Sales Training Drivers

Sales Enablement

How do You Enable the Sales Team?

Millions of Internet pages are dedicated to the subject of sales coaching and sales training. Have you conducted an Internet search for it lately?

With all that content available, it’s amazing that sales team have any trouble hitting their performance goals.  Have you ever thought about it from a salesperson’s shoes? Think about it: there are many different resources available for salespeople in how to close, how to manage time, how to ask questions, how to manage a territory, and how to stay motivated.

Yet, despite all this, the next evolution in selling is upon us, and it requires all salespeople to conduct a thorough review of where they are, what they stand for, and what they are trying to achieve. If salespeople aren’t actively embracing this evolution, they will be passed by.   This is a harsh reality that sales training sometimes doesn’t address, luckily there is an answer  – sales coaching.

Have you had the opportunity to work with people who are now just just coming into the profession?  Have you stopped to look at what the “new” sales reps are seeking and asking questions about?  If you listen to what they are asking, you might be surprised.  New hire salespeople often seek to understand “WHAT” selling actually entails, before they want to learn “HOW” to apply selling techniques.   They seek first the “WHAT” and then the “HOW”.

New hire salespeople want to know:

• what are my expectations?
• what are the goals?
• what does success look like?
• what is in it for me?
• what do I need to do?

This is big difference that is often overlooked.  Most sales training focuses on “HOW” to sell.  This change has been born from each salesperson’s ability to fully customize their own selling system to the needs of the clients and their territory. Seasoned sales pros of today have a deep command of the basics, and they’ve come up with something that is uniquely their own over time.  They did it by seeking “WHAT” and then “HOW.”

Sales coaching can help you fully customized an approach that maximizes strengths and minimizes weaknesses — it just took 10–15 years (or longer) to do for many people.

In the next evolution of selling, each of salesperson must have a foundation of sales competency and an understanding of the framework of selling is, before they learn a single technique.

So where does, my advice for any new person coming into sales would be to first strive and understand the universally applicable knowledge, skills, and abilities you must have to be successful. When you read as many books as you can, attend as many seminars as you can, and ask as many questions as you can, then do it some more. You must work hard to to understand the common “sales language” that other salespeople have. You must be able to engage in a professional discussion with another salesperson who might even be your competitor because of this common language. One way to think of it — work hard to learn and discuss what it means to be a professional. Just like doctors who all understand the contents of “Gray’s Anatomy Book.”

The harder you work at the beginning of your career, the better we all are. Other people outside the profession will soon begin to see selling for what it is – a major catalyst in the global economy. Until that time, be proud of selling. Do not be afraid of who you are. Take comfort in the fact that there are over 30 million of you across the globe.

I also challenge each person to look at his or herself and engage in a dialog with their customers around what a great sales professional is in their mind.

Are you contributing to the sales profession? If you are not contributing to the profession, you are not being professional. You have to take ownership and you have to take responsibility for yourself and your success. With this becoming outwardly visible, believe me, your sales will increase, the trust of your customers will increase, and your impact to others will increase.

Finally, I would submit that many salespeople have become their own worst enemy. Work hard to not let this happen to you!

It’s just to easy to be complacent, apathetic, and unaware of what your professional calling entails. So do not let yourself become one of the masses.

Winston Churchill said :

“Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Your enemy is your own ignorance about your profession.

To overcome this ignorance attend sales training (not product training). Read sales books. Get a higher level business degree. Never stop learning. Be a student of selling – and you’ll reap the rewards.

How Can You Improve Sales?

The top 5 Issues Facing VPs of Sales

Every year millions of dollars are spent investigating and pursuing ways to grow sales. Any business owner knows that sales are the life blood of the company. If there are no sales there is no company, it is that simple!

A past study of 2,663 sales organizations by Think Training, Nightingale Conant, and Trainique uncovered five areas that shed light on what separates the best from the rest.

Issue one – A poorly defined sales process. 82% of all CEO’s said their sales organization had a process that was poorly defined or a process that wasn’t being followed. A sales process is like a road map. If you pay attention it helps you determine if you are in heading in the right or wrong direction. A well defined sales process does the same thing. It should be consultative in nature, have defined steps that allow both parties to develop a better understanding of each other and a set of questions that help you qualify or disqualify.

Issue two – Lack of essential skills. 42% of CEO’s said their salespeople lacked the essential basic skills needed to do their job properly-ouch. During the 70’s and 80’s it was common for large corporations to hire new sales recruits and put them through a 12- 18 month intensive sales development program. Those days are gone, leaving a huge skills gap! Odds are if you are younger then 40 you never received the type of training you really needed.

