Selling Power Blog

What Is the One Driver of Sales Performance?

Today's blog post is by Tom Stanfill, CEO and co-founder of ASLAN Training and Development, a global sales training company with seven consecutive years in the Selling Power Top 20. Since 1996, ASLAN has worked with many of the largest sales organizations in the world, training more than 50,000 sellers and leaders in more than 33 countries. Through numerous speaking engagements and published articles, Tom is widely recognized as a thought leader in selling and sales leadership. His passion: helping organizations and individuals embrace the idea that we are more successful and fulfilled when we serve.

 

In the past few months, I’ve attended two conferences for sales and sales enablement leaders. At both, the main focus was this: The economy is up, but sales performance is on a continued decline.

Everyone seems to be scrambling to find the big fix. And this is probably why the latest sales productivity tools are so hot right now.

According to Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and CEO of Selling Power magazine, there are now more than 3,000 sales productivity tools on the market (with AI tools at the top of the list). Everyone, it appears, is looking for something to make selling easier.

Can You Make Selling Easier?

More power to them! Selling is hard, and any edge you can get is worth pursuing. But here’s the truth about selling: There is no secret sauce, silver bullet, or magic fairy dust (pick your favorite metaphor) to mastering the profession.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a big fan of the tools, pro-tips, insights, or anything that will make it easier to sell. Our company has invested heavily in such tools.

But, just like learning to play golf or the violin, sellers need a defined set of capabilities and skills to succeed. There are no shortcuts. If you’re struggling to hit the ball in the fairway, you could invest in the latest driver – but rigorous practice is required to fix your swing.

As long as sellers are talking to customers, there are no shortcuts to mastering the art of influence.

So this begs the question: What is the most effective strategy for developing a seller’s capabilities? Is it sales training? Nope. Is it delivering real-time microlearning to your sales team? Nope.

Frontline Sales Leaders Are the Key to Better Sales Performance

Here’s what we have learned from 20 years of research, conducting control group studies, and analyzing the highest performing sales organizations: If you want to change your sellers’ performance, there is nothing more effective than focusing on your frontline sales leaders.

Training, microlearning, and productivity tools are all critical to improving sales performance, but nothing has more impact than the leader/coach. The leader drives the culture and engagement, and is the key to developing the seller’s competency. Change happens one-on-one, not in a workshop.

I know this idea, on face value, isn’t revolutionary. You’re probably a big believer in sales coaching. You love the whole sales coaching movement. I get it – almost every organization I’ve worked with supports this idea.

When I spend time in the field, I ask questions to assess how well teams are being coached, including these:

• “When was the last time your manager rode with you?”
• “After a ‘coaching session,’ what is the plan to build a new skill set?”
• “How are you measuring a seller’s competency level or engagement level?”
• “What are the seller’s personal development goals?”

And, in response, I often get blank stares.

Most sales coaching sessions are really management meetings or strategy sessions. They are discussions about what went wrong, what went right, what the plan is to win, and how the numbers are looking.

Even if it’s an incredibly collaborative exchange, where the seller successfully diagnoses opportunities for improvement, nothing changes without practice. And, honestly, even the best reps can’t accurately assess their abilities without another set of eyes.

My point? Effective sales coaching takes time – and most organizations are still looking for the quick fix.

The very best tool, in the hands of an incompetent rep, will yield very little. To learn to “play,” we all need a coach to help us see our blind spots, encourage us, challenge us, and continually support the skill development process.

No judgment; I get how tough it can be. Our organization struggles regularly with coaching; and, when we fail to make it a priority, performance suffers. If you want to change performance, ask yourself: Are the frontline leaders the number one priority?

What Is Your Sales Leadership Score?

If you suspect there is a need to refocus on the frontline sales leader – or you want to personally assess your approach to developing your team and improving sales performance – check out our leadership diagnostic. In about five minutes, you will see if there are quick wins you can implement.

Here’s a quick snapshot of what you will discover:

• How well are you igniting the desire to change?
• Is your current culture enhancing or diminishing engagement and performance?
• What are the real metrics that matter?
• How much time, realistically, should be allocated to coaching?
• Are you focused on the three elements of coaching that change performance?
• Are you coaching the right people?
• Are you assessing and measuring the eight competencies that determine ability?
• Have you created the most effective development strategy for the four types of sellers?

