Posts Tagged Sales Training
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.
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.
Questioning Your Sales Training Investment?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on June 16, 2014
Does this sound like a familiar conversation within your organization? “We don’t spend money on outside sales training because it never seems to do much good. In the past we’ve had training companies come in and work with our team but as soon as they leave it seems like our people are just back to doing what they were doing before. Training is just a waste of our time and money.”
Many company leaders have the above attitude because their experience has been that the training they paid good money for didn’t change their sales team’s behavior—at least not for long.
After having that experience a couple of times it would seem rational to eliminate the outside training expense because obviously training companies can’t make the fundamental changes to people that they claim they can.
The company leader assumes that the root of the issue lies with the training company and its inability to have a long term impact on the sales force.
But is that really the problem?
Certainly the issue could in fact lie with the company that provided the training. But are a number of possible reasons apart from the company hired to perform the training for sales training failure–from treating sales training as an event instead of an ongoing behavior change process, to salespeople who view attending sales training sessions as torture, to the company’s failure to provide follow-up coaching for the sales team. All of these are real issues that can negate any potential success you might experience from your investment in sales training.
There is another factor that is often the real cause for the failure of the training—intentional or unintentional sabotage by the sales team management.
Are your sales managers trying to take the edge off their charges having to go to training by reassuring them, “yes, you have to go to the training, but don’t worry; just go and when you get back, sell the way you’ve always sold?”
Maybe they don’t believe in the training and are intentionally training their team members in different processes and tactics?
Possibly some sales managers don’t want to invest the time and energy in learning new strategies and tactics themselves and consequently don’t care whether their folks adopt the training.
If you fail to get full buy-in from your sales management team to the specific training you are presenting, you will not have comprehensive and universal implementation of the training.
Your front-line sales managers who work with their team members have more influence on how your salespeople sell than anyone else—more than senior executives, more than middle sales management, more than the training department, more than HR, more than the expensive sales trainers you hire.
If they don’t believe, the salespeople won’t believe.
If they don’t reinforce the messages, the strategies, and the tactics, those occasional training sessions will be nothing more than expensive exercises in futility.
How do you get all of your sales managers on the same page?
Before you ever put a salesperson in a training workshop or seminar, each and every manager must have gone through the management version of the training. Each manager must understand what the company’s comprehensive, unified sales process is and how the particular training that is scheduled fits in the big picture; what short and long-term results are to be expected; what their job is in reinforcing and coaching the training; and what criteria will be used to determine the success or failure of the training.
Most of all, each manager must believe in the process and strategy. .
Whether the training is presented by an in-house trainer or by a professional trainer brought in from outside, each segment of training should consist of a management segment designed to gain manager buy-in and to give them the tools and knowledge they will need to coach sellers once they are back at the office and a segment for salespeople that is attended by their managers.
And although the initial cost of training in terms of both time and money will increase, the long-term result will be reduced waste of training dollars and increased sales. That wished for unified sales process will begin to become a reality because the biggest determent to success has been turned into the biggest promoter of success.
Effective Sales Training Is All About Timing and Quantity
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES BEST PRACTICES on May 7, 2014
For many sales organizations, training salespeople is one of the largest investments made in performance improvement. From the onboarding of new hires to annual training events for the rank and file, billions of dollars are spent each year to improve the skills of employees. In fact, U.S. businesses spent more than $62 billion on training last year.
However, sales training is also one of the most perishable investments a company can make if the learning is not immediately and consistently reinforced. At least two factors conspire against the stickiness of most sales training; the amount of content delivered and the timing of the content being delivered.
Too Much, Too Soon
The sheer volume of content included in many training programs is overwhelming to salespeople. It is expensive to take a sales force out of the field, so sales leaders are motivated to jam a year’s worth of learning into a single event. In order to make the most of the investment, it’s not uncommon to see three, four or even five-day sales conferences where training is the primary activity.
With such a vast amount of information being poured onto the salespeople, it would be literally impossible for sales managers to reinforce all of this content when they return to the field. Realistically, a sales manager should spend much of his time reinforcing a single new behavior, such as call planning or questioning techniques, so it would take a team of full-time coaches to address the content of a five-day training event. As the training agenda deepens, the chance of it sticking diminishes quickly.
