6. Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Phone #: 510-542-8014 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Account #: 95285581 Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Last Agent: Joan Taylor Hello, Mr. O’Hearn. This is Joan Taylor. Hello. I’m calling because I think there was an error on my last bill. CRM software Company Confidential IVR Dialer PBX/ACD Agent CTI Fraud Protection Provisioning Data Bridge Accounting Data Replication Web CRM software Database Churn Manager Data Warehouse Fax, E-Mail Credit Billing Customer Blending Sales and Service Account Name Account Number Mobile Number Address Last Agent ABC Computers 41359967 415/331-5643 4121 Lake Street Gray Cove, CA 94965 Steve James Computers, Etc. 33789001 408/453-7895 650 River Drive Round Tree, CA 94080 Jennifer Lee Hardy Stock, Inc. 84210956 510/908-8834 93245 Doyle Street Bay Center, CA 94521 Mark Wilson Moore Brothers 12356732 916/487-6654 215 Walnut Avenue Aubrey, CA 95821 Stacy Johnson O’Hearn Technostuff 95285581 510/542-8014 235 Deep Cave Circle Liberty, CA 94505 Joan Taylor TC Technology 65589354 916/483-9001 1453 Marcom Drive Oak City, CA 95825 Mike Smith Super Systems, Inc. 95285581 510/542-8014 5461 Maple Street Hilltop, CA 94506 Mary Jones
9. CRM software Company Confidential IVR Dialer PBX/ACD Agent CTI Fraud Protection Provisioning Data Bridge Accounting Data Replication Web CRM software Database Churn Manager Data Warehouse Fax, E-Mail Credit Billing Customer Blending Sales and Service
10. Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info Tickler Info IVR Dialer PBX/ACD Agent CTI Fraud Protection Provisioning Data Bridge Accounting Data Replication Web CRM software Database Churn Manager Data Warehouse Fax, E-Mail Credit Billing Customer Blending Sales and Service Tickler Screen
15. CRM global architecture Channels Web Call center Mail Media S.F.A. Campaign Management Market place Legal environement Targets & Segments Front office Back office Supplier Partner EDI EDI ERP DSS Reporting OLAP Datamining Audit Marketing Buy Production Sales Logistics Company
17. Unprecedented Focus on Sales Execution 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 1992 1997 2002 (est) Cost Efficiency vs Revenue Growth Change in CEO Expectations Severe Economic Pressure Channel Sales Telesales Field Sales Web Sales
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26. Common Experience Across All Channels Channel Partners Web & Email Field Sales Call Center Customers Marketing Analytics Back Office Customer Information
56. CRM global architecture Channels Web Call center Cards Media S.F.A. Campaign Management Market place Legal environement Targets & Segments Front office Back office Supplier Partner EDI EDI ERP DSS Reporting OLAP Datamining Audit Marketing Buy Production Sales Logistics Company
57.
58. Type of tools C.M . C.M . C.M . C.M . C.M . Database One customer with many interactions to one company Decision Support System Customer Cards & POS Call center & Audiotext Internet & Extranet Sales Force Automation Mail, Fax & Coupons E.I.S. & OLAP Data Mining Campaign Mgmt
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67. Target Selection Select list Select graph type (2D, 3D, bar, line, pie,...) Select what you want to see Drill down on audience Mail report, print report,...
73. Guide contacts to your BUSINESS GOAL with Microweb: - Lead acquisition - Product upsell - ... audience Invitation mail Filter: personalize microweb Survey form1 Survey form2 Interprete result Populate list Response page
Looking at this model of telecom customer care, let's review a scenario to understand how the ideal call center environment would work. First a customer calls with a billing question. This simultaneously triggers two important functions. • Computer-telephony integration with the customer care system identifies the most appropriate service rep to receive the call based on business rules set up by the telecom provider. For example, it may be the last CSR who talked to this caller, or it may be a service rep who speaks Spanish. It then routes the call to this representative. • CTI integration with the customer care system also automatically delivers all relevant information about the caller in a pop-up screen - before the call reaches the service rep. This information includes a history of previous transactions with the company, including service calls and market campaigns directed at the customer. It also may include relevant demographics that apply to the caller pulled from a data warehouse or churn manager system. As a result, the CSR who answers the customer's call is already well qualified to support that customer, knows who the customer is, and has both the knowledge and ability to support a number transactions, including service, sales and billing. In this example, the customer believes there is a billing error. Under the old customer care model, the CSR might have to toggle to another software program or computer system - or even route the call to a different representative. In this new customer care model, however, the rep simply hits a button, and the billing record pops up onto the screen. The rep can quickly address the caller's question and explain why calling charges were high for the previous month.
