Lean Sales - Reducing 70% of Waste on your Sales Process and Accelerate Conversions

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Well, good afternoon, LinkedIn live audience and our webinar audience. We’re back again, for our next segment of the lean sales talks that we’ve been having. We have our esteemed guest, again, Geraldo Sario, back again to share with us some of the good tools and tips and tricks that you might want to consider when thinking about your lean sales pipeline and how to clean it out and reduce waste. And so today, we’re going to talk about how you can potentially unblock your b2b sales pipeline, up to potentially 70%, get conversions up 70%, and reducing waste up to approximately 70%, as well. So hopefully, today, you guys will have a good dose of new information and tools that we can share with you. Right, turn into the next slide, please.

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And

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so, question is for you, audience, where are why are we here today? And what are some of the challenges that we’re facing, as we’re trying to deliver on our sales pipeline? Alright, so that’s kind of the crux of the conversation is, what are the challenges that we typically face in our sales pipeline? And how do we overcome them? All right. So a little bit of background on myself, been in the software development industry for over 25 years now in various capacities as even developer at early stages of my career to project manager and then transformation consultant is what I do most recently, and helping organizations deliver better software and reducing waste along the way.

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Righto, I’ll turn it over to you.

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Thank you very much, Charles.

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Thank you for inviting me for the second time to this second part of the three webinars, we’re giving about Lean agile sales. And Tavi and a little bit about me, as in the last webinar, I’ve been in the technology company, as you Charles for so many years. 23, around three to five years of experience doing managing it b2b sales teams, and especially global expansion projects, from America to Europe, Middle East, and so many countries and regions. And from this point, I actually been working with a lot of sales teams and understanding exactly the challenges challenges are very similar in most of the countries in b2b world in the complex sales. And I remember Charles that we actually met around 2018, I believe. So in one of these safe,

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seminar setting or event in Washington, DC, we were initially we’re talking about like, all these challenges to make sales a little bit more agile. And you weren’t surprised, you were a little surprised about like, all these terms and how to apply it in the in the real deal in teams. And of course, it was like a lot of things to, to solve. One of them is to understand exactly if the Lean Agile principles will actually apply to the b2b sales teams. But on the other hand, he was one of the most controversial themes that I heard in most of the directors by these DPS and model years. He’s like, okay, how can I make this happen in my organization? How can I measure this more accurate? And especially how can I implement this without so many pains. So in this way, I’m glad to be sharing all my experience. I’ve been working in this Lean agile sales for more than 10 years now. And of course, exploring a lot of things not just from our customers, but also for us for our companies. And so now we’re going to be sharing some of the things in the second webinar about the Lean pipelines and discovered techniques on how to reduce weight and accelerate conversion. But first of all, remember that we gave these first webinar it in June about Lena yell sales intro and all the principles and what you need to enable you and your team to go from traditional to lean agile sales. You can check it in our in our YouTube link is recorded there. And of course, it’s gonna give you a background about what we’re talking about. But if you have been following us probably you’re gonna be very

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interesting in this webinar, because we are going to be talking about reducing waste. As I mentioned, Charles, in the last webinar, successful companies has have around 30% of, of right conversions, that means that they also have 70% of waste. So sales areas are probably one of the areas that need in these times and Buca times be more optimize it, and work into reducing waste, because most of us are spending a lot of money money in structure is marketing, digital marketing. And if we don’t optimize this is going to be cost us a lot of more money. So now in terms of close recessions, and in times, of when, when a lot of companies are trying to solve their, their their sales problems and budgets, I think this is going to be very interesting for you. And probably in the next weeks, we’re going to be ending with a third, third webinar, call it a girl self management, when in this one, you’re going to learn how to understand the body of your customers. And in the third one, you’re going to understand how to manage that value with your sales things. So this is the things that we’re going to be talking about in this in this webinar. And please follow this because I think you’re gonna find out some very interesting. So today takes away b2b Customer current challenges, as you already know, not just for COVID-19, for probably for the 510 years.

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Some of the some of the challenges of the new customers are especially on how to reduce the risks, the risk on on buying something that is very important for them. And how this buying process is changing, is something relevant to understand. So you can actually understand how to reduce this waste. So after this is we’re going to be talking about traditional sales pipelines challenges in a digital environment. Wow, how how all these traditional sales pipelines are built, or even in the CRM, how can you manage these templates, and how you can jump to a leaner pipeline. Of course, we have a template, of course, we have

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general design a public design, but that’s not important. The important thing is that you actually understand how to unblock all the challenges that you’re having right now in your pipeline and reduce the risk and reduce the waste. And of course, if you actually do all these things, and you actually go through this process, you need to measure and the KPS the KPIs and the keys, key success factors to unblock qualification stages is so relevant, we’re going to be talking about the qualification stage so much and giving you some advices on how you can unblock this thing. And of course, some of the steps on how you can start to doing this, sell the outcome, unblock your sales pipeline and measure continuous improvement by prioritize relevant deals. This is quite important for for making some progress in our our sales teams. So let’s go to what are the challenges are the new customers demand in Dukkha times, and of course, we have a lot.

