Sales Management Secret to Coaching Reps Like a Hero
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on March 6, 2017
I have been trained many times in the strategies and skills of negotiation – even taking a full course in negotiation during graduate school. Consequently, I’m a decent negotiator. However, there is one thing about negotiating that has always flummoxed me, and it’s something that was never mentioned during any of my training (that I can recall, at least). That is, how to know when you’re actually in a negotiation.
Signs that You’re in a Negotiation
There are plenty of venues where you know you are in a negotiation. Two lawyers sitting across the table from one another ready to make a deal…negotiating. A buyer and sales manager in a car dealership haggling over price…negotiating. A woman and her fiancé in a showroom selecting a china pattern…negotiating. In any of these situations, you know a negotiation is taking place. In fact, both parties know it, and it sets the tone of the discussion. Everybody knows they are there to do business, and some form of haggling is going to take place.
But there are other situations where it’s not so obvious. For instance, when the person across the counter in a jewelry store is telling me the price of a watch. Do they have the authority to negotiate? Maybe, maybe not. And if not, I look like a jerk if I pull out my hardball negotiating techniques. We’d have one person in an aggressive negotiating stance, and another standing flat-footed and confused.
Or what about when the firewood guy comes around every year to sell me a truckload of wood? Is the price he’s giving me really non-negotiable? If so, I come across as a jerk trying to pressure him into taking less hard-earned cash back to the family’s table. We’d have one person trying to save $20, and the other irritated and insulted.
How to Execute a Good Coaching Conversation
I think that is the way coaching is, too. Unless both parties know they are in a coaching conversation, sales coaching doesn’t seem to work. From the manager’s perspective, it takes a very specific mindset to execute a good coaching conversation. You have to come to the meeting prepared to coach and be in a collaborative mood. You have to keep the meeting structured so distractions don’t take you off task. You might need to bring information or data with you that will facilitate an objective conversation. In short, a sales manager has to know he’s going into a coaching conversation and be prepared to create an environment to do so.
From the seller’s perspective, you need to come to the meeting with a mindset to be coached. You need to expect to be challenged and know it’s not a personal attack. You need to bring high-priority opportunities you’d like to discuss with your manager. You need to expect to delve deeply into a few opportunities or sales calls rather than rattle through a list with dozens of deals and issues. In short, a seller also needs to know she’s going into a coaching conversation and be prepared to do so.
The Difference between Sales Coaching and Just Talking
Yet this is not how most “coaching” conversations take place. Frequently, if we ask sales managers, “How often do you coach your sales reps?” the response we receive is, “I talk to my reps all the time.” Well, of course you do. You talk to them when they call unexpectedly about some issue, and you talk to them when you call them about something that just came to your attention. They call you to tell you they just won a deal, and you call them to clarify something from an email they sent. However, none of these is an acceptable venue for sales coaching. They are venues for exchanging information.
The ad hoc or unplanned interactions sales managers have with their sales reps are not coaching sessions, because most interactions between a manager and a rep are not scheduled in advance. They are triggered by some event or a realization that information needs to change hands. Right then. Unless that incoming call was scheduled in advance and both parties entered into it knowing it was a coaching conversation, it is not a coaching conversation. It’s just, well…a conversation.
So, just as I need to know I’m going into a hotly contested negotiation, I need to know I’m going into a value-added coaching session. Whether I’m the coach or the coached, I need to be prepared for the content, tone, and structure of the interaction. Otherwise, I’m just having a conversation.
Set the Stage for Sales Coaching Success
This is one of the biggest hurdles we see between the current state and the ideal state of coaching. Managers can’t, don’t, or won’t set aside time on the calendar for regularly scheduled coaching sessions. Coaching is the most important thing that doesn’t have to happen by Friday afternoon – unlike forecasts, pipeline reviews, and the other fires that flare up during the week. There just never seems to be enough time, and coaching is the one nice-to-have that sellers rarely get to have.
