Selling Power Blog

Why Struggling in Sales Means You're Winning

Today’s post is by Christine Harrington, The Savvy Sales Lady and a facilitator for Peak Performance Mindset workshops.

 

How many times have you told yourself sales is too hard or that you must be doing something wrong because you’re struggling to make sales?

Here’s the truth: Your struggle – and even your deep sense of failure – are sure signs that you are growing.

Struggle hurts. It can overwhelm you as you try to find the right way, the right words, and the right prospect.

Remember, too, there’s no sense of failure or discomfort in mediocrity.

By contrast, when you’re struggling, you are often fully conscious not of strength but of your weakness. Your weakness comes into full view; it no longer sits in the shadow.

I’ve always been intrigued by second chances. What I’ve discovered is, while others may be willing to give us second chances, often we will not give ourselves a second chance. A second chance we deserve. Somehow, we punish ourselves relentlessly.

This punishment is undeserved. It shows up in ways like

• Unforgiveness
• Isolation
• Depression
• Self victimization
• Resentment
• Self loathing

You will give yourself a million reasons why you shouldn’t be able to succeed – and to walk away. The thing is, you need only one reason to stay. What’s your one reason?

Can you imagine working in a job for 40 years that you hated? Selling some products you didn’t completely believe in while trying to discover what was true and right for you? Who would do that?

I did that. I worked in an industry for 40 years that I could not align with. Don’t misunderstand me…there’s nothing wrong with the industry. The issue was with me. It forced me to go deeper – to grow personally, spiritually, and professionally. It made me look at myself in ways that were no fun at all.

That said, every bread crumb I followed over the past 40 years taught me the sales skills and mindset I have today to help my clients and followers. Instead of trying to avoid the struggle, learn from it. Embrace it and know the answers – and the freedom it brings will empower you in ways you cannot imagine.  

Struggle is a good thing. It causes you to either grow or stay fixed in your struggle. Which will you choose?

How to Properly Assess a Sales Opportunity

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. Contact him at bob.junke@adventace.com.

 

I’m a firm believer in opportunity assessment – perhaps the most important function frontline sales managers should perform.

What is opportunity assessment? It’s a very deliberate process of evaluating a seller’s opportunities against six key qualifiers. This evaluation will help sales teams proactively identify and rectify problems, both with the opportunity itself and with the seller’s skills, and assign the opportunity to the correct stage in the sales process.

Opportunity assessment should be performed as early as possible and periodically thereafter. Here are a number of key benefits you’ll get when you practice opportunity assessment.

• The sales manager will be able to identify whether the opportunity has any problems.
  
  
• Depending on the nature of such problems, the sales manager can determine whether the opportunity should be disqualified. (This is part of the “tough love” aspect of a sales manager’s job.)
  
  
• The sales manager can get a clear view into how well a salesperson executes key selling skills during sales calls. (Those skills include need development, qualification, control, and negotiation) In effect, opportunity assessment is the best way for the sales manager to identify a salesperson’s skill deficiencies and put the appropriate skill development plan in place.
  
  
• The sales manager can accurately assign the appropriate stage to an opportunity. This is very important because it sets the stage for accurate communications about the opportunity, and it is a fundamental requirement to accurate pipeline management and forecasting. (And yes, I did say the sales manager should assign the stage. Salespeople tend to not remember stage definitions, don’t adhere to them, or tend to be “wishful thinkers”  – especially if they are at 50 percent of quota.)

As a sales manager, how do you properly assess an opportunity? Here are the six key questions you should ask.

1. Have you clearly identified a critical business issue (CBI) that will drive the buyer’s need to act? Is it significant enough to cause a buyer or buyers to take action; or, put another way, is there enough “pain” to cause “change”?
   
   
2. Have you developed a clear solution in the mind of your buyer? Can the buyer literally see themselves using the solution so the CBI can be eliminated? Can you establish a clear advantage over your competition?
   
   
3. Have you proven you can provide the capabilities that make up the solution?
   
   
4. Have you gained access to the buyers who are “above the power line,” and thus capable of both driving the opportunity and making the decision to go forward?
   
   
5. Does the buyer have a clear sense of the solution’s value, and does that value meet their expectations for return on investment?
   
   
6. Have your salesperson and the buyer agreed on a clear sequence of events, or a “go forward plan” which defines the remaining steps leading to a purchase decision?

These six qualifiers can be summarized in a simple equation sales managers should teach their salespeople:

Sale = CBI x Solution x Proof x Power x Value x Plan

Consequently, if any of these qualifiers gets a low score, so, too, does the seller’s probability of winning that opportunity. Whenever a qualifier is low, the appropriate action or actions should be identified for the seller to take with the buyer, and there are two possible outcomes:

• If your seller is successful you will have an opportunity that is back on track.
  
