Posts Tagged Sales Performance Improvement
What Separates High-Performing Sales Organizations From Average and Underperforming Sales Organizations?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on April 7, 2015
That’s what Velocify, along with Steve Martin, author of the “Heavy Hitter” series of books on enterprise selling, set out to discover. They asked 800 sales executives, managers and front-line sales reps a whole lot of questions—42 of them to be exact—to get at the answer.
The results of their study, which can be downloaded here, should be of interest to any sales leader. The report aims to show how high-performing organizations differ from average and underperforming organizations in terms of attitudes and structure.
Survey respondents were asked to compare year-over-year revenue growth for the past 2 years. Those that characterized their growth as significant were rated as high performing organizations. Those that characterized their revenue growth as flat or declining were rated as underperforming organizations (those in between were characterized as average).
The report offers up a summary of how people in each group responded to the questions. It’s interesting to note that 47% of the respondents were quota carrying salespeople. It could be enlightening to see how their responses compared to those of sales leaders.
Here are some of the key highlights from the study:
- High-performing sales organizations set higher quotas and expect fewer sales reps to meet their quota
- Mediocre sales organizations were slower to fire underperforming sales reps
- The best-performing sales teams were more likely to describe themselves as a “cohesive group”
According to the study, three key differentiators separated the great sales teams from mediocre teams according to the study.
Differentiator #1: Aggressive Goal Setting The best performing sales teams consistently set higher quotas and expected fewer sales reps to meet quota.
46 percent of respondents at high-performing organizations said that less than 60 percent of salespeople should make quota, compared to just 30 percent of respondents at average and under-performing organizations.
18 percent of high-performing sales organizations indicated that salespeople will be terminated for poor performance after one quarter compared to only 2 percent of average and 5 percent of underperforming organizations.
Differentiator #2: Team Mentality A team-oriented outlook was more prevalent among high-performing sales organizations.
High-performing sales organizations were nearly twice as likely to describe themselves as “a cohesive group of like-minded individuals” than people at lower-performing organizations, who more often described themselves as “a loose collection of individuals.”
The best teams also viewed individual talent as a lesser factor for sales success than mediocre groups, but were less likely to include below-average salespeople – exhibiting a more unified sales culture.
Differentiator #3: Process-Driven High-performing sales organizations were more likely to employ a structured sales process than others.
High-performing sales organizations were almost twice as likely as underperforming organizations to describe their sales processes as “closely monitored” or “strictly enforced or automated.”
High-performing sales organizations ranked “disciplined sales process and systems usage” as the second most important factor separating great from good sales organizations. They were also more likely to closely monitor lead follow-up than lower-performing organizations.
The report, “The Sales Organization Performance Gap,” includes analysis and survey results for 15 key questions. Here are a few (somewhat re-worded):
- What is the optimum percentage of salespeople who should make quota to validate that quotas are not set too high or too low?
- How soon is a sales person terminated for poor performance?
- In what order should the factors that separate great from average (and from underperforming) sales organizations be prioritized?
This last question uncovered an interesting result. Both the high performers and the good performers ranked “lead generation and pipeline activity” as the most important factor, above six other factors including sales leadership and sales talent.
Comparing how you would answer these questions to those of the survey respondents just might cause you to re-think the attitudes and structure of your own organization.
This article was originally posted to the Smart Selling Tools Blog by Nancy Nardin on January 28, 2015.
Sales Management Coaching – The Power of Questions
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on February 16, 2015
Asking questions is an underpinning of successful selling. The notion – ask, listen, and then talk is a powerful principle in the science of successful selling. Asking questions is also an underpinning of successful interactions between salespeople and their sales managers.
Consider this; Effective coaching is not so much about teaching people, as it is about helping them to learn – that’s why top coaches ask more than tell. The problem is too many times when coaching, managers do it the other way around. They don’t ask enough questions and they talk more than the sales rep.
Given all that we thought it would be a good idea to provide some specific questions that could be used to get the sales coaching session on the right track. While there are no silver bullets, here is a starter list of 11 questions that could be used when coaching after a sales call.
- How do you think the call went?
- What do you think was the customer’s major walk-away from the call?
- What specific piece of value did the customer gain from the call?
- How did we differentiate ourselves from the competition?
- If you could do the call again what would you consider doing differently?
- What happen that you did not anticipate – how could you have prepared differently?
- Which part of the call didn’t go so well? How would you improve on it?
