This client success scorer was also developed for a high-ticket, consultative sale and spans both the sales cycle and the ongoing account management relationship.  It tracks the strength of the relationship with the client and the results delivered.  The purpose with this tool was not to qualify or disqualify accounts but to realistically measure how well we were doing at the account and how to make retention and expansion more likely.

The ‘relationship strength’ section is somewhat similar to the fit / winnability tools discussed above with its tracking of initiative priority, contact level, budget size and competitive environment. Additionally, it tracks how the client awards additional business, from an RFP process (weakest relationship) to a verbal ‘give me a bid so we can move forward (strongest relationship).’ 

Another good indicator of relationship strength tracked here is how often strategic reviews are scheduled.   These reviews were face-to-face discussions with the executive sponsor about current project status and future project ideas.  Annual or bi-annual reviews was our target but something we hadn’t earned or asked for at all our customer accounts.

The ‘client results’ section first tracks the annual value created for the client.  Obviously, if you can quantify and get agreement around strong results, retention and expansion are easier.  We also scored solution usage (multiple divisions?), solution depth (multiple solutions?), and renewal status (from “no” to “automatic”). 

We felt referenceability was linked to results because if a client was agreeing to be a reference for sales, or, even better, for national pr / marketing / advertising campaigns, they were getting strong value from the solution.  We also tracked the professional success of the individual buyer  -  did the results from our solution make them a company star (strong)?  Did it get them promoted (stronger)?  Did they parlay it into a best practice industry leadership role (strongest)?

There were 30 points possible from both the relationship and the results sections and we carried the scores on our account management plan.  You’ll also notice that the 2^nd tab on the spreadsheet shows a relationship-results scorecard for 5 accounts.  We used it as a group at a sales / service kickoff to assess how strong our relationships and results were.  It was an eye-opening exercise and made us realize specifically where our relationships and our results could be stronger than they were.

• Simple Opportunity Scoring (medium average selling price (ASP), spreadsheet)
• Winnability Scoring #1 (low ASP, Salesforce.com)
• Winnability Scoring #2 (medium ASP, Goldmine)
• Sales Resource Prioritizer (high  ASP, spreadsheet)
• Client Success Scoring (high ASP, spreadsheet)

This sales cycle was a high ticket (ASP > $1M) create demand sales cycle where we needed to be smart about continually assessing fit and winnability because it was a long and resource intensive sales cycle: creative, technical and client services people were needed in every sales cycle in addition to an executive sponsor and the sales people themselves.

We had enough reps but not enough of these other folks (who also had day jobs outside of the sales cycle) to work all the opportunities.  We needed a fair and generally understood way of disqualifying opportunities because the ad hoc refereeing of resources at the sales meeting was not working well.

We tracked 2 phases of fit in a simple spreadsheet with this sales resource prioritizer.

Phase I ranked early sales cycle information that could be figured out through research and a 1^st call.  Here we ranked things like vertical market attractiveness, alignment with CEO initiatives (determined from annual reports or transcripts from investor calls), size of marketing budget, year over year sales growth (we had better success selling to greed than fear and so winners were more likely to buy our solution),  and our internal coach’s level in the prospect organization.

Phase II was the gate to delivering a full solution presentation to an account.  It ranked information that could be gleaned through a discovery phase.  It included where our solution fit priority-wise for our line-of-business VP, how strong the solution fit was, how many competitors and how committed the prospect was to a joint evaluation process.

• Simple Opportunity Scoring (medium average selling price (ASP), spreadsheet)
• Winnability Scoring #1 (low ASP, Salesforce.com)
• Winnability Scoring #2 (medium ASP, Goldmine)
• Sales Resource Prioritizer (high  ASP, spreadsheet)
• Client Success Scoring (high ASP, spreadsheet)

I used a simpler approach to ‘winnability’ tracking with a sales force that hadn’t been using opportunities to track deals.   They were selling into an emerging market so a combination of solution fit and the ‘desire to buy anything’ was a good proxy for ‘winnability’ -- our competition was prospect inaction vs. specific competitors.

Many of the reps came from relationship sales backgrounds (versus solution selling backgrounds) so once they had client interest, standard operating procedure was to send out a quote and hope for the best while they used a combination of charm and persistence to try and forge a friendship.

But in fact, they were often engaged in a ‘create demand’ sale with multiple buying influences and a product that had an implementation period of a few months. Placing all their chips on a typically low-level friend in the account wasn’t helping drive the opportunities and so there were many stalled accounts. To win more consistently, they needed to add more value during the buying process and also qualify opportunities better by asking the right questions and talking to the right people.