  
• If your seller is not successful, then, in all likelihood, you should disqualify the opportunity.

So, in my view, consistent opportunity assessment is critical. It is key to winning more opportunities, shortening sales cycles, uncovering and resolving skill deficiencies among salespeople, maintaining a clean sales pipeline, and forecasting accurately.  

Five Essential Facts You Need to Know about Sales Prospecting

Today’s post is by Mike Schultz, a bestselling author of Rainmaking Conversations and Insight Selling, director of the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research, and president of RAIN Group, a global sales training and performance improvement company. Follow Mike on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.  

 

When it comes to sales prospecting, sellers are told the following all the time:

• “Cold calling doesn’t work.”
• “It’s impossible to get through to buyers cold.”
• “With all the information on the Internet, buyers do their own research and reach out later in the sales process.”
• “You shouldn’t pitch your capabilities.”

But rarely do sellers stop and think, “Is any of this true?”

According to 488 buyers (who get prospected to all the time) and 489 sellers who outbound prospect (as reported in this white paper, “5 Sales Prospecting Myths Debunked”), these generally accepted-to-be-true statements are, in fact, false. They are sales prospecting myths that too many sellers are following – and it’s hurting their results.  

Here are the facts when it comes to sales prospecting:

1. Prospecting over the phone works.
   
   Many sellers don’t want to pick up the phone and call their clients, current or past, under the pretense of generating leads. They don’t want to cold call. They say buyers don’t pick up the phone anymore, so what’s the point?
   
   Using the phone represents three of the top five most effective prospecting tactics, according to sellers. (Prospecting tactics rated very/extremely effective.)
   
   
2. Making calls to existing clients: 51 percent
3. Making calls to past clients: 37 percent
4. Speaking at events: 32 percent
5.  Sending one-to-one customized emails: 31 percent
6. Making phone calls to new contacts (i.e., cold calls): 27 percent

The phone is also the second most preferred way buyers like to connect with sellers (49 percent of buyers prefer to connect with sellers over the phone). C-level and VP-level buyers prefer the phone even more (57 percent).

There’s no denying the phone plays an important role in sales prospecting and it’s still one of the most effective ways to generate initial sales conversations with buyers.

2. Buyers want to connect with sellers early in the sales process.
   
   According to research from the Corporate Executive Board, 57 percent of the purchase decision is complete before a customer calls a supplier. Sirius Decisions also found that 67 percent of the buying journey is now done digitally. These statistics make many sellers assume buyers don’t want or need to talk to them early in the buying process.
   
   Dead wrong. Of buyers who accept meetings, 71 percent want to hear from sellers when they’re looking for new ideas and possibilities to drive stronger business results. In addition, 62 percent of buyers who accept meetings want to talk to sellers when they’re actively looking for a solution to solve a problem. These are the early stages of the buying process.

Sure, buyers do their own research, but so what? Buyers want to hear from you – and hear from you early in the buying process. Rather than sit back and wait for them to call you, bring your ideas to buyers. When you reach out early, you put yourself in the best position to help define the buyer’s needs and position yourself as the preferred supplier.

3. Buyers do accept meetings with sellers who reach out to them.
   
   One of the most common excuses I hear for not prospecting is, “Buyers don’t accept cold meetings.”
   
   Eighty-two percent of buyers say they accept meetings, at least sometimes, with sellers who reach out to them proactively. It’s certainly not easy to set appointments with busy buyers, but it’s far from impossible. Most buyers admit they accept initial meetings when sellers reach out proactively. It’s what you do and say in that initial connection to influence whether the buyer meets with you.
   
   
4. Buyers want insight and to hear about your capabilities.
   
   According to buyers, the content that most influences their decision to accept a meeting or otherwise connect includes:

• Primary research data: 69 percent
• Content 100-percent customized to our specific situation: 67 percent
• Descriptions of the provider’s capabilities: 67 percent

Insight and capabilities capture buyers’ attention. While many sellers are told not to pitch their capabilities, buyers want a combination of insight and knowing what you do.

5. Value converts to sales.
   
   It’s one thing to get meetings. It’s another to generate sales wins. We wanted to know what factors, regardless of the seller’s offering, influenced the buyer’s purchase decision. Ninety-six percent of buyers say they’re influenced by sellers who focus on the value they can deliver and 93 percent are influenced by sellers who collaborate with them.
   
   If you want to get the meeting and eventually get the sale, focus on the value in your sales meeting and work with them collaboratively.
   
