A Guest Post by Salesloft.com

How do you sell to a millennial B2B decision-maker? Be aware of what’s important to that individual – just as you would with any client.

You’ve heard the jesting description: Millennials are narcissists, attention-seeking, spoiled clingers still living in their parents’ house, buried under a ton of student debt. They studiously avoid the business of adulting and all that it entails. They don’t stick in jobs, believing a year is plenty of service to a company. They work, gain some experience and move on.

This could lead you to believe, if you’re selling your product or service to a millennial decision-maker, that a little flattery and consistent attention combined with some numbers and a few benefit statements will make the sale for you. And if you’re not successful with the first millennial buyer, another one will be along within a year.

Those aren’t good assumptions and that’s not a good plan. Millennials are flooding the workforce.

According to the Pew Research Center, Millennials have surpassed Generation Xers as the largest generation in the U.S. labor force with 54 million individuals. In fact, this year, Millennials surpassed Baby Boomers. The Department of Labor predicts that by 2025, the workforce will grow to include 74 million millennials. As their career trajectories lengthen, they’ll move into more powerful decision-making roles and you need to be ready.

According to research done by the B2B marketing agency Sacunas, 53 percent of millennials are already involved in B2B buying decisions at their companies. Ignoring the unique priorities of millennial decision-makers is not good business.

So how do you sell to the millennial decision-maker? What prompts a millennial to make a B2B buying decision.

IT’S ALL ABOUT BEING CONNECTED

Millennials are connected. They’re the first generation to be completely wired and they’re more likely to turn to technology to do research when they are making a buying decision for their company. And they research diligently.

According to the Sacunas research, they use Facebook and YouTube to connect with humans who have engaged the services of a vendor. They look at the vendor’s social media feeds to assess customer service. They visit Glassdoor to examine company reviews to determine if the vendor is someone they want to do business with.

They ask friends and colleagues, via social media, if they would recommend a company’s product or services. They value the opinions of other people.

This makes it imperative that your company monitor its reputation on social media, swiftly address concerns and provide outstanding customer service.

VIDEO IS KING

Millennials like video content. They particularly like it if it provides relevant, informative content, such as product demos, training and news about the company or marketplace. Practical information that they see as readily applicable to their specific buying need resonates with millennial buyers. They’re gathering data for the group of decision-makers; if it’s good, they look good. If it’s video, they’re even happier.

Make it visual and valuable and you’re capturing the attention of a millennial buyer.

THEY NEED PROOF

Depending on where they are on their career trajectory, accurate data is important to the millennial buyer. They’re gathering research for a decision-making group – it’s rare for one person to be the decision-maker on a corporate buy today – so the better the data, the happier they are. It solidifies their reputation with the team as someone who does the homework necessary to make a smart decision.

If they’re buying automated revenue analysis software from you, how effective and accurate has it been in similar industries? Do you have numbers? If they’re buying an email tracking program, what kinds of data does it collect and how do they apply it to their business? If they’re looking at your customer relationship management service in the cloud, what kinds of reporting can it generate to help them identify growth channels and leads?

If you can provide that information, you’re arming the millennial buyer with the powerful tools he needs to make the recommendation you want.

THEY WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE

Relationships are important to millennials. There’s no arguing that texting and emailing are viable forms of communication, but millennials like personal contact, even if it’s a meeting by Skype or Facetime. A direct connection with a real human (which is why they turn to social media for confirmation of their thoughts) is critical at an early stage in the sales cycle.

ARE YOU A GOOD CORPORATE CITIZEN?

The Marketing Scope reports that millennials feel good about working with vendors who demonstrate a commitment to a cause, who are philanthropic, who give back to the community they serve. Millennials connect with companies that have clear environmental policies. Social, environmental and philanthropic values have a direct impact on a millennial’s decision to work with a specific vendor.