When the Calendar Allows
Training is typically done when it is convenient for the calendar. And not necessarily when it is the best time to learn. If the annual sales meeting is in September, then the annual training will probably be in September, too.
Unfortunately, if a new skill is not immediately reinforced, whether through coaching or by actually putting the skill into practice, it begins to erode with frightening speed. Ideally, training is held in close proximity to the need for the skill, not just when it is can be squeezed into the calendar. When a vast amount of information is given to a salesperson that does not immediately use it, the knowledge literally goes into hiding… perhaps never to return.
A Just-In-Time Approach
By looking closely at organizations with world-class sales forces, you’ll discover their approach to training is dramatically different than above. These companies have adopted what could be considered an innovative “Just-In-Time” approach to sales training.
Rather than holding comprehensive training events where a year’s worth of content is dumped onto the sales force, they opted for smaller, more focused sessions where very specific skills were taught. This allowed the salespeople to concentrate on mastering one or two skills before moving on to others.
Also, the training took place in close proximity to when the salespeople would need to use the skills. By providing the learning experience immediately before the sales force was expected to demonstrate the skills, these organizations improved the likelihood that the learning would stick. Train today, use tomorrow, allowing no time to forget.
Lose the Fire Hose
Training should be a large investment for every sales force, but the investment must be protected. A clever approach to avoiding post-training atrophy is to rethink how the training itself is delivered. Specifically, avoid at all costs a fire-hose training event that takes place when the calendar happens to allow for a good dousing.
Instead, deliver bite-sized training to your sales force when the skills are actually needed. If relevant and timely training is provided in easily digestible chunks, salespeople are more able to focus on the new skills and reinforce them through immediate usage. Usage leads to adoption, and adoption leads to improved capabilities, and that leads to a wiser training investment with better sales results.
How the Best Sales Leaders Structure Sales Training to Optimize Talent
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on January 13, 2014
Average Sales Leaders often mistake talent as being a static sales metric. You either have it, or you don’t. The best Sales Leaders know the opposite is true. Talent is a dynamic factor which they must continue to develop in their sales team.
Most organizations have some form of sales training but lack a systematic approach for continuous skill advancement. As the Sales Leader, it’s up to you to ensure instead of waiting for talent to show up, you invest in developing it.
There are four crucial stages to structure your training to produce optimal growth within your sales team:
- Pre-Session Preparation
- Training Execution
- Post Session Reinforcement
- Measuring Results
Pre-Session Preparation
Choose the right topics – An effective sales training program should promote sustainable skill improvement rather than being company, or product-focused. In order to truly grab the attention of your sales people, the skill you choose to develop must be valuable. What defines a valuable skill? One which is as complex as it is relevant. If a sales representative can learn this skill on their own, they’re not as likely to be engaged in the session.
Set clear objectives – Sales people like to be included in the decisions which pertain to them. Don’t keep the meeting a secret – be very open and clear as to why the training session is taking place and what you expect as the result. If you express the objective as quantifiable, even better. Sales people will then be incentivized to actively monitor their own performance in respect to the goals.
Assign ‘homework’ – A training session has no hope of taking hold if your sales people are not prepared to engage. Assign some pre-training work to get your people acquainted with the material. Then, stipulate they bring relevant examples and questions to make the training session more interactive.
Training Execution
Set expectations – Before the meeting, refresh everyone on the purpose of the training session and its desired outcome. List the main points and even take time to write them out. Specify what’s expected of everyone during the meeting. Beginning each training session this way ensures everyone starts off on the same foot.
Cover the topic – This is the meat of the training session – the content. In this stage, it’s imperative you take the time to explain your concepts in a clear and concise manner. What is the skill you want your team to work on? Include slides, videos, and examples to help reinforce the concept. As a bonus, you can have some of your top sales performers weigh in on these skills to add peer credibility.
Use case studies – Nothing cements an idea quite like using a real-life scenario. Explain an example where the skill wasn’t used properly and therefore produced a negative outcome. Then, refer to a case where the skill was effectively used to produce a desired outcome. Transforming theories into real concepts will ensure it sticks with your team.