Issue three – Failing to focus on the right kinds of activity. 90% of CEO’s said their salespeople focused on low payoff activities or called on the wrong people. It is a common mistake to confuse being busy with being productive. Top performers know what they are doing, why they are doing it and whom they are doing it with.

Issue four – Allowing “self talk” to sabotage your efforts. 86% of CEO’s said their salespeople had negative thinking or self talk that was damaging their sales efforts. There are hundreds of examples but the most obvious has to do with discounts. Over and over again I hear salespeople say they have to be the lowest price to win the business. Every study I have ever read says that there are 4 – 6 other issues ahead of price but we have been “programmed” to think price is the issue. It is critical to understand how you have been programmed and how some of thoughts are working against you!

Issue five – Sales management not developing their people enough. 67% of CEO’s said that their sales managers were not spending enough time coaching and developing their salespeople. The job of a sales manager is to coach their people just like in professional sports! Unfortunately if we don’t have a sales process, salespeople with undeveloped skills or the wrong people coaching becomes impossible.

For salespeople taking responsibility for our own professional development is the key! Have a process, hone your skills, focus on the right kinds of activity, be aware of your thoughts, get some coaching, join a sales mastermind group, or join an association dedicated to your success.

Good sales professionals realize their strengths and weaknesses and create a plan that addresses their abilities. Great sales professionals repeat this process over and over.

Sales Quota Anyone?

The Myths of Salesperson Competency

If you stop any sales person on the street and ask them if they are good at what they do, chances are, they will all say “yes!” But ask their manager, marketing department, customer service area, human resources department (or any other function of the firm), and chances are the answer is “no.” The difference in defining sales competence is a matter of perspective.

Compounding the problem are two myths regarding measures of competency in sales.

Myth#1: Quota performance does not equate to sales competency – A salesperson’s quota is usually determined by management. More often than not, the quota is set as a way to attain a goal of an increased share price or its just pulled out of the air as a “nice-to-have-number” that is bigger than last year. It’s a rare organization that can articulate how a quota was set. It’s even rarer to find an organization that sits down to do the sales math and determine the realistic quota and stretch quota for their salespeople. Without this understanding, how do you know if the quota is too high? How do you know if it is too low? You don’t! Therefore the salesperson that hits quota in an organization that doesn’t know how to set one is not proving his or her competence.

Myth#2: Activity level does not equate to sales competency – Many organizations set sales activity goals. They will ask their salespeople to accomplish X sales calls, X phone calls, and X proposals a day. These types of measurements, and constantly hitting them, do not mean the person can sell. Sure, there is a positive correlation between activity and selling, but if I play the lottery every single day I probably won’t win. If I play X lottery games, in X states, and with X amount of money, it doesn’t mean I’m driving towards a win. It simply means I’m increasing my chances. I’d rather have someone that knows exactly what they are doing and not playing the lottery with their sales territory.

So what exactly is sales competency? Competence is defined as someone’s knowledge, skill and internal motivation. Knowledge is the building block of competence. Effective sales professionals are continuously learning and they have developed a framework and process for accessing their knowledge. They have a solid knowledge foundation and they understand their strengths and weaknesses. Skill is determined by the knowledge a salesperson has gained plus their experience level. The most skilled sales professionals have stayed in one vertical market or industry for a longer period of time. They have also stayed in the same sales role for a longer length of time (such as outside sales). They have also followed a defined career path with increasing levels of responsibility and complexity of sale. Internal motivation is someone’s self talk, drive, and purpose. Their passion for the product, zeal for the organization where they work, and their positive attitude form the cornerstone for the ability to overcome objections, handle rejection, or deal with poorly set sales quotas.

A competent sales person has the ability to move into any organization and gain the trust of the decision-makers. They work to create a situation where buying can occur within an ethical environment at a fair price. They have the knowledge to speak to a CEO, the front-line manager, or the newest employee about what issues and challenges they face. Most of all they strive to increase their knowledge, skill, and motivation so they can be the best at what they do.

Help Your Sales Team Succeed

Help Your Sales Team Understand the Buyer

Businesses seeking to increase revenue growth should shift specific focus to the buying environment within each potential customer. Great sales professionals recognize there are a distinct set of phases that a buyer engages to buy with the end result of this buying cycle being the purchase of the product or service, or not.

Unfortunately for all buyers, each selling organization and their individual sales professionals are unique and often require immense amounts of energy to build a relationship with. This keeps buyers guessing, which in turn keeps the sales organization guessing. It’s a constant game being played out across offices across the country.

