Sales Management 2.0 - Featured Blog Posts

Growing a Brokerage Sales Organization

2009-06-26T14:07:58.193Z

Culture and Process First; Then Technology

Independent insurance agents and brokerages are gaining efficiencies with technology. More efficiencies are on the way as vendors and carriers roll out real-time communications.

But with so many processes now automated and keystrokes eliminated, this is an excellent time to re-address the real inherent value of the independent agent. That value is around sales—unless a sale happens, nothing happens.

Efficiency—while continuing to be very important—can’t be the end game. The sales must first happen in order for all of the other improvements in brokerage workflows and technology to make a difference.

If a brokerage can’t create an effective sales organization, it can’t create enough growth to satisfy its insurance carriers. And if it can’t create enough growth, the great producers in that firm will leave for greener pastures.

Successful owners of sales-driven organizations use a four-step process for growth and profitability:

1. Infuse the brokerage with a culture of marketing and sales
2. Develop and implement workflows for marketing, selling and processing business
3. Apply proper technology to manage these workflows
4. Hire outstanding talent to leverage that technology

Sustaining an effective sales management process over the long term has traditionally been a major challenge for independent agents and brokerages. This four-step process can enable the brokerage to transcend these traditional difficulties.

Culture

Let's begin with the premise that most agencies simply do not have a sales environment.
When you ask the age-old question to an agent, “If you had to define what you provide best to your customers, what would it be?” The answer is, “We provide really good service.”

Most consumers perceive that agents and agencies provide sales and service, while most agents look to sales as a by-product or a given in their agencies.

In the flurry of day-to-day insurance processing work, and responding to customer requests, owners often lose sight of the big picture: the need for proactive client and prospect contact, which results in more sales.

Brokerage mergers, which create new and sometimes unexpected cultural differences, also can impact sales. This issue is not to be taken lightly. A little history reminds us of how it often has played out in the real world.

In the 1950s the typical independent agent placed himself on a street corner in Small Town America and he became Mr. Everything. He became a trusted advisor in the community. He liked to contribute and be involved. He was a smart guy, and insurance was a great product that he really didn’t have to sell hard.

Then the brokerage begins to expand. It started out as a one or two-person brokerage and pretty soon it’s a 10-horse thing and then a 20-horse thing and decades later it’s a much a larger entity.

The lack of sales leadership is not just an issue in larger, merged entities. Every brokerage needs a sales and marketing quarterback. That requires retooling of human skills and creating the right environment, not just new technology tools. There is a lot of difference between being a really good insurance agent and being a really good manager of a sales process.

Some brokerage principals should continue in their current role as a really good insurance agent, and bring in a really good manager for the sales process who helps set up a sales-oriented culture throughout the firm. These are the firms that are positioned to use technology tools to enhance their sales process.

Not too long ago, the typical brokerage sales process was that Monday morning arrived, and the producers would ride out on their horses and sell. It worked well. But times have changed. Agents now have to have a pipeline in the office to produce prospects/customers over a long period of time.

A strong sales culture coming from top management is critical. It’s not enough to have good salespersons. A typical independent brokerage can find training on how to hire the right personality and how to turn them into an effective salesperson.

But if you don’t have a system behind those salespeople in this day of niche marketing, just having good salespeople knocking on doors from one end of Main Street to another and coming back with a slew of sales leads isn’t what the brokerage needs.

What the brokerage needs is the ability to develop a program, for example, on the types of leads or accounts it can bring into the brokerage because it knows the types of business it can place.

This cultural change necessarily results in upheaval in staff responsibilities. Independent agents who routinely take full advantage of new technology face an issue. Yes, you do free up resources with smart technology, but are the people remaining the right ones to handle the sales process? Painful decisions might need to be made.

Establishing and Sustaining an Effective Sales Process

The traditional brokerage entrepreneur can realize a whole new level of achievement if he or she orchestrates the transition of his or her brokerage into a sales organization. They, or someone they bring in, must manage the process. They need to create sales teams.

Agents need technology to ensure the sales manager knows that his or her salespeople are making the necessary contacts. In a best-case scenario, a sales manager would be in place – a coach willing to oversee that process. And sometimes the best producer is the worst one to be the coach.

A salesperson must assist in creating the needed process by providing input as to what needs to be done, along with the steps and strategies. Once you develop a sales strategy and a system, it may be tweaked a little bit as time goes by depending on demographics.

Basically, however, once it is created, the salesperson must be totally removed from implementation. Here’s why, the brokerage may want to target the H.S.A. small business market. They want to write every small business owner in their territory. He gets a list of viable small business prospects to target and they develop a system to do that (getting a referral, or direct mail, or seminar marketing, or association marketing). Then an agent for the brokerage is in charge of implementing the system. They send out direct mail and after the first week make phone calls. But after 10 calls and seven appointments they get excited and they are now busy going after those appointments. But in the meantime, they dropped the other part, such as sending out the letters, following up with phone calls – the part that creates those appointments. It’s an up-and-down cycle.

Distribution Sales Training and Support

Thus agencies need Distribution Sales Training and Support to assist the brokerage’s marketing and sales process and to assure that the brokerage continues to generate an ongoing stream of viable prospects. The responsibilities of this coordination are to:

· Oversee the brokerage’s marketing and sales processes
· Track producers to make sure they are making the necessary contacts and seeing to it that the information gets passed on and into the brokerage management system (or sales and marketing system)
· Coordinate mailings (newsletters, cards, promotional items)
· Process returns – keeps mailing info current on brokerage management system
· Update form letters

The Distribution Sales Training and Support breaks down the whole process from the beginning. How do you find and identify prospects or suspects whom you think would be interested? How do you match them with carriers you have? And how do you create a system of contacts to get the foot in the door? That’s the marketing process.

The sales process is a system to assure that the detailed proposal is made, that the carriers and their quotes are presented, and that the sale is closed. This department also assures that the proactive services proposed to the customer are in fact delivered on time by the brokerage. Then the brokerage prepares for the first renewal, which means ongoing sales activity to retain the business and to broaden the protection provided where appropriate.

Breaking Down the Process for New Sales

When a prospect is looking for insurance and an agent is looking for prospects to write insurance, they are both looking for information. The prospect is looking for coverage and costs, and the agent is looking at the prospect to qualify him/her through field underwriting and placement. It is all about information.

The marketing process/area of an brokerage should start this flow of information by developing “suspects” and then by distinguishing within this group between suspects – those people and businesses an agent “suspects” may need his/her service – and prospects– those people and businesses that an agent “knows” may need his/her service because an x-date is secured or some other signal is given by the potential customer.

Technology Tools to Strengthen the Sales Process

Technology to support the marketing and sales processes falls into five broad categories:

1. Campaign manager: Software that automates the sales and/or marketing functions to prospects or customers.
2. Submission and proposal manager: Software that tracks where in the process to insurance companies, prospects, and customers the quoting/underwriting is currently.
3. True contact relations manager: Software to account-develop current customers.
After a brokerage writes a piece of the customer’s business, it can begin a marketing process to write the rest of the account.
4. Call center technology for a sales campaign: Software (e.g., telephony) and hardware
(e.g., headsets) that allow agencies to contact prospects and update account information while setting appointments for producer follow up.
5. 24/7 service pieces: Software for customer self-services, and customer processing of insurance information by the customer, as well as e-newsletters on the brokerage’s website. Other services to customers and prospects are available depending on how expansively a brokerage wants to develop those services.

Once the culture in the agency has evolved so producers stop freelancing based on what they did in the past, then owners can look at technology to support that new sales culture. One key element in a sales-oriented agency is the ability to sustain the process in order to provide consistency over a long period of time, fully leveraging the marketplace opportunity.

Brokerage owners must have Distribution Sales Training and Support with the skills to sustain a sales management culture and sales process over the long term. Agents need a customer relationship management (CRM) system that facilitates prospect/customer contacts on a proactive basis based upon the additional services they have interest in or are candidates for.

Some agencies find their brokerage management systems suitable for handling their sales and marketing activities, while others find using a third party system more efficient and effective.

The first step is for an brokerage to gain a full understanding of the sales and marketing capabilities of its brokerage management system before deciding to go to a third party system to meet its needs. If considering a third party system, it is important to know how well this system integrates with the brokerage’s management system. Some agents have been successful using their brokerage management systems to track their sales process and to generate the necessary management reports.

A brokerage management system is used for most marketing efforts. All prospects are keyed into the system. It tracks last contact, form of contact, industry, etc. A variety of reports off the system can be run – all of which help to determine the next step. This needs to be done actively, and then follow up with agents to make sure they have provided the information about their appointments. Without that, the system wouldn't have good information.

Conclusion

The Independent Agency System certainly is competitive. In most sales opportunities, a direct-writing company can’t compete successfully against an independent agent and broker who can offer the client an array of products. In both personal and commercial lines, independent agents and brokers usually have the weapons to carry the day.

But first they need to have the sales system to get in front of a steady stream of potential new customers. The direct writers have been successful doing this with the massive advertising, disciplined sales process, and training they have put in place and required of their producers.

As the Independent Agency System inevitably becomes more efficient, greater efficiency should improve productivity by enhancing the manufacturing and sales processes. Without a closed sale, there is no productivity to increase. The sales culture in an agency must have the principals deeply involved. If not, sales will suffer. The owner is the bus driver and carriers can be the fuel for the bus.

Agencies need a solid, effective sales management strategy, and technology will necessarily be a factor in any such strategy. We encourage those with a stake in the Independent Agency System to continue to encourage the development of a sales culture coupled with the implementation of sustainable sales processes which can be managed and enhanced with technology.

Have You Mastered Sales 1.5?

2009-06-25T16:48:12.954Z

Sales 2.0 is getting tons of buzz right now in the technology market. There are lots of different definitions out there, but here's mine:

Sales 2.0 is an outcome not an event. The process requires you to transform your business from one that is focused on selling to one that is focused on letting the market buy from you.
Sales 2.0 requires a change in mindset. It requires focus on buyer personas, lead nurturing, content development, social networking strategies, web 2.0 tool, etcetera, etcetera.

Pretty head spinning, right?

So how do you begin to transform your organization?

Take baby steps: you need to master Sales 1.5 before Sales 2.0. You need a solid foundation on which to initiate real change.

We all have limited resources and an organization can only absorb so much at once. Taking a measured approach will result in better outcomes than just throwing yourself into the fray and launching new initiatives, technology or otherwise.

Here are 6 recommendations on how to make sure you have mastered Sales 1.5:

Take a look at your sales goals
Are they realistic and achievable? Are they based on real world data or were they handed to you?

Now, more than ever, numbers need to be based on real world data defined by how many buyers that fit your ideal customer profile are available in each territory. The days of vanilla quotas are dead. The days of data driven quotas have arrived.

Take a look at your compensation plans
Are they driving desired behavior? Are they based on opportunity or are they based around activity?

