Selling Power Blog

Seven Stories for New Hires to Drastically Improve Ramp-up Time

Today’s post is by Chris Wade, co-founder and CEO of Traena.

 

 

If only you could clone your veterans and top performers (or yourself)! They have the experience, industry insights, and relevant customer success stories that seamlessly guide customers along their buying journey. Your new hires are trying hard, but there’s just no way for them to make up for the gap in knowledge needed to deliver at the same level until they rack up years of experience, right?

Wrong. Fortunately, you can drastically reduce that ramp-up time by arming your new hires with the stories they need to win. Stories are how we put events in perspective and understand why things are the way they are.

Whenever we communicate with stories, we give our audience a big mental hook to latch onto in order to understand the key point. Conversely, when facts and ideas are presented theoretically, they become the mental equivalent of greased watermelon – nothing to grab onto and remember the main point with.

Odds are, your new hires aren’t equipped with the stories your veterans deploy so well to win. Here are seven categories of stories you can easily start sharing today to invest in the development of your new hires and eliminate the knowledge gap.

1. Customer case studies: Who are some specific customers whose lives your company has made significantly better? How exactly are you helping them? Be proud and show off!
   
   
2. Competitor breakdowns: Who are your top competitors? How do you stack up against them? Are you younger and more nimble? Older and more experienced? What are some examples where you have beaten them? Where they have beaten you? What is your market share? How has that changed over time?
   
   
3. Founding vision: Why did the founders start the company? What did the world look like before your company existed? What is the current 10-year plan? How do you make the world a better place? Give a vision of which your team (and your customers) will be proud to be part.
   
   
4. Company history: How has your company gotten to where it is today? What have been the major wins? When were things not going well? Maybe on the brink of collapse? How did you get through?
   
   
5. Market overview: How big is your company’s market? Is it highly competitive and fragmented or dominated by a few large players? How has that changed over time? What are the major changes going on currently?
   
   
6. Problem statement: Help put your team in your customers’ shoes. What problem does your company solve? Who does your company help?
   
   
7. Strategy overview: How does your company go to market? What’s the marketing strategy? The sales strategy? On what is your CEO focused this year?
   

Arming your team with these stories and telling them what they should be highlighting to prospects will give them the tools they need to succeed, facilitate more rapid personal development, engender more loyalty, and more firmly establish alignment with the company vision and goals.

It's Time to Be a Data-driven Sales Organization

Today’s post is by Stephen D’Angelo, president, worldwide field operations at Aviso Inc. Join him in March at the Sales 3.0 Conference, where he will present “Delivering Accurate Forecasts – How Companies Like Dell, Splunk, Zuora, and MongoDB Went from Complicated and Inaccurate Spreadsheets to an AI/Machine Learning Platform.”

 

As a sales leader, wouldn’t it be useful for you to know if a rep, product line, or business segment is forecasted to miss the number? Wouldn’t you also be interested in knowing by how much – and what you could do about it? All while driving smart pipeline management and deal reviews?

With artificial intelligence (AI) for deal management, you can actually do all that.

The Link between Baseball and Sales Organizations

As an example, recall the bestselling book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, published in 2003 and written by Michael Lewis. There’s a reason this story became a bestseller and turned into a major movie starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the major league baseball general manager. This was the fascinating tale of how major league baseball evolved from an old-fashioned, stodgy kind of business to one driven by data and statistics.

Up until the mid-1990s baseball was run by scouts, field managers, and general managers who made game execution decisions based on gut, intuition, experience, and personal bias. None of the decisions were based off of metrics like on-base percentage, total walks, slugging percentage, etc.

Fast forward to today. The most successful teams use guidance from sabermetrics, big data, and AI to complement human judgment. Analytics now drive draft picks, trades, lineups, and any other major decisions. For the latest evidence of this approach, look no further than the 2017 World Series-winning Houston Astros. They successfully transformed their team blending the latest in data analytics with great talent.

What does this have to do with running a high-performance sales organization? When it comes to key deal management processes, the majority of sales organizations operate like the old, stodgy scouts and GMs of baseball’s yesterday. Most rely on the art of the sell – using gut feel and intuition.

New Insights You Can Leverage with AI

Most sales organizations take into account very little data that shows account historical performance. They also fail to use seasonality to guide forecast management, pipeline reviews, or deal reviews. Preparing for each of these meetings can be time consuming and – with gut feeling driving decisions – leaders can’t get an accurate picture of the business.

