Selling Power Blog

How to Stuff Your Sales Pipeline

Today’s post is by Dave Kurlan, founder and CEO of Objective Management Group and Kurlan & Associates (a global sales consulting firm). He has written two books, including the bestseller Baseline Selling.

 

You’ve sent emails to 10 prospects – or 100 or 1,000 or 10,000.

You’ve shared an update on LinkedIn with your 250 connections – or 500 or 1,000.

You’ve tweeted the same update on Twitter to your followers there.

You’ve sent your email newsletter to your subscribers.

You’ve left voicemails for the prospects who did not respond to your emails.

You’ve also followed up on the leads that came in this week and failed to connect with any of them.

What’s wrong?

Everything!

Your Contact Method Matters

First, the phone should still be your primary means of connecting with prospects. The problem you’re having is that it takes many attempts to reach one prospect.

If you must schedule your calls/meetings with the C-suite, it can take as many as 15 attempts. If you schedule your calls/meetings with the VP level, it can take as many as eight attempts. And, if you are dumb enough to schedule your calls/meetings at the manager level, it may still take as many as six attempts. Most salespeople give up after four attempts – so there aren’t many connections!

You can schedule a call/meeting with procurement without much difficulty, but you are probably among the weakest 25 percent of all salespeople if you think starting with buyers is smart. They don’t care about much other than price; so, if you’re attempting to sell value, procurement cannot be your target.

Your voicemail messages are probably not helping, either. Most salespeople provide way too much information – enough information for a prospect to determine they don’t need to return the call.

LinkedIn and Twitter? By my estimate, only five percent of your connections there are active. While they do have profiles, they aren’t on LinkedIn every day, don’t participate in conversations, and don’t take notice unless they are specifically tagged on a post or invite. If you have 500 connections, and five percent are active, that’s a passive audience of only 25 people. If one percent respond to solicitations, it’s down 0.25 percent. Think about how many connections and followers you need before you have a critical mass/audience on LinkedIn large enough for one percent to respond to your posts and shares! As a result, you should see LinkedIn and Twitter as nothing more than personal marketing tools to provide you some visibility.

Emails are getting worse instead of better. The prospecting emails I receive from SDRs, BDRs, and marketers are not personalized or signed, the messaging is poorly conceived, and nearly all are deleted the moment they are seen. Good emails – although few and far between – are more likely to be read, but they will be responded to only if the prospects have previously thought about the problem the message addresses.

The biggest mistake salespeople make is believing they can conduct a conversation via email. You can’t. Use the phone, stop hiding behind your monitor, and do what salespeople are trained to do.

Being Effective on the Phone

Will you be effective if you use the phone?

It depends on how effectively you do the following:

• Your phone introduction: The first five seconds do more to determine whether your prospect will speak with you than the rest of the call. Do you sound like someone they would choose to speak with? You must sound friendly and cheerful when you introduce yourself.
• Your positioning statement: At a high level, this helps you communicate the problems you solve.
• Your examples: These are extremely short examples of problems you solve.
• Your discussion: It must lead to your prospects sharing that they have a problem.
• Your close: Your ability to convert the problem to a call or meeting.
• Your tonality: The speed, pitch, pace, and inflexion you use to create a nurturing call.
• Your consultative approach: Your ability to push back, challenge, and ask questions.

Your success in sales is in direct proportion to the size and quality of your pipeline. You have total control over your ability to fill that pipeline; it’s just a question of how committed, disciplined, consistent, and effective you are at conducting the activity to achieve a stuffed pipeline.

Develop your sales skills! Register now for my live, interactive, online sales training course based on my bestselling book, Baseline Selling.

How to Coach Your Salespeople off Plateaus

Today’s post is by Mike Fisher, vice president of business development and a master facilitator for Integrity Solutions. Contact him on LinkedIn.

 

It happens to nearly every sales manager at some point. One of your most consistent salespeople reaches a plateau and just can’t seem to get past it. The goals you’ve set for them should be attainable, but you hear excuses and their activity starts to fall off. “That won’t work in my territory,” they tell you.