Revenue is always the end game but what other factors drive success in your organization - new logos, increased customer retention, new verticals or products...think about those factors and include them in your compensation plans.

Take a look at your roles & responsibilities
Is each member of your sales team held accountable for specific goals? What is Inside Sales responsible for v. the Field v. Lead Generation? What are the metrics by which Marketing is measured?

Resources are precious commodities and you can't afford to squander them. Marketing and Sales need to share a common set of definitions, metrics for measurement and goals.

Take a look at your messaging & sales tools
How do you communicate with the market? Is it all about you or is it about delivering value to your buyers?

Your sales organization must have great content to use throughout the sales process. The education of buyers can't end after they deliver a product overview and a case study.

Take a look at your talent
When was the last time you profiled your best performers? Have you evaluated your recruiting and interview processes to make sure they are effective?

The economy isn't the only reason you might not be making your number. How much of your budget do you allocate to professional development for your team?

Take a look at your systems
Do they deliver value to Sales or just require admin work from them? Is the Sales Org actively using all the tools at their disposal?

Make sure Reps are given the tools they need to better understand and serve customers & prospects. Make sure your systems highlight and deliver the right tools at the right time to move Sales opportunities forward.

Okay, do you feel good about all of the above? Great! Now you are ready to start thinking about Sales 2.0 because you have a solid foundation on which to build and initiate change (a blog topic for another day perhaps).

There's no silver bullet. There's nothing but hard work, well thought out strategies and flawless execution.

But you already knew that, right? Happy Selling!

Inside Sales Experts Blog

(Photo credit: maxbisschop)

Sales Leadership Using "Girl Scout Power"

2009-06-20T04:53:04.120Z

The Girl Scouts of America was teetering on the edge of extinction when Frances Hesselbein was named president of the organization in early 1976.

The Girls Scouts, an organization comprised of thousands of volunteers from across the fifty states, had been going about their business in a very traditional way for years...but that way was now placing the organization in jeopardy.

Bleeding funding and declining enrollments, Frances knew she need to change things fast or the organization would cease to exist.

But how could she motivate a group of thousands of volunteers?

Because her position had no inherent power to command, she quickly realized that she could not order the necessary changes in behavior.

She knew that she needed to evoke a different style of management.

The genius of Frances was that she understood that by including as many people as possible in the process of change, she could harness the power of others to achieve the important goals she was responsible with achieving.

Her philosophy, like the philosophy of Sales Management Mastery was very clear:

"The more power you give, the more power you get".

Frances saved the Girl Scouts of America, not by wielding her power, but rather by sharing her power with those of her followers. And none of her followers had high sales quotas to hit in the middle of a recession!

As a sales manager, do you wield power or do you give it away like Frances Hesselbein?

Its tough...with so many initiatives and orders coming down from above and being planted smack dab in the middle of your plate every single day, its difficult not to lapse into a "I order - you do" kind of management style.

In spite of that, top-performing sales mangers rise above the fray and do not succumb to the temptation to command. After all, what sales consultant really wants to be told what to do all day long?

Your job as a top-performing sales manager is to hire and retain top performing salespeople who can think on their own and produce exceptional results on thier own. The top-performing sales manager gets the best out of them by giving away their power, so that the sales rep becomes empowered.

And thats how you lead with "Girl Scout Power".

Post a response to this post and tell me how you get the best from your sales consultants by giving away your power.

If you like this post, then get your FREE copy of the Top 15 Sales Management Mastery Tips, then learn the first step to Sales Management Mastery by checking it out here: http://www.salesmanagementmastery.com/landing.html

Sales Management Mastery
http://www.salesmanagementmastery.com

Beg, Steal And Borrow Your Sales Techniques

2009-06-17T14:49:19.217Z

My current place of work is an open office environment. This means that for each sales call that is made, I can hear it. I can hear it when my colleagues get beaten down on price by a professional purchaser or when they attempt to fend off a refund because they exaggerated the features or benefits of their product.

Listening to your colleagues’ sales calls is one of the best ways to understand the wide variety of sales techniques around and provides you with a chance to expand your arsenal. While I write this post I can lean back and listen to a whole host of closing techniques. I can hear them all; alternative, ask for it, fear, trial offer, alternate vendor and assumptive close. Some are poor attempts and some are great attempts.

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, so if your colleagues have some great closes or opening questions - use them! When you first start out in sales, plagiarism is one of the most effective tools at your disposal. After a while, you’ll see that your colleagues will be plagiarising techniques from you!

- Sales Informant

Your average percent over target is 50%. You are 10% above the next best average. You seem to be ‘closing’ everything and everyone. You’re on fire. You’re magnificent!

2009-06-17T14:46:44.766Z

Are you REALLY though?

I used to work within a small sales team, pro actively selling software to prospective clients, worldwide. I worked there for 3 years and I had perfected the art of either coercing our clients into purchasing or simply verbally bullying them into purchasing. I even started to train other colleagues in the fantastic art of sales I had perfected over the last 36 months, providing tips/tricks on closing and obtaining that sought after signature. I had arrived and I was brilliant.

Unfortunately my colleague won the award for ‘Best Sales Person’ that year. His award was based on the comparison metric noted above.

Each and every day your sales managers are stuck in the statistical trenches searching through mangled data, just looking for that one pulse that will prove they were correct. Unfortunately they use this approach when attempting to stamp a skill level on the sales people too.

In order to obtain a fair reading of skill from a sales person, you need to obtain the correct statics and introduce the human factor. By listening to the sales calls in question you can easily generate a more detailed reading of the sales person’s ability.

Never rely on metrics alone when judging your sales team as you’ll dramatically increase the chances of rewarding the wrong person.

- Sales Informant

Are You Selling Your L-Factor

2009-06-16T16:32:00.381Z

This is my article from the new Summer eBook from Top Sales Experts International.

It’s 147 pages and includes articles from some of the foremost sales experts in the world. People like Dan Adams, Keith Rosen, Wendy Weiss , Nancy D. Solomon, Joanne Black, Jonthan Farrington, Paul McCord , Cindy King and Kelly Robertson to name but a few.

To download your copy - just click through to my blog.

————————————————————————————–

A person’s likeability factor is often referred to by people such as Simon Cowell when assessing contestants for TV shows like Pop Idol. While it might be a commonly used term, how many of us really understand what it means? How can you use your own L-factor to improve your sales performance?

Definitions of “likeable” can be vague. Terms such as “Easy to like”, “attractive” or “appealing” are just some of the descriptions that are often used. In the book “The Likeability Factor” author Tim Saunders tells us that it is only when we enter the fields of psychology, physiology, and personality that a more concise description of likeably can be found.

Tim defines our likeability as, “An ability to create positive attitudes in other people through the delivery of emotional and physical benefits” He identifies four key factors that go to make up each individual’s L-Factor, they are:

● Friendliness: your ability to communicate liking and openness to others.

● Relevance: your capacity to connect with others’ interests, wants, and needs.

● Empathy: your ability to recognize, acknowledge, and experience other people’s feelings.

● Realness: the integrity that stands behind your likeability and guarantees its authenticity.

We refer to actions in sales, where both the prospect and the salesperson benefit, as win-win. Improving your L-factor is also win-win, because not only do those who know you benefit, but as Tim points out - you also benefit. You win more of “the popularity contests” that define your life.

In sales, your likeability is vital in creating good first impressions, building rapport and allowing the prospect to trust you. These are critical building blocks to creating strong relationships with customers.

Likewise, in a competitive situation where two solutions are evenly matched, the salesperson’s L-factor could quite easily become decisive. So what are some practical steps you can take to increase your own Lfactor with your customers?

————————————————————————————–

1. Friendliness - Be more open to creating a lasting Impression with your Customers.

One of the first ways that you convey friendliness to prospects is through non-verbal communication.

● An open posture
● Using open gestures
● Maintaining eye contact
● Interested facial expressions
● Smiling
● Laughing

Note: Remember that later evidence is only interpreted by customers in light of their first impressions of you.

————————————————————————————–

2. Relevance - Let your Customers know you are listening to what they want.

Active listening is how you communicate your listening to customers. This means nodding, conveying expression in your face and making good eye contact. Also important are not interrupting, asking the customer checking questions and taking notes. Remember, it’s how you dramatise and convey you’re listening that really matters.

————————————————————————————–

3. Empathy - To better know your customers, first get to know how they are feeling.

Developing empathy with your customers requires that you manage your responses to:

a. Your customers and their circumstances.
b. Your customer’s reactions to you.

● Be careful not to pre-judge an emotional state, tone or reaction, as there are nearly always circumstances beyond your knowledge.

● Rather pose questions to better understand where the particular emotion (good or bad) is coming from.

● The best way to develop empathy with customers is to ALWAYS try to look at things from their perspective.

● Remember, the first step in getting customers to feel strongly about you is to first understand what they already feel strongly about.

————————————————————————————–

4. Realness - Guarantee your Customers nothing but the Truth (even when it hurts).

Honesty is an integral part of sales. Without it, there cannot be trust and without trust, there cannot be a relationship. The ability to develop strong relationships is the critical aspect of a successful outcome in sales - which in turn makes honesty so vital.

Remember (Honesty ● Trust ● Relationship ● Sales)

Most salespeople are never intentionally dishonest, but there are times when pressure or temptation creates traps that we can fall into. These sometimes result in salespeople venturing into grey areas and telling customers white lies.

Traps to be very careful of:

● When a customers asks a question where you don’t know the answer to or only know some of the answer. Not wanting to appear foolish - the temptation here can be to bluff - don’t do it!

● When a solution only partially meets a customer’s needs, but they continue to be interested - the temptation can be to fail to highlight that the solution will not meet all of their needs - don’t do it!

● When a competitor makes very ambitious claims - the temptation can be to follow suit - don’t do it!

● Where a customer is still struggling to grasp how a solution will work, but still wants to buy - the temptation can be to choose to explain after the deal is done - don’t do it!

The easy rule to apply to any circumstances is, if in doubt - DON’T do it!

————————————————————————————–

Getting prospects and customers to like us more is by no means easy. The challenge to building great person to person relationships, very often comes down to our understanding and acceptance of the individual’s uniqueness (warts and all). The skill is in finding the common ground.

There are certain traits that we all find appealing in others - business and sales are no different in that regard. Becoming a better salesperson may require that you become a better person.

Applying these 4 simple, yet effective, principles in both your personal and professional life will help.

Oh yeah! And your customers will trust, respect and LIKE YOU MORE for it.

Are You Truly Maximizing?

2009-06-15T19:47:15.720Z

Saw this article by Jay Abraham, author of the new book The Sticking Point Solution. Thought you all might like it.

Are You Truly Maximizing?
By Jay Abraham,
Author of The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business From Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times

Are you making the best possible use of everything you've got?

Are you getting the best return on everything you're investing in your business -- your money, your effort, and above all, your time?