Role playing – While many Sales leaders think it’s more important to explain a concept, the majority of the training session should be spent role-playing. Why? Because role-playing does work! Have different individuals perform the skill while the rest of the class watches and provides feedback. It’s not only extremely effective in helping your people comprehend the skill, but it also promotes teamwork.
Wrap up and decide next steps – Once you feel your team understands the main purpose of the session; it’s time to wrap up with the key takeaways to solidify their understanding. Before you excuse them however, make sure you have received commitments from each of them on the behaviors they will change and the skills they will adapt. Then, ask for their opinions on how they want to be held accountable for implementing these skills and the kind of support they find most beneficial. This way, you end the meeting with a clear and agreed upon goal for the future.
Post-Session Reinforcement
Reinforcement – If you have no post-session plans for reinforcement, then you’re just wasting time. Reinforcement is the key to solidifying skills into a rep’s daily routine. There are several different kinds of reinforcement – below are listed what have been found to be the most effective ones.
Peer Accountability – One of the strongest types of reinforcement comes from our peers. They are the most influential tools at your disposable and spend the most time interacting with your developing sales people. Ensure these prominent figures lead by example and reinforce the key concepts from the meeting.
Real-Time Coaching – Nothing helps you understand how well your people are implementing their training like observing them directly. Spend some time in the field watching and working with your sales people. Observe and insure they’re utilizing their new found skills and step in when they’re using them incorrectly. Real-time coaching is very effective in eliminating poor behavior.
One-to-One Meetings – Setting time aside to discuss individual progress will show the members of your team you’re serious. If they see it’s important to you, it will become equally important to them. This time can also double as personalized coaching if an individual sales person requires additional advice or assistance.
Positive Reinforcement – While observing the team, openly promote those who are successfully applying the learned concepts. Making good behavior known fosters feelings of good-will and encourages sales representatives to keep trying.
Measuring Results
Before embarking on this sales training journey, you should establish a clear objective – a particular goal you’re trying to achieve. The skill you’re attempting to teach will determine the exact sales performance metrics, the key performance indicators (KPIs) of this success. Broken down into five different levels, here are some suggested indicators:
- Observed change in behavior
- Deal Advancement
- Deals Won
- Quota Attainment
- Margin and Revenue
Each of these levels represents a different stage of learning. However, observing a change in behavior is only the first step. Once you see these skills start impacting the bottom line, you will know the training session has come full circle.
Talent is not a static metric. Successful Sales Cultures at top-performing sales businesses stress continual training and reinforcement of skills. The representatives with whom you spend time in developing will reward you with their improved performance. The best Sales Leaders understand the value in developing their talent and will invest the time into doing so.
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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Do You Have A 90 Day Sales Rep Success Plan?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION, SALES LEADERSHIP on March 25, 2013
Fortune 500 companies have a structured “On Boarding Process” which every new sales person follows. The plan lays out detailed time lines and benchmarks, specific action items and goals. This formal process is great for both the company and the new representative because it leaves nothing to interpretation and establishes shared expectations. The initial training is structured and detailed; giving your new employee the knowledge and confidence that your organization has a plan and intends to succeed.
The problem arises within many of small to mid-sized businesses. In most cases, these are owner-operated companies where the on boarding process and training falls to the owner or manager of a small sales team. Although the intentions are always good, regularly you’ll hear from the new sales person there was no process in place and they spent too much valuable time trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. Secondly, the new rep is often not sure what is expected of them in terms of direction and performance. “Welcome to the company. Here’s your price book, now go out and sell,” is not a recipe for success or a viable On Boarding Process!
Not having a process in place from day one results in the sales person losing direction and becoming frustrated, and the business owner being disappointed and fearing they have made the wrong hiring decision. So how do you fix this problem? First, regardless of the size of your organization, you must develop a written plan of action that lays out specific actions, goals and timelines for the first 30, 60 & 90 days, with a continuing plan for the first year. This may sound like a daunting task but it is actually much easier than you would think.
If you are the business owner & COE (Chief of Everything), you should look for outside expertise to assist you with this process. This can be an inexpensive way to develop a quick start program allowing you to remain focused on revenue driving activities. After all, you most likely hire an accountant, web-designer, and IT firm so why would you attempt to self manage the one area of your organization which directly affects your bottom line? Each dollar in lost sales opportunity is revenue you will never recover.
