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What is Advisor Expert?
Consult Advisor Expert if you need extra assistance with a difficult Opportunity (IBO).
The Sales Environment Section, visible after clicking ‘Expert’ button, is a tool for gathering and recording information about the strategic aspects of a sales situation.
Advisor Expert uses this information to help formulate a sales strategy using Intelligent Response. This response is the computer’s best effort, based on established rules of selling, to provide assistance in strategizing this sale. It displays its own Priority value and Probability in yellow.
Use Advisor’s Priority and Probability to compare against your gut feel values. You can then evaluate why the computer thinks differently from you – if it does – and make changes to your assessment of the sales environment as you see fit.
Fig 1: Advisor Expert disagrees with user’s assessment…..
Fig 2:.. and explains why in Intelligent Response
The Advisor Expert can also agree with you.
Fig 3: Advisor Expert agrees with the user’s assessment
Enabling Sales Advisor Expert
To enable Advisor Expert on an IBO, edit that IBO and click grey Expert button in the top right corner.
Note: the button can be automatically enabled in all your new IBOs, based on the setting in your User Profile. If the button is blue (in edit mode) or if you see the word “Expert” (in read mode), then Advisor Expert is already enabled on that IBO.
Fig 4: A button to enable Advisor Expert
Sales Environment
The Sales Environment section displays for any IBO that has enabled Advisor Expert. It contains clickable buttons and fields to record details such as the competition, key decision makers, budget, etc.
Sales Environment section is divided into 3 parts, corresponding to 3 phases. Close phase may not be available if the IBO is early in the Sales Cycle.
Probe Phase
Fig 5: Probe Questions
To what degree have you established the customer’s need for this product/service? This question is specifically asking you to rate the degree that you have established a need for your product/service in the customer’s mind. You must consider all aspects that determine the need when assessing your answer.
What is the customer’s level of need for this product/service? This question is different from the first because it is asking what is your perception of the level of need for your product/service to the customer.
To what degree does your solution match the customer’s need? Asking for your opinion of where your product/service ranks in terms of satisfying your customers needs.
How does your pricing strategy match the customer’s budget? Take your pricing strategies and compare them to your customer’s budget.
What are the chances that the customer will receive the money needed for this purchase? This question is asking for your opinion on the customer’s budget for this purchase.
How familiar are you and your company with the customer’s organization? Rate both the company’s and your understanding of the customer’s organization.
What is the degree of competitive pressure in this sales opportunity? Rate how strong a position the competition holds compared to you in this sale.
Who are the Competitors? The competitors question allows you to enter the names of the various competitors who are competing with you on this sale. You can enter multiple competitors for any given sale.
Decision Makers
The decision makers area allows you to enter the names of the three main decision makers who are affecting the outcome of this sale.
The three decision makers are classified as one of three types (Economic, Technical, and User).
- Economic Decision Maker: Is the person who handles the financial considerations of the business
- Technical Decision Maker: Is the person who is making a decision on the business from technical standpoint.
- User Decision Maker: Will make the decision based on whether the product/service meets the end user criteria.
Influence: The influence drop down field allows you to rate the influence of each decision maker in the chance of acquiring the business.
Important: enter a word or phrase that describes what feature or aspect of the product or service is most important to this decision maker. (eg. Price, Performance, Delivery, Specifications, Ease of Use, etc.)
Prove Phase
Fig 6: Prove Questions
The Prove tab of the Sales Environment screen prompts you for information related to your proving skills. The information on the prove tab allows you to monitor your relationship with each decision maker and your degree of success in proving specific functionality to them.
Relationship: You can rank your relationship with each decision maker by selecting Good, OK, or Bad from the drop down box
Degree of Proof: You can select the degree of proof you provided to each decision maker by clicking on a “star” between the spectrum of “Not convinced”(0) to “Convinced”(5).
Close Phase
The Close section of the Sales Environment screen prompts you for information related to your closing skills. The information on the close tab allows you to monitor your closing effort and closing strategies regarding the current sale and share it with you colleagues by email.
The Close section also contains a running history of your closing activities that you can use to review your previous closing strategies.
Fig 7: Close section of Sales Environment
Email Notfication (1)
Select recipients of the Email that contains all the information from the Sales Environment for the Close phase. Add a short note and click Send Notification to send out the email.
Fig 8: Content of the Email sent from the Close section
Close Phase Questions (2)
Have you attempted a trial Close?: The Trial Close question asks whether or not you have attempted to close the sale. The default answer is “No” indicating that you have not attempted a trial close. If you change the answer to “Yes” another set of questions appear to record the outcome of the trial close.
Has the customer make a decision?: The Decided question appears if you answer “Yes” to Trial Close. This question is asking whether the customer has made their purchasing decision. The default answer is “No” indicating that the customer is still making up their mind. In the case where the customer has still not made their decision, you are presented with additional fields to record the barriers to closing, your potential closing strategies and whether or not you have enacted your strategy.
What are the barriers to close?: The Barriers field allows you to record any barriers that are affecting your ability to close the sale in your favour. The Barriers field only displays in cases where the customer has not yet made their purchasing decision.
What is your strategy to overcome the barriers?: The Strategy field allows you to record your strategy for overcoming any identified barriers and winning the sale. The Strategy field only displays in cases where the customer has not yet made their purchasing decision.
If the customer made the decision, the Close phase contains different fields.
Did you win or lose this IBO? The result field allows you to record the outcome of the customer’s decision and close the sales opportunity. The two possible answers for the Result field are Won and Lost.
If the customer has made their decision and opted to purchase from the competition then you select Lost as the result.
If the customer has made the decision to purchase from you then you select Won as the result.
Date Won/Lost: The date field allows you to record the date that the opportunity was either Won or Lost.
Reasons: The reason field allows you to enter the reason(s) why you Won or Lost the sale. The Reason field only displays when the opportunity has been either Won or Lost.
Previous Trial Close (3)
This section displays the history of Trial Close.
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