Selling Power Blog

Can You Outsell the Big Companies?

Today's post is by Dave Kurlan, founder and CEO of Objective Management Group Inc. and Kurlan & Associates, and author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling: How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball.

Is it better to have a small niche of raving fans or a large group of people who have mixed feelings about you, your products and services, and your company? Let’s try to answer this question by taking a quick peek at the presidential primary season, and then determine if the same things hold true in sales.

Marco Rubio withdrew from the campaign on March 15, 2016. He had a small group of raving fans – his supporters – but they weren’t enough to help him win – even in his own state.

Almost as many people hate Donald Trump as those who love him and stand by him regardless of what he says – and no matter what the haters say about him. He is living proof that you don’t need to be all things to all people, as long as enough people like what you stand for.

We saw the exact same conditions play out on the Democratic side of the ticket, where Bernie Sanders had some very loyal followers, but not enough to win big. Hillary Clinton has lots of haters, too, but enough people liked her and supported her to help her continue to win.

Do the same rules of engagement hold true in business? I have two relatively small businesses. Kurlan & Associates is a Selling Power Top 20 sales and sales management training and consulting firm, and Objective Management Group has been named the Top Sales Assessment Tool for five consecutive years. They are both good, profitable, successful companies, but under $10 million.

If I had been attempting to scale these companies to $100 million, I would have failed. But that was never the goal, is not the mission, and is not anything I care about doing. At the same time, when an enterprise-sized public company fails to meet Wall Street’s profit expectations for the year, it loses value – despite their huge size and profits.

These contradictory examples of cause and effect become important to every seller representing underdogs. Who are the underdogs? If you sell for any of the following 11 types of companies, you are an underdog:

• New company
• New product
• New technology
• Expensive to buy
• Higher priced than your competition
• Complex sale
• Long sales cycle
• Not the safe and easy decision
• Not the most well-known brand
• Not the low-price leader
• Have a story to tell

If you are an underdog, you must be a better salesperson. You must be better at selling consultatively, selling value, building relationships, differentiating, messaging, positioning, qualifying, and closing. You must be a better presenter, write better proposals, and have better conversations. The leading brands, low-price leaders, and safe-to-buy companies have it easy: show up, make nice, take orders. To beat those guys, you must be better at everything!

Assuming you are indeed an underdog, what can you do to become a salesperson who is that good?

According to evaluations and assessments of more than 1 million salespeople (conducted by Objective Management Group) elite salespeople – those who are that good – make up only 7 percent of the entire sales population. There is another group of about 16 percent that are very strong – almost that good – who also have the ability to outsell the big boys. But 77 percent of all salespeople are simply not strong enough to get the job done – and that job is becoming more and more difficult every day.

What will you do?

Why Salespeople Must Become More than Order Takers

Today’s post is by Mark Magnacca, president and cofounder, Allego.

 

 

Modern sales professionals require a much different skill set in order to be successful in today’s tech-driven world. Sales requires researching, listening, strategic thinking, as well as strong communicating – often referred to as “consultative sales.” Salespeople are no longer simply order takers, as they are required to provide detailed knowledge and insight about a product or service as it relates to the customer’s business. In many ways, great sales professionals have become more like consultants.

Why Salespeople Must Add Value

Buyers are becoming increasingly aware of the options available to them because of the abundance of information available on the Internet. In fact, according to the Forbes article, “The Disappearing Sales Process,” “customers reported to being nearly 60 percent through the sales process before engaging a sales rep.” This tells us that, if your salespeople aren’t contributing beyond what appears on your Website, they’re not adding value.

That’s why salespeople need to be more knowledgeable than ever about the customers and industries they serve. They not only need to be trained in the ways of selling, but also in how businesses within their target markets operate and how your products and services can solve their specific business challenges.

A recent blog post by Jeff Thomas, the vice president of sales at SEMrush, adds to this:

“You cannot reasonably expect to consult with someone if you do not know your stuff. Depending on your client base, you may never be better at their job than they are, but you need to know how your product and solution will impact them in a positive and meaningful way. You need to be able to ask questions and give answers that relate their expertise to your product.”

How Can Salespeople Become Experts?

This requires salespeople to not only be aware of what’s going on in the target industry they serve, but also become experts on it – and that means learning and researching on an ongoing basis. Since most sales professionals deal with many clients – often across multiple industries – the challenge of keeping up can grow exponentially.

With this trend of consultative sales, it’s become more common for companies to hire salespeople who have a background in the industry to which they will be expected to sell. This, however, may not be the right approach. Given how fast industries change and how sales reps may need to cover multiple industries, isn’t it a better approach to hire sales professionals with the right skills and provide them with the tools to learn about the customers and industries they serve?