   It’s interesting to note that most sellers do not do this. Buyers say 58 percent of their sales meetings do not provide value. There’s a huge opportunity here for the sellers who do.

As you think about your own prospecting efforts, take these findings to heart. Forget what you may have been told in the past. Buyers want to talk to you, cold prospecting works, and there’s a huge opportunity for those sellers leading the way with value.

Top Five Reasons Curiosity Leads to Sales Success

Today’s post is by Chanin Ballance, founder and CEO of Veelo, a single, easy-to-use sales enablement platform that improves onboarding, enablement, and sales performance. Built on brain science principles and powered by machine learning, Veelo gets sellers the content, coaching, and productivity tools they need to win.

 

We’ve all encountered sales reps who fixate on features and benefits but never ask the customer any questions.  They care only about what they know instead of what they can learn.

By contrast, curiosity can help salespeople open up new business, revive deals that have stalled, and pave the way to bigger deals over time.

 

This is why the best salespeople are naturally curious. Here are the top five reasons curiosity leads to sales success.

#1: Curiosity improves discovery calls.

High-performing reps see open-ended questions as their best friends. They’re inquisitive about root causes, and they don’t latch onto the first problem their prospect mentions. They keep track of all their questions and rank the answers by urgency. Finally, they’re always trying to identify advocates and decision makers to determine the best way to move forward.

The non-curious salesperson believes what he or she knows will solve the puzzle, but the curious rep keeps looking until the full picture is revealed. Curious reps aren’t afraid to ask questions, and they aren’t afraid to receive them in return. The more questions they ask, the more curious they become – and the more opportunities they’ll reveal.

#2: Curiosity helps you come up with better solutions for customers, quickly.

Successful reps want to understand why certain problems matter – and what steps prospects have already taken to address their challenges.

When prospects share pain points, most reps try to match those problems to features and benefits right away. But that rarely reveals the full story. Top-tier sellers are comfortable with ambiguity, and they’re committed to understanding the deeper context of their prospect’s needs.

Here’s a little secret: The most successful salespeople aren’t content with the status quo. The more they analyze their buyer’s needs, the easier it is for them to translate convoluted sales scenarios into predictable outcomes. Unlike most reps, they’re not just aiming for the win; they’re committed to their prospects’ ongoing success. And the only way to get from mundane results to exceptional ones is curiosity.

#3: Curiosity makes it easier for you to build rapport.

Any sales rep can develop curiosity for a prospect’s business needs, but there’s another skill that’s harder to teach. Some reps seem to make an instant connection as soon as they get on the phone. They’re not just curious about what prospects do; they’re genuinely curious about who they are.  

This is the essence of success in sales. If you want to motivate prospects to change, then you need to understand their challenges on an emotional level. Curious sellers want to understand their prospect’s goals, fears, and desires. The best reps see their prospects as individuals, not dollar signs. They get curious about topics that might not seem to have anything to do with the sale. Yet it’s this type of curiosity that pays off in the end.

#4: Curiosity improves your memory and capacity to learn.  

Successful reps aren’t just interested in their prospects. They’re curious about everything – but especially about how to sell better. They’re constantly tinkering with their pitch, their demos, and their follow-up. If there’s a sales metric out there, then curious reps are going to be the ones to optimize it.

We’re primed to learn more if we’re already interested in a topic, but there’s a twist that promises a big advantage for the curious rep. It turns out that curiosity has been shown to boost learning and memory, even when it involves unrelated information. If curious reps are interested in everything about their prospects, then they’ll wind up learning even more about their business challenges. Curiosity really is the gift that keeps on giving.

#5: Curiosity will help you achieve at a higher level.

Learning the right way to sell isn’t enough for top-tier reps. Once they learn how to do something well, they set out to do it even better.

Some reps become complacent – content to deliver merely satisfactory results. Other reps become anxious – nervous about taking too many risks. Yet the most successful reps draw on their curiosity to get better every time.  

High-performing reps have an insatiable desire to learn, and they don’t let temporary setbacks distract them from their highest aspirations. Curiosity gives them the power to push through uncertainty and ask tough questions.

The most successful salespeople have boundless curiosity. They win more, and more often, because they never stop looking for ways to improve. That’s why being curious is critical to sales success.

How to Establish Real Sales Connections in a Digital Age

Today’s post is by Case Allin, director, business development, Park Place Technologies.

 

 

In an age of instant communication and real-time updates, picking up the phone and introducing yourself to prospective customers – “cold calling” – may seem antiquated. However, it is the longstanding approach to building a business and is still the backbone of many organizations’ sales models.

