Posts Tagged Sales Coaching
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 Sales Coaching Tips to Lead You to Success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on November 2, 2014
As a sales leader, it’s your responsibility to motivate your sales team and drive sales results. You need to build a talented team of sales professionals and provide ongoing sales coaching and training. You should continue to develop your team’s talent. Many sales leaders and managers insist they don’t have the time for sales coaching, they’re not sure how or what to coach, or they don’t have the right tools and resources for effective sales coaching. These excuses are the reasons your sales team isn’t getting the results you want. Stop making excuses and make sales coaching a priority. Here’s a list of five sales coaching tips to lead you and your sales team to success.
- Develop Talent: So you’ve managed to round up a great group of experienced and talented sales professionals. You need to continue to train your salespeople. Provide them with the sales coaching they need to succeed. Sales coaching isn’t just for new hires. Check in with your team regularly, identify sales training needs, assess sales processes, and introduce new sales tactics. Remember to adapt your training techniques and sales coaching methods to meet your trainees’ needs.
- Set Specific Goals: As a sales leader, you should develop and set specific goals for individual team members that align with company goals. By setting specific goals, you’ll be able to track progress more effectively. Your sales team will have a clear understanding of your expectations and they’ll be motivated to meet and exceed these expectations. If goals are not met, do not consider this a failure. This is a sales coaching opportunity. Review sales practices and make improvements.
- Use Social Media: Take advantage of social media. Get your salespeople online. Encourage your team to use social media for professional purposes. Work closely with your marketing department to ensure valuable content is being created for sales reps to share on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to generate sales leads. Salespeople should use social media to interact with customers and potential buyers. Provide social media training if necessary. Your prospects and your competition are using social media, so why aren’t you?
- Focus on Progress: Many sales leaders focus solely on results. You should take the time to sit down and review progress as well. Ask for progress reports, ask if your sales team needs assistance or advice, and make changes to the sales process if something is no longer working. By helping your sales reps along the way, they will be more likely to achieve hit their sales targets. They’ll also have more confidence knowing that their sales leader will be there to help if they encounter any obstacles.
- Give Effective Feedback: Great sales leaders give sales reps effective feedback. Encourage your sales team to meet their sales targets by recognizing and rewarding their successes. An incentive program can go a long way when it comes to motivating sales professionals. Salespeople want to be recognized for their hard work. You can use financial rewards and/or non-monetary rewards to show your appreciation. Some sales leaders think it’s a good time to slip in some criticism after congratulating someone. This is not the time. This only undermines the accomplishments, defeating the purpose entirely. Remember, feedback is meant to help. When you give effective feedback, you will develop more trusting relationships with your team members.
It’s up to you to keep your sales team motivated. Provide continuous training to develop their talent and help them meet sales targets. You can’t sit back and expect improvements. And you shouldn’t blame your sales reps for a dip in sales. Assess your current sales strategies and update your sales tactics. Develop talent, set specific goals, start social selling, focus on progress, and give effective feedback. Use these sales coaching tips to lead you and your sales team to success.
This article was originally posted to the SalesForce Search Blog by Doug O’Grady on October 21, 2014.
Three Critical Skills New Sales Hires Lack
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on January 3, 2014
The best sales managers know how to hire enthusiastic people who have the right attitude and want to take advantage of a great opportunity. But even the best new hires usually lack many key skills. Where does a sales manager start? Here are three critical skills you should focus on coaching with your new hires.
Qualification Skills
Do you remember when you were new on the job? Did you know how to recognize prospects that could turn into good clients and those that would just waste your time? Neither did I!
Too much valuable time is wasted on low potential accounts. New hires need to learn how to weed out under-qualified leads faster. Your role as the sales manager, especially with new hires, is to get involved early in the sales opportunity. Talk to your sales person about a prospect and ask specific questions such as “Is this organization a good fit for us and our products/services?” Then ask them to explain their answer. What are they seeing or not seeing which makes them think the company is a good or poor fit? If it is a good fit, ask them, “Where is this customer in their buying process?” and “What factors did you use to determine this?”