Everybody knows at least one highly productive person, someone for whom there seems to be more than 24 hours in a day. This person is 10 times more productive than her competitor because she understands the concept of highest and best use. It's a rather simple -- yet inarguable -- concept. Use your time, and everything else you invest, to produce the greatest strategic, long-term pay-off.

Most businesspeople fail to view time expenditure the same way they view all other expenditures in their lives -- even though time, opportunity cost, and effort are the 3 most precious, intangible assets you possess. Instead, most people waste time on unimportant things when they could be investing it in their strategy. As a result, they miss out on valuable opportunities to grow and expand their business. Most people just don't make the highest and best use of what they've got. Fortunately, you no longer have to count yourself among their ranks.

If you're not practicing the concept of highest and best use, you're sacrificing your potential, your profits, and your future -- and most businesspeople are. So let's talk about how to optimize the highest and best use, not just of your time, but of your relationships, opportunities, activities, and the money your business spends.

The Secret of the Highest and Best Use of Your Time and Talents
The concept of highest and best use is deceptively easy. Just use your time and your talents to the maximum potential -- simple, right?

And yet, most of the world fails to do it. For starters, most people don't have a clue which items on their to-do list actually qualify as "highest" and "best." If you're thinking to yourself, "Hmmm. I'm not sure I do, either," you might be working at as little as a third or less of your capacity, because you're spending time on tasks that are far less important or result in much smaller payoff. That's a lot of efficiency you can't stand to lose!

Let's try an exercise right now that will help you identify your "highest and best." Start by writing down the 3 most critical tasks you're paid by your business to do. Then break down those 3 tasks into sub-tasks, for which there are usually as many as 7. Then give each of those sub-tasks 3 different values based on their relevancy, your competency, and your true passion for doing them.

Now it's time to review what you've come up with. If the task is not relevant but you're competent at it, it's a waste of your time. If your competency in a particular task is less than average, then you're not the most efficient person for the job, which means it's a huge expenditure of energy and, again, a waste of your time. For example, why should you review every employee's time card, if doing so eats up half your day? I'm not saying the time cards shouldn't be reviewed, but you shouldn't be the one reviewing them first. Get someone else to do the heavy lifting, then spot-check review or audit their work. (We'll solve the problem of just who should be doing the heavy lifting in a minute.)

What this exercise will help you do is determine which tasks you should permanently remove from your to-do list, so that you can put yourself into the geometric power position that brings the greatest yield. Whatever your tasks and subtasks may be, it's imperative that you're working on the most important tasks for you. Here's the bottom line:
Anything that isn't relevant, that you're not competent in, or that you're not completely passionate about should be delegated to somebody else.

This is true even if it means you need 10 people doing the same job 80% as well as you. That's still 8 times greater efficiency and results, rather than doing 100% of the job yourself. It frees you up to focus your most precious assets -- your time, energy, and opportunity costs -- on the things that matter most and that deliver the most meaningful, ongoing results.

If you'll quit trying to raise your weaknesses up to the level of mediocrity and instead do only the things that you do best while delegating everything else, you'll get the best possible return on your investment of time in your business. You'll make more money, and you'll have a lot more fun.

©2009 Jay Abraham, author of The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business From Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times

Author Bio
Jay Abraham, author of The Sticking Point Solution: 9 Ways to Move Your Business From Stagnation to Stunning Growth In Tough Economic Times, is founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc., in Los Angeles, California and has spent the last twenty-five years solving problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines for over 10,000 clients in more than 400 industries worldwide. Jay has won high praise as a marketing genius in USA Today, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, OTC Stock Journal, National Underwriter, Entrepreneur, Success, Inc., and many other publications. Jay's clients range from business royalty to small business owners, many of whom acknowledge that his efforts and ideas have led to an increase in profits ranging into the millions of dollars. He lives in Los Angeles.

Learn more about Jay Abraham at www.abraham.com

I'd Like to recommend a few "Must Reads"

2009-06-15T15:17:38.765Z

Some of the things that most stick with me throughout my sales career are things quoted to me in sales literature. For example, Robert Kiyosaki, America's famous "Rich Dad" mentioned that the day we stop learning is the day we stop growing. I think that the day we stop learning is the day our wealth stops growing. Ziglar mentioned that if we spend a certain amount of money on personal hygiene, like deodorant and toothpaste, that we should spend an equal amount of money on knowledge, so that our selling skills don't wreak. You wouldn't approach a prospect stinking of BO or dog breath, would you? So how could you approach them with mediocre, and tacky sales techniques? Everyone knows that in the ancient profession of sales, 20% of any company's sales force bring in 80% of their business. Why? Because it's only 20% who go the extra mile and think about brushing up constantly on their prospecting, and delivery. Of course I don't agree with and use everything I find in books and magazines, but it's like the Halloween candy that kids get. They get ton's of cheap candy mixed in with their own personal favorites. Sure, they eat up what they like the most first, but after its gone, they're surprised at how good that generic jaw breaker was, and they start to eat it up as well. My point is that to give all of us a better name, and to increase your own personal revenues, take 15 minutes a day, and read something related to personal growth, or something related to sales. If you've already read something that has been on your shelf for more than a year, read it again, and again.
Some books that for me are must reads are "How to Master the Art of Selling" by Tom Hopkins. It's one of those books that you should have a notebook handy with you to be able to take what you learn, and put it on paper to customize it to your own product or service.
Another must read is "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill. It is a timeless lesson of the power of positive thinking.
On i tunes, you can find podcasts like the one from this site, Sales Management 2.0, and Zig Ziglar has a great one as well. Your local library has books on tape you can listen to on your ride to and from work. You'd be amazed at how quickly you fly through a book when you listen to it in your car. I've been listening to "Think Big and Kick Ass" by Donald Trump. Now there is a powerful message! I never knew what my opinion was about Trump until listening to this Audio Book. Now I like the guy. He has the "cojones" to speak his mind, and is willing to share his secrets with others so they can benefit from adapting his mindset as well.
Never judge a book or article by its cover. Accept everything you can to enrich your life and career. Take what you can use, and don't discard the rest, just put it into a bag for later. You never know when you'll be able to use it.

How Focus Helps Sales Management Effectiveness

2009-06-11T18:48:24.698Z

In a strong economy just showing up to play is enough to achieve your sales objectives. In today’s economic environment sales leaders are facing sales force downsizing and poor sales rep morale. Sales reps are frustrated by longer sales cycles, dropping demand, unrealistic quotas, concerns about declining income and losing their jobs.

The key to success is Focus, Focus, and Focus. As the leader of your sales organization you should ask yourself 1. Am I focused? 2. What is Focused Leadership? and 3. Why is focus so important to my success?

Ask yourself the following questions to ascertain your FOCUS factor.

Have you established your 2-3 critical success factors (CSFs) that will help you achieve your objectives?
Have you determined the key activities that will help you achieve your CSFs?
Have you communicated the key activities to your sales team?
Does each and every one of your sales people know what the key activities are?
Have they incorporated these key activities into their daily plans?
Are your sales managers coaching the reps on these key activities?
Are the sales reps accountable to delivering on these key activities?
If you have answered “YES” to a majority of these questions, then you’re Focused! Congratulations you will thrive. Feel free to share what you are doing. Send me an email.

If you answered “NO” to more than 2 questions keep reading.

Focused Sales Leadership is about determining, communicating and inspiring your sales to apply all their energy on the critical success factors/activities.

Many of your competitors have surveyed the market and may have come up with similar strategies. The differentiating factor between surviving these difficult times and getting your butt kicked relates to how well your sales team executes. Successful sales execution is about ensuring that each and every one of your sales reps clearly understands their marching orders (CSF). It is imperative that your front line sales managers keep their sales teams focused on executing the critical success activities.

If you would like to find out more about how The Focus Factor can benefit your organization coming soon at http://www.starresults.com

Focused on your success,

Steven Rosen, MBA

Sales Management Expert

Creating Value, Business and Personal

2009-06-11T14:23:00.364Z

I've been writing about creating differentiated value for your customers. Let me focus on a couple of elements of value---in this you will discover why "generic" value propositions miss the mark.

Value has many dimensions. As business and sales professionals, we tend to focus on the business elements of value--how much we can reduce costs, how much we can improve revenues, how much we can improve quality, and so forth. Business value, particularly when quantified is critical in sales.

There is another dimension of value that we often miss, but which can be the most important and differentiating element of your value proposition. It's personal value--what you bring to each customer you work with.

My friend, Charles Green, wrote a post on Two Questions. It's an outstanding post and part of it talks about personal value. He talks about asking the question: "How are you doing?"

Personal value is all about the individual, asking "How are you doing" helps you discover what your customer values and how you can help hat person. By exploring this aspect of value you learn about your customer's goals, dreams, and aspirations. You learn about their frustrations, problems and needs. You develop a relationship with the customer, showing that you are really interested and that you care about them---as individuals.

Elements of personal value can be very simple, but have a profound impact on your customer. It could be as simple as "get my boss off my back," "let me get home at a reasonable hour so I can spend more time with my family." It may be, "get me a promotion," or "get me a bonus." Until, you explore the personal side of value with each individual involved in the decision making process, you don't know how you can make a difference for each of them.

We talk about sales being about relationships, but without exploring the personal element of value, it is impossible to develop deep relationships with your customers.

Personal value is an important part of your value proposition. We have seen, many times, that the business aspects of our value proposition are roughly equal to those of the competition. From a business point of view, our value proposition is not differentiated. However, customers make the decision for us because of the personal element of the value proposition--they know we really care.

Before concluding, let me add a warning note. Developing and delivering personal value requires commitment on your part. It must be genuine, it must endure beyond the "deal." If you don't care, if you aren't committed to developing deep, genuine relationships with your customers, you are being manipulative. Customers will see through this quickly and you will never achieve your goals.

As you build your value proposition, think of your real differentiator--it is the deep relationships and trust you build with your customers. It is how you make a difference in their lives. This is the most sustainable and differentiated element of value anyone can create.

Fixing Sales Training, Chicken Or Egg?

2009-06-09T23:30:28.247Z

I've been quietly following my friend Dave Stein's posts, tweets, and rants about the state of sales training this week. I guess the ASTD conference set him off, but I've been quietly cheering him along.

Sales training seems to be one of those things people constantly complain about --- management, sales people, training people --- yet somehow we are content in not doing anything about it. Billions of dollars/euros/yuan are spent, with little impact; but those dollars will be spent next year (maybe a little less) and the same complaints will persist.

Where does the fault lie? I'm not sure, I'm not sure I care. Training is blamed a lot of the time, often justifiably, but often their hands are tied. Management is not engaged as they should be, but given their time pressures, finding time may be difficult.

I want to focus more on solutions, how do we break this conundrum. Some thoughts:

1. Nothing will be changed until sales management recognizes the biggest leverage to improving sales effectiveness and productivity is to make the development of their people their number 1 priority.

I've written a lot about management's role in coaching and developing people. I continue to believe the highest impact management activity is actively engaging their sales people, individually and as teams, in developing their people.

