MODULE 4

• Getting the Right Marketing People

• Developing Right Marketing Skills
• Lead The Marketing Team
• A Marketing Culture that Works
• How to Handle Difficult People in your Team
• How to Develop the Marketing Team
• The Follow-up Momentum
1. GETTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE

• How many times have you heard ‘sales is all

about people: customers don’t buy from
companies they buy from people’?
• Quite right –if you don’t have the right people
in your team you have a major problem.
2. So, what makes a successful marketer? They need to
have the following attributes:

Energy

Courage Focus

SALES
SUCCESS
Aptitude Knowledge

Motivation Skills
 DEVELOPING THE RIGHT MARKETING SKILLS

1. Each year we expect our sales team to produce more, and how do we ask
them to achieve this? Often by simply saying, ‘Do more: make more appointments, spend more
time on the phone an write more proposals’.

2. So what else can you do? You can suggest they do 15 calls per week and also improve
the quality of those calls: seek out better prospect, shorten the time to close the deal. The
problem here is, why didn’t they do that last year? If nothing has changed then neither will
their behavior or their performance. In fact, they probably need training or coaching in new
skills.
3. A good start is to ask your salespeople what they think are the skills required
to do their job effectively. They will typically come up with the following:

 Time management
 Research
 Cold calling
 Questioning
 Listening
 Proposal writing
 Presenting
 Objection handling
 Negotiating
 Closing
 CONTD…

4. Firstly, decide on a manageable number of key skills you are going to measure. Then
have the salesperson rank themselves on a scale of 1- 10. Rank them yourself
independently, based on observations in the office and out in the field. ( If you haven’t
seen them in action, you cannot measure them.)

5. You are now in a position to meet and discuss the differences in the scores for each
skills. It is vital you understand why the difference of opinion is there and negotiate a
score for each that you can both agree on.
6. Identify a robust mechanism for helping the person to move forward.
Fundamentally there are four ways that people develop skills.

• Self-development: the salesperson takes responsibility for their own improvement.

• Coaching: the team leader goes out with the salespeople on calls and
presentations, acting as an observer and using structured briefing and debriefing
sessions.

• Training; formal in- house or external courses.

• Promoting best practice: developing a culture where individuals are happy to

share what works well for them.
7. Self-development
a. Encourage the team to read relevant articles and books. Give them a forum where they
can discuss selling skills and can learn from their colleagues.
b. Give them opportunities to practice, particularly in low-risk situations like role plays.
c. Work on developing their skills during customer meetings.

8. Coaching
a. Spend time with your salespeople. Coaching is all about letting them develop their own
style and perfecting it.
b. If you coaching during customer meeting, it is vital that you explain what your role will
be before the meeting. The best approach is to let salespeople run meeting and you
blend into the back-ground.
c. Always debrief soon after the meeting.
d. Many sales manager use a tick sheet for coaching purposes. There is a sample coaching
tick sheet for this purpose.
9. Training

Make the training relevant, as there is nothing more demotivating

than sending a salesperson on a course that is too high level or that
focuses on skills where they already excel.

10. Promoting best practice

Encourage sharing good practice like that, because salespeople

with good idea tend to keep them to themselves. You may want
to come up with incentive for salespeople to share good ideas.
11. Appraisals
a. You should run these formally once or twice a year. It should be standard for everyone
and measured objectively. Do not just measure results but also look at what was done to
achieve those results.

b. It is good to focus on areas such as product knowledge, market knowledge, customers

and then on their skills such as planning, researching, building rapport, identifying
requirements, report writing, presenting, negotiating, closing and time management.

12. One–to-one meetings

a. Hold these weekly or monthly. Ideally these should be face to face and they are more
effective if the salesperson drives the agenda, not their manager. The idea is to use this
time to get the best performance possible out of the salesperson, by having them talk
about themselves and where they think they are performing well and where they need
guidance. Again, out of these meetings should come clear action plans.
13. Time management
i. One of the great things about being in sales is the freedom it brings. Most
salespeople are able to decide exactly how they spend their day. This is a
tremendous benefit but there is a danger that they’ll spend their time doing
what they like rather than what produces the best result.
ii. Doing the pre-meeting preparation, the research, setting the agenda and
objective, and making and assessment of the decision-making process