To help track winnability in addition to the standard opportunity completion stages, we set up a single winnability field on the opportunity to track the fit (three stages taking you from 10% - 30%) and likehood of the prospect buying anything (4 stages taking you from 40% - 90%).

Looking at the winnability ‘fit’ values, ‘client interest’ as a 10% winnability percentage reminded the reps that there was more work to do.  Being in our  target market or, if not, scoring more than 20 points on a fit calculator (similar to the simple opportunity scorer discussed above) got us to 20% winnability.  The third fit question – strong business value – addressed value delivered to the prospect.  We kept this as a conversation point versus a score sheet but the reps were expected to know why our solution was materially important to the prospect’s business.   You needed to have all three of these fits to continue working the deal.

We had three winnability ‘why buy anything’ factors – compelling event (CE), strategic mentor (SM) and budget created (BC) – that didn’t always happen in the same order or at all. 

We could win without a compelling event or a strategic mentor, but we had less control and those were less predictable sales cyles.  We defined a compelling event as ‘something bad happens if they don’t do this project by a certain date’.  We defined strategic mentor as ‘someone who can tell you if you really are winning.’

We were often creating demand, so it wasn’t unusal that we had to manufacture budget for our solution during the course of the sales cycle.  Therefore, it often happened later in the sales cycle than identifying (or creating) a compelling event and recruiting a strategic mentor.  But not always  - sometimes there was a specific budget when we arrived.  So you’ll notice that these three winnability factors are each worth 20% points and can be selected in any order.  All three of these would get us to 80% winnability.

Our opportunity completion cycle and winnability cycle converged at the same 90% final step – contract redline.  Once the prospect spends legal time redlining your contract, you are close to both completing a sales cycle and winning.

• Simple Opportunity Scoring (medium average selling price (ASP), spreadsheet)
• Winnability Scoring #1 (low ASP, Salesforce.com)
• Winnability Scoring #2 (medium ASP, Goldmine)
• Sales Resource Prioritizer (high  ASP, spreadsheet)
• Client Success Scoring (high ASP, spreadsheet)

There is logic to this approach but it is one-dimensional.  You may be at an early stage with a prospect who has bought from you at their previous company and have a high likelihood of winning or be at a later stage in 3^rd place with a very low probability of winning. 

Stage completion probabilities also suffer a timing problem when used for pipelines and forecasts– what happens when you have completed most of the opportunity stages – say you’re 80% complete  -- and although you are confident you will win, there is a good chance the deal will roll into next period?

Do you sandbag by changing the close date to next period and try to bring in the big surprise this period?  Do you leave it in this period but detach the stage probability from the stage itself and use it to show the probability of winning this period vs. winning at all?  If you take this approach, how do you track general winnability?

In a perfect world, you’d want to measure multiple dimensions of winnability, like how far you are in the cycle, how likely the prospect is to buy anything and how likely they are to buy from you.

In emerging markets where the competition is small and fragmented and doesn’t show up regularly in every deal, tracking how good the fit is and how likely the prospect is to buy anything can be a good proxy for how likely you are to win. 

This scoring tool example is an example of scoring both fit and how likely a prospect is to buy anything.  This was done in Salesforce.com and, like the first example, has 10 questions.  These are carried both at the lead and (shown here) opportunity levels. 

There are some ‘table stakes’ questions that didn’t score any points but are critical to a good fit that could be answered after an early qualification call – like ‘do they primarily sell with a direct sales model?’ and ‘is new account business important to their sales effort.’

Other questions like ‘is there a compelling event?’ or ‘have we spoke with the line VP?’ typically took more time to understand and execute.  An example of a proxy for ‘will the prospect buy anything’ was ‘how long have they had Salesforce.com?’  We found that companies that had Salesforce.com longer were more likely to be aware of its shortcomings and so further appreciate our product.

While the table stakes questions were not scored, the others were.  Six were equal to 10% and the main correlator was worth 30% so there were 90% winnability points possible.  The reason we used percentages and a total of 90% points here was so we would could look at this number in conjunction with the opportunity stage completion percentage and easily compare them.

This scoring approach is valuable for multiple reasons.  It quickly flags differences between the winnability and opportunity stage completion numbers.  If you are at an 80% opportunity completion stage and you show only a 20% chance of winning, it is worth a conversation with the rep about fit and tactics.