Management --- sales leadership is not about administration. It is an aspect of the job, but it is a cost driver not an enhancement of the sales function. There are increasing numbers of very powerful tools that can help managers do the administration. Sales executives must focus on business process simplification to reduce the time managers have to spend on administration.

Management ---- sales leadership is not about being a Super Salesperson. Sales managers have to be strong sales people, but their job isn't to drive deals or to swoop into save the day. If they were super salespeople as individual contributors, they probably were fully consumed time-wise. Giving them broader responsibility managing more people, a larger territory, provides no leverage on their time so expecting them to do more is unrealistic.
Management --- sales leadership is about getting things done through people. Yet many managers don't know this is their job, they don't have the skills to do it, their performance is not measured on people development, and they may be afraid. Sales executives must realize their most leveraged activity is to set the a standard for people development, to hold their people accountable for it, to measure it, and to do it themselves---coaching and developing their own management team.

The bottom line here is: It's simple, there is no more important or highly leveraged activity to driving sales results and effectiveness than developing and coaching your people--managers and individual contributors -- to reach the highest levels of performance.

2. Sales training is too important to be left to the sales trainers. I'm not criticizing people in the training organization (well maybe a little), but we are asking them to step up to something that is beyond their experience base---and this is a management problem.

Years ago, when I was at IBM, high potential leaders always spent some part of their careers in training and development. Every sales training class I went to was led by someone who had been a sales person, the value of "been there, done that" is so important in driving relevance into training.

Moving high potential sales leaders into a training function also improves their ability as managers and leaders. To be effective in training, they have to learn how to be effective in coaching and development. They spend time in developing their skills on what will be the most important thing they can do in the future as managers and sales leaders.

We see many large companies doing this as part of their OJT management development and in providing relevant training to sales. Organizations that staff their sales training organizations with training professionals are disadvantaged -- and it's not the trainer's fault. I think professional trainers are very good and make great contributions, but I think the contribution is improved my mixing the training organization with high potential sales practitioners.

Small and medium companies may not have this luxury, they may not even have a training department. This mandates that sales managers and executives take an active role in developing and executing the training programs. They must set objectives, they must evaluate alternatives, and they must make sure the training is integrated into their overall business management process. The process of doing this will both improve the results of training and will help managers develop their own capabilities.

Bottom line: Sales management has to own and engage in setting the training strategy and even in training delivery. It is a fast way for them to develop their own skills.

3. Training needs to stand up to sales management. Often, I see well meaning training professionals wanting to do the right job, but not feeling empowered to do this. Recently, I was involved (unsuccessfully) with the training organization of a large company. They had an impossible task.

Sales management had mandated some innovative training programs and dumped it in the laps of the training organization. The training department had real concerns about the programs. There were some budgetary concerns, but those weren't central. The training organization had seen millions invested in training on these specific skills in the past, with no result. They were concerned about replicating the same thing. One of their tasks was to develop management coaching training. Yet, managers were not held accountable and many did not believe that coaching was part of their responsibility.

Bottom line: It takes courage, but training needs to stand up to management, forcing them to do the right thing, and to be engaged. Frankly, this is a matter of self preservation for training. If they don't this death spiral discussion will continue.

4. Be careful how you are being sold---manage your vendors. My friend Niall Devitt has been having a very active discussion about selling sales training. Go to that discussion and learn from it. There are a lot of quality suppliers of sales training, but there are even more hucksters. If you call a vendor in and ask them for training and the price, not letting them engage you, you deserve what you get.

Be careful of people talking about the silver bullet or focusing on the 10 clever techniques of doing something. If the vendor isn't asking you a lot of questions about your markets, your sales processes, your people, the challenges, performance expectations, and so on--then they aren't concerned about making a difference, they just want to separate you from your money.

Watch how you are being sold. Many years ago, I was EVP of sales for a large organization. I went through the final interviews of sales training vendors. They were basically selling the same thing-- a process based, customer/consultative focus managing the complex sales process. At a surface level, it was hard to distinguish between vendors.

What I inspected was how they were selling me and how they had sold my people. Interestingly, of 4 major firms (big name companies) we considered, only one of the sales people was using their process in selling us. It caused me to think, "If their process wasn't good enough for them to use, then why was it good enough for me?" I chose the one vendor who was using their own process in selling us. In working with our clients, a number of people have commented on the same---we use our process in working with them, many other don't.

Bottom line: Be aware you are being sold -- and sales people are susceptible to being sold. Perhaps paraphrasing the golden rule: "They should sell unto you, as you would like to sell unto your customers." Hmmm-not sure that works, but you get it.

I'll stop here, you know I can get into long winded discussions. What suggestions would you add so that we can break this death spiral on the effectiveness of sales training?

Setting Yourself Apart, Developing and Communicating Differentiated Value

2009-06-09T23:24:34.859Z

A compelling and differentiated value proposition is critical in selling—we all know this, yet this remains one of the biggest challenges facing sales professionals.

This post examines 5 critical elements about developing and communicating differentiated value propositions.

1. Numbers count, quantifying your value is critical. We know the structure of value proposition, it states a problem area or issue your customer has, addresses what you can do about it, and ideally provides quantification of the result.

For example, in working with sales executives, I often say: "We can reduce the number of calls your people have to make on each deal by 30-40%, dramatically improving productivity." Sales productivity and the effective use of time is usually a high priority for sales people and executives, and a 30-40% call reduction is usually compelling to the executive, they usually want to hear what we say.

While most sales people know the structure of a value proposition, very often, we don’t see sales people quantifying the magnitude of improvement or result the customer might expect to achieve. They present the product feature and generalized benefits, but leave it to the customer to guess at what improvement will result. The best sales people make this result very obvious as a part of their value proposition.

2. If your value proposition isn’t differentiated, the only differentiation apparent to customers is price. Product based value propositions are undifferentiated. Today, differences between competitive offerings are often very small. Too often, I see sales people developing value propositions based on the features, functions, and benefit of their products -- but they look similar to the competition’s.

Do this test: Look at a product in your company’s web site and how its value is presented. Go to your top 3 competitors and look at their value propositions---are they almost exactly the same as yours?

To differentiate yourself, you have to take a broader look at your offering. Elements that drive differentiation include company reputation, ease of doing business, the total customer experience through the buying and implementation process, your personal relationship with the customer, and many other issues.

3. The value proposition must change as you progress through the customer buying cycle. Early in the cycle, a relatively generic or undifferentiated value proposition is perfectly sufficient. All you are trying to do is to get the customer interested in you and to commit to consider your offering, along with competition.

Too often, though, sales people stick with these generic value propositions. To win, the value proposition must change. As you discover the customers’ most critical issues, problems and priorities, you must adjust your value proposition to address those specific issues, in the customer terms.

For example in my sales productivity above, as I work with the customer, I might change my value proposition to: "Based on our discussions with you, we have found your people are spending too much time pursuing unqualified or bad deals. We believe by helping your people better disqualify bad opportunities, we can improve your win rates by as much as 15%, and improve resource utilization by 22%."

In the beginning of the deal, the general sales productivity improvement was interesting enough for the customer to consider us. As we understood the customer‘s challenges, we focused on a specific issue impacting their performance and our value proposition focused on the results in addressing their specific issues.

4. You have to address the customers’ top priorities and issues. We tend to treat the customer as the enterprise or company. People make decisions, not enterprises. To be effective, our value propositions must address the priorities and needs for each person involved in the decision making process---in their terms. While they may have some common priorities, there will always be differences.

Using my value proposition example, the sales executive is most concerned with win rates, resource utilization, and cost of selling. A regional sales manager might be concerned with win rates, and improving the quality of the funnel. A training manager will be more concerned with the delivery of the program, the coaching and sustainability, and the learning pedagogy.

To be effective as a sales person you have to focus on each person involved on the decision and address their top priorities and requirements. The one individual you have not satisfied may be enough to cause you not to win a deal.

5. You win by focusing on each customer’s top 5 priorities. I talk to people who have generated long laundry lists of issues they have to address. While you can’t ignore all the issues, generally addressing the top 5 priorities for each customer and setting yourself apart in those areas will be what causes you to win. Make sure you have compelling and differentiated value propositions for those and make sure your customer acknowledges them. Addressing their 20th issue is not likely going to be what causes you to win or lose the deal.

However, be careful to re-validate the customer priorities through their buying cycle, their priorities may change and you will have to change your focus to stay aligned.

6. Bonus---I couldn’t resist giving you a bonus tip: None of this counts until the customer acknowledges the value, confirms that it is differentiated and agrees it addresses their most critical needs. However differentiated and valuable you think you are, until it comes from the customer’s mouth, you are just guessing.

Partners In EXCELLENCE is the recognized leader in helping organizations develop and communicate differentiated value propositions. If you need to sharpen your tools, processes, thinking, and skills in this area, look at our Value Proposition Solutions, follow the link. For a copy of our free Value Proposition eBook, follow the link.

For any other information about how Partners In EXCELLENCE can improve your organization’s capabilities in understanding, developing, communicating and delivering differentiated value, please contact us at +1-949-305-7146 or valueprop@excellenc.com

Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?

2009-06-09T21:35:15.076Z

Consider the following letter by an active head of one of the largest software company in America:

“Results are the only things that count. We are perfectly willing to pay a salesperson $100,000 a year if they deliver the goods; we are willing to pay $750,000 a year if that person delivers, and a person’s earnings from $7500 a month up to almost anything is in their own hands.”

The heads of ninety-nine out of every hundred companies employing salespeople reflects that sentiment. Often the main limit to the salesperson’s earning power is a self-imposed one.

I am sure you know the question in the mind of the person starting out with a cell phone in one hand and an expense check in the other is: “How can I sell?”

The question in the mind of the salesperson producing now is: “How can I increase my sales?”

Understand in advance, please, that we offer no theories. The source of the methods offered herein derives from the operation of thousands of successful salespeople in varied lines the country over.

These people are working more than the average salesperson because they are better than the average. And here is what they have found produce real results.

Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?

Let’s take a look at the order-taker, not as a negative example, and not as an object of pity, but only to make a point.
Chris the “order-taker” visits on Smith, Brown, Jones, James, and Robinson. They are not in the market. Then she opens her portfolio in Harrison’s store and Harrison buys.

Mind you, she didn’t sell anything. Harrison was ready; the order taker had the goods, showed them and took the order. Why? Simply because the prospect was in the market, ready to buy.

She encountered a favorable situation; she was standing directly under the apple with a bushel basket when it dropped from the tree. That is what makes it possible for the order-taker to exist. If the order-taker calls on enough people they are bound to find a certain percentage needing what is sold and ready to order.

Let’s leave the subject of order taking. Let’s deal with the problem of the person who really sells.

What is it? What’s the difference?
Simply this - the salesperson must create a specialized situation, and place people in the market who didn’t feel that way when they walked in the store. It has been said that sometimes a good salesperson sells to buyers who don’t think they want what they buy.