Developing Strategy/ Process
When new hires lack a defined sales process, they have no strategy for success. If ramping your new hires to success faster is a goal, your company may very well need a “sales playbook” which captures best practices used by your senior sales people. The playbook should document both the general sales process you want your people to use plus examples of what successful sales representatives do in a variety specific situations, such as selling different types of products/services to specific types of decision makers. Once you have the documentation, make it available to your new hires – preferably online, or somewhere they have easy access.
Having the playbook isn’t enough, however. To become proficient and confident in selling situations, new hires must practice the steps of the sales process, determining where a customer is in their buying process, and work on problem-solving skills and questioning techniques – while also appearing confident on knowledge about your company’s solutions. Of course it would be best they gain this practice through role-plays with you than when dealing with customer! If you have your company’s sales process “baked” into the playbook, you have a ready source for developing role-playing scenarios which you can run with new hires. And keep in mind “flexibility training” is essential in role-playing. Offer scenarios which are unexpected with questions out of left field etc.
Understanding Company Expectations
Success in sales is not just what one does, but how one completes each step. Being a successful salesperson takes a mix of consultative selling skills and attitudes, performing to high expectations, and meeting the needs of an employer – not just customers. Many salespeople, and especially new hires, lack a vision of what their company expects. As a sales coach, take time to develop a Success Profile that defines all these elements then share that list with your team. You can use this Success Profile as a coaching tool. Use it to launch discussions with each sales person about their professional development and attitude improvement goals. This profile might also suggest to new hires what criteria a company may use to look for in people they consider for promotion.
If you can help your new hires master these three areas; Qualification, Process, and Expectations, they will have a solid foundation for a great sales career.
This article was originally posted to the TopLine Leardership Blog on December 19, 2013.
Effective Sales Coaching – It’s All About Timing
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on October 18, 2013
The fundamental mistake which sales managers make, which is perhaps the worst culprit in terms of de-motivating a sales force, is managing only results instead of the behaviors and activities that lead to the results.
It came be seen as entirely rational for sales managers to focus on results because that’s how we are measured and, of course, compensated. Unfortunately, it’s not very effective at motivating salespeople.
Here’s why…
A sales “result” is what comes about as a consequence of the sales process or processes preceding. Sales managers who manage by results, by which I mean a sales manager who waits until a poor result is produced and then confronts the salesperson about the poor production, is like a “Monday morning quarterback.” They are criticizing what happened after it happened, and much too late to do any good.
To be an effective sales manager you must focus on the input side of the production equation, the sales behaviors and activities that contribute to the sales results.
Many sales managers haven’t clearly defined the behaviors and activities sales representatives need to be successful. Here’s a test for you. Suppose you were to email five of your salespeople and ask them to each reply to the following question: “Please describe to me the specific behaviors and activities you need to perform to achieve the sales results our company expects.”
How many different answers would you receive? If you’re like the managers who have actually tried this test, chances are quite a few. In too many sales organizations, there is a lack of clarity about and understanding of the behaviors needed for success. Your salespeople, then, are selling on instinct.
Now imagine you’re a salesperson. You’ve just had a bad month. Your boss confronts you about that bad month, but he or she doesn’t have a clue what caused the bad month. The manager just pushes the button that sales managers always push when they don’t know what caused poor production-: “You’re not making enough sales calls. Increase your activity level and you’ll sell more.”
If you were a salesperson, how would that make you feel? I suspect you’d probably be demoralized. You feel like you worked hard, and don’t really know what to do differently. You would appreciate a more constructive coaching discussion, but you’re not getting it. Your boss just tells you, “get out there and sell more.”
To be a great sales coach you need to define the behaviors and activities your sales force needs to know and do to achieve maximum sales success. Put those in a document titled “Standards for Excellence.” And communicate them clearly and repeatedly to your sales team. Have your salespeople practice new skills and approaches while you observe so you can give them specific tips. Give them the opportunity to ask questions and get feedback early in the sales cycles.
