You Can Always Sell More!

“Focusing on Problems - Not Symptoms”

2011-11-22T13:02:00.000-06:00

As a sales manager, are you spending more times working to solve symptoms or problems from your sales team members? Sadly, most of the sales managers I see spend the majority of their time only working on symptoms and not problems. The majority of all the sales problems brought to me by sales people asking for help over my 30 years as a sales trainer and consultant have really only been symptoms.

Symptoms can be fixed and they will go away, but will keep coming back or reappearing as different symptoms as long as the underlying problem still exists. You go to the doctor with a cough you feel is a problem. However, the doctor cannot just give you cough medicine to suppress your cough; they need to look deeper to uncover what is really causing your cough in the first place. My Doctor loves to tell all of his patients “You bring me symptoms; I’ll give you problems, no extra charge!”

Do you remember the “Hellarewe” bird I am always mentioning; the three-foot bird living in four-foot grass? The vast majority of otherwise successful sales professionals tend only to see symptoms and not the real problems due to their lack of awareness and vision. When you are only three foot tall in four-foot grass anything in your way appears as if it is a problem to you, even when it is only a symptom and others can see the real underlying problems. The job of a sales manager is to lift your reps above the four-foot grass so they can see where they need to go and what they need to do. Helping translate symptoms into real problems that can be fixed is one of the ways you can successfully lift your reps above their four-foot grass.

So how much time are you spending with your sales team solving symptoms instead of problems?

The most common sales symptoms

Let us review the three most common symptoms sales people think are really problems, how many of these have you heard lately?

“Our prices are too high”

The most common symptom brought to me by sales people is “We lost because our prices are too high.” Most sales people see their pricing as a real problem. However, a customer’s primary evaluation of competitive proposals is not based on the differences in your price, but in the differences they perceive in your value. The greater the difference in value between competitors the greater difference in price a customer will be willing to pay.

The symptom is your prices are too high, but the real problem is your sales rep (and likely your entire company) has not done enough to position and communicate enough value differential to justify your higher price. But look how ineffective your sales coaching help would be if you only focused on trying to help your rep deal with your higher prices.

“Most of my prospects won’t agree to a second sales call”

The second most common symptom I hear from sales reps is “Most of my prospects won’t agree to a second sales call.” Notice how this symptom brought by a sales rep, along with the majority of all other sales symptoms, cannot be solved with a simple or direct solution. But if we reframe their problem into a real problem then both a solution and a set of action plans to correct it can now be identified. The symptom is the rep cannot seem to get a second appointment, but the real problem could be the prospect is not seeing enough competitive value and uniqueness to justify investing time meeting with another vendor. The real problem could also be that the prospect does not need or find value in what you offer and should not have been called on in the first place.

“We lost because of our customer’s screwed-up political environment”

The third most common symptom I am asked for advice centers around “We lost because of our customer’s screwed up political environment.” Your sales rep believes their customer’s political environment is the problem when the real problem is they did not do enough to get “higher, wider, and deeper” within their prospect’s political structure so they wound up being surprised by others having more influence or stronger interest in a competitor.

Notice how most symptoms are never caused or due to the fault of the sales rep. Screwed up political environments cannot be fixed, but me as the rep doing more to get “higher, wider and deeper” within my customer’s organization is something I can take responsibility for and actually fix or improve.

That is one of the reasons sales reps focus so much of their attention on symptoms and not problems. Notice how the majority of symptoms stated as problems by your reps can always be ended with “…so it’s not my fault.” “We lost the proposal because our prices were too high…so it’s not my fault that we lost.” Or “We lost because of our customer’s screwed up political environment…so it’s not my fault.”

How to turn sales symptoms into real problems

There are seven sales coaching ideas that can help you translate the sales symptoms brought to you by your reps into identified problems that can be worked on and solved.

Idea #1 - Never accept a rep’s first answer as the real answer

The first suggestion to help you identify real sales problems instead of just sales symptoms is never to accept a rep’s first answer or description of a perceived problem as the real answer or problem. When you ask a sales rep “What’s the problem?” or “Why did you lose the sale?” realize their first answer will most likely be a symptom meant to communicate that it is not really their fault. Most of the better sales professionals have strong egos; a strength that helps them deal with the rejection and uncertainties in selling. However, protecting their large egos will also be an underlying goal of any problem they bring to you for help. A great coaching rule is to believe that the first problem identified is usually never the most important problem that needs to be fixed or improved.

Idea #2 - Keep asking questions

The second idea to help you identify real sales problems is to keep asking questions. Because the first problem identified is usually never the most important problem that needs to be fixed, it is critical as a sales coach to keep asking questions and working to uncover the real problem, and an identified problem that can actually be fixed.

Idea #3 - Think the opposite

Another way to help identify real problems is to think the opposite of what your sales rep is telling you. If your sales rep says, “We need a new brochure to help us sell,” the opposite idea might be to ask why your rep is not able to communicate or prove more competitively unique value and support to their prospect. Since a sales rep will usually bring a perceived problem that shows it’s not their fault or responsibility then start asking and evaluating what else they could have done or needed to do that could have eliminated or will at least improved the solution to this problem.

Idea #4 - Look at it from the customer’s perspective

The fourth suggestion to help you identify real problems is to look at any problem brought to you by a rep from the customer’s perspective. I’ve observed the majority of business-to-business buyers are logical and rational decision makers. If a customer’s actions or buying decision seems flakey then you likely have invalid information or are missing significant parts of the real story. A great way to interpret sales symptoms is to evaluate how the customer must be looking at your rep and your company and to ask your rep the questions your prospect or customer was also most likely asking them.

Idea #5 - Think “above the four foot grass”

A fifth suggestion is to remember the “Hellarewe” bird problem discussed earlier. You can assume your sales rep is likely looking at their perceived problem through the four-foot grass so is unlikely to see the bigger issues or longer-term perspectives. Most perceived problems brought to you by your reps will be very “now” or “today” problems that lack the longer-term perspective or awareness. Getting your sales reps to think and talk multiple moves ahead is a great way to help identify the real underlying problems causing the symptoms your reps only see. What can you do and ask that can help your reps see the longer term or bigger picture?

Idea #6 - Never accept “We lost because our prices were too high”

The sixth idea to help you identify real sales problems is never to allow a sales rep to identify their problem as “we lost because our prices were too high.” As we have discussed in earlier articles you have never lost a proposal or business opportunity because your price was too high. Price is never the final determinant in any buying decision. The only time price becomes relevant to a buying decision is when your buyer perceives everything else; value, risk, and support levels, to all be equal. It is not that your prices are too high but instead that your perceived or communicated value is too low. The less of a differential your customer sees between competitors then the less of a differential in price they will be willing to pay. You do not effectively fight low prices by dropping your price and profit margins. There will always be another competitor waiting to undercut your prices.

You defend your higher prices by communicating and proving your added value, lower risk, and stronger support levels.