More importantly, the CSR can now take this reactive customer service call and turn it into an opportunity. When the billing comes up, the customer care system, powerful scripting tied to workflow processes identifies that this customer receives a large number of incoming calls and is a highly qualified candidate for call waiting and voice mail. A script takes the CSR through the process of suggesting these services, and the caller decides to purchase them. The CSR makes a simple entry - as easy as checking a Yes box, and the system automatically sends necessary information to various telecom functions that are now integrated into the overall customer care solution. For example: • Information is sent to the billing system, which updates invoicing for that customer. • Another update is sent to the provisioning system to ensure that the new services are installed promptly. • A third notification may go to an integrated fax or e-mail system that automatically generates and sends a letter thanking the customer for the recently purchased services and highlighting the benefits of those services. • Through data replication, updates also can be made to the data warehouse - and to any pro-active marketing campaigns, ensuring that no one tries to sell the customer services that have just been purchased. Significantly, all of these activities happen automatically, without additional follow-up from the customer service representative. Everyone benefits. The customer is pleased by the fast response and the CSR's ability to proactively identify and provide added value services. The telecom provider has turned a billing question into a revenue opportunity, and because the follow-up processes are automated, is now ready to support the next caller.
This is just one scenario. It's easy to imagine others where a comprehensive, enterprise customer care system can deliver strategic value to telecom providers. For example: • When a customer calls in with a problem, the information is now on-line, so that problems are resolved quickly on the first call. Because the customer care system is linked to vital systems such as provisioning and billing, much more issue resolution can occur automatically, improving response time and minimizing error. • By linking customer care into the fraud detection system and resource allocation software, the systems can empower service representatives will available time to make outbound calls to advise customers of potential fraud and sell them a fraud protection package. • Similarly the churn manager may flag an important customer that is at high risk of moving to another vendor. By integrating this information into a sales campaign, representatives can call customers and offer value-added services - potentially at no extra cost - that will link the customer more tightly to the existing telecom provider. These are just a few examples of how a new model for customer care that is focused on integrating the entire organization can empower telecom companies to maximize their productivity through optimal efficiency and effectiveness.
Looking at this model of telecom customer care, let's review a scenario to understand how the ideal call center environment would work. First a customer calls with a billing question. This simultaneously triggers two important functions. • Computer-telephony integration with the customer care system identifies the most appropriate service rep to receive the call based on business rules set up by the telecom provider. For example, it may be the last CSR who talked to this caller, or it may be a service rep who speaks Spanish. It then routes the call to this representative. • CTI integration with the customer care system also automatically delivers all relevant information about the caller in a pop-up screen - before the call reaches the service rep. This information includes a history of previous transactions with the company, including service calls and market campaigns directed at the customer. It also may include relevant demographics that apply to the caller pulled from a data warehouse or churn manager system. As a result, the CSR who answers the customer's call is already well qualified to support that customer, knows who the customer is, and has both the knowledge and ability to support a number transactions, including service, sales and billing. In this example, the customer believes there is a billing error. Under the old customer care model, the CSR might have to toggle to another software program or computer system - or even route the call to a different representative. In this new customer care model, however, the rep simply hits a button, and the billing record pops up onto the screen. The rep can quickly address the caller's question and explain why calling charges were high for the previous month.
