

Management needs to understand the environment in which their business decisions are made to determine the correct business decision based on their corporate objectives.

So — how should management make strategic decisions?

Executive decisions should be evaluated based on the cause and effect model of the event being reviewed.

Are you addressing the primary problem (the cause) which was created or are you addressing the secondary problem (the effect) which is the outcome of the primary problem?

Often executives find themselves reacting to secondary problems which were created by a primary problem. If the primary problem is not identified and allowed to recur over and over again, then secondary problems (often more identifiable) result.

Here’s some common scenarios that are associated with secondary problems:

• If your key account project work deal is off schedule, do you blame the lead implementation manager?
• If sales are down, is it the sales team’s fault?

Each one of these events has a cause and effect impact and must be evaluated from a stand-alone point of view. Your strategic decisions should be based on logical corporate goal alignment instead of reaction to an immediate crisis.

Generally, most strategic business issues can be positioned into two separate categories.

1. Primary Problems which cause the business pain and must be fixed or secondary problems will occur.
2. Secondary Problems which are the effects (or outcome) of the primary problem and are often viewed as the main problem in crisis management.

By addressing and adjusting the primary problem, you are able to prevent and remove future recurrences of various business issues.

Many times, just fixing the secondary problem forces the business issue to repeat itself.

Example
Let’s say Company A has had a high turnover rate in their sales department (voluntarily and involuntarily) due to constant adjustment for lack of sales. However, they have a very marketable product for all sized companies regardless of the vertical and their actual cost to provide is minimal. When launching the product, Company A arbitrarily determined that it could be sold for $8,000 to a market of 1,000,000 potential clients. In the year since the product launch, they have been able to sell only 1/10% of the market (or 1,000 clients). Prospect responses were good, but objections included concern that the product’s value was not in line with the cost. A decision was made to drop the price to $3,000 and they were able to sell 1% of that same market (or 10,000 clients) during an equal timeframe. The lower entry point allowed them to sell small firms as well as large.

The Primary Problem was that the product was incorrectly positioned and overpriced for the market. Secondary Problems arose which included a lack of sales and high turnover in their sales staff. The result was an increase in sales by 10% and an increase in revenue by 25%.

When dealing with day-to-day business issues, use the following actions and steps to evaluate your decision alignment process more succinctly and determine if you are trying to fix a primary problem or a secondary problem resulting from the primary problem.

Remember, general business issues that repeat themselves (after you have made adjustments) are usually secondary problems of a larger primary problem which has yet to be addressed.

4 Action Steps to Identify Primary and Secondary Business Problems:

1. Start with identifying a business problem. Determine if the problem is a recurring issue, e.g., lack of sales, delay in releasing product, etc. If it is a recurring issue, then you have probably only identified a Secondary Problem - the effect rather than the cause.
2. Try to assess what is causing the issue identified above. This will be the Primary Problem, e.g., product is incorrectly positioned, other priorities get in the way of releasing new product, product doesn’t work as well as competitors’ product, etc.
3. After the Primary Problem has been identified, adjust and align. The Primary Problem will continue to effect your operating model until you make adjustments and align your decision with your corporate goals.
4. Create contingency actions to prevent the Primary Problem from affecting your model in the future. Audit and manage. Make sure that the Primary Problem is kept in check in order to prevent Secondary Problems from arising.

Focus more on responding to business issues from a cause position rather than an effect position and you will align your business decisions more accurately with your corporate goals.

“I have to be wrong a certain number of times in order to be right a certain number of times. However, in order to be either, I must first make a decision.”
- Frank N. Giampietro

“Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson’s responsibility — it’s the company’s responsibility.” Paul DiModica

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy

Top 10 New Year’s Business Resolutions for 2010 . . . Without Getting a Headache!

December 1st, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the December 1, 2009 edition of BPI News!

2010 is almost here. Have you thought about your New Year’s resolutions?  In this edition, we give you a few to ponder.

Call me at 617-532-0918 and lets discuss how the BPI Strategy Group can help you increase your revenue in 2009.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Walt

========================================================

Top 10 New Year’s Business Resolutions for 2010 . . . Without Getting a Headache!

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

It’s that time of year again when sales teams are assigned their company’s new compensation plans, sales quotas, and job responsibilities. It’s that time of year when sales managers start looking to hire new salespeople and sales executives start looking for new jobs.