The Benefits of Just-in-Time Learning

One solution to this conundrum is just-in-time learning. When implemented correctly, it provides a combination of training in both sales techniques and industry knowledge to back up the benefits of a product or service – allowing reps to talk to customers in a highly relevant manner. At its foundation, just-in-time learning eschews the traditional sales kickoff or training event in favor of a method that gives sales reps the ability to share content – pitch examples, best practices, lessons learned, tips, etc. – when and where they need it most. So, whether the rep is prepping her pitch in her office the day before the meeting, or in the parking lot minutes before it starts, she’s able to get information that will help her close the sale at a more effective point.

This kind of training is what sets great salespeople apart from the pack. In this blog post, George Athan, the chief strategist at MindStorm Strategic Consulting, says, “In consulting for many organizations and training sales teams, it is alarming that most salespeople are not taught how to effectively sell. The organizations that do training, often times it is not done effectively, and/or not consistently. This rings especially true when it comes to consultative selling.”

Hiring people based solely on industry expertise or their “sales personality” is the wrong approach. As is trying to onboard new reps with a firehose of information. Organizations that hire salespeople with the versatile skills required for modern selling and then arm their teams with just-in-time learning tools are much more likely to have success.

It’s time to provide sales professionals with tools that match today’s demands and empower sales reps to be consultants and not order takers.

Crossing the Chasm of Stalled Sales Pipeline

Today's guest post is by Bill Butler, CEO of Journey Sales.

 

 

According to The Sales Benchmark Index, 58 percent of deals in the sales pipeline end in “no decision,” which translates into, “The salesperson just did not show enough value or create enough urgency to break the status quo.”

However, the reason those 58 percent of deals don’t close goes much deeper than that since, on average, only 5-7 percent of prospects at the top of the sales funnel are ready to buy from you. Why? Largely due to misalignment between actual buyer behavior and what we, in Sales, expect.

As salespeople, we expect leads that are qualified – first from Marketing’s efforts in generating content, running campaigns, investing in marketing automation, social media, and more. But those people who have expressed interest in your firm’s marketing campaigns are still at the very beginning of their buyer journey.

From there, we expect Inside Sales or our sales development reps (“SDRs”) to continue to nurture those leads as soon as they raise their hand and express interest, while they’re still hot. But today’s reality is that it’s harder than ever for SDRs to engage buyers. People are simply inundated with emails, phone calls, meetings, and marketing messages. Yet SDRs continue to furiously work as many leads as possible – sending emails, making phone calls, leaving voicemails, and trolling LinkedIn profiles to qualify these leads for Sales.

But, if the buyer isn’t yet ready to engage with you (which is likely the case), then it takes a lot of unseen follow-up emails, ignored phone calls, and cycles of marketing touches to get them to a point where they’re valuable to Sales – if they ever reach that point at all.

You’re now looking into the Great Chasm of Stalled Pipeline: those leads and prospects who choose not to engage with you. Despite your best efforts and continuous nurturing by Marketing, Inside Sales, or your SDRs, the once-hot lead drops down, fading from sight, echoing as it bounces, deep into the Chasm of Stalled Pipeline.

How to Get Across the Chasm

As we all know, enterprise B2B purchase decisions require a group of decision makers and stakeholders who need to align and reach consensus. And the dynamics of that internal decision-making process for organizations is not only growing more complex, but largely unknown to us as salespeople. What’s critical for getting your sales team across the Chasm of Stalled Pipeline?

1. Shift Your Thinking

No wonder 95 percent of people at the top of the sales funnel aren’t ready to buy. It’s not a matter of Marketing and Sales gaining the attention of a single decision maker, nor is it even a matter of gaining the attention of the right decision maker. Sales needs to engage an entire team of decision makers and stakeholders – or, better yet, enable them to engage one another.

2. Prospect for More than One Champion within an Account

Are your Marketing and Inside Sales Development teams able to engage, educate, and empower not only those buyers after their initial hand-raise, but the entire team of stakeholders and decision makers within an account? How do you steadily build up engagement levels on their own timetable, rather than letting them slide down into your Chasm of Stalled Pipeline? Here at Journey Sales, we work with customers who have opportunities that were thought to be “dead on the vine” but just needed the attention of another key contact to reactivate the deal.

3. Engage the Collective Buying Team

If you’re familiar with the CEB’s ChallengerTM sales methodology, consider how it applies throughout your sales process, from the earliest stages of lead qualification to close. When the purchasing team can share knowledge and information about your company’s value from the outset, then salespeople are also getting what they want because they’re making it easier for the buyer to buy. And when mobilized buyers are engaging with one another and self-educating, those are the prospects your Sales team will have a much easier time converting into real opportunities to meet their quotas and your company’s revenue targets.

4. Measure and Optimize the Buying Experience

Once you’ve recalibrated your Sales process around these new buyer behaviors, it’s time to optimize. With the right tools, your team should be measuring these new sales stages of buyer engagement. Evaluate and assess whether your current stack of sales enablement solutions provides you and your sales team the right level of buyer engagement analytics at every stage of both your sales process and the buyers’ journey. Analyze what tactics work best for moving your prospects through the process versus which are stalling your sales activity. Only with these insights into your buyers’ behaviors will you be able to know when, where, and with whom to engage.