- What did you plan to do that you didn’t do – why?
- Who did the most talking?
- Did you leave the call with one of the advances you planned?
- What did you learn from the sales call that will impact your future sales calls on this customer?
Obviously the sales coaching questions that you would use would depend on the specific sales rep and the type of sales call. So your list of questions would be unique for each call. However, when coaching it is always a good idea to plan some coaching questions before the sales call and then modify the list as the sales call progresses.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Training Connection by Janet Spirer on February 6, 2015.
Everything You Need to Know About Becoming a Better Listener
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on February 10, 2015
“It can be stated, with practically no qualification,” Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard A. Stevens write in a 1957 HBR article, “That people in general do not know how to listen. They have ears that hear very well, but seldom have they acquired the necessary aural skills which would allow those ears to be used effectively for what is called listening.” In a study of thousands of students and hundreds of businesspeople, they found that most retained only half of what they heard — and this immediately after they’d heard it. Six months later, most people only retained 25%.
In this, I suspect the world has not changed much since 1957. So I dug into HBR’s archives for our best advice on the imperfect art of listening. Here’s what I found.
It all starts with actually caring what other people have to say, argues Christine Riordan, Provost and professor of management at the University of Kentucky. Listening with empathy consists of three specific sets of behaviors. First, there’s the actual intake of information — recognizing the verbal and nonverbal cues the other person is emitting. Then there’s processing, which is where we make sense of what the other person is saying. Finally, there’s responding. This is where you validate what they’ve said — and note that validating doesn’t mean you have to agree with it — by nodding, playing back what you heard, or otherwise acknowledging that you’re picking up what they’re putting down.
To help you stay focused on the most salient points of what someone else is saying, take notes as you listen. Ram Charan offers a tip he saw work especially well for Larry Bossidy when he was CEO of Honeywell. Bossidy would draw a vertical line down the page of his notebook and write general notes to the left, while keeping track of the most valuable nuggets on the right. This helped train his brain to listen intently and zero in on what’s most important.
Recognize your defaults. Are you gregarious and outgoing — a real extrovert? Then you have many wonderful qualities, but listening well may not be one of them. It’s tough to listen when you’re the one who does most of the talking. Or are you super-conscientious, your smartphone always in hand and your calendar always uber-scheduled? Again … listening is hard when you’re distracted by a screen, or rushing to your next meeting. Knowing yourself is a key part of being a good listener (and one of just many good tips in Sara Stibitz’s piece).
Pay attention when your mind wanders to figure out what’s stopping you from listening. This piece of wisdom comes from Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins, executive coaches and co-authors of Own the Room. When your attention flags, is it because you’re starting to plan your response to their comments? Or have you started listening to your own inner critic, instead of what they’re saying? But you can’t really listen fully at the same time you’re thinking about something else. When you notice something has blocked you from listening, simply make a note of it — don’t belabor it, or you’re just not-listening for even longer! — and shift your attention back to what the other person is saying.
Nichols and Stevens point out another factor that can stop us from listening: our own emotions. Feelings fog up a conversation. When you notice you’re having an emotional reaction, withhold evaluation and, with your judgment thus suspended, embark on a hunt for evidence that proves your own position wrong. “If we make up our minds to seek out the ideas that might prove us wrong, as well as those that might prove us right” – which human beings tend to do without making a conscious effort – “we are less in danger of missing what people have to say.”
When someone is upset or venting, a lot of us “listen” by sharing our own experiences (note: that is actually just talking). Or we try to fix the problem. (Note: that is also talking.) Or, perhaps because we’ve been told, “Don’t try to fix it, just listen!” so many times, we clam up and say nothing, which doesn’t result in the speaker really feeling heard. So the best way to listen when someone is venting is to ask questions, writes Mark Goulston, a psychiatrist and author of Just Listen. Help them get all that anger and frustration out into the open, where they can start to make sense of it on their own. Pose questions like, “What are you most angry about?” and “What are you really worried about?” They’ll feel heard, and you’ll get to the root of the problem.
As Nichols and Stevens point out, the basic problem with listening is that we can all think faster than we talk. The human mouth plods along at 125 words per minute, while a neuron can fire about 200 times a second. (This helps to illustrate why it’s crucial to slow down difficult conversations.) So give your brain something else to do while you listen: note the key points that are coming up in the conversation, actively look for nonverbal cues, ask yourself what the speaker might be intentionally not saying, or weigh the evidence being presented.