Want to assess your own sales leadership abilities? Take one or both of our five-minute quizzes: motivation assessment and coaching assessment. 

How to Create a Winning Business Proposal

Today’s post is by Jay Mitchell, founder and president of Mereo LLC. With a heart for serving, Jay’s others-focused values inspire his clients and peers alike – as reflected in Mereo’s purpose of Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™. Follow Jay’s thought leadership on LinkedIn. 

 

A business proposal holds the power to win over buyers. It is your best salesperson in the form of a document, because it is on hand for buyers to share with all relevant stakeholders, and it contains your business’ solutions and capabilities.

Every business proposal presents you an opportunity to truly serve the buyer with real value. Yet most business proposals suffer from a few common pitfalls.

First, many proposals fail to deliver what a prospect needs. Your prospect’s needs and your own needs are usually very different. And, ultimately, it is vital sellers change to meet buyer expectations if they wish to prove their value and land deals.

Buyers’ Business Proposal Needs

Mereo had the opportunity to participate in the development of a business study conducted by The Ohio State University that targeted more than 1,000 executives at organizations making enterprise purchases. The first portion of the study asked, “What do you need to be able to sell a business proposal internally?”

This is what the study uncovered:

Business Proposal Element	Percent of Buyers Who Expect It
Project Description	100 percent
Solution Description	80 percent
Key Value Drivers	71 percent
Technical Specs	9 percent
Project Plan	69 percent
Three-year ROI Review	54 percent
Five-year ROI Review	46 percent
Budget Impact/Budget Set	54 percent

In the same study, real insights came with the second part of the question: “How often are your business proposal needs being met?”

The greatest disparity between what buyers and prospects need in a business proposal and what they are given appears in the project description (88 percent of sellers provide versus 100 percent of buyers expect); key value drivers (14 percent sellers provide versus 71 percent expect); tech specs (77 percent of sellers provide versus just 9 percent expect); and budget impact (12 percent provide versus 54 percent expect).

Turn Business Proposal Needs into a Compelling Story

Though the aforementioned insights can benefit sellers in focusing their intents, crafting a winning business proposal is more of an art than just sticking in the key value drivers and including a project description.

You are not just selling to a buyer – nor are you only helping them sell to their internal teams. You are inspiring them to transform from where they are to what your solution can help them achieve.

Accordingly, the effectiveness of any business proposal can be vastly improved by storytelling from the buyers’ point of view. And there is no better framework for telling a story than through pain, solution, gain, and proof.

Pain: What problems is the buyer struggling with? Stress these, especially if they persist as the status quo, and illustrate how they can negatively impact your buyer’s bottom line. 

Key elements: Project Description, Key Value Drivers     

Solution: How can your buyers rescue their business and their customers from these pains? This is not about your business (e.g., how many employees and offices you have) but about your buyer’s new capabilities and benefits powered by your solution.

Key elements: Solution Description, Project Plan

Gain: What will happen if your buyer uses your solution as opposed to what is at stake if they forgo using your solution? Expound on their potential successes, including benefits and ROI.

Key elements: Three-year or Five-year ROI Review, Technical Specs (briefly), Budget Sets

Proof: What other, similar buyers have realized success using this solution?

Key elements: Client Success Stories

Your business case becomes all the more compelling when you can prove, using a story that resonates with buyers, that:

1. You understand the buyers’ pains
2. You can provide real value
3. Your solution will deliver sustainable benefits and ROI

And, when they’re won over, your buyer will be enthusiastic about selling your solution to their own internal stakeholders.

For more “Seek to Serve, Not to Sell” insights, connect with Mereo on LinkedIn.  

What Does It Take to Be a Successful Salesperson?

Today’s post is by Austin Ries, a content marketing manager for Zoho CRM. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Do you assume introverts suck at selling? Do you think salespeople always win by being highly competitive and aggressive? Does a lack of sales experience doom a potential career in sales?