Sure, data from CRM systems is useful, but most sales organizations have yet to adopt advanced, cloud-based technology or machine learning to assist their teams. Instead, managers ask questions of their reps, assess their truthfulness, integrate involvement with the deals, come up with a swag or confidence level of a forecast number, and predict which deals will close, for how much, and when.

Much like major league baseball moved into the future, it’s time for sales leaders to transition to leveraging the power of big data, machine learning, and AI to drive decision making for forecast management, deal reviews, and weekly sales pipeline calls. Like financial planning, supply chain management, and so many other business processes, shouldn’t sales organizations leverage machine learning and AI to create more accurate forecasts? Don’t our CEOs, CFOs, and shareholders deserve a more accurate forward-looking assessment of the business by leveraging predictions based on several quarters of data pulled from CRM and other sales systems?

I have been leading organizations and sales teams for more than 30 years and I, too, am one of those leaders that had to come to this realization and adjust. Sales organizations must stop using bulky, error-prone spreadsheets as forecasting tools or as tools to run pipeline reviews. Aviso can help you do this. Unlike CRM analytics, spreadsheets, or simple forecasting tools, our platform connects to CRM systems, snapshots data every 15 minutes, and stores it in the independent data store. We see through millions of data points to make sense of predictive signals and provide a series of accurate predictions on day one of the quarter.

In summary, here are the key things you can accomplish for your sales organization leveraging AI, analytics, and machine learning:

• Understand if you’re closing deals fast enough to hit quota – also known as “pacing.”
• Determine if your current pipeline will produce enough revenue to meet quota this quarter.
• Understand whether pipeline is being built and progressing at the proper pace to support next quarter’s number.
• Get an accurate sense of your run rate business – or the amount of revenue you can expect from deals that both open and close in-quarter.
• Receive AI-driven “Smart Selling Signals” on every deal in your pipeline to quickly identify green, yellow, and red indicators so that you can adjust execution and win more deals.
  

You have great talent on your team. Your sales pros are proficient at selling and negotiating. Now, you can use AI to guide your talent to better assess the likelihood deals will close – and forecast more accurately. You can also stay laser focused on deals that need immediate attention during pipeline reviews, and eliminate any prep required for deal reviews.

If you’re ready to be the Billy Beane of your team, email me at stephen.dangelo@aviso.com. You can also read more about laser-focused pipeline reviews and zero-prep deal reviews on the Aviso blog.

The Most Frustrating Phrases Used on Voicemail Greetings

Today’s post is by Nancy Friedman, keynote speaker on customer service, communications, and sales, and president of Telephone Doctor®, an international customer service training company headquartered in St. Louis, MO, specializing in customer service, communications, and telephone skills. Call 314/291-1012 for more information or visit her Website at www.nancyfriedman.com.

 

When was the last time you listened to your own cell phone or work phone voicemail greeting? If it’s been a while (or never), that’s your first assignment from me, the Telephone Doctor. Listen to your own greeting.

Why do this? Because we cannot fix what we do not know. Here are some of the most common phrases sales professionals use on their away message – and the missteps you need to avoid.

#1: “Hi, I’m not at my desk right now.”

Well, that’s a hot lot of news! If your voicemail answered, they already know you’re not there. Let your callers know where you are – not where you’re not. The whole point is to be available to your customers and prospects. Instead of telling them where you’re not, give them another avenue by which to reach you (since they obviously didn’t reach you on this particular call). The best would be to give another name or extension. You can also provide an email address or a home phone number.  

#2: “Your call is very important to me.”

 The problem with this phrase is that it doesn’t sound genuine. The caller is thinking, “Well, if I’m so darn important, where the heck are you?”

#3: “I’m sorry I missed your call.”

Of course, you are (although, let’s face it; there are probably some calls you’re not sorry to have missed). Leave this one out! It’s a given. Use the time and space for something more valuable.

#4: “Go ahead and leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”  

Everyone says this, right? Well, not everyone, actually! (I don’t.)   

Based on our Telephone Doctor surveys, people aren’t returning their phone calls in a timely fashion. If you’re telling your callers you’ll call them back, then do it ! Or have the call returned on your behalf. “As soon as possible” is rhetorical and a choice. (Also: “I’ll return your call at my convenience” is a potential irritant.) And remember: unreturned phone calls rank high on the frustration list.)  