“The effectiveness of the spoken word hinges not so much on how people talk as on how they listen,” Nichols and Steven write. Many decades later, that’s still true. You can’t necessarily turn the people around you into better speakers. But we can all make ourselves better listeners.
This article was originally posted to the Harvard Business Review blog by Sara Green on February 6, 2015.
Companies with a Formal Sales Process Generate More Revenue
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on February 3, 2015
How well is your company managing its sales pipeline? Research conducted by Vantage Point Performance and the Sales Management Association revealed that 44% of executives think their organization is ineffective at managing theirs. (The survey included 62 B2B companies, 39% of which have revenue greater than $1 billion and 37% of which have revenue greater than $250 million.) This statistic is discouraging because there is a direct correlation between effective pipeline management and strong revenue growth.
In our survey of B2B companies, executives were asked to rate their company’s year-over-year change in revenue on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 representing “drastically decreased revenue” and 7 representing “drastically increased revenue.” Executives were also asked to rate their company’s effectiveness in managing the sales pipeline. On average, companies that reported having ineffective pipeline management had an average growth rate of 4.6; companies with effective pipeline management had an average growth rate of 5.3, a 15% increase. Even more interestingly, companies that mastered three specific pipeline practices saw 28% higher revenue growth.
What did these top companies do to achieve such a high level of success? Here are the three best practices that these all-star sales forces have in common, as well as ways to implement them in your company.
Clearly define the sales process. Pipeline management includes how the sales pipeline is designed, how it is measured, and how it is used to drive sales rep performance. However, at its most basic level, the sales pipeline is merely a representation of a company’s sales process. We discovered that sales forces were most effective at managing their sales pipelines if they had invested time in defining a credible, formalized sales process. In fact, there was an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that didn’t.
So what does it mean to have a formal sales process? For starters, it means having clearly defined stages and milestones that are universally understood by your salespeople. Your sales team shouldn’t have to guess where a particular deal stands or how they should be managing deals in each stage. In addition, your sales process should align with how your customers move through their buying process. Too many sales teams use generic sales processes, and consequently get generic sales performance. Invest the time in developing a unique process for your team, and make sure that they understand how to use it.
Spend at least three hours a month on pipeline management. In addition to having a solid process in place, our research revealed the importance of dedicating enough time and resources to carrying it out well. Companies in our survey that spent at least three hours per month managing each rep’s sales pipeline saw 11% greater revenue growth than those that spent fewer than three hours per month. But success doesn’t just depend on the amount of time that’s spent on pipeline management – how the time is spent is just as important.
Many sales forces believe they are spending a lot of time managing their pipelines when in reality they’re spending a lot of time creating forecasts. If your pipeline management discussions revolve around close dates, probabilities, and deal sizes, then you are forecasting. Period. If, however, you spend your time discussing the overall health of your sellers’ pipelines and how they can shepherd more deals to successful closure, then you are managing your pipeline in a productive way. The primary focus of a pipeline meeting should be to help reps develop a game plan to move deals forward, not just scrubbing CRM data and forecasting revenue.
Train sales managers on pipeline management. Our research also revealed that 61% of executives admit their sales managers have not been adequately trained in pipeline management strategies and techniques. This begs the question, “How can we expect our sales managers to do something well when we haven’t prepared them to do it?” Companies that had trained their sales managers to manage their pipelines saw their revenue grow 9% faster than those that didn’t. But not just any training will do. Sales managers need targeted training to address specific pipeline management challenges.
Most pipeline training that sales managers receive is limited to how they log in to their CRM tool and generate reports. What they really need is training in how to make better pipeline management decisions. For instance, sales managers need to know how to determine the ideal pipeline size for each rep. They need to know at what point in the sales process their actions have the biggest impact. And they need to know how to structure pipeline meetings so they enable coaching rather than inspection. Even these few skills can have a significant impact on sales force performance.
Ultimately, pipeline management is a critical activity for all sales forces, and better pipeline management can make a huge difference in sales performance. Our research shows that there are no secrets to realizing this increased performance — you must define your sales process, commit to good pipeline management, and enable your managers to carry it out. If you integrate these best practices into your sales force, you can expect to nail your forecasts, hit your quotas, and see your sales reps succeed beyond what you thought possible.
This article was originally posted to the HBR Blog by Jason Jordan and Robert Kelly on January 21, 2015.