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We’re just showing you some of them that in the last probably year, we have been having a lot of interviews with buyers, and people and sales VPS. And we’re going to show you some of the things. The first thing is, okay, less time to react to market requirements that new customers demand. As you can imagine, in the Buca times some of the velocity and some of the complexity of the market is has pushed us to a lot of changes, immediate changes. So when we are dealing with customers and urgencies, there’s a lot of offer in the market, so when there’s a lot of offer of you know, a lot of promises and everything, our customers get a lot of confusion. And what they don’t want is to take into a risk business. And this is something that push all the sales areas to understand exactly what are they going through. And if we don’t help them, of course, our proposals and deals are going are going to be very, very complicated. These take us to another thing, it just take longer to them to decide. And it has just taken longer. It just takes more people to the site. This is something that Gartner has showed us in the last couple of years how the buying decision the buyer decision is taken longer because they have so many options there have a lot of things to go in through. And probably they need to make sure that the providers are understanding really well what they’re offering too much dilutions information. That’s something that is already happening, and it’s getting to the situation to our buyers.

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A core complex internal challenges between areas are most of those of all, I think we have been going through our understanding and trying to map everything that corporations and and customers are dealing with internally. And sometimes we just need some a lot a lot of information, important and relevant information to make the right proposals. And and, and as I always say, in b2b, all of the customers want to reduce risk and increase increase their right urgency. So these are some some some of the things that the new customers are demanding. And why is an interesting thing to talk about right now in this reducing waste pipeline process. Because as we understand this, we’re going to be very focused in exactly what we need to understand for customers, something the sales are challenges. There are a lot, of course of things that are happening right now, difficulties to reach monthly sales goals. I don’t want to get too deep into how to build a forecast. But as you all imagine, forecast has been struggling in so many ways, because we used to do the forecast prediction by taking in county historical data in you know, what we sold in the last year, adding 30% for the for the new forecast, and trying just to accomplish that. And, of course, this makes into a threatening situation, to the salespeople. You know, it’s it’s something that is happening and some of the sales VPS has telling us, you know, I understand that we need to consider a new way to doing forecasts. Too many leads with unclear visibility of demands. That’s something that is also in sales, weekly planning meetings, you know, it’s like, not all the time, we understand exactly what our customers demand deeply on the on the cost is probably worth us understanding the symptoms. And this is something that if we don’t get clear, we get stopped into the negotiation phases. Don’t know how to push customers to buy, I’m not really into the push techniques. I don’t, I don’t like it. And I think customers current customers don’t like it anymore. The new customers likes to make some scouting, to decide to check different alternatives digitally. But these techniques of bushings are really, really working out. It’s a very low rate of compression. And the sales teams are really having a lot of complex situations with Jordan bush, and not really understanding the problem solution problems problems of our customers and work. Its cost this is something very relevant. This takes us to feel capable to move forward from negotiation to close pipelining stages we’re going to be talking about about these in the next slide. It’s and how how to unblock these bottlenecks. But one of the bottlenecks is how can we feel that we’re not making progress. If we’re not making progress to close the deals, we get just desperate. And we just get into situations that we’re going to be showing. And of course, one of the most relevant things that sells up some directors and managers has been telling us lack of KPIs to measure qualify the stages and understand understand real customer problems. When we don’t get these information, we just get lack of visibility. And talking about forecast. Charles, I think this is something very, very common when we build our forecasts and just ask ourselves teams, how they’re following up the important and relevant key key accounts and they use to stop pushing and pushing and pushing desperately. And we just tend to ask right now is a bad forecast design or release, we are not measuring the right to the KPIs to qualify, or we are not having the enough techniques to negotiate or to build proposal, there’s a lot of stuff that is going on. And in this situation, we just get so desperate. So this is one of the reasons that we’re talking about like understand the initially what is the waste on your pipeline? So what where is it? How can you measure that? How can you solve these these things? And this is this is this is something that we’re going to be pointing out so what is the work in the you know, the like the design of the of the focus in nowadays? Well, there are different Council support there’s going to be a strategy, Cassius tactical courses, operational councils, but basically is what because we have been, you know, deciding, you know, our focus just based on historical sales data, as I’ve mentioned before, probably is just like, you know, as very inspirational. We all want to get a lot of money. We’re going to get a lot of deals, we’re probably we are not focusing exactly on what