It’s that time of year when management teams huddle in the backroom, order pizza, strategize their corporate goals, and develop new business concepts while simultaneously designing marketing materials that will make them look like an industry player.

So, as the New Year approaches, we all make New Year’s resolutions that are both personal and professional. We write on our magical list that we want to make more money, exercise more, get a better job, or lose the extra pounds that have hung around the last few years.

Yet studies show that most people do not have a personal success plan or even a business plan (a sales plan is not a business plan) and that by April of each New Year, most people have failed to live up to their New Year goals.

So, will you be prepared to reach your goals?

Traditional New Year’s resolutions include get out of debt, get a new job or work from home, save more money, exercise, get organized, learn something new, and reduce stress. At the Value Forward Network, we work with CEOs and senior executives to increase their professional and corporate business performance. To help our many readers, we have provided a list of the top ten recommended New Year’s “business” resolutions modified from the traditional ones you might have already seen or made.

Follow them and you will be healthier, wealthier and wiser in 2010.

Are the following resolutions tough? You bet they are. Am I being too aggressive in my observations? Maybe. But these are New Year’s resolutions. They are designed to make you reach for strategic and tactical goals that will make you more successful.

2010 is up to you!

Top 10 New Year’s Business Resolutions

1. Be a better leader. As the CEO or president of my company, I will not let ego drive my business decisions. Instead, I will substitute business logic, research and input from others.
2. Base my business decisions on research. As the CEO or president, I will not make up my team’s annual sales quota or target assignments in the backroom. Instead, I will calculate their goals based on a mathematical sales capture model that also looks at market opportunity size by territory.
3. Invest in my business. As the CEO or President of my company, I will invest in outside sales training, marketing, and strategy advisement for my company, because I really don’t know everything and without increased revenue capture . . . we don’t need our other departments.
4. Accept accountability. As a salesperson, I will not blame marketing, the services group, operations/engineering, or my boss when I do not hit my assigned sales quota. Instead, I will be a mature salesperson and accept it’s my responsibility to be successful within the corporate environment I operate in.
5. Invest in myself. As a salesperson, I will stop being cheap, accept that sales is my chosen career, understand that I am a professional, and actually invest my own money in career training to become more successful (at least 1% of my gross income a year).
6. Learn something new. As a salesperson, I will finally admit that I don’t know everything and will actually try to learn some new sales methods, strategies and techniques to increase my success.
7. Make more money. As a salesperson, even though I hate to cold call, I will cold call at least 40 new prospects a week, every week — because cold calling is still one of the best ways to hunt for new business and make more money.
8. Be more productive. As a marketing department manager, I will focus on generating qualified inbound leads for my sales team first, work on branding second, and create brochures third.
9. Reduce stress. As a sales management executive, I will not manage my team by emotions. Instead, I will manage my sales team by business metrics that are realistic and can be documented.
10. Help others. As a manager of operations, engineering or corporate services delivery, I will stop blaming the sales department for client engagement problems and start working with them in tandem to deliver what I said we can do.

One Extra New Year’s Resolution

To work at what I like doing — not just what I have to do.

“Remember, revenue capture is not solely the salesperson’s responsibility — it’s the company’s responsibility.” Paul DiModica

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

TWITTER: BPIStrategy

Do You Feel You Are Pushing a Rock Up the Hill to Close More Business?

November 5th, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the November 1st, 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we discuss Closing More Business.  If you would like to attend a How to Grow Your Business seminar or have it presented to your Executive Team, call or email us today and lets make it happen!

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name, company, phone number and email address. We will add you to our mailing list.

Walt

======================================================

Do You Feel You Are Pushing a Rock Up the Hill to

Close More Business?

by Paul DiModica

In Greek mythology, there is a legend that the gods became mad at a criminal by the name of Sisyphus, the son of the king of Thessaly. As punishment for his deeds, he was sentenced to continuously roll a boulder up a hill for eternity.

Trying to move forecasted sales opportunities forward can feel that way. Here are 8 action steps you can take to move business deals ahead.

1. Find your prospect’s pain and be a doctor!

In today’s economy, prospects are buying products and services that improve corporate earnings. It is the pain that gets the funding. Clients are paying for surgery, not band-aids. During your client discovery conversations, you must focus on finding the prospect’s biggest pain so you can be a doctor and fix it with your product or service. If you don’t know what your prospect’s biggest wound is, then you will not get the deal. People are spending money, but only on high priority projects. Be the doctor, find the pain, and fix it.