Social networks such as LinkedIn haven’t eliminated the cold calling model; instead, they have allowed sales professionals to become smarter and more efficient at driving organic growth. International Data Corporation has reported:

• 91 percent of B2B buyers are active on social media
• 84 percent of senior executives use social media to support purchase decisions
• 75 percent of B2B buyers are significantly influenced by social media

An Inside Sales Team Learns to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator

My company, Park Place Technologies is a leading post-warranty data center maintenance provider, and in 2015, converted to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which enabled the inside-sales force to leverage the enhanced search options within the platform. One of the simplest and most effective searches is the ability to view customers and prospects who have changed jobs. This makes for an easier and more meaningful first interaction as you share some mutual connections and experiences.

Our team has seen several first-hand examples of this that paid dividends almost immediately. Within a month or two of using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the team found a Fortune 250 firm in Chicago’s suburbs with a new IT infrastructure manager who was coming from a longtime Park Place client. After reaching out to this individual on LinkedIn, the sales team learned he had first-hand experience with Park Place’s offering and was excited to implement quickly.     

Arguably more valuable than the initial connection is the ability for employees and prospects to communicate with each other through the platform, gain an understanding of what interests you share, and grow business relationships. LinkedIn allows for more personal and engaging conversations. As business relationships grow, communication over LinkedIn becomes more prevalent. When clients move into new roles, they will typically reach out through the LinkedIn messaging feature. According to Gartner, 15 percent of IT employees change jobs each year. Leaning on LinkedIn to notify Park Place account managers of job changes is a primary driver of new customer growth.

Leveraging Relationships and Getting Rich Insights about Customers

Leveraging relationships within LinkedIn Sales Navigator has helped grow Park Place’s business – specifically, within the legal vertical. Legal IT is a close-knit community with many of the stakeholders knowing each other. Park Place has leaned on Sales Navigator to connect with legal IT stakeholders and leverage referenceable clients within the local markets. When you have a happy client who has a working relationship with a prospect, this reference for service is much stronger than a reference the prospect does not know. It is a simple, yet effective concept.

Eighteen months ago, Microsoft outbid Salesforce for the acquisition of LinkedIn and has integrated the platform into its Microsoft Dynamics Sales and CRM applications. Park Place is embracing this revamped relationship sales platform and the data, productivity, and AI it instantaneously delivers. LinkedIn provides rich insight about customers and introduces potential connections who share relationships or interests. This will allow account managers to communicate better and work more efficiently, without having to leave the CRM workflow.

As an organization, Park Place has utilized our more than 47,000 LinkedIn connections to share new and relevant information with our clients. With the debut of ParkView™, a remote platform that enables proactive detection and identification of hardware faults within a data center, LinkedIn was leveraged as a conduit for the news releases and updates. It has helped drive attendance to speaking sessions and product launches in Las Vegas, London, and Toronto.  

“Cold calling” may sound and feel like the vestige of an older era, but, like other longtime commercial activities (from buying music to food ordering and delivery), this sales practice is evolving and getting great results.

How to Integrate and Align Sales Organizations after Mergers and Acquisitions

Today’s guest post is by Jen Marie Jacober, president of EverChanges. Jen Marie is a Peak Performance Mindset Trainer and Transformation Advisor – her focus is on helping companies align their people, culture, and organizational structures to thrive in the ever-changing digital information era. Contact her today to learn more at jm@everchanges.com.

 

When companies merge or become acquired, they need to integrate across people, process, and technology so they can achieve organic revenue growth.

Last month I wrapped up a post-merger transformation project. Here are five takeaways that will help businesses integrate sales organizations after a merger or acquisition.

Takeaway #1: Establish a Strategy
The first step to take when integrating two companies is developing a one- to two-year strategy. The strategy should include people, process, and technology elements – with quarterly milestones and outcomes defined.

For example, as part of the merger, the sales organization needs to make sure all teams move from a contact-based selling approach to an account-based selling approach. This strategy may need to include milestones and outcomes for training (people/process), analytics capabilities (process/technology), and new tools (technology). Develop branding for the strategy to visually depict what the post-merger future looks like. Use the branded strategy for all future communications.

Takeaway #2: Execute a Communication Plan
The next step is to develop a communication plan for the strategy. This plan should lay out a structure for communications and cadence and define a message framework.  

Initiate communications by sharing the strategy across the teams. Provide a forum for employees to ask questions and provide feedback. Use an established cadence to update employees via emails, newsletters, team meetings, and one-on-one meetings with managers. Ensure the message is consistent and that the accomplishment of milestones and outcomes iscelebrated.