The Truth about Sales Stereotypes

Almost everyone has assumptions and stereotypes about what it takes to succeed in sales. But, if you want to crack the code of sales success, don’t think about what or who you need to be – think about what customers want.

The bottom line is, customers don’t want to buy from people they don’t trust – and they don’t trust people who aren’t genuine. They don’t want to sit through closing spiels that are unrelenting and unnerving. They want a connection.

With this in mind, I talked with a few sales leaders to get their take on three common assumptions about what it takes to succeed in sales. Here’s what they had to say.  

Assumption #1: Salespeople need to be extroverts.

“A lot of people think you have to be outgoing and likable, but some of the most effective salespeople are nonchalant, very casual, and people you wouldn’t necessarily think of as being in sales,” said Kia McGuire, director of sales and marketing at OralWise Inc.

The true definition of an introvert is often misconstrued and mischaracterized. It doesn’t mean an individual is shy or hates interacting with people. Introverts prefer alone time to recharge after their energy is depleted by a long day of interacting with and being around others.

Where you land on the introvert-extrovert continuum is also misunderstood. Most people aren’t one or the other, but somewhere in between. And, while salespeople do need above-average communication skills to interact with people effectively, that doesn’t mean all sales job postings come with “introverts need not apply” clauses.

In fact, not being an extrovert salesperson has several advantages. Introvert salespeople spend more time listening and asking questions during sales interactions – two essential skills when ascertaining potential customers’ needs.

Introverts also communicate best in one-on-one situations, take time to reflect before speaking or answering questions, and enjoy forming deeper relationships with customers. All of which makes for a great salesperson people want to buy from.

Assumption #2: Salespeople need to “always be closing.”

Alec Baldwin’s iconic “always be closing” speech in Glengarry Glen Ross makes for some pitch-perfect Hollywood drama doesn’t evoke sales dogma any more than Grey’s Anatomy is the truth about working in a hospital. More than ever, consumers have access to an abundance of information about any product or service. They do their research, read about the competition, and know the best price before ever talking to a salesperson on the phone or in person.

“[At least in my industry] the hardcore ‘always be closing’ mentality doesn’t work,” said Lisa Blizzard, ecommerce sales manager at Continental Mills. “It’s more low-key, sharing information; less about the relentless pressuring and more about building relationships and selling based on answering questions.”

This is excellent news for consumers, but especially for those just getting into sales who aren’t comfortable with pressuring people or haven’t honed opening and closing lines. The modern salesperson identifies needs by asking thoughtful questions, listening attentively, and showing genuine interest in helping people – not by using canned lines or responses.

In many cases, customers avoid high-energy and assertive salespeople and prefer to talk with more relaxed and more thoughtful salespeople – especially if they have a lot of questions after spending a number of hours educating themselves on the space or product.

If you take care of those things, closing deals will take care of itself.

Assumption #3: Salespeople can’t win without prior sales experience.

There are plenty of career fields where experience is not only helpful, but also required. Sales isn’t one of those. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in sales for three years or three weeks. If you have the desire to work hard, do the right things, and be persistent, you can flourish.

“[Experience] helps but it’s overrated,” said David Oman, sales director at Twist-Ease Inc. “Anyone can be successful in sales as long as you learn about the product, learn to listen twice as much as you talk, and have a desire to be successful.”

In many instances, years of experience can lead to cynicism. Sales is a daily grind and requires a relentless pursuit of increasing your product knowledge, building relationships, and following up with every lead you have. And none of that has to do with being someone you’re not.

So, for those launching their careers in sales – or even those who have been at it for years – think about how you would like to be spoken to or treated as a potential buyer. Then, imitate it.

Yes, You Can Be Successful in Sales

To have a successful sales career, you don’t necessarily have to be extroverted, aggressively focused on closing deals, or highly experienced. You just have to be the kind of person customers want to buy from, and you have to use the right tools.

With Zoho CRM, salespeople can customize their sales process to fit their needs, automate routine sales activities, and track every sales interaction so they can focus more on the customer throughout the relationship.