2. Talk to prospects with titles of VP or higher.

Mid-level managers and directors in small privately-owned firms and Fortune 1000 companies are not the decision makers. Bypass them immediately and go directly to VP’s or above. My general rule of thumb in sales is, if the person you’re dealing with does not have at least a VP title, then you do not have a qualified prospect for your sales forecast.

3. Hand-deliver every proposal and discuss it in person.

When selling products and services, set up an appointment to hand-deliver your proposal and discuss the business details. Email and overnight delivery services have reduced the personal closing techniques and sales skills of salespeople during the last fifteen years. You need to walk through the proposal in person with the prospect to keep the one-to-one relationship perpetuating forward as you deal with the prospect’s objections. Hand-deliver all proposals and you will close more deals.

4. Offer pricing options over time to initiate purchases.

Companies need to offer better financing terms to their prospects to spur purchases. As long as you are comfortable with the prospect’s business viability, stretching payments over time (while delivering the product or service on the original schedule) may close a tabled deal.

5. Cut up your offering into time pieces.

Another method to reduce the prospect’s up-front investment is to cut your project’s price point into smaller more digestible pieces. Find out what your prospect’s current budget cycle is and spread their investment over multiple fiscal quarters (i.e., Phase 1 during Q2, Phase 2 during Q3, etc.)

6. Turn your product into a service.

At times, companies postpone capital investments that have been assigned as a budget item because of their perceived high cost. To bypass the capital budget item issue, turn your product into a service and sell it as a cash flow investment option (i.e., selling application software as a multiple-year license that is paid monthly, etc.).

7. Offer a discount that is attached to a specific date.

Giving customers a real discount to close business by a specific date may push a hesitating buyer to invest now instead of later. However, it must be a real discount and the date needs to be enforced. Letting the client buy later at the discount price makes you lose all credibility. (P.S. Remind your CFO that discounting to get revenue is better than having no revenue.)

8. Give a bonus and add value.

People who make buying decisions are just like you and I. They buy houses and cars and vacations. Like you and I, they want a great deal. One way to repackage your price point is to give something for free (tied to a purchase date) that clients value highly (i.e., sell an 18-month maintenance agreement for a 12-month price or give them a free service, etc.).

Selling has never been easy. To grow sales, successful firms need to modify their corporate business model to maximize revenue. These eight suggestions should help.

“A mediocre salesperson tells. A good salesperson explains. A superior salesperson demonstrates. A great salesperson inspires the buyers to see the benefits as their own.”
Anonymous

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.” –Anonymous

Take The CEO Grow Your Business Test

October 1st, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the October 1st, 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we discuss Growing Your Business.  If you would like to attend a How to Grow Your Business seminar or have it presented to your Executive Team, call or email us today and lets make it happen!

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name, company, phone number and email address. We will add you to our mailing list.

Walt

======================================================

Take The CEO Grow Your Business Test

by Paul DiModica

In order to grow your business aggressively, you need to use a premeditated system, take specific action steps to maximize corporate goals, exploit market opportunities, and understand the drivers needed to maintain sustainable growth.

At the Value Forward - BPI Strategy Group, we audit 100+ business growth drivers to determine company strengths and weaknesses in their operating models. Here are 25 of the 100+ drivers we use to audit a company’s potential for success and to measure the areas that need to be adjusted.

The How to Grow Your Business seminar is your opportunity to get one-on-one coaching with us in these 25 areas, plus the other 75 drivers we focus on.

Take the test and measure you revenue growth success potential.