As their manager, you start to wonder, Is that all there is?

The good news is, in most cases, the salesperson is absolutely capable of moving off that plateau. But the excuses and the decline in activity aren’t what the real issue is. Like the “check engine” light in your car, they’re the indicator that something else is wrong.

In our work, we frequently see two primary culprits that lie at the root of why a salesperson stalls out: self-limiting beliefs and a lack of goal clarity. Coaching your people around these two areas can help them release their inner achievement drive so they can get back on track and hit their numbers again.

Self-sabotaging Self-talk

Over the course of our lives, we all develop belief boundaries – defining for ourselves what we can and can’t do. Someone freezes up on a quiz in grade school and decides, from that point on, they’re not a good test taker. A manager sets a goal that’s beyond anything a salesperson has achieved in the past, and they tell themselves, “No way – I can’t do that.”

No matter how much someone knows (intellectually) what they’re supposed to do, that self-talk works against them – looking for ways to prove they can’t do it. Any obstacle is a sign: “See, I told you so.” In essence, they’ve programmed their goal seeking mechanism to achieve negative results.

When you hear arguments or excuses, it’s an indicator that you’re pushing up against that person’s comfort zones. They can move past that plateau and achieve more, but their belief boundary is telling them they can’t. It’s your job as a coach to help them recognize their self-talk is just talk. It does not reflect what they’re really capable of.

• Focus on activities, not results. Coach salespeople to do the activities that will drive the results they want, and reward and recognize the effort rather than the result. The salesperson can’t control whether someone buys, but can control whether to make the call. When the skills are there, activity will build confidence and expand their belief boundaries as the effort begins to pay off.

Lack of Goal Clarity

People often say, “You can’t teach achievement drive,” and that’s true. But everyone has achievement drive within them; it just lies dormant until they have goal clarity.

That’s where great sales coaches come in. They see more in their salespeople than the salespeople see in themselves. When salespeople don’t think they can do it, sales coaches show them they can.

As a sales manager, you have the opportunity to be that person for your salespeople. Once salespeople are clear about what they’re trying to accomplish, and why, they can come up with a plan to get over the obstacles. The “why” that goal clarity provides is an essential self-motivator. If you have the “why,” you’ll figure out the “how.”

• Support, don’t assign. Never tell them what you can ask them. You can ask, “How do you think we can reach a 20 percent increase?” Let them share their beliefs. There is much deeper buy-in if it is their idea. This releases achievement drive to make it happen. Coach them and hold them accountable, but let them own the goal.

By nudging salespeople out of their comfort zones, expanding their belief boundaries, and helping them take ownership of their success, you’ll not only help them hit their numbers; you’ll change their view of what’s possible.

To get the full results from Integrity Solutions’ 2018 research on sales coaching effectiveness and its impact on organizational performance, see our Research Brief.

To Fill Your Sales Funnel, Focus on the Customer Life Cycle

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.

 

As sales and marketing leaders, we need to give our time and attention to an emerging conversation: the call for more focus on expanding the customer life cycle, versus acquiring new business, as the means to fill the sales funnel.

Obviously, both sales revenue streams are critical, but there is fresh focus on understanding and expanding the customer life cycle as a means to put more convertible sales opportunities into the sales funnel.

We all know acquiring new business is far costlier than retaining existing customers. According to recent statistics compiled by Invesp, the cost of acquiring a new customer is five times greater than the cost of keeping an existing customer. Perhaps more compelling is the data that speaks to the dramatically higher conversion rate and profitability from existing customers.

• The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent, while the success rate of selling to a prospect is 5-20 percent.
• Increasing customer retention rates by 5 percent increases profits by 25-95 percent.

These numbers suggest shifting your priority – from acquiring new business to expanding and extending the customer life cycle – is not only worthwhile, but also a potential game changer.

For so long, we have viewed “sales success” as getting a prospect to customer status – so we have funnelled our marketing dollars into the pursuit of new customers. But what if we change our paradigm? What if we define sales success in terms of customer loyalty, advocacy, and longevity?

Doing so would hold significant implications for our sales process and sales team, with the greatest potential falling into these three categories.