Takeaway #3: Baseline Operations to Identify Redundancies and Gaps

Understanding how the sales organizations operate is critical to identifying redundancies and gaps. Redundancies may occur when the companies have the same function but only one is needed post-merger – or a technology is in place where a manual activity had been performed.

Technology redundancy is likely if the merged companies perform the same functions. Technology is the long pole in the tent for most post-merger transitions. Gaps occur when the companies do not have the people, process, or technology to execute the strategy.

Takeaway #4: Use Outcomes instead of Outputs to Measure Process and Methodology

Hierarchy, rules, and complexity make change and adaptability difficult. It is easy to get mired in the details of process and methodology and to spend months or even years on implementing post-merger process change.

Accelerate these changes by focusing on the outcome instead of the output. For example, improving churn rates by 5 percent is an example of an outcome, while tracking monthly leads is an output. This will increase the likelihood of accomplishing the outcome instead of trying to dictate how the process and methodologies need to improve.

Takeaway #5: Align through Integration

The final step is to align the merged companies – recalibrating all functions (typically, post-merger strategies do not address all aspects of sales operations). Develop an integration plan covering six to 12 months post-merger.

The integration plan should include all aspects of people, process, and technology needed to run sales. Use lessons learned (and failures) to identify what needs alignment; then, develop a plan to address them. Once the implementation plan is complete, continue to share communications and use outcomes versus outputs to monitor progress.

How to Transform Your Worst Salespeople into Your Best

Think about the bottom half of your sales team. What are they like? Probably reserved or even introverted. They may work hard, but – no matter how much they try – they simply can’t deliver. Sales doesn’t come naturally.

And that, argues consultant and author Matthew Pollard, is their advantage.

An introvert himself, Pollard went from being terrified at door-to-door sales to being the number one salesperson in the largest sales company in Australia – through sheer desperation and mentality. He tried every sales trick he could find. When something worked, he used it in every sale. When he found something else that worked, he added it to his routine. In no time at all, that awkward introvert, barely out of high school, was outselling sales superstars. Promoted to sales manager, he started teaching his sales process to others and found something funny: the introverts consistently outsold the extroverts.

While plenty of sales books focus on big ideas or specific tactics, few provide what The Introvert’s Edge does: a seven-step process for creating a sales system expressly for you and your team. Even better – instead of focusing on how to make good salespeople better, Pollard’s book shows you how to transform your worst salespeople into your best.

The secret lies in understanding that the key to consistent sales isn’t personality or the gift of the gab. While these qualities may serve extroverts well, anyone who has been in sales knows that, if they rely on these gifts, then they are doomed to a sales career of peaks and troughs. Sales success in this manner, embracing these extroverted gifts, is largely correlated to the sales consultant’s mood. If they close a big deal, they feel unstoppable in the next sale; but a fight with a spouse, financial pressures, or a rejection from a big prospect can lead to a sales slump that can stretch into weeks or months.

Matthew explains that, instead of relying on charisma, sales teams should instead seek to master a process that fully eliminates inconsistencies – a system that delivers reliable and predictable results, rain or shine.

So why is this book for introverts? In truth, these strategies work for any sales team or sales representative. Matthew, however, asserts that introverts are far more likely to embrace the work that comes with learning and perfecting a system in the short term, if it promises them a long-term edge from that point on. After all, they have everything to gain and nothing to lose. The converse – that an extrovert will take a small step away from their natural gifts and shining-star personality – is less likely, even if it ultimately leads to a massive leap forward in results and consistency.

Finally, and most importantly, this book tackles the biggest problem introverts have in selling: their self-limiting beliefs. Far too often, introverts fall victim to the myth that their quiet personalities mean they can’t succeed in sales, forcing them to accept subpar results – or, worse, not even pursuing a career that, if successful, promises a much more prosperous life.

Pollard confronts this stigma head on, story after story – some as riveting as a novel – showing how all types of introverts, from tech execs to a commercial realty team and even the ghostwriter for the book itself, overcame their introversion to find a way to naturally sell...and then outsell the competition.

This book is a must-read for sales managers, sales teams, solopreneurs, and anyone who wants to reliably and authentically improve their sales results. Visit www.theintrovertsedge.com to download a free sample chapter.

The Secret to Increasing B2B Sales without a Single New Lead

Today’s post is by Jeff Kalter, CEO of 3D2B, a global business-to-business telemarketing company that bridges the divide between marketing and sales. He leads customer acquisition programs for Fortune 500 companies and is passionate about building strong business relationships through professional phone conversations.

 

Years ago, mass marketing was in vogue. While this technique took advantage of economies of scale by reaching out to an entire audience with one message, communications were often not on target.