To hit your numbers in today’s Sales environment, you need your entire team – from Marketing, to your SDRs, to your sales executives – to be aligned on the goal of crossing the Chasm of Stalled Pipeline. If you can identify, engage, and optimize the entire buying team, you’ll be harnessing that initial momentum with prospects, and be on your way to reclaiming 58 percent of your pipeline.

How to Turn Your Salespeople into Negotiation Experts

Today’s post is by Jose Palomino, CEO of Spyglass Selling.

 

 

Since every negotiation is a give-and-take, it’s never really a surprise when a sales professional quotes their best price and the client replies by asking for an even better one. That’s why top-performing sales teams have a knack for uncovering and framing tradeoffs based on true value to the customer rather than price alone.

These salespeople have what I call a “negotiating mindset.” They understand the basic principles involved to avoid conceding on price or head off extraordinary requests that would be too costly to deliver.

The negotiating mindset is one of seven key characteristics of top-performing sales teams. The others are prospecting, product knowledge, sales acumen, account management, business acumen, and marketplace awareness. All of these are leading indicators that your team is thinking the right way to drive sales success.

When they have a negotiating mindset, sales professionals are able to shape deals without depending on unreasonable concessions on price or other matters. Even before they begin formal negotiations, they’ve thought about what they might offer – and what they might request – to shape a win-win agreement.

Sales professionals with this mindset understand that their discussions have to be framed at the beginning of the relationship, and not at the “closing table.” Almost always, they propose options that are of lower cost to their company but of higher value to the customer.

For example, they might offer to help develop a go-to-market strategy – or give the customer regional exclusivity for a limited time. Neither impacts their product’s price, but each certainly increases its value to the client.

Some say that sales negotiation is a form of game playing. The truth is that there is game theory at play. But the goal in B2B (long-term relationship) selling should always be to create value for both your company and your customer – not to employ “Jedi mind tricks” to win a round. That’s just a shortcut to avoid thinking of solutions that can increase your true value to your customer.

This means really listening to all of your customer’s needs – from the first meeting until the contract is signed. For example, a customer’s team may find your new product to represent a headache to install. By offering real installation training, the salesperson neatly addresses a need that’s not about pricing, but makes working with their company much more attractive…and profitable for all.

Assessing Your Team’s Negotiating Mindset

As a sales manager, how can you tell if your team has a negotiating mindset? Start by looking at how many of its requests focus on price concessions. If it’s a significant number, you’ve got work to do.

But that’s just the first step. Also ask yourself these questions:

• Does my sales team align customer interests with our products and services?
• Do they create win-win solutions with trade-offs that don’t involve price?
• Can they identify client motivations and limitations?
• Are they able to articulate our company’s value to overcome client objections?
• Can they recognize the client’s main ROI considerations?

If the answer to any of these is “no,” you need to strengthen your team’s negotiating skills. Among the most effective ways to do this is to question every salesperson who argues that a major price break is needed to close a deal. Ask them:

• “What else can we do for this customer?”
• “What are the customer’s three biggest challenges?” The answer may offer hints of needs the salesperson hasn’t identified.  
• “If, instead of a price concession, you had to inform the customer of a price increase, how would you defend it?”

When your team knows they’ll be challenged on every price concession with questions like these, you’ll influence the sales culture to think more proactively about creating value beyond price.

Sales leaders should shape deals to increase revenue and margin … and value to the customer. By taking action to ingrain the negotiating mindset, you’ll have more opportunities to raise profit margins and actually develop happier customers.

Seven Ways to Define Your Sales Success before You Design It

Today’s post is by Jack Daly, an expert in sales management, sales, and corporate culture. His website is http://www.jackdaly.net/. Connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

Sometimes we have to reinvent ourselves in order to succeed. To become a “sales superstar,” you have to adapt, work hard, persevere, and have the ability to recognize your full potential. Finding a way to define your future success will help you set goals, navigate unplanned detours, and achieve unprecedented results.

Create a Goal. Chart a Course. Achieve the Goal.

Identifying where you are right now is the first step. You can’t begin moving in the right direction until you can define your present role. Knowing what you can offer – and understanding your talents – are essential to your success. Without that knowledge, you can’t define the methods for reaching your goals.

Once you’ve identified your current position, you’ll need to identify your end goal by employing backward thinking. Chart your course to success by beginning at the end. Picture what your end goal will look like and what you want to have achieved. Then, work backwards – plotting out each action you’ll need to take in order to reach that end goal. Your vision for the future will essentially determine what your future holds.

To give yourself the best chance to succeed, do one simple thing: write your goals down. It doesn’t matter if you use pen and paper or type it up in a Word document. Just record your goals. The chances of you reaching that goal increase exponentially once you write it down. Dreams don’t often come true, but goals in writing do.

Write your goals down. It’s efficient, simple, and effective.