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like to measure exactly in the market, lack of visibility of real problems or prospects across the pipeline, we don’t get the visibility of real problems that they’re having. So we don’t cap the chance to understanding because we are in a hurry to close, not a problem, problem solution beach, we are, we have been taking some B to C, technical techniques sales in the last years. And it’s not working in b2b anymore, the new customer is requesting and demanding so many different things, not working closer with marketing and product innovation areas. I myself have been experiences of some providers have been offering me, you know, a lot of solutions, and they are just featuring oriented, but they don’t really understand exactly how they their products have been innovating. Or if they have an innovation plan, they’re just wanna be focused on closing the deals. So depending also on the reputation of the customer, instead of the real these opportunities. This is something that happened to me many years ago, when I was in one of my experiences dealing with with a sales team. And I always was very focused on the amount of the deal. I mean, making prioritization and the amount of it, the larger the company, the larger the deal, it was like I was just focused on that. And after years of working exactly how to manage the I start understanding that was not a really good way of doing things to make progress. So we need to take care of these, as some of the council’s not having a presentation lead processing early pipeline stages, some of the things that we’re going to be talking now, Ramiz finish from the ground targets, sometimes we just don’t understand exactly, we’re talking with the right target or the right profile, or the right people in the position. And of course, traditional pipelines is such a space in on pushing cells into close deal no matter how they do it. I remember this mentor that once told me that, okay, just your labor is just to do to close deals, and I don’t, I don’t I don’t, I don’t really need any more information about what you’re doing. Just close the deal. And after so many years on analyzing this, this is okay. But the problem is that if we don’t understand how we can got to the point to close a deal, and we don’t measure this, this is going to exist, that’s going to be scalable for us. So we need to we need to point out this, because this is all related to how to build a pipeline. But before going to the point on how to build a pipeline, linear pipeline, I want to show you some of the traditional pipeline issues that we’re having right now, Charles, what do you think about these charts? If that makes sense to you?

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Yes, definitely. I mean, we know we see these things every day. So I’m like a case study on this. You know, we’ve talked about these things so many times, as you helped Ifor on some of these topics. So yeah, these things resonate really, really strongly with me. Greg, right. Yes, yes, I remember we have been working with with your company as well on how to make progress in this. And of course, this is something that when we really understanding on how to focus on eliminating waste, we just take it to the next level. So talking about we’re talking about waste in Toyota Production System when a lien was created, was very oriented to first identifying which kind of wastes are in Lean. And they are pointed out seven waste of limb that now we’re going to show you how to this happens in sales as well probably you’re thinking okay, this is also related to production, but you’re going to be seeing that it’s not just in production systems is also in sales, because sales is also process. So inventory inventory is some of the ways if we have a lot of inventory problem is money that is started there is not moving. So this is something what we need to take in consideration one of the ways way we lot of time waiting, defects, overproduction, more motion transformation, order processing, all of these are kind of waste. So the question here is, what kind of race are we having in our sales process? Are we similar to this is not similar to these where I’m going to show you something now. So you can actually think about this as you can actually have in our job or actually happen in your sales process. Are we stuck at leads? Okay, are we stuck leads? It’s related to having a lot of leads with a live rent types of segments, different type of problems, and you are just not understanding exactly how to follow up when you are having a lot of leads or none are moving in, especially in digital

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Markets every minutes, if you’re not really taking an account and responding to your leads, it’s something that it’s getting colder. So it’s not how much leads you have is love how much quality of leads you have, this is something related more to the strategy or to the marketing process, or how to work in this early marketing process, to understand how to make to bring to the sales areas, where validated leads, but especially if you are an hour stuck in different phases of your pipeline, this is one kind of waste. The second one the time now value meetings, waiting for the customer or waiting for the next meeting, or waiting for sending information, waiting for sending everything that takes the interaction and timing and you are not really understanding how much time are you spending on this. And if not relevant is a waste of time. So no value nobody meetings, it just means that you are not taking your customer to some meeting just to show a demo, or to show a feeder or to show something that is he starting to rest. So this is quite important to understand why it’s valuable for our customer and clear proposal, they just take us from meetings to unclear proposals Well, in my years of experience, when when I when I’m very interested in on looking for some some solution. And this is something that it’s actually happening right now.

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Do you contact some of the providers, some of the solution providers, and some of the times they just give you those just the pricing list, or just focuses focused on on the features, or, or promotions or whatever they are doing, but they don’t really understand exactly what you need. So I remember when I first initially understood the minimum viable product, I really liked this, this concept. So where we have Rob remit to lean sales is the minimum viable proposals. So just bring the customers what they need. Don’t oversize proposals, even in features are even in money, even everything that you’re thinking is a waste of time. If you’re trying to increase the amount of your of your proposals, do it by understanding exactly what problem critical problems you need to solve first, one of the main reason that some of the complex solutions don’t are the closed is because we tend to oversize proposals. So this is a waste. This is a kind of a waste. And this is something that some of the customers has already told us that they just feel that when some of the providers solutions are sending our side proposal, they just get more confused. And they just don’t like to take that risk. So this is the fourth one. The fifth one is irrelevant. Internal follow up meetings, this is more related to the sales themes. And as you can imagine, we’re talking about these meanings were just general making some accountability or something that easiest meet me to make the quarter anything, but they just don’t get to the real, real important. Discussions are about customers problems and everything. So this is another waste. We’re going to be talking about that in the next webinar about agile management, lean, lean, agile management sales process. And the next one is long implementations. I think Charles you have a lot of experience in that is just not about to close the deal is like Okay, after closing the deal, what are you going to do when you are starting implementation.