So, if you want to be a better coach, set the stage for success. Schedule coaching sessions and call them that. Set clear expectations for what’s going to take place, and then make it happen. If you create the venue for high-quality coaching, you can provide high-quality coaching. If you don’t, you’re destined to have a lot of, well…conversations.
This Article was originally posted to the Selling Power Blog by Jason Jordan on May 11, 2016.
Bring Structure to Your Sales Coaching Calls
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on February 27, 2017
Despite their best intentions, time pressed sales leaders are pulled in so many directions that talent development gets put on the back burner. Bringing structure to dedicated coaching interactions is a proven way to build positive outcomes in people and results. Without structure and planning, sales leaders often mail it in, missing real opportunities to move their people to the next level of success. Avoid this common pitfall by structuring sales coaching calls and each interaction around a guiding plan to bring consistency to the conversation, and ultimately results.
My approach is to organize coaching content into “buckets” that are consistent for everyone. When thinking through what I want to accomplish with a salesperson I am coaching, I typically build my planned dialogues in 3 buckets:
- Navigating within the sales organization: This encompasses mastery of the sales organization, from products and services to the resources available to support the sales effort. How agile are they inside our organization? Can they build customer teams on behalf of their client? Do they build internal relationships? Do they lead and quarterback sales pursuits with appropriate resources? How well do they understand our products and the value they bring? Can they translate that value to the customer’s situation?
- Customer and selling skills: This involves the critical behaviors I am looking for when observing or participating in client interactions with my people. How well do they establish rapport, set agendas, transition to business, ask good questions, listen, confirm needs, positon solutions, follow up and confirm next steps?
- Knowledge of the prospect or customer: This is my favorite – talking with my salespeople about their prospect or customers. Exploring the customer’s landscape and asking simple but powerful questions: Why this, Why Now? What’s prompting them to talk to us? What is occurring in their sector or industry that’s causing the pain? What will success look like for them? How will we know? Who wins in their organization? Who owns the pain?
The above are the consistent givens in my approach. I like to use the phrase “vary the treatment” when thinking about my people. In other words, I have common goals for everyone but the path for how I get them there has its own DNA and blueprint. The above buckets remain the same but the dialogues are different and special to each person. That takes planning and structure but the time invested yields dividends that build over time.
When thinking about the long development journey with sales people, I have come to one exciting realization: It’s a great time to be a sales coach. Technology today has enabled us to move the needle even further. Here at Richardson we are utilizing exciting mobile technologies that provide an ability to capture real sales behaviors with our people over the long haul. Using tablets with a user friendly platform, I am able to capture my observations of client interactions that lead me to richer coaching dialogues with my people. The result is a salesperson reaching for new levels of success with my encouragement and long term support, and their buy in and commitment to change.
Cadence and consistency are essential. One rich coaching dialogue will not get the job done. Make real commitments to coach over the long haul, setting up a cadence of coaching dialogues that set expectations, establish trust and build mutual goals. The complexities of the organization will constantly test the best sales leaders when it comes to delivering coaching. Don’t let your people down. Often I have met salespeople who haven’t had a conversation with their direct leader for the better part of a month. Setting and honoring a protected time for quality dialogues must be the hallmark of the coaching relationship. Don’t discount the time together. Salespeople walk away stronger when working with a caring and dedicated coach.
It’s all about them. The best sales leaders are in it for the pure joy of seeing others achieve success. Honor their time, and yours, by structuring the dialogue and setting the right expectations. Your people and organization will thank you for it.
This article was originally posted to the Richardson Sales Blog by James Barnett on April 26, 2016.
Five Tips to Increase Engagement on B2B Social Media Sites
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 21, 2017
Even if your B2B company has been posting to social media sites for some time, it is always a good idea to review your activities to make sure you are getting maximum engagement from your followers. Below are five considerations that can help everyone from the beginner to the seasoned veteran.