Today, marketing is narrowing its focus. B2B marketers have recognized they can increase their marketing ROI by appealing to the needs of different segments – dividing their clientele and prospects by such criteria as geography, industry, and company size. As they do so, they are moving toward individualized messaging, the heart of engagement marketing.  

Growing the Value of Each Customer

The interest in engagement marketing shows companies are taking the advice seriously that “The customer comes first.” That’s because a business’s most important assets are their customers. So, while marketers used to be focused squarely on generating and qualifying leads, they are now playing a greater role in enhancing the customer’s value to the business. This includes the following components:

• Maximizing annual sales to a customer
• Increasing the lifetime of a customer
• Leveraging the goodwill of that customer to spread the word about the organization to their peers and network

How to Increase Engagement

To create engagement with prospects and customers, companies must treat them as individuals, building a relationship and helping them meet their needs. To understand what this looks like, think of Amazon – an example from the consumer world. First, when you visit, the home page is customized to your interests. Then, when you select an item to review, you see customer reviews and products that other customers bought with that product. The information customers receive makes their shopping experience more engaging, relevant, and easier – bringing them back again and again.

You want to do the same in a B2B environment. After all, you’re still dealing with people. And, in a world where buyers receive messages non-stop – online, via email, and through other channels – you can gain a competitive edge with engagement marketing. By creating a two-way dialogue with your customers, you can build long-term trusting relationships.

It sounds good, but how do you make it happen?

Communicate personally by phone, email, or social media. Individualizing your conversations and messages requires an in-depth knowledge of the prospect’s or customer’s behavior. How have they interacted with your Website? What actions have they taken after receiving your emails? What purchases have they made? What have you learned about them through your phone calls? To be efficient and effective with engagement, your reps need easy access to the answers to these questions in a marketing-automation or marketing-engagement solution that’s integrated with your customer relationship management system.

So what do these personalized interactions look like? Let’s say a rep in an enterprise content management firm notices a prospect is reading articles on the company’s blog about managing digital content. The prospect is also asking questions on social media about how their peers have tackled the explosion of content. Finally, the rep notes that social media is one of the prospect’s preferred channels. Given this information, the salesperson reaches out via LinkedIn with a personal message like this:

Sylvia:

I see from your comments on LinkedIn that you’ve been grappling with some issues surrounding enterprise content management. I thought you might like to attend an upcoming event we are offering in your area. Our CEO will be doing a short presentation on best practices for enterprise content management. (No sales…I promise). We’ll also be serving hors d’oeuvres and refreshments and providing plenty of time for networking.

Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send you an invitation.

The outreach does not have to be for a physical meeting. It could instead be an offer of valuable information, such as a webinar or e-book.

If the prospect had also responded well on the phone in the past, it’s probably better to make a call. That’s because you can gain more information from a two-way dialogue of B2B phone calls. Thus, they provide more significant insights into how your organization can help the prospect and what it will take to move him or her through the buying cycle.

Work Your Goals

Each time you communicate with a prospect or customer, you should have a goal that goes beyond just building a relationship. In the beginning, your objective may be to develop a prospect’s trust, showing that leaders in your organization are knowledge experts who are willing to share information. In the initial stage, you can present solutions to a problem generically. At some point, once an individual is consuming the information you supply, you’ll know that they are ready to learn about your company’s specific solutions. Start sharing that information with the goal of a sales conversion.

Go beyond the Sale

In the old days, marketing’s job would be over once the deal was sealed – the baton had been handed off to sales. Not so with engagement marketing. You should remain involved in providing communications and content that enable customers to get the most out of their purchases and to learn about other products and solutions. You might, for instance, offer a series of articles or videos on tips and techniques for using your solution. Or, if you’ve had a customer for a while, you’ll want to keep them informed of new products or upgrades to existing ones.

Get Started on the Road to Engagement

So, if you’re interested in increasing sales conversions and the value of your customers, consider starting an engagement marketing program. With today’s technology, you can now efficiently communicate in a personalized way.

Eight Signs of a World-class Sales Rep Onboarding Program

Today’s post is by Lauren Bailey, the former global head of telesales training for SAP and current president of Factor 8, an award-winning consulting and training company specializing in inside sales. She has been recognized as a Top 25 professional in inside sales and is a top 100 sales coach to follow in 2017.

 

Been thinking that revenue targets would be easier to crush if your new hires would ramp up to speed more quickly? You’re spot on, my friend.

Best-in-class onboarding (or new-hire training) programs go well beyond the standard “welcome to the company” orientation and dive into actual job training. But most programs stop after introducing reps to their new systems and product. This leaves reps on their own to figure out things like:

• Who do I call first?
• How do I give a demo?
• What do I say if they ask me about the product?

