Selling Power Blog

The Best Sales Training Tool to Win More Conversions

Today’s post is by David Varner, author of The Sales ChecklistTM: Get It Right Every Time! 

 

I’ve been in the sales training industry for the better part of 20 years, and I’ve observed countless companies re-implement their sales training or pursue the latest shiny new thing. 

I’m not talking about ongoing sales skills development and optimization. I’m talking about the belief that their overall sales process isn’t yielding enough conversions to sales. In response, sales leaders feel the need to start over, invest in more training, “and do it right this time.” 

Why Is the Average Closing Rate Only 25 Percent? 

Why do sales organizations continually do this? Was the training they invested in flawed? Seeking the answer to this led me to write my new book, The Sales ChecklistTM. 

The reality is that most salespeople already have an acceptable level of selling skills. Can they get better? Absolutely. Is lack of skills the real sales conversion problem sales organizations are facing? No. 

From our research, the average closing (conversion) percentage today, across all industries, is approximately 25 percent. This means three out of four of the sales pursuits that make their way through your sales process will result in a loss, no decision, or an unknown conclusion. 

Disappointingly, this losing rate has stayed the same for many years. With access to so many sales skills programs, why is this happening? 

The reason sales are lost (or pursued when they should not be) is that the salesperson missed something he or she knew was necessary to do. Why did they miss it? Because, in the real world, it may be something they don’t consistently execute. However, there are required steps that must be systematically covered to ensure a positive outcome – either a closed sale or an informed, early disengagement. 

The Sales Checklist™ – Get It Right Every Time! 

Checklists minimize avoidable failures due to lack of attention, memory, or thoroughness. They empower professionals to have a higher baseline of performance by reminding them of the necessary steps in a process – where missing one step potentially has the same consequences as missing all the steps. 

Although we don’t typically think of a shopping list as a checklist, it is. Without a checklist, we forget to pick up items we know we should. A checklist for shopping ensures you don’t have to go back to the store to pick up the milk! 

In aviation, checklists are vital. Pilots use them as part of their protocol because they have found it could mean the difference between life and death. The first known use of a checklist for pilots occurred following the 1935 maiden flight of the prototype Boeing XB-17 (later B-17) WWII bomber. The flight, conducted by one of the Air Force’s most experienced pilots, ended in tragedy shortly after takeoff: the pilot had forgotten to release a locking mechanism on the rudder and elevator controls. The pilot had known he had to do it, but he simply missed a step. Once Boeing identified the cause of the crash, they developed a checklist to ensure that, going forward, pilots didn’t miss any steps. 

Once the checklist was adopted, the impact was two million flying miles without a similar incident.

The Power of a Checklist for Sales

How do we, as salespeople and sales leaders, gain the same consistency of a pilot successfully executing a flight from departure to arrival? How do pilots get it right, statistically, almost 100 percent of the time? How do they apply their knowledge consistently and correctly every time? How do they make the preflight look so easy, so simple? How do they manage extreme complexity so consistently? 

Simple. They follow a checklist. 

Overall, salespeople are competent and know how to ask questions, probe, develop solutions, develop coaches or mentors, and so forth. The reality, however, is that the majority of their time (75 percent losing rate) is wasted on opportunities where they have missed a step or more. 

This leads to lost sales (or sales that were never going to be won) being pursued to the end of the customer’s buying process – representing a tremendous opportunity cost. 

Typically, customers require three to four companies to quote or bid on any major purchase. This means the customer must motivate two or three of the salespeople who are not going to win the order to stay engaged to ensure they receive the necessary number of quotes. 

Using The Sales Checklist™ will ensure you have visibility when you’re the third or fourth quote – empowering you to make an informed decision whether to stay engaged or invest your resources where they will produce a greater return.

A sales checklist minimizes avoidable failure. No longer will missed steps lead to being blindsided by a surprise lost sale. Checklists minimize avoidable failures due to lack of attention, memory, or thoroughness. 

Yes, You Can Build a More Successful Sales Organization and Win More Sales

Sales leaders, are you tired of the following? 

• Struggling with the difficulty of growing sales organically
• The lack of data to make informed sales decisions
• Managing and coaching salespeople who all seem to have their own ways of selling
• Implementing sales methodologies that consistently fail to meet your expectations 
• Low closing rates, inaccurate forecasts, wasted resources, and surprise losses
• Poor adoption and impact of CRM

If so, my book enables you to implement a simple checklist – one that will empower you to run your sales territory or organization with the confidence and consistency of a pilot. Simple solutions get adopted; complex ones do not. Sales meetings, sales coaching, and deal reviews will be short, focused, productive, and consistent. 