BOTTOM LINE

We know you’re going to treat every buyer with respect. Millennials may have specific triggers that are important to them, like the environment and social causes, looking professional to their bosses, demonstrating excellent levels of due diligence, so it’s important to be aware of that. But it’s just good business to do a thoughtful needs analysis and find a true and worthy solution to your buyer’s pain.

“What you can conceive and believe you can achieve.”  - Napolean Hill

This is so obvious that any meaningful information could probably be expressed simply by stating:

If you have people with various levels of desire for success in sales, you will have variability in performance!

Done. 

Not really, but this isn’t going to take a long time either.

Many years ago, I heard Mark Victor Hansen (author, speaker and all-around good guy) present to the Cincinnati Association of Life Underwriters.  It was at our annual conference and he was our keynote speaker.  His topic was “Visualizing is Realizing.”  During his presentation, he made the comment, “Motivation is an inside-out job.”  I wrote that down in 1990, and I’ve used that phrase over and over again in our 23-year history as a company.

Time and again, sales managers, sales executives and presidents of companies ask me, “Tony, how do I keep my team motivated?”  I tell them that they cannot do that because it’s something their people have to come wired with. That's mostly true. Companies do have to have an environment where it’s possible for people to create reasons for staying motivated.  Compensation, contests, incentives, and recognition all play a part in keeping people motivated.  However, in the end, people have to have a really good answer to the question: “Why do I desire success in selling?”

Success in selling is very specific.  It isn’t just success in a vacuum.  It’s success in a very difficult role with very difficult challenges.  I was once asked why I was in life insurance sales.  I responded that I liked people.  The prospect said, “Bullshit. You’re in sales because you want to make a lot of money.”  I said, “Fair enough; you’re right. I do want to make a lot of money.”

But, money in and of itself is not the root desire.  It’s one of the basics that drive the desire. It’s represented in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Money is just a way to take care of food, shelter, clothing, freedom from harm and security.  Traditionally, people that are very successful in selling have this one thing in common – they have lots of s**t to do that requires money.

Yes, sometimes people have a desire to be recognized as the best.  And they want to have self-satisfaction for a job well-done; but I assure you that none of that matters if there are bills to pay, kids to be fed, a college/mortgage/wedding to pay for or new cars to be driven.

With that as the foundation, let me make this as simple as I can to help answer the question, “So, how do I minimize variability in performance by focusing attention on desire?”

1. Recognize that it is an inside-out job… so that means you have to recruit people that have huge desire for success in selling.
2. Traditionally, desire is a result of people establishing goals.
   1. Your manager has to be leader in this. If they are not a goal setter (personal goals), then chances are your salespeople won’t be either.
   2. Your manager also has to set the example of goal achievement.
   3. Your manager has to create an environment/opportunity for personal goal setting.
3. Your manager has to have the mindset that they must know what motivates their salespeople – why do they desire success in sales?
4. The sales manager needs to recognize that it is their responsibility to help people raise their self-esteem by recognizing success in all forms when it happens.

As I stated in the beginning, the connection between desire for success and selling and the variability of performance is pretty obvious.  If you want to minimize variability in success, minimize the variability in desire for success.

Several years ago, as part of our sales team evaluation, the skills, tendencies and effectiveness of the sales leadership team was also assessed.  The findings indicated that of the 224 leaders, 23% had at least 60% of the skills required to be an effective performance manger.  Of the 5 sales management skill sets required - coaching, motivating, recruiting, mentoring and performance management – this last one, performance management, is where the team “scored” the best. The skills/tendencies within the skill set are as follows:

• Doesn’t accept mediocrity
• Has no need for approval from sales people
• Takes responsibility
• Manages behavior
• Asks Questions
• Manages pipeline
• Has beliefs that support accountability

Before digging into this topic further, just take a minute to examine these results: 

• 224 sales leaders
• 23% (51) with the minimum % of skills needed to be successful in their role
• 67% (172) sales leaders below the minimum standards of effectiveness
• Only 1 out of 4 managers, hired to do the job of managing performance and holding sales people accountable, had the skills to do so.