Idea #7 - Increase your selling and sales leadership skills and awareness

My seventh and final suggestion to help you identify real sales problems instead of just sales symptoms is to increase your selling and sales leadership skills and awareness as the leader of your sales team. Becoming a stronger and more aware sales coach and leader of your team is the best way to translate your team’s perceived problems into real problems that can be solved and improved. The only way you can successfully lead a team is when you have “More” than they do; more awareness, more experience, more insight, or more selling knowledge. What can you do to increase your understanding of the skills, structures and philosophies of selling? The best and easiest way you can improve your sales team’s selling efforts and success is by becoming a more knowledgeable coach and leader.

The job of a sales manager is to help every one of your sales team members achieve more than they would have achieved if you just left them alone. Your role as a coach and leader is based on your ability to ask questions, help increase insight and awareness and to lift them above the four foot “Hellarewe” bird grass, so they can see where they need to go and what they need to do. One of the best ways to increase your coaching effectiveness is constantly to be helping redefine their symptoms brought to you as perceived problems into real problems that can be fixed, improved, or eliminated.

As the manager and leader of your sales team we know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and aware enough to successfully help your sales team identify and solve the real selling problems they face on a daily basis?

Jim Pancero

"Selling to Your Buyer’s Entire Political Culture”

2011-11-08T11:17:00.000-06:00

The reality of today’s buyers is they rarely make decisions alone. A “final decision maker” will still seek opinions and insights from others, even when they alone are the final decision maker of their vendor selection. However, most sales professionals only focus their attention selling to their main buyer or decision maker and see little value talking with the rest of the buyer’s organization, after all, they say, “I’m already talking to the decision maker who signs the checks, what’s the value of talking with anyone else?”

Getting “Higher, wider and deeper” within your prospects and customers

However, increasing your relationships, connections, and customer information can significantly increase your competitive advantage. Just calling on the final or top decision maker is not enough in today’s buying culture, you need to get higher, wider, and deeper within your buyer’s organization if you want to increase your competitive advantage, and ultimately win their business.

Every organization has three levels of political awareness and power

The most powerful group is the “Inner Circle.” These are the decision makers who can easily decide what to buy and who to buy from. However, the “Inner Circle” decision makers are influenced by the second group, the “Outer Circle.” The “Outer Circle” influencers provide feedback, council and share opinions with decision makers. The third and final political group within your buyer’s organization is the group titled “What’s a circle?” This third group neither recognizes nor understands their organization’s political structure thinking there are no political levels within their company, and decisions to buy are only made on the merit of who is the best vendor who can provide the most value to their company.

The reality of buying in today’s hyper-competitive world is the more politically aware, or closer you get to the “Inner Circle” political level, the less likely these people will want to tell you the truth about what is really going on in their company.

Buyers don’t benefit telling you the truth…

The reality of buying is that there is little value in a decision maker telling you the complete truth. As an example, let’s say I’m the buyer who is buying from your competitors and you’re the sales person calling on my company. As you walk into my office I say “Thank goodness you’re here! My current supplier has been ignoring me, I can’t get any support from them, and they keep missing their promised delivery dates. Their billing system is all screwed up and no one there seems to even care about my business.” What would you be thinking as your prospect told you that? How many of you are thinking “Cha-ching!?”

Buyers have learned they have to have two levels of openness to all but their closest vendors. The first level of openness is when a buyer isn’t in “buying mode.”

This is the time where they’re not evaluating or shopping for new vendors. During this open mode buyers at all three political levels will be happy to answer any of your questions and to tell you exactly how things are going, both the good and bad, with their current suppliers. They are so open now since they don’t feel anything they say can be used against them since they’re not ready to buy again, or to renew an existing agreement at this time.

But when they’re getting ready to buy again and start shopping multiple vendors they move to the second and most restrictive level of openness. When a buyer is shopping and talking with vendors they know they’ll lose the ability to effectively negotiate with any vendor who knows about any significant gaps in current service or any displeasure with their current supplier. It’s kind of hard to be a tough negotiator and to demand a lower price from you, the vendor, if you know I’m unhappy and not likely to continue with my current supplier.

This is why it is so critical you get “higher, wider, and deeper” within a prospect’s or existing customer’s organization. You want to get higher, getting to all the decision makers in their “Inner circle” the people who sign the contracts and checks. You want to get wider, getting to anyone who will be able to influence their Inner Circle, such as other department heads or other areas of responsibility within your buyer’s organization. In addition, you want to get deeper, getting to the non-politically aware “What’s a circle” group such as their front line users and operators.

When a buyer is in their shut down “shopping mode,” the “Inner Circle” decision makers will only tell you what they think will help them negotiate more value or a lower price. Therefore, any problems with their current vendor will be hidden or dismissed, since any sign of problems with their current supplier will just help you justify why they have to pay your higher prices.

These politically aware buyers know that if you get to their less politically aware “Outer Circle Influencers” or politically clueless users and operators you could learn what is really happening, and how much their company really needs to buy from you even when you have a higher price. This is why these decision makers will work to restrict your access to anyone else within their organization during their vendor evaluations even demanding you only talk to them.

The value of thinking and planning more moves ahead than your customers…

This is why one of the foundations of success in selling is based on you thinking and planning more moves ahead than either your competitors or your buyers. Successful selling and negotiations are founded on information and awareness. The more you know about what is really going on within your prospect or customer the more you can focus your communications on positioning, and proving your greater value and ability to improve their working environment compared to any other competitive alternative. The lowest total cost vendor will always be the one who can identify and then improve the most buyer challenges and problems.

But you need to know what’s really going on in order to successfully communicate and prove your lower total cost and enhanced ability to improve their business. If you, like the majority of sales people, only wait until your customer identifies that they are ready to shop and talk with

you, then you are guaranteed to be locked out of the very information that can help you justify why you are the best vendor for their needs. You need to get into your prospects and customers political environment before they shut down into “buying mode” so you can learn what’s really going on from a variety of individuals at all three political levels: decision makers, influencers, and the front-line operators and users.

This is why it’s critical to establish as many buyer contacts at all three political levels and to start looking for new selling opportunities within your prospects and current customers before they shut down into “buying mode.” If you are able to complete the majority of your contact building and information gathering before they shut down you can then use this competitively unique information and contacts in your selling efforts even though your competitors are not allowed to talk to anyone other than the main buyer or decision maker. Even when the decision maker shuts down access to vendors you can still usually informally communicate with any contacts already established to get a clearer perspective of what’s really going on.

What can you do to get “higher, wider, and deeper” now, before your buyers move into their restrictive “buying mode?

What can you do to think and plan more moves ahead than your prospects and customers? Moreover, what can you do now to get “higher, wider, and deeper” before your decision maker shuts down the flow of information as they move into buying mode? Once again, your competitive advantage, value, and uniqueness will be based on you proactively initiating instead of reactively responding. You have to start selling, conducting your research and establishing your contacts within an organization before your buyer is ready to start evaluating, and buying if you want to increase your control of your buyers buying process.

