Business Plan for a New Manager with an Inexperienced Team Selling B2B

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Business Plan for a New Manager with an Inexperienced Team Selling B2B

As the folks who have found this blog through my LinkedIn Profile know, I started this blog to keep my skills sharp during my job search. I interviewed last week with a telecom company for a Sales Manager position in their Manhattan office, managing a team of 8 to 10 Sales Representatives without a lot of sales experience or industry tenure. I need to convince the Sales Director (the Hiring Manager) that I am the best candidate for the slot on his team. I thought putting together a Business Plan of what I plan to do during my first sixty days might help convince him I am the right person for the job. I also thought it might make interesting reading for the next posting on this blog. So here goes my best effort to make this post interesting to you, the readers and persuasive to the Hiring Manager!

Assess the team QUICKLY - Get as much information as I can on each member of the team. Learn who’s making quota, who’s self sufficient, who has potential to be successful but is struggling and the hard one, decide who on the team isn’t suited to this position and needs to look at other career options. I would make sure their activity level was sufficient for them to be successful as well as make sure they were using their time as productively as possible.

Learn the company’s Sweet Spot in the Market - Determine what type of business has the need for this niche telecom service. It’s a niche, but in this case, it’s a big niche. The reason for this is if I can determine a strong vertical market where the company has had some success, I can have my team contact their competitors. They can say that the service is being used in their industry and mention the business’ name. They can talk about the way it’s being deployed and how it can save the prospect money, make them more efficient because they can connect offices in a way that was too expensive with traditional carriers, or keep their costs the same, but give them more (value) for the same amount of money.

Determine New Vertical Markets - If one of the uses is video conferencing as an example, determine what businesses currently use or could benefit from high bandwidth video connections that provide high quality video. How ‘bout?
Law Firms? Sure! One way they can use of video is they can hold and record depositions via video instead of traveling in some of their cases. Since these are billable hours at $500+ per hour, this is a sure moneymaker for them.
Ad Agencies? You bet! Them too! Use video conferencing as a collaboration tool for practicing and perfecting pitches and new ad campaigns before they make the final presentation to their customer. This is especially important if there are multiple offices collaborating on the project, as is common with larger Ad Agencies.
How about Hospitality and Hotels? Why not suggest to them that they outfit one or a few of their meeting rooms with video conferencing. How about this as an example? The Business Managers at the hotel can suggest to their customers that they rent a room in a Manhattan Hotel and a Room in the Los Angeles Hotel, and connect them via video. The benefit to the business is increased productivity! The people don’t lose two days traveling (not to mention the travel expense). The end client might be a company with a large sales force. The videoconference meeting might not replace their national sales meeting entirely, (but it might if the budgets are too stretched), however, it can be a supplement for quarterly updates, new product releases, etc. The hotel gets to rent two, three, or four meeting rooms, plus food and beverages to make the Hotel Catering Manager happy and will probably still rent some hotel rooms too.

Assess Competitive Strengths – Where does this company have an advantage over the other players? Is it a technology advantage? This is an area where a company like Apple would capitalize on by charging a premium price because they have a product that is superior to the other products available in the marketplace. Is it a size and reach advantage? Does the company have a greater footprint than the others businesses? Are you able to sell, service, install and maintain your product in areas where the other businesses either just can’t do business or have to engage a third party? If so, I would have the Sales Reps introduce FUD, (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) to the users. Make sure they know there is a loss of control and often, but not always, quality, when a third party is engaged. Is the business’ competitive advantage a cost advantage? If you are the Wal-Mart of your industry, you will be able to increase market share because you can sell at a lower price that your competitors and still make money. With this company I am speaking with, their advantage is clearly a cost advantage, so I would instruct and work with every rep on my team to make sure they could clearly convey the story of lower cost and how their customer benefits.

For the Hiring Manager, I hope I was able to convey in this blog posting that I am the right person for the Sales Manager position. In any case, I enjoyed speaking with you and thank you for your consideration.

Everyone else; thanks for reading. Please send me any comments, suggestions and questions.