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This article was originally posted to the TopLine Leadership Blog by Kevin Davis on November 20, 2012
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Coaching – A Critical Element of Sales Performance and Retention
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on March 1, 2013
Most sales managers would agree that coaching their sales teams is key job function contributing to their success. However, when it comes to actually defining what the term “coaching” means, how best to do it, and what are its affects in the long term, each sales manager would probably have a different opinion.
What is coaching? Is training and coaching the same thing? How much time should a sales manager spend coaching? How much time do they actually spend? What type of sales rep benefits most from coaching? Do top performers need it? What are the best ways to coach? Does it affect sales staff turnover?
Leslye Schumacher of Talent Bits and Bytes recently addressed these issues in her blog post, “How Much Time Should Sales Managers Spend Coaching Their Salespeople?” You can read the entire article here. In my opinion, it’s a must read for anyone involved in managing sales people.
In this very well researched article, Schumacher quoted several studies that give much clearer answers to these important questions. Here are some of the highlights:
- To maximize sales results, the optimal amount of coaching is 5 hours per month per sales rep.
- Salespeople that are coached daily outperform other salespeople by 30%.
- What prevents sales managers from coaching is the time spent on administrative tasks, the time spent direct selling, and lack of training in proper management techniques.
- Only 7% of sales managers were found to be effective at coaching without training.
- Core salespeople receiving ineffective coaching averaged 83% of goal attainment. Their performance rose to 102% when they then received effective coaching.
- In regards to retention, top performers were 50% more likely to stay if they received good coaching
The conclusions are clear. These statistics prove what the top sales managers have been practicing for years; coaching works and you have to plan to make time to do it! Not just any coaching, mind you, it has to be effective. Take the time to learn how to “show how, not do for” properly, and you will be a better sales manager for it.
Remember as John Quincy Adams once said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
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This article was originally posted on A Sales Compass on February 13, 2012 by Susan A. Enns
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Ten Reasons Why Salespeople Fail
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on January 13, 2013
I have yet to meet a sales professional who doesn’t want to succeed, who doesn’t want to exceed quota and make more money. But the reality is salespeople still fail. Sometimes it’s a temporary slump, sometimes (unfortunately) it’s a career-long trend. In the work we’ve done with sales organizations, managers and individual reps, these are the 10 most common reasons why salespeople fail.
1. No experience
Honestly, this is a bit of a false crutch & excuse. If you have the right drive and make-up, you can succeed with zero previous sales experience. I’ve seen it happen countless times. Of course, a raw, inexperienced new sales professional can’t succeed without the proper support, training and management to help them accelerate through the learning curve.
2. No plan
If you come to work every morning waiting for the good leads, you’re going to fail. If you’re waiting for the phone to ring, reacting to what comes into your email inbox, that’s not exactly a recipe for success. And yet, many salespeople work without a plan – reactively and opportunistically going through the month or quarter without a strategy. Just because you have a plan, doesn’t mean you’ll always follow it. But if you don’t have a roadmap, how do you expect to get where you want to go?
3. No discipline
Sales can be incredibly difficult. Oftentimes, it’s not even fun. The daily grind, the never-ending activities required to get through the “no” answers and find the ready-to-buy prospects, that not only takes a ton of work but requires daily discipline to stay focused and actively on the path to success. Look at the most successful reps and you’ll find men and women who get up early, power through their calls, and do what it takes – every day – to make their number.
4. No training
This is more than just product training, which is critical. Every rep should know the details of their product or service, but that’s table stakes. They also need to understand the market into which they’re selling, as well as who their target prospect is – what they care about, what their problems are, and what they’re trying to achieve independent of your product or service. And this training needs to happen far more often than the annual sales kick-off meeting too. For world-class sales organizations, training and reinforcement is a regular, ongoing habit.
5. No support
To be successful, sales professionals need tools to help them work smarter. They need sales support and operations resources to provide the infrastructure, tools, processes and other execution best practices so they can spend more of their time in front of customers. And they need a proactively supportive management team, including managers who know that coaching requires more than just reinforcing process, but also proactively helping reps solve unique sales problems.