We know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and proactive enough to think and plan more moves ahead than either your buyers or your competitors, so you can increase your competitive advantage and ability to win the business, even at a higher price?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More…By Positioning Buyers to Use Your Low Risk Customer Buying Process”

2011-10-25T10:58:00.000-05:00

What is your selling approach and competitive uniqueness? Is your selling strategy to win the business based on having the lowest prices or are you selling on your greater value and lower total cost?

Less skilled sales people tend to gravitate to selling on price. They lack the skills of probing to understand better, their prospects real needs. They tend to sell products that are cheaper in their construction, have fewer performance functions, come with less support, and are less durable.

One of the key ways these “selling cheap” sales people increase their competitive advantage and selling success is by accelerating or shortening their customer’s evaluation and buying process. After all, if I have a cheaper, less supported and lower functioning product compared to my competitors, then I can increase my odds of winning by accelerating how you, the buyer, make your buying decision. In addition, the faster and sooner I can get you to make a buying decision then the less likely you will be as a buyer to uncover my product’s competitive gaps or functional exposures that exist in my cheaper product offering.

This is one of the reasons companies selling on low price tend to go in early in the selling process offering special prices only available for a short period of time. If they can make their special discounts or pricing look attractive enough, they might get a buyer to accelerate their buying decision and miss what they are really giving, compared to buying from a stronger competitor.

The key to selling higher priced products or services against low price competitors.

The key to selling higher priced products or services against low price competitors is to increase your customer’s competitive evaluation and decision process. It makes sense doesn’t it? You can increase your competitive advantage selling higher priced, greater value and lower risk products when you can get your customer or prospect to conduct a complete and extensive evaluation of all their competitive alternatives. The greater your value and uniqueness then the more likely you are to win when your customer or prospect gains a complete and detailed understanding of everything they are going to get from all of the vendors going after their business. A more complete competitive evaluation will also prevent your buyer from being surprised by selecting a cheaper product they later discover was under-configured and ignoring what they really wanted and needed.

Presenting your customers with the “low risk customer buying” process.

One of the best ways to persuade your buyer to complete a more through competitive evaluation is by showing them a more customer focused process or structure that can help them through their evaluation. The goal is to help your customer understand how to evaluate all of the aspects, both product functionality and performance, as well as the service and support capabilities of all proposals, both yours and your competitors.

Proposing your suggested buying process has to be handled properly. You will position yourself and your company as more professional, ethical and customer focused if you are able to offer your customer buying suggestions that come across as more balanced and fair than anything being suggested by your competitors.

The first step in any selling process is to lower your customer’s resistance and to increase their trust in your offers of help. The more you lower their resistance and increase their trust in you and your company then the more likely they will be to consider and follow your advice. You can best accomplish this resistance lowering trust building process by conducting more research, asking more questions and spending more time understanding their total business than what your competitors are attempting to do.

Fairly early in your selling process, but after you feel you’ve stabilized your relationship and built up their trust, you want to start asking how they plan to evaluate all of their competitive choices. The less structured or complete their evaluation plans then the more you are going to be competitively exposed as the higher priced, but greater value vendor.

You will come across as more customer focused and professional if you help your buyers evaluate and protect their best interests. The goal here is to have them see how concerned you are for them making the best decision for their business, and your confidence that the more complete their evaluation, then the more likely and confident you are that you’ll win their business.

The best way to position your suggested customer buying process is by positioning the questions you have found have been of most value to your other customers in the past. You will be most effective if you present these buying suggestions as something you encourage your buyers to ask of all vendors going after their business, including you.

You want to present these suggested questions verbally to your buyer but also have a letter prepared to hand them at the conclusion of your suggestions. You want to present your suggested low risk customer buying process as a business letter instead of as a printed brochure. A letter on your company stationary and addressed to them looks more intimate and special to each customer where a brochure looks like it’s been printed and is being presented to all customers.

It’s also a good idea to carry unaddressed copies of this letter with you at all times just in case you have the opportunity to share this information with a new prospect or contact. Even though the letter is not addressed directly to them, it can still impress them with your personal focus to their buying issues and challenges.

Suggested low risk customer buying process letter.

This letter and suggested buying process will work equally well selling intangible services, equipment, or consumable supplies. Though these same four suggested buying questions will work for any product or service selling environment, you’ll want to customize the detailed evaluation questions contained under each of these four questions to better focus on your proposed business application. A suggested letter format for selling your equipment to your customer can read like this…

Dear << Customer’s name >>

Thank you for your interest in << Your company name and product brands being proposed. >> Our past customers have shared the following four questions as a way to help you lower your risk and ultimately achieve the lowest total cost equipment selection if you ask all vendors (including us) being considered to quantify and prove to you:

1) “What’s my total cost?”

- Are all the required accessories and tools included in your quoted price?

2) “How will you support me?”

- How will you prove your “24/7” support?

- Equipment performance record

- Service technicians and support availability

- Parts inventory/availability

3) “How much risk am I taking doing business with you?”

4) “How will you help me improve my business?”

We look forward to working with you to fully explain and outline exactly how we can successfully answer these and all of your other questions.

Sincerely,

As a higher priced, but lower total cost vendor you will increase your chances of winning when your customer conducts a through and complete evaluation of all competitive alternatives being considered. Presenting this letter and these suggested buying questions, and being able to provide strong answers to each of these questions is one of the best ways to prove you are the lower risk, lower total cost and most effective solution for your customers, even when you have a higher price.

We know you’re good…now the question is….are you good enough…and customer focused enough to offer these four questions to help communicate and prove your added value and lower risk so you can increase your competitive advantage and selling success?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More, By Making Sure It’s ‘No Problem!’”

2011-09-27T14:08:00.000-05:00

There‘s a new term that’s crept into today’s selling and service language that’s having a severe and negative impact on our customers and how they view our efforts to help them, and I bet it’s a term you’ve used yourself in the last 24 hours when talking with your customer.

And the term is…“No problem!”

I have an unusual food allergy, I’m allergic to garlic and garlic has become a pervasive spice used today in almost all sauces, anything deep fried as well as most foods served at meetings. When I go to any restaurant or meeting I have to specifically ask for help to identify what I can eat that doesn’t contain garlic.

But when I ask the wait staff for help with my garlic problem the most common response I hear back is…”No problem!” Well to me it’s a big problem, and not a response that makes me feel comfortable or trust them taking serious enough my questions about what I can or can’t eat at their buffet.

Recently I asked a sales person trying to sell me a new camera if they offer support in case I have a problem or failure with any of the equipment I’m thinking of buying and instead of telling me how great their service and support are, they tell me “No problem!”

How many times have you or your support team used this phrase with your most important customers? One of my friends who runs a farm shared how they recently had their tractor break down in the middle of planting and they needed urgent service from their local equipment dealer. The service tech quickly arrived and got my friend’s tractor back up and running much faster than my friend expected. Impressed with the service he was receiving he thanked the service tech for getting him back up and running so fast, and the service tech responded by saying “No problem!”

Well, to my friend, his tractor being down at such a prime usage time was a major problem and getting up and running so fast was a real added value of doing business with that equipment dealer. But even when my friend identified this added value and thanked the service tech the service tech’s response of “No problem!” only neutralized any of the value and good will that dealer was receiving from such a successful repair.