Category #1: Customer Relationships

The customer relationship belongs at center stage. Customers buy from people they like – when trust, credibility, rapport, and respect have been established. These elements provide the foundation on which to build productive, long-term relationships.

For sales professionals, building this foundation requires abilities far beyond product knowledge. For starters, sales professionals need a strong intellectual curiosity to understand their customers’ business, competition, and marketplace – and they need to work in partnership with their customers to influence the customer’s customer.

Your sales team also needs specific communication, exploratory, and diagnostic skills, as well as a mindset that puts the customer’s business ahead of their own sales objectives. This combination of skills and mindset strengthens the customer relationship, extends the customer life cycle, and drives more sales as the role of the sales professional evolves from vendor to business partner.

Category #2: Networking

Sales professionals usually have a limited scope of customer contacts who advocate for us within an account. Not surprisingly, one of the leading causes of lost business is the exit of a solo champion from the organization.

Effective networking protects against this vulnerability and, more importantly, allows sales professionals access to the people who can educate them as to how they can provide significant additional value for the client’s organization. Networking is the most effective means of extending your value contribution deeper and more broadly throughout the client organization.

Category #3: Sales Team Motivation

Sometimes sales can be a brutal and deflating profession. That’s why sales leaders devote a lot of time and energy to motivating the sales team.

While rejection is a reality for every sales professional, there is no greater motivator than success. When we consider the comparative sales statistics between new and existing customers, as outlined above (success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70 percent, while the success rate of selling to a prospect is 5-20 percent), we can clearly see they advocate paying attention to the customer life cycle for sales team success and motivation, as well as bottom-line growth.

Beyond the direct correlation between customer retention and sales growth/profitability, these benefits spill over into new business development, since customer advocacy is a key driver of new customer acquisitions via referrals. And we know that referrals drive the strongest leads for closing new business.

If you want to maximize sales growth and profitability, place proportional focus on extending the customer life cycle. Success on this front depends largely on having selling skills in place to cultivate strong customer relationships, loyalty, and advocacy.

How to Drive Sales Performance in Three Simple Ways

Today's post is by Mark Shonka and Dan Kosch, co-CEOs of IMPAX Corporation, a global sales training and performance acceleration company. Connect with Mark and Dan on LinkedIn.

 

The results of our 2018 State of B2B Sales study show the relationship between many buyers and sellers is fractured.

Buyers increasingly view salespeople as product pushers and short-term problem solvers – perceptions that make selling tougher than ever.

To accelerate and maintain strong sales performance, sales leaders need to get strategic. Below, we reveal three key actions every sales leader and team can take to thrive in a tough sales environment.

#1: Prioritize value over price.

In many industries, companies are being pushed toward commoditization. This is due, in large part, to the increase in procurement and vendor management practices (bad news: The procurement situation is expected to get worse before it gets better). As a result, sales organizations are seeing the customer’s perception of their value erode.

When price is the top consideration, sales organizations tend to suffer. So, what will sales professionals need to do to counteract this disturbing trend? Make sure your sales team understands value and can position it effectively with customers. Of particular importance are things like

• Conducting research to understand the broader business outcomes customers are trying to realize
• Developing influential coaches within customer organizations
• Identifying and involving higher-level decision makers (who are empowered to buy value)
• Delivering customer-focused messages that quantify the potential impact of working together

#2: Improve sales performance by adopting a sales process and developing your team’s consultative selling skills.

Basic selling skills are still important for sales professionals. However, intermediate and advanced skills (again, like recognizing and articulating value) will help customers regard salespeople as trusted advisors.

Salespeople can’t succeed on skills alone; they also need a consistent sales process to follow (and an understanding of how to implement and scale it appropriately).

#3: Hire and develop great sales managers.

The role of the sales manager is critical to successful sales results. Strong leadership will position you well for success; poor management performance will expose you to the forces of commoditization.