6. No leads
This is another place where many sales professionals find a perfect excuse for why they’re not hitting the number. In some sales organizations, reps are given leads for follow-up. Some leads are qualified, some are not. But even when reps aren’t handed leads, they’re responsible for finding their own. Yes, this can be a pain-staking, inefficient process. Yes, this can directly impact an individual reps ability to close more business. But you have two choices when face with no leads – get some yourself, or go somewhere else.
7. No motivation
Motivation can come in a variety of formats, of course. It can be material, such as a new boat or stereo system or exotic vacation. It can be fundamental, like putting your kids through school. But whatever it is, motivation to succeed drives performance and ensures consistent execution for reps who don’t let failure take hold.
8. No adaptability
The way you were taught to sell 20 years ago might not be as effective today. The tools you used, the approach that once worked, might fall flat today. If you aren’t able to adapt to the changing market, the changing customer – you’re likely to see declining results. Successful sales professionals constantly adapt their strategy and execution to what’s changing and working around them.
9. No customer insight
Gone are the days of one-sided selling (if they ever existed in the first place). Gone too are the days when the prospect allowed you to ask them questions to which they already knew the answer. Reps today fail in part because they don’t take the time to understand their customer before making an approach. This is far more than just having a solid introduction or insights to break the ice. This is about getting to the root needs your customers has, and differentiating yourself as someone who isn’t there just to sell, but to teach and enable the outcomes the prospect needs and/or has envisioned in the first place.
10. No focus
There are so many things that can distract you during the day. Things that feel important, maybe even feel urgent, but are neither. It’s incredibly difficult to stay focused on what’s important, what will truly push your results forward. But that’s why so many reps fail, and so few consistently hit their number.
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This article was originally posted to Heinz Marketing on January 8, 2013
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The Ten Best Sales One-Liners of All Time
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on January 5, 2013
Great sales managers are great coaches. More often than not, they’ve worked deals “from soup to nuts,” and have “carried a bag” as individual contributors to sales teams early in their careers. Now it’s their job to motivate and develop inside and outside account executives to achieve goals and advance their careers.
To successfully motivate their teams, managers should first make themselves equal, rather than different. This often requires managers to “talk the talk” and make their points fast while educating teams.
What follows are ten of the best sales one-liners, Ever! Call them clichés, truisms, or idioms, whatever. Executives, sales managers, customers, industry pundits, and other sales reps use them all the time. This is only volume 1, and there are a whole lot more where these came from. Enjoy this first installment, and share with us in the comments which one-liners you use and hear most, as well as which ones you’d add to the list.
Ten of the Best Sales One-Liners. EVER!
- Just tell them what time it is; they don’t care how you built the watch.
- There’s no need to engineer the Starship Enterprise when all they need is budgetary pricing.
- If you can’t thoroughly demo your product, you’ll die on the vine.
- You prospect’s got a finely-tuned BS meter.
- You can’t expect to take a fishing boat out and just watch the fish jump into the boat.
- You won’t get by on just personality and good intentions.
- It’s better to lose in the 1st round than in the 15th.
- If you’re going to lose, don’t lose alone.
- If all you’ve got is a hammer in your hand, then everything will look like a nail.
- From a strategic perspective, this deal’s carved in butter.
Learn them. Know them. Live them
The Value of “You” in the Sales Process
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on September 28, 2012
Any sales professional today will agree customers are smarter than ever. They’re doing their homework aided in full by the internet and the social media. The big question now is: How has your “sales pitch” changed to keep up with your customers and the changing sales environment?
The term “sales pitch” invokes the image of a hard sell. But in this context, a sales pitch is short for the story you tell. A good sales pitch is one you tailored to your customer’s needs and helped to differentiate your offering from the competition. But today, because customers are educating themselves on your products and those of your competitors through the internet and conversations with other customers, the product knowledge gap you filled in the past is getting smaller.