- Post at the right time
Make sure you are posting to your social media profiles at a time when your customers and prospects frequent those sites. In most cases you might find that B2B buyers will show up on weekdays from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, thus making this an optimal time for posting messages. Still, every B2B company has its own target time frame, so make sure you pay attention to when your audience is posting in response to your messages and when traffic increases.
- Add calls to action
You can add calls to action to your individual social media posts to encourage prospects to learn more about what you have to offer. Your posts should give B2B buyers the opportunity to raise their hands and express interest in your products or services. The best way to do that is to make a compelling offer that will drive them to a landing page on your website. Usually they will need to exchange their contact information for the offer. These offers can be a mix of things that generate awareness at the top of the funnel and things that help drive consideration. Sometimes it can also entail telling a prospect why a particular offer is more appealing than something else. In other cases it might involve telling a B2B buyer why the product or service in your offer is so important. Anything that can be used as a call to action will be worthwhile for your marketing plans.
- Keep from being overly personal
While you might have lots of friends that follow your B2B company on your social media profiles, you should treat your page as a business-first spot. You need to avoid posting too much personal information. Focus on posts that are relevant to what your business is doing right now and what it has to offer your customers.
- Take risks
Sometimes you’ve got to take a few risks in order to go places. You might want to take some small risks that will cause your B2B company to look more appealing. Don’t be afraid to post funny videos that are relevant to your customers and prospects. This could be your chance to break out of the “boring B2B” mold. The odds are people will see the human side of your business.
- Get special guests
Consider adopting the idea of the celebrity takeover on your social media profiles. Identify influencers from your industry, or even subject matter experts from within your B2B company. Customers and prospects are more likely to engage with these industry stars during the takeover. There is really no limit to who you can tap for this purpose, and it can even become a regular feature of your social media profiles.
If you follow these reminders for how to post and interact on your social media channels, you will create more engagement with your B2B prospects and customers, especially if you can drive them to your landing pages or website.
This Article was originally posted to the Social Media B2B Blog by Sameer Bhatia on May 12, 2015.
How to Find Agreement When You Come from Opposite Sides
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on February 13, 2017
I’m very lucky to experience much less disagreement or outright conflict on the job than most people. Although my clients’ views may differ from mine in many ways, it’s implicit in our relationship that we’re mutually committed to figuring things out together and coming to the strongest possible joint solutions.
But some of the folks I work with have dozens of crucial disagreements every week as if they are explicitly job responsibilities! In fact, I often coach or counsel people who’ve been having the same long-running disagreement or underlying conflict for — I hate to say it — years.
I’ve observed and analyzed numerous disagreements as part of my consulting role, and have helped people work through many of them, and it’s quite clear that logic isn’t enough to ensure collaboration. Two equally logical people can hold such completely different beliefs or represent such different positions that it feels like they’ll never come to any kind of useful agreement.
Making the First Move
So how can you make a start when you truly need to accomplish something together but don’t see eye to eye? Sometimes it helps to work on the relationship itself, along with the issue.
There’s no way to force people to be comfortable as collaborators, and directing them to like each other is absolutely ineffective. But there is a useful technique that can open a pathway to dialog. It comes out of couples and relationship counseling, so it’s not usually identified as a workplace tool.
It won’t overcome structural barriers, lack of competence, or bad intent. But it has workplace application when both sides are operating in good faith, yet can’t seem to broach the wall that exists between them.
Creating a Connection
“Making a bid for connection” is how Dr. John Gottman, a psychologist renowned for analyzing the behaviors and expectations that make marriages and other intimate relationships successful, describes the process.
One of the parties initiates connection — tentatively — with a tiny action or communication to try to establish a small but affirmative interaction.
The other side may “turn away” by ignoring the bid, “turn against” in an attack, or deliver the desired outcome by “turning toward” and reciprocating with another genuine, positive communication or action. Whenever one person turns toward the other’s bid for connection, both people are on stronger footing without necessarily having expressed anything about the content of the conflict at all.