The reason why is this: the good salesperson makes the buyers realize they want what is being offered.

Let this sink in deeply. The order-taker canvasses looking for people who want to buy. However, the professional salesperson tries to make every person he or she calls on wants to buy.

The order-taker accepts the advantage of the situation he finds. But the order maker, a professional salesperson creates specialized situations to suit his purpose.

Now, the question you should ask yourself is:

Are You an Order Taker or an Order Maker?

To learn more about the Crucial Points to Succeed in Sales and how to use them to improve your sales results, get my e-book here.

Remembering 'Thank You"

2009-06-09T01:43:13.753Z

Much is being said currently about these “slow” economic times and the added difficulty that sales people are experiencing as they work to close sales. As always, our minds turn to creating new streams of revenue and working hard to get results.

A word of caution and reminder is due here. Remember to say “Thank You” to your current client base. There are a number of solid reasons to spend some time and money on your existing clients now.

1. Nothing stings as bad as having one of your strong and faithful accounts go to another provider because they “just wanted my business more than you did.” The competition is out there shaking bushes and knocking down doors with a vengeance and the doors that they may be opening could be your clients. Don’t let your good clients forget how much you value them and their business.
2. Solid clients are often the source of new revenue. Those companies and people who have invested in your serves are probably among the strongest and smartest customers. They are no doubt dealing with the affects of the economy, as well. Solid companies are looking to make new and creative responses to the current situation and your services or products should be a part of that. Let them know you value their success and will work with them to create new revenue sources for them or make their process more profitable.
3. Your existing client base may need assurance that you and the company you represent are stable and ready to meet their needs. Calm their fears and assure them that you are in this together.

Today, make a list of the top 20% of your client base. Schedule time this week to touch base with them, preferably face-to-face to address any issues and inquire about any needs for the coming months. Remember to use a hand written thank you card and possibly a small gift to get their attention. You know your clients so you will know how to personalize something. Don’t let the persistence of someone looking for new customers rob you of your hard won and otherwise faithful client base. Say “Thank You” today!

Sales and Marketing: Align, Define and Make Money

2009-06-09T14:56:26.644Z

The word misalign is defined as, “positioning or arranging something improperly in relation to something else.” Sounds like too many sales and marketing departments in corporate America. Even though the two departments share the same corporate office, the approach to engaging potential clients and existing customers is often disjointed. Here are six key areas of misalignment that cost companies lots of money each year:

1. The marketing message doesn’t match the customer’s need.
Sales managers need to ask the marketing department to join their sales teams on daily calls and meetings. Marketing surveys and focus groups are good for research, but meeting with prospects and customers at their place of business is better. “Ride-a-longs,” as we call them in sales, is the best place for identifying needs and gaps in the company’s product/service offering. It’s the day-to-day interaction with prospects and customers that provide real-world data for identifying opportunities, challenges, and trends in the industry.

2. There is a call to action and but no training for the sales team.
The marketing program is working; leads are being generated, the right prospects are calling, and the new product launch looks like a success…until the phone is picked up by the untrained salesperson. The salesperson has received no education in building rapport on the telephone and has no well-crafted value proposition about the new product. The result is a beautiful marketing campaign with less than desirable sales results. Lots of money has been invested on the front-end of the marketing campaign to create opportunities, and zero money has been invested on the back-end to insure that sales can close the opportunity.

3. The marketing message doesn’t reach the real decision maker.
Business changed after 9/11 and the Dot Com Bust. Changes included more people, different people, and a shift in the power of each buying influence. Companies continue to market to old buying influences because the sales team is too busy selling to sit down with marketing to discuss:

- Who is buying
- Why they are buying
- New pain points
- Decision criteria

The company is aggressively marketing…to the wrong people. Imagine going duck hunting in New York City…

4. The marketing message doesn’t match the follow-up by the salesperson.
How many of you have received literature on an exclusive resort or high-end product? The marketing program worked until you called to place your order. The salesperson on the telephone line doesn’t sound exclusive, can’t answer basic questions, and frankly, isn’t that enthused about their own product/service. Enthusiasm and confidence is contagious and in this case, the salesperson has driven you to, “I better keep looking.”

Ever experienced this one? Your marketing message promises that your consultants are “professional and knowledgeable,” but marketing and sales have not met to determine what “professional and knowledgeable” looks like on a sales call. For example:

- Professional – If the sales meeting requires a leave behind, does the marketing piece coincide with the prices you are charging? If your salesperson is a professional, are they showing up for the appointment five minutes early and in a suit that fits? Yes, I am tired of seeing too short, too tight or too big in the conference room.

- Knowledgeable – Has the organization figured out the FAQ’s in your industry? Does the sales team know the answers? What about competitive analysis? Does the salesperson know the gaps in the competition’s service offering so he/she can better position the call?

5. Using email marketing and follow-up by sales.
Email is an inexpensive way to drip market to prospects. Prospects responding to email versus other types of marketing require a different type of follow-up. Traditionally, salespeople immediately pick up the phone to follow up on the lead. The email prospect doesn’t want a phone call and is often turned off by this type of follow-up. The marketing is generating a response; however, the effectiveness of the campaign is diminished because of an ineffective follow-up plan.

6. Good repeat customers are ignored and the focus is on new business development only.
Everyone in business knows it’s more profitable to grow an existing account than to prospect for new business. When working with sales teams on strategic account management, I often hear, “I’m not sure if my customers know about our full service offerings.” That is a sales problem and a marketing problem. Marketing can assist sales by making sure customers are aware of the depth and breadth offered by the organization through articles, special events, newsletters, direct mail, emails, etc. Sales can follow up by setting up business review meetings to discuss other products and services offered by the organization.

Align your sales and marketing organization. Togetherness is not just for romance – it’s a very good way to make money.

Differentiate Prospects from Suspects

2009-06-03T11:05:31.490Z

If you want to be a successful sales person and to close the deal, very important part is to be in front of your customers at the exact time when they are on the market for goods or services. You can find companies they are on the market now, or you can put them in the market.

The only thing you can accomplish is to lose a precious time chasing prospects who are not interested for your product, or they are not a fit for your products or services at all.

Many unsuccessful sales people spend their time with customers who are not even close to sales process and to buying, but poorly trained sales person still contact them regularly simply because they are in pipeline and they need to fill their day somehow. Talking to that kind of prospects is just a waste of your and their time.

When you are selling you need to differentiate and trigger events will make this possible. You will have tools to create the opportunity for you, and not just in the visible market where customers are actively looking for provider or supplier, but also in the invisible market - you put them in the market, you are making customers realize that they are on the market now. Without trigger events you can’t force customers to meet with you because you will be just one of many sales guys knocking on their door.

Here are two examples of trigger events:

* Your research shows some trigger events like hiring new 15-20 sales reps or changes in upper management levels: this clearly sends out messages that the company is in need of new office furniture or new computers with software, or maybe a new benefits plan for employees.
* Thousands of corporate turnarounds occur every year. You may have read about a few of them in your local newspaper, but that’s not enough. There are companies in a turnaround phase that affect sales in your area all the time. I suggest keeping abreast of the New York Times or other newspapers like that in your region. Their business page carries a number of turnaround events throughout the company along with web sites by the large accounting firms and graduate business colleges such as Wharton. Turnaround time means change time: new people, new products, new services, and new sales potential for you.

Customers will be positively shocked with your due diligence and fact-finding mission you accomplished with them. When you contact your prospects and on the first conversation you leave them with impression you know their situation very well — you care to help, and you can add value to them, trust me when I say you are much closer to signing a deal than anybody else.

After discovering trigger events, the next steps are to develop the customer’s perception of your unique value. What can you do for them? How your solution can actually create value to them?

Trigger events will give you the clue about the timing too.

Joe the Sales Manager-Coaches the Self Doubter

2009-05-28T20:47:43.054Z

Joe is a successful district sales manager who could work in any industry and for any company. In fact, there are many Joe’s in all companies. Each month Joe is put to the test with different sales reps he must coach to success.

Joe has decided to start the year by building development plans with each of his reps. Joe is a strong believer that his role as district sales manager is to help each rep develop their skills as well as ensure that the district achieve their sales numbers. With the economic down turn the market place is becoming increasingly more competitive. Baltic senior sales management feels that new business will help them reduction in business from existing clients. The company has had good growth over the last 5 years but there is an overall sense that the sales force is composed of many gathers and there is a need for more hunters.

In our follow up coaching session Joe singled out a rep he felt was his biggest challenge. In Joe’s own words:
Tom has been with Baltic for 10 years. He has been through the company selling course and has also taken the CPSA Professional Selling course. He is the district “go to” person in terms of his product knowledge. He has been an above average performer with lots of potential. Tom’s success has been built on his existing customer relationships.

Joe has been Tom’s manager for the last 2 years. Tom is a hard worker; “every time I go out with him we have a full and busy day”. Tom has an excellent understanding of his products, his customers like him and appreciate his technical ability. Not only does he doubt his value, Tom constantly apologies to customers and rarely asks for the business.”

Every time Joe provides feedback it is taken negatively and Tom becomes very defensive.
Questions:
1. How can Joe coach Tom and help him develop into a STAR?
2. What is the best approach to help a Self Doubter become a better sales rep?

See my thoughts below …..

Dear Joe,

Reps who are Self Doubters can be challenging to coach. If you provide direct feedback it may be met with “I already do that” or reasons why they don’t. The Self Doubter perceives any critiquing as weakness and personalizes it as confirmation that they are doing a horrible job! The trick with this type of individual is to lead them through a process of self discovery and improvement.

Here’s how:
1. You need to ask a series of questions (listed below),
2. Guide Tom to write out his own course of self discovery and improvement.

Ask Tom:
1. What are the key elements critical for effective closing? Write out a list.
2. Which elements of closing do you excel at? Write in order.
3. Are there opportunities for growth? Write them down.
4. Which of the elements would he like to work on?
5. What is in it for you to grow your competencies in these particular elements? Have him write those down.
6. What are you committed to doing? All commitments should be written down.
7. When should I follow up with you? Put a follow-up date at the bottom of the paper. Sign it.

Congratulations now you have buy-in from Tom and a high level of commitment.

Let me know how it goes,

Steven Rosen, MBA
Sales Executive Coach

Joe the Sales Manager Rule #1 (Self Awareness)

2009-05-28T20:43:02.512Z

I have decided to write a series of Blogs on a sales manager named Joe. Joe is a district sales manager who could work in any industry and for any company. In fact, there are many Joe’s in all companies. Joe is just a shade away from being a great manager. But until he truly understands the fundamentals of changing behavior he will be an average Joe at best.

Joe is one of the members of a group learning session that I give to sales managers who have taken my course.
As part of the coaching process I ask for feedback from managers. I question how well they apply the concepts that they had learned and if they are seeing the benefits of the training.