Data will enable your team to systematically disengage from business they’re not going to win. Do the math: If using the checklist empowers your sales team to intelligently fire one out of four of your pursuits and replace it with one more likely to close, how will your numbers be impacted? All of a sudden, a 10+ percent growth in organic sales is very reasonable. 

Salespeople, are you tired of attending the “flavor of the month” sales training programs every year or two, only to have it be essentially forgotten in a few months? For this reason, many of you have become jaded and don’t take new training seriously. 

In the short time it takes to read this book, you’ll learn a framework to consistently navigate any business-to-business sale, with no long implementation process. This book is written from a sales leader’s point of view, but the concepts also apply to everyone within an organization. It will provide you with immediate, measurable results, including higher commissions. 

The Sales Checklist™ and COVID-19

In the past few months, the worlds of our customers have been turned upside down.  The majority of (if not all) the opportunities in our sales forecasts have been impacted – and will continue to be impacted.

With all the uncertainty we’re facing, we need data more than ever to quickly answer key questions. What does our forecast look like now? Where do we spend our time? How can we move opportunities forward? Which opportunities are no longer qualified? We can’t afford to guess or assume. Gut feelings are dangerous. 

Time is of the essence. We need solutions that are easy to use, simple to coach, and produce immediate results. We need to do something now – not next quarter. 

The Sales Checklist™ is uniquely suited to help. Using the checklist will allow you to use data to quickly review every active opportunity on your forecast, accurately determine where you are positioned, and decide what you need to do next to either move it forward or make an informed decision to disengage and invest the sales resources where they will produce a greater return. 

Unfortunately, it’s irrelevant if a deal had been forecast to close the end of April. That may not be accurate any longer. 

Additionally, if yours is one of the few businesses that has seen a positive spike in business from COVID-19, what’s your forecast and pipeline going to look like when the spike subsides?

We must strive to run our sales organizations with facts, not faulty assumptions. The Sales Checklist will empower you and your team to make timely, informed sales decisions minimizing your current risk and positioning you for success in the future.

If you’re seeking a simple yet sophisticated tool to immediately improve your sales results, get your copy of my new book, The Sales ChecklistTM: Get It Right Every Time! 

The Value of Digital Sales Transformation Right Now

Today’s guest post is by Mike Orr, co-founder and CEO of Grapevine6. Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

 

As sales and marketing teams adapt to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re all adjusting to new modes of operation as we try to stay productive, connected, and successful. 

One lesson the global quarantine has taught us: the value of digital sales transformation. Specifically, it’s urgent for sellers to change our communication habits and embrace the digital world to stay connected and carry on. 

At Grapevine6, we began helping customers prepare for a shift to digital sales transformation a few years ago. Here are two key reasons. 

#1: Conventional content marketing approaches aren’t cutting it anymore. For one thing, customers have stopped trusting what brands say about themselves; they trust what other people say about the brands through peer advocacy and peer reviews. Second, too much content has created noise and made it difficult for brands to stay relevant. 

#2: Social has emerged as a source of trusted information. Many forward-looking companies like Guardian Life Insurance Company, SAP, and others recognized the shift to social as a source of trusted information in the buyer’s journey. 

Harvard Business Review reported 82 percent of the seller’s social content had a significant impact on their client’s buying decision. They turned to digital programs to address the issue of brand authenticity and to help their business leaders and customer-facing employees create engaging and valuable conversations with their future clients. These social selling initiatives enabled salespeople to build out authentic and professional (yet personal) brands online, create authentic connections with their networks, and provide engaging, valuable content to their buyers. 

The True Value of Digital Sales Transformation

The sheer volume of available content creates two primary challenges:

1. How do we enable our salespeople to efficiently find the right content at the right time to advance sales conversations in digital? 
2. How do many companies – especially the ones that represent highly-regulated industries such as financial services – ensure the content and conversations don’t create more problems than they solve by introducing reputational or regulatory risk?

The answer to both questions – managing relevance and risk at scale – is artificial intelligence (AI), specifically AI-powered technology. These tools collect large amounts of content, analyze it for compliance, and personalize it for each user’s profile based on their personal preferences. 

Those profiles can be further personalized by monitoring the engagement with content over time. This approach, powered by mature AI, takes the pain and risk out of content curation and compliance, freeing up the valuable resources for more strategic and creative tasks by sales and marketing.

Now’s the Time to Embrace Digital Selling

Digital transformation of sales was always a good idea, but it was never an urgent one. In March 2020, however, it became a pressing issue – moving digital selling from “nice to have” to vital.  