The complete 90 day plan needs to include goals, activities, product training, competition, prospecting, order processing, customer service, market evaluations, performance metrics, as well as simple things like getting to know your company and its people. Once you have a sales process in place, your new sales rep will be highly motivated, more confident and able to perform better. A detailed template you can use to create your 90 day sales rep success plan is included in the book, “Action Plan For Sales Management Success”.
Consider this analogy; You may be a good driver but will you take the time to teach your son or daughter to drive or would you rather they go to an accredited driving school? Besides, if they learn from a driving school, the insurance companies will provide a discount. It’s a better ROI for you and less stress for your kids. The same theory applies to your On Boarding Process. What’s the fastest way to make a new sales person profitable?
Studies show companies with a defined sales process consistently outperform those with no process. After all, as Harvey Mackay once said, “Failures don’t plan to fail; they fail to plan”.
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This article was originally posted by Robert J. Weese on March 12, 2013 at the B2B Sales Connection Blog
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Are We Moving Beyond The Consultative Sale Model?
Posted by Rick Pranitis in GENERAL DISCUSSION on March 21, 2013
If you look back over the last hundred years or so, there have been three or four major shifts in how major organizations sell. Each period was dominated by a specific sales model and best practices for implementing that model.
Clearly the “king of the hill” for the last thirty to forty years has been Consultative Selling. Consultative Selling emphasizes the importance of moving from a product-centric to a customer-centric sale. A focus is placed on doing a superior job in building relationships and uncovering and developing customer needs. The art and science of asking questions is a pivotal skill set.
Now for sure, each business organization and each training company has their own particular twist on Consultative Selling – for example: different questioning frameworks. But the underlying assumptions and fundamental skills are the same.
It is important to highlight, as compared to the product-centric approach, Consultative Selling has proven to be a dramatic improvement – it has worked and worked well.
With that said, if one looks very carefully, it’s possible to discern the emergence of a new model for selling in B2B markets. Like most paradigm shifts the change is not happening everywhere, all at once – over night. Instead, the change is emerging in phases with some markets and companies spearheading the way.
The important point is to be aware a change is happening and to start exploring the importance of the shift for your organization. With this in mind, let’s take an initial look at the new sales model and explore why the change is occurring.
This new sales model maintains a customer-centric approach, but the assumptions about the expectations of the customer are different. Let’s examine that difference.
Some customers are changing from wanting consultative sales people to wanting expert sales people. These customers are becoming increasingly impatient with sales people who consistently start calls with a “discover your pain” discussion. They expect the sales person to have a good handle on their needs and interests before the call. So time in the call can be spent on diagnosing and integrating the problems and on generating alternative innovative solutions which will have a positive impact on the customer’s business.
In order to conduct this type of call, the sales person must know beforehand the economic, political, market, and regulatory trends driving the customer’s business. With this knowledge in hand, they can bring a point of view to the discussion, ask second and third-level questions and work with the customer to formulate a business solution, as opposed to, starting with a basic discovery conversation. Today’s problems are complex and time matters. So customers cannot afford to start at square one to help every sales person understand their business issues.
Anytime there is a paradigm shift, it’s interesting to ask the question: Why now? Usually there are a number of voices speaking out but seldom is there total consensus. But what is common is some trend which defines the change and a match that ignites the change.
In this case it could be speculated the underlying driver is the fact customers in a wide variety of markets are facing the necessity to up their game. Market economics are demanding, competition is tough and getter tougher and a lot of the old answers have been played out.
So business-as-usual is not going to carry the day and changes which are simply incremental may help you to survive but not to prosper. Customers need new ideas they can use to innovate their business and they are expecting their suppliers to help. This business dynamic has been occurring for some time and some companies have gone through transformational changes in order to adjust.
But, what was the match that lit the fire for change in the sales function? Again consensus is unlikely to be found … but here’s something to consider.
The match which started the movement toward Consultative Selling – the key event which brought Consultative Selling to emerge – was the research done by Neil Rackham’s Huthwaite Research Group. This was subsequently turned into the all-time best seller – SPIN Selling. The research provided the credibility and the book provided the how-to.