• Simple Opportunity Scoring (medium average selling price (ASP), spreadsheet)
• Winnability Scoring #1 (low ASP, Salesforce.com)
• Winnability Scoring #2 (medium ASP, Goldmine)
• Sales Resource Prioritizer (high  ASP, spreadsheet)
• Client Success Scoring (high ASP, spreadsheet)

  Getting your sales team to focus on winnable opportunities can be a challenge. 

I’ve spent my career selling technology but had an interesting conversation on the topic of focusing on attractive and winnable opportunities with a friend outside the industry the other day. 

He works at a mid-sized engineering firm and several folks – including the founders – are responsible for selling new business.  It turns out that only one of the new business folks (a non-founder) sells profitable projects.  Even though it costs $25K+ to work up a bid, no discipline is used to figure out where their firm adds the most value and where they are most likely to win.  So they ‘quote and hope’ and lose a lot of proposals and win a lot of unprofitable business.  But they don't know any other way.

This is not unusual.  I’ve walked into this situation many times at technology companies. I’ve seen the problem with inside sales forces selling SaaS offerings with low average selling prices ($10K / year), with field sales forces selling on-premise licensed software with high average selling prices ($1M) and with everything else in between.

I’ve found it is actually quite easy to come up with 5 – 10 questions that help reps focus on the right opportunities.

Over the next five posts I’ll walk through different variations on this theme and show you five best practice tools I’ve used to keep my reps focused on the right opportunities:

• Simple Opportunity Scoring  (medium average selling price (ASP), spreadsheet)
• Winnability Scoring #1 (low ASP, Salesforce.com)
• Winnability Scoring #2 (medium ASP, Goldmine)
• Sales Resource Prioritizer (high  ASP, spreadsheet)
• Client Success Scoring (high ASP, spreadsheet)

Simple Opportunity Scoring

Growth companies don’t always clearly define focused target markets, thinking that focusing on specific markets would be limiting and compromise growth in light of their horizontal solution and its wide appeal.  And, of course, all these horizontal prospects have the same basic problem and so the same basic solution makes sense – who doesn’t want to fish in a bigger pond?

One reason is that sales reps –   spurred on by core character traits like optimism, creativity and perseverance – often feel like they can win anything if they apply enough grit.  And they will certainly supply a lot of heartfelt talk every Monday morning at the sales meeting about why their deal is a great fit even though it is quite different than any current customer implementation.

And the rep will win some of these outlier deals, help make a quarter and sometimes even open up a new, viable market for the company.   Everyone is happy.

More often than not, though, these deals where the rep is transposing value delivered on the fly are lost.  And when they are won, it often turns out that the solution needs a few tweaks because it’s actually a little different in the new industry -- service scrambles, development scrambles, the rep starts to get calls from the new customer, the customer’s not refereanceable yet, the new market is not necessarily that attractive, etc.  Now everyone isn’t quite so happy.   

Abdicating market management to sales reps is not a great idea.  Sales reps need guidance in figuring out and focusing on those opportunities that are most attractive and winnable.

Short of getting full target market alignment from the management team and having a well-honed marketing team that is disciplined in delivering targeted leads, there are some easy sales tools a sales manager can use to help your reps focus on the right deals.

Here is an example of a scoresheet I used to rank new opportunities with reps at a small software company that was wasting a lot of time pursuing random stuff.  There are ten qualification questions, each worth 2 points, so a 20 point score would be a perfect fit.

For this company, a prospect got ‘fit’ points if it was in the most penetrated market, near headquarters, had a need that matched our easiest-to-deliver solution, if its business had a high average selling price, if our primary contact was highly placed, if it was big enough to afford the product, if we delivered high value, if we could get a decent size starter deal and if there was a good expansion opportunity.

This tool was designed so all the answers, or proxys for the answers, were easy for the rep to figure out.  If the rep didn’t know the budget for our product category (direct marketing, in this case), we would use 1% of annual revenue.  This helped us see that typically we needed prospective with a minimum of $50M in annual revenue. 

We had a simple value calculator to determine the value we delivered at an account that any rep could use and so on.

There were three scoring outcomes: work the deal, walk from the deal and evaluate case-by case.  The most valuable category was ‘walk from the deal’ unless determined strategic by the CEO.  We would review deals during the 1:1s and were able to quickly eliminate a lot of the losers with minimal fuss from the rep.

We would attach the spreadsheet to the opportunity in our CRM system.

Practically speaking, going through this exercise a few times with each rep helps change behavior. It is a good tool to keep around to ramp up new reps