Final tip: When you record your voicemail greeting, smile! Your listeners will be able to hear that in your voice.

Nine Factors that Create the "Sales Enablement Effectiveness Gap"

Today’s post is by Bob Junke, founder and CEO of Adventace®. He is also the author of the bestselling book, Create the High Performance Sales Environment® and creator of the Adventace Sales Management System™, a Salesforce-based application that enables a high-performance sales environment.

 

In their 2015 study, Heinz Marketing and Highspot said there is “A massive gap between the importance and effectiveness of Sales Enablement.” The gap was confirmed in their 2017 follow-up study when they said, “Persistent gaps in content performance metrics, best practices, and training are leaving too many sales teams underprepared.”

The good news is that sales enablement is well “above radar,” and is considered very important. I believe this is due to the promise it holds of making new hires productive more quickly, providing sellers with the differentiators they need to win more business, and contributing to the drive to reduce sale cycle length.

In my view there are nine key factors causing the gap – all of which can be resolved.

1. Content Is Misaligned with Sales Process

CSO Insights said, “Organizations that implement a dynamic sales process and align it to the customer’s journey have higher win rates and quota attainment than those with lesser alignment and lesser degrees of process.”

But what about then aligning content with that buyer-aligned sales process? Here the results are not so good. MarketingProfs said, “Most companies admit that there’s a lot of work to be done in aligning marketing content with sales processes.”

2. Content Lacks Granularity

A key objective of sales enablement is to provide the right content, at the right time, and in the right format. Generally, however, content simply tends to be far too broad brush. The processes a seller executes should parallel, enhance, and shorten the buyer’s journey. Content should, in turn, parallel a seller’s processes. That means it must be specific to buyers based on a number of important factors:

• The step the seller is executing
• The buyer’s vertical market
• The buyer’s job function
• The critical business issues the buyer likely has
• The business capabilities the seller’s products/services can provide

3. Lead Generation Content and Activities Directed to the Wrong Buyers

The A/B ratio is perhaps the most important predictive sales metric. It measures the number of opportunities a seller has that are “above the power line” divided by those opportunities where the seller is “below the power line.” Most sellers have A/B ratios that are 1/8 or worse. This translates to them wasting 40 percent of their time calling on buyers who cannot buy.

In most companies this devastating problem starts with marketing, who inadvertently directs their lead gen efforts to “below the power line” buyers.  

4. Inadequate Coaching by First-line Sales Managers

The linchpins in the sales organization are first-line managers. They must execute effective assessment of opportunities, pipeline management, and metric analysis to ensure sellers are executing effectively. If this is done properly, seller skill deficiencies – including inadequate use of sales enablement tools – can quickly be identified and rectified.

5. Appropriate Metrics Aren’t Used to Track Success and Drive Improvements

Today, management struggles with sales enablement metrics, but there are very good predictive metrics that enable sales management to pinpoint specific performance anomalies related to each step in the sales process. This, in turn, enables managers to determine whether an individual has skill deficiencies, if a broader content issue exists, etc. The aforementioned A/B ratio is such a metric.

6. Comp Plans Don’t Reflect Sales Enablement Objectives 

With metrics in place, the stage is set for aligning compensation plans with sales enablement objectives. This will appropriately incent salespeople and sales managers to improve execution of sales skills and better utilize content.

7. Misalignment Between Marketing, Sales, and Product/Service Teams 

According to a report from Demand Gen Reports, “misaligned organizations suffer from poor communication, flawed processes, and weak and inconsistent follow-up. Marketsource went on to report that “Misalignment between sales and marketing is a troubling challenge for B2B organizations. Fractured relationships, lost leads and sales, inefficient processes, and lowered revenues are far too familiar for these groups.”

Particularly as it pertains to content development, it is also important to align a company’s product/service development team with marketing and sales. While marketing and sales understand markets and buyers, the product/service development team best understands the capabilities the company can provide to help buyers. Including them in content development is essential.

8. Lack of Executive Ownership 

Too often executive stakeholders do not take ownership – which, in my view, is more than leadership – for sales enablement results and, therefore, problems arise such as poor-quality content, content not being used by sellers, late delivery, etc.