Looking at this model of telecom customer care, let's review a scenario to understand how the ideal call center environment would work. First a customer calls with a billing question. This simultaneously triggers two important functions. • Computer-telephony integration with the customer care system identifies the most appropriate service rep to receive the call based on business rules set up by the telecom provider. For example, it may be the last CSR who talked to this caller, or it may be a service rep who speaks Spanish. It then routes the call to this representative. • CTI integration with the customer care system also automatically delivers all relevant information about the caller in a pop-up screen - before the call reaches the service rep. This information includes a history of previous transactions with the company, including service calls and market campaigns directed at the customer. It also may include relevant demographics that apply to the caller pulled from a data warehouse or churn manager system. As a result, the CSR who answers the customer's call is already well qualified to support that customer, knows who the customer is, and has both the knowledge and ability to support a number transactions, including service, sales and billing. In this example, the customer believes there is a billing error. Under the old customer care model, the CSR might have to toggle to another software program or computer system - or even route the call to a different representative. In this new customer care model, however, the rep simply hits a button, and the billing record pops up onto the screen. The rep can quickly address the caller's question and explain why calling charges were high for the previous month.
Looking at this model of telecom customer care, let's review a scenario to understand how the ideal call center environment would work. First a customer calls with a billing question. This simultaneously triggers two important functions. • Computer-telephony integration with the customer care system identifies the most appropriate service rep to receive the call based on business rules set up by the telecom provider. For example, it may be the last CSR who talked to this caller, or it may be a service rep who speaks Spanish. It then routes the call to this representative. • CTI integration with the customer care system also automatically delivers all relevant information about the caller in a pop-up screen - before the call reaches the service rep. This information includes a history of previous transactions with the company, including service calls and market campaigns directed at the customer. It also may include relevant demographics that apply to the caller pulled from a data warehouse or churn manager system. As a result, the CSR who answers the customer's call is already well qualified to support that customer, knows who the customer is, and has both the knowledge and ability to support a number transactions, including service, sales and billing. In this example, the customer believes there is a billing error. Under the old customer care model, the CSR might have to toggle to another software program or computer system - or even route the call to a different representative. In this new customer care model, however, the rep simply hits a button, and the billing record pops up onto the screen. The rep can quickly address the caller's question and explain why calling charges were high for the previous month.
In Q4 of last year, Accenture published a study that showed that the priorities of most CEO’s have been going through a fundamental change over the last few years . In a nutshell, Accenture found that CEO’s are shifting their focus away from internal cost reduction and more towards revenue growth . In fact, in 1992, approximately 80% of capital budgets were spent on cost reduction and 20% on projects that drive revenue. By 2002, Accenture believes that ratio will be completely reversed, with 80% of capital budgets being targeted at revenue growth. Now, if you think about what organization is most responsible for driving revenue growth, it’s the sales force.
If you combine the focus on revenue growth with an extremely challenging economic environment, you end up with a point in history where there has never been greater pressure on the sales force . And incidentally, we are not just referring to field sales people, but to all channels that make up your sales force. This includes telesales, resellers, and any initiative that leverages the Internet. As a result, any pain that you may be experiencing with regards to sales execution is more intense today than it has ever been.
As you can imagine, Siebel has spent the last several years talking to literally thousands of customers about the issues that are impeding the effectiveness of their sales forces. Not surprisingly, we have found that most of those issues fall into these 5 categories. Those categories are: Pipeline Management – having visibility into the actual health of your business. Being able to “ see ” the top opportunities that your sales force is pursuing and being able to manage those opportunities to closure. Being able to systematically diagnose problems within the deployment of your sales force and proactively take action to resolve those issues. Sales Effectiveness – not only automating the tasks that your sales reps perform, but more importantly, improving the effectiveness of the rep in front of the customer, improving the proposal that they develop or the presentation that they deliver. Motivation & Focus – ensuring that the incentives you have in place with your sales reps are actually aligned with your business objectives. Giving your reps immediate visibility into those objectives as well as their progress against them. And finally, when your business objectives change, being able to quickly realign your sales incentives and communicate those changes across the sales force in rapid fashion. Underlying all of these areas is Selling Knowledge – providing ALL of the information that a sales rep needs , when they need it. Making sure that the information is current and relevant to the types of sales situations that the rep is pursuing. And most importantly, giving global sales teams the ability to collaborate and share information across organizational and geographic boundaries. Best Practices – establishing defined processes and methodologies that improve the effectiveness of your sales force as well as insure consistent execution across all sales channels. From a management perspective, insuring that you are utilizing metrics that are actually leading indicators of your business rather than lagging indicators.