How often are you and your support team neutralizing any value differential or customer satisfaction with your responses? Look how much damage responses like “No problem” generates within a buyer.

What did it cost that equipment dealer to get my friend’s tractor up and running faster than he expected?
I bet it was because that dealer invested in a fleet of in-field service trucks and trained technicians. They also carried more spare parts inventory and did more training of their service team than their competitors. And I bet the reason they invested in all this extra service and support was so they could increase their competitive advantage within their markets allowing them to charge a higher price and still win the majority of the business.

But after this dealer made all of these investments to increase their value and uniqueness…it all got discarded by the service tech responding to a thank you for a great job with “No problem!”

And this is not just a local problem with us here in the United States, or even North America. I recently had the opportunity to visit Helsinki Finland, Paris France and London England, and heard the response several times of “No problem” in all three cities.

So…is this “No problem!” problem a problem with your sales and support teams?

Some suggestions…

The first idea or suggestion is to make your entire team aware of how damaging responding with “No problem!” is to your business, your brand, and your value and uniqueness in your markets. Every time someone now tells me “No problem!” I immediately respond with, “You mean there’s no value.”

The second suggestion is to get your management team to commit to stopping this negative selling language within your company. Just making your people aware of the damage this type of “No problem” response generates is not enough. Stopping this language within your company team will require you to break people’s habits, and that takes both time and the attention of all your managers to listen for and coach your people into giving more positive selling responses instead.

So what’s a good response to give a customer instead of saying “No problem?” Well, just about anything said will likely be more positive. But if a customer thanks you for your fast service times, like my farmer friend told his tractor service tech, the simplest response could have just been saying “Thank you!” A more persuasive and proactive response might be to say “Thanks for noticing how fast we work, we think it’s one of the reasons our customer’s keep using our service and buying from us.”

The reality of customers is they tend to evaluate all vendors based on the mistakes or weakest things we have (or haven’t) done for them lately, not based on the strongest or best things we’ve done. An important part of success in selling today is to minimize, repair or improve the weaknesses that exist within your company and customer support efforts so your true value and competitive strengths can be seen and understood.

The reality of driving any change within an organization is that it takes time, attention, and repetitive feedback and coaching in a positive environment to actually make long-term changes to the selling habits of your team.

The goal is to coach all members of your team; your managers, drivers, administrative people, ordering or parts counter staff, service techs and all sales people, to respond to any opportunity by saying something positive that’ll affirm and reinforce your uniqueness and brand. Remember that branding is predictability. The more consistent your responses to a customer then the more consistency and predictability they’ll hopefully see in your products or services and buying from you.

After all , we know you’re good…now the question is….are you and all the members of your sales and support teams good enough, and persuasive enough to not respond to a customer by saying “No problem!”? Instead use that opportunity to increase your value, your uniqueness, and your brand in the eyes of your customers and prospects.

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More by Becoming More of A ‘Managing Manager”

2011-09-13T16:26:00.001-05:00

Are your salespeoplemaximizing all of the selling opportunities available in your markets? How areyou, as their sales manager, contributing to their selling success andprofitability? What “management style”do you utilize to lead your sales team?

There are twobasic managerial styles or philosophies of leading a sales team. You can manageand lead as a “Doing” Manager or as a “Managing Manager.”

Are You A “Doing” Manager?

The majorityof sales managers only function as “Doing”managers. A “Doing” sales manager isa manager who has multiple responsibilities other than managing and leading a salesteam. There are three major categories of “Doing”sales managers:

- A SellingSales Manager - This is someone who splits their time between functioningas a salesperson and acting as a sales manager to other salespeople. A “Selling Sales Manager” spends part oftheir time selling their own customers and the rest supporting the salespeoplereporting to them. A “Selling SalesManager” normally handles the largest (or most important) accounts and isthe busiest member of the sales team. This is the most common type of “Doing” Manager within most“business to business” distribution companies.

- A FullTime “Take Over” Sales Manager - This sales manager sees themselves as afull time manager and leader but in reality is only functioning as the “LeadDoer.” Instead of coaching others on how to do things they would rather just doit themselves because they then know it will be done right. A “Take Over” SalesManager on a sales call will take a sales call away from their sales rep andwill do all the selling “because this account is just too important.” Whencoaching a salesperson, a “Take Over” Manager will just tell the rep exactlywhat to do instead of coaching the rep so they discover the best answer ontheir own.

- A WorkingSales Manager - This position is normally only present in small companieswhere everyone handles a variety of jobs and responsibilities. These are the salesmanagers who split their time between managing their salespeople and working atsome other task such as running a piece of equipment or running the entirecompany.

Do any ofthese “Doing” Manager profiles describeyou and your management style? Though each management approach has a differentset of problems, they all share the significant challenge of shifting theirfocus between successfully coaching and leading a sales team and handlinganother radically different responsibility of just feeling they should doeverything themselves.

It’s hard towork for a “Doing” Manager. They tend to offer very little coaching ordiscussions of how to handle situations but instead jump in and take over whatthe salesperson is doing. If you ask a “Doing” Manager how to un-jam the officecopier they’ll most likely just do it for you.

Have You Ever Been Trained As A Sales Manager?

The mainreason most sales managers act as “Doing Managers” is they’ve never beenformally trained in how to lead salespeople. Over 90% of all the sales managersI see in my programs have never attended even a full day of sales managementtraining.

How did youbecome a sales manager? Most started off as salespeople and either out-sold orout-lasted the others to finally get promoted to sales manager. And why wereyou so successful as a salesperson? Most likely it was because you were a “Super-Doer.”A “Super-Doer” is a sales rep who has learned it’s easier to just do everythingthemselves than it is to go through all the time and hassle to ask others forhelp. They survived under the maxim “If you want it done right, you might aswell do it yourself.”

So now wetake these successful “Super-Doers” and promote them to sales management butgive them no training and very little coaching. So the first time one of yournew reports brings you a problem how do you solve it? Well as a “Super-Doer” or“Take Over” Sales Manager of course and you just do it yourself.

It takestraining to understand how to coach others on how to do something instead ofjust doing it for them. How much sales management training have you had on howto coach and lead others?

The Goal Is To Become a Stronger “Managing Manager”

The solutionto this “doing” manager problem is to become more of a coach and leader thanthe “lead doer.” The goal is to become a stronger “Managing Manager” where youunderstand your greatest value to your company and your sales team is yourability to help others become more effective and successful, not by being the“lead doer” but instead becoming the coach and strategist. A successful“Managing Manager” also realizes they’re least effective or productive whenthey try to actually “Do” things for their sales reps that the reps should bedoing on their own.

A sales teamneeds to be coached and led. You cannot build a successful sales force by justfixing problems and doing things for them. The goal of sales management is tosignificantly grow a sales force, not just maintain your current performancelevel. And that means you need to coach and teach each member of your team howthey can improve their performance and income.

How mucheffort have you invested in helping each member of your team understand howthey can improve and strengthen their skills, structures and philosophies ofselling?

