Management Questions

• Do you know who your most profitable customers are and why? Or who the most valuable prospects are? Does your sales team spend the majority of their time focused on the highest value targets?
• Is your value proposition compelling and relevant for the highest-value segments?
• Do you tailor your selling approach and offering only by customer size and geography, or also by customer value?
• Is your sales force coverage model organized to fully leverage your offerings?
• Do you have the right people with the right skills to deliver your value proposition?
• Are you maximizing the time that your sales force spends selling versus the time it spends doing administrative tasks?
• Are your sales training sessions built around improving results? Does the sales force find them relevant?
• Does your sales force have the tools it needs to drive revenue and profit growth?
• Do your compensation system and evaluation metrics encourage behavior that is focused on value growth, not just on revenue growth?

Source:
Selling for Profit: Redesigning the sales effort to jumpstart growth
by Mike Weissel
Mercer Management Journal, Issue 15

205No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/30/questions-for-sales-managers/Questions+for+Sales+Managers2007-10-30+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

Who?
A few excellent “who” questions you might consider using in order to convert “suspects” into highly qualified prospects are:

• Who has the most obvious need for your products or services?
• Who are the ideal prospects? Don’t limit yourself to existing customers.
• Who has the money to buy your products or services immediately?
• Who has the most urgent need to buy your products?
• Who has influence on the prospects you are able to identify?

Where?
By asking enough “where” questions, you should be able to qualify prospects beyond your current client list.

• Where do your ideal prospects live, work, socialize, worship or play?
• Where can you find useful mailing lists of people who fit your ideal prospect profile?
• Where can you find directories from which you can form your own lists?
• Where could you go to contact new prospects?

Why?
By using the “why” questions, you can set up priorities so as not to waste your time in qualifying prospects.

• Why would the prospect be likely to buy your product or service?
• Why would the prospect resist buying your product or service?
• Why might this time be good (or bad) to approach the prospect?
• Why would this person be likely to set up an appointment with you?

What?
These questions, if properly used can boost your qualifying average.

• What will the prospect find most beneficial about your product or service?
• What information could you present, or what questions could you ask would most likely get the prospect to talk about his needs?
• What more do you need to know about the prospect?
• What information should you gather about the prospect before you meet with him?
• What is the single biggest problem the prospect has?

When?
This question is about timing. Don’t try to set up an appointment for your convenience.

• When is the best time to contact a prospect? An important hint, if he or she is a busy executive, is never on a Monday morning!
• When is the most productive time from the prospect’s viewpoint?
• When is the prospect most likely to give you the time you need?
• When should you contact the prospect again if your first efforts were not successful?

How?
You will not be able to ask many meaningful “How?” questions if you have not fully explored the other five.

• How can you be sure that you are doing a good enough job of follow-up prospecting? (Look at the Who? questions again.)
• How can you use your prospecting time more productively? (The “Where?” questions can help you here.)
• How can you sharpen your prospecting and qualifying skills? (Hint: Search for creative ways to put your products and services to good use. Look at the “Why?” questions.)
• How can you best approach your prospects? (Think about the “What?” questions. What will they want to hear?)
• How can you make more time for meaningful prospecting and qualifying the leads you generate? (The “When?” questions will give you a good indication of effective time management.)

Source:
How to Qualify Leads and Prospects
by Felice Philip Verrecchia
Edward Lowe Foundation

204No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/29/qualifying-prospects/Qualifying+Prospects2007-10-29+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

• What types of mistakes do customers tend to make while making this kind of decision? Make sure the decision process avoids these mistakes.
• What do customers most frequently overlook or not consider? Make sure the decision process brings these elements into consideration.
• What are the most difficult things for a customer to understand? Determine ways to communicate these elements precisely.
• What must a customer understand to reach a fully informed decision? Make sure the decision process brings these to the customer in an orderly fashion.
• What level of professional education or experience is required to understand each specialty area of the decision? Make sure that you engage in the decision process those people who have the required experience or professional background.

Source:
The Decision to Buy
by Jeff Thull
MarketingProfs.com, April 18, 2006

203No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/28/preventing-decision-mistakes/Preventing+Decision+Mistakes2007-10-28+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

Here are six of the most important criteria you can use to evaluate your sales effectiveness.
Does my sales team

1. Consistently meet or exceed revenue and margin goals?
2. Focus on selling the company’s existing products and services and minimize one-offs?
3. Enter accurate and timely sales data into the company’s SFA/CRM systems?
4. Know the competition in-depth and how to differentiate our company and its products and/or services from others?
5. Involve senior management to help close important new business?
6. Only pursue the business they can win?