CEO Business Growth Audit Test

1. Are your services, engineering or operations departments set up as individual profit centers?
2. Is your service department, engineering or operations department revenue capture process only the sales team’s responsibility?
3. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new offerings without market gap research or detailed written project plans?
4. Does your development, engineering or operations department create new business offerings without getting written input from your sales and marketing department?
5. Have your operations or development department wrapped your services into a packaged offering with specific pricing options targeting specific buyers to help your prospects buy easier?
6. Is the average success of your entire sales team’s assigned sales quota or target greater than 85% annually?
7. Do you have a written, documented systematic sales process detailing your firm’s entire sales cycle from pre-sale to post-sale that you require your sales team to follow?
8. Do you know your sales capture cost per sale?
9. Do you use a metric-driven method to mathematically calculate sales quotas or sales targets for your sales team?
10. Do you pay your sales team the same commissions for business from existing customers as you do for business from new prospects?
11. Do you know the lifetime dollar value of each of your top ten customers during the last five years?
12. Do you and your management team get a line item detailed profit and loss statement (P&L) showing profits and losses before corporate general and administrative costs (G & A) every month for each of your departments?
13. Do you know specifically (based on research, not conjecture) why your prospects buy from you?
14. Do you know specifically why you lose business (based on research, not conjecture)?
15. Does your vice president of sales have total control over who they hire and fire?
16. Do you raise your product or service pricing every year?
17. Do you calculate marketing Return on Investment (R.O.I.) for each your marketing investments?
18. Is your senior marketing manager paid financial incentives based on revenue growth?
19. Does your marketing department have a written month-by-month marketing action plan listing each activity, its costs and its expected inbound lead generation goals?
20. Has your firm calculated business demand for your products or services through market gap analysis?
21. Are you growing your firm’s top line revenue organically through outbound new market revenue capture?
22. Is at least 50% of your current fiscal year revenue coming from new customers?
23. Do you have any customer responsible for more than 15% of your total revenue?
24. Do you believe that all of your customers primarily buy from you based on your price?
25. Do prospects call you and ask to buy your product or service without you contacting them first?

1. Yes 2. No 3. No 4. No 5. Yes

6. Yes 7. Yes 8. Yes 9. Yes 10. No

11. Yes 12. Yes 13. Yes 14. Yes 15. Yes

16. Yes 17. Yes 18. Yes 19. Yes 20. Yes

21. Yes 22. Yes 23. No 24. No 25. Yes

Scoring Assessment: Give Yourself 5% for each right answer. The following audit is not a complete assessment of your revenue growth potential but a snapshot of where you may be versus where you need to be. How did you score?

60% and Below
Your business model cannot maintain year-over-year sustainable growth. If your revenues are increasing, it is an anomaly, not a methodology and has specific financial and operational leakage issues and corporate instability exposure.

To fix this position, you need a redesign of your business and the integration of your operations, sales, marketing and strategy processes into one revenue capture approach.

61% to 80%
Your current business growth model has some of the best practice attributes needed to grow revenue year-over-year using a planned process. Some of your business structure may need to be adjusted to maximize long-term corporate growth goals.

80% and Above
Your business structure maximizes corporate growth capabilities and uses an interdepartment alignment that focuses on strategy linked to action steps. You have built a sustainable pattern which should foster continued success.

PS: If you want learn more about why your firm may not be growing as fast as you would like it to, schedule the How to Grow Your Business seminar now, I do not want to mislead you, it takes work, commitment by you and your management team but with our 100%  guarantee and  attending this event, you have nothing to lose and revenue to gain.

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.” –Anonymous

How to Manage RFPs and Proposal Development Successfully Before They Manage You!

August 20th, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the August 15, 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we RFPs and Proposal Development.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name, company, phone number and email address. We will add you to our mailing list.

Check our website ( http://www.bpistrategy.com/news.html) for information on our next free teleseminar - “How to Sell to the Government”, on August 28th, noon to 2 PM EDT.

Walt

======================================================

How to Manage RFPs and Proposal Development Successfully Before They Manage You!

by Paul DiModica and Walter Wise

As part of government Source Selection Teams years ago, I sat through many proposal reviews submitted to us by both small and large businesses. Sitting in the room with the technical evaluators, cost evaluators, business evaluators and program and project managers, I was able to observe the strategic, tactical, analytical and emotional selection process used to procure goods and services and to award multimillion dollar, multi-year contracts. It was interesting how the team inspected each proposal, created a short list and made subjective observations about each vendor, their offering and its value contribution to the government. Since it is estimated that 24% of all RFP’s are NEVER implemented even when a short list is compiled, many RFP’s are actually a Request for Information (RFI) in disguise and it is important to manage your time allocation based on logic not emotion.

Often senior management and sales teams assume that an RFP is a big deal and they must submit a response. This approach is called the “rainbow affect” and makes many companies chase RFPs they should otherwise ignore. Yet time and time again, companies chase the RFP rainbow, spending hundreds (or even thousands) of man-hours and dollars trying to win the impossible.

These experiences, coupled with working with clients on capture management and proposal development have given the BPI Strategy Group and the Value Forward Network insight into some best practices you may be interested in considering if you want to increase your proposal success.