How to Become a Stronger “Managing Manager”

Becoming astronger “Managing Manager” means realizing your strength is in your wisdom,awareness and the ability to help others see further than they do now.

The majority ofproblems facing your experienced salespeople do not focus on productivity orfunctional implementation issues. An experienced sales rep usually has thoseskills under control. Growing the sales volumes and profitability of anexperienced salesperson requires you, as their sales manager, to help changetheir focus, approach, messaging or persuasive style. These kinds of changesinvolve more than just “fixing”problems but instead require your coaching and guidance to help your rep realizethey need to redirect andrefocus their efforts.

When mostsales managers find one of their reps mentally banging their head against thewall they’ll ask them what they are doing. The rep, while still banging theirhead against the wall responds, “I’mtrying to find the door to leave this room.” Your rep is working hard andtrying their best but just lack direction and focus. As their sales manager,your job is not to do their job for them, but to gently grab their shouldersmoving them over a few feet and then watching them leave the room through theopen doorway. How are you redirecting and refocusing each of your salespeople?

Strategically Redirecting and Refocusing Each member of Your Sales Team

Considermaintaining a coaching focus with your sales team by asking their opinionbefore giving them the correct answer. The best coaches ask the most questionsunderstanding that a salesperson discovering an answer on their own (but withyour coaching guidance) will retain and believe in the idea much longer than ifit’s just handed to them. As you work with your people consider continuallyasking questions like:

“And thenwhat do you think you should do?”
“How doyou think your customer’s going to react to this and how will you handle it?”
“What haveyou seen happen before that might give us an idea of the best actions to take?”
“What elsecan you be doing with them that can increase your selling value anduniqueness?”

Becoming astronger “Managing Manager” means increasing your focus and emphasis on askingquestions and coaching advice. Your job as a sales manager is to help eachindividual achieve more than they would have without your involvement. How areyou helping each of your people understand and work toward increasing theirselling skills and financial success?

As the manager of your sales teamwe know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and committedenough to strengthen your questioning and coaching skills so you can become aneven stronger “Managing Manager” to your team?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More By Strengthening Your Listening Skills”

2011-08-30T18:12:00.000-05:00

How good a listener are you? When I ask this question of experienced sales pro’s the overwhelming majority immediately identify they’re great listeners and identify their listening skills as one of the reasons for their long-term selling success. But the reality is significantly different for most salespeople, even the most experienced and successful ones.

The reality of selling is that most salespeople sell by talking. They do ask questions of their customers but usually only with the goals of first qualifying them to make sure they’re a viable prospect and then second, by asking them enough questions to learn and identify issues or customer “hot buttons” they can then sell to.

How interactive are your sales calls?

With over 28 years as a sales and sales management consultant I’ve had the opportunity to ride with a wide variety of salespeople to watch them sell. I’ve ridden with salespeople selling in distribution, manufacturing, capital equipment, agricultural, services and financial industries and the vast majority spent considerably more time talking than they did asking questions and listening.

There are two tests you can take to identify how much you actually talk with a prospect or client compared to listening to what they say.

The first test you can do alone. Next time you’re spending the day on the telephone talking with either new prospects or existing clients consider recording some of your phone calls. The goal of this recording is for you to go back later and listen to your call with a stop watch so you can time out exactly how many total minutes you talked during your call. You don’t need any fancy equipment to do this, any type of tape player or dictation recording device will work. You don’t even need to record both sides of your conversation, if you just record your side you can still time it out by assuming any silence was when the customer was talking.

Another way to discover how much you talk vs. listen during a sales call is to ask your manager or another sales rep to ride with you for the day. You can introduce them as an observer or down play their role so they’re not actively participating in the call. Ask them to bring along a stop watch and, while keeping the watch in their pocket and without the customer’s knowledge, they can now turn the watch on and off whenever your customer starts talking so you can get an accurate total of the minutes your customer actually talked. By the way, if you do this exercise make sure your stop watch makes no noise when you turn it on or off!

I’ve taken a stop watch on hundreds of sales calls I’ve ridden on. I never tell the rep until the end of the day I was even timing their calls. After the day of selling I’ll ask the rep how much of their calls they think they talked, most reps answer somewhere between 40 to 60%. But the stop watch identifies numbers that usually range in the 80 to 90 percentages. The majority of salespeople do all the talking on a sales call!

The sales calls are always interactive, but sales rep is still doing the majority of the talking. How long does it take a customer to ask you the question “Why are you so expensive?” maybe two or three seconds? But how long does it take you as the rep to answer that type of question, maybe ten minutes?

The average sales call I’ve experienced usually involves the sales rep getting the customer to open up and “chit chat” as a way to lower their resistance and to work to establish their friendship. But once the call actually starts to focus on the customer’s business needs and opportunities then the rep tends to shift to asking their customer questions that only generate a few seconds response followed up by several minutes of the rep selling or explaining their unique value and solutions that can benefit their customer.

What percentage of your sales calls do you talk vs. listen? The concepts are old and established but not followed by the majority of salespeople. How many salespeople do you know with the old attitude of “if your not tell’en your not sell’en?”

Five Suggestions To Help Improve Your Customer Listening Skills

Want to become a better and more persuasive listener to your customers? The following five suggestions are established concepts of listening, but still completely valid and viable today.

The first suggestion is to realize how much talking you’re now doing on your calls. The first step to fixing anything is awareness. Identifying the high percentage of time you actually talk on a sales call is the first step to improving your ability to listen. Consider timing some of your calls to identify your real percentage of listening vs. talking.

The second suggestion is to concentrate on actually changing or fixing this problem. Decide to invest next week to improve your listening skills and effectiveness. Write yourself notes in your calendar, pasted to your car dashboard and prominently hung in front of your desk. Ken Blanchard who co-wrote the “One Minute Manager” identified that “the things that get worked on first tend to get fixed first.”

What can you do to make improving your listening skills a stronger emphasis in the coming weeks?

The third suggestion is to get help. You’ll have a greater probability of actually sticking to this improvement effort if you share that effort with your sales manager and co-workers.

The fourth suggestion is to take more notes on your sales calls. Most salespeople don’t take enough notes on a call. This is also a common problem with more experienced salespeople. Experienced reps feel they know so much about their business and products they don’t feel the need to write as much down during a call. But note taking is not just meant to capture valuable customer information, it’s also a way to affirm to your customer the importance of what they’re saying and sharing. Note taking is a highly effective way to subtly communicate your interest and respect for what your customer is sharing. Customers will keep talking and provide you with more detail if you’re affirming what they’re saying by writing down their significant points or comments.

The fifth suggestion to improve your listening skills is to use some of the proven techniques of customer engagement and communication.

Paying attention, maintaining eye contact and not interrupting your customer while they’re talking are great ways to affirm the importance of their statements.

Sales trainer Tom Hopkins suggests when talking with a customer that you end every statement with a question. So instead of saying “This unit comes in four different models” you instead might say “This unit comes in four different models, which one do you like best?” By ending every statement with a question mark you’ll constantly be pulling your prospect or customer into your conversation and into talking.