Six Soft Sales Skills Critical to Sales Success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on December 24, 2014
Asking questions. Selling value. Handling objections. Crafting sales strategy. Closing. Analyzing the competition. Check out any sales training program and you’re likely find some of these sales skills being taught. They are the fundamentals and they are critical to sales success. And just because they are fundamental does not mean they are simple to learn. To perform them skillfully requires a lot of practice and feedback.
But to borrow a phrase, these skills are “necessary, but not sufficient.” A study by Millennial Branding and American Express, for example, reported that 61 percent of managers surveyed felt that soft skills were more important in new hires than hard skills, or even technical skills. In fact, the same study showed that the top three characteristics managers looked for when promoting Millennials were the ability to prioritize work (87 percent), a positive attitude (86 percent) and teamwork skills (86 percent).
The study goes on to report six soft skills most often cited as critical to success. Although the report was focusing on professionals in general, we thought the work held merit for those concerned about developing sales success.
- Communication – Communication moves beyond sending emails, texts, and Instagrams. Everyone inside companies must be able to effectively engage people face-to-face. Nowhere is this more critical than for salespeople who must engage a wide variety of customers across a varied set of situations.
- Teamwork – B2B sales increasingly are moving away from salespeople as the lone wolf to sales teams – whether multiple salespeople, technical specialists, etc. This means salespeople must develop the skills required to both lead and to participate in sales teams.
- Flexibility – Flexibility provides some unique challenges for salespeople. Beyond simply being flexible about schedules and responsibilities, salespeople increasingly are being called on to marshal internal resources and to be part of – or manage – sales teams. In today’s environment salespeople are required to play different roles at different times during the sales process.
- Positivity – This one is no surprise – people like to be around positive people. And, this is certainly true for salespeople. Salespeople need to learn how to leverage praise from people for what they do and avoid overreacting to criticism and bad news. But, salespeople have a special challenge – not only do they have to work with colleagues, they also have to work with prospects and customers where it’s easy to say “yes” – but yes is not always the right answer. Salespeople must learn how to effectively say “no” or disagree or present a different view to prospects and customers and have the customer view that interaction positively.
- Time management – Whether new to sales or a veteran, time management is an obstacle all salespeople must tackle. Learning how to prioritize and manage time is important for all salespeople. A good idea for any salesperson is to periodically assess the percentage of their time they are actually selling vs. doing something else. If one can increase that number by 10%, which in most cases is very likely, a whole lot of good things happen.
- Confidence – Confidence is an underpinning of every salesperson’s success. Salespeople must learn to display confidence – it’s at the heart of building their credibility and credibility is a key for success. When someone is new to a company or new to sales, building confidence and credibility can be tough to do. One answer is leveraging your company’s capabilities and success stories until you develop your own tales of success.
If one believes the soft skill story, then a real challenge emerges for sales managers. It’s likely that most salespeople would not on their own, over time, develop these soft skills. As a matter of fact in some situations, time may actually degrade the skill. For example, a salesperson could very easily lose confidence due to failures vs. learning from the failures as to what to do next time.
Once again this is why sales management coaching and modeling are so important for developing and sustaining a successful sales team. Yet, how often do the soft skills make the short list for sales coaching?
This article was originally posted to the Sales Training Connection Blog by Janet Spirer on November 21, 2014.
©2014 Sales Momentum®
How To Deal With A Stall In Negotiations
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on December 10, 2014
When you get to a point in the conversation with a customer where you have to negotiate on price or some other issue, remember one thing: the vast majority of negotiations occur because you haven’t identified the value of doing business with you earlier in the conversation.
I have found that if you uncover the needs, wants, desires ad motivations of customers early on, the whole aspect of having to negotiate starts to change. Because you are aware of how the customer will value your offering before you present ideas, you know exactly where you may need to give more than take. Negotiations most often occur when the customer has not had all their needs dealt with, or the value of your offering has not been built up enough before presenting solutions.
Having said that, it may well be that you get into a negotiating scenario that requires you to give and take. How do you know exactly what will be important or valuable to the customer?
Well, it may be that the two most powerful words in any negotiation are “What if?”. Using this question works because it allows the other person to consider possible solutions without committing to them. This way you can avoid making an offer before they have signaled a willingness to accept it.
To put this technique into action, suggest a possible solution by saying, “What if our solution involved distributing to other warehouses? Is that something that might work for you?” Then listen closely to the response, and change the suggestion if necessary, remembering to phrase it as a hypothetical (”What if?”) and not a formal offer.