Why All Effective Sales Leaders Have High EQ

Today’s post is by Jeff Seeley, CEO of sales and leadership training company Carew International, as well as a frequent keynote speaker, columnist, and blogger. Find him online or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Success as a sales leader begins and ends with the quality of our relationships.

Those with an ear to the ground have likely noticed increased attention recently to the “soft skills” required to win in “high-value” interfaces with customers. These days, the pressure is on to optimize the customer experience and expand the customer life cycle.

Five Trends That Impact Sales Teams

I read with great interest Gerhard Gschwandtner’s recent eBook, 5 Trends That Will Impact Your Sales Team in 2019. The five trends included AI/CRM, value, customer experience, sales training, and conversational intelligence. Gschwandtner was spot on in identifying these key areas – four out of five of which center on the quality of customer relationships and the degree to which sales professionals can connect with customers to cultivate trust, credibility, and rapport. And, for the most part, current thinking on sales skill development aligns with these trends.

Yet, as I survey the landscape relative to sales leadership development, I worry about the lack of attention on soft skills and relationship building, and that we are overly focused on AI and CRM for leadership effectiveness. How can we recognize the critical role of relationship building and communications skills for our sales teams and so egregiously ignore these same skills when it comes to sales leaders?

In business, we continue to focus our assessment of professional worth in terms of knowledge, experience, intelligence, and education. Sales professionals are typically promoted to leadership roles because of what they know, how long they’ve worked, or how well they’ve sold rather than their EQ (emotional intelligence) or skill in managing others.

This dynamic drives a misconception among sales leaders: that they should have all the answers. This means they tend to spend most of their time talking and telling rather than listening and understanding.

Add to that our preoccupation with hitting our sales numbers and improving sales cycle efficiencies, and it’s no wonder sales leaders are missing a key link in their quest to cultivate optimal performance among sales team members.

What Is EQ?

What, exactly, is emotional intelligence? In their book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0, authors Bradberry and Greaves define emotional intelligence as “your ability to recognize and understand emotion in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships.”

High EQ fosters leaders who are approachable, relatable, human – and trustworthy. The significant impact of EQ is widely recognized and documented: Research has shown that people with the highest levels of intelligence (IQ) outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while 90 percent of top performers have high emotional intelligence (EQ). Bradberry and Greaves say EQ skills are more important to job performance than any other leadership skill.

We often wonder why successful sales professionals don’t succeed in leadership roles. Perhaps it’s because they set aside EQ-driven relationship-building behaviors that served them well in sales, and instead favor the managing, talking, and telling behaviors they perceive as leadership behavior.

EQ Practices to Help Sales Leaders

What if sales leaders fully leveraged their existing EQ and sales development practices as the foundation for their leadership development? This might include the following practices.

• Explore and then listen to understand and identify needs and motivations
• Be open, interested, and curious rather than judgmental
• Consider each sales team member’s perspective instead of your own
• Focus first on building trust – helping and adding value – before making demands
• Make emotional investments in your sales and sales support teams

With these fundamental practices in place, sales leaders would be able to fully leverage strong, trusting relationships with sales team members. They would be able to apply their EQ while honing and deploying specific leadership functions such as providing prescriptive and actionable feedback, assessing performance, managing conflict, solving problems, and motivating each team member to maximum performance.

I don’t mean to suggest that AI and CRM are not powerful tools for sales management; they absolutely are – particularly as a means to identify trends and problem areas and to drive efficiencies in the sales process. But these tools cannot cultivate the human-to-human relationships that foster trust, credibility, respect, collaboration, motivation, problem solving, coaching, and performance counseling.

As leaders, our communication is ineffective if people don’t connect with it – and us – on an emotional level and view us as resources and partners in their success.

What about the role of EQ in developing and retaining top sales talent?  Maya Angelou famously said, “People will forget what you said and did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

Establish Trust, Credibility, and Rapport

Sales leaders who fail to connect with team members for meaningful conversations will have sales team members who feel isolated, unappreciated, and insecure. It’s a dynamic that drives sales rep turnover and undermines sales performance. Conversely, the leader who is able to engage and model relationship-building skills will reduce turnover and cultivate sales team members who are better prepared to build trust, credibility, and rapport with their own customers.