The following best practices are recommended for companies that have annual revenues less than $100 million per year or where the sales team is required to put together the RFP response themselves. Often companies with annual revenues greater than $100 million have a dedicated proposal department to manage the submittals. These apply whether you are working on public or private sector proposals.

5 Best Practices for Proposal Success

1. Deals valued over $1,000,000 in the 1st year

Bid ONLY if you have at least 3 of the following variables in your favor:

· You have worked with the client before and know the “hot buttons”

· You know the competition

· You have “done your homework” before the RFP was released

· The work location is within a 2-hour plane ride or less from your office

· You know for a fact you will be placed on the short list by submitting

· You have won this type of business before and have the qualifications to prove it

· You can comply fully with all requirements

· You helped write the RFP

2. Deals valued under $1,000,000 in the 1st year

Bid ONLY if you have at least 3 of the following variables in your favor:

· You know the customer

· The work location is within a 4-hour car ride or less from your office

· You know for a fact you will be placed on the short list by submitting

· You have won this type of business before and have the qualifications to prove it

· You have some knowledge of the competitors

· You can comply fully with all requirements

· You helped write the RFP

3. Packaging

When packaging your proposal, make sure its presentation matches your value. Many companies work on their response up to the last day, then overnight it to the contract office to beat the deadline. Focus on the proposal structure (color, dividers, PDFs, etc.) as well as the content. When sitting in on RFP reviews, I noticed that the best looking physical presentations always seem to get more attention. Remember, proposals are invisible salespeople.

4. The Offer

When writing the financial section in your response, consider giving them 3 price options, not one . . . even when they tell you to give them only one. Why? Because once you submit a proposal — it’s the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” syndrome and you may not have the opportunity to resubmit alternatives they may not have considered or that your competitors have suggested. By supplying three options, you position your response differently than others who only offer one.

5. Over-Produce

When creating your proposal - the key to success is to over-produce, yet companies barely get the finished document out the door. To increase your closing ratio, consider the following: build a better presentation, supply audio CD, DVD, or MP3 file testimonials of your clients, add a 5 minute CD from your President explaining why the prospect should buy from you, create a website specifically for your response to provide additional information, provide the URL in your proposal and track it to see when it was visited. Give the buyer more than they asked for – added value up front.

One business metric we see that seems constant is that companies that respond to too many RFPs, normally do so because the rest of their lead generation programs are weak, and they try to compensate for their lack of revenue growth and lead generation by incorrectly assessing their potential proposal success and respond to everything.

To close more proposals . . . respond less, qualify more and over-produce when you submit!

So, stop saying how great you are and start proving it before the sales cycle begins . . . and you will sell a lot more.

Walter Wise
President
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.” –Anonymous

10 Ways to Know If Your Firm Is Pulling Their Value Behind Them

July 18th, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the July 15, 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we discuss pulling your value behind you - where it shouldn’t be!

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name, company, phone number and email address. We will add you to our mailing list.

Check our website ( http://www.bpistrategy.com/news.html) for information on our next free teleseminar - “How to grow Your Business in a Recession”, on July 29th, noon to 2 PM EDT.

Walt

======================================================

10 Ways to Know If Your Firm Is Pulling
Their Value Behind Them

by Paul DiModica

Every day, management prospects hear the following pitches from vendors:

We have the best product.

My firm’s customer service team is the best.

Our pricing is the most competitive.

Our staffing team is the most qualified.

We are number one in our market.

As management prospects hear this corporate rhetoric day after day, they just stop believing the pitches sales and marketing people tell them and instead look for solid validation.

More often than not, most sales teams “pull” their sales value behind them during the sales cycle by presenting these descriptions as facts which are not up for validation.

This method of “pulling value from behind” is an ineffective marketing and sales process and positions vendors on the same level as their peers who are perceived to be business commodities.

“Value” is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “relative worth, utility, or importance”.

Many sales teams utilize standard methods of vendor communication by talking about their firm’s value and how great they are. This generalist approach places salespeople in a defensive position with prospects about why they should buy from them.

Rather than have your salespeople pull their value behind them, companies need to have their value out in front before the sales cycle begins to make it easier to sell.

Most marketing programs use a passive communication model of “here it is, this is what we do”. This process over the long haul just wastes money and valuable selling time.

How much time during an average sales cycle does your sales team spend prospecting, educating new prospects on why your product or service is different, and managing competitive issues?

Too much!