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That’s another thing that we it’s very complicated. So it’s just about closing the deal is about to guarantee that the customer is going to going to co create with you the solution is going to be implied in the solution, and it’s not going to take longer. So, this is one of the concepts and I probably probably do have a lot of experience in these charts in when we are not understanding the technical requirements quite requirement Exactly, we just get in a lot of problems when in the implementations, right?

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Irrelevant product information.

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This means that our probably when when we’re sending some of information to our customers in the initial stages or even when we are sending some information for validating probably too much and this concept goes to a leaner leaner information. So, you need to consider all these kinds of waste. So you can take an account because when you are taking this to your pipeline, you need to make sure that your criterias that you are going to be following in each stage taking out these kinds of waste eliminate this kind of waste. So what do you think we charge this is this is some

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think that it happens in the in the in the technology environment? I wouldn’t so Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, that’s actually probably they say, you know, like the Gartner reports and whatnot, say the biggest waste in software development is,

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you know, irrelevant requirements, that it was a requirement that wasn’t almost like it wasn’t needed, or it was overstated, or, you know, there’s something wrong with the requirements. So ultimately, it becomes waste. And so that’s one of the biggest waste factors of, of any processes irrelevant requirements. Yeah, that’s right. And I remember this conversation with software development teams, when we were in one of our customers, we were given these lean, lean, agile cells implementation. And they took the product and marketing teams, and the product development were really amazed about like how we our lead sales is considering in these stages, that we don’t sell anything that the customers don’t need at all understand, and if they don’t have the conditions to implement to implement. So we are just not taking this to a point to increase your rates of conversion, also to reduce your churn and to reduce the waste on your production system when you’re delivering something to your customer. So as you can see, it’s also a lot of things that going into the into the waste process. But first of all you need to identify. So this is something that our Lean sales is bringing to all of us. And I think it’s quite important. But let’s talk about the pipeline, because I think this is when it comes very interesting to both of us. challenges with traditional pipelines. Okay. As you can see, right now, I’m showing you one of templates of a traditional sales pipeline. And probably you do you feel that you have already seen this, you know, the prospect, the qualify stage, the meat demo, the proposal, the negotiation, but one of the things that has been happening probably in most of our customers and in our companies is that we have a lot a lot of leads in our proposal and negotiation, but not so many in the close stages. And when you are actually identifying the bottlenecks here and 80% of the companies have the problem, sir, in the in the proposal negotiation stages, probably it’s one of the other things that you need to consider as to check out why is this happening, some of the solutions and alternatives and most of the sales teams are considering is okay, we need to train our people on to better negotiation techniques, we need to bring some offers, we need to unblock these stages, but bring in the customers something that they can actually make them by. And in our in our experience. The problem would cause problem is stuff here is probably that we are making 80% of the effort in something that it’s too late when we understand this, and when we got we just checked that our effort is basically basically based in these stages, we need to understand that probably the problem is not there. So why we have been seen, okay, if you can see here, most of the time, our salespeople, our sales teams just moved so fast in these early stages in the prospect qualified the meet and demo is like if there’s an urgency for the sales team to make the customers to request a proposal or to understand and to want to feel really amazed by the product, but not understanding the real problems. So in this situation, we just get a 20% of effort. And probably this is something that is making our sales pipeline filled the same very stuck, and a lot of problems. So what’s the solution for this? What’s what’s happening here, when when when we started working in the traditional fiber have 80% of the ways to do to seller qualifying leads and understand the basis. But what we have seen is that it’s just not to make a better qualified is how to measure this qualifying process and how to take this take this pipeline to be more specific and to understand with our salespeople what they need to do. Okay, so to take this to a point where we’re talking about Lean, one of the things that helped us want to, to talk to you and and I know Charles that you have a lot of experience because you have been explained implementing Lean and Agile for so long is the key official number

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Adelina Jacobi in the similar pasture, to pasture. And this is something that always a lot of customers, when we’re in the initial phases, they’re asking me, this is faster, this is going to be like shorter lean, or shorter pipeline, this is going to be an easier pipeline to women, it is going to be take me to the to close instead of in three months in one month, because our pipeline is shorter. Initially, probably not. So this is this is a concept that we need to understand why Lean agile and agile? Is that the same as fast? So what do you think chose? Do you have a lot of employees? Well, I mean, the the easy analogy that comes to mind when you say something like this is that,