Clearly, what we have just reviewed is an oversimplification of the problem. If fact, we can expand each one of these areas and spend days detailing a multitude of issues under each one. What ’ s interesting, however, is that as you read through these issues, you realize that many of these problems are not new. In fact, many have been around for as long as selling has existed.
About 10 years ago, a concept called “sales force automation” became the industry’s favorite catch phrase. At the time, most companies that decided to deploy SFA utilized 1 of 2 basic approaches. The first approach involved nothing more than taking a handful of “personal productivity applications,” loading them on laptops, and forcing them into the hands of sales people. The problem with this approach was that these solutions were deployed with little regard to the underlying sales process. In most cases, these companies believed that technology alone would resolve any underlying process problems. Further, since these applications focused on PERSONAL productivity, they did not allow sales people to access information on existing systems, collaborate as a team, or automate workflow. At the other end of the spectrum, we had highly centralized, hierarchical companies whose primary goal was to use brute force to ensure that every rep followed the same process on every deal with every customer. These systems tended to be home-grown, mainframe applications that forced a rep through every step of the mandatory sales process regardless of the sales situation. The problem with this approach was obvious…the inflexibility of these systems forced the rep to appear inflexible and unresponsive in the eyes of the customer. Further, competitors were able to identify this inflexibility and use it to their advantage. Although the company may have established more “control” over their sales force, that control was costing them business. As you can see, the intentions of both approaches were good, but we learned some very valuable and expensive lessons . In addition to the obvious issues we just discussed, I’d like to summarize 5 additional lessons here. (click) First, selling is not a linear process . Many of the great sales “guru’s” have summarized the act of selling into nice, neat boxes , like you see here on the left. But for those of you that have been selling for any significant amount of time, is this really what your day looks like??? Of course not! (click) It looks more like the picture on the right. You have a number of tasks that you have to perform, usually in random order , to demonstrate responsiveness to both your customer, as well as your management team. This challenge requires that you interact with multiple people, multiple information sources, and multiple systems in order to get your job done. And as we all know, this can be very time consuming! In fact, several studies have shown that most reps spend upwards of 50-70% of their time, consumed by the picture on the right. The bottom line: 1) The solution must support BOTH structured and non-structured activities, 2) it must reduce the amount of time required by the non-customer facing activities, and 3) it must make the rep more effective in front of the customer.
The next lesson is related to information. If you think about it, at this point in time, there really is no shortage of information. The challenge for any sales rep is finding the individual piece of information that is most relevant to the sales situation that they are in. Once they have found it, often times that information is not current. (click) To further understand this challenge, your sales teams must integrate information from multiple sources. (click) In most cases, that information resides in different places. In fact, if you have gone through an acquisition or dramatic growth, (click) each form of information may reside on multiple systems. This forces your sales team to serve the integration mechanism for almost all of the information within your company. The net result is that sales reps spend an incredible amount of time simply looking for information.
The lesson learned is that you must consolidate access to all selling knowledge within your organization. Once consolidated, the navigation required to find information is dramatically reduced. In addition, once information is consolidated, you can assign specific “owners” within your organization for each piece of data or collateral. Once ownership is clearly defined, it is much easier to insure that information is maintained such that it is always current and relevant.
The next lesson is that Sales Productivity is really a function of 3 things: Efficiency, or reducing the time required to perform specific tasks. Effectiveness, improving the quality of the proposal, presentation, or relationship that a rep has with a customer. And Teamwork, the ability of sales people from multiple organizations and geographies to sell to a customer in a coordinated, collaborative way. This may seem intuitively obvious, but to fully understand this, we need to take a look at the varying level of skill within the typical sales force. (click) Regardless of industry, your sales force follows a Bell Curve in terms of its effectiveness. To develop a truly effective solution, you need to segment your sales force in terms of those skills – and understand that the needs of each group will vary . (click) For the upper half of the curve, we want to increase the number of deals, the number of customers, that these reps are able to handle. The focus here is clearly on efficiency . For the lower half of the curve, we must increase the quality of the work that these reps are doing. Simply giving a mediocre rep the ability to send a lousy proposal to 10 customers instead of 5, doesn’t solve the problem. In fact, it makes it worse! I have literally been in meetings where a sales executive proudly announced that “our worst reps are now spending twice as much time in front of our customers!” Congratulations. Finally, the ultimate success of any rep, is often determined by how effectively they manage a team of resources . In fact, many of those non-customer facing activities that we talked about earlier involve team coordination. If you look at your own products or services, they have clearly become more complex over the last few years. Further, your customers have become global , and expect you to sell to them in a global way. As a result of these 2 phenomenon, the days of 1 rep calling on 1 customer are behind us. Your SFA solution must support collaboration across multiple organizations and geographies.