The result? Long ramp-up times – while the reps use experience to supplement what they could have been taught. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a ramp-up period. Our goal is to shorten it.

I’ve been building and benchmarking sales rep onboarding programs for the past 15 years, and there are very few who don’t need help. Why? Because most trainers don’t actually get sales, and most sales leaders don’t usually get excited about sales training for new hires only – they consider it a sandbox thing.  

A great onboarding program is a killer combination of both worlds. Incidentally, a great program can also shrink your rep attrition. Keep them longer, ramp them up faster; this is worth your investment, sales leaders!

Here are eight signs of a world-class rep onboarding program that you should start using immediately:

#1: Remember training for new hires is a process, not an event.

Think of it as “just-in-time training.” 100 percent classroom time is one to two weeks and then decreases gradually to once a month.

For example, a new hire is in full-time training for two weeks; but, by week four, they’re in class two hours a day – and, in week six, only one hour a day. By week eight it’s one hour a week. By month three (and for the rest of their tenure) they’re in training once a month.

For this reason, it is critical to focus reps’ first two weeks of training on only what they’ll need month one on the phone.

Why? They’ll have no idea what they don’t know yet. That means you’ll graduate a team of super-confident bad-asses that can’t wait to get on the phones. Perfect. Want to learn more? Check out my video on building “just in time” new hire training.

#2: Use call recordings.

This is my favorite tip. My theory is that ramp time is always present because it isn’t the “what to do or say” that takes a long time to get. It’s the “when do I do it or say it” that takes experience to really nail.

We shorten the “when do I say it?” learning curve by letting reps listen to call recordings. The recordings don’t have to be their own, and they shouldn’t all be great calls – just typical. It’s like reviewing game tapes before the big game – breaking down what the other team (customer) is doing and when they should have used the right play (skill). Check out my video on using “the pause game” with call recordings for instructions on this free and easy tip.

#3: All six critical components of a training program are included and mixed together.

1. Systems and tools – CRM, intranet, lead management, etc.
2. Product and service – be sure it’s “how to sell the product or service” and not “the full history of the product or service”
3. Sales – how to sell our products over the phone (not generic sales 101 field training!)
4. Process – how leads and orders get processed + rep and customers’ top 10 questions
5. Acumen – business acumen, industry acumen, and customer acumen – these are critical!
6. Manager integration – nope, lunch on day one isn’t enough. Get them more involved.

#4: Get sales reps on the phones (ASAP)!  

This is kind of the Factor 8 motto. We put it on our T-shirts because we think it’s so important. If you can create an exercise where reps are calling current, potential, or even past customers by day two, do it! They can qualify leads, gather success stories, call cold leads – whatever! The right hires are itching to start calling, and the wrong hires will show reluctance and wash out. You’re welcome.

#5: Less than 30 percent is e-learning.

Sorry, large organizations – I know it’s so tempting! But classroom-based training is still the most effective for a reason: You can’t practice selling with a computer! Also, how engaging is your new hire’s experience when they’re clicking forward 200 times a day? Painful.

#6: Be rigorous.

In my experience, a good 25 percent of every new-hire class should not graduate training (yes, please be sure you’re hiring in groups, not “onesie-twosie”). When you really trust your training department, you’ll count on them to de facto manage reps during training and coach them out the door if they won’t make it. Start, stop, and break times should be like real life on the floor, and weekly tests let them know how they’re doing.

#7: Make sure training for new hires mimics the floor.

Quick-hit ways to do this:

1. You have a systems sandbox for training (a monthly-updated mirror image of all systems)
2. Phones and systems in the classroom for better role plays
3. Dummy accounts or even real (low-scoring) accounts for practice
4. Call coaching or quality forms approved by sales leadership used for role plays and testing
5. Scenario-based testing. (Because, really, when is a real client going to say, “A – send me a quote; B, schedule a call back…”?)

#8: Don’t let HR teach reps how to sell.

There’s a difference between regular company training and sales training. Aberdeen recently reported that 85 percent of best-in-class sales teams use a professional sales curriculum or trainer. Sorry, HR, but that’s because, if these folks knew how to sell, they would actually sell.  To learn what you need from a sales training vendor, check out my video, “What is good sales training?