Assume for a minute that this might be your sales organization.  Now, you might be thinking, “I don’t have that many sales managers and so my numbers won’t look like this.”  You are right; they won’t look like this, but consider the possibility that maybe you didn’t get the 1 out of four!  How would you know?

• Do your salespeople meet and exceed goals?
• Do your salespeople consistently have the right volume of pipeline?
• Do your salespeople have a tendency to have up and down weeks, months, quarters or years?
• Do your salespeople blame the economy, the competition, the pricing, the lack of marketing, lack of support, too much paperwork for failure to prospect?
• Have you spent a small fortune for CRM and yet still struggle with trusting the reliability of the pipeline report that you get?
• Are people late to meetings or fail to show up at all, or leave early?
• Does your sales manager take bullets for the failure of the sales team?

Performance Management – Definition (As defined by the University of California Berkley)

• Performance management is an ongoing process of communication between a supervisor and an employee that occurs throughout the year, in support of accomplishing the strategic objectives of the organization. The communication process includes clarifying expectations, setting objectives, identifying goals, providing feedback and reviewing results.

Hogwash!  This is part of the definition and this might suit the academics, but in the real world of business, there is something missing!  “What’s missing?” you ask.

• Identifying and implementing Rewards for success
• Identifying and implementing Consequences for failure
• Implementing disciplined approaches (structured activities) to correct failure to perform effort or execution.

The Berkley definition is kind of like the LifeLock commercial you see on TV commercials.  The bank is being robbed and customers ask the security guard if he is going to do something about the robbery.  His response is that he is not a security guard but rather a security monitor.  If all a manager does is communicates expectations, sets objectives, identifies goals, reviews results (“you are not hitting your goals”) and provides feedback (“You have to work harder”), then performance really isn’t managed; it’s just monitored.

As long had you have a sales team consisting of self-starters, self-managed, high figure-it-out people, then you are okay.  BUT, and this is a BIG BUT(T), you probably don’t have an entire team of people like this.  Short of having a team that just needs to be pointed in the right direction, an organization needs someone to manage performance and hold people accountable to individual commitments.

The organization needs someone that can reward people for success through compensation and recognition.  As important, if not more important, your performance management manager MUST be able to recognize early when people are off-track. This person must have implemented the right systems and process for early detection.  And the person must be strong enough to have fierce conversations with people when they are failing to perform.

Finally, there must be a process of disciplined and structured correction procedures so that those failing to execute have a chance to succeed.  PIPs are not the answer.  PIPs are to late to have a significant impact.  By the time you attempt to put someone on a PIP that horse has left the barn.

Additional Resources:

• Sales Management Certification – Call me at 513.226.3913 or text SMECert and provide me a name and number to call
• For our SME Certification Slidedoc – Email Jeni@anthonycoletraining.com
• Evaluate your sales team – Email Jack@anthonycoletraining.com

Earlier, I stated that eliminating the variability of performance all starts with people, right?  And then, I proceeded to tell you that I thought that eliminating variability starts with systems and process.  Now, it’s time to talk about people and that means talking about recruiting.  Here are the big ideas about recruiting:

• You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.
• You must be excellent at it.
• You must know exactly what you are looking for – What is your *Zebra?
• You must stick to your plan of hiring nothing but Zebras!
• You must have an excellent onboarding system and process.

Companies hiring salespeople do not hire talent intending for that talent to be average.  Companies creating business plans do not put plans together with an end game of “Let’s be average.”  No one starts a company, starts a career or initiates a marketing campaign with the excitement of “I think this is really an average idea that will bring us average results and make us average in the marketplace!”

So, why should we use average, above average, okay, trending, making progress and “in line with out peer group” when describing our results?  It’s the wrong way to measure success or progress.  If you don’t intend on having average results, then don’t intentionally hire average people and don’t accept it when evaluating effort, execution or performance!