Characteristics to Consider When Hiring Sales Talent

From a talent perspective, having the right people on your team will be key. Sales leaders and salespeople both believe characteristics that will lend themselves to success in the future include things like

• Being collaborative
• Being insightful
• Having business and financial acumen

However, it is not enough to simply understand the profile of a successful sales representative. Sales leaders need to make sure they have a process in place to actually hire to that profile, too.

Improve Sales Coaching Among Managers

One of the most important responsibilities a sales manager has is coaching his or her team. The data on the impact of coaching is compelling: One study found that sales leaders who coach their salespeople see a boost in revenue by about 27 percent! Over and over, results show that simply receiving coaching – regardless of its quality/effectiveness – leads to increased sales performance.

Unfortunately, there is a recognized gap in this area. Our study shows both sales professionals and sales leaders lack confidence in leaders’ abilities to coach the sales team and advance opportunities.

Ultimately, sales teams driving success in 2019 and beyond will focus not only on the performance of their sales teams, but also on improved performance from their sales managers, too.

For more information, download our complimentary 2018 State of B2B Sales study results.

How Agile Selling Leads to Better Results

Today's blog post is by Michelle Vazzana. She is the CEO and a founding partner at Vantage Point Performance, a leading global sales management training and development firm. She is co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance. Vazzana is also author of Crushing Quota: Proven Sales Coaching Tactics for Breakthrough Performance. 

 

Once upon a time, sales organizations had very little organizational structure. Then sales teams discovered the power of sales methodologies.  These became de rigueur as sales leaders adopted the idea that there is a ‘best’ way to sell. (Naturally, sales training companies filled the void offering myriad expensive, specialized programs showing the path to sales nirvana.)

The Rise of Customer Segmentation and Buyer Personas

Along the way, customer segmentation became a requirement and salespeople changed their selling approach, slicing and dicing customer groups with demographics like industry, size, revenue and so on. Recently, buyer personas have become trendy, requiring lots of specific data around the buyer’s role and motivation, in addition to other demographics. Sales leaders and sales reps everywhere these days have been duly buried in new data, collateral, approaches and so on, as they’ve sought to manipulate these additional nuggets of information into a more fully formed picture of buyer personas. Yet sales performance continues its steady decline.

Sales Trends Still Stink ...

Here we are, overwhelmed with the sophisticated, expensive tools and selling strategies we’ve purchased for decades, convinced all we need is to identify our ideal kind of buyers, and woo them with our favorite sales process. Success must be close at hand! Except it’s not.

What if I told you that according to the LinkedIn – State of Sales Report by Gong.io Research, 65% of sales reps miss their quota and 34% of newly hired reps leave their companies in 16 months? What are your company’s stats on these two metrics? Companies spent $15B in 2017 on sales technology and training, according to that same report. Why does all this investment appear to be making so little impact on sales organizations? Are your company’s training dollars generating an equally dismal ROI?

And what if I told you that new research conducted by the Florida State University Sales Institute may have hit on a revolutionary explanation for this utter failure of sales process and customer segmentation? And further, that this insight should cause you to completely re-examine your sales training programs?

What Really Works: Situations

Here’s the lightning bolt: Personas do not determine successful interactions by reps. But buyer situations do.

Let’s consider a simple selling example that most of us face on a daily basis. John is the head of sales. He is also an avid golf fan and enjoys spending time with his family. John greets his family with a hug or a kiss. At golf events, he high fives. At work, he shakes hands. Why? Because from a very young age, John has observed each situation requires a different way to say hello. Imagine if John hugged his clients or shook hands with his wife. Cringeworthy, right? Sales meetings are no different.

Sales cycles can be long or short. Some buyers have assumptions that should be challenged, and others whose favorable opinions need reinforcement. Some buyers are highly motivated and other are not. Can you honestly name a sales methodology that encompasses all of these scenarios? (If you can, email me!)

Out with the Outdated

This is the future of sales – training agile managers and reps to use methodologies that take into account different buying behaviors. FSU’s Dr. Leff Bonney has shown that one size-fits-all sales methodologies fail 75% of the time. It should, therefore, be clear why it’s unwise to train sellers in a single, rigid sales approach and then expect them to use it in all selling situations.