Define Your Goals

Most people have no problem setting goals. It’s easy to create goals – especially those with short life expectancies, as we see every New Year’s. But the vast majority of these goals are abandoned within the first few weeks of setting resolutions. The hard part is defining those goals for the optimal chance of success. That’s where most people falter. If you can’t define your goals, you can’t achieve your goals.

Three Simple Guidelines

Here’s how to extend the life expectancy of your goals while avoiding the pitfalls that stop most people:

• Set goals that are nonnegotiable
• Set goals that are difficult
• Set goals that are important to you

Setting a nonnegotiable goal negates the ability to waiver on your decision. This is especially true in sales, where everything is based on establishing and maintaining relationships. If your clients see you setting goals you never achieve, you’ll lose credibility.

Setting difficult goals will help you remain focused on the task at hand while lessening your chances of procrastinating. Here are two goals: (1) Exercise three times a week, and (2) Keep your family safe. Which is more difficult? Keeping your family safe, right? Sure, finding the time and energy to exercise can be difficult, but the scope of the second goal is much more involved, stressful, and even intimidating.

Setting goals that are important to you provides motivation to help complete the goal. Meeting with three clients next week to nurture relationships is great, but so is adding three new clients next month. Which one is more important? If you’ve done a good job building a relationship with your current clients, it’s going to be more important for you to gain new clients that will contribute to your productivity and increased profits.

Don’t Be Easy on Yourself

Goals that are nonnegotiable, difficult, and important to you are the ones that will drain you of your energy and increase your frustration levels. But guess what? They’re worth it. These are the goals that will excite you. If you’re serious about meeting your goals, then setting nonnegotiable, difficult, and important goals will feel like a natural progression toward your success.

More than Just Business

Too many businesses think of goals only in terms of business. Broaden your thinking – include quality of life and personal goals. Denis Waitley once said, “Most people spend more time planning Christmas and holidays than they do planning their life.” Make your goals multidimensional. Don’t limit yourself.

Hold Yourself Accountable

Here’s where you can take your turn in the hot seat. Share your goals with people you respect and care about and establish a system to review your performance. Ask for their feedback. Schedule a review at least once every quarter where you can assess your progress and make adjustments accordingly.

Good sales professionals prioritize everything, including clients. Clients are actually one of the most important things you can prioritize. Every salesperson should have a list of their top 30 prospects. Prioritize them according to your sales prospecting activity over the past 90 days, top hurdles associated with winning over the prospect, solutions to leap those hurdles, and, finally, a targeted timeline for winning over the prospect.

Set Some Goals

Focus precedes success. Once your goals are in writing and you’ve got a system in place to acquire results, make sure each of your goals is (1) nonnegotiable, (2) difficult, and (3) important to you. You’ll find yourself much more focused and motivated once you’ve defined your goals.  

Three Tips to Turn New Sales Hires into Top Performers

Today's blog post is by Diane Polnow, owner and founder of Elite Sales Leaders.

 

In my 20+ years as a sales manager and sales director working for some of the most recognized Fortune 100 companies – such as American Express and Sprint – I’ve coached my fair share of new hires who have become some of the highest producing reps in nationwide rankings.

There is a long list of things to do – but here are three tips to help you get started.

Starting new hires properly from the beginning is vital if you want them to be superstars.

Tip #1: Onboard new reps as fast as possible. 

First, get them get onboarded as fast as possible. It’s vital to give them all the necessary tools you can to help set them up to succeed in the beginning! Get them things like territory and account lists, technology, access to company systems, and training schedules. I’ve heard horror stories of new hires not getting these until long after they start.

Tip #2: Assign a team to help train, mentor, and coach reps.

Next, it takes an enormous amount of time and energy to coach someone new, so the next tip is to assign a team of people – as many as you can – to help train, mentor, and coach in addition to you. These would be top performing peers with the same job title as your new hires – either in or out of territory. Helping your new hires build a network of superstar peers will allow them to learn from the best. Plus, you’re their boss – they’re always hearing from you, so they’ll like hearing from peers and they should be striving to hit their quota from day one. Having multiple coaches can accelerate learning and top performance. Too often, new hires are left to fend for themselves. Providing proper training in the beginning is everything!

Tip #3: Provide opportunities to learn in the field quickly (and often).

The next tip is to get them in the field quickly and as often as possible – either with you or with other top performing peers. If you want new hires to be the best, let them learn from the best – and there’s nothing like learning quickly through on-the-job training. Quick success is motivating and exciting, so work with your new hires to develop a list of potential deals to close.

After you’ve done these things, it’s now all about activity, activity, activity. Activity leads to sales. Continue coaching new hires to refine and improve their pitch. Keep them focused and be cautious to not overwhelm them with too much information – give them just enough to be powerful and effective. I did these with my new hires and they quickly rose to the top.

For more details and information about our programs and services and how you and your teams can rise to the top and be part of the Elite, go to www.EliteSalesLeaders.com and watch our video – “Coach New Hires To Become Top Sales Performers” – at https://youtu.be/TRiaeUTUYKg. I look forward to hearing how you rise to the top and join the elite!

