Get ready for a comeback

After the screaming highs and desperate lows of the dot-com boom, economic observers are becoming cautiously optimistic about the prospect of an upturn: Out of 150 chief information officers (CIOs) surveyed at an Oracle-sponsored CIO summit late last year, 80 percent see the economy as improving and 19 percent say it's flat-just 1 percent believe the economy is getting worse.

But is this perception reflected in your sales results? And, if it's not, is it because things are improving slowly-or because your sales force is still selling like it's 1999? Keith Block, Oracle's executive vice president of North American sales, has some very specific ideas on how to prepare sales organizations to take advantage of tomorrow's upturn.

Surprisingly, it's not by doing what has been done before. 'The way customers purchase has changed forever,' says Block. In the old dot-com days, there was so much business coming in that a lot of the fundamentals, such as the way a company is organized or how it goes to market, didn't matter much. But this type of 'fire hose' sales process is not an option any longer-even in an upturn.

'Even though economic recovery is at our doorstep, organizations have all been subject to increased margin pressure and lowered revenue forecasts,' says Block. As a result of these constraints, businesses are becoming more selective as they evaluate new products and services-they want to be convinced that what you offer will provide them with benefits that can be quickly realized and easily measured.

Putting the Customer in Focus
As customer expectations change, so must the sales organization. The critical first step is to focus the sales organization on specializations, such as vertical industries. 'Customers are not looking for general answers anymore,' says Block. 'They're looking for solutions. The one-size-fits-all approach doesn't make sense anymore.'

But Block also believes that succeeding in an economic upturn requires more than just specialization-it also means a back-to-basics focus on the customer. 'I think the way you treat your customer is very important,' he says. 'Transactions will always be a piece of the business, but there needs to be a long-term approach around strong relationships, delivering solutions, and serving the account.'

This transition-from immediate product sales to long-term solutions-can be difficult. 'Today's customers want to make sure that the salesperson understands their business, is servicing their account, is giving them a good solution, and is someone they can have a great relationship with,' says Block. 'They're simple principles, but the execution can be challenging.'

The combination of investing time, developing references, and building relationships is a cultural shift for selling organizations, but, according to Block, it's a long-term change that will work to your advantage. 'It's almost like a leap of faith for the rep. If you make these investments in your account base, you may not see the dividends immediately, but, over time, you build up a tremendous portfolio of goodwill in your account base, and that pays off in the end.'

Proving the Point
Execution is also about proving the point. It's important to understand the customer's business and develop strategic relationships, but those steps are only the start. If you can't convince customers to bank on your solution or product, you're not going to make your sales goals.

Conversely, if you can show how your solutions or products have benefited key customers in important vertical markets, you've got great potential to go after their competitors.
'Everything we do with a customer, we want them to be referenceable,' says Block. 'That's the endgame-it's almost more important than the sell, because there's nothing better than reference selling.

If you identify your key domino accounts in each industry and service those customers well, do a terrific job, and solve their business problems, you'll get more and more of their mind share. They become references for you, and then you're able to walk into another related account and tell them how you've solved that problem for the leader in their industry. It's very compelling.'

Making It Happen
As important as they are, reference customers don't just happen. Most organizations have to make an effort to ensure that their sales process is focused not just on accomplishing the sale but also on making the customer referenceable.

One way to do this is to foster better collaboration between your sales organization and your consulting organization-or even combine them into a single group. 'This provides tremendous leverage into the customer base,' says Block. 'Customers want to mitigate risk.

If they've got limited spend, they need to make sure their decision is right. That's where [in high tech companies such as Oracle] the consulting organization can help, since they live and die by implementing these products successfully and advising customers on the proper architectures.'

Accelerating the Sales Cycle
Before a company becomes a reference, it needs to become a customer. While reference selling is a good approach with new customers, another approach is to capture their attention and convince them your organization can deliver a practical solution or product quickly.

For example, Oracle has pioneered a prototyping exercise using Oracle's Web Conferencing technology that enables customers to go through a one-day collaborative design effort over the Web that focuses on a customer's current processes and business challenges.

After the customer signs off on the plan, a salesperson sends the design architecture to Oracle developers in India, who build a demo overnight that shows how the proposed solution will solve a customer's problem. 'This approach is a perfect example of using technology and the internet to shorten the sales cycle,' says Block.

Putting It All Together
Even with all the technology and market changes organizations have gone through over the past five years, the recipe for success isn't elusive for Block. 'Being successful is a combination of technology, the way you're organized, your strategy, and making sure that your organizational culture recognizes how customers want to buy and what's important to them,' he says. 'I think if you roll all those factors up, you come up with a very powerful sales organization.'