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you know, say I’m a person who needs to get in shape, and I’m trying to run a run a six minute mile. And my coach comes to the, to the house, and he gets me on an exercise program and a diet program, you know, nutritional program, I’m not gonna immediately that day, you know, as soon as he tells me all this information, jump out a bit and run a six minute mile, probably, to your point, I’m probably going to be very sore, some days, I’m probably not even be able to get out of bed some other days, I might be throwing up some other days. But over time, if I follow the coaches program, eventually, I probably will get faster. But it’s the process of reducing the waste, reducing the bad habits that I have the bad, you know, exercise habits that I have, ultimately, I’m gonna get faster. But there’s a lot, of course correcting and a lot of things that I have to do to kind of clean up my act and get, you know, get some pieces in place, ultimately, but to the point, removing a lot of the things that are not needed a lot of you know, the things that I’m eating that aren’t needed, a lot of the exercises, habits that I didn’t have, I’m introducing some new practices. So those are the things that we need to adopt to actually get the productivity that we’re trying to try to achieve. And you know, like I said, who knows, you might get faster, but maybe your problems just you know, is large in nature that you need is going to take a while like, you know, a lot of you know, in our, in our business, the consulting timelines of closing a sale, take some time, six months to a year and you don’t realize it, but there’s things that you have to nurture some nurturing phases, there’s a lot of other steps that need to go into account. So you can’t always just think that you’re going to get faster.

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By by, by by choosing some process. The last example I was giving, you know, this probably the most popular thing that people usually say when when they say, Oh, you’re gonna adopt agile, you could get faster. Oh, does that mean that if you got nine women that you can actually have a baby in one month? No, certain things just take certain time periods. And, you know, you’re you need to deal with that. But you can maybe optimize or maybe, maybe to try and make a higher quality pregnancy, if you will, within that period. But, but no, there’s certain things that just takes a certain period of time, and you try to optimize around your, your process. And that’s what Lean and Agile is about how you optimize what you got.

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So hopefully, that shed a little light on it. Of course, I just love love that that examples because it’s so true. We just get confused. I know that we all in sales have an urgency to close the deals. But yeah, it’s like when you are getting into, you know, new exercise or you need to, to lower your weight or anything, you just need to understand exactly what you need to get rid first, how to change your mind and how to get rid first of the bad habits. It’s not it’s not adding things. Adapting is first to initially to reduce things that are also one of the things that I’ve been learning in my personal life. When I feel it, I feel in some that I’m struggling with some business things and everything is just just you need to you need to be linear in this way. So I just loved your examples. So where do I get it with a leaner pipeline? Okay, so focus on the real causes for no closing deals.

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I remember that one of my personal frustration so many years ago, he was like, when my sales team says like, Okay, why are we not closing? Why?

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And, you know, there’s a lot of conversations about this. It’s like, okay, you know, the customer is on holidays, or I don’t know the customer used, you know, looking for mortality alternatives, or anything but not like the real information that I probably me as a manager will like to have that it’s more oriented to the problem, okay. And when we have lack of information, we are in a serious situation. So these linear pipeline will focus on the real

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All courses are not closing, you are stuck accumulation of invalidity in your pipeline. When you start modifying your pipeline into something that it just get

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a visual pipeline with less things that were most important leads in your life just get better. I remember that. In some of the of the

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experience I’ve been seeing, like Pinelands, we did you know, that sales director told me you don’t look at my CRM, look at my pipeline, there’s a lot of stuff and just like, Okay, but how much of that of those is real? Well, you know, 15 20%, so what do you have, like in the same pipeline, all these leads, so probably, we need to build different pipelines to just classify and nurturing as you said, Charles, and not just to focus on this as a whole, you know, visibility of real customer requirements and bells and pains, you will also have the visibility of what is going on with your customers, better sales meeting conversations is instead this is something that, you know, we all that we are in sales, we just hate, you know, like irrelevant sales meeting that just never get to a point. And you just get a lot of pressure and everything just go to the point better sales meetings, lay some valid opportunities to follow up by sales seem more real opportunities driven, more accurate forecasts, and sales team enable me to prioritize, buy sell mine and management tools. And this last one thing is something that that we need, we need tools with the process we need, we need something to buy. So the leader pipeline, so related to the traditional pipeline, and something that we need to empower in our pipeline and to modify is the qualification stages as you can see here, probably within within till the qualification bar qualification has another kind of stages that probably we’re taking to the to the next level, our pipeline, what it’s like to prepare preparation, preparation and how to initially get to a lead qualification prioritization. That is something that not most of the of the sales teams are doing is like to classify exactly in different pipelines. After that, after a contact of their doing approach how to make a research on what on your on your lead, and probably after that, going through meetings to make discovery, understanding some of the things that I personally hate is going to a demo, a demo meetings oriented just to technical features, and everything and what I have been speaking with a lot of buyers, it is not relevant, depending on the profile of your target on the on the people that you’re talking. But some of the things that I think it’s, it’s important is to understand exactly so we’re gonna be we’re gonna be understanding, as you can see it right now, in each stage, we have something called Lean sales Canvas model. And this is something for you guys, if you if you are a sales executive, or Key Account Manager. This is something that is going to help you to understand exactly which kind of things are relevant things are KPIs, you need to ask to your customers in each stages. So you can actually qualify, especially what you need to understand to make a leaner proposals and have successful proposals. So you can have a better closer or probably shorter ones. We’re not talking about fast faster, we’re talking about the short term Minimum Viable proposals that probably get you to a point so you can actually close as you can see in below where we are in the first stages with a lot of assumptions. This is something that our Lean Startup talks a lot about it and and also in the continuous integration bye.