As we adapt, survive, and learn, we are accelerating this change. Most companies have to embrace digital selling in the short term or risk a collapse in commerce. Ignoring social and digital selling also creates the long-term risk of falling hopelessly behind competitors. Combine that urgency with the understanding that most behaviors are very difficult to change and change back. It’s apparent that investing in digital selling as an organizational capability and mandate is critical now and will be in the foreseeable future.

How to Skyrocket Win Rates by Multi-threading Your Deals

Today’s post is by Devin Reed, head of content strategy for Gong. Previously Devin worked for six years in SaaS sales. 

 

You’re riding high on a deal that’s certain to close. The prospect has budget, need, and a clear-cut timeline. The prospect even has authority to say yes. In short, you have all of the “BANT” ingredients to ensure a successful deal.

Then it happens. Or, in this case, doesn’t happen. Your main (and, as it turns out, only) point of contact on the deal goes dark. Silent. Gone. 

You’ve been ghosted.

Did your contact go on an impromptu vacation? Did he or she leave the company? While both are possible, it really doesn’t matter. The deal is dead.

If you only had...insurance – or deal insurance, to be specific – you would’ve avoided heartbreak (and won that deal). But your BANT criteria is missing a critical element: influence.

Why Multi-threading Is Insurance for Sales

Multi-threading is insurance for salespeople working toward the close. Multi-threading means building relationships with multiple stakeholders within your deal. It’s also your ticket to winning influence in an account. How do I know this? 

The Gong research team analyzed 53,632 sales opportunities (and the sales calls and emails within them). We found that most deals start with one point of contact. But deals that are ultimately successful have triple the number of participants from the buyer’s side for the second meeting. Multi-threaded deals are a defining characteristic of sales success.

Here are some other insights we discovered. 

GONG LABS DATA POINT #1: Successful deals include at least three people from the buyer’s side in meetings across the sales cycle (phone/Web conferencing). 

By contrast, deals that are ultimately lost show that it’s often a struggle to get more than one point of contact to attend meetings. The first person they connect with is often the only person they ever speak with.

The success gap really widens when you look at the unique number of prospects involved in a deal via email.

GONG LABS DATA POINT #2: On average, winning deals involve eight points of contact via email. Losing deals only make it to three points of contact via email. That’s a 243 percent difference in engagement.

Three Critical Advantages of Multi-threading Your Sales Deals

1. Get deal insurance in case your champion goes dark. 
When you rely on a single person to close your deal, you’re only a single person away from losing it. This is single-threading, the “unhealthy opposite” of multi-threading.

Even if your champion is the decision maker or economic buyer, investing in their direct reports is worthwhile. You may have a verbal yes, and it may feel like the deal is pretty much done.

Until that single point of contact disappears.

You need additional contacts that will continue to give your deal momentum or, at the very least, supply you with information and deal updates. Any update is better than radio silence. 

2. Win over the decision-making committee. 
Healthy deals can take a quick downward turn when priorities shuffle, budget restraints set in, or bandwidth becomes limited. Each circumstance has the potential to hold up your deal, but multi-threading can tackle them all.

Multi-threading means you are never fighting obstacles alone. The ability to tackle several threats at once is especially important for companies attempting to go up-market and for sellers chasing larger, more complex deals.

3. Get deeper insight from multiple sources about potential deal obstacles. 
Every deal in your pipeline has a surprise – a hidden truth you have yet to uncover. That’s why you’re never truly in control of your deal until you learn the full truth, and that requires numerous information sources.

You uncover unknowns by triangulating the truth with your stakeholders. This means asking the same questions to multiple contacts and seeing whether the answers align. 

If they do, great! You have your path to a deal. If they don’t align, then you’ve found a hiccup in the buying process before it’s found you. Now you can get in front of it and continue the buying process.

Build the Path to a Successful Close

Now that you know the importance of multi-threading, you need plays you can put into play today. That's why we created our Multi-threading Playbook, so you can keep influencers engaged throughout your sales cycle. Download it today and get three ready-to-fire multi-threading plays so you can stack the odds in your favor to win more deals.

Agile Selling: Why It Matters Today and How to Apply It

Today’s post is by Ben Taylor, MBA and content marketing manager at Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Agile selling works because it accounts for the most common aspect in selling: change.

Unexpected change is not only a common experience in selling, it’s becoming increasingly frequent. Businesses and governments have seen unprecedented changes in consumer demand, supply chain logistics, and forecasts as macro-economic changes and geopolitical trends evolve. There has never been a more appropriate time to leverage the battle-tested agile selling methodology.

Why Does Agile Selling Matter Today? 

An agile model focuses on customer collaboration and responsiveness to change rather than adherence to a single, unchanging plan. Put simply, agility in selling means being flexible and using different skills when and where you need them.  

