Presentation Transcript:

1. managing a complex sales process
2. basic sales funnel
3. leads -> sales funnel -> orders
4. complex customer needs => complex sales process
5. a typical process
   1. requirements
   2. map solutions
   3. budget costs
   4. configure solution
   5. proposal
   6. order
6. complex sales process => workflow model
7. workflow model
   1. milestones – progress indicators – work hand-over points – business rules
   2. roles – organization structure – responsibilities – capabilities
   3. templates – fill-in forms – document formats – validation rules
8. example of workflow model mapping milestones, roles and templates
9. workflow model =>shared workspace
10. shared workspace
    1. people  - business entities  - contact details – responsibilities
    2. information  - requirements – solutions – budgets – time lines
    3. activity log – appointments – tasks – notes
    4. documents - proposals - diagrams - data files
    5. progress reports – milestones completed - key hand-over info - who & when
11. sharedworkspace => prioritized reports
12. prioritized reports
    1. alerts – when we are stuck – alerts for appointments and tasks – alerts for stuck leads – alerts for unattended customers
    2. funnel – where are we stuck? – idle leads – no sales activity – inactive leads – no progress – inactive customers – no open projects
    3. metrics – why we are stuck? – velocity – how long are we taking ? – volume – how many leads are we handling? – conversion – success and failure
13. On2Biz
    1. workflow models - milestones - roles - templates
    1. shared workspace - information - people – activity – progress – documents
    2. prioritized reports  - alerts - funnel - metrics
14. Sample screen shots
15. screenshot: shared workspace
16. lead = project (screen shots for a single lead or project)
17. screenshot: people - business entities – contact details
18. screenshot: information - requirements – solutions  - budgets – time lines
19. screenshot: activity log - appointments – tasks – notes
20. screenshot: progress - milestones completed – key hand-over info – who & when
21. screenshot: documents - proposals – diagrams – data files
22. screenshots of prioritized reports
23. screenshot: alerts – alerts for appointments and tasks – alerts for stuck leads – alerts for unattended customers – email alert – sms alert
24. screenshot: funnel - idle leads – no sales activity – inactive leads – no progress – inactive customers – no open projects
25. screenshot: metrics – velocity – how long are we taking ? – volume – how many leads are we handling? – conversion – success and failure
26. what next?
27. 1. quick start ! – sign-up for a free account – fill in workflow model sheet – start tracking your workflow
    2. consulting – interviews with all stake-holders – advanced customization guide – custom workflow model
    3. implementation – custom workflow implementation – training sessions – on-going support
28. contact us !

Related posts:

1. Using the sales pipeline report for key performance indicators
2. Managing Business by Remote Control
3. How effective is your sales process?

Rahul Jain, a highly successful business coach who has worked with several CEOs to help them effectively scale their businesses, asks some tough questions that helps a business owner evaluate their effectiveness in achieving business results:

• Is your business growing at the rate you wish it to grow?
• Are you and your business making the kind of money that you wish to make from the business?
• Do you still find time to do things you enjoy doing or your business is taking away all your time, leaving no free time?
• Do you spend most of your time working IN your business or are you working ON your business. (Are you spending most of your time solving the same every-day problems or are you investing your time uncovering new ways to grow your business.)
• Do you spend most of your time dealing with emergencies and fire fighting?
• Are you enjoying and having fun running your business or is it a cause for constant stress
• Are your employees working for you or are you working for them?
• Are you in control of your business, taking your business where you want it to go, or is the business driving you?
• Do you have self-sustaining systems in place that manage your business even in your absence?

Most business owners and manager may easily identify their situation with the above. But being caught in the trap of micromanagement, the solutions seems far from easy.

Nahid Casazza, another business coach who effectively combines her background in psychology and business expertise explains the root cause of micromanagement:

…micromanaging behavior is driven by the positive characteristics of conscientiousness, diligence, and responsibility; it’s just that they have been taken to an extreme. People often confuse themselves with the quality of the work they produce. As long as they can control the quality of their work, they are ok, but as soon as they have to depend on others for results, they are faced with the fear of representing sloppy or substandard output. Since putting out less than excellent work is SO personally humiliating, they need constant reassurance that the team is performing.

One way to escape this trap of micromanagement is to create a process documentation system that captures everything that is going on in your business and allows you to keep track of it from the outside.

Like Rahul says:

Documenting and setting up the required systems, -moving the business from people dependency to systems dependency. (It also ensures that when an employee leaves the organization, another person can quickly fit into the place, because of the systems.) A step by step program to take any function in your business and turn it into a scalable, replicable, reliable process, complete with checklists and full documentation so that anyone in your company can do it just as well, by following directions. (Putting it on Auto Pilot) having the business ‘work’…even when you’re not there, resulting in the biggest freedom which you have always dreamed of- the freedom of time.