Don’t commit to a solution before confirming that it works for the other person. Ask, “What if?” to test ideas before making formal offers.
A good way to prepare for this stage might be to ask yourself what combinations of options would make an attractive solution to both you and the other person. Should you present options independently or package them as one solution? Also, ask yourself whether you, personally, are willing to accept the solutions you’re suggesting.
It’s important to position this technique in the customer’s mind before you try it out. Saying something like, “We’re probably not ready to commit to an actual solution yet, but I have some ideas that we could discuss to see if we can get closer here. Would you like to hear them?” would allow the customer the chance to see if there were options that would be satisfactory to them.
The objective of this technique is to get the customer to see how different approaches might or could work for them, and offers opportunities for them to test out hypotheses before making decisions.
This article was originally posted to the MTD Sales Training Specialists blog by Sean McPheet on November 19, 2014.
First Line Sales Managers – The Heart of B2B Sales Success
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on December 2, 2014
I know many CEO’s believe that hiring the best sales people is the recipe for sales success, and of course, they are partly right. But there is a critical missing piece to that puzzle – and it’s not just about giving your new hires the right sort of product training.
The critical success factor – and it ought to be blindingly obvious, if you think about it – turns out to be the effectiveness of your first-line sales managers. Yet that’s often the place where sales performance problems have their roots.
You’ve probably seen the situation play out dozens of times: a vacancy emerges in the sales management team, and a top performing sales person gets promoted to fill it. After all, they can lead by example – can’t they?
And that assumption, of course, is where it all breaks down. Because it turns out that being a top sales performer is a hopelessly invalid predictor of that individuals’ ability to successfully lead a team of sales people.
Avoiding the obvious mistakes
Sometime the reason is predictable, and the issue avoidable. You probably know who your “lone wolf” sales people are, and you’ve learned to live with their anti-social behaviors, because if they didn’t keep the orders coming in, there’s no way you would tolerate them.
It’s blindingly obvious that promoting them would be a bad idea all around, and if they had any sense, they would probably refuse the promotion even if you were foolish enough to offer it to them. So organizations typically manage to avoid that most obvious of mistakes.
No: the real problem lies with high-performing sales people who appear to be well-integrated with their colleagues, and who behave like good corporate citizens – it’s just that a critical part of the front-line B2B sales managers’ skill set is missing.
Coaching – the pivotal skill
The ability to coach – to help sales people learn how to succeed through their own efforts rather than have the manager take over when the going gets tough – turns out to be a pivotal front line management skill. Yet it is so rarely taught.
Some of your front-line managers might have more of an innate talent that others, but experience has convinced me that intelligent new front-line managers can develop strong skills in this area with the right guidance and training.
So here’s the problem: even organizations that invest regularly in sales training often fail to invest in their front-line sales managers. It’s not that they are not involved in the same training as their sales people are – it’s obvious that they need to be.
Preparing your front-line leaders
The issue is the lack of specialized training and mentoring in the key skills needed to be an effective sales manager. Coaching is a big part of this, but it’s not the only area where development would often be beneficial.
What about running effective forecasting and pipeline review meetings? What about conducting continuous performance assessments? And what about opportunity and team coaching, as well as 1:1 sales person coaching?
What about the skills and techniques necessary to support the implementation of the company’s defined sales process? What about the effective use of the organization’s CRM system? And what about the regular reinforcement required to make your company’s chosen sales training methodology stick?
A pivotal role
Your front line sales managers are pivotal in achieving all of this. But how much time and money are you allocating to their professional and personal development? My bet – in most cases – is that the answer is “not enough”.
And yet these are the very people you are relying on to make sure the numbers are made, to ensure that your expensive sales training investments deliver the desired results, and they are your critical change agents when driving new initiatives.
This article was originally posted to the Inflection Point Blog by Bob Apollo on November 18, 2014.
The ultimate response to “I want to think about it.”
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on August 29, 2014
When a customer says “I want to think about it” or “I need some time to think it over” it’s one of the most frustrating expressions a salesperson can hear. You feel helpless, or if you’ve been poorly trained, you lapse into some manipulative dialogue that proves you’re both a crappy salesperson and you’re only there for the money.
There’s a better way.
The paradox of “I want to think about it” has always been that the salesperson wants to make the sale right away, and the customer has not yet seen the value or the reduced risk in doing business with the salesperson.