9. Technology Delivery Problems

HubSpot reported that 27 percent of companies still use email as their primary method to deliver content. If you are a salesperson, try integrating that into your sales process! A comprehensive technology solution should support end-to-end sales enablement activities – whether it is training, new or updated solution roll-out, pre-call planning, post-call follow-up, etc.

We have seen companies that overcome these deficiencies achieve 1,900 percent improvements in key sales enablement metrics in less than two quarters, and increase product sales from as low as 207 percent to as high as 647 percent.

Learn the Secret of Elay Cohen's Sales Enablement Success Mantra

A success mantra is exactly what helped Elay Cohen (now CEO and cofounder of SalesHood) create and execute all of Salesforce’s sales training programs back when he was the company’s senior vice president of Sales Productivity. His efforts accelerated growth from a $500 million to a more than $3 billion enterprise.

The innovative sales training and support delivered over these years by Elay’s team to thousands of sales professionals resulted in unprecedented hyper-growth. How did he do it? In a recent video interview, he explained his team’s SUCCESS formula: 

S – “Seed and grow.” They ultimately believed that, if they could win a customer, a division, or a team, they would be able to seed the success of Salesforce into that business.

U – “Users sell for you.” They believed that, if they could get their customers to share their stories, the customers would do the selling for them.

C – “Customize the demos.” They always tailored the demo to the customer’s business and used the customer’s vernacular.

C – “Connect the dots.” They figured the chances were high that they already knew someone with a connection in the prospect’s company. To use those relationships, they connected the dots.

E – “Experience events.” Think about Dreamforce. Each year, thousands of customers come to the event, get energized, and get connected to other customers. This creates value.

S – “Show them the money.” They used a classic value-based selling approach to build political maps and understand the customer’s business processes.

As Elay told me, they did so much good work in those years of hypergrowth that he felt it was important for him to document the best practices and record how they went to a $3 billion run rate. As he reflected on his time and successes at Salesforce, he realized one of the most critical elements of success was the tight partnership between him, the enablement organization, and the frontline sales managers. His book, SalesHood: How Winning Sales Managers Inspire Sales Teams to Succeed, takes the best of enablement and teaches managers how to bring it to their teams.

When he was at Salesforce, sales enablement was top of mind for Marc Benioff and the entire leadership team. One day Elay got a call from Marc, who said: “Now that you’re heading up enablement, what’s your plan?” They spent a few hours on the phone and he introduced Elay to the idea of a messaging mantra. Marc said: “We have an amazing product and we’re at the beginning of dominating the market.” He told Elay he wanted every single salesperson on message, sharing the same stories and selling the same way.

Those were their marching orders. Elay’s team knew their corporate pitches and the playbooks. As Elay told me: “We always had support and expectations that we were going to deliver excellent sales enablement.”

You can hear more from Elay in the video below, and you can also register now to join us at the Sales 3.0 Conference, where Elay will present Crack the Code to Sales Growth with a Winning Sales Enablement Strategy.

Forget Goals and Embrace Daily Disciplines

Today’s post is by Anthony Iannarino, an entrepreneur, speaker, and author. He is the managing director of B2B Sales Coach & Consultancy, an adjunct faculty member at Capital University School of Management and Leadership, and a certified Peak Performance Mindset trainer. He also writes daily about sales, leadership, management, and success at thesalesblog.com.

 

Stop and think about how fast 2017 zipped by. That was frighteningly fast, wasn’t it?

Here is the problem with our perception of time: We can do a lot less than we believe we can in a short period of time (like a day or a week), and we can do a lot more than we believe we can over a longer period of time (like, say, a year). This is why I continually talk about transformations using the shorthand “one comes before two.” Progress in most things comes incrementally, not overnight. This is true no matter how badly you want the result. You have to go through the process of change.

I have written a blog post every day this year – something I have done for eight years now (minus 13 days in Tibet). Writing one post a day is easy; writing 365 is impossible. I tried to shoot a YouTube video daily in 2017, but I got discouraged by gear issues and trying to upload videos from hotel rooms and airports. Still, I ended up with 234 videos. This is in addition to the 405 I shot for my new training offering – a project that will require another 150 videos in January.

This is why I write about disciplines instead of goals. Goals are wonderful. You cannot hit a target you cannot see. But most of the things that will make a difference in your life are not goals – they are something more than that.