Sure, you have to talk about your capabilities, but the how and when of such a dialogue has changed. Nothing will ever reduce the need for you to understand your products and your customers’ needs. As a matter of fact, you need an even a deeper understanding of both. Beyond that though, you must bring more to your customers than the ability to differentiate your capabilities. Customers expect you to be more proactive and more creative in solving their business issues.
What you bring as you – the value you add to helping customers meet their business objectives, your ability to help them see a broader perspective – is as important, often more important, than what your products will do for them.
Lately, there has been a focus on the need for salespeople to increase their business acumen — and rightly so. Customers expect you to engage them in broader business dialogues, and that demands business acumen. The internet and training resources can help you build business acumen. But one of the best seminars on earth is your customer’s office. Take advantage of your customer’s knowledge. Don’t shy away from asking broader, more strategic questions. If you are prepared and it is a value-based give and take, customers will share knowledge with you. Ask questions to understand how your customers see their business and what they want to achieve. Not only will you be better positioned to customize a winning solution, but you’ll learn from the exchange and be smarter for this customer and the ones after. The successful call is one in which both you and the customer learn something.
Customers value industry knowledge. They value competitive data. They value research and metrics. They value being helped to broaden their perspective. Customers’ product knowledge gaps are getting smaller and smaller, but the areas where you can provide value have changed and expanded. When your product capabilities are framed with what customers’ value, they will reward you for it.
After your next call, ask yourself what you learned that broadened your knowledge and built your business acumen. Make this as important as what your customers learned from you. Together you will build winning solutions.
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This article was originally posted to the Richardson Sales Training Blog on September 28, 2011
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Confronting an Under-Performing Sales Rep
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on September 22, 2012
Every sales coaching workshop that I deliver I ask sales managers, “How many of you have a performance problem with a sales rep that is just unacceptable, and you know you need to address the situation?” Everyone raises their hand. Then I ask, “How long have you known this?” The answer I hear is often months, and occasionally years. Clearly, many sales managers have tremendous difficulty confronting an under-performer, and so they keep putting it off.
There are a variety of reasons why sales managers avoid this most difficult of all conversations. Sometimes it’s just a time management issue – the sales manager has many other more pressing issues to deal with. Another reason is that the sales manager blames him or herself for the salesperson’s lackluster results – “I haven’t provided the salesperson with enough ongoing coaching” or “I need to provide this person more training.” So the sales manager accepts personal responsibility for the rep’s performance problem, but that’s not right.
The simple truth for sales managers is that your team is only as strong as your weakest performer. You can say all you want to about sales performance, but your actions speak louder than words. Everyone on your sales team looks at the lowest producer as the minimum level of sales production necessary to stay on your sales team.
When you fail to address a sales performance problem you send a message to everyone else on the sales team – that you tolerate mediocrity. Face this issue now. Have the tough conversation. Don’t let another day go by without addressing this performance problem. And before you have this “positive confrontation” conversation, jot a few notes down next to the following checklist so you are properly prepared:
- What aspect of this person’s performance (and/or skills and attitude) is unacceptable? Be very specific about what the person must change. Be prepared to provide examples.
- Why has the person not been performing up to expectation? As the sales coach, you must assess the performance problem. Is it the rep’s lack of skill, a lack of will, or both? During the meeting, ask questions to either confirm or disprove your analysis of the situation. You never know what might come out here. I once had a salesperson break down in tears in my office about his marital problems.
- Why should the person make these changes? Remember that Skill + Activity = Sales Results. All too often sales managers, when communicating expectations to the team, focus on the outcome expected (sales quota) rather than the inputs necessary to achieve the outcomes, and the importance of each step in that process. When you explain “why” a certain task must be accomplished with a certain amount of quantity or quality, you are also explaining why it cannot be avoided.
- What should the consequences be if the salesperson does not make these changes? Another conversation with the manager? A written warning in their personnel file? Termination? You must be prepared to explain in very clear terms exactly what will happen if the changes are not made.