And often, the customer has already made up their mind, but does not want to share that with (you) the salesperson. The salesperson gets frustrated and blames the customer for their inability to decide, rather than taking responsibility for his own lack of sales ability and lack of preparation.
REALITY: Stop blaming. Start taking responsibility. Be prepared (Boy Scout motto) for the objection way before you get to the sales call.
Here is what to say, here’s what to offer, and here’s how to offer it…
You say: “I’m an expert at what I do. You’re an expert at what you do. Let me share with you the questions you need to ask yourself, and ask of others, as you think about it.” These are questions way beyond “How much is it?” and “When do I really want to start?”
Hand over a list of questions about the intricacies and the value of your stuff. For example, if you’re selling IT services and data protection, here’s a list of questions that you might want to ask:
Mr. Prospect, here are six things you need to think about as you’re deciding:
- How much is your data worth?
- Who is protecting your data daily?
- How much spam do you get? How much time do you spend dealing with it? What is your time worth?
- What happened the last time you lost data?
- What is a business heart attack to you?
- What’s the difference between 99% guaranteed up time and 100% guaranteed up time? 3.65 days of downtime. What is the extra 1% worth?
You hand the questions to the customer and read the questions out loud, and then ask him or her, “Would you like to think about these questions by yourself, or would you like to think about them with me?”
Keep in mind, you are the expert. The customer is depending on you for answers that he or she cannot create for themselves. Whether you’re selling life insurance, refrigerators, accounting services, new cars, or a million dollar home, most likely the customer is making a purchase one time, but for you it may be your one-thousandth time to make the presentation. It’s critical that you transfer confidence, not just information.
“I want to think about it” is your GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to give value, prove value, make the prospect think about themselves and their options, and still have an opportunity to make the sale.
THE SECRET: You must prepare for the “I want to think it over” stall BEFORE you make the sales call. You have to positively accept the stall when it occurs. The more positive you are, the more surprised the prospect will be. And you must present my solution in EXACTLY the manner I have described above.
When presenting this answer to the prospect, your tone must be both friendly and calm. The prospect will see that you’re prepared and at the very least be impressed – and at the very most, be both engaged and willing.
You are in complete control when you’re prepared.
You have totally lost control when you’re not prepared.
REALITY: This solution will NOT work all the time, BUT it will work. How often it works will be determined by how often you try it. The more you prepare for it, the better you will become at overcoming.
Want to try it? Or do you want to think about it? It’s your choice.
This article was originally posted to the Eye on Sales blog by Jeffrey Gitomer on August 1, 2014.
Sales process – it must mirror the customer’s buying process
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on August 8, 2014
In the last ten years a substantial amount of time, effort, and money has been devoted to discussing the sales process. Listen to a conversation about the sales process and it usually begins by someone saying something like:
- “We have very aggressive sales targets and we’re just not getting there.”
- “We’re not leveraging our own best practices – a lot of our sales reps are simply doing what they did the last time.”
- “Our customers’ buying process has undergone dramatic changes but we’re still selling like we always did.”
Whether or not you have consciously addressed the topic of putting in place or modifying your sales process – it is happening every day. It is whatever your salespeople are doing on a given day to navigate the customer’s buying process.
If you want to put in place a more effective sales process, avoid these two pitfalls.
Lack of definitional clarity. Sales process is one of those sales concepts that unfortunately means something different for each person with whom you talk. Some would say if you put in place a new questioning model you have changed your sales process. Others would say that is simply adopting a new questioning model. Try it. Ask someone what their sales process is and a good bet is you will get not just different answers but entirely different types of answers.
To make something better everyone needs to have a clear and common vision of the topic at hand – it’s about being on the same page.
Our best suggestion is to restrict the term sales process to mean the overall set of steps you take from beginning and end of your sales cycle to win the business versus using the term interchangeably with concepts related to selling techniques, models, frameworks, and best practices.
Unbridled compliance. It is not a good idea for a whole bunch of reasons to have everyone do their own thing – that is not the road to success in today’s market. That’s an easy one.
On the other hand, in today’s disruptive buying environment it is equally true that unbridled compliance to a standard sales process can have its own pitfalls.
The greatest risk is that rigorously following any standardized process only works when one is absolutely clear that you are following a path that leads to success. In the B2B market the problem is many companies are going through transformational changes. These changes are impacting what they buy, how they buy, and what they are willing to pay for it.