It’s usually best to start with the smallest bid and the lowest risk you can. Make the hurdle so low that it’s almost impossible not to at least accidentally clear it. “Can you believe the game last night?” is a very small bid; “Want to get a cup of coffee and discuss this?” is a larger one.
Raising the Ante
Once you’ve established tacit agreement that both sides are going to try to engage constructively, you can be more direct, and at the first airing of a potential disagreement, make a stronger bid by asking kindly, “May I share a different perspective?” That gives notice that you do, in fact, disagree, but that you’re willing to do it in the most respectful way possible, letting your opponent create the conditions for sharing. Doesn’t that sound less threatening and more agreeable than “I disagree!” or “That’s not the way it is!”?
If you’re getting a negative reaction to your input, you can make a slightly different bid: “Would you like to share a different perspective?” That makes clear your respect for the other party as a human being, as well as your desire to hear what they have to say.
It takes patience to take these very small steps. But the more frequent and the larger the bids, the more likely it is that, over time, the relationship will develop, permitting other techniques for conflict resolution to begin taking hold.
This article was originally posted to the Workplace Wisdom Blog by Liz Kislik on January 25, 2017.
Five Mistakes Every B2B Company is Making on Facebook
Posted by Rick Pranitis in Social Media on February 9, 2017
While LinkedIn is often the preferred platform for B2B social media, Facebook can be the difference in the success of your marketing, if done right.
When it comes to B2B marketing, it’s crucial to find how your goals overlap with the functionality of the platform being used. In the case of Facebook, there are a range of opportunities to flip the traditionally B2C platform in your favor.
Keep reading to find out how to get B2B marketing right on Facebook.
- Not using the Custom Audience feature
You already have a list of contacts built up in your database. Why not put those email addresses to good use and try to find more followers and potential buyers through Facebook? Many B2B businesses miss out on advertising opportunities because they haven’t narrowed down their audience successfully. The Custom Audience feature will help you do this.
The Custom Audiences feature lets you upload your database directly to Facebook. Using Facebook Ads Manager, you can create targeted ads and then send them to your email contacts. Facebook will then match your emailing list against the user accounts currently open. Because so many people use their personal email addresses for social media accounts and shopping accounts, there’s a good chance that your contacts use the same address for Facebook.
You can also reach out to new customers by creating a similar audience to your already existing Custom Audience. This is a great way to find new customers who are demographically similar to your current customers. Remember, not everyone wants to be your customer, so do your best to avoid marketing to those who have no interest in your company.
- Letting posts get too sales-y
Getting people to like your page is one thing; getting them to stick around and interact with your posts is another. Some B2B marketers believe that posting on Facebook isn’t as important or necessary so long as you have those fans, but in reality, your posts say a lot about you as a company.
Your posts need to be engaging while providing industry-related information to your customers. This is how you show them that your company isn’t just about selling products and services. You care about your customers and you care about educating them. By showing them that you know your industry and will provide them with up-to-date information, you’re illustrating your company’s professionalism as well as its superior customer relations.
That’s not to say that you can never post any self-promotional material on Facebook, but remember the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of your content should be useful blogs, articles, infographics, videos and other useful pages from third parties. The remaining 20 percent can be about your own promotions.
Remember this rule when your posting, and your customers will be more likely to interact with your posts. They’ll also appreciate not being bombarded with sales pitches.
- Forgetting to tag or mention people
When you post from your own Facebook account, do you tag people in your posts or mention places that you’ve recently visited? If so, then why aren’t you doing this with your B2B Facebook posts?
Social media is all about creating dialogues and connecting with customers. Tagging well-known industry experts brings them into the conversation and offers readers new perspectives. Tagging your own followers is a great way to interact with customers and make them feel appreciated by your brand. Doing so gives readers more of an incentive to comment on your posts if they think you might answer them back.
Facebook’s tag and mention options allow you to pull people into your conversation and make them feel included. This is a great way to involve your customers and get them talking with you.
For example, a higher education institution might tag a student who was recently nominated for an award in his or her field and offer a hearty congratulation. This gets followers talking and shares the good news with other who might not be aware.