To help both sides, it may be prudent to go back to root cause of these ambiguity. The only common denominator across all sales organizations and all buying organizations is the dollar sign. Surprise! Buyers and sellers are concerned about the same thing! The buying organization wants more revenue through decreased revenue; the selling organization wants more revenue through sales. The bottom line– we all want more revenue.

The item that keeps most C-level executives up at night is how to engage in the global marketplace to increase revenue or reduce costs-that’s it. All decisions being made today, whether it’s compliance to new laws, expansion into new markets, or whether to lay anyone off, can be traced back to these two sides of the dollar sign. The key for many companies is to focus on aligning marketing, sales, and customer service functions to that common dollar sign–but this is easier said than done. What many companies fail to do is to align these systems to the buying organization and their actual buying processes instead of forcing their process onto the buying organization.

This approach can be summarized as:

(1) Know your customer,

(2) Know your product,

(3) Be ready for the customer to buy, and

(4) Stay engaged with the customer after the sale.

Many organizations train their sales professionals, marketing departments, and customer service representatives on their product, but stop there. As a result, they have spent millions of dollars on training with little results. The problem with this approach is quite simple; they have not first asked “what is the process the buying organization uses in relation to these four phases?”

Believe it or not, the occupation that must understand this question absolutely and definitively is the sales profession. This is because the sales profession has the responsibility for converting market demand into revenue for the selling organization by understanding the desire to increase revenue in the selling organization. Sales professionals fill a critical position in any company by spanning boundaries from one organization to the other. The sales organization (sale professionals, and all supporting infrastructure) must build relationships, understand the customer, and articulate how bring value to the lives of their buyers. This in turn helps the subsequent customer. Sound confusing? Try doing it with a CFO of a telecom firm in the morning, a VP of Marketing in an IT software firm at lunch, and a CEO of a fortune 1000 at night!

The question is not “how do project our sales process onto the buyer?” The real question is “how do we facilitate the customer experience?”

As an example, how would your organization sell to the federal government? Would it be easy to do so if your organization had never done it before? The reason why it is difficult to sell to the federal government lies in difficulty of understanding how the federal government procures their goods and services. By understanding how the government buys obviously helps companies understand how to sell. This needs to happen in every industry, with every buying customer. Unfortunately, this crucial understanding is often overlooked, at the expense of driving lop-line growth.

Improve Sales

What are the needs of the sales team?

Sales development needs must begin with an understanding of the intricacies of the buyer and seller relationship. Simply put, you must help sales team members leverage a standard sales process. This requires that youknow as much, if not more, about the sales process as the sales team members who employ it. While many sales team members have been trained on a standard process, or have figured it out on their own, you are in a unique position to prioritize, organize, and implement the appropriate sales training activity to improve its execution — as long as you know what you’re doing.

The steps below are recurring cycle. Leveraging this analysis tool, you can improve efficiency and manage sales team development processes more effectively, within a strategic context.

This tool offers a structured way for you to identify, prioritize, and implement sales training solutions. Because the approach is a system’s approach, it can help sales teams align to the buying organization, focus on ratcheting up performance, and address immediate problems while keeping an eye on the longer term. Sales managers and sales trainers will approach each sales training action with information about their organization, the buying organization, and the relationship between them.

The model’s five phases are:

1. identify: determine desired outcome(s) required to achieve the overall sales strategy
2. examine: determine gaps in achieving the desired outcomes
3. enable: develop specific recommendations and solutions for success
4. execute: create a comprehensive plan and get buy-in from stakeholders
5. evaluate: collect feedback and measure against the expected outcomes.

As organizations begin to think of sales development needs within a phased, cyclical process, they are better equipped to adopt an overall holistic approach to sales force recruiting, retention, and engagement that includes talent management and leadership development—building a path towards improved sales team performance.

Following this approach can help your organization understand the alignment of areas of sales force expertise in relation to long-term sales goals. By determining the key questions outlined under each step of the sales development analysis tool, you can begin to see how each phase builds upon the one before, and how specific skills and knowledge are developed. It will help you set the stage within your organization to effect the paradigm shift from “sales training” to “sales development and performance,” and will guide your efforts to make the business case for this shift as well as tie it to desired business outcomes. By adopting this approach, you can ensure that your sales organization is knowledgeable, engaged, and equipped to work with even the most demanding buyers to ensure your company’s future growth and profitability.

Perhaps more importantly, this model serves as a continuous improvement framework. When you have accomplished step 5, it’s time to begin anew at step 1.