Overwhelmed? Here are a few easy ways to start:  

• Get to know your current onboarding training ASAP. Pick your best sales leader and charge them with shortening ramp. Attend training, learn about good training, partner with and assist your trainer with curriculum.
• Get the reports. Sales numbers won’t show you class-by-class ramp times unless you specifically build it. Believe me, it’s worth it.
• Close the loop. Are you reporting the top three skill gaps on the floor to training on a monthly or quarterly basis? Do you have the call coaching and rep meeting cadence in place to provide this?
• Get some help. Spend the money to bring in a professional sales training leader, someone to fix your program, or a great sales training curriculum. When sales reps ramp faster and stay longer, you’ll wish you’d budgeted for this three years ago!

How to Coach Your Salespeople to Have Powerful Conversations

Today’s post is by Bruce Wedderburn, chief sales officer for Integrity Solutions. Bruce has more than 20 years of global experience in the sales performance improvement industry – building, coaching, and directing sales teams and distribution channels to surpass growth targets. He will lead a webinar on customer conversations and sales strategy on March 21 with Selling Power founder Gerhard Gschwandtner.

 

Most companies are currently dealing with many pressing business challenges in some form or fashion. These might include

• Aggressive growth targets in a commoditized market
• A high number of stalled pipeline opportunities eventually being lost to “no decision”
• A sales team too heavily focused on selling product versus value during the sales process.

Meanwhile, a new sales or business technology surfaces almost every day, along with dramatic claims about how it will solve all your business problems and help you blaze a trail to the future.

Unfortunately, an inconvenient truth is often overlooked in all this onrush of technology. No matter how many CRM and AI systems, apps, tools, plugins, or dashboards your people have at their fingertips, sales leaders must confront three unavoidable realities:

1. Your salespeople still need to have conversations with customers.
   
   
2. The quality and quantity of those customer conversations will determine, more than any other factor, how differentiated your solutions are to customers, the level of value your customers will perceive, and the degree to which your opportunities and revenues advance.
   
   
3. The quality and quantity of those customer conversations will also determine, more than any other factor, the ROI from your technology investments.

Technology won’t replace the need for these pivotal human conversations. The success of those conversations ultimately comes down to the salesperson’s skill, motivation, attitudes, and beliefs about selling.

Coaching Your Salespeople to Have Powerful Conversations

What are the key indicators your salespeople are maximizing the value of their customer conversations? If you want the information that goes into your CRM or pipeline management tool to be accurate and able to help close opportunities, then build a sales organization that stays laser focused on answering these critical questions.

1. Do you and the customer both clearly understand the customer’s challenges and needs? According to one study, “State of the Conversation Report,” customers say this is the most overlooked area – often rushed through or skipped entirely by salespeople in their haste to deliver insights, challenge or teach (aka “present solutions”). The salesperson needs to think about whether his or her customer clearly sees a gap between the current situation and the desired situation. The wider the gap, the more value customers will see in the solution.
   
   
2. Does the customer understand the cost of inaction? It doesn’t matter if you’re selling security or retirement solutions, surgical equipment, or pest control services; when you get down to it, you are selling the one thing that, as humans, we are hardwired not to do: change. You’re asking them to change the way they do things, change suppliers, upset the status quo, abandon the known. 
   
   “The State of the Conversation Report” also indicates that executive-level decision makers are 70 percent more willing to make a decision to change if you position their current situation in terms of what they stand to lose by not changing versus what they could gain by changing. We are more likely to make a decision to avoid pain than to gain benefits. To gain traction during the sales process, salespeople must know which questions will help customers understand the risks and consequences of remaining in their current situation. 
   
   
3. What commitments are you getting from customers at the end of each meeting that will move the opportunity forward? In other words, what is the customer doing to advance the sale? Is it a specific action or a vague statement? Unspecific comments like, “Call me in three months” or, “Send me a proposal” put all the responsibility back on the salesperson. There’s no commitment to action on behalf of the customer – and that’s a major contributor to stalled pipelines.
   
   
4. Do you know who is on the decision making team and what role your key contact will be playing? Too many opportunities are “single threaded.” In other words, proposals and presentations are delivered only to one person or one department without a clear understanding of how the decision will be made and by whom.

To gain these insights, your salespeople need a degree of skill in planning and conducting a customer-focused sales conversation with a range of buyers involved in the decision. For most of the team, making these conversational skills habitual will require repetition, reinforcement, accountability, and coaching.

Few people doubt the immense potential new technologies offer in terms of improving efficiency and enabling organizations to manage their sales and overall businesses with much greater precision than ever before. It’s a huge step forward in the evolution away from the subjective guesswork of yesteryear. But, to maximize these exciting new technologies, the fundamental conversation skills of salespeople must be front and center.

To learn more, register now for our webinar with Selling Power, “Are Your Customer Conversations Sabotaging Your Sales Strategy?” on March 21.