This fluidity matters not only in the context of recent economic upheavals but also in the context of sweeping changes to the way businesses operate. Consider research from BCG showing that “businesses move through their life cycles twice as quickly as they did 30 years ago.” Today, success belongs to businesses that have an agile approach.

How to Apply Agile Selling

Adopting the agile selling methodology means first becoming comfortable with change – because change is inevitable, and change signifies that the customer is thinking critically about the best way forward. 

Sales professionals can develop their agile approach using these three capabilities:

Read the Buying Factors

The customer’s journey revolves around a set of buying factors – the facts, influences, and circumstances that all contribute to the result of a decision to buy or not buy. These factors are dynamic and interrelated and exert pressure on customers throughout all stages of their buying journey. These factors: the case for change, the stakeholder dynamics, and the decision process.

The case for change is the what and why of the buying decision. Customers are determining if the desired outcomes, solution options, and value vs. risk are all strong enough to warrant making a purchase. The most common and immovable obstacle in building the case for change is the status quo – representing what the customer considers normal. 

The stakeholder dynamics represent the various decision makers involved in the buying process. Each buyer has a distinct definition of opportunity and risk. The sales professional must first identify these different perceptions, then address each one. 

The decision process represents the iterative steps the customer takes toward the purchase. This process is complex (and often non-linear) as a result of changing priorities and stakeholders who enter and exit the picture.  

Build Consensus

Once sales professionals understand the buying factors behind each of the above categories, they can begin to build consensus by building alignment. Doing so is an increasingly important skill as buying decisions become more diffused in organizations. The challenge, however, is that alignment is not natural. Each stakeholder has individual leanings and likely wants something different from the solution.

In the early stages of consensus building, sales professionals are forming a relationship with the customers. In the middle stages, sales professionals coalesce the different perspectives and needs into one cohesive case-for-change narrative. Finally, in the late stages, alignment is more about driving the decision and managing the perceptions of risk. 

Explore the Customer’s White Space

When sales professionals identify the white space in an existing account, they are creating opportunities by positioning solutions that align with the customer’s goals, challenges, and initiatives. An agile approach fits this strategy because sales professionals benefit from the momentum they’ve already created. With an existing understanding of the buying factors and the stages for alignment, it is easier to find the areas in the customer’s business where the solution will add value.

At Richardson and Sales Performance International, we are equipping sales professionals with these agile selling skills via our Virtual Instructor-Led Training Workshops, which replicate the classroom experience and are highly effective tools for sales teams working remotely. 

Three Simple Ways Sales Coaching Can Reduce Turnover

Today’s post is by Brian Trautschold, co-founder and COO at Ambition, the leading sales coaching and gamification software used by in-house and remote sales teams across the globe.

 

In an ever-changing industry like sales, there’s one challenge that’s constant: high sales rep turnover.

The average tenure of a sales rep is often quoted to be somewhere between 13 and 30 months. When typical ramp time takes nine to 12 months, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for reps to operate at full steam before they move up to a different role or move on to a different job.

What’s the trick to getting your best reps to stick around? It’s all about managing with a sales coaching mentality. Reps crave effective and consistent coaching. In fact, our State of Sales Performance Management Survey showed that 98 percent of reps who responded were more likely to stay with a company if they’re offered ongoing training and development.

Here are three ways you can use sales coaching to ensure your top (or up-and-coming) talent sticks with you.

1. Get personal.

If you’re not engaging in meaningful conversation – or if every coaching session with every rep looks exactly the same – then you may as well not be coaching at all. To keep your coaching sessions personalized:

• Automate what you can: Yes, it seems counterintuitive, but automating the administrative tasks – like scheduling sessions, gathering performance data, tracking conversations and action plans, and sending questions ahead of time – means you can spend your sessions on valuable, development-focused conversations tailored to each rep. The right sales coaching software will help you do just that.
• Ask the right questions: One-to-ones are not mini performance reviews. In fact, your reps should be leading the sessions – but you can guide the conversation with a solid mix of thoughtful, open-ended questions. Ask questions that encourage your reps to make observations about their performance; draw conclusions based on those observations; and then apply them to new and different circumstances.
• Invest in their success: Show your reps you care about them – as members of your team and as sales professionals. Help them identify career development opportunities and position themselves for success. Sure, they may leave you someday if they’re eager to climb the ladder, but you’ll instill in them a level of confidence today that will have a direct impact on their performance today.  

By personalizing your coaching efforts, your sessions will not only become more powerful; you’ll also nurture relationships with each rep – which goes a long way toward creating a healthy team culture. 