Running a marathon is not the same as having impeccable health. A high paying job is not the same as creating wealth. Spending more time with your family is not the same as being fully present for them when you are with them. Most of what you want is a life-long project. Goals are the milestones along the way, but disciplines are what keep you tracking toward your North Star (a preview of one of my three words for 2018). Disciplines are what allow for the incremental accumulation of results over time. Intentions are not enough, and neither is a great plan. 

In 2018, remember that, when you look back, your progress is going to be the result of what you did each and every day – even if it doesn’t seem to produce any dramatic result on that day.

Disciplines are greater than resolutions, and by a wide margin.

You can get these insights every Sunday by signing up for my newsletter at www.thesalesblog.com/newsletter.

Are You a Leader Who Fires Up Your Sales Team?

Over the holidays I recorded a “mindset conversation” with bestselling author Liz Wiseman about why some leaders bring out the best in us, and why others cause us to hold back.

In her book, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, she shares great insights into why some leaders are able to multiply the intelligence of their followers, while other leaders become unintentional "diminishers" who fail to fully spark the productive capacities of the people who work for them.

In our interview, Liz cited Tim Cook as an example of a multiplier leader. As she said: “He really is one of these leaders who brings out the best in people. Somehow people are at their very best around him. When you go into a meeting with him, you go prepared and you bring your best game with you.”

Personally I think of Bill McDermott as a classic multiplier. I’ve seen him interact with people in many settings. When anyone walks out of his office after a meeting, they say to themselves: “I can do this. I have hope. I can set the world on fire!”

The reason Liz started thinking about the capabilities of leaders was due to her time working at Oracle, where she was in charge of developing talent. Her hiring strategy was to hire for raw intelligence, niceness, and above-average achievement orientation. She explained that she noticed an interesting trend after awhile: “I looked at all these executives who were so brilliant but I started to notice that they didn’t all cause brilliance. Some of them were so enamored of their own ideas that they didn’t see all the intelligence around them.”

As Liz pointed out, people come to work desperately wanting to contribute and give 100 percent of what they’re capable of.  This is just as true of your own salespeople and team members. The problem is, these people soon find out they have managers who aren’t interested in their contributions. The managers either don’t see their capabilities, need them, or want them.

This creates a toxicity in organizations. And it creates the very opposite of what sales managers want to achieve!

Sales managers cannot possibly create greatness without the ability to get everyone on the team to row in the same direction, with the same level of intensity. This requires a multiplier mindset, not a diminisher mindset.

For more insights, listen to my interview with Liz below. Thanks also to Mark Hunter for adding his valuable contributions to the discussion.

For more sales and leadership wisdom, subscribe to my YouTube channel.

What Happens after You Get Promoted to Sales Manager?

Today’s post is by Alice Heiman, founder and CSO at Alice Heiman, LLC. She regularly emcees the Sales 3.0 Conference and is a certified Peak Performance Mindset trainer.

 

Congratulations! You’ve just been promoted to the rank of sales manager. Yet it is the very word “promoted” that puts you at risk.

Let’s be clear. As Lee B. Salz says: “Sales management is not a job elevation – it’s a job change.”

Unfortunately, most companies don’t recognize that selling does not fully prepare you for the role of sales manager. While your bosses don’t acknowledge that this is a job change, you will still be held accountable for performance. And they won’t wait long to get it!

What can you do? Here are four important steps to make sure you succeed in this new role:

1. Accept that this is a job change – and do not let ego get in your way. While you may have been a rock star salesperson, you are now a novice sales manager. Once you come to terms with that, the road to success becomes much clearer.
2. Study and research the role of sales management. There is a wealth of information available to develop role mastery. Read blogs and books on various aspects of sales management. Watch Webcasts to learn about your new role. Become a student and learn – just as you would expect the salespeople who now report to you to do.
3. Find a mentor. This role is new to you, so working with a successful sales manager can shorten your learning curve. Look for a mentor outside of your company with whom you feel comfortable discussing confidential issues.
4. Hire a coach. If you are one of the lucky new sales managers, your company will invest in you to help you succeed. Based on the blogs and books you’ve read, select a thought leader with whom you feel there is philosophical alignment. Then contact them for a coaching engagement.