Source:
Kiss Theory Good Bye
by Bob Prosen
Gold Pen Publishing, 2006

202No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/26/does-your-sales-team-measure-up/Does+Your+Sales+Team+Measure+Up%3F2007-10-26+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

Defining the Opportunity

1. How do you determine acquisition cost objectives for your sales and marketing activities?
• We have a clear understanding of the lifetime value of our customers derived from historical data. Based on the LTV, we use financial models to create an acquisition cost target that will generate acceptable profit.
• We have an intuitive idea of the acceptable acquisition cost range.
• We do not have an acquisition cost target.
2. How tailored are your product offerings to each market segment you target?
• We have established market research and customer feedback programs in place to help us tailor our product offerings to the unique needs of each segment.
• We only target market segments that want our core product.
• We do not have a formal market segmentation plan.

Refining Target Customers

1. What is your process for refining your target market?
• We formally refine our target market every quarter to align with organizational goals based on historical financials, current sales funnel analysis and marketing program effectiveness, industry research, and customer feedback. 
• We formally refine our target once or twice a year, using historical financials and industry research.
• We informally refine our target market periodically based on anecdotal feedback.
2. What are your methods for soliciting customer feedback? (Check all that apply)
• Regular customer satisfaction surveys
• Periodic in-depth customer interviews
• Short customer surveys on our Web site
• Organized customer advisory panels
• Formal feedback forum for “customer-facing” staff members
• Informal customer feedback from sales reps 

Generating Leads

1. How do you set lead generation objectives for your marketing programs?
• Based on extensive historical data and sales experience, we have defined a specific, numerical target for the number of leads we must generate to meet sales conversion and revenue goals. 
• We do not have final target numbers set because our product is new to market and we only have limited historical market data.
• We have a lead generation target number, but it is not derived from the number of closes we need.
• We are basically trying to get as many leads as we can.
2. How do you integrate your brand building and direct response programs to support your company?s sales goals?
• We coordinate all communication efforts to build our brand at every touch point and provide recipients with an appropriate opportunity to respond and develop their relationship with us. Each activity has a defined role and measurable objectives tied to our financial plan.
• We separate our communications activities into brand-building and response generation. We establish goals around our response generation programs to support sales.
• We do not have integrated brand-building and direct response programs that are tied to sales goals.
3. To what extent do you coordinate prospect communication?
• We coordinate prospect communication by doing the following:
1. Developing a core message proposition and customizing messaging by target segment and the customer’s phase in the sales cycle.
2. Communicating a common campaign theme across all communication tactics–direct mail, advertising, email, phone scripts, web site landing pages, trade shows, etc.
3. Employing an explicit contact sequence (e.g. direct mail, email, web, trade show, and then phone) and setting a logical time frame within which integrated prospect touches take place.
• We implement some coordination by:
1. Communicating a common campaign theme across most of our communication tactics- e.g. direct mail, web site, trade shows, etc.
2. Scheduling a sequence of touches surrounding a product launch or key event (e.g. direct mail, email, trade show, and then phone).
• We keep messaging consistent across activities, but we do not have an integrated communication strategy.
4. How do you develop your prospect database? (Check all that apply)
• Signing up prospects on our Web site through contact forms or online transactions
• Using specific offers or value-added content on our Web site to encourage prospects to enter contact information
• Immediately entering new contacts into a contact database after networking events and trade shows.
• Using offers in email solicitations designed to capture prospect email addresses.
• Supplementing outside lists with cost-effective contact verification methods.
• Our sales reps enter prospect info into the database as they acquire it.

Developing Sales

1. How do you deal with prospects and customers at different stages in the purchase cycle?
• We have explicitly mapped out detailed sales processes for managing the pipeline and generating regular reports and methods for handling the following profiles:
1. New inbound leads
2. Hot leads, warm leads and cold leads
3. Active customers (segmented by revenue potential)
4. Inactive customers (segmented by revenue potential) 
• We have ways of handling prospects and customers in distinct ways, but that’s about it.
• We let the sales force handle opportunities however they want.
2. Where do you store your customer data?
• All of our customer data is available as one “virtual” database for use by sales, marketing, finance, and support departments.
• We have separate customer databases managed by each functional department.
• Each sales rep keeps his/her customer information in a private data file.