Well, you can do such a thing, but you shouldn’t expect anything to change! Buyer demographics are not as helpful in making successful sales as finding your company’s unique buying situations and then training your managers and reps on how to use them. Go on, I dare you! Step into the 21st century with a bold, new sales approach.

Three New Selling Skills You Need to Win with Buyers

Today’s post is by Andrea Grodnitzky, Richardson’s chief marketing officer. She is responsible for demand generation and value creation through strategic marketing, brand awareness, digital optimization, product launch initiatives, and market-facing thought leadership to drive sustained, organic growth.

 

Why does it make sense for salespeople to develop new skills? To start, consider three facts about the current state of buying and selling.

1. Customers have an increasing number of buying options and, therefore, face more complexity in the decision process.
2. More buying decisions are unfolding behind closed doors, leaving sellers in a poor position to shift buyers’ assumptions and existing beliefs.
3. Skepticism among buyers is increasing: A study of 33,000 people revealed that trust across major institutions, including business, has dropped by 37 percentage points in the U.S., according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.

Sales professionals need new capabilities to properly face these challenges. Here are the current skills sales professionals need – and how to implement them.

Skill #1: Asserting a Point of View to Shape Thinking

Most customers tend to hold deeply ingrained beliefs. Positioning a solution means reshaping these well-established notions.

However, sales professionals must first understand the customer’s needs and perspectives before asserting their own perspectives. Take the time to ensure you express a point of view based on facts, not assumptions.

Asserting a point of view can feel threatening to the customer. Therefore, clarify your intent first. Make it clear that your interests are aligned to those of the customer. This preliminary step creates an environment that is more conducive to asserting a point of view.

Next, use concise, compelling language to deliver your message. Remember: Customers embark on buying journeys because they seek a solution, so don’t be afraid to be assertive.

Finally, after asserting your point of view, ask for the customer’s response. Use reflection questions like, “What are your thoughts on this approach?” or, “How do you see this solution fitting into your business model?” To advance the dialogue, sales professionals need to know if the solution capabilities resonate with the customer’s needs.

Skill #2: Uptiering to Gain Access

Uptiering is the process of expanding your engagement within an account and drawing in more senior-level contacts. This skill is invaluable because decisions today typically occur among a team. In most selling scenarios, if you’re talking to just one person, you’re engaging only a fraction of the customer. Effective sales professionals use uptiering to expand their spheres of influence rather than leapfrogging from one person to another.

Embracing this approach means building trust with the initial contact. Doing so reduces the risk of alienating the primary contact when making the request to meet with senior-level decision makers.

Moreover, the current contact must be certain granting you access to senior-level colleagues will reflect well on them. Without an uptiering strategy, the sales cycle can grow, leaving the sales professional with a limited understanding of the customer’s needs. Sales professionals should begin the request by recognizing the current contact’s existing level of support while highlighting the benefits of expanding ties to both the current contact and the senior-level contact.

Skill #3: Creating Alignment among Stakeholders

One dissenting voice within the buying team is enough to sink the sale. This outcome is more likely to appear as business challenges grow in complexity and create uncertainty in the buying process. Therefore, sales professionals need a plan for aligning the stakeholders and encouraging their resolve to move forward.

The first step is to identify the source of misalignment. In most selling scenarios, the source is fear or communication breakdown. Next, the sales professional must weave the differing customer perspectives into one case for change. Finally, the sales professional must address concerns surrounding risk. Just as the buyer’s journey is dynamic, the process of building alignment is also ever-changing. Alignment is never assured until the sale is complete.

Effective sales professionals are recognizing that the skills needed today look different from conventional selling capabilities. Uptiering, asserting, and aligning are all part of the new playbook.  

To learn more about Richardson’s advanced sales training program, High-Stakes Consultative Dialogues, please download a complimentary brochure here.

How to Overcome Resistance to Sales Coaching

Today’s post is by Michael Mallin, professor of Sales and Marketing at The University of Toledo’s Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales. He has published more than 40 articles in sales and sales leadership and is the academic director for the Executive Master of Sales Leadership degree program – a specialized master’s degree program for sales professionals.