- Focusing on selling rather than generating leads
One of the biggest misconceptions about Facebook marketing is that it’s all about selling, selling, selling. If you’re not generating sales from your Facebook marketing endeavors, then you’re doing something wrong.
The truth is Facebook just isn’t a good marketplace for selling your products and services. Facebook and other social media platforms are about building solid customer relationships and improving your brand. People come to Facebook to talk, not to shop, so if you’re focusing on getting people to buy your products on Facebook, then you may be wasting your time.
Facebook can be one of the most useful tools for generating great leads and nurturing them. By capturing email addresses, you build your database and expand your reach to new customers. Once you have them, you can begin marketing directly to them through Facebook.
As your leads become more invested, you can pass them on to your sales team and turn them from a lead to a valuable customer.
- Ignoring metrics data
Recently, Facebook updated its Ads Manager, giving it a whole new look that was a little overwhelming for some. The main page now gives you a plethora of data telling you how successful your ads are. If you’re ignoring this data, then your campaigns probably won’t improve, and you won’t know what works and what doesn’t.
To help you better manage your budget, Facebook now lists your total spent over the course of the week at the top of the Ads Manager page. Now you can keep better tallies on your expenses and make sure you don’t go over your budget.
There are a number of ways to break down your campaigns, ad sets and ads so you can better see their successes and weak points. Don’t be afraid to click around and pull up new reports. It may be hard to track your ROI through Facebook marketing, but looking at your metrics is a good place to start.
This article was originally posted to the SocialMedia B2B Blog by Michael Bird on December 1, 2015
How Sales Teams Should Approach Price Negotiations
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on January 31, 2017
Sales staff face many challenges en route to closing a deal, but one of the most difficult can be handling those tricky price negotiations. In many cases, a buyer will look to try and squeeze a discount out of a sales rep, forcing a negotiation to take place. So how should a sales team approach this?
Negotiate From the Beginning
Too many sales reps think of negotiation as something that takes place at the end of a sales process, after all of the other work has been done. In reality, your sales team needs to be negotiating throughout the process. However, early negotiation should be framed in terms of trying to find a mutually beneficial solution.
A common tactic from buyers is something known as ‘anchoring’, where they attempt to establish their own maximum price early. When this is attempted, sales reps should enquire as to how they arrived at that figure, and try to learn about the buyer’s needs. Ideally, sales staff should also be the first to state a figure.
Sell Value Rather Than Price
One of the best ways to improve negotiating is to sell value rather than price, and this should be emphasized in sales management training and become a part of the sales culture. Your product may be more expensive than a competitor’s because it is better. Selling value means staff can approach negotiations from a position of strength.
“The reality is, there are solutions customers will pay a premium for,” MHI Global writes in their document, The Problem With Price Discussions. “Ultimately, customers decide to buy from you because they believe you brought to the table something that has value to them that they can’t get elsewhere.”
Know When to Walk Away
Finally, a sales team should know that there will be times when a mutually beneficial solution cannot be reached. This is unfortunate, but staff should have a clearly defined breaking point and should not be afraid to walk away from sales opportunities that have no real potential.
Where possible, sales training should try to teach staff to recognize early warning signs that a negotiation will fail, so that as little time is wasted as possible. However, this can be difficult. The most important thing is to remember that other sales opportunities will exist if this one isn’t right for either party.
This Article was originally posted to the EyeOnSales Blog on December 2, 2016
Four Tips to Help You Connect With Those Hard-to-Reach Prospects
Posted by Rick Pranitis in MARKETING on January 25, 2017
Sometimes you just can’t seem to connect with that prospect you’ve been trying to reach. You call, you email, you try social media and it’s not working. Here are four quick tips that may give you hope.
Let me tell you a quick story. One of the sales people I was coaching last year was trying to get into a major retailer and called 42 times. I know the exact number because it became a game with him after the 5th or 6th try.