14. Aptitude
i. Salespeople must able to learn and adapt to new and challenging situation.
It is important to understand what produced the right results but also to
measure not just the result, but the element that produced the result.
 LEADING THE MARKETING TEAM

Leadership is about getting things done through others &

Enabling others to perform beyond their perceived limits.
Leader - Motivating the individual
How do I get the most out of each member of my sales team?

i. Reward success. We tend to think of rewards as being money, but there are
many other effective ways to reward your people. Sometimes just a ‘Well
done’ can be the biggest motivator – many of us respond to recognition.
ii. Some low-cost could be small gift for their kids, car wash tokens and theatre
or cinema tickets. How about buying them a good book on effective sales?
For special reward, there is always the long weekend away.
iii. Always look for opportunities to give positive feedback; it is best to do this
for individual excellence. You can recognize and reward a team, but often
this has a smaller impact than an individual pat on the back.
 Leaders Create The Right Environment

Why is this important?

i. The morale of a sales team is very significant. Customers can

smell fear and desperation; so no matter how tough things are,
it is very important to have a selling environment that people
can feel proud of and look forward to coming into it the
morning.
ii. The key word to describe the environment is ‘professional’.
Professionalism sells. Customers like to buy from salespeople who
treat them professionally, do things on time and present an
excellent image of their company.
 Contd…
iii. Success breed success and nowhere is this truer than in a sales
office. A successful team measures itself by sales made, and
when things are going well in this area, there is the step of the
whole team. The only downside of this is arrogance. Watch out
for it and nip it in the bud. What you are looking for is self-
confidence.

iv.When times are tough it’s more difficult to keep up morale. The
best tip for handling hard times is to tell the truth and keep the
team abreast of what is happening. Hold on planning meting
that starts with an admission that things are tough and then ask
the team by meeting for ideas on how to make more sales, find
more prospect and keep cost down to a minimum.
Typical cultures that works, includes the following:
1. Caring or blaming – caring is much better; a rule by terror rarely lasts
2. Team or independent – Form people into a team when you can; the total is
much more than the sum of the parts. On the other hand, there are people,
particularly find in sales teams, who are loners and work better by themselves.
Respect that choice
3. Taking responsibility or not taking responsibility. In the long run giving people
more responsibility make them bloom and grow
4. Learning or closed – Always emphasize the need for everyone to learn.
5. Fun or serious – people who enjoy their work achieve more.
6. Open or not open to change – try hard to stay flexible.
7. Clock watching, flexible working or long working days – make it horses for
courses if you can, so each person choose their own hours of work, if that does
not impede customer service.
8. Conservative or radical – Go for it; higher-risk strategies tend to have higher
return.
9. Measure it – ask colleagues to describe the right culture.
How do I handle difficult people in my marketing team?

• Why do you think they do it? Try put yourself in their shoes. It could be because they want to
be recognized; perhaps they are insecure; or maybe they think they are capable of doing
more than you are giving them.

• How do you naturally react to them when they are being difficult?
You can try to ignore their behavior or get aggressive or defensive. Check what is the right
response. Look for what you can do to improve your response. Understand and control your
emotions and recognize emotions in others.

• Are they are looking for recognition or more responsibility?

This can be relatively easy to address. If they want more responsibility but are not capable,
how can you help them reach the level they aspire to? Maybe they need your help or
external help.

• Salespeople who have achieved their targets regularly can be particularly difficult. They
feel invincible and that they can do what they like. Either take them aside and explain why
their behavior is damaging the rest of the team or try giving them more responsibility. If this
does not work, consider getting rid of them.
 How should I develop the marketing team?
Allow team members to develop themselves. Have a vision and a strategy that is easy for
everyone to understand; then give your team members the responsibility of implementing it.