And while we’re on the topic of value to the sales rep, the fourth lesson is to focus on effectiveness not control . Another way of saying this is: if the sales rep doesn’t see value in the solution, they won’t use it! Great sales reps are masters at getting around barriers within your organization. If your SFA solution is a barrier, they will find a way not to use it. If they don’t use the system, they will not be providing the information that you need for visibility within your business. Without visibility, you will not have control. If you think about it, if you didn’t have control over your sales force to begin with, technology is not going to solve that problem. The reality is that if your primary goal is to use SFA as a weapon, you will probably fail.
The last, and most important lesson that we have learned in recent years, is that the solution must include all channels – field sales, telesales, resellsers, and web sales. To understand this, we need to look at how channel selling has evolved …
Today, customers are demanding a common, high quality experience across all channels. In order to provide this, we must have a consolidated view of the customer that can be shared across all channels . This is not accomplished, by the way, simply by consolidating your data. You must consolidate you business processes as well. Now, the chart that you see here is what we typically use to describe the broad area of Customer Relationship Management. And as an industry, we typically describe this in a reactive fashion. In other words, we usually describe this in the context of the customer “coming to us” for support, and we are able to service their needs consistently across all channels. But if you think about it, the real power of this, from a Sales Force perspective, is that once this infrastructure is in place, (click)
So, for a VP of Sales or the GM of a business unit we have assembled a very powerful solution with a compelling set of value propositions. First of all, we help you Grow Revenues More Quickly . Our Pipeline Management system enables you to get better visibility into the status of deals so that you can apply the right resources to the right deals at the right time . In addition, you can better recognize cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that enable you to achieve greater “share of wallet” in customer relationships. Siebel Sales also provides the infrastructure for enabling you to Respond to Customers More Effectively . You can construct Sales Teams that make sense for you and your customers and enable customers to buy in ways that make the most sense for them. Specifically, this means combing Field Sales, Telesales and Web-based Customer Interaction solutions that are responsive, scalable and flexible. Siebel Sales contains the critical sales management functionality to enable executives to get the right combination of information on forecasts, territory management and incentive compensation . Sales management can adjust sales coverage and compensation to align with company goals. Siebel delivers a platform for improving communications among sales teams and across geographies and product lines. You can drive best practices and share knowledge in a useful and systematic fashion across the entire sales force . Finally, Siebel has the only solution in the industry that spans the range of implementation environments that exist in global enterprises today . This includes the critically important support for synchronizing mobile databases and support for emerging technologies like handheld, wireless and voice . In addition, Siebel has the experience of implementing this solution with hundreds of customers who have achieved measurable ROI in conjunction with their implementation of a Siebel Sales solution.
So, for a VP of Sales or the GM of a business unit we have assembled a very powerful solution with a compelling set of value propositions. First of all, we help you Grow Revenues More Quickly . Our Pipeline Management system enables you to get better visibility into the status of deals so that you can apply the right resources to the right deals at the right time . In addition, you can better recognize cross-sell and up-sell opportunities that enable you to achieve greater “share of wallet” in customer relationships. Siebel Sales also provides the infrastructure for enabling you to Respond to Customers More Effectively . You can construct Sales Teams that make sense for you and your customers and enable customers to buy in ways that make the most sense for them. Specifically, this means combing Field Sales, Telesales and Web-based Customer Interaction solutions that are responsive, scalable and flexible. Siebel Sales contains the critical sales management functionality to enable executives to get the right combination of information on forecasts, territory management and incentive compensation . Sales management can adjust sales coverage and compensation to align with company goals. Siebel delivers a platform for improving communications among sales teams and across geographies and product lines. You can drive best practices and share knowledge in a useful and systematic fashion across the entire sales force . Finally, Siebel has the only solution in the industry that spans the range of implementation environments that exist in global enterprises today . This includes the critically important support for synchronizing mobile databases and support for emerging technologies like handheld, wireless and voice . In addition, Siebel has the experience of implementing this solution with hundreds of customers who have achieved measurable ROI in conjunction with their implementation of a Siebel Sales solution.