How to Avoid Rookie Mistakes that Could Cost You a Great Sales Job

Today’s post is by KiteDesk CEO Sean Burke.

 

 

The level to which you choose to be public, private, and everything in between on your social networks has a substantial impact on employability. For those seeking their next lucrative career opportunity, it’s challenging to decide what to reveal in your public social spaces.

In no space is that more relevant than in sales, where talent acquisition is more competitive and fluid than ever before. Hiring managers now use candidates’ social footprints as one of the first steps in the hiring process – and they may be using it as much to weed out potential employees as they are to include them.

So how exactly are hiring managers considering social profiles and participation as they hire? Internet citizens looking to score a dream gig want to be sensitive to what recruiters are thinking as they consider a new hire.

What Managers Look At

A whopping 93 percent of hiring managers look at a candidate’s social presence before making a hiring decision! CareerBuilder reports that one-half of employers said they’ve found content that caused them to not hire the candidate – up from 34 percent in 2012. Managers are studying your suitability for a sales role from a culture fit standpoint.They’re interested in your personality because they want to know if you will be a good fit with the rest of the team.

Here’s what hiring managers are likely to view favorably:

• High number of overall contacts and connections
• Active and current posts across various networks
• Recommendations from colleagues and supervisors
• Synergy – similar connections to the company and the industry
• Obvious willingness to engage, and ability to get others to engage
• Well-rounded, wide range of interests
• Volunteering or charitable connections are a plus

Here’s what won’t work in your favor:

• Illegal activity references (and/or sexual escapades and obvious drug use)
• Inappropriate photographs
• Negative comments about a company or team member
• Poor spelling and grammar
• Political or religious rants/diatribes or proselytism
• Oversharing

Be Yourself

By all means, don’t forget to be interesting! Express in detail what you want in a career; wishy-washy candidates are rarely appealing. If you don’t dare to reveal what you’re looking for, you’ll be passed up completely.

Experience and knowledge of the position are obviously also key, but so is a clear representation of balanced interests. In other words, one-dimensional profiles are far less appealing than those that show a “real” person.

Keep It Current

Stay current with social data. Don’t include your high school experience on your profiles if you are a mid-level job seeker. Still touting older accomplishments? Managers may assume you haven’t achieved much in recent years and that you lack ambition and drive.

Be Humble

Nobody achieves success as a lone wolf – we all have help along the way. Be mindful of the number of instances of I vs. We as you list your accomplishments. In other words, resist narcissism – give credit to those who deserve it. Managers weary of hiring a very me-focused social profiler.

Be Active

Follow and engage with the social presence of all companies you are considering for employment. It’s this kind of initiative that separates less-appealing recruits from the full-on must-haves.

Rookie Mistakes on Social

Here are the most common gaps you should definitely avoid:

• No professional, polished photos as your avatars
• Profiles that are self centered and self serving
• Flat, generic profiles that don’t tell a story or build a portrait
• No recommendations from coworkers, supervisors, or customers
• Interests that don’t match the position or industry you’re considering
• Profiles that are either too aggressive about employment or too passive

Stay vigilant. Pay attention to privacy updates on all of your social networking accounts. Know that managers will use public information to spot both stars and loose cannons.

Sales is a highly competitive landscape, and learning to present oneself skillfully on social platforms is paramount for career success.

Nine Traits of Extremely Successful Sales Managers

Today’s post is by Dave Mattson, a bestselling author, sales and management thought leader, keynote speaker, and leader for sales training seminars around the world. As CEO and president of Sandler Training, Mr. Mattson oversees the corporate direction and strategy for the company’s global operations, including sales, marketing, consulting, alliances, and support. His key areas of focus are sales leadership, strategy, and client satisfaction.

As a manager, you always want to make sure your salespeople are fulfilling their potential. Every single touchpoint you have with them should be driven by a very simple question: How can you best support them in increasing both their effectiveness (their ability to do the right things) and their efficiency (their ability to do those things well)?

Questions All Sales Managers Must Ask Themselves

You also have to ask yourself some important questions about your own efficiency and effectiveness. For instance:

• How do you protect your own precious time?
• How do you avoid falling into a time trap, day after day?
• How do you keep yourself out of the stressful scenario in which you keep solving everyone else’s problems – often the same problems over and over again – while your team underperforms?

These are big questions. Their best answers, I believe, lie in your commitment to your own development within the one area that is, potentially, the single highest-impact element of your job as a manager: sales coaching.

The Importance of Sales Coaching

Many sales leaders underestimate the importance of sales coaching. This happens – at least in part – because they haven’t been exposed to the kinds of dramatic performance changes effective sales coaching can bring about. What’s more, they may begin with an incomplete understanding of what effective sales coaching really is.

Contrary to popular belief and practice, effective sales coaching is not “showing them how to do it.” It’s not listening in on a salesperson’s telephone call and then, once the call is over, sharing what you would have done and how you would have done it. It’s not wandering into the breakroom and sharing your own in-depth critique on the latest “one that got away” with a salesperson – in front of his or her peers. And it’s not summoning the team together into a room and sharing your favorite stories from the days when you were selling.