Sounds simple. But implementing systems is by no means easy. As any business owner or manager who has tried to implement any business tracking software can verify, the biggest problem in maintaining a system is to get people to enter data in it.

The difficulty lies in the decision of how much data to capture. If you ask a manager to decide what to capture, you will tend to get an answer close to “everything”. From a manager’s perspective, the more data the better. And most software systems aim to please the manager by providing more features meaning more data to enter. This inevitably leads to a situation where over 90% of software implementation projects fail.

The approach that works is to provide systems that capture the progress of the business process automatically, without requiring people to separately enter any data. This can be achieved by providing a customized template that acts as a checklist for all tasks that are to be performed, and the person who finishes the task merely has to check off the tasks completed. The system should then automatically register the person who completed the task, the time spent, the next steps required etc. based on a pre-determined logic.

Process template - a simple checklist to track the progress of a business case

The adjoining sample screenshot is part of a process template designed for a subscription based software business. The template shared on the web and is available to all persons working on the specific business case, project or order. The process is broken down into milestones, where each milestone could have an associated set of questions that need to be answered or sub-tasks that need to be performed. The person responsible has to merely check off the tasks completed.

The system then automatically tracks the progress of all business cases, projects or orders and provides a summary to the manager. The following are two sample reports that the manager can see:

Live feed of ongoing business activity

The first screenshot is of a live feed of all ongoing business activity. This report picks up all live business cases, and lists all ongoing activity including milestones completed, messages exchanged, documents prepared or tasks completed.

This report is available for viewing from anywhere via the web, and is useful for the business owner to remotely track the business process. All activities are directly linked to the corresponding business case or project, allowing the manager to view the complete context of the specific activity.

Process Pipeline Report

The second screenshot is a performance summary report. This shows the pipeline of all business cases or orders, and tracks the velocity of movement of cases through the list of milestones in the process template.

This report provides a valuable feedback to the business owner or manager to identify possible bottlenecks or stumbling blocks. Any order that is not moving ahead in the milestones is highlighted, allowing the manager to investigate by simply clicking on the inactive projects and drilling down from the report to the list of projects and then to the individual project.

This simple strategy promises to provide the business owner or manager an effective tool to help manage the business by remote control, thereby creating more time to work on strategy to grow the business.

Related posts:

1. Managing a Complex Sales Process
2. Case Study: Insurance and Financial Products Sales
3. Why do you need a CRM or Sales Force Management System?

Anand Shrikhande is the owner, who wants to expand his business & wants to have a
professional setup for his general insurance business. He expects that once he’s successful in implementing this with general insurance business, then he’ll expand it to his other businesses.

Ace Money has a team of tele-sales executives who make calls to customers when their insurance is due to expire, and then give them options of various Insurance products just in time to consider new and better options. If the customer decides to opt for any of the proposals, then they send a field sales executive to complete the transaction.

So far in On2Biz, we have handled primarily field sales operations. This was a new and interesting case that would challenge the SaaS model, and we were keen to rise up to the challenge.

Expected Challenges

When our consulting partner, Arun from Solution Enterprises referred the case to us, we were concerned about the following challenges:

1. Transaction Load – So far in On2Biz, we have been handling companies who primarily have field sales executives. Even there are tele-sales executives, there are very few calls made per day. In this case, the tele-sales executives make an average of 20 calls per hour! We were concerned about how our system could handle such a large load and continue to serve existing users without affecting response time.
2. Connectivity – The company in question has multiple offices spread across A and B-level cities. We were concerned about whether we could manage enough last mile connectivity at all locations.
3. Leads Data Importing – Leads were to be captured from various source databases. This included purchased leads, external databases and spreadsheets.
4. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) – Previously, the tele-sales team operated on a manually recorded spreadsheet, and with rented computers. They were now planning to purchase new computers – in fact, they planned to purchase laptops for each user. Hence in addition to the monthly usage charges of On2Biz, the TCO would include the cost of the hardware, networking, Internet connectivity, and software for the operating system, web browser and for managing office documents.

Following our standard implementation process, our first step was to map the sales process into our workflow template.