The next area is Pipeline Management. One of the interesting things that we’ve noticed as we’ve talked to literally thousands of customers, is that an incredibly high percentage of those companies identify forecast accuracy as their #1 sales issue . And as you dig deeper into this problem, you find a common trait amongst all of these customers. Fundamentally, none of them are systematically capturing information about individual opportunities . Sure, many of them will say that they have spreadsheets that capture who, how much, when, and odds, but almost universally, none of them are capturing qualitative information about each these deals. That information includes: What is the current sales stage? What is our value proposition? What is our overall strategy? Who are the decision makers and influencers? What are the key milestones for the customer in terms of making a decision? What are all of the activities that have occurred with our team since this deal was identified? Once we begin capturing qualitative information about opportunities, we can begin to do much more meaningful analysis of our pipeline. As an example: - What are the top opportunities company-wide and do we have the right resource aligned with those deals? What is our average sell cycle? Does it very by product, deal size, or sales rep? Do we have enough opportunity identified at each stage of the sell cycle to make plan? Are opportunities moving effectively through each sales stage? If not, do we have a problem with our sales process? Do we have the right coverage strategy? Do our reps have the right skills? Once we understand these issues, the process of forecasting gets much easier. As we will discuss in a moment, once we expand the amount of information that we capture on individual opportunities, forecasting can be as simple as executing a database query. But it all starts with capturing qualitative information about opportunities…
As we stated earlier, once you begin capturing this kind of information about individual opportunities, you are then able to perform a much more thorough analysis of your pipeline. On a daily basis, sales managers have 3 primary challenges related to pipeline visibility: 1) they must constantly assess the “health” of their business, both current and future, 2) they must align sales resources based on that assessment, and 3) they must anticipate changes that need to be made within their strategy or process . Given the complexity of these challenges, simply knowing how much opportunity is entering your pipeline, isn’t good enough any more . (click) To effectively assess your business, you must know how much opportunity you have at each sales stage. This is the only way of knowing if you will be able to attain not only this quarter’s objectives, but future quarters as well. Further, this is the only way that you can assess if your sales team is allocating an appropriate amount of time and effort at the various stages of the sell cycle. (click) Next, to align resource, you must have immediate visibility into the top opportunities across the enterprise. Besides just having a list of those deals, you need to be able to drill into each opportunity, understand the current status, and see the current barriers or issues that are preventing each deal from closing. Only after you understand these issues, can you effectively align the sales resources necessary to close each opportunity. (click) Finally, to anticipate changes required with regards to people, process, or strategy, you must be able to see how opportunity moves from one stage to the next. In other words, we must be able to measure the amount of time opportunities spend at each stage of the sell cycle. If we understand the bottlenecks within the sell cycle, we can then identify tangible actions that can be taken to improve our sales process, our sales skills, or our overall go-to-market strategy.
Now if we return to our original premise, you can see that if you are capturing information about individual opportunities and, as a result, thoroughly understand your pipeline, then generating an accurate forecast becomes much easier. At that point, you can actually use a couple of approaches for generating a forecast – either a “field roll-up” or, even simpler, a management-driven query of the opportunity database.
Not surprisingly, once we are capturing this kind of information about our opportunities, pipeline, and forecasts, there is an endless array of analytics that we can leverage to gain additional insight into our business. We separate those analysis capabilities into 2 primary categories: Sales Analysis and Channel Analysis. Within Sales Analysis , we can identify our most valuable customers, the quality of leads from various campaign sources, and the profitability of specific product lines. Within Channel Analysis , we can assess the effectiveness and profitability of specific channels. We can then use this information to hone our multichannel selling strategy.