The True Definition of Sales Coaching

Sales coaching is a formal process that uses confidential one-on-one meetings to help salespeople achieve new levels of success by discovering the hidden issues that inhibit their performance.

That’s an important definition – one I’m going to suggest you try the next time you interact with any member of your sales team. Consider its implications and prepare to move outside your own comfort zone, just as (I assume) you want the members of your sales team to move beyond theirs.

Why Sales Coaching Is Not Telling Salespeople What to Do

Here’s the most challenging implication once again, the “big idea” that sometimes disorients sales managers we talk to: Sales coaching has absolutely nothing to do with directing the actions of the salesperson.

Instead, sales coaching is singularly focused on helping the individual you’re coaching to grow as a person – and, incidentally, perform more effectively within the role of salesperson. That kind of growth within the salesperson’s professional role is likeliest to happen when the coach facilitates the salesperson’s personal conclusions about better ways to act while in the selling environment.

In other words, coaching is all about supporting salespeople as they come to their own conclusions about certain behavioral changes they themselves decide to take on. It’s not, ever, about telling them what to do.

This kind of coaching represents about 35 percent of the successful leadership role and has the single greatest impact on the future success of the salesperson. It means changing the way you operate and takes time, attention, and effort. It means breaking the “performance code” for each individual salesperson on your team and supporting that salesperson over time. It sounds, at first, like it takes too much time.

But our experience, across multiple industries, is that effective sales coaching is always a net productivity gain for sales managers – because it frees managers from the (common) pattern of “putting out fires” for most or all members of the team.

The Nine Traits of Successful Sales Managers

This year, Sandler formalized the revolutionary sales coaching process laid out by the founder of our company, David H. Sandler. We did that in order to make mastery of the Sandler Coaching System easier for sales managers in any field, working with any size team. Here are the nine traits of managers who successfully implement the Sandler Coaching System.

1. High self awareness: The coach has a high degree of self awareness and uses this to maintain an objective perspective during the coaching process. This means learning to think about the best ways to create opportunities for self discovery on the salesperson’s part – as opposed to getting pulled into “fix-it” mode.
2. Balanced focus: The coach explores the salesperson’s mix of personal limiting negative beliefs and the professional issues affecting the salesperson’s performance – and understands that these combined factors can have a profound impact on sales performance. For instance: If a salesperson grew up being told repeatedly by a parent that very wealthy people are exploitative and greedy, that belief is likely to have an impact on the salesperson’s performance. The impact may become noticeable only as the salesperson approaches new, higher income levels. In the area of professional issues, a change in the compensation plan making it easier for that same salesperson to earn higher income levels might interact in complex ways with the limiting negative belief about being wealthy…and actually lower sales productivity!
3. Ability to solve problems: The coach analyzes each salesperson individually and determines the true genesis of a problem, separating it from unrelated areas that might cause sidetracking. One common example would be the situation where a salesperson complains about the quality of his or her leads, but the real issue is call reluctance.
4. Sincere interest and desire to help: The coach is sincerely interested in helping the salesperson develop as a person and does not view the coaching session as a perfunctory part of the manager’s role. Remember: Coaching is a time saver, not a time waster!
5. Nurturing and nonjudgmental feedback skills: The coach focuses on giving neutral, nonjudgmental feedback. This focus protects the self worth of the salesperson and makes acceptance of the feedback much more likely. Here’s what that might sound like: “Amanda, thank you for sharing that. I agree – you really did a good job with bonding and rapport in that role play. So, now, let’s focus on the issue of setting a strong up-front contract, as it is not at all uncommon for people to need some time to get their head around, especially if they’re new to the Sandler Selling System.”
6. Strategic thinking skills: The coach focuses on the big picture and works through issues strategically. This approach helps the salesperson broaden his or her thinking and explore all the available options. It’s absolutely essential that you connect everything you’re doing togetherin the coaching session to a specific personal goal – one that matters deeply to that salesperson. For instance, if it’s important to a salesperson to have $5,000 in savings so he can buy a nice engagement ring and propose to his girlfriend, that’s the “big picture” goal you’re both aiming to attain.
7. Openness to new ideas and approaches: The coach displays openness during the coaching sessions and does not steer salespeople toward the coach’s desired result. This allows salespeople to take ownership of their own ideas and ensures personal acceptance and ownership of all new behaviors. The kind of openness we’re talking about might sound like this during a coaching conversation: “Let’s explore this together and find out if there is different way to attack this issue.”
8. Trustworthiness: The coach earns a high degree of trust and recognizes the importance of being professionally vulnerable in order to create the right atmosphere for the coaching session. As a general rule, people don’t trust coaches who show zero vulnerability. Trust is built only over time, and it must be continuously strengthened – or it will decay. For instance, an effective coach wouldn’t use something learned during a coaching session as a weapon to win a later argument with the salesperson or as fuel for a sarcastic remark in front of the salesperson’s peers.
9. Questioning and listening skills: The coach asks the difficult questions and then listens with both ears to the responses. The coach is at ease with any discomfort caused by questions asked as part of the coaching process. Only the salesperson’s honest answers to these tough questions can drive growth. The coach recognizes that the salesperson is only growing in understanding when responding – not when the coach is talking. Questions that support this kind of listening include: “Can you tell me more about that?” “Could you have done that differently?” “What happens if you did more of that behavior?”