1. Set objectives – What is required to achieve the desired results? This could be the
number of customer meetings, but it could also be to improve questioning skills, know
more about the new product or service or handle objections better.
2. Monitor - Track what team member are doing and the results of what they are doing.
3. Analyze – Really understand what they are doing and the results of what they are
doing. This will also require a financial understanding that you may not have needed
in previous roles. You may now have to read a balance sheet in order to understand
your profit and loss account.
4. Plan – Agree how they will change in the future and by when; also what is required to
achieve that change and how you will be able to support it.
5. Motivate – Really understand what makes them want to do some things and not
want to do others. What can you do to help them want to do things they don’t want
to do, but need to?
 FOLLOW-UP MOMENTUM
i. How often have you walked out of a sales marketing punching the air with ‘Wow that went
well! They have really bought into our concept and will buy any week now’; then a week
goes by and you hear nothing.

ii. Perhaps the customer is simply using you to leverage other suppliers. It is worth investing
time to analyse what went wrong. It is very sensible to ask your prospect; they are normally
very helpful.

iii. Don’t hang on to prospects who are not going to order unless there is something specific
about your approach that you can fix to recover the lost momentum. Move on and find a
better opportunity.

iv. Always try to leave a prospect meeting or phone call with them wanting more-more info.

v. Sometimes you just cannot get a prospect to buy despite the fact that they are still willing
to see you and seem happy with your proposition.

vi. Detect a loss of momentum as early as possible and take action quickly.
 MODULE 5

• Understand the Competition

• Sales Pipeline
• Key Account Management
• Current Marketing Team Assessment Check sheet
• Keep Up-To Date in Your Business
• Q&A
• Quiz
 THE UNDERSTAND FORMULA

What you need to understand is the total environment in

which you are conducting business?

That’s often a lot broader than you may think. An organization exists in
some context, and its activities consist of effectively managing
relationships within that context. To do this, the organization must have
eyes and ears on the rest of the world, and this is one of marketing’s
job.

Understanding the costumer tells you what you must produce to be

successful and how to offer it.
 CONTD…
1. You need to know who your customer and potential customers are. This means you
must define them.

2. You need to understand why they buy from a particular vendor, which means
defining their vendor selection criteria .

3. Identify the decision makers in desired customer’s organizations.

Are they the purchasing agent, engineer, manager, company executive, or

others? Understand their decision process. Is the buying decision up to one person,
a group, a chain of people or groups, or is some other mechanism used?

4. You will need to understand in detail, the customer’s business.

i. How the product is used in the customer’s business or consumption pattern.

ii. Why you have won sales and why you have lost sales.
 UNDERSTANDING THE COMPETITION

Your competitors are out there with you, going after then same customers, with many
of the same resources you possess. Your job is to understand them and:

1. Know how to capitalize on their weaknesses,

2. Plot strategy so your product or service will be superior to their in some significant way.

You need to understand the following parameters and, as always, their dynamics-
how they are changing:
• From your customer’s point of view, who are your competitors? What are their defining
characteristics? You may be surprised to learn that your real competitors are not who you thought
them to be. Your competition may come from an entirely different direction, or from another
product altogether.

• Through what channels do they sell? Are they the same as yours, or different? Why?

• How do they sell their product; that is, what are the sales procedures that they employ? Perhaps
they always call on a particular level in the organization.
 Assignment/Exercise No.5
-Competitor Analysis Table
MAIN PRODUCTS/ BUSINESS STRENGTHS WEAKNESS COMPETITVE
COMPETITORS MARKETERS DIRECTION , POSITION IN
CURRENT MARKET
OBJECTIVES
& STRATEGIES

1.

2.
THE SALES PIPELINE
i. The function of a pipeline is to take something in at one end and deliver it at the other
end. In the case of a sales pipeline it is about taking potential customers in at one end
and delivering buying customers at the other. It can also be looked at as a funnel.
ii. It is often an idea to start looking at the end of the pipeline, based in what results you
want to achieve and what customers you need to achieve those results. Ask yourself :
 What does our ideal customer mix look like?
 What sectors will they be in?
 What opportunities are there to sell to new sectors?
 What is the balance between key accounts and others (plus other categories you may
have?)
 Does the 80/20 Pareto’s rule apply? (Is it true that 80 per cent of our profits from sales
come from 20 per cent of our customers and, if so, is that acceptable?)
 What will be the average spend of the key accounts?
 What will be the average spend of the others?
 Why do customers buy from us?
 What makes them keep buying?
 How strong are the customer relationships?
iii. Here’s how to calculate the number of buying customers required
to make budget:
Budgeted sales revenue 25,000,000
Last year’s actual sales revenue 20,000,000
Difference to make up, assuming 100% retention 5,000,000
Actual buying customer retention rate 85%
Lost revenue from customers who stop buying 3,000,000
Total net sales revenue increase required 8,000,000
Average spend of new buying customers 200,000
By dividing the total net sales increase by the average, 40
spend, you can calculate the number of new buying
customers required this year
iv. Here’s how to calculate the number of suspects to be pursued to
make budget based on expected conversion ratios:

2,000 researched are worth pursuing as suspects

SUSPECTS 10:1 ratio

200 convert to prospects

PROSPECTS 5:1 ratio

40 convert to buying

BUYING
8:1 ratio
CUSTOMERS

5 become key accounts

KEY
ACCOUNTS
v. By analyzing your sales pipeline conversion rates you can adjust
your selling activity to improve your effectiveness at each stage.
vi. Change your actions in sales campaigns to make them more
effective by using the tactics that give you greatest success.
vii. Finally, use the sales pipeline analysis to find out how many
prospects you need to make the required number of sales, and
discipline yourself to do sufficient prospecting to keep your
pipeline full. Most top salespeople have a discipline to spend a
certain amount of time each week finding new prospects.
viii. You will also want to consider how many meetings you need on
average with a prospect to get them to buy from you.
Q. How many times have you been in a customer sales
meeting and it is just not going right, but you can’t
put your finger on why?

Sales is like any other job or task. You need a

clearly defined process: you start wit a suspect
at one end you end up with a buying customer
at the other end. It is what happens in between
that is important.
SELLING PROCESS LINE
PLANNING

DISCOVERY

CONFIRMATION

SOLUTION DESIGN

PRESENTATION

OBJECTION HANDLING

NEGOTIATION

CLOSE
 KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

Many industries continue to become more concentrated,

which means that they are becoming dominated by a
smaller number of larger customer. Under such operating
conditions, the effective management of those accounts
becomes critical to survival and success.

Use this key account planning tool as part of an annual

planning process for your most important customers.
A. Why Manage a Key Account ?
1. The Pareto principle – protect the 80 per cent of results being produced by 20 per cent of
sales and support effort. Don’t spend 80 per cent of the effort to get the extra 20 per cent.
Do not clear why you are doing it and communicate the reason internally (and to some
extent externally).the attention of a key account manager and perhaps a team should
result in improved profits and revenues, and just as importantly it should make sales more
predictable.
2. The customer is involved in our plans and we are in theirs.

B. Which?
1. Be careful not to select key account on emotion, because they were your first customer
or because they have become friends. The checklist in the diagram is useful in making
sure that you choose the right companies for the right reasons. Remember, one downside
of selection is that other customers may get to realize that they have not been selected.
Another downside is that the customer gets the view that they are very important to you
and negotiates very hard for more discounts and better treatment.
C. How?
1. It is very important to plan account management carefully, and it may have an impact
on the way you structure your team . Make sure that everyone knows which customers
you are working to develop into key accounts.
2. Think through the decision-making process and people in your key accounts. This given
you a chance to develop a contact strategy. Many senior people at your customer may
insist, for example on talking to senior people on your side.
3. Develop a communication plan that makes sure your name is in front of the customer’s
important people regularly.
4. By the time a company has managed a key account for a number of years they should
have very detailed information on the customer’s business.
5. Think through how to retain this information and make it available to anyone who gets
involved. One very good idea is to have a summary document that describe the
customer – its history and its key people, as well as its numbers and what you are trying to
achieve. This could be contained in your CRM system.
6. Hold regularly scheduled review meetings with your key accounts. If possible use a
standard agenda that can be ‘flexed’, depending on each key account’s requirements.
Measure the outputs from these meetings.
7. It is worthwhile introducing objective stability indicators to measure how strong your
relationship is and how likely they are to switch away from you.
D. Beyond
1. Your overall strategy is to maintain an alignment between what you and the customer
are trying to achieve. This means understanding their strategy and key business issues. Use
the relationship with your key accounts to drive innovation. The depth and breadth of
your relationship will allow you to have candid sessions with them, identifying ways to
innovate your product or service, ways to market, how you sell, how you are structured or
your processes. Customizing a solution is very good indeed for your reputation with that
customer, but take the time to calculate the return on investment.
2. Make sure that any influence the customer has on your strategy is agreed with others in
your organization. Too often we react to a key account threat or demand.
3. The ultimate aim of key account strategy is to generate long-term mutual growth, where
you work jointly to reduce each other’s coasts, drive efficiencies and improve
opportunities to increase sales and margin.
4. Make sure you do not allow to key account management process to stifle new ideas and
stagnate the relationship and your own development. Capture best practice, ideas and
knowledge from key accounts and then develop them as opportunities for growth such
as a new processes, new products and service, new markets and new customers.
CUSTOMER PROFILING
Customer name What is the of the external or internal customer that this
account plan covers?
Primary purpose What is the customer’s mission statement or purpose a short
statement of the customer’s overall aim?
Note: think about what would be missing if they no longer
existed.
Product and services What are the customer’s main products and service?