He had a place in his notebook where he put a check mark each time he called. He didn’t give up at 10 calls, kept going at 20 and finally on the 42nd call he reached the person that was in a position to review his product. The good news was the company not only showed interested in his product they became a customer. His persistence landed him a very large new account.
Here are three other proven methods for connecting
If you have a product that is typically reviewed by purchasing and you are having no luck talking to anyone in that department, then skip the buyer and go directly to someone in product management, operations or marketing. If they like the idea they can make the introduction to the buyer. “Fred you need to connect with Nick and take a serious look at this new product“.
If the person you are trying to reach has a company fax number listed on their website or product literature send them a fax. I have a client that uses faxes for lead generation regularly. Since no one is doing it anymore and most companies still have fax lines and fax machines it’s proven to be a great outbound lead generator for them. They are amazed at how well it’s working.
This is one on my favorites and I used it a lot when I was first starting out. I would send the person a Tim Horton’s gift certificate (it’s a Canadian thing) or other type of gift card in the mail.
The note with the gift card reads:
Hi Nick: It’s very difficult to schedule the time to have a coffee and talk about how _________ may be of value to (your company name) So instead of trying to set up a coffee meeting I’d like to buy you a coffee and give you a call (date, time) and speak to you for 5 minutes. Alternatively if you have a crazy busy phone schedule you can email me at _____________ and I will send you the information directly for your review”.
The coffee gift card is a very inexpensive sales tool and I landed some of my biggest accounts with this simple ice breaker.
Just remember that finding new customers can be one of the most difficult parts of building your business. Use a system, set aside time each day for prospecting and be persistent.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Compass Blog by Robert J. Weese on January 26, 2017.
Set Your Solution Apart From the Competition
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on July 1, 2016
There’s always a competitor in the sales process. Even if there’s not another vendor that’s being considered, “do nothing” or “do it internally” can be your biggest competition.
Without the ability to clearly differentiate your solution, and understand its value, a buyer’s decision is arbitrary and often price-driven.
Focus on Meaningful Value
When you differentiate on value, you can avoid the dreaded discounting that happens at the end of sales cycles. If you constantly have to lower your price to close a deal, you will lose margin and find yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel to meet your quota.
It’s important that the value has meaning to the individual buyer. You can tell me your marketing solution provides the ability for me to have 100,000 contacts in the system. If I only need 45K contacts, that feature means nothing to me. Buyers need to see the core benefits that your solution provides, in terms of what’s important to their business needs. You can rattle off features and functions that make your solution different, but if those qualities aren’t vital to the buyer’s business, your product will seem too expensive or not an adequate solution.
Remember, there is as much differentiation in how you sell as there is in what you sell.
Offer Tangible Examples
Buyers want to know that you can do what you say you can do. They want evidence of past success. When you have proof to back up your differentiation, it’s much easier for the buyer to defend the spend.
“I know we can do that at your company, because at Company X, we implemented this solution and cut their time-to-market by 50%, saving them $500,000.”
Proof of performance helps alleviate buyer skepticism. Telling buyers you can cut their processing costs by 25% is one thing. Hearing that same metric from three of your customers is much more impactful — and helps buyers believe your differentiation.
It’s Not About You
Even when you are trying hard to focus on the customer in your conversations, it can be difficult to not share the bells and whistles about your company. Potential customers really don’t care about your financial stability or company culture when they’re trying to solve a problem. They want to know how your solutions can help them achieve their business objectives. The best way to set your solution apart from the competition is to speak in the buyer’s language. How long you’ve been in business or who you have worked with may help a buyer feel comfortable signing the check, but it’s not going to seal the deal when it comes to competitive differentiation.
This article was originally posted to the Business 2 Community blog by Rachel Clapp Miller on June 5, 2016.
Sales Training – It Isn’t About “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It”
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on June 26, 2016
It is also not about the elapsed time since you last did it. The strategic “it” in this case is the decision about whether you should make an investment in sales training.