 

Sales coaching is an ideal way to improve productivity among your team. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, “… no other productivity investment comes close to coaching in improving reps’ performance.”

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, however, sales coaching outcomes aren’t always as effective as they could be. Chalk it up to basic human nature – salespeople sometimes have an instinctive, negative reaction to sales coaching.

Why Salespeople Sometimes React Negatively to Sales Coaching

Even if sales managers have the best intentions to positively impact performance, salespeople might respond with feelings of defensiveness, reluctance, fear, confusion, and apathy. This is perfectly natural, and there are a few key ways managers can lay the groundwork for successful coaching outcomes.

Put on Your Sales Coaching C.A.P.

Dealing with a salesperson’s negative reaction should be treated like the process of handling any sales objection, issue, or concern. Think C.A.P.: Clarify, Address, Proceed.

Clarify. First, clarify or acknowledge the negative reaction to reveal the basic issue. This may be accomplished by

• Asking questions (“Help me understand your concern with me traveling with you”);
• Reflecting (“So, you feel there are no areas in your questioning techniques you can improve upon?”); or,
• Showing empathy (“I understand it may be difficult to try something new”).

Address. Next, address the negative reaction by clearly explaining the purpose. The key message should be to remind salespeople that your focus is to help them develop and refine their skills so they can achieve sales objectives.

Proceed. Finally, proceed with the coaching session only after clarifying and addressing the salesperson’s basic issues.

This table illustrates some sample conversations you can use when salespeople display negative reactions to sales coaching.

Salesperson Negative Reaction	Basic Issues	What You Might Say: Clarify or acknowledge (C) the basic issue Address (A) the concern
Defensiveness	Ego and self-esteem protection; Risk of exposure of skill deficiency	C: “Help me better understand your hesitation.” A: “I’ll share with you my observations during the (sales) call and we’ll discuss steps to get you back on track.”
Reluctance	Defiance or unwillingness to engage; Does not see or believe a benefit will result.	C: “I see you are a bit reluctant. The benefits of doing this may not be apparent.” A: “I’ve been working with Joe over the past few weeks on this (skill). He is now on track and is more confident.”
Fear	Concern over consequences stemming from skill deficiency	C: “I can appreciate your concern, given last month’s results.” A: “However, I believe in your abilities. If we spend some extra time together, I know you can make a great comeback next month.”
Confusion	Lack of clarity or ambiguity of the process and benefit	C: “It seems that you are not clear on the purpose.” A: “My goal is to facilitate a discussion with you so we can agree on some adjustments necessary to help you achieve your sales goals.”
Apathy	Self-improvement is not important; Belief that coaching will not make a difference	C: “I sense your skepticism.” A: “This is an important step to ensure we both agree on your steps to performance improvement.”

Conclusion: The Key to Effective Sales Coaching

Remember, negative reactions from salespeople don’t have to be a roadblock. By incorporating the steps discussed here, sales managers can put themselves in the best position for their coaching efforts to be received more favorably by salespeople and for their feedback to indeed be viewed for what it is: a gift.

Effective sales coaching is an action-oriented process to help salespeople further develop their knowledge, skills, and efforts. It is not a one-time event but a sequence of ongoing conversations providing lessons to maximize performance. If you’d like to learn more about coaching and other sales leadership topics, look at the curriculum of the Executive Master of Sales Leadership degree program at The University of Toledo’s Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales.

It's Time for Sales Managers to Focus Beyond Numbers

Today's post is by Julie Thomas, president and CEO of ValueSelling Associates. She is a sought-after speaker, and author of ValueSelling: Driving Up Sales One Conversation at a Time.

 

Recently, The Indicator from Planet Money, an economics-focused podcast, gave one of its dubious Indicators of the Year awards to employee “ghosting,” in which people quit their jobs without any advance notice. Deemed the “tackiest trend” of 2018, the practice of workers just failing to show up one day is a symptom of a very tight labor market and, perhaps, mismanagement. After all, if someone feels valued, he or she is less likely to leave an employer – let alone in such grand, bridge-burning fashion.