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Bye Ashmolean is always talking about like, how we can reduce assumptions, the enemy of the sale process is assumptions. If we don’t understand exactly how to reduce assumptions, we’re going to take all these wastes to the next phases. So consider when you are creating a pipeline to understand which kind of assumptions do you want to reduce? And is the same as which kind of ways do you want to reduce so this is something important. So as an approach, so what you’re seeing right now, it’s a template called the leaner pipeline, our friends from combat zone has gave us some access to create it, because one of the things that I liked it from Cameron zone is that you actually can manage all the deals and actually classified it and actually, you know, put the gray areas and understanding exactly what are the things that you can work with you can do this is not a CRM by the way, but this is something that you can actually manage all the process of your sales team

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One of the things that I think I think it’s different is that in the CRMs are not built to manage our bids are built to control the format of the financial amounts and everything. So in this way, we have been exploring the use of the of this of this tool combat zone. And I think it’s wonderful. And as you can see it here, there’s like a specific criteria that you can follow approach and qualifying discounting. What do you think are the things that you need to consider the company interested in marketing using for scouting the buyer persona, company, website, and core business, all the information you need to put into God preparation is the first step to understanding customers before contacting them. When you go to the contact phase, and this is built in different in different stages, you need to prior Delic understand get ready for understand initial customer requests, validate lead potential, one of the main problems in traditional pipelines is that we don’t really understand is this lead that we are talking to this prospect has the real opportunity. And so many sales teams struggles in these phases. Why because it is accelerate this process. And we don’t understand we are talking with the right person we have understanding the moment and if they’re willing to get a better understanding, we can get other understanding, but especially if the problems or challenges that they’re have are critical, we are going to be talking about how a lot about criticality a lot, because this is the main thing that we need to unblock. How critical is the problem our customer has, the problem can have your customer can have a problem, but it could be aspirational. But if he’s not critical, you’re not going to close anything for you know, in early stages. So, these two stages are very important. So you can follow it, then we’re going to share to you some links, so, you can actually use the the Kanban and sound

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solution for 30 days, but and you can find it there all the criteria. So, you can actually start using it what which are the next stages where the next stage is after you can talk to them is the meeting preparation. So, we say meeting preparation is everything and why why is so important, because in this pipeline, what you need to empower is when you get to the point that you need to do this discovery and exploration phases do you can actually need to map and CO create and CO understand with your customers what is a real problem and intermediate preparation phase you need to confirm day where to platform link replaces customer teams to assess you know everything and we need to prepare I know that probably you know in the sales team the in the sales areas, we are not so used to to accomplish so the specific steps but believe me, this is something very, very important when you are dealing with complex sales to understand and prepare, you know set exactly one of the most important things in the discovery and exploration. We have been exploring in probably in the last six years using game serving using innovation games, you’re using a lot of canvases to co create with our customers and understanding in these meetings and exploration phases. So when you are in the in the meeting preparation phase, do you need to understand what you need to discover is not just to calculate things, it’s what do I need? What do I want to discover in this customer? Do I want to understand the the if they have been using another solution before how long they take to in the license period simple implementations, I mean a lot of things you need to consider. So, when you get to the discovery and exploration phase, you can actually have experience with your customer or cocreation experience that brings you a lot of information. These the discovery and exploration phase is the most important stage in all the pipeline. And if you can see it, we are pointing out these because we consider that if you can ask this make an assessment as deep as possible do you actually can co create your solution with your customer and when I’m talking about CO creating the solution is like consider your customer’s opinion about the conditions they have to implement and to have the fastest resource resource as possible to their problem. If we can do this process that of course, in other webinars we can be talking about these techniques. Actually you can guarantee one thing if you can follow up and you can make problems with this lead. Or if you can actually understand that there is no point to follow up and probably take this lead to another pipeline in soap for neutering or for doing it

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other things, but not feeling that you are working so many hours for nothing. So of course after that, in some situation, it could be that tech requirements are deeply so you can, you know, bring your pre sales and CO create or understand more specific requirements. But this is just in case that you’re selling some complex solution, probably not a problem. This but these stages, Charles is one of the of the principal things we I know you have been through this experience of creating, and another set of stages. But this is the this is the stage when it’s all your, all your leads are are facing to to check if you are wasting your time or not qualifying with defining quitters will give you visibility on customer prospects by every product liability, this ability to take on validates to propose any negotiation phases. So the last the last steps of the leader pipeline proposal procreation, as I already mentioned, if you can understand the problems of your customer, you can take them to co create a proposal with a minimum viable proposal. So you can give them a product entry level product, you can give them something you can get for new customers. If it’s if it’s an existing customers, it will also ready as well, because you already know them, probably you know more about their organization or their challenges and everything, but you need to point that out. And then the negotiation phase. And the the negotiation phase in this session is not so relevant when you understand everything that are there problems. So you can actually manage this. But for doing this, we need to measure and to measure the this is something that we have been exploring in the last years is to bring something called weighted short to chop first. And in this point, I want to chance to share why is this concept and why? While we have grabbed this from software development sales, and how have been helping a lot of software development teams to prioritize their job. Yeah, sure. Thanks for auto. So yeah, the weighted shortest job first.