If you traveled back in time and drop in on some of the conversations about sales training, you might hear: “We are not knocking the ball out of the park but things are okay plus we have a lot of other things going on so let’s think about that sales training thing next year” or “We just did some training three or four years ago – trained our entire sales team.”
It’s also true if you tune in with your other ear, you might pick up on comments such as: “Say, we have Thursday afternoon free at the national sales meeting why don’t we just fill that slot with some sales training” or “I just got a call from a training company, why don’t we just try them out in our southern region – we’ll probably get something out of it.”
Fast forward to the present – can you hear those same voices? Our experience says absolutely. But the really bad news is due to the present day competitive environment and the disruption in the markets, the negative consequences of those ideas are far greater.
The notion that one can develop and sustain a superior sales team in today’s buying environment without taking a more aggressive and forward looking perspective on when to invest in sales training and what that sales training needs to accomplish is at the very least questionable. The sales training discussion needs to be updated and reframed.
So, asking if something is broken or asking when was the last time we did it are not the right questions. What is the right question for determining if a sales training investment is appropriate?
Ask yourself: Is there a change occurring either internally or externally that requires your sales team to adapt and adjust their sales skills to continue to sell effectively? Let’s explore three examples of such a change.
Go-to-market strategy. Recently we were talking with a client that determined it was necessary to shift from being a low-cost provider to a value-added provider if they were to remain competitive. To execute this shift a number of changes needed to be considered ranging from the sales compensation package to the territory design to market segments – and the skill set of the sales team.
Most sales reps cannot easily move from selling on price to selling on value without some substantial help. Hence considering an investment in sales training is clearly warranted.
New product. Companies launch a dazzling array of new products annually. They run the gamut from innovative new offerings to minor upgrades of existing products. Yet, regardless of whether it’s a simple upgrade or a “bet the company” new product, the product launch strategy too often looks more like an escape plan than a well-devised blueprint to develop market superiority. The greater the innovation of the new product, the greater the need for the sales team to update their sales skills.
It is a safe bet that many new product launches fail to deliver the expected results because the investment in improving the sales team’s ability to sell the new product is inadequate.
Disruptive market changes. Companies in a number of markets are going through transformational changes in what they buy, how they buy, and what they are willing to pay for it. The medical sales industry is a striking example. If you are selling in the hospital market, winning is now about selling both the clinical and economic value of your product and you cannot just sell to the doctors, you also have to sell to Value Analysis Committees comprised of people who will never directly use the product.
If buyers change how they buy, sellers need to change how they sell and training needs to help.
There is an added benefit of reframing the need for sales training as a response to a strategic change. It enables a company to not only determine when an investment is warranted, it also helps you to define exactly what the sales training ought to look like. Case in point, the nature and content of the most effective sales training for the above noted examples would be significantly different.
It is unlikely that sales training will ever develop a better track record unless we do a better job determining the strategic reason why we are doing the training in the first place. The need must be clearly defined and it must be a need that matters.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Training Connection Blog by Richard Ruff on June 1, 2016.
Trust Between Seller and Client Must Be Mutual
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on June 20, 2016
Would you like your clients to trust you? Presumably you would. And in order to trust you, they must feel that trusting you is a low-risk proposition. They must feel you are trustworthy. Most firms get that.
So, most firms go about trying to appear trustworthy. (The better ones, of course, actually try to be trustworthy, since trust is a hard thing to fake.) This often translates into things such as values statements, corporate social responsibility, efforts at transparency, and programs to enhance customer focus.
All of that is well and good, but those efforts are missing a critical element. Because if all you focus on is trustworthiness—cosmetic or real—then you are forcing your client to take all the risks. And if your client is the one always taking the risks, after a while your client will notice and say, “Wait a minute. I appreciate all of the Boy Scout virtues and so forth, but I notice you never take any risks. And that’s not fair. And so I don’t think I trust you.”
You can be trustworthy to the max, but if you never trust your client, then before too long, your client won’t trust you. And as goes their trust, so goes their business with you.