We’ll now shift our focus to Sales Effectiveness. One of the issues that we discussed earlier was the amount of time that reps spend looking for information. Once they find it, however, they are faced with an equally time consuming activity of integrating multiple pieces of information into a single document that is appropriate for the sales situation. If you think about it, one of the tremendous advantages of centralizing all of this information is that you can now automate the creation of key customer deliverables. Whether that’s quotes, proposals, presentations, or customer correspondence , Siebel pulls information from multiple sources into a single document that adheres to the standards YOUR company defines each type of deliverable. The benefit to the rep is the time saved from cutting, pasting, and reformatting. The benefit to your company is consistency in terms of the look, feel, and content of the information being delivered to your customer base.
The next area that has a direct impact on the effectiveness of your sales force is giving them the ability to interact with Siebel in several ways. We fundamentally believe that to provide a multichannel solution you must support multiple platforms. That includes mobile clients, connected clients, thin clients, and handheld clients. Our mobile client allows field professionals to operate Siebel Sales on laptop computers using a local database, and later synchronize back to a server database. We support connected users , such as inbound or outbound call centers for sales, service, or blended sales and service. We support thin clients , allowing connected users to access complete functionality through their Web browser, and resellers, partners, prospects, and customers to access rich customer information over their extranet. We also support handheld computers . This enables mobile professionals to synchronize with the local datastore on their Handheld Palm or Palmtop PC, and also access a subset of Siebel Sales and Siebel Field Service functionality on the handheld device. The last area that we are extremely excited about is our support of voice recognition. With this product, we give a mobile sales rep the ability to “call” Siebel and check their calendar, activities, accounts, contacts, and opportunities. In future releases, reps will actually be able to update this information as well. Now, from an implementation standpoint, it is important to note, that organizations can configure the Siebel application once and deploy everywhere. Once an organization makes customizations to Siebel Systems’ underlying objects, these customizations can operate automatically across all types of client computing devices. This provides dramatic savings in deployment and implementation costs, and consistency across customer-facing channels. Only Siebel eBusiness Applications provide one Web-based architecture, one set of business objects, one development toolset, and one logical data model that operates on mobile clients, connected clients, thin clients, and handheld clients.
The next segment that we will focus on is Motivation & Focus – or in other words, insuring that your sales force is focused on your most critical business objectives. When most people think of the “sales cycle,” they think of the process that you see here. However, as any experienced sales manager will tell you, aligning the tactical efforts of a sales team with the overall corporate strategy is much more complicated. (click) It begins by insuring that the reps are focused on the correct objectives. Next, they must be motivated to aggressively pursue those objectives based on clear incentives. Once they close an opportunity, they need to be paid….and the process continues throughout the year. The primary tool that a sales manager has to focus and motivate a sales rep is the compensation plan. And, as you can imagine, effective sales plans share some common characteristics. (click) First, the incentives within the plan must support the corporate business objectives. Second, a rep have immediate access to both their targets as well as their progress against those targets. And finally, as business objectives change, those changes must be immediately reflected in the sales plan and rapidly communicated to the sales force.
Today, customers are demanding a common, high quality experience across all channels. In order to provide this, we must have a consolidated view of the customer that can be shared across all channels . This is not accomplished, by the way, simply by consolidating your data. You must consolidate you business processes as well. Now, the chart that you see here is what we typically use to describe the broad area of Customer Relationship Management. And as an industry, we typically describe this in a reactive fashion. In other words, we usually describe this in the context of the customer “coming to us” for support, and we are able to service their needs consistently across all channels. But if you think about it, the real power of this, from a Sales Force perspective, is that once this infrastructure is in place, (click)
The last segment that we will discuss is Best Practices – or leveraging standard processes and methodologies within your sales force to improve effectiveness and consistency. The most powerful mechanism we have for improving our customers’ sales execution actually has nothing to do with our product – it is actually a large team of PEOPLE within Siebel who are recognized worldwide as thought leaders in improving sales effectiveness. We refer to this organization as Siebel Multichannel Services. These individuals work with our customers to help address all of the issues associated with people and process, that go hand-in-hand with the implementation of our technology.