The Current Process

The tele-sales team’s current working procedure was as follows:

1. Open the call sheet (spreadsheet). Check whether there are any follow-up calls to be done
2. If no follow-up call is due at that time, look at the list of fresh calls
3. Look up the phone number of the customer to be called from the contacts sheet
4. Call the customer
5. Discuss the offer (as per call script)
6. Capture data about the vehicle, such as the age, cubic capacity, seating capacity etc. and record into call sheet
7. Look up a Insurance premium calculation sheets (one for each option)
8. Prepare premium quotation using the calculators. If necessary, offer more than one insurance package for comparison
9. If any follow-up call is required, record the date and time for the follow-up call in the call sheet
10. After the call is over, update the status of the call in the call sheet

On2Biz workflow objects

1. Sales Project or Opportunity – a sales project or an opportunity is a single case of selling something to a customer. For example, an insurance policy. We may have more than one sales project for the same customer. Hence, it is important to differentiate between a customer and a sales opportunity.
2. Sales Milestones – Each sales project or opportunity goes through several stages of selling. Starting with a fresh call, the project may go through several follow-up calls and stages, including visits by field sales, and finally till the payment is collected and the order is closed. The project may also get aborted at any stage, with an unsuccessful outcome. Each stage of the sales process, where there is a easily measurable outcome, is called a milestone.
3. Sales Projects Pipeline – a list of sales projects at various stages of the sales process, is called a sales pipeline. A sales person’s primary responsibility is to move projects ahead in the sales pipeline from one milestone to another, till the order is closed.
4. Tasks and Appointments – the activity that a sales person carries out so as to move the project from one milestone to another is a set of tasks, phone calls or personal visits. The phone calls and personal visits are termed as appointments, while other types of activity which need to be done are called tasks.
5. Notes – these are remarks that can be added be anyone associated with a sales project. It could be remarks added by the sales person to record any important information regarding the project, or can be added by a manager to record suggestions to the sales person.

The new process using On2Biz workflow

The new operating procedure using On2Biz was designed as follows:

1. Check whether there are any follow-up calls to be done by looking at the “Pending Appointments”
2. If no follow-up call appointment is due at that time, look at the list of projects in the “Projects Pipeline”
3. In the project pipeline, click on the project title to open the Project page. The project page shows the entire case history of the sales project
4. Look up the phone number of the customer to be called by clicking on the contact name.
5. Call the customer
6. Discuss the offer (as per call script)
7. Select the type of policy to be offered by editing the Value section of the project. Then select the policy to be offered by selecting the checkbox on the left. It will also open the form to capture data about the vehicle, such as the age, cubic capacity, seating capacity etc.
8. Look up reference spreadsheet to get the IDV of the vehicle by clicking on the link “IDV Lookup”
9. Click on the “Premium Calculator” to prepare premium quotation using the calculators. If necessary, offer more than one insurance package for comparison
10. If any follow-up call is required, go to the Activity section, and add a new appointment to record the date and time for the follow-up call
11. After the call is over, update the status of the call in the milestone section.

The Infrastructure

Connectivity – They were able to arrange for a 512 Kbps Internet connection for every location

Computers – Each user was provided with a low-end laptop with a Celeron processor and 512Mb RAM. A Server was configured as a gateway and proxy at each location.

Operating System – All laptops and servers were equipped with Suse Linux.

Web Browser – Firefox

Documents Manager – Open Office

Read more about the setup at Arun’s blog

The Result

Ace Money is now using On2Biz for all their sales executives. Managers are able to monitor the flow of opportunities through the pipeline of every sales executive, and measure the sales effectiveness at every stage of the sales process.

Screenshots of Dashboard

Sales Performance in November 2007

Sales Performance in March 2008

Related posts:

1. Customer / Partner Relationship Management facilities in On2Biz
2. Why do you need a CRM or Sales Force Management System?
3. Managing a Complex Sales Process

• U.K. company fined over laptop theft
• Hard drive vanishes from VA facility
• Stolen Boeing laptop held ID data on 382,000
• Commerce Department counts 1,100 missing laptops
• Theft of laptop puts thousands of identities at risk

These stories show how easy it is to steal data from “well-resourced enterprises and government departments” when the data is stored in individual computers. Compared to that, data that is centrally stored in a professionally managed data center is far safer. The amount of investments that can be made at a data center towards securing data, and the risks involved for the service provider in the event of data loss are far too high. Ofcourse, trusting a big company like Google with your data is different from trusting an upstart like On2Biz. But then, with On2Biz, you have direct access to the people involved, rather than a call center handling customer calls. So you can hold us responsible – and we know it.

But as for outsourced storage, the story is going to get even more interesting. Google, and other big web companies like Amazon are working towards allowing web services companies like us to use their servers on a pay-per-use basis. We have already subscribed to Amazon’s S3 – which allows us to store data on servers managed by Amazon, and EC2 – which allows us to run our applications from their servers too! This will then give the double benefit of world-class security infrastructure combined with personal attention from the On2Biz team. But till then, our servers are still hosted in a world class professionally managed data center.

Looking forward to more action from the big guys…

Related posts:

1. On2Biz virtual development team, thanks to open source
2. Customer / Partner Relationship Management facilities in On2Biz