2. Provide a clear path to success.

It’s easy for reps to mentally check out if you haven’t defined what success looks like or if success feels flat-out unattainable. At best, that can lead to disengagement; at worst, it can be demoralizing and create burnout – a huge driver of turnover.

As a sales coach, identifying the right KPIs and setting the right targets will allow you to create a clear path to success for your reps. Bonus: It gives you hard numbers to which to hold your reps accountable. 

Not sure if you’ve got the right goals in place? Here’s a quick refresher:

1. Work backward from your “North Star”: Start with the big revenue number your team is trying to hit; then, reverse engineer your sales funnel by each opportunity stage – going backward from closed deal to RFP to demo to...you get the picture. 
2. Calculate conversion rates: Using historical numbers, figure out the average conversion rate between stages in the pipeline. 
3. Define the activities that drive each stage conversion: These are the activities you should measure and reinforce for reps. Figure out which sales motions work the best for each stage of an opportunity, and incentivize whichever reps are responsible for that part of the funnel to hit their activity goals.

Remember: You can only manage what you can control – and activity and effort are two things that are fully under your control. Set sales goals for your most relevant activities and drive your reps to achieve them every single day. This will create a system of consistency and accountability that will make your reps successful and engaged – and successful, engaged reps are much easier to retain.

3. Coach beyond the one-to-one.

Every sales coach needs to find ways to recognize, motivate, and coach in the moment – without constantly looking over your reps’ shoulders or micromanaging. 

The best way to strike that balance is to leverage tools that provide real-time insights and alerts into performance (bonus if they integrate with your instant messaging technology, like Slack). That way, the second a rep veers off track, you’ll know – and you can step in to offer support or coach them up on skills they may need to develop.

Of course, coaching is also about recognizing and celebrating a job well done. If you’re sharing a sales floor, leverage sales TVs with anthems and triggers that fire off when reps score – and be sure to publicly broadcast your sales competitions, too. (If you’ve got remote team members, make sure everything can be viewed through a URL, so the whole company can cheer the team along.)

Real-time coaching demonstrates to your reps that you’re present and plugged in, which in turn keeps them present and plugged in – a surefire way to combat high turnover.

If you’re struggling to retain your top talent, you’re not alone. Before you throw your hands up and assume that short tenures come with the territory, however, consider reevaluating your coaching program. 

Structure a coaching program that gives reps what they need, and you can expect to see enhanced productivity, stronger performance – and a lot of talented employees who choose to stick around.

Should You Really Pursue That Sales Opportunity?

Today's post is by David Yesford, senior vice president of Wilson Learning Worldwide and contributing author to several books, including Win-Win Selling, Versatile Selling, The Social Styles Handbook, and The Sales Training Book 2. 

 

Are your salespeople spending a lot of time on deals they don’t win? As win rates go down, expectations go up – that next deal better close! That next opportunity better be a big one! Margins need to be higher! Do something! Make more calls! Find more prospects! 

Do you know what creates frenzied salespeople? Activity for activity’s sake, without a clear direction to invest in high-probability sales opportunities that bring profitable business to your company. 

So how do we transform unqualified sales activity into informed and focused outcomes? If your goal is to help salespeople and sales managers invest their time on opportunities that represent the greatest value and opportunity to win, use the following three questions to inform the discovery dialogue and provide a structure to pursue the right business.

Three Questions to Focus on the Right Sales Opportunity

1. “Will the customer buy from someone?”

To conduct an intelligent, informed discussion around, “Shall we pursue this sales opportunity?” the first “Yes” comes from a moderate to high probability the customer will buy something. 

This doesn’t mean the customer will buy from you; it just answers the question, “Will the customer buy from someone?” If there is low probability, you may need to rethink whether pursuing the opportunity is worth your time and resources.

The signs are usually clear. Look at the following metrics: 

• Is there a strategic importance for the investment? 
• Is there a compelling event pushing the customer toward a buying decision? 
• Is there a budget? 

If you can’t find evidence of a situation in the company that will cause the customer to buy from you or one of your competitors, it’s time to make a “No Go” decision. If you got out now, how would that help your win rate and profitability?

2. “Will the business, if won, be good for my company and me?” 

Let’s face it: Salespeople love to win – and hate to lose. As a result, they tend to focus on the time and resources already invested in the pre-sale pursuit of the deal; however, they must also include in their assessment the profitability of the opportunity and the post-sale costs of resources needed to deliver, implement, and support the sale.

If you can’t collect compelling evidence that answers, “Will the business, if won, be good for my company and me?” with a resounding “Yes,” the sales opportunity may evolve into a deal you wish you would have lost.

3. “Will the customer buy from me?”