Create a Wall of Dreams Next to Your Scoreboard

As Selling Power founder Gerhard Gschwandtner says: “Get personal with reps and believe in their dreams.” Ask each of your salespeople to share what dreams motivate them. Do they crave a fancy SUV, a vacation home in Hawaii, a heli-skiing trip in Chile, a yoga workshop in India, or volunteer opportunities in a Tibetan orphanage? Invite them to paste pictures of their dreams on the wall next to the scoreboard.

While the scoreboard reminds reps to make their numbers, these images allow salespeople to express their inner desires and assert their individuality. This small change can transform the conversations in your office. Reps will understand their peers on a deeper level and become more aware of the “why” behind their sales goals. As the saying goes, the bigger the why, the harder the try – and the better the how.

Deploy Empathy as a Leadership Tool

If you want your company to be customer-centric, you must inspire your sales team to show empathy for their customers. Emotions play a vital role in the client experience. Customers want to be understood on a logical and emotional level. The same is true for your coworkers. “If you treat people with dignity and respect, they will give it right back to you,” Bill McDermott wrote in his bestselling book Winners Dream. Empathy elevates the dignity of the human spirit.

Evangelize a No-limit Mindset

Salespeople come to work to win, and they don’t want to work for managers who set limits. Great sales managers are CEOs – Chief Encouragement Officers – who believe in each salesperson’s capacity to grow. If you can believe it, they can achieve it. It’s that simple.

Give Constructive Feedback

To quote Mark Hunter: “Praise in public. Critique in private.” As a leader, one of your most powerful tools is something you can’t measure. It’s something you can’t see. But, in the end, it will make a bigger impact than nearly anything else. It’s culture!

Team and company culture play a much bigger role in sales than people realize – because culture is the core of how people see themselves. Never forget that culture starts at the top. It begins with you! Your people will look to you and will watch you. They will watch what you do and, just as importantly, what you don’t do.

To create a positive culture, treat people with respect. A simple way to do this is by coaching people privately and praising them publicly. When your team hears you discussing others in a positive light, they naturally will want to succeed and get you talking about them too!

Conversely, never share negative comments publicly. The moment you speak negatively about one salesperson you will damage the trust you have earned with the rest of the team.

It’s a simple concept but is worth repeating. Praise in public. Critique in private.

The culture you create will determine your team’s level of motivation – and a positive culture can motivate people to achieve what they didn’t think was possible.

Catch Alice Heiman at a Sales 3.0 Conference in 2018, where she is a regular co-emcee! See dates and locations at http://www.sales30conf.com/.

How to Read Your Customer: The Body Language of Yes and No

Today’s guest post is by Jim McCormick, co-author of Body Language Sales Secrets.

 

Body type, culture, and context all affect a customer’s body language. Even so, it is possible to make some general observations about what constitutes the body language of yes or no.

Regardless of what type of sales strategy you are pursuing – relationship, solution, expertise, ROI, or fear selling – knowing when to move forward and when to ease up and postpone the “ask” is key to your success.

Open body language is actions and facial expressions that are invitational; they show a desire to connect – and suggest that trust is present. The body language of happiness and many other positive mental states and emotions will contain movements suggesting openness.

Closed body language projects the desire to shield and separate; it neither inspires trust nor suggests receptivity to building it. The body language of disgust, contempt, or other negative mental states and emotions will contain closed movements.

Examples of open body language are:

• A smile with the eyes engaged.
• Open palms and arms comfortably away from the body rather than shielding it.
• Head nods and attentive eye contact that encourage continued conversation.
• Little or no fidgeting.
• No attempt to put objects, like a desk or laptop computer, between the two of you. There is a good comfort level between you – a sense of easy interaction that makes barriers unnecessary.

Examples of closed body language are the opposite:

• A fake smile. Only the mouth and muscles around it are moving.
• Clenched hands or hands that suggest pushing the other person away. Arm movements could be either close to the body or aggressive. Flailing or whipping movements can be ways of repelling another person. Legs can also be part of closed body language. Some people will cross their legs because it feels like a protective position; others do it out of habit or comfort.
• Head shakes and avoidance of eye contact discourage continued conversation.
• Fidgeting – which suggests some degree of nervousness is present – gives a sense that a trusting connection is absent, at least at the moment.
• The need for barriers – increasing the size of one’s personal real estate and reinforcing shielding from another person – typifies closed body language.