As was the case forty years ago, a new piece of research has been conducted and a new book has been published to provide the foundation for change. In this case, the research was done by the Sales Executive Council and the book was authored by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. The book is entitled The Challenger Sale.
It’s always hard to tell whether a new set of ideas are a vanguard for an important change or simply a creative fad for promoting discussions. In this case, you may not want to bet against the former.
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This article was originally posted by Richard Ruff on June 20, 2012 to the Sales Training Blog
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Eight Reasons Great Leaders Let People Fail
Posted by Rick Pranitis in SALES LEADERSHIP on January 28, 2013
Sales leaders, how comfortable are you letting failure happen? Are you OK letting your sales manager make a mistake? Are you OK letting the sales rep lose a deal? What do you do when you see a flaw in the strategy of your sales V.P.? Do you let them execute the plan?
What should you do when you see failure on the horizon? — Let it happen!
Letting failure happen is one of the most difficult challenges of sales leaders and other leaders alike. No one likes failure, especially when we see it coming. The best leaders know this however and let it happen anyway.
Why let failure happen?
Failure is the only way to learn:
Failure is the only way we learn. As leaders we need and want people to learn and grow. Failure is a part of the learning process. If people aren’t allowed to fail, they won’t learn and without learning, they won’t grow.
It creates ownership:
When we don’t let others fail, we strip them of ownership. When we don’t let people fail, we in essence make the decision for them. We don’t let them make the final call. When people don’t get to make the call, they don’t feel attached to the end result; good or bad. Ownership is important to creating accountability. We want our people to feel ownership for their decisions and the consequences; good or bad.
People need to make their own decisions:
At the end of the day, people have to make their own decisions. They have to be empowered to make the decisions they think will work best. Preventing people from failing takes away their ability to make decisions. We have to let people chose for themselves.
It creates accountability
When people make their own decisions, it creates accountability. We can’t hold people accountable for outcomes when they aren’t given the latitude to choose for themselves. When we don’t let people fail, it’s because we chose for them. We disagreed with an approach, we saw a flaw in the thinking, and we did the work for them. When we step into avoid failure we are taking over the decision making process. Taking over the decision means it’s no longer their decision and we can’t hold them accountable for the end results. People have to be allowed to make their own decision if we want them to experience the consequences — good or bad.
It’s empowering:
When we let people fail, we are empowering them. We are telling them, “We trust you.” People need to know they are trusted for their expertise. People need to feel valued for what they know and for what they do. When we don’t let failure happen, we strip people of a sense of competence. We send the message that says; I don’t trust your judgment and therefore I’m going to do this for you. Do this too many times and your will create stunted robots, as no one will make any decisions. They will just wait for you.
You could be wrong:
Has it ever entered your mind, you could be wrong? What happens if you are wrong? What if your idea wasn’t the right one and failure happens? What if they WERE right? Now what? Just because we think we know the answer, doesn’t mean we are right. We can be wrong too.
It creates diversity, creativity and innovation:
By letting people fail, we are giving permission for people to think for themselves. When an entire organization is allowed to think for themselves it creates a wide swath of ideas and approaches for creating opportunity and to solving problems. If there is one single greatest benefit to letting people fail, this is it. When we don’t let people fail, we stunt creativity. Idea’s are put through the leadership filter and stripped of creativity. When ideas or approaches have to be run by management rather than implemented they lose their ability to be proven out. Letting failure happens means, letting ideas go out without the constricting filter of you. Leadership can’t think of all the good ideas, nor can they determine what the good ideas are. Let people fail, you’ll learn more than by trying to keep them from failing.
It’s why you pay them:
At the end of the day we hire people to do their job. If you don’t trust them to make good decisions, don’t hire them. If you do trust them, then let them fail. They will only fail once. They will learn a lot. They’ll feel as if they have ownership and that they are empowered. The will grow and get better. Letting people fail is an investment.
Let people fail. You’ll have a much more creative environment and a lot more time on your hands to SUPPORT all this new found creativity — and that’s exactly what you should be doing.
Let failure happen. You’ll be happy you did.
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