If you have said “Yes” to the first two questions, then the next “Yes” needs to come from your discovery around, “Will the customer buy from me?” From your customer’s perspective, does your offering match their needs better than the competition’s offering? Is there a competitor better aligned with the customer on value? Are your salespeople offering a clear competitive advantage and do they have credibility with all decision makers?

Uncovering this type of evidence enables everyone involved in a sales campaign to discuss the relative strength of your competitive position. And, if your salespeople lack evidence, it is incumbent upon the salesperson, sales manager, and/or support staff to have a dialogue, ask questions, listen, and determine the strength of your competitive position for increasing win rates.

Consider each of these three questions in order. If you don’t know the answers, stop and find out before considering the next question or deciding to pursue the sales opportunity. 

Time is too valuable to spend on pre-sale activities that won’t deliver the sales results you  seek. Energize your competent sales force by encouraging your salespeople to use these compelling questions to better inform their sales discovery process.

Wilson Learning was named one of Selling Power’s Top 20 Sales Training Companies in 2019. Find out more about how Wilson Learning can help you develop your sales force.

What New Sales Managers Need to Know

Today’s post is by Nick Kane, managing partner at Janek Performance Group. He has trained more than 15,000 sales professionals worldwide and is passionate about helping sales professionals improve their selling careers – as well as their lives. He is co-author of Critical Selling: How Top Performers Accelerate the Sales Process and Close More Deals. 

 

So, you’re a new sales manager. Congratulations on entering the world of management!  

If you want advice on how to do this job well, you’ve come to the right place. Below are some key things to know as a new sales manager. 

1. The team culture will be determined largely by the example you set.

Because you’re the leader of the team, you set the culture. Even the most independent sales rep will take cues from you. So, if you tell your team to be in at 8:30 am every day, but you stroll in at 9:00 am, the team will ignore your instructions and come in at 9. If you tell your reps the phone is important, but all anyone sees you doing is email contact, the team will likewise default to email. So be sure to practice what you preach. 

2. Learn to let it go.

When you were a sales rep, you probably excelled at your job (thereby earning you the promotion). You know how to talk to clients and connect with people. When you see your now direct reports struggling, it’s tempting to jump in, take over, and save the day.

But there are many reasons you shouldn’t do that. Sure, you might win the deal, but that’s a short-term gain that damages your chances of long-term success. 

Firstly, you’re potentially creating confusion for the buyer: Who’s the main point of contact for them – you or the sales rep they were working with? 

Secondly, and most importantly, you’re robbing the rep of valuable learning and development opportunities. You might also run the risk of the rep becoming demoralized, demotivated, or dropping in work ethic because they didn’t impact the sale in a positive way – and they may get the idea that they don’t need to work as hard, because you’ll just come in on falling deals.

3. The skills of a sales rep and those of a sales manager are completely different.

It’s a common error. Like when the owner of a sports team hires a former athlete as manager or coach, then watches it all implode. 

Two different major factors are at play in this type of failure. One, some people are so naturally talented at what they do that teaching and developing others in their field is too difficult – the skills they’re supposed to be imparting to the next generation are so instinctual that they can’t transmit their knowledge in a way that connects. 

Two, managing and coaching involve skills different from selling and playing – you need to be able to instruct and inspire, consider the long-range growth and development of other people, and take a role of oversight and administration. As a sales rep, you don’t necessarily need to be a leader. As a sales manager, you do.

4. Your most important duty isn’t selling – it’s developing your team members.

When you were a sales rep, the numbers and metrics were likely major measurements of your success. As a sales manager, you still might be judged that way by your leadership. But, while you should pay attention to what the numbers say, your primary focus should be on growing the knowledge and skills of your sales reps. When you have a knowledgeable, skilled team of sales reps, the numbers frequently take care of themselves. Don’t miss the forest for the trees.

5. You’ll need to make a lot of judgment calls.

As noted earlier, as a manager, you’re a leader. That means you’re going to have to make decisions – who to hire, who to fire. What skills each of your team members should be working on. How to handle a star performer who is detrimental to the rest of the team. At what levels you should set the sales forecast and quotas (depending on the size and structure of your organization). 

Being a sales manager is a lot of responsibility. It requires a new set of skills and can be challenging. But it’s also an opportunity to create something exciting and dynamic – an entity that brings real value to your organization. So think about what type of manager you want to be, what type of team you want to have, and what culture you want to create. 

For more helpful advice on how to advance your selling and sales management skills, visit Janek’s resource library. 

How Much Do You Really Know about Sales Enablement?

Today’s post is by Mark Stralka, founder and CEO of Mobile Locker, a global sales enablement platform. Mobile Locker facilitates seamless and frictionless collaboration between sales and marketing. The platform also delivers trade show "lead to pipeline" conversion with unprecedented velocity. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Sales enablement has been around for decades. Still, it’s often misunderstood.