How do we know that this actually happens?

• Companies use stack ranking and the sales managers/executives reviewing the sales reports brag about outperforming their counterparts in similar markets. If the counterparts are successful, then that’s a good analysis.  If the counterparts suck, then one team just doesn’t suck as bad as the other teams.
• Companies use year over year performance. I get it.  I understand it because companies are trying to demonstrate that they are improving. That makes sense, kind of.  But, let’s suppose you are a sports team that plays 10 games.  Last year, you won 2. This year, you won 4 – a 100% improvement; however, you still lost 60% of your games!
• The 80/20 rule doubled. If you look at most sales teams that have at least 10 salespeople, normally you find that about 36% of the salespeople are responsible for 90% of the results.  What the heck is the other 64% of the team doing?

How does this happen?  Recruiting, on-boarding, training and development, sales coaching and performance management. 

It is possible to fail in many ways…while to succeed is possible only in one way (for which reason also one is easy and the other difficult – to miss the mark easy, to hit it difficult.)   - Aristotle

How do you minimize the opportunity for failure in recruiting thus minimizing the variability in performance?  Answer: Have a system.  Have a system managed by quality people that are more interested in hiring quality people that will actually sell.  Have partners internally and externally whose objectives are aligned with the ultimate goal – creating a sales team built for growth.  Manage the process like you would manage any other process in your organization.

With all of that said, here are a couple of key things to consider:

• Have a pipeline process. Imagine for a minute that you were talking to your salespeople about their prospect pipeline and they informed you that they didn't have one. What would your reaction be?  Why then is your company allowed to NOT have a candidate pipeline or a process to build a pipeline when necessary?
• Have huddles to discuss internal activities designed to generate candidate leads. Internal ownership in the recruiting process is critical. Hiring an outside firm and them blaming them or using them as the excuse for poor hiring is not an option.
• Profile the results needed to be successful rather than write and publish a job description. Look into what is being done by your most successful salespeople (*Note- These may not be the same people with the biggest revenue contribution). What are they doing? What kind of activity do they have, who do they call on, what is their average size case, close ratio and sales cycle?  How are they being managed and at what level do they succeed? Attract those that aspire to work and succeed at that level.
• Assess for job fit, sales skills inventory and WILL to succeed in selling. The resumes are going to look good. References are pointless these days and almost all of them will have a decent profile on LinkedIn.  So, use a pre-hire assessment tool so that you have the same set of sales skills inventory questions being asked the same way all the time.
• Screen for the skills you need. Just as an example: If phone skills are important and the salesperson will often face prospects that are not terribly over-excited about getting a call from a salesperson, then you must first screen for that skill, that talent.  If closing for an appointment is important for sales people to do, then make sure that this candidate closes you for the next step.

These are the big ideas in recruiting. This is the start of the transformation of your sales team.  Stop hiring those people that end up on the wrong end of the 80/20 curve.  Be a leader and break the trend of accepting mediocrity from people you hired to succeed.

If you’ve followed my blog for any period of time, you know that there are several phrases that I use when discussing sales outcomes, sales management, recruitment and talent development:

• Your organization is perfectly designed for the results you get today.
• When you evaluate talent that is not performing as expected, you must ask yourself: “Did I hire them this way or did I make them this way?”
• Hire people you cannot afford.
• Hire great people when you find them, not when you need them.
• Catch them early (refers to performance management).
• You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
• When all else fails, hard work works.
• They (your underperforming salespeople) either are lying about their activity or they suck at what they do.
• You should begin the exiting process of an underperformer the moment you have the first thought.
• All prospects lie all the time.
• Don’t look, act or sound like a salesperson.
• When goals are clear, decision making is easy.
• Events happen to us all, destiny is what happens next.
• They’ll only do it once.

That's about it.

Do you have favorite business phrases? Share your feedback and comments below!