Based on their feedback I was feeling really good. I gave myself a high five and a couple pats on the back. Way to go dude you are really making impact with these guys!

We were working through real life examples when… Joe gave a recount of one of his successful coaching sessions.
It went something like this: “In my last field visit with one of my reps, I gave her feedback on her closing skills. I then began to give her a couple things she should work on and noted it on her field visit report”.

Ok so far so good. There is verbal and written feedback…
The group thought that Joe did all the right things, he observed, asked questions and gave written and verbal feedback to close off the day with his rep. As I reflected on Joe’s example, I thought to myself… what is the likelihood that the next time Joe works with this rep that she would have taken this coaching session to heart and diligently worked on her closing skills?

Based on my son’s grade four understanding of probability…he would say to me, “highly unlikely dad”.
The reason why I say that is that Joe needs to make a fundamental mindset shift in his coaching to become a great coach. That mindset shift relates to the fundamental rule below:

Rule #1: Unless there is self awareness and recognition that there is a need to change… the likelihood of change is remote.

Dear Joe,

I think you did a wonderful job on your last field visit. However, your rep did not have the guts to tell you that she didn’t buy in to what you were saying. You would have been much more impactful if you asked her to determine what area she needed to work on and let her tell you what she intends to do between now and your next field visit.
Don’t expect to see any improvement in her closing skills on your next field visit.

Your coach,

Steven Rosen, MBA

Stay tuned for more on the adventures of Joe.

Does This Common Sales Management Killer Hinder You Too?

2009-05-28T01:42:27.285Z

In a study performed in 2007, it was found that by year-end 2009, forty-one percent of the time an employee spends at their job will be spent responding to email.

Forty-one percent!

With the portability, ease and pervasiveness of email, it's no wonder this is the case.

I am guilty of it, I admit it. It's just so darn easy to anonymously pound out an email instead of dealing with the realities of actually TALKING to people about some uncomfortable or complex issue. It's so safe, it's so convenient and it's so, so...ineffective.

The central theme of the "Top 15 Sales Management Mastery Tips" ( which can be ordered through ), is establishing trust with your salespeople in order to unleash their hidden sales potential.

Establishing trust however, is a real hard thing to do if the only way you communicate with your sales reps is through your Blackberry.

As an ambitious sales manager, it is critical for you to establish (or re-establish) ACTUAL HUMAN CONTACT with your reps, and you can't do this by email no matter how "human" you make it.

To lead effectively, you need to "get in their grill" (as a former boss of mine used to say), and talk to them, understand their views, consider their solutions, then work together to take the right course of action. All this interchange loses its teeth if it's done by email alone.

Human contact rules the day, email does not.

To let you off the hook, you are probably responding to the majority of your emails either after normal working hours or squeezing them in between meetings when you have little time. In these cases email is very handy.

But I am sure that there are plenty of times when you respond or initiate an email chain that you KNOW you should probably call the other person about...but because it's so easy, you do it on email instead.

In those cases, pick up the phone. Or better yet, just block out your Outlook and get out in the field with them - get to know them, meet their customers, witness them firsthand their environment.

In subsequent posts, we will discuss the "managing by walking around" (or MBWA) concept that was popularized by Ken Blanchard back in the late 80s. The idea isn't really too complex, but its a crucial concept to understand, then implement so that you can not only make deposits in "The Trust Account", but also harness the hidden potential of your salespeople. All so that you can make more, work less and place yourself in an optimal position for promotion.

Call your sales people. Establish or re-establish a two way live relationship with them.

Visit the Sales Management Mastery blog at:

Sales Leadership, Shouts from the Trenches.

2009-05-18T16:31:41.683Z

In case you haven’t been tuning in recently, the whole question of sales ineffectiveness was brilliantly raised by Dave Stein. It’s not just a great question for sales professionals; it’s frankly the ONLY question.

Dave rightly asks “The root causes of sales ineffectiveness are clear. There is plenty of sound advice about how to fix the problem. There is a proven path. The answers are there for everyone to see. There are companies you can read about and observe that have achieved sales excellence.

So, recession aside, why is sales as a profession and function, losing ground?”

In three follow up posts, Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture of the Future of the Profession, parts one, two and three; Dave Brock does an excellent job in teasing out the issues.

In Part One, he talks about why “for too long, we have treated sales as a “black art”, that now “Customers can be more informed and less knowledgeable” and how “Consultative selling is difficult—it is disciplined, process based, and requires commitment and follow through on a sustained basis”.

In two, he observes that this is not just a sales problem” “Some of it is “business culture”—in general, some of it is “regional culture”—that is North American, European, Asian, and so forth. Some of it is “industry culture.”

Finally in part three, He resolves that these same difficulties also provide for “people who are or who are committed to becoming the highest levels of performance” - “opportunity for real progress and growth for sales professionals”.

He asks “how can we improve” “what can we do”. Dave believes that “each of us can take ownership in driving change”

“Whether you are a leader or individual contributor, becoming disciplined and process focused, committing to follow through on these, exploiting the tools produce results. Leverage these processes and tools, not because your management tells you to, but because they help you become more effective”

Collectively, these four posts are a MUST read, if you don’t have the time, MAKE the time – the reasons WHY are in the TEXT.

Now it’s not often, I take anything remotely resembled an issue with what Dave Brock says.

“To be honest—at least from an organizational point of view, I am tempted to point the finger at management—not just sales management, but corporate management”

Perhaps, it’s inexperience, or my youthful exuberance, but I am inclined to not just point my finger at senior management, but my entire hand, in fact right down to the tips of my toes. My entire being points in that general vicinity. Here why:

For too long, salespeople have been getting in the neck from management.

Yes, we may have a bad reputation and yes some of it may be deserved, buy ultimately the system is set up so that we always end up taking the heat. If the results don’t happen, who invariably gets the blame?

For years and years, salespeople get cast aside, replaced and cast aside again by companies. Rarely if ever, is it asked did this person get the right training? Did this person get the right support? And why did we hire this person again? Oh and by the way “who hired this person?

Dave says “I don’t believe change only comes from the top. I believe change comes from committed, passionate people at all levels of the organization” If a collective ownership of the result existed within organisations, I think Dave would be very right.

If some of the people entrusted with the sales leadership function in many organisations didn’t do their best to dodge and pass the buck, I think he would be right.

If salespeople weren’t forced to knock out huge numbers of calls and put in vast amounts of meaningless activities by ill-advised and badly trained sales mangers, I think he would be right.

If the wider business community and business leaders respected sales and salespeople, I think he would be right.

The point is this; the problem is in the way that the system is set up particularly with regards to responsibility. It makes it extremely difficult for salespeople to change the “science of selling” from within.

In my opinion, the buck stops and it STOPS squarely at the feet of some of our so called sales leaders.

In case, you missed my point - take a little inspiration from this recent article about HP

Which is more important Sales Coaching vs. Admin? The Great Debate:

2009-05-04T20:51:18.704Z

It is very lonely in the world of blogging, so getting comments from clients is a validation that people are reading your thoughts.

After my last blog 5 Ways to Gauge Your Sales Managers’ Coaching, I heard from several clients. One VP of Sales loved the article and asked for copies for his Directors of Sales. Two heads of sales from different companies liked the post but did not want to send it out to their frontline sales managers because of my comment (see below) that coaching was more important than administration. Neither wants their sales managers to feel that it is OK to spend time in the field and avoid administration.

“Like many of us, managers tend to spend their time on the activities they are the best at and most enjoy. A manager who focuses extensively on administrative tasks like submitting reports on time probably is less comfortable coaching. The manager who finds creative ways to get into the field and spend more time with sales reps probably sees the value of this time. Remember that administration doesn’t generate revenue or help develop your salespeople and that time spent in the field improves your reps’ ability to be the best they can be”.
Both were struggling with individual sales managers who were not completing their administrative duties on time and they were tired of excuses. So by sending this article out they felt that they would provide an additional rationale for the sales managers to avoid completing their administrative work.
For the head of sales, managers not getting reports from their direct reports affects their ability to do their job -- hence their frustration with their reports that are not on top of their admin. I can certainly see their points of view and I took two key points away from our discussions:

1. It is always important to manage your boss and keep them happy. Even though the administration doesn’t generate revenue, the old adage that “the job ain’t finished until the paperwork is done” holds true.
2. It reinforces my article that a Head of Sales has little visibility as to how well his or her managers coach. Given that lack of visibility, frontline sales managers can be poor coaches but perceived as good managers by their bosses.

The intended message of my blog was that coaching is the No. 1 management activity that drives performance. In fact, going from good coaching to great coaching can increase sales by 19 percent. The longterm impact of developing and retaining your salespeople is critical for the extended success of a sales organization. Given my experience with coaching many sales managers I find that coaching skills are an area that even the most successful sales manager can improve upon.

The message? Great coaching = great performance. Getting the paperwork completed = happy boss.

Do both and be great and happy!

Recession Proofing Your Sales Force

2009-05-13T14:59:16.580Z

As the leader of your organization, the next 6 months will prove to be more pressure-filled then you may have experienced in years. With decreasing prospects and the cost of doing business increasing, a squeeze on profits is inevitable.

Companies will look to cut costs and the first place to start is the sales force. The sales force is your company’s most expensive promotional resource. You will have to make some critical decisions: Do you cut costs or improve the performance of your existing sales team?

Cut back, down size and cut costs:

I don’t need to give you advice on cutting back. It’s easy to cut back on sales people, promotion and training. While radical surgery may be financially prudent in the short term it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: first sales decline, then performance suffers and finally moral drops, completing the downward cycle.

How can you improve the productivity and performance of your sales force?

I believe that too many sales organizations operate well below their potential. Quick fixes abound during these times, but the secret to surviving difficult economic times is simple…

Unlock the potential in your sales organization and watch that potential turn into sustainable performance!

1) Invest in your front line sales managers

Who else is at the heart of change, productivity, accountability and performance in your organization? The front line sales manager is the key to unlocking the potential in your sales organization and turns that potential into performance. Your success depends on these managers.

Coaching is the single most impactful activity that front lines sales managers perform. Studies show that effectual coaching can impact sales performance by as much as 19%! Great front line sales managers do a far better job hiring, developing and retaining top performing sales people.

If you had $1 dollar to invest in your business the first dollar and best dollar would be invested in your front line sales management team.

2) Turn your farmers into hunters by focusing on unlocking the potential within existing customers

Many of my clients tell me that their sales team are made up of a bunch of service people or farmers. The challenge in difficult times are that new customers are risk averse to trying new suppliers and that the cost of getting new business may come at the expense of profitability. The most economical way to grow your business is through existing customers. Train your farmers to cultivate more business with their existing customers. Programs targeted at growing and expand business opportunities can help stimulate sales people who have become complacent and find it challenging to go out and get new business.

3) Maximize the ROI on your training budget

Maximising your ROI on training really means ensuring that what ever training you do creates sustainable changes in behaviours that impact on business performance.