Take a minute to answer the following questions to find out if your perceptions about sales enablement are fact or fiction.  

FACT or FICTION? A typical sales enablement program improves sales by approximately 10 percent in the first year.

FICTION: Sales enablement is a proven way to increase sales. The actual level depends on your current situation, what changes you decide to make, and your team’s commitment to sales enablement. 

The typical effort more than pays for itself in increased efficiency and productivity within a few months. Improvements will continue over time – leading to better sales results year over year for as long as you maintain a disciplined sales enablement program. 

Want to learn more? Download “The Sales Enablement 6-Pack.” 

FACT or FICTION? Sales and marketing process improvements are the top drivers of sales enablement success.

FICTION: Training is an equally important contributor to the success of sales enablement initiatives. Educating reps and other employees – giving them the knowledge they need to do their jobs better – is the fuel that drives the leading programs.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement breaks down the barriers between sales and marketing. 

FACT: (Even though you may think it’s impossible to bring the frenemies together!)

A sales enablement program and system makes it easy for marketers to develop and distribute sales content – and for salespeople to use it. The system is a central hub where both groups can monitor content usage, communicate about it, and determine its effectiveness. 

It eliminates the issue of each team using its own systems and depending on different sources of data to track success. It encourages the use of common language that brings people together to work toward common goals.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement software works best on a computer and is less effective on other devices.

FICTION(ish): Many old-school sales enablement systems are cumbersome and work best on computers and laptops connected to the Internet. The latest, however, are optimized to work on any device – laptop, tablet, or smartphone – any place, any time, with or without Wi-Fi.

This makes them a great asset for reps who often find themselves in challenging sales situations where they may be called on to use a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or all three. If you haven’t checked out sales enablement solutions lately, you owe it to yourself to take a fresh look.

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement solution will replace all the other tools sales and marketing teams currently use.

FICTION: Think about a sales enablement system as a hub that will integrate seamlessly with everything you’re currently using, including your CRM, contact management software, email system, and more. There should be no need to change anything. It will simply enhance what you’re already using and make things more effective.

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement system is something you “grow into.”

FICTION: While it’s always a good idea to plan for tomorrow, you should never pay for software functionality you may never use. Even worse, doing so could confuse and frustrate people who have to work with a too-complex system. This often leads to abandonment. 

It’s smarter to invest in a sales enablement solution that’s right for you now, is scalable so it can grow with your business in the future, and lets you add features and functionality when you’re ready for them.

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement systems are difficult to customize.

FICTION: While a lot of well-known sales enablement software is out-of-the-box, there are other alternatives. Mobile Locker’s app is an example of one that can be customized quickly, easily, and cost-effectively to meet the needs of virtually any business. 

FACT or FICTION? Sales enablement is about process, not data.

FICTION: It’s true that a sales enablement program will improve your sales and marketing processes and procedures. However, modern sales enablement technology takes things to the next level by providing you with easy access to data about the effectiveness of your sales process, team, and collateral. You’ll also gain invaluable insights about the people in your customer base. 

FACT or FICTION? A sales enablement program and system is hard to implement.

FACT(ish): Like any worthwhile endeavor, starting a sales enablement program takes time and effort. Once it’s up and running, you’ll gain efficiencies that will make it easier for you to do your job while generating better results. Businesses find the short-term trade-off completely worth it. 

Once you establish a sales enablement program, implementing a modern system is simple. Salespeople and marketers can be up and running and using it in a few hours. 

Want to learn more facts about sales enablement? Contact the friendly experts at Mobile Locker to get answers to all your questions.

Are You Happy with Your Current Sales Methodology?

Today's blog post is by Lou Schachter. Lou Schachter heads the sales and marketing practice at BTS. He is the co-author of Selling Vision and The Mind of the Customer, both of which were published by McGraw-Hill.

 

Today’s sales methodologies are outdated. Sales and marketing leaders agree – it’s time for a change.

Most common sales methodologies were developed in the 1980s. Despite updates, they don’t reflect the modern selling environment that exists today. More recent methodologies that have been widely adopted are hard to implement, and only work in certain situations with certain people. Clearly, what’s available is no longer working.

So, what has changed? We turned to leading sales and marketing leaders – as well as their customers and buyers – to find out. Through more than two years of research, we discovered there has been a fundamental transformation in the way people buy, which requires sales leaders to successfully execute sales change. 

The Buying Paradox: Buying Is Slower Despite the Need for Agility

In the digital world, buyers have more information than ever, and that creates more complexity than ever. 