Even if you are certain your sales team members won’t leave you in the lurch, every sales manager should be concerned about turnover and its potential impact on productivity and morale. Finding and onboarding new talent takes time and energy. Additionally, millennials (who now make up the workforce majority) generally value mentoring and skills growth more than previous generations.

That’s why every sales manager should be focused on retaining his or her top performers and grooming those with strong potential. Too often, however, today’s sales-team leaders remain fixated on making their numbers – without realizing those numbers might be easier to attain if they spent more time coaching.

Sales coaching isn’t as easy as it looks. Many reps who rise to management positions do so based on their own sales processes and business relationships. Coaching demands a different mindset: You must be passionate about helping someone else achieve their sales dreams. And you must do so in a way that works for them.

Where to start if coaching doesn’t come naturally?

Make sure all salespeople work from the same playbook

While individual sales practices and personalities vary, the basics and fundamentals of selling should be consistently applied throughout a team. Find a sales methodology everyone can follow. Ensure each rep has access to sales tools that assist their efforts.

Sales teams typically are a mixture of newer account executives eager for formal training and seasoned professionals needing to master newer technologies. Providing ongoing sales training and tune-ups makes it easier to motivate and monitor team members as they move through sales cycles.

Be the subject-matter expert for your team

To make sure you earn the respect of your team, you must stay in the know – which is not easy at the breakneck pace of change happening today. Find ways to keep up with what’s happening in your own company, territories, and industry so your team members know they can turn to you for expert advice. A big part of coaching involves learning how to collaborate with different personalities and work styles. This can be done more easily if you too are receiving professional coaching from someone fluent in sales and business communications.

Make your sales coaching measurable

Yes, there are the numbers we all chase each term. But there also are metrics used in coaching that help show whether your advice and counseling are getting traction. First, work with each rep to determine their strengths and weaknesses – and then how to overcome the latter. Often sales problems boil down to competence and confidence issues. By providing the right sales tools and training, you can help bolster someone’s ability to better communicate with prospects and upsell customers.

One reason sales managers don’t invest in their own coaching skills is time. They are too busy to learn how to better connect with their reps and enhance everyone’s ability to communicate value. That mindset, though, is short-term thinking at its worst. Invest the time to become a better coach – sooner rather than later. Your own long-term sales future may depend on it.

How to Get New Salespeople Generating Revenue Faster

Today’s post is by Steve Lunz, executive vice president of Imparta Inc., and a prominent expert in the sales enablement and talent development industry.

 

For most companies, the sales team is the primary engine of organic growth. So it stands to reason that adding new sales talent and increasing the size of your sales team will accelerate your growth rate.  

But, if you’re in a B2B market with a relatively long sales cycle, it can take up to a year for a new salesperson to generate significant revenue – even though the cost of that hire starts affecting your balance sheet on day one. As a result, if you want to maintain or increase profitability, there are only so many new salespeople you can bring on board each year. Unless you can get new hires generating revenue faster, this can become a major barrier to growth.

The Problem with New Sales Hires

Many companies are struggling with this issue right now – especially with sales headcounts and budgets under pressure. Even companies that aren’t pursuing aggressive growth targets are still hiring to address attrition and the deliberate churn of poor performers. And the reality is, from recruitment to guarantees to onboarding, hiring a salesperson is a very expensive process.

Adding to that expense is the fact up to 25 percent of those new salespeople won’t succeed. So, to get an accurate sense of what this process really costs, you have to spread the cost of the 25 percent who don’t make it across those who do. For a salesperson earning a $110,000 salary, the first-year cost before commission can be as high as $270,000.

The overall P&L impact depends on when they are hired; but, without question, the cost is a larger number than most people realize. If you are hiring enough salespeople to make a real difference in your revenue, their costs will also make a real difference in your profits.

The Impact of Reducing Time to Revenue

The good news is, if you can reduce the time it takes for a new hire to start producing, you can significantly reduce your exposure and even make the case for bringing on more salespeople to accelerate growth. For a B2B business with a field sales force and a typical sales cycle of 6-9 months, reducing the time to revenue from nine months to five can reduce your net cost in the first year to zero – unlocking much more rapid growth in the business.