So, a strategic caution is in order: Are you doing a good job driving compliance to a sales process that is more about what and how customers were buying five years ago versus what they are doing here and now?
Summary. On the sales process scale of “everyone does their own thing to blind compliance” we suggest being somewhere in the middle.
Introduce a well thought out sales process because it can contribute to replicating success and scaling the business. But, beware of overdone rigor and excessive compliance. The latter will tend to eliminate innovation and discourage the positive deviants among you from exploring the ideas that will define what success looks like tomorrow.
This article was originally posted to the Sales Training Connection blog by Janet Spirer on August 25, 2014.
Best Practices of Top Performing Sales People
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on July 1, 2014
Many people wonder what separates a top performing sales person from the rest of the pack. In most cases, it’s because they apply a number of best practices in their daily routine. Here are 17 best practices of top performing sales people.
1. They set HIGH TARGETS and goals. Top performers don’t wait for their manager to issue an annual or quarterly quota. They set their own goals that are usually more ambitious than the corporate targets.
2. They carefully PLAN their quarter, month and week – as well as their daily schedule. Too many sales people fly by the seat of their pants and only look at the day or week ahead instead of planning their month and quarter. Look at the big picture.
3. They set OBJECTIVES for every sales call. It is essential to know exactly what you want to accomplish before you make your call (face-to-face or telephone).
4. They ASK high-value questions that probe to the heart of the issue. Sounds simple but most sales people fail at this and ask weak, feeble questions. Top performers are comfortable asking tough questions that make their prospect think.
5. They LISTEN carefully to what their prospects and customers say instead of waiting for your turn to speak listen to your customer. You can ask all the questions in the world but if you don’t hear what people tell you won’t be able to present the proper solution.
6. They CLARIFY the issue when they are unclear what their prospect means. People often say things that are unclear and most sales people assume they know what their prospect means. Top performers take the time to fully understand by asking “What do you mean by that?” of “Can you clarify that for me?”
7. They WAIT TO PRESENT their product, service, solution or idea until they know exactly what their prospect’s situation is. The majority of sales people jump too quickly into their ‘sales pitch’ but top performers are patient and wait for the right moment.
8. They begin every sales presentation with a brief RECAP of their understanding of the prospect’s situation. Again, a simple concept but one that is greatly ignored by many sales people. A quick summary of your customers’ situation give you the opportunity to ensure that your presentation addresses their key issues.
9. They know how to ADAPT their sales presentation if their prospect’s situation has changed.
Making changes on-the-fly is challenging but it is one way to stand out from your competition. Learn how to modify your presentation when customer’s situation has changed from the time you initially met to the time you are delivering your presentation.
10. They know how to properly and effectively POSITION their product, service or solution. The vast majority of sales people fail miserably at this. They talk, talk, talk but usually end up talking about aspects of their product or solution that have little or no relevance to their customer’s situation.
11. Their sales presentations FOCUS on the prospect. Most sales presentations focus on the seller’s company, their product, or other trivial information that is of no interest to the customer.
12. They are PREPARED for potential objections. Top performers anticipate objections and plan their response before their sales call.
13. They always establish the NEXT STEPS. Decision makers are busier than ever which means they are more difficult to connect with. Avoid losing contact with a prospect by agreeing on the next steps after every sales call. Do this in face-to-face meetings and telephone calls.
14. They FOLLOW-UP after the initial call or meeting. Many a sale has been lost because the sales rep failed to follow up after the initial call. You cannot rely on your prospect or customer to call you; you need to take this initiative. Set this up during your call or meeting.
15. They PROSPECT continually to keep their pipeline full. It’s not uncommon for sales reps to experience peaks and valleys in their sales. This is usually a result of failing to prospect for new business on a regular basis. Avoid the highs and lows and schedule time to prospect for new business every week.
16. They deal with the DECISION-MAKER whenever possible. Dealing with people who have little or no buying authority is a waste of time. However, many sales people fall into this trap because it is easier to connect with people other than the decision maker. And that may be true. However, in the long run, they end wasting their time because they don’t close the deal.
17. They look for ways to KEEP IN TOUCH with their customers. A sale is not a one-time deal. However, you need to find ways to keep your name in your customer’s mind to prevent a competitor from squeezing in. Top performers incorporate this into their schedule and make it a priority.
Incorporate these strategies into your routine and you will quickly become a top performing sales rep too.
This article was originally posted to the Eyes On Sales blog by Kelly Robertson on June 23, 2014.
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