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acronym stands, you know, Wiz GIF is is kind of what they say for for short, it was popularized by a framework and agile framework called the Scaled Agile Framework. But that actually, that concept actually was built off of another concept call called, you know, essentially prioritizing based on cost of delay. And that’s at the root of weighted shortest job first. So if you think about it, how much is it costing us to delay this item versus this item. So if it’s a bigger cost of delay on this item, I want to make sure I focus on that item first, because it’s, it’s losing me, you know, the most value, you know, I want to know another way of looking at it, it’s kind of like I want to go after the lowest hanging fruit items that you know, relatively speaking based on the value of something and the effort to to get it done. Let’s focus on those those low hanging fruit items to try to knock those things out. So the whole goal of prioritizing based on cost of delay and weighted shortest job first is making sure we’re spending our efforts in the most optimized way to drive the most value for our company. So, you know, so long story short is, you know, you’re doing a an assessment in terms of how much value is this thing versus how much effort do I have to put into it, because nothing could be very valuable, and far outweigh the value of something else. But it might take you like heads down not doing anything else for the next month. And you might you might lose out on like knocking out five deals that could actually ultimately achieve more value than just that one thing. So you have to weigh your pros and cons about how you focus your efforts. And the last thing I want to say about the weighted shortest job first areas here that that you’ve got caught out here user business value time criticality and, and risk reward opportunity enablement is it’s a kind of a full circle way of looking at what makes something valuable. Obviously, something from an end user from our customer, from ourselves as a company, you know, right on the face of it, it’s a very shiny, very fancy looking product that we want to sell or service that we want to sell. I mean, it’s the you know, it’s the best valuable service out there a product out there. But the time criticality of it might not be so big, you know, they may want it next year or, you know, tomorrow, or they can want it tomorrow they need to they need that proposal in tomorrow because their budget cycle is ending tomorrow. So time criticality might be high as well on this thing. And then also too, it might actually enable future opportunities for

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reps. So the opportunity enablement piece of it may go up as well. So again, different ways of leveraging this weighted shortest job first model, because it can give you a full circle way of looking at what makes something valuable. Now even say, like, even knowledge is valuable in some cases, as well, what you learned from some process of what you learned from a customer, going through the proposal process might give you more insight onto what other opportunities are there as well. So, so using weighted shortest job first, and then the cost of the opportunity, how much is it going to cost us, again, is our effort that we need to put into it, if we need to put a 20 man team, right place to run to create a proposal, you got to think about that, that’s going to take all 20 people off something else that they’re doing. And then that again, that that will bring it down in the overall ranking of weighted shortest job first, because it’s overall score, you could see this isn’t that was a, you know, you have a, a numerator and the denominator is basically math here that’s happening return on investment that you’re putting into it, it needs to have a sufficient enough high return on investment in terms of the value that provides us based on the investment that we put into it. So overall, a good way of prioritizing and writing something that’s valuable to your organization. And you can use it for many different purposes. And that’s why it’s a very,

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you know, useful tool that you can bring from the software development industry to bring into this this sales process. Great. I love how you explain it, because it’s crucial to understand how much effort are we taking on each opportunity? And one of the probably one of the most relevant things is that if we are really understanding if it’s valuable for our customers, and if it’s critical that just related to the kind of effort we need to do, it’s not that we are I don’t I don’t want to I don’t want to be confused about this. But it’s not like do don’t do don’t follow up all the relates, but you need to understand exactly how much effort and what is the problem and what is the criticality, so you can actually give them something as fast and minimum possible. So when we have been taking this to the to the to the sales, it has turned an amazing tool to use because we have been speaking about how to empower and how to focus on your qualification process. Of course, you need to adapt sales by month two criterias to reinforce these KPIs in qualification and customer understanding stages. So how do I make sure I know these KPIs with my sales teams, okay, remember the first team how to come from a traditional pipeline to linear pipeline, how to build the criterias and then how to build them and measure this four things you need to consider of course, we can share you this Excel sheet word with with a with a way to chart that your first look for things you need to consider for your sales team to start understand the business value, to ask your customer context problem alternative solution and outcomes exactly what is their how they consider that is valuable your solution. And the valuable solution is related to the problems to the alternatives to the cost is the second one, the critic column. This is something for me probably when it just turned something very different to the rest of the stages, most of the people are talking about like techniques to empower your solution, your features, the comparison with your competitors and everything. Believe me, if you understand criticality, this is something very, very, very easy to understand how to make progress with your this moment, triggers urgency and what’s at stake for your customer. If you ask these kinds of things, and you then related with you and ashy, and then going through the white church, that your prayers that we can actually explain that these later July are going to have a very clear visibility on the opportunities, opportunities, how many opportunities target these these these kind of leads, solution creation tech requirements, other areas challenges, options, and implementation readiness. This is also very important when you’re talking about b2b complex products. And the last one income and quite important, it’s at the budget sizing fee the return of investment, the payment condition, among other things, probably for most of the people this is the most important for me, probably is a mix of the four things that I will of course will