We call those salespeople who can generate revenue within five months “sprinters.” Sprinters are not only fast revenue generators; they also tend to be more likely to exceed their targets year after year. Partly, this is because the same factors that led them to early success remain relevant – and partly because they are made more confident by that success.

How to Speed Up Revenue Generation

To understand how management actions can affect the “ramp-up” of new salespeople, we researched a wide range of new hires and the revenue they generated in their first year. The following diagram shows what we identified as the main factors affecting sales ramp-up, along with key management levers to pull.

You don’t have to take every action listed here (and you will be doing some already), but the importance of the issue warrants a systematic approach. After all, your profitability and business growth literally depend on it.

Find more tips on reducing the break-even time for new salespeople in our white paper.

Five Things You Do Wrong in Product Demos

Today’s post is by Parth Mukherjee, head of product marketing at Chorus.ai, the conversation intelligence platform used by the fastest growing B2B businesses. Chorus.ai records, transcribes, and analyzes business conversations in real time to coach reps on how to become top performers. Learn more at https://www.chorus.ai/.

 

Sales reps spend a significant portion of their time in the sales process doing product demos. But are they delivering those demos effectively?

Chorus.ai, a leader in conversation intelligence solutions, analyzed more than three million sales call recordings in 2018. Our advanced AI automatically recognizes screen shares and machine learning algorithms to pinpoint the kind of sales behaviors that impact win rates.

Based on this data, here are five common mistakes reps make when delivering product demos.

1. Forgetting to keep your video on when sharing your screen

Keeping your video on can impact your win rate. That was the conclusion of a recent Zoom-Chorus joint research study that showed win rates increase with more prolific use of your Webcam.

Additionally, closed deals had 77 percent of meetings with videos on, while lost deals had only 65 percent meetings with videos on. Being able to see each other – even when you are doing a product demo – is an important way to establish rapport and observe the prospects’ response to your demo.

2. Saving product demos for subsequent calls

A lot of sales reps try to focus on discovery and qualification early on and, when prospects ask about the product capabilities and features, they point to the next call. (“We will do an in-depth demo for you at the next meeting.”) This is usually a sales rep’s attempt to herd more people into the meeting and run a more effective demo. Doesn’t sound like a bad approach – except our research suggests otherwise.  

Giving prospects a quick sneak peek into the product during the discovery call results in more won deals. It ensures buyers see enough value to invest more time with you. So, don’t shy away from giving the prospects a product demo on your initial call.

3. Not segmenting discovery questions

Again, discovery is not just a phase. Like any relationship in which you keep discovering new things about a partner, you can do deeper discovery after you have started a product demo. A little demo during discovery and some discovery during your in-depth demo seems to be the right approach.

In most won deals, demos are spread out over two separate calls. One call should be heavier on discovery, and the other call should be focused almost completely on the product demo.

4. Keeping demos too short and sweet

Sometimes reps tend to do shorter demos because they’re not yet comfortable with the product or lack enough sales engineering support. They want to focus on value props and ROI instead of product features.

Data suggests you had better get comfortable running longer demos. It helps get the prospect deep into the product. As a standard best practice, customize the demo based on the pain points you uncovered during the discovery call. Then the demo duration becomes a leading indicator of deal winnability.

So, the longer you demo, the more likely you are to win the deal. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But ask yourself – do your sales managers and reps use the demo duration to determine the probability of winning the deal? This can be a factor you use to improve your own sales forecast.

5. Forgetting to engage the prospect during the demo

Demos do not mean endless pitching. Yes, when you are sharing your screen and showing off the great stuff in your product, you will talk more and listen less. Compared to the discovery phase of the call, reps need to talk more.

However, you still have to engage the prospect. Top reps ask questions every three-to-four minutes in a demo and create an engaging moment every eight minutes – even when they demo.

For more information, download our complimentary, ungated resource (available as a PDF or a Google Drive file) on how to deliver great product demos. Print it out, pin it near your desk, and use it before and after every product demo.