Listening and watching for changes in vocal expression is another way of determining how relaxed or strained – positive or negative – a person is. You need to pay attention to how something is said, not just what is being said.

Pitch, tone, pace, volume, and hoarseness/stridency are among the characteristics of a voice. In some cases, they can change from moment to moment, reflecting some momentary shift in emotion. For example, you ask the customer a question that may cause a little discomfort; right away, you’ll probably hear a change in the person’s voice.

Pitch helps convey the intensity of the communication, express a question, or convey uncertainty or even deception. Someone who is excited and happy might suddenly have a higher pitched voice than before. If you’re at the end of your sales presentation and hear that change in pitch just before the “ask,” you might have reason to think, “I nailed it!” – especially if it’s accompanied by open body language.

Tone is a characteristic of voice that goes a long way toward conveying meaning. Much of what we learned about tone we may have learned from our parents when we were kids. Mom asks the child to do something he has no interest in doing and the child says, “Yes, Mommy” in a way that provokes, “Don’t you use that tone of voice with me, young man!” Tone and pitch work in tandem to convey sarcasm – to clue you in that someone is telling a joke, to leak repressed anger, and much more.

Pace is the speaking rate someone has adopted in a particular conversation. A sudden change often indicates stress. On a business call recently, I heard the client quicken the pace of his speech. I looked at my computer and noticed that it was three minutes to 11. Even though we hadn’t established an end-time for the call, I asked him, “Do you have another appointment at 11?” The client said, “Yes!” He seemed surprised – and delighted – that I had somehow sensed he needed to wrap up our call.

Volume is another vocal quality that conveys intensity. An ardent denial of an accusation would probably be said more loudly than other parts of the conversation. Of course, some people might drop to a whisper in expressing a denial as if they are embarrassed at their attempt at a cover-up. Watch the person’s body language; it if goes from open to closed, that may reinforce your suspicion.

Stridency or hoarseness, when they are not normal for the person, can suggest stress. When the vocal cords tighten up and/or the throat becomes dry, the voice takes on a different sound. It can get very raspy but, for some people, that coarseness is part of their normal speech. Look for other signs of stress, like an increase in blink rate. If the throat is drying out, then the eyes are drying out, too, and the person will automatically blink more often.

Throughout a sales interaction, it’s vital to recognize what actions your customers adopt in response to stress. If you can keep customers at ease, you boost your chances of being on the path to yes!

To Win in 2018, Pick One Small Thing You Can Do Today

As we begin a brand-new year, I’d like to share a story I’ve told many times before about a cab ride I took years ago in Chicago. The driver was wearing a Chicago Bulls basketball jersey with player Derrick Rose’s #1 on the back. When I asked him about the jersey, he told me, “I’ve got something in common with Derrick Rose. We were both raised in Englewood, a rough neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.” The cab driver told me that he, too, wanted to be wealthy and famous.

I noticed a book on the front seat: Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. At first I thought that the cab driver was also a philosophy student, perhaps taking courses at night; but, rather than jump to conclusions, I asked. He told me that philosophy was a source of inspiration for the rap songs he writes, and that opened a floodgate of information way too long to share in this space. He shared with me that he actually felt pressured to become a superstar rapper, but he hadn’t written a good song in a long time.

As we were driving down the highway, he confessed that he had no idea how to create his brand, sell his work, or compete with rappers who capture the spirit of our times in the edgiest ways. He said, “I’ve been stuck in a rut for the past two years. I want to take three months off and do nothing but write new songs.”

Then he asked me what I thought, so I made a suggestion, drawing from what I know: the art of selling. “Take baby steps; don’t try to boil the ocean. Why don’t you set smaller goals every day? Think about what you can do today. Perhaps write three good lines and call it a day. Tomorrow, you’ll add three more, and within a month you’ve got 90 lines.”

His face lit up, and he said, “I can do that. I really can’t afford to take off from work anyway. I can write three lines over and over until they’re perfect – that takes less than an hour a day.”

That conversation brings me back to the rut in which many sales organizations find themselves. Sales leaders delay decisions until they have a chance to consult their advisors. They wait for new technology, data, or buy-in from C-level executives. As a result, they don’t think about what they can successfully do today. But the time to get things done is now. Start with small things you can do today. You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

For more leadership insights and strategies, join me at a Sales 3.0 Conference in 2018.