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invite you to us, we have created this Lean sales Canvas model and we also can can share to you when you can actually map and start writing in CO creating with your customer exactly what are the problems, their outcome, their problem, the moments or readiness and everything. So you have to lead you can have a template so you can work within also the leaner pipeline, but also to understand that you can actually use it in each stages right

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for understanding the four things that we have already mentioned, okay, the business value, the criticality, the opportunity and the incomes. So if you can actually feel everything in your lean sales canvas, you can get a lot of information from your customers to make progress. And this is how it looks. This is how it looks when we are talking about, okay? Is this gonna take me to a better understanding of prioritization? Well, I, in my experience, this is something that takes has taken so many sales team to have a better understanding what they need to focus in a weekly basis. So you can get rid of these

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sales meetings where just a lot of excuses now, it’s not that, okay, the body of the business, but the business part of this account, the time criticality and new opportunities, the income, the cost of opportunity, how much effort you take on, of course, understanding how to price, okay, if we’re going to be focused on the customer, X, Y, and Z, this is the things that we need to work in this in this week. And the last thing, how can I how can we know that we are measuring in the right values of business value, or the time criticality, each one, okay, these one of the most important things you need to understand, if you are not sure about the business value, you need to come back to your customer and do a specific questions to specify that you are measuring the right things. So this is quite relevant to understand to take this for more real real forecast. If you go there, you take this, this table and you understand exactly how to make it believe you’re gonna take yourself to the next level reducing waste understanding where do you spend your effort reducing, you’re struggling and of course, having more visibility on how to qualify and make the cabbie KPIs more relevant. So basically, I know that we have been shut down right now. But basically, what I want to close with how do I start with using weights in my sales process? The first one is identify where is the bottleneck in your pipeline, I think we have already talked about it. I love your pipeline to power understanding instead of closing, closing deals, these are consequences of a good qualification and understand your face. The third one define how you want to measure your interaction with customers. Financial can KPI surveys are basically one take you to a continuous improvement, they think that it’s going to take you to continuous improvement improvement is to understand exactly where are the problems of your customers use cocreation tools and canvases to interact with customers, this will help you to map customer problems, solutions, critical situation and will be a lot easier for you to prioritize. And the fifth one added bonuses, sales conditions to long term and less churn by promoting close collaboration between sales teams and customers. So these will be my five advices to start reducing your waste in sales process. I know there’s a lot of information, but of course, I know we have just a couple of minutes for questions and answers. And and before leaving. I don’t know Charles, do you had any comments about it? Any questions about it? Well, yeah, let’s see if there. Are there any questions that comments that came in through our

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from those that attended in the webinar? Let’s check the

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check our messages here.

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Just doing a quick little check over.

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Overall, I guess Harada what question while I’m checking on this is that

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I know we don’t like to necessarily recommend

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or sponsor any tools or anything like that. But are there any tools that do this? Well, in your opinion versus others other tools that can actually measure this and

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track? Yeah, sure, I just shared the Combat Zone tool where you can actually start using the linear pipeline public template, I think it’s going to, it’s going to be easier for you to implement it. And the other thing is the using the

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way to church with your first Excel template that we have that we’re going to be sharing, of course, and the third thing that I just almost forgot is that we are going to be doing a six week sling sauce program in September, probably mid September. So you can actually understand on how to implement all these tools. Of course, there’s also mirror that when you can use it for for for the cooperation process. You can use, of course the Lean sales camp

1:00:00

This model that we have been creating, there’s there’s a lot of things that you can actually

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take into account on these lean sales process.

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All right, great. And there’s no no questions. And we’re right at time, right? Oh, can you can you go to the next slide and, and I think we can kind of transition here. And as you mentioned, there’s a program, a cohort that’s coming up, that if you’re interested in attending and kind of walking through your process and walking through kind of step by step, and getting your environment set up to measure and manage a sales process and this way, definitely reach out to Geraldo or myself, and we can get you hooked into that that cohort, that program that’s coming up. Otherwise, that those that didn’t get a chance to attend, can tell your colleagues this will be out on video. And this will be shared out to those that were interested. So it will be put up on in our webinar area at the eye for group dot the eye for group.com. You can check our webinars up the latest webinars up there and this will be posted up there pretty soon and it will be pushed out on to the various social platforms as well. And we look forward to seeing you guys again next time. Thanks Toronto for your time today, sir. Thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Have a great Day. Bye Bye.