Markets and customers What are the customer’s main markets and who are their
customers ?
Unique capabilities What is unique or special about this particular customer in
term of what they do for their customers? Why do their
customers choose to use or buy from them as opposed to
other provides?
Positioning and brand How does this customer position themselves with their
customers?
Note: think about what their ‘brand’ stands for and what.
CONTD…
Core processes What are the customer’s core processes?
Note: identify activities that are critical to the effective supply of their
product and services to their target customers.
Structure and people How is the customer’s team structured or organised and how many
people are employed?
Geographic locations Where is the customer located and where are key decision made ?

Funding, growth and What are the key things that will help the customers to achieve their
profitability mission and what are the main bottlenecks?
Note: reflect on the customer’s product, service, customers and markets,
and on the current operational capabilities.

Impact What is the impact of theses strengths and weaknesses? Use a simple
scale of H= HIGH, M= MEDIUM, and L=LOW.
Customer What are the key things that will help the customer to achieve their
opportunities and mission?
threats Note : reflect on change in the customer’s operating environment, such
as regulation, technology economic condition or competitive threats.

impact What is the impact of theses opportunities and threats? Use a simple
scale of H= HIGH, M= MEDIUM, and L=LOW.
 ACCOUNT OBJECTIVES
Objectives What are your key objectives for this customer?
Note: all objectives should be SMART:
S = specific
M = measurable
A = agreed
R = realistic
T = time-bound

Our strengths and What are the key things will help you to achieve your objectives with
weaknesses this customer and what are the main bottlenecks ?
Note: reflect on the your products, services, customers and markets
and on the current operational capabilities.

Your opportunities and What are the main changes in the way the customers operates that
threats will affect how you meet you objectives?
Note : reflect on the customers profile and assess how they might be
changing in the light of their opportunities and threats.

Impact What is the impact of these strengths and weaknesses on your ability
to deliver? Use a simple scale of H= HIGH, M= MEDIUM, and L=LOW.
How do I keep up to date in my business
It is very easy to rely on the information you gather in your day-to-day job. You will need to
expend your sources of information to ensure that you are not missing ideas.

• Trade publications, university articles, newspapers and books

These are a great source of up-to-date thinking from a variety of experts. Talk to your
contacts and read reviews to discover which publications are likely to be most useful.
• Your network
Include your whole network-colleagues, customers, friends. Be aware of who in your
network has expertise in certain areas. Try to get them to advise you of changes in
thinking or new approaches they have taken.
• Internet
This is provides freely available information from a variety of sources, but be aware that it
is typically unstructured and will contain bias. Review the websites of your ‘top ten’
customers and competitors twice a year and identify up to five other useful websites hat
provide challenging insight.
• Conferences, seminars and courses
These are a valuable source of up-to-date new thinking and offer the opportunity to
question ideas or discuss how they can be made relevant to your situation make the
effort to take two or three days out of your job to attend these and then get back to the
backlog of issues when you return. Before you attend, consider how you are going to
record and act on the ideas that you receive.

• Institutes and professional bodies

These can offer a combination of publications, networking and conferences. Remember
that institutes and professional bodies will have a far wider benefit to you on your career
ladder, so don’t limit the way you use them just to keeping up to date.

So plan how you will keep up to date, how much time you will allocate to it, how you will
record the information and how you will ensure you use it effectively.