Determining Sales and Marketing Effectiveness

1. How does your sales force provide feedback to your marketing department?
• We have a well-defined feedback system that integrates sales feedback early into the process of developing marketing programs. Our sales reps test marketing messages and price sensitivity during client meetings and formally report the findings to marketing.
• Our sales reps informally let marketing know if they learn something interesting about price or message in client interactions.
• There is very little communication between sales and marketing.
2. How do you track the success of lead generation programs?
• We have a structured lead model with a comprehensive lead capturing process to track from initial contact to close by:
• Assigning a source (advertising, direct mail, Internet marketing, telemarketing, etc.) to each inbound lead.
• Using technology platforms to capture and track what percentage of leads from each source actually purchase our product and to determine sales and marketing program effectiveness.
• We manually track the number of leads that come in from certain marketing activities, but we do not associate EVERY lead that comes with a lead generation source.
• We track the number of leads generated by each marketing activity, but we are not able to carry our analysis through to closes.
• We do not track number of leads generated by specific marketing activities.
3. To what extent do you measure the effectiveness of marketing activities?
• We have implemented an ongoing process into every marketing effort to measure the results of each individual sales and marketing activity (including advertising, PR, web site, email, events, & sales force activities). We enhance the next campaign iteration/program touch based on previous learning and quantitative and qualitative results generated.
• We measure the results of sales force activities and some marketing activities. We do not measure the results of each individual marketing effort.
• We only measure the results of our sales force activities.

Source:
nFusion Demand Generation Diagnostic Tool
nFusion

201No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/25/demand-generation-diagnostic/Demand+Generation+Diagnostic2007-10-25+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

• Who am I selling to today?
• Why are they buying anything?
• What do I have to sell them?
• Why should they buy from me?

Source:
A New Marketing Bill of Materials
by Tim Riesterer
MarketingProfs.com, September 9, 2003

200No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/23/4-basic-sales-questions/4+Basic+Sales+Questions2007-10-23+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Sales Questions

1. Are the complexity of the extended enterprise and major earnings drivers across it transparent?
2. Are interdependencies understood and interdependence risks identified?
3. What programs are in place to ensure the viability of earnings drivers?
4. Are these programs fully aligned with corporate strategy and objectives, and do we understand the trade-offs within these programs?
5. Do we know what we spend on resilience?
6. How good is our situational awareness — that is, do we have enough business intelligence, internal and external, and is it directed to the appropriate parties?
7. Do we distill such intelligence properly and in a timely enough fashion to react to it?
8. Who is accountable for resilience, and how do we make decisions and measure progress?

Source:
Enterprise Resilience: Managing Risk in the Networked Economy
by Randy Starr
strategy+business, Spring 2003

199No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/22/diagnose-your-enterprise-resilience-eight-fundamental-questions/Diagnose+Your+Enterprise+Resilience%3A+Eight+Fundamental+Questions2007-10-22+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Risk Management Questions

• How good is my company at understanding risk? i.e., what risks do we face and how does that risk impact on my organization?
• What control procedures does my company have in place to mitigate these risks?
• How does my company achieve recognition for the effort we have put into implementing control measures and managing risk?

Source:
An explicit item for the main board
by John Bromfield
European Business Forum, Issue 13

198No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/21/3-key-risk-management-questions/3+Key+Risk+Management+Questions2007-10-21+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Risk Management Questions

• Which market segment are we targeting specifically with that particular product?
• What is the role and mission of that specific product in our overall product line?
• What is a winning product, from the customer’s viewpoint, in that segment?
• How have we chosen to beat our competitors, generally and in that segment?
• If it’s impossible to meet all customer demands, which ones should we meet?
• How many variants of the product are we prepared to develop?
• How fast will we replace this particular product we are developing? etc.

Source:
Creating a Product Strategy
by Jean-Philippe Deschamps
Prism, Q2 1993

197No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/19/product-strategy-questions/Product+Strategy+Questions2007-10-19+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Products & Services Questions

Managers who want to launch a Value Sourcing initiative should consider these questions:

• Is sourcing seen as driving revenue growth as well as cost reduction?
• Are we maximizing the value of our supplier relationships?
• Have we segmented our spending and identified strategic categories and suppliers?
• Do we understand and are we positively affecting supplier economics?
• How collaboratively do procurement, users, and key suppliers work on new product development?
• Are our product and service specifications up to date? Do they strike the right balance between technical need and total cost?
• Are there significant portions of spending under the control of the user community with little involvement from Procurement?
• What portion of spending could benefit from a global or regional approach?
• Do we have the internal capabilities to ensure a generation of continued gains?
• Is procurement of equal importance to engineering and operations in the company?
• Can we use Value Sourcing to transform the organization?
• How do we gain buy-in and motivation with key managers?
• What are the right and cost-effective digital tools to apply?

Source:
Stop Thrashing Your Suppliers: Focus on value and profits, not just cost, in the sourcing process
by David Bovet
Mercer Management Journal, Issue 14

196No Comments »http://www.mgmtquestions.com/2007/10/18/value-sourcing-questions/Value+Sourcing+Questions2007-10-18+18%3A15%3A00Administrator Posted by Administrator / Procurement / Purchasing / Sourcing Questions