The challenges relate to a lack of accountability and follow up. Are there systems in place to measure newly learned behaviours or follow up programs to sustain lessons learned? The answer is no. Studies show that 90% of training is forgotten in the first 30 days unless reinforced. Are you one of the many companies investing in T&D and little or no ROI?

Unless there is a plan that measures and reinforces changes in behaviours you are wasting your money! You must ensure that there is a plan to reinforce learning’s and you hold individuals accountable for demonstrating newly learned behaviours.

Maximize your investment in training and development with a program that measures and reinforces the learning’s and they will become business practice.

4) Strategically invest your resources

As you look how to manage your resources more effectively, the key is to strategically target your promotional dollars to maximise the ROI. Each sales person needs to be much more strategic on where they allocate their limited resources. This involves building customer specific plans based on factors such as existing business and potential business and holding sales people accountable to executing their plans.

Strategically investing your promotional dollars on the right customers and holding sales people accountable will be one of the keys to unlocking your star results!

Feel free to comment on the article above or post a question to other sales executives

Steven Rosen, B.Comm. MBA, Sales Performance Expert
Steven Rosen is the founder and Chief Performance Officer of STAR Results. Steven is a performance coach, trainer and advisor. His expertise is sales leadership development.
STAR Results is a sales leadership consulting, training and coaching organization dedicated to leadership development. Our mission is to inspire sales leaders, managers and sales people to achieve their full potential.

Visit us at www.starresults.com

How to present successfully - 2nd part

2009-05-12T21:25:47.756Z

In my previous article about presenting, I was talking about how we can’t all be at our best every day or every hour.

But if you get your best possible presentation down on paper and then firmly entrench it in the back of your head, you’ll be certain to make a better average presentation than you ever have before. It will also give you confidence during off days.

Now, knowing what you do about your own proposition, if you were in your prospect’s shoes you’d want it, wouldn’t you? Well then your task is simple; you have only to make your prospect feel the same way about it that you do yourself and the order is yours.

And how are you going to do this?

By conveying to your prospect the very things that have made you feel the way you do. You can hardly expect the prospect to view matters the way you do in the first place. If they did, their orders would be coming in through the Internet or the mail.
That’s what you are there for - to make them feel the way you do and arouse their desire.

Fear – Haste - Uncertainty

* Fear is a dangerous four-letter word - an emotional response to impending or imagined danger that is tied to anxiety. They’re all enemies of the successful presentation. Why should you fear? The worst that can happen to you is not to get the order. And you can’t lose anything that you haven’t got.
* Haste, why should you hurry?
You must make your listener understand in order to get the order. You certainly can’t make them understand by rattling off your presentation as if you were paid by the number of words you got out per minute. Listen and record yourself sometime. Are you interesting to listen to? Are you clear and with a voice of different tones?
* Uncertainty?
You can’t be uncertain. You know too much of the merit of what you’re selling to waver one second from the absolute knowledge that you are there to benefit the person you’re talking to.

You’re too strong to let fear, haste, or uncertainty wrecks your plans. Leave them to the weaker ones.

I’ve seen lots of salespeople who the minute they encounter opposition put themselves on the defensive, and take the attitude of trying to prove that they are not liars. They’re predestined to failure.
You are the captain of your presentation.

You know what you are going to say. You know how you are going to say it.
You know that what you are going to say and the way you say it are going to direct your prospect’s mind to the final point of desire for what you sell.

So let your facts come as gospel. State them as undeniable, irrefutable truths. Let your deep sincerity and positive statements head off objections and overcome arguments before they are raised.
Assume that your listener believes you; give them facts they can believe, and in the majority of cases they will.
Simply make it easier for them to believe than not to.

Avoid the pitfalls of long words and small superfluous arguments. Remember that the salesperson, to be effective, must get it across in the quickest, most convincing sort of way. Long words and so-called “clever talking” defeat their very object; they are offensive instead of impressive. And those little, good-for-nothing arguments don’t get the orders. Stick to the big points of your proposition: the points that count - the tried and true order-getters.
You know them. Use them.

Whenever you open your mouth to make a presentation forget that you ever made one before, or that you’re ever going to make one again.

There is just one person in the world to be sold, and that is the person you are talking to. You can’t sell that person by thinking of the person you sold yesterday or the one you are going to sell this afternoon. The person is before you; concentrate on that one.
Remember, no matter how old your arguments are to you, they ring fresh in that person’s ears. And the same points that sold your proposition last year and the same ones that will sell it next year will sell it this very minute to the person you’re talking to.
Leave no possible questions unanswered in your prospect’s mind. Some people have a tendency verbally to say, “Yes,” without really being convinced, just to be agreeable or avoid argument. Instead of trying to get a mere verbal assent, bend your endeavors toward making a prospect’s mind completely and absolutely convinced of the truth of what you are saying.
In this way, step-by-step, as you go through your presentation you will gain a general approval on every point you make. Then - when you return to the net result of getting the order - your prospect cannot raise a point, and go back and disagree with you.

Fit Interview, Behavioural Interview, Psychometric Test: Three Steps to Hiring Top Performing Salespeople

2009-05-14T15:35:49.491Z

In a discussion with the head of sales of a mid-sized pharmaceutical company, he wanted to know why some front-line sales managers are much better than others at hiring top performers.

Before answering, I asked if he had a systematic hiring process. The reason I asked that is when there is no process in place the ability to select top-performing reps is dependent on the skills of the sales manager. Anytime you create a systematic process you tend be better at predicting success.

Well, he thought about the question and then responded: “You’re right. How can we create a better hiring process?”

So, with respect to that pharmaceutical exec, here are three critical steps to selecting top performing sales reps:

Step 1: Conduct a Fit Interview
As the title says, the goal of the initial interview is to assess fit. The beauty of this is that even in the absence of great interviewing skills, the sales manager reviewing a candidate’s resume can ask questions around work history, education, personal interests and accomplishments. The essential element here is to determine whether a candidate fits your culture and work environment. And if the candidate does do fit the existing sales team, would you be able to work well with him or her? Is the candidate well-suited for a career in sales? This interview should last less than 30 minutes.

Step 2: Conduct a Behavioral Interview
After you have determined whether or not the pool of potential candidates would be a good fit for you and your organization, you bring back the best candidates for a behavioural interview. This is a more formal interview with structured questions. The key here is a pre-established list of questions related to the organization’s core competencies or leadership principles. Each sales manager is expected to use the list and ask each candidate the same questions.

Many managers lack the skill to conduct effective behavioural interviews, and some training may be required to improve their ability to effectively probe the candidate to provide specific examples of behaviors they have exhibited. This involves asking open-ended questions, listening carefully and taking notes of the degree of specificity and quality of each answer.

For each question the interviewer should take notes and rate the candidate’s response. After each behavioural interview the sales manager should rate each candidate.

This interview may take an hour or more. The goal is to determine if the candidate has clearly demonstrated the competencies to function at a high level since past successes usually are considered are an indication of future success. Watch for reps that generalise answers or say “we.” What we are trying to ascertain is evidence or clear examples of successfully demonstrating the competencies you have determined are important to the position.

Once all interviews are complete the manager can reflect on each candidate’s competencies. Some companies also may conduct additional interviews by other managers and HR during this step.

Step 3: Psychometric Test
Once you have narrowed the pool down to 1-3 potential candidates the use of psychometric tests adds value to the process. There are two possible issues: 1) that top performers don’t always stand out an interview and 2) that poor performers are very adept at putting forth a favourable impression in the interview process.

Psychometric tests add a level of science into hiring process. Many psychometric tests are able to predict performance by measuring source traits associated with success in sales. They are also great in identifying potential red flags that were missed in the behavioral interviews, which in turn allows the hiring sales manager to ask more questions and dig deeper to either validate or negate the red flags. This component adds a second sober look at the candidate that complements the interview process.

Adopting and following a consistent, multi-step process will ensure that your sales managers can determine who a top performer will be prior to making a hiring decision.

Good hiring,

Steven Rosen, MBA
Sales Management Expert

If you are interested in discussing how you can improve your hiring process feel free to contact me at steven@starresults.com or visit http://www.starresults.com

Developing Culture.

2009-05-04T22:01:49.711Z

I am currently engaged with a company which is suffering greatly from the recession. Having been invited to work with the company to implement a new Marketing Strategy, initial analysis quickly unveiled many other problems which were not being addressed.
There was a distinct lack of communication between management and staff, with the effect that there was no apparent Team Spirit. The staff were unaware of the full effect that the recession was having on the business, and that staff layoffs were imminent.
When a company is formed, the owners have a clear vision of what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. From the outset, this vision must be communicated to all staff, involving them in the mission. This particular client had never passed on their vision leaving them bereft of culture and team spirit.
With the owners permission, I arranged for a meeting of all staff to bring them up to date with how the company is performing within its market. I outlined a strategy to give direction to the “Team”, ensuring that all members have a full understanding of the necessary work to be done. Regular Staff Meetings are now in place to keep everybody working together as a team.
This company still faces the same hurdles in their market. However, they are now better equipped to deal with these barriers as they occur, by working together. To all employers I say, involve your “Team” in your Strategy, ensure that they understand their role. Let achieving the goals of your Strategy be their measure of success. Promote a team culture!
Phil Byrne
Mentor Sales & Marketing

The newest little addition for Brad & Krisy

2009-05-04T18:24:38.843Z

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up, both Brad & I are proud parents to Sarah Danielle. She was born this Saturday at 12:49pm. She weighed 6lbs, 12ozs and was 19 inches long. Her big sister, Sophia is really excited as well!

Whats going on in the world of Sales Podcasting?

2009-05-01T15:35:49.439Z

Image via Wikipedia

I have written many times about how I use "Automobile University" to continually expand my knowledge of sales. management, and leadership, but one thing I have never talked about is how the heck do I afford to do it EVERY DAY. Those CD's can get expensive right? They can and while I still buy a lot of them I also supplement them with Podcasts. 3 out of 4 Americans have a iPod or some other MP3 device, and the podcast makes it easier than ever to not only get fresh, current, and timely information on a variety of topics it is also free! All you have to do is add them to your iTunes library and they will automatically be downloaded and ready for you when you want them! How cool is that? If you prefer though you can also just add the feed to your RSS reader and listen to them from your browser just like viewing any other blog post by streaming the audio. My intention here isn't so much to give a lesson on podcasting though as it is to share with you some GREAT audio content I think you should have in your iTunes library, or feed reader so here we go!
First off I would feel pretty silly if I did not include a link out to my own sales podcast! Did you know that Jerry Kennedy and I host a weekly show right here on the Sales Management 2.0 Social Network? Every week we hunt down some of the latest best selling authors, hottest consultants, and interesting sales leaders to share with you fresh information that is bound to give you some new insight into what you currently do or share some new technologies you may not have seen yet. This weeks episode was with Will Fultz, a good friend of mine and fellow member of the Sales Bloggers Union. In this weeks episode Will leads a discussion about what motivates sales professionals, and what companies should do to keep top sales performers motivated. Make sure you listen to Rewarding Your Top Producers!