Improving this one area of sales management – coaching – can have a huge positive impact in both the short term and the long term. When properly executed, sales coaching delivers a positive ripple effect that leads to truly remarkable performance turnarounds for both individuals and teams. I’ve seen it happen hundreds of times.

To learn more about the Sandler Coaching System, visit us at https://www.sandler.com/resources/sandler-books/coaching.

How to Sidestep Silly Price Wars in Selling

Today’s post is by Dave Kurlan, founder and CEO of Objective Management Group Inc. and Kurlan & Associates, and author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling: How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball.  

If you have watched or listened to news about the current U.S. presidential election, debates, interviews, or pep rallies, you might have noticed some interesting forms of selling taking place.

Claims over what the various candidates would do relative to taxes, healthcare, and college are the political equivalent to salespeople talking about price. When politicians say they will lower taxes, it is very similar to when salespeople say they will have lower prices. When politicians claim that healthcare or college will be free, it is like salespeople who say their product or service includes all of the desired bells and whistles. If those claims resonate, you might get excited, raise your expectations, and then…

The “Low Price” War

While a few companies in each industry battle it out to win the silly war of having the lowest price, it’s important to note that only one company can actually have the lowest price – and always having the lowest price is not sustainable unless their volume reaches Amazonian proportions. The remaining companies in each segment must rise above the noise of price and concentrate on selling value – something most of them fail to accomplish. It’s not that they aren’t trying as much as they aren’t really doing it.

A sales conversation that even suggests any of the following things will cause severe damage to your chances of selling value.

• “We will be competitive.” Suggesting you will be competitive when you will ultimately be higher sets an expectation you cannot meet.
• “We can save you some money.” Saying you can save their company money when the competitor will save them more money challenges your integrity and credibility.
• “We will send you a quote or a proposal.” Offering to accept their request for a quote or proposal quickly turns your effort into a transactional sale that cannot coexist with selling value.
• “We will be within your budget.” Assuring them that you will be within their budget, while true, does not address the issue of you having a higher price – and will disappoint your prospects.
• “Let’s schedule a demo.” Rushing to schedule a demo – like accepting the request for a quote – turns your effort into a transactional sale.

Price simply cannot coexist in a conversation about value. You will even get in trouble if you talk about value as a means of differentiation – the low-price leaders also use the word “value” to suggest that their value lies in their low prices!

Value is not something you articulate. You would be better off saying up front that your prices will be higher than you would if you tried to articulate your value to the prospect. No, value is actually observed by prospects, not articulated to them. Value is something your prospects see in you and get from you. Value is a derivative of a true consultative approach, with its foundation built around a growing relationship – a real conversation consisting of great, thought-provoking questions about them, their challenges, how those challenges affect them, the resulting consequences, and how that makes them feel.

The biggest problem with all of that? Most salespeople can’t have that kind of dialog. It’s not that they can’t learn to. Everyone can learn it. It’s that most salespeople are very uncomfortable with it because it takes them 180 degrees away from what they are comfortable with – talking about their company, capabilities, value proposition, products, applications, services, features, benefits, and pricing.

Affirmations to Help You Sell Value Successfully

You must change in order to succeed at selling your true value. Read this aloud eight times:

Comfort is not a prerequisite for success.

Doing what feels comfortable does not lead to great results.

Doing that which achieves great results is a requirement in modern selling.

How many salespeople are able to sell value this way? The group is shrinking! Read this article to learn how few salespeople have this ability and what this means for everyone else.

If you are a sales leader and want to learn if your sales organization can become value sellers, consider a sales force evaluation. If you are a sales leader and want to hire salespeople who have the ability to sell value, consider using OMG’s accurate and predictive sales candidate assessments!

It’s worth noting that the political candidates are attempting to sell us on the value that will be provided by electing them to the presidency. In February, Trump called Cruz the biggest liar ever. On Super Tuesday, Rubio said that Trump is a con man, and Cruz said you can’t have someone in the White House if you would be embarrassed if your children were to hear him.

Bashing the competition flies in the face of selling value. On Super Tuesday, Trump recognized that and regrouped. With his new and improved approach, he congratulated Ted Cruz for winning Texas and Oklahoma, mentioning how hard Cruz had worked for those wins. Talking about your competition in a positive manner adds to your credibility – and you must have credibility in order to sell value!