To sell more, you need to use “experiential marketing” techniques to help the sales team get inbound qualified leads where the prospects see your business value BEFORE the sales team tries to sell them.

If a prospect “experientially” experiences your business value before the sales team talks with them, the result is competitors are eliminated, the sales cycle is shortened, and a profitable gross margin is maintained.

WHY?

When a prospect approaches your firm after having experienced your business value prior to the first sale, your sales team can then spend most of their time personalizing how they will help the prospect use your product or service as a business tool, instead of spending a disproportionate amount of time in the sales cycle cold calling,

So, should you advertise more?

No.

Advertising is a passive medium and does not educate prospects on your value. It is a means to express why “you think” you have value. Prospects must confirm you have value based on their own internal metrics which cannot be done through ads in magazine, TV or direct mail.

In fact, most advertising is focused on projecting what the advertiser wants the prospect to “see”. But at the end of the day, the prospect does not care about anything except their personal business needs.

So how do you create a “value forward” approach to your sales?

Instead of talking about how great you are, show prospects your product or service value by giving them business content for FREE up-front which will induce them into a sales action step to call you.

Marketing tools like webinars, teleseminars, newsletters and workshops are the key to communicating your value first to generate qualified leads. These marketing devices allow your prospects to learn about your value through their own filtering and judgment process and if done correctly, they will call you and say “I am interested.”

Take the following Value Forward Test to see if you pull your value behind you.

Value Forward Test

1. When explaining your sales value proposition to prospects, do you sound like everyone else?
2. When you present your offering to your prospects, do they expect you to drop your price to match your competitors?
3. Do prospects see you as a peer and and provider rather than a vendor and a predator?
4. When you explain your product or service, can the prospect visualize the difference between your company and your competitors?
5. Every time you meet or chat with a new prospect, do they say they have not heard about your company?
6. Are most of your qualified leads generated from cold calling?
7. Does your marketing generate at least 3 qualified leads per salesperson each month?
8. Has your sales cycle timeline increased by at least 25% during the last two years?
9. When you meet with a management prospect, do you have a lot of competitors?
10. Does your marketing budget allocate more money for brochures and trade shows than engagement devices like newsletters, webinars and teleseminars?

Correct Answers:

1-No	2-No	3-Yes	4-Yes	5-No
6-No	7-Yes	8-No	9-No	10-No

So, stop saying how great you are and start proving it before the sales cycle begins . . . and you will sell a lot more.

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.” –Anonymous

How Much Are You Spending on Marketing and Are You Generating Qualified Leads?

July 5th, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the July 1, 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we discuss best practices for marketing in today’s economy.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name, company, phone number and email address. We will add you to our mailing list.

Check our website ( http://www.bpistrategy.com/news.html) for information on our next free teleseminar - “How to grow Your Business in a Recession”, on July 29th, noon to 2 PM EDT.

Walt

======================================================

How Much Are You Spending on Marketing and Are You Generating Qualified Leads?

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

When coaching CEOs on best practices on how to grow their business, one question we are often asked in this economy is “how do we generate more qualified leads?”

Generating leads — specifically qualified leads — takes knowledge, business funding and a planned strategy.

Often when working with clients, we find that they have a silo approach to lead development and end up focusing on one type of lead generation model with which they or their team members are comfortable.

This silo lead generation approach usually fails because it limits the potential capture of new prospects to one communication medium.

Most successful lead generation programs use multiple communications which we call the “three legged stool of lead generation.” The three legged stool of lead generation includes cold calling, networking and marketing. Each one of these approaches has their own budget, planned process and projected return on investment.

What marketing methods are you using in your firm?

What marketing methods are most successful?

Do you know your real marketing costs?

During a recession, never reduce your marketing budget. There are always buyers buying; you just don’t know who they are. Instead, tighten your marketing focus on your most likely buyer, based on their demographic profile, negotiate better on your vendor pricing and track your lead return on investment.

Marketing should generate qualified leads . . . or else it is a wasted investment.

Walter Wise
President & CEO
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com

A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.” –Anonymous

The Business Value of Your Company

June 1st, 2009 Posted in Newsletter | No Comments »

Welcome to the June 15th 2009 edition of BPI News!

In this issue we discuss what comprises the business value of your firm.

As always, I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

If you would like to sign up to have this newsletter delivered to your mailbox via email, please send an email to newsletter@bpistrategy.com and include your name and email address. We will add you to the list.