Trust Is Reciprocally Risky
“The fastest way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.” That statement is credited to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Henry Stimson, and he expressed a powerful concept: trust is a reciprocating exercise in risk-taking. First one party takes a risk, and the other reciprocates. Then the roles reverse, and the exercise is repeated.
Take the simplest of all trust gestures: the handshake. Smiling I extend my hand to you and say hello, signifying good intentions. You almost certainly return my handshake, smile, and greeting. But you don’t have to.
You could, after all, spurn my gesture, refuse to extend your hand, frown, and turn away from me. I would feel embarrassed, upset, and dismissed. And that would be the end of our budding trust relationship. You probably wouldn’t do that, though. Instead, you would meet my risk-taking gesture with trustworthiness, and our relationship would be off to the races.
Corporate Risk Mitigation
This is not an exercise in corporate anthropology. Think about the context in which you hear “risk” in modern-day business. It is almost always in a negative sense.
Risk is seen mainly as something to be mitigated. Post 2008, financial institutions have laid off layers of employees—except in risk management. The contracting process in nearly all companies has added layers of risk indemnification to its documentation. Lawyers are on hand to ensure not just compliance, but even the appearance of anything that could be considered risky. Insurance businesses are inventing new products to mitigate risk in contracts of all sorts. The last few decades have seen the creation of risk management institutes and certificates in risk management programs.
Despite the protestation that some risk is good (think “risk appetite” or “calculated risk” in the financial world), the emphasis is overwhelmingly on the “calculated” part, not the “risk” part. And once one gets outside of the financial world, it’s hard to find examples of thinking that suggest risk is good.
Execution Risk and Dereliction Risk
The management world is obsessed with avoiding execution risk—the risk of doing the wrong thing. Unfortunately, it makes a pact with the trust devil when it embraces dereliction risk—the risk of not doing the right thing.
We want lifeguards to eschew dereliction risk. If they think someone is drowning, we don’t want them second-guessing themselves. We want them in the water immediately. In basketball, Kobe Bryant is the NBA’s leader in most missed shots. He would rather shoot 4 for 20 than 2 for 5. Another athlete, hockey great Wayne Gretzky, says you’ll never miss a shot you never take—but neither will you make any shots. In all of those cases, they understand the importance of taking execution risks and avoiding dereliction risk.
Yet in business, we are afraid of a hundred execution risks. We fear having the wrong answer, giving offense, looking ignorant, looking foolish, or speaking out of turn. So, we do nothing. And because of our penchant for avoiding execution risk, we absorb dereliction risk, which guarantees failure in the long run.
Trustworthy but Untrusting Does Not Compute
You may be proud of your organization’s record on trustworthiness. But ask yourself these questions to see if you may have some work to do on trusting:
- Do you have onerous non-compete clauses for your employees?
- Do your sales pitches hedge their bets or lead with strong hypotheses?
- Do you make your subcontractors insure you against general liability with no limits?
- Do your salespeople refuse to answer direct questions about price?
- Do you ever admit you don’t know something when asked a straight question?
- Do you insist on client non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) beyond your industry’s norm?
- How many ex-employee lawsuits has your firm been involved in in the past five years?
- Are your tardy account collections handled by accounting or by account managers?
- Would you ever recommend a competitor to a client if the competitor were clearly the better candidate for the job?
- Do you use lie detector tests for employees?
- Do you encourage your salespeople to comment on their own and others’ feelings?
- Do you share your cost information with clients?
- Do you share your supply-chain information with suppliers or clients/customers?
- How many paragraphs of fine print are in your client agreements? And how fine is the print?
- Are your standard client agreements longer or shorter than your biggest competitor’s?
- How do you handle overruns by you with your clients? How do you handle overruns by your suppliers with you? Which is more onerous?
You can be as trustworthy as a Boy Scout, but if you force your clients to take all of the risks, then before too long, they won’t trust you.
This article was originally posted to the Trusted Advisor Blog by Charles H. Green on June 6, 2016.
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