Six Reasons You Should Include Simulations in Your Sales Hiring and Training Processes

Today’s post is by John C. Kolencik, who has been conducting business simulations for client companies for more than 20 years. His company, Matrix Impact (http://www.matriximpact.com), focuses on increasing clients’ sales revenue an average of 42 percent by finding the best people, training them, and providing high-producing lead generation.

Organizations are only as strong as the people who work for it. That makes people your most precious resource. It also makes the hiring, assessment, and development of A-Players critical best practices in any company. Nobody wants to make a mistake in hiring or promoting. So why is it one of the most under-taught, under-improved processes in all of business?   

One of the best ways to improve your hiring, assessment, and development of A-Players is the use of simulations, but fewer than 2 percent of all businesses use them – and it is a mystery to me. What this stat screams is that, when simulations are utilized correctly, you can differentiate your business from at least 98 percent of your competition.  

I mean, nobody would buy a car without taking it for a test drive, nor would an airline hire pilots unless they could prove – in a flight simulator – that they were competent. So why choose to hire or promote someone without seeing their true ability to perform required business tasks with your own eyes?

Here are the six reasons simulations should be an integral part of any hiring, promotion, and training processes.   

#1: The 5:1 Ratio

A mis-hire/promote costs the company 5 times the candidate’s annual compensation (e.g., a $50,000 salary costs the company $250,000).

With training, it’s just as easy to see the ROI. A business parable for you:

CEO said to the CFO: “We have to train our people to get better.”

CFO says: “But what if we invest time and money to train them and they leave us to go to our competitor?”

CEO shoots back: “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”

Whether it is a mis-hire or a less-than-adequately-trained employee, the impact on client relations, revenue, productivity, supervision time, and morale is negative – and it is huge.

#2: The Power of Proof

Have you ever had an interview where the person told you they couldn’t do the job? Or have you ever had a person who “stretched” their abilities in the interview and, as a result, you were cleaning their messes for days, weeks, or months after?

A best practice simulation provides you “point-to-point correspondence” with the job. When the activities found in the simulation are a replica of activities required on the job, you get an accurate portrayal of skill level.

This is also why simulations are critical to training. Do you really want salespeople “practicing” on customers? Of course you don’t! General George Patton once said, “The more my troops sweat in peacetime, the less they bleed during combat.” Simulations are a must in all continual development.

Reason #3: How They Handle the Debrief

Once they perform in the simulation, how do they respond to constructive criticism? Are they thin-skinned? Do they gloat? Is their self-confidence warranted? Many times, you find out the best and the worst of people by observing how they handle coaching.

It also opens a window to know how they learn best. Through the debrief, you will discover what they will and won’t respond to. This can be invaluable as you continue to train and develop your team.

Reason #4: Go to the Video

When recorded, simulations help reduce – if not remove – bias and subjectivity in the hiring process in one big  way: “The eye in the sky does not lie.” You don’t want a he-said/she-said situation in any business scenario, but especially in simulations.

Here’s a great example of the benefit of recording simulations: A hiring manager who got a “good hit” off a candidate in an interview might get a completely different feeling after watching a recorded simulation. The candidate might be the most charming person in the world, but, when the time came, he didn’t have the skills he had trumpeted. In any business, that is a disaster averted.

Recorded simulations are irreplaceable in training as well. There is nothing better than being able to go back and review specific areas for either praise or correction. Plus, reviewing with individuals their recorded progress or regression is a very powerful training tool.

Reason #5: Onboarding

Even if somebody is an A-Player, it does not mean he or she is perfect. Too many onboarding programs fail to adapt to the candidate, thus slowing the speed to effectiveness of the new hire.

Simulations don’t just weed out bad candidates. They also help assess a good candidate’s specific strengths and weaknesses in a hyper-accurate way. This allows you to design/implement an onboarding process to speed them to productivity. Not to mention, it helps in offer decisions such as salary negotiations.    

Reason #6: Positioning Your Company as the Best

The War for Talent is upon us and there are only so many A-Players out there. The mistake most organizations make is purposefully making the hiring process easier out of fear of losing the candidate.

Thomas Payne said, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.” Being with the best requires paying the price. Candidates learn respect for the position and respect for the company by seeing how seriously the company takes the hiring process. The best candidates don’t want to be with some company that just rolls over. Remember: Everybody wants to belong to The Club that is impossible to get in.

87 percent of people who voluntarily (i.e., quit) leave a company do so because of a lack of growth and development opportunity. It’s human nature to want to improve, develop new skills, succeed, and advance. If you have good people, make them better. Use simulations to continually train and develop your team. And you know what they call the company with the top employees…they call that company the best!

Andy Grove, the Intel visionary, said, “The most important charge a good manager owns is the responsibility to continuously train his/her employees.” When you add in the training component, you have three areas where you can either irreparably damage or exponentially advance your most precious resource.  

To ensure you are hiring A-Players – and for training to be both impactful and “sticky” – you have to closely tie how things are actually done in your organization to any evaluation and development of personnel. This is why simulations are such a critical management tool.