Walt

========================================================

The Business Value of Your Company is Not the Product or Service you Sell . . . It Is The Strength of Your Sales and Marketing Team

by Paul DiModica, CEO - Value Forward Network

“Good salespeople in poor sales programs . . . always fail“

I hear from VP’s of Sales every week who work for Global 1000 players, small start-ups or family-run businesses — finding good salespeople is very difficult. But like a professional athlete, when you find a great salesperson, you have a franchise player. They can pull your entire team upward to a higher level of performance.

Yet the ability for great salespeople to succeed on demand is many times dependent on other attributes beyond their own sales skills, business experiences, and controls.

Like professional athletes, salespeople may have previous training, previous experience, and a resume that indicates they should be a successful heavy hitter, yet they still can fail.

Is your firm making successful salespeople fail?

This specific issue affects every sales manager, VP of Sales or CEO who is trying to build a replicable, scalable sales model to increase corporate product or service sales.

When seeking the successful salesperson, you interview, check references, analyze candidates through psychological tests, and search for hidden motivations. Then you hire the best salesperson available at the time of your open sales requisition.

Most sales management teams then hope the new sales executive is going to pay for themselves quickly. But if the new sales account manager is not hitting their numbers 180 days into their employment, the management team starts talking about them in hushed conversations behind closed doors wondering whether they should cut their losses and let the new account manager go.

But is it the salesperson’s fault they are missing their sales target numbers?

Maybe yes; maybe no!

Selling successfully requires more than the individual business and emotional characteristics that a salesperson can produce on their own. It also requires the company to be a participant and contributor in their success as well.

Yes, I’m confident you pay them well, but just because a sales rep is paid well does not mean management’s involvement is over.

It is a misperception by management to believe increased corporate revenue is tied to hiring top performing, high paid experienced salespeople — believing pow like a magic trick in Vegas you have instant sales quota capture.

Nope - it does not work that way!

For experienced salespeople to sell successfully (hit quota or higher), management must participate in their success.

Here are 7 reasons why many great salespeople fail. None of these variables have anything to do with the salesperson being lazy, unprofessional, or lacking the appropriate sales skills.

7 Reasons Why Good Salespeople Fail

1. The company they work for has no documented sales process.

   Yes, you need to focus on specific sales techniques but sales training is not sales performance. Having a written sales process will help you and your team build a replicable, scalable sales program that can be duplicated over multiple prospects’ buying cycles. Without a sales process, you end up with isolated sales techniques.

2. Sales training is not enough - sales learning is needed.

   Interesting, 65% of companies say that they actively train their sales teams, but only 35% actually do it. Sales is a business profession. You must continually invest in your sales staff to drive performance. Sales training is a one time event; sales learning is ongoing education and investment in your revenue capture team.

3. Your sales education investment must at least equal other department educational investments.

   Calculate the amount of money your firm invests per program in training and education for your other staff members (operations, HR, engineering, etc.) and compare it to the investment in sales education for your sales team. If there is variance, you have a sales skill gap.

4. Incorrect sales quotas prevent great salespeople from hitting their target.

   Stop pressuring salespeople if your sales quotas or sales targets are based on assumptions. You must use qualified market demand analysis and existing sales metrics that can be documented to correctly forecast sales quotas that are attainable.

5. Management must supply salespeople with qualified sales leads.

   Of course salespeople should cold call and network, but what about the marketing department generating inbound leads for the sales team. Technology, service and logistic companies spend huge amounts of money on marketing that normally creates only a trickle of inbound qualified sales leads.

6. Your market gap demand must be documented, not guessed.

   Great salespeople cannot sell red shoes to blue shoe buying prospects. Just because you tell the sales team to sell your offerings to targeted prospects does not mean there is a buying demand.

7. Your firm must provide a selling environment that is motivational and positive.

   Yes, good salespeople can be prima donnas, but like professional athletes who have negotiated a big compensation contract, salespeople are not just interested in money. To make good salespeople sell more - make work interesting and conducive to their personal needs to compete and succeed.

Selling is a team sport. On any given day, when the team has practiced together and supports each other, anybody can win.

If management does not support good salespeople, they will fail.

A mediocre salesperson tells;
A good salesperson explains;
A superior salesperson demonstrates;
A great salesperson inspires the buyer to see the benefits as their own.”
–Anonymous

Walter Wise
President
BPI Strategy Group
617-532-0918

www.bpistrategy.com