Next I want to share with you "What’s in Your Pipeline?", a podcast from Tibor Shanto Principal and founder of Renbor Sales Solutions Inc.. Tibor declares that the pipeline is core to sales success, and as in sports, a strong core allows you to excel in all other areas of your sport. Much like a trained athlete Tibor understands that keeping a strong core or a healthy pipeline is more about discipline and proper execution. In this episode you can here him discuss key elements every sales person can put into practice to ensure a consistently healthy and vibrant sales pipeline.

Another favorite of mine, and someone I have had as a guest on my own podcast is Skip Anderson. Skip leads the the Selling to Consumers Sales Podcast. In his latest episode “The Essence of Selling,” he offers six tips for getting your prospects to make a decision and get off the buying decision fence. GREAT STUFF!

Ian Boradie of lighthouse Business Consulting also had a great episode this week on Lead Nurturing. In this episode Ian explains that in most businesses, between 70-80% of your leads are long term. They’re potential clients who pass all your qualifying criteria - however, they’re just not ready to buy right now. he also explains how you should begin to build a relationship with these potential clients so that when the time is right to buy, you’re in the front of their mind. Unfortunately, most salespeople tend to drop leads the moment they find out they’re not going to close in the short term. This is a huge mistake. Almost all these potential clients will buy from someone in the next 24 months. The role of Lead Nurturing is to make sure that someone is you. Ian does a great job of explaining not only the why but the how! Check it out!

Although it’s not quite from this week, there are some excellent podcasts on sales process management from the team at Symvolli at the Symvolli Sales Blog.

Finally I know this episode is about podcasters, but I didn't feel this post would be complete if I did not mention one of my favorite video bloggers Karl Goldfieldwho produces Sales Evangelist TV.The next episode in the Taking your Message to the Street Series will be “Thinking About Thought Leadership?” The focus will be on what it means to become a thought leader. To learn more about the benefits of building a reputation as an expert in your industry. Visit Sales Evangelist TV on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 7:30pm PST.

I hope I have given you some good info to chew on... I would love to see you share some of your favorite podcasts in the comments below.

Have a great weekend everyone and happy selling!

-Brad

My Worst Sales Call - Ever!

2009-04-29T09:28:53.881Z

A few weeks ago a I read a post by a sales manager who was kind enough to share with us his biggest screw up. He most ably illustrated how sales managers can take over at the wrong time, and make everybody feel bad about it.

The post reminded me of an experience that shaped my attitude toward anybody wanting to "help" with my deals.

CEO's, VP's and Sales Managers need to stay out of my way until I decide how they can help, and then do it my way.

Here's a true story, told in the 3rd. person to avoid the "I" word.

Steve had been working for six months with Gesterklar, a manufacturer of construction items, trying to sell the company a software package for manufacturing. There was no shortage of competition in those days.

He and Richard, the Gesterklar IT Manager, had worked out a proposal that worked for both companies, including the price. To make the "close" easier they agreed to set up meeting between David, CEO of Gesterklar, and Martin, Steve's sales manager. The excutives would only have to meet and shake hands on the deal with a price of $240,000.

Everybody understood the execs' jobs were purely about making the CEO feel he'd been in control of the decision. They would negotiate. both knowing when they got to $240k the deal would be done.

To start with the meeting went well enough. The big guys did their "pretend I'm in charge" bit but soon got down to the price. Martin confidently offered " David, I think we can make it work for us at $240k if that will work for you" and extended his hand for the shake.

Relieved, David stood up, accepted the extended hand and accepted "Martin, it's nice working with people who know how to do business. We have a deal."

The smiles around the room didn't last long, at least on Steve's side of the table.

Martin continued, " BUT, David, I want you to feel really good about selecting Dornix to supply your new system, so I'm going to offer it to you for $200k".

Bewildered, but highly amused, David just grinned and said "OK then".

At this point both Richard and Steve were badly out of shape. Richard had totally lost control of the project and cast his boss's ego in stone. There were more measurable impacts on Steve.

In the car driving away from the meeting Martin suggests "sorry Steve, I may not have done the job you asked me to, but we have got the deal closed".

"Right on both counts" replied Steve. "An hour ago I had this deal sewn up and Richard really appreciated my efforts in helping Gesterklar to choose the best solution."

"Now his boss thinks he's incompetent and wonders how much more discount we would have offered. Richard blames me and thinks I'm a snake oil salesman, because I didn't offer him our best price."

"Worst of all, my commission check is $5,000 lighter and I'm $40,000 further away from my target". "Next time ................"

Well there wasn't a next time, because Steve never took Martin on a sales call again.

5 Ways to Gauge Your Sales Managers’ Coaching

2009-04-27T00:30:34.930Z

In my last post I told you about my lunch with a VP of sales who was frustrated because the members of his sales management team were focused so exclusively on results that they neglected the care and feeding of their salespeople.

That executive sees the role of the sales manager as developing his or her people to the best of their potential. I agree with his a longer-term view that by developing your people, you get improved performance and better retention and you essentially develop a pool of succession candidates.

So how exactly do you know if your managers are effective coaches?

1. Asking vs. Telling

You can tell much about a manager’s coaching ability by observing the interactions with his or her salespeople. If a majority of the interaction includes the words “do this” or “why are you not doing that,” your manager is in “tell mode.” This highly directive and subservient communication makes salespeople feel like robots and produces mediocre performers. Frankly, it strains their relationship with their manager.

Coaching is about asking thoughtful questions. It is based on the belief that individuals have the answers to their own sales challenges. The manager’s role is to help individuals develop their ability to self-direct and solve their own problems. A coach would spend a majority of the time asking “how do you think you can best accomplish this goal?” or “how would you like to address this opportunity?”

Spend 15 minutes in one of your manager’s sales meeting and you’ll quickly determine if the manager operates in “coach” or “tell” mode.

2. Time Spent in the Field

Like many of us, managers tend to spend their time on the activities they are the best at and most enjoy. A manager who focuses extensively on administrative tasks like submitting reports on time probably is less comfortable coaching. The manager who finds creative ways to get into the field and spend more time with sales reps probably sees the value of this time. Remember that administration doesn’t generate revenue or help develop your salespeople and that time spent in the field improves your reps’ ability to be the best they can be.

Do you track the number of days each manager spends in the field? The best coach likely is the one who does so most often.

3. Accountability

Coaching is about accelerating a sales rep’s growth and ability to achieve personal goals and reach full potential. It’s a four-step process that: (1) identifies opportunities for improvement, (2) gains commitment, (3) develops a plan and (4) sets an accountability meeting to discuss progress. Set aside one hour a month to review your manager’s field visit reports. Why not go farther and follow three or four field visits with the same rep to see if the accountability for the reps to carry out their self-improvement plan is being reviewed by the sales manager? You are looking for progress toward improving one or two areas of the rep’s development.

4. Sales Rep Engagement and Turnover

Many companies track two metrics: One, they perform an annual engagement survey in which the key is to drill down to the level of the sales manager. This provides insight into the differences between managers as well as the managers’ effectiveness in coaching their reps. Effective coaches will score much higher in sales rep engagement. Second, turnover is also a sign of reps’ relationships with their managers. In fact, 70% of top performers who leave will do so based on their relationship with their manager.

5. Get out in the Field

Spend a couple of days in the field each month and get to know your reps. Ask them about the level and quality of coaching they are getting. Another approach, the dreaded “co-work with,” involves sitting in with the sales manager and his rep for a day. You observe the coach at work and get a firsthand perspective on the coaching effectiveness. I have never personally done this but I do know a sales director who has utilized this approach and I applaud his resolve.

Here’s to good coaching!

Steven
http://www.starresults.com

Nobody likes to be sold

2009-04-27T11:10:54.784Z

Practically every sale made to a new buyer may be properly classified as easy, difficult, or impossible. You’ll readily agree to that. But will you agree to this? Sales are not easy, difficult, or impossible according to the character or mood of the person you’re talking to.

What you say or do during the first few minutes of your conversation is the one thing which largely controls the later course of the sale. It doesn’t take brains to make a sale difficult or impossible. Your task is to pave the path and make it easy. And it’s just as easy to make a sale easy, as it is to spoil it altogether.

The whole object of your approach is to arouse fully your prospect’s interest, and bring them to the point where they want to see your product and hear your proposition.

That is the first specialized situation - to make the person you’re talking to really want particulars - arouse their interest and put them in a buying frame of mind.

How are you going to go about creating this situation?

In the first place, there is a factor in selling which few men seem to have recognized; yet it is a block over which we stumble time and time again, when by knowing that it was there we could just as easily walk around it.

This stumbling block is this:
The average person’s instinctive antagonism to being sold.

It exists and is a force with which we have to contend just as surely as the wind blows, the rain falls, and the sun shines. The minute a person realizes that you have something to sell, they instinctively - without realizing it - throw up the mental barrier.

Though they will hardly put it in words or even admit it. More likely they will respond this way in their mind:

“This person has something to sell. He thinks he is going to make me take it. I’ll show him he is wrong. I will not buy.”

You see the idea? The mere fact that you are a salesperson influences your prospect partly to make up their mind that they are not going to buy. This feeling is based on the fact that every person instinctively hates to admit that another person can make or control him or her to do anything. And remember, all this happens before either of you say one word. So your first task is to get past this barrier of instinctive antagonism to being sold.

How are you going to do it?
Here’s the way to overcome that instinctive antagonism to being sold - the quick way - the sure way.

Forget forever that there is such a thing as forcing your business on the other: put yourself in their place and start right - working with the potential buyer to find out how their business will be benefited by your proposition.

In this way you can overcome this instinctive antagonism to being sold in much less time than it takes to tell about it. The earliest you manage this antagonism the better.

There is a right and a wrong way of meeting the objection of antagonism. Here is an example.

The salesperson says to the prospect:

“Your vacuum cleaner is a loser; mine has twice the power and suction. I can’t even give you a trade in on that piece of junk.”

The right way:

“I know you are interested in a clean environment and my company is too. This is the reason they designed this vacuum cleaner; it does not recycle the dust - it picks it up and securely holds it. It’s the best help you can get toward maintaining a clean home environment. Here, let’s compare in a operation test your old one with this new model.”

The question has been turned from salesperson’s proposition to discussing customer’s problem. The instinctive antagonism to being sold has been passed. And if he’s the right salesperson, the eventual solution of your problem will be his proposition.

Overcoming instinctive antagonism to being sold is a good deal like starting your plane by doing a pre-flight walk around first; it has nothing to do with your initial purpose but it is a necessary preliminary.

The real purpose of your approach is to arouse the interest of your prospective purchaser - to put him in the mental attitude of:

“If this is what he says it is - I’ll buy.”

Get the idea?

And once you have created the specialized situation, all you have to do is to prove that your statements are true; then the order is yours.