Effective Sales Management and Coaching

Improving and encouraging requires some specific sales and communications skills. A great sales manager is able to demonstrate effective performance rather than speak in generalities.

In this podcast, Tim and Steven talk about ways that a sales manager can encourage and develop subordinates – making more money for the sales person and for the sales manager.

Making the Best of Your Year End

If you have had a good year and hit your targets, it’s time to connect with your marketing counterpart.

Revenue Marketing: Tell your marketing team what’s going to align with their program for the coming year. Marketing Qualified Leads from your marketing group is an opportunity to begin to plan the email marketing program for the next year. If you want to be an innovator, sit with your marketing director and see how you can align with their program, measure sales qualified leads. People who bring in more resources are going to be more effective.

Closing Along Above the Line

Realignment to business and personal value is an essential component of closing executives.

Tim provides an example of an authoritative close – that did not turn out well. From that experience, Tim learned how to sell above the line, getting to the real reason that they did not buy from you this time.

Tim explains the close “If you were going to rank us today, where would we rank ? ” and shows that (if you can’t be the number one choice) why choice number three is the best ranking.

Putting Your Customer into Mild State of Discomfort

Your choice of Hard and Soft closes depend upon where the prospect is above or below the power line. Using the wrong form of close will not give you results either above or below the line.

Your negotiation plan is a key element, especially when dealing with purchasing agents and those below the power line in the account. Relationships with junior people are more likely to be damaged if you attempt a hard close because the decision to issue a purchase order today is beyond their approval scope. Giving up margin too early and clearly not getting something in return – deviating from your negotiation plan – will end up leaving too much on the table.

Are You Closing Power ?

Your close will vary, depending upon the relationship with the power line. At least two buying signals must be present before your close. First, they are expanding the buying audience, and begin to use your vernacular. If you hear your jargon and not that of competitors, that’s a warning flag.

You are always closing – for a meeting or some concrete advancement of the deal

If they begin to use the phrase ” when we do this”, that’s  a second good indicator that your are on the right track.

How do you determine the personal value to the customer ? This is where a true professional sales person will shine. If you can set expectations of a personal win, you will be able to insure the support of the person.

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Why Do People Buy ?

The sale includes both personal and business value. Critical Business Issues (CBI) are why you are playing the game. But, do you really know what the business value is that your solution addresses ? It is necessary to align with pain, but that alone is not sufficient to swing things your way. Every vendor in competition with you can also solve the problem.

How do you determine the personal value to the customer ? This is where a true professional sales person will shine. If you can set expectations of a personal win, you will be able to insure the support of the person.

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A Strong Plan for Engaging Effectively with Purchasing

After there is an understanding of the current situation and future state – plus agreement from the prospect to buy – there is a process . Don’t take it for granted. There is a sequence of events that needs to be documented, because you cannot afford a slip in schedule.

The difference between closure on one day versus another can be incredible at the end of the month or year, depending upon your compensation plan. All stakeholders and influencers have to be on board with a common sense of urgency. Planning for that sequence is your responsibility if you want to get paid.

Testing Power at All Stages

Those who have power are hard to connect with. They are very busy and unless they are highly organized are difficult to get to meetings. They make decisions quickly and firmly – but if they don’t engage with you willingly your access to power is slipping away.

Continuously verify their power. Asking  ” When you have bought things like this before, what’s the process ? ”  If it turns out they have not done it before, you’ve added months to the cycle. The biggest red flag ? If the person tells you there’s no need to talk with anyone else.

Solutions are Not Products

How do you present options to clients ? Before your get to that step, you have to get the basic product sold. You need to be able to tell your prospect how clients have been able to solve problems using your product and service, not how your product solves problems.

The basic reference story includes how your clients were successful using your product.  But the key was that the client is the hero of the story, and your product was an enabler to realization of that goal.

Match your solutions with their future desired states, not the present.

DIscovery – the Key to Making More Money

You have been trained to go for pain – but if you think that you can find bigger opportunities because people are in pain you may want to think about reasons why people will buy anything.

Pain is only one motivator – a more productive one is big open questions around goals because it is exciting and safe.  If you sell for goals you are appealing to vision and uncovering the issue as the client sees it. Appealing to their vision and building rapport is a good start. Getting too personal too quickly can throw a prospect into a negative loop – keep them thinking longer term, moving their thoughts into a desirable future state.

Stay in the place that allows you more flexibility and allows you the most flexibility. If you jump to the problem/solution phase you will lose the opportunity to deal with greater issues and opportunities.

Match your solutions with their future desired states, not the present.

Using Linked-In to Determine Relationship Power BEFORE the meeting

LInked In is a powerful tool to determine a lot about your prospect.

The first indicator is the number of connections: A shallow LinkedIn Profile with 18 connections could telegraph information to you about activities with peer group, standing in the industry and awareness of current business tools like LinkedIn.

Conversely, several hundred connections and frequent updates indicate that your contact might be valuable as a referral and is plugged in to the industry and aware of trends and influencers.

You can also learn about company trends and outlook – from a close study of the LinkedIn profile of some of your contacts at the company.

You have do to do your homework. And if you haven’t done the preparation for an in person sales call, the questions “What keeps you awake at night ?” or ” Tell me about your business” are a sure ticket to the door.

What Motivates your Clients ?

There’s an underlying motive that your prospects have – and it is your job to uncover the motivation that they have for taking a meeting. What is the meeting driver ? Why do they choose to meet with you ?

Meeting drivers are NEVER product related. There are deeper business needs or pain that your product or service MAY be able to address.

We are happy to take meetings, but understanding the reason that your client is talking to you is a secret that top sales performers understand.

If you have an executive from your company to join you on a sales call, you need to brief your execs, and give them a one or two page summary before you start towards the account.

Make sure that you include information on reporting relationships and current Industry, Company, Competition and Project status.

You are letting them do most of the talking, but you are able to toss in some small points of knowledge that shows that you know the Industry, Company, Competition and Project

Personal information can be useful late in the interview – – but to avoid the appearance of stalking you’ll want to offer this only sparingly.

Google Fu Part 2

Email intelligence: Finding the email convention of the target company is a straight forward search string, but seldom used to full advantage. Almost all large companies have an official template for email accounts such as firstname dot lastname @company.com  or first initial lastname@company.com  . If you search on the pattern @company.com, you will be able to deduce the correct email address for a prospect.  It will usually appear on page four or five of the search.

Once you are used to search, you can use on LinkedIn, Twitter or Bing . Try not to look for a person. Look for an event where that person is quoted and then use that as an entre to begin a conversation.

Google-Fu sales Ninja skills will pay off, regardless of your industry or product !

Don’t Hunt Elephants when you only have time for hunting Small Game.

Pipeline management: As the fiscal year begins to close, top performing sales people and managing their work in a way that ensures they have extracted every bit of value from their compensation plan to just hit target (or whatever accelerator incentives exist.

You have to get ruthless in your understanding of your pipeline. Don’t train your customers to expect end of year discounts. Which deals are most likely to close ? Your efforts have to be focused only on deals that can and will close within 60-90 days.

In the last quarter, you need to focus on things that customers can buy quickly and without a lengthy decision or purchasing process – like standard products and smaller orders.

Focus on activities that you can do to fill the pipeline that will give you deals of the correct size. Government customers in particular are responsive to direct email campaigns with ‘end of year Use or Lose’ funds.

Good 4th Quarter strategy will maximize your return on sales effort, and position you for the next year of outstanding sales performance.