- The “Two-Roads” Discussion One sales manager with whom I’ve worked refers to this is the “Two Roads” part of the discussion. “Ms. Or Mr. Under-performer, you have reached a fork in the road. If you continue down the path that you have been on this is what the consequences will be… However, there is another path for you to choose, and it leads to greater sales performance, more money, etc.” Ultimately, the responsibility for change is the rep’s responsibility, not yours. If coaching or training is required, or would help the situation, then do it now.
Peak performance sales managers do not accept mediocre performance. They realize that their entire sales team is watching how they handle the under-performer. They accept the responsibility for their role, and if someone is not performing up to expectations they address the problem sooner, rather than later.
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This article was originally posted on the TopLine Leadership Blog by Kevin Davis on September 18, 2012
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Increase Sales with Consultative Selling
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on September 17, 2012
When consultative selling, a sales professional should act more like a consultant than a conventional salesperson. Rather than pitching the features, advantages and benefits, of a product or service, a consultative sales person should make recommendations based on the buyer’s most pressing pains and desires.
By acting like a consultant rather than your stereotypical salesperson, consultative selling enables sales professionals to create long-term relationships with customers which are based on trust. This adds significant value to each and every sale, making customers all the more likely to buy from you instead of a competitor.
Here are 4 quick sales tips which will get you on the right path to mastering consultative selling:
Tip 1: Be a Problem-Solver:
Consultative selling requires salespeople to approach selling in the same way that they would to solving a problem. They need to treat any customer pain, need or desire as a problem that is there to be solved.
Here a commanding knowledge of your own company’s capabilities is necessary to align the customer’s problems with the right product or service. However, it is important for salespeople to open discussions around the customer’s pressures, pains and desires before aligning them with the product/service’s features, advantages and benefits. To become a problem-solver, salespeople need to qualify with their customers that the problem exists and can be solved before pitching their solutions.
Tip 2: Become a Trusted Advisor:
When consultative selling, moving the discussion from the customer’s problems to their desires will transform the salesperson’s relationship with customers. By applying a consultative selling technique, the salesperson will be perceived as a trusted advisor by the customer. By acting like a problem-solving consultant, consultative selling can transform the buyer/seller relationship into a novice/trusted advisor relationship.
Tip 3: Probe with Open Questions:
To truly master consultative selling, salespeople need to be great at asking the right questions about their customer’s pressures, problems and desires for improvement. By asking open-ended questions (i.e. who, what, where, why, when…), salespeople can probe their customer’s deepest motives, feelings and attitudes towards the solution. By probing the customer’s pressures, the implications of failing to respond to these pressures (the potential pain), and the customer’s desire for improvement, the customer’s needs can be shaped and urgency can be created.
Consultative selling through asking open-ended questions enhances the salesperson’s understanding of the buyer’s situation. This makes them better equipped to qualify sales opportunities and align the buyer’s pains and desires with the solutions they sell, thus giving the customer confidence in the salesperson’s recommendations.
Tip 4: Give the Customer Added Value:
As part of the final step to mastering consultative selling, salespeople must learn to create added value for their customers. Here salespeople need to enhance the value that their solution will give the customer in order to differentiate their offer from that of the competition. Added value comprises the tangible advantages and benefits that your company offers over and above the product or service that it is proposing. This may be a ‘right-first-time’ delivery guarantee that you know is better than that of the competition, or a managed implementation service that you can deliver across the region.
Each ‘value-added offer’ must be specific to the selling organization’s capabilities and will increase the value of the overall solution to the client so long as it has been aligned directly to their most pressing need. When aligned directly to this need, added value will not only enable you to differentiate your offer from competitors, but will actually allow you to charge a premium. You will be able to not only increase your chances of winning deals but you will also find it much easier to up-sell or cross-sell during the meeting.
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Consultative selling enables salespeople to gain a clearer understanding of the customer’s world. By achieving a clearer understanding of the customer’s most pressing needs and desires, salespeople are able to play the role of a consultant who aligns their solutions with their customer’s problems. By implementing an effective consultative selling methodology, you will be able to determine you customer’s most pressing pains and desires and respond accordingly.
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This article was originally posted in the Sales & Business Development Blog by Steve Eungbut on November 11, 2011
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