Sales trainer Jeff Slutsky talks about an idea he uses of repeating the last few words a customer has said to encourage them to continue talking. If your customer says “We had a fire in our warehouse last night.” You would immediately respond by saying “A fire in your warehouse?” If your customer says, “So far there are four people assigned to this project” you would answer with “Four people are assigned?” By responding with an encouraging questioning statement you’ll help your customer to keep talking and hopefully sharing new insights or awareness you can now effectively use to present a more valuable and unique solution.

Are you taking your sales listening and questioning skills for granted?

Listening and questioning skills are fundamental components of any effective sales call. But the lack of effective listening skills is an ongoing challenge faced by the majority of otherwise experienced and successful sales professionals. Can you improve any of your listening skills and techniques? Do you think you could spend more time listening and less time talking on your next sales calls?

We know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and persuasive enough to strengthen your competitive selling advantage by becoming a better listener to your customers?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More…By Helping Your Reps Shift From Being Intuitive To Being More Structured And Consistent In Their Selling Efforts”

2011-08-17T13:46:00.000-05:00

Do you have professional salespeople on your team? Of course almost all sales managers would answer yes, even when it’s not really the correct answer.

What’s your definition of a professional? The best definition I’ve heard of a professional is based on their consistency of performance. Describing someone as a professional is also saying there’s an expectation that they, as a professional, will have a consistency in their ability to perform and produce. Do you want to increase your customer’s perceptions that your team members are professionals? Then we need to increase your sales team’s ability to consistently act and respond, following some type of pre-defined and tested structure or process. Without consistency there is no professionalism!

Selling Best Practices

Today’s quality programs call these pre-defined and tested structures or processes “best practices.” The goal of any “best practice” is to have a researched and proven system, process or structure that’ll help your people, when they follow your “best practice” to increase the consistency and ultimately the professionalism of their selling efforts.

Sadly though, most sales organizations have few “best practices” defined and in place for their sales team.

Defined “Best Practices” include identifying the steps of a sales call you and your team have found work best for your selling environment and customers. They also include defining the prospecting steps or “best practices” you follow, from the time you identify a new prospect until the time you close your first significant sale. What about the “best practices” you’ve defined to help maintain and grow your best accounts over a year?

An organized and focused sales team will function more like a police ‘SWAT’ team than as a bunch of independent gun fighters. ‘SWAT’ teams practice and rehearse to insure all understand and can immediately implement the “best practices” for any team action, and all members of a ‘SWAT’ team learn and benefit from any single individual’s mistakes or experiences.

But independent gun fighters, the philosophy of most sales team’s today, believe that each territory; each customer; and each sales rep’s style; are all so unique that it would be impossible to identify, much less follow, any consistent process or stepped structure.

How many “best practices” have you and your team defined, and an even more important question is, how many of your defined “best practices” are your sales team members tracking and following on any type of consistent basis?

The Challenge Of Shifting To A Structured Selling Philosophy

So why do so few sales teams have any organized or defined “best practices” of selling and account management?

Most salespeople are completely intuitive in their selling efforts lacking any kind of defined structure or process. This intuitive approach to selling is usually first caused because the majority of salespeople have never been through any type of formalized sales training where they were taught the basic processes, steps and structures of selling, the foundation “best practices” of selling.

Because of this lack of formal sales training it’s not surprising that most now only approach selling as an intuitive art instead of as a structured science. You can test this out, just ask any member of your sales team to define the steps of a sales call, the most basic structure in selling. Most cannot define the steps and they sure don’t think of them when selling in front of a customer.

An “intuitive” focused sales rep utilizes their feelings or “gut reactions” to decide what to do next at an account. They tend to be constantly re-inventing their selling processes and structures since they rarely apply the same sales steps or structures to multiple accounts. They also don’t tend to think many moves ahead because without any kind of defined steps or structures they constantly keep changing their plans and “next steps” as they progress through an account.

The Job of A Sales Manager

So how can you shift your sales reps from their current random “intuitive” selling approaches present in most teams to more consistent “Best practice” selling processes and structures?

Well, that’s where your job as a manager or leader of your sales team is supposed to come in. The most important goal of a sales manager is to help each and every one of your salespeople to achieve more than they would have achieved if you just left them alone.

Two of the best ways you can help each of your salespeople achieve more in their job is by first driving a shift in their habits and selling efforts, and then second, by working to better define and validate the “best practices” your team needs to follow.

Shifting Behaviors In Experienced Sales Professionals

The best sales professionals all tend to have strong egos and are fiercely independent. This independence is also one of the greatest challenges you now need to overcome if you want to make your team more consistent and focused in their selling efforts.

You can’t define any selling “best practices” if each member of your team believes there’s a different, and better way, to do just about everything in their job.

As you work with your team you’ll need to make sure they feel you’re working to define and clarify their ideas or “best practices.” Due to their strong egos they’ll be more willing to work to define a selling process or structure if they feel it’s being based on what they’ve already proven works.

Start Meeting To Define Your Selling “Best Practices”

The best way to begin defining any selling “best practice” with your team will be by picking one of your most important selling structures to work on first. You’re more likely to get the support of your entire team if you start working on a selling process or structure that your team feels is most important to everyone’s selling success.

It will become easier to define additional selling “best practices” when you can get your first “best practice” defined, agreed to, and consistently followed by your entire team.

Start By Defining Your New Business “ID to Close” Selling “Best Practice”

Defining your new business “identify to close” selling process is one of the best places to begin your team planning efforts. Most salespeople have never quantified their steps of processes required to sell a new customer, but most sales managers would like to immediately increase the amount of prospecting being done by their sales team.

On a white board or flip chart draw a horizontal line with an arrow drawn on the end of the right side of your line. On the left side of your line write “Identify” and on the right side just before your arrow write “close.” The arrow pointing to the right after the close signifies your selling process will continue after your initial close or first significant order.

Now you have a visual showing the path or “best practice” you want to follow from the time you identify a new prospect opportunity until the time you have closed your first significant sale to this new account.

Now you want to start brainstorming with your team to identify all of the major steps or efforts that, when consistently followed, will have the greatest probability of you winning the business and closing the sale.

Of course there’ll always be unique situations or challenges with each account. But the “best practices” of selling are based on the philosophy that it’s better to have a defined process that works 90% of the time, but still requires minor tweaking or adjusting, than it is to have no defined process and to assume you need to invest the time and effort to redefine the steps you want to follow with each new account.

Try these steps to work your team through developing your new business “ID to Close” selling process.

First ask each team member to write down the new business steps they believe work best today. You want each person to write down their own answers first so you can see where each of your people are today. If you start off with everyone shouting out their opinions your meeting will be dominated by your most senior players with your junior reps just nodding their head in agreement.

Now start to build a common starting list of your new business steps by adding each reps answers or opinions to your list.