More stakeholders are involved in each buying decision, and they have competing needs. At the same time, corporate priorities are changing frequently. The world seems like it’s speeding up, yet making good decisions quickly is increasingly challenging. These factors create a situation we call the “buying paradox”: Buying is slower despite the desire for agility. 

Let’s take a step back and review how we got to this point. In the mid-20th century, salespeople with the best product knowledge had a distinct advantage over their competitors because they could best fill their customers’ needs. But the advent of the Internet and globalization commoditized “product selling.” 

Sales forces responded by wrapping together bundles of products and services to solve “problems” that were larger than needs – “solution selling.” But then everyone started doing it. 

What B2B Buyers Want from Salespeople Today

This brings us to today. The current era of sales is defined by customers seeking salespeople who have a deep understanding of their 

• business, 
• challenges, 
• industries, and 
• desired business results. 

Today, world-class salespeople must focus on accelerating customers’ desired business results. This requires salespeople to apply enough business acumen to define what value means to each customer. Customers want the personalized touch and customized value proposition – and they’re willing to pay a premium for it.

Furthermore, buying cycles have changed, too. Historically, buying cycles were represented as forward-moving linear paths. Today, however, decisions often stall and go backwards. Because of competing stakeholder values in the buyer’s paradox, a change in corporate priorities, a new stakeholder, or new information – or even the decision just getting too complex – can make the buying cycle come to a halt. Or the stakeholders can return to an earlier stage and start over. 

Sales Teams Need Value Propositions Customized to Buyer Needs

So, what’s the solution? If you want your salespeople to accelerate buying, and therefore accelerate selling, you need a sales methodology that helps salespeople create buyer-specific value propositions. This requires more involvement with more stakeholders – but doing so will produce impressive results. 

At BTS, we have a sales methodology that will help you create the buyer-specific value propositions you need, and accelerate your sales. To learn more, visit our Website. I’ll leave you with one final question. Is your current sales methodology truly reflective of the world you sell into? Or, have times changed?

How to Become a Sense Maker to Your Prospects and Buyers

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

 

If you’re in sales and you feel like it’s getting harder to win deals, it’s not just you. The world of buying and selling has gotten much more complex. That’s why we’re focused on empowering salespeople to help prospects and customers make sense of a complex world. Our offerings help sales teams do that in three ways. 

Three Ways to Become a Sense Maker for Customers

1. Increase trust and lower skepticism. Recent Gartner research shows that customer skepticism of brands is high, despite the proliferation of high-quality and readily-available information about offerings and purchase options. Their recommendation is to help prospects make sense of their options.  A good integrated CX platform that aligns every customer interaction gives  salespeople insight into what information customers already have. If customers have raised questions, the platform will let salespeople know; which opens up opportunities for salespeople to reach out not just with another white paper or case study, but to answer the customer’s specific question.
    
2. Get insight into your customer’s emotions and sentiments. Again, the salesperson who sends the most information is not necessarily going to walk away with the deal. Buyers won’t make time to have conversations with salespeople who waste their time or can’t bring an additional level of value to the conversation. That’s why it can be so helpful to use a CRM solution with embedded AI technology that not only provides sales reps with data about the sale at hand, but also analyzes language in the email to detect the emotional tone and overall mood of the customer. With this insight, reps can prioritize customers who need help identifying value, and plan an appropriate response based on their sentiment.
   
   
3. Create fluid internal conversations. Nothing annoys buys prospects more than getting the same message from multiple people on your team. The less in sync you are with your team, the more disorganized you look to your customer. Avoid sending duplicate messages and annoying customers by unifying your customer-facing teams with a single technology stack. Conversations will be  fluid across reps and departments, so customers never receive duplicates of the same ebook or testimonial.

Sales Success Today is about Making Human Connections 

When customers are struggling to make sense of information and reconcile inconsistencies, effective sellers can use this moment to stand out by making a human connection. 

Instead of overwhelming the customer with additional content or data to dispute a competitor's claims, guide them through the evaluation process, fight the urge to tell them what to think, and patiently work to find answers that guide them to a purchasing decision they won't later regret.  

Sense-making sellers will be the salespeople of the future. As AI continues to advance and handle more mundane daily tasks, reps can focus their attention on developing and utilizing these types of skills to connect with customers with empathy and authenticity. 

Along with empathy, being a Sense Maker requires active listening and creative problem-solving. The good news for sales reps is that these are the skills they use every day, and soon will help them get to the end of the tunnel faster with happier customers on the other side. 

Your customers deserve a better experience, and with Zoho CRM Plus, you can give it to them. Sign up for a free trial today and learn how a unified technology stack can accelerate upmarket growth.