Now that you have at least some structure identified it’s time to start challenging your list to see what else needs to be added. Ask each of these questions one at a time to help fuel your reps thought processes and creativity:

1. How many of the steps you’ve identified are just the reactive steps of selling that do nothing to increase your selling or competitive advantage? “Submitting your proposal to the customer,” though important, is still a reactive step that does nothing to increase your selling uniqueness or advantage. How many proactive steps can you insert into your process? Proactive steps are efforts or activities that you initiate and that, when implemented, help promote your uniqueness and value. What can you and your team do to add more proactive steps to your list?

2. Do our defined steps include anyone besides the sales rep doing anything at the account? Most initial stepped lists from reps only include the things the sales rep needs to do and tends to ignore defining how anyone else can contribute to winning this new business. What about adding any steps or actions that involve you and the rest of your management team? What about technical or installation preparation and support?

3. Do any of your defined steps include efforts to get “higher, wider and deeper” within the prospect? Most sales reps sell to too few contacts within an account. Just talking to a financial buyer like a purchasing agent; and a technical buyer like a plant supervisor; might be what your competitors are doing, but we’ll increase your selling advantage and odds of winning the business if we can get you to go “higher, wider, and deeper” into the prospect’s account than your competitors. Are there steps you can add that’ll get you higher, wider and deeper?

4. Do we have any steps aimed at communicating and proving our overall selling philosophy and market uniqueness? Do we have anything defined that’ll help us prove and validate our claims of better value and support?

Once Defined You Now Need To Test And Validate

Once you feel your new business prospecting “best practice” steps are defined and agreed to by your team it’s now time to validate your new stepped process. And the only way to really test out your newly defined process is to start using it to see if it really works. You want all members of your team to agree to utilize and follow your newly defined steps. You, as their manager, also need to constantly be referring back to your defined steps any time you’re talking about a new account with one of your team members.

Initially you want to debrief with the entire team every time a new prospect process is completed, whether you won or lost the sale. You want to go back and review what your rep did and how closely it followed your newly defined steps. Are there additional steps we need to add? Does our order need to be rearranged or improved? Only by debriefing and discussing your process will you be able to identify if it does indeed work. By constantly talking about it you’ll also help drive your team to be using it on a more consistent basis.

“Best Practices” Only Stay Alive When Led By A Manager

Selling process or structure “best practices” will only stay in place and be utilized by your team as long as you keep these processes alive. You as the sales manager need to be constantly talking up these processes and reminding your team members of their importance.

Any time a rep asks for help on a new account you want to start off the conversation by asking “So what step are you on now?” and also asking “And briefly tell me how you followed our new business steps to get you to where you are today with this account?”

Turning Experienced Independent Gunfighters into A Selling ‘SWAT’ Team Takes Work

So how do you feel about these selling “best practices?” Does it make sense to work to shift your salespeople from their current intuitive selling steps where they keep making it up as they go along?

This type of shift in selling habits and efforts has to be led by a manager and will only stay alive within your team as long as you maintain a dialogue and attention on your team’s defined structural “best practices.”

Success in selling today is based on being able to have a sales team who can consistently sell as professionals. And that consistency begins with the definition, and ongoing implementation of, the “best practice” systems and processes that’ll help your team increase both the efficiency and effectiveness of their selling efforts.

As the manager of your sales team we know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and committed enough to lead your team as they shift to a ‘SWAT’ Team selling philosophy and follow your defined selling “best practices?”

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More…By Taking Some Time to Look For New Smokestacks”

2011-07-27T09:14:00.000-05:00

Everyone agrees with new business prospecting being a critical component of any sales territory. However, even during tougher economic conditions the majority of sales people still tend to over-service their existing customers and do as little as possible to find new clients. What about you? How much new business prospecting have you been investing in lately?

My Uncle Russ was always a hero to me when I was in my early 20’s and was new to selling. He had retired in the early 1960’s from a successful career selling firebricks used to line industrial furnaces. As a new salesman for the IBM Corporation’s large computer division, I was just beginning to understand how selling and persuasion really worked, and Russ always seemed to have the answers to my many questions. In the early 70’s we would sit on his porch for hours talking about selling in general and my various issues and challenges as a new salesperson in particular. It seemed that selling firebricks and selling large computer systems was not that different after all.

One of Russ’s favorite questions was to ask me how much time I had recently spent “looking for new smokestacks.” As a career salesman, Russ understood the critical importance of an ongoing new business prospecting system as the foundation to the growth and success of any sales territory. He also understood how an ongoing prospecting effort was meant to do more than just increase your sales…he knew it was also meant to help increase your selling energy.

Are you prospecting to increase your energy?

Russ spent hours helping me shape my philosophy and approach to selling. He was always telling me “…you won’t keep doing anything long-term…including selling…unless it stays fun and exciting!” He said that after 40 years of selling he realized that the more excited and interested he was in what he was doing the more success he seemed to have doing it.

He also helped me understand that only calling on the same customers, talking, and selling the same stuff year after year, could become boring and could strip away your energy and joy for your job…and for Russ…that’s where looking for smokestacks came in.

Russ continued to encourage me to invest a half day a week, or at least two days a month, just driving around new areas “looking for new smokestacks.” As a firebrick salesman, he knew that any new smokestack he could find likely contained some type of furnace at its base that would likely need new firebrick at some time in their future. When was the last time you took a few extra hours out of your selling week “looking for new smokestacks” that might lead to new customers for you?

At Russ’s urging, I started carving out a few hours each week to drive around a new area of town or a new industrial complex looking for companies I had not talked to yet. When I did find a new company, I would stop in to talk with the receptionist or guard.

With Russ’s coaching I learned to say to the receptionist or guard that I had not called on their company before but thought my products might be of value and interest to someone within their company. I then asked them for the name of who they felt I should be talking to so I could call them later to see if they were indeed interested in talking further about their need for what I sold.

Most of the time I was able to leave with the name and number of someone new to contact, but sometimes they would encourage me to call that person from their lobby so I could introduce myself and begin talking. My success following this system eventually led to my office promoting me to be in charge of all new business prospecting within our Cincinnati branch.

The Three Greatest Benefits of Ongoing Active Prospecting

Because of Russ’s guidance and expertise, I was able to experience personally the three greatest benefits of ongoing active prospecting…

Prospecting Benefit #1 - Increased revenues and commissions

The first and most obvious benefit of any type of new business prospecting is the expansion of your territory, sales volumes, and commissions. Several industry studies have confirmed the average “business-to-business” sales territory turns over, or loses, an average of 2 to 5 percent of their customers and revenues each year due to issues outside their control such as companies being purchased, going bankrupt, or moving their business out of your area.

Additionally, if you don’t have enough depth of coverage in an account you could also lose customers because your main contact got promoted or left their company. You might even have lost business due to being out-sold by your competitors.

The reality of selling is that any established sales territory will go through a natural shrinkage every year. Either you can try selling more stuff to your existing customers, the path chosen by most reps, or you can increase your prospecting so your total sales and customers continue to increase every year.

How many customers and how many sales did you lose last year, and what are you doing about it?

Prospecting Benefit #2 - Increased selling energy and excitement

The second benefit of new business prospecting is much less obvious compared to our first benefit of increasing your sales, but can be even more important to your long-term selling success.

This second benefit is the additional energy and excitement you can gain by occasionally doing something different and enjoyable. Everyone needs a break no matter what his or her job. There is new energy that can affect all aspects of your job that comes from starting a new business relationship, finding a new selling opportunity, or just getting to talk with a new contact about the value provided by you and your company. What can you do to add new and additional prospecting energy to your selling efforts?

Prospecting Benefit #3 - Strengthened negotiating skills

The third benefit to ongoing prospecting comes as a direct result of you prospecting and finding new customers; you will become a stronger and tougher negotiator with all of your customers.

There is a simple concept of negotiations that affects all sales professionals, the more unfulfilled opportunity you see in your sales territory the tougher a negotiator you will become with all customer discussions and negotiations.

Consider these two scenarios. In the first scenario, you are coming to the end of a tough business year and though you are close, you have still not made your sales quota and the bonuses that come with making your numbers for the year. You really have only one sale left to close that will make, or break you, making your numbers and bonuses for the year. As you are talking to your prospect they tell you, “you’re prices are way out of line…what are you going to do about your pricing to become more competitive?” If you lose this sale, you also lose your bonus and the recognition for the year. What would you do? Of course, most will cut their price to insure making the sale and their annual quota.

Now consider the second scenario. You are coming to the end of your year and it has been a spectacular sales year for you and your company. Things are so good you are having a hard time keeping up with all the new business opportunities and time demands from your other existing customers. Now that same prospect tells you “you’re prices are way out of line…what are you going to do about your pricing to become more competitive?” What would you do now? Bet you won’t cut your price!

This is the reality of negotiations for any sales professional. The more unfulfilled opportunities you see within your territory, the tougher, or stronger, a negotiator you will be. The third and mostly hidden benefit of an ongoing active prospecting process is that you become a stronger and more effective negotiator as you increase your new business selling opportunities and success, increasing your profit margins across your entire territory. What can you do to increase your prospecting efforts so you strengthen your skills as a negotiator?

What can you do this next week to carve out some time from your schedule to make a few new phone calls, stop by some new companies, or at least start looking for new smokestacks in your area?

Russ passed away years ago, but not before he was able to inspire in me his excitement for selling and his understanding of the science of our persuasive craft. I hope you have an Uncle Russ in your life, someone who after spending a lifetime in selling is equally excited about passing on his or her understanding, energy, and excitement for selling to you and your career. I also hope they inspire you to want to do more prospecting on some type of regular basis, so you too can increase your selling energy, improve your sales, and strengthen your ability to negotiate with your buyers.

We know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and disciplined enough to increase your ongoing new business prospecting efforts so you too can find more joy and excitement in your career as a selling professional?

Jim Pancero

You Can Always Sell More, By Spending More Time Riding With Your Sales Reps

2011-07-19T10:06:00.000-05:00

How strong are the selling skills of your team? How consistent and effective are they in front of a prospect or customer? And when was the last time you checked them out to see if they could actually improve any of their skills and effectiveness?

The Problem In Believing That “Experienced = Trained”

Do you believe that “experienced = trained?” The vast majority of sales managers actually believe that statement or they at least manage their sales team as if they believed in it’s accuracy.

How do you train a newly hired sales rep? Most managers only train a newly hired sales rep on the technical product knowledge skills required in the job. They’ll also do extensive training on how to process and enter all of the administrative aspects of the job.

When I ask sales managers “but what about actually training a newly hired sales professional on the “best practices” of selling?” Most answer with “well, since we only hire experienced sales reps we really don’t see the need to teach them how to sell. We assumed their experience in sales should have already provided them with those required skills.”

And that’s alright with most sales reps anyway. The majority of experienced sales reps also tend to believe “experience = trained.”

Whenever I get a chance to talk with an experienced sales pro I like to ask them a series of questions to better understand their experience level and to learn how strong and consistent their selling skills and structures really are. One of the first questions I’ll ask someone is ”So how much sales training have you had in the last twelve months?”

How would you answer that question? The vast majority of otherwise experienced sales professionals when asked, don’t define their recent sales training efforts because for most they haven’t experienced any recent training. What they do answer back is ”Well I’ve been selling for 15 years!” “Experienced = trained!”

Most Experienced Reps Are Like A Car Going Down The Expressway

Most experienced sales reps are like a car going down the expressway. Their success is measured both on how fast they’re going and how far they can get. Now most of the experienced sales reps I meet are doing a good job, they’re going 80 miles per hour down the expressway and have been covering a lot of ground. They’re successful!

But the majority also tend to be inefficient and even ineffective in a number of specific selling skills. Even though they’re driving down the expressway going 80 miles per hour, they’re still in second gear and only utilizing four of the eight cylinders in their engine. Imagine how much faster and further they could go if they were using all of their resources and skills!

Where Are The Selling Skill Gaps Within Your Team?

Where are the selling skill gaps within your team? What personal selling skills or processes have they stopped using or were never taught?

You can’t learn this type of insight into the skills and selling gaps within your team unless you actually ride along and observe them selling. How often do you ride with your salespeople?

I observe three problems or challenges currently being faced by the majority of sales managers. The first problem is they tend to be very overworked compared to the rest of the sales team. In most companies the sales manager is the one who’s putting in the most hours and is under the most day-to-day stress. Is any of this accurately describing you and your job?

The second problem is that most sales managers tend to focus all of their attention on where things are today. What can they be doing today to close business or improve their market position?

This today focus becomes a challenge when it overwhelms the thinking and planning of a sales manager. Even when they do ride with a salesperson for the day making calls most managers still only see their time investment with this rep as a way to close business, help move an account forward or network with one of their people.

And the third problem is this problem we mentioned earlier of “experience equaling trained.” Because most sales managers assume they already have experienced sales pros working for them they don’t even see the need to observe, and coach their senior sales reps, even though most definitely need help and with the proper coaching could get even better than they are today.

What To Look For When Riding With An Experienced Sales Rep

If you haven’t done this already, the easiest way to get started evaluating and coaching your sales team is start carving out some time in your schedule to allow you to ride with your reps. If you’re new to coaching one of the best places to start is to watch and evaluate the foundation or operational skills of your people.

Operational selling skills include the basics or fundamentals of selling. Your ability to ask questions, to use the steps of a sales call, to understand the personality flexibility skills and to be able to manage and run a territory are all Operational skills.

Three Of The Most Common Fundamental Skill Gaps Within Otherwise Experienced Sales Reps

Three of the most common Operational or fundamental skill gaps I observe in otherwise experienced and successful salespeople all focus on their bias of only tending to talk about themselves.

I recently rode with an experienced sales rep named Chuck calling on the fleet manager of a local distribution company. The goal of the sales call was to present the final leasing proposal for several trucks and to walk the customer through the presentation of why their company could do the best job for that manager and his company.

The first part of Chuck’s presentation proposal was basically made up of about 20 pages of PowerPoint like full page slides talking about why his leasing company was the best choice for that distributor. During this 45 minute call this otherwise experienced rep made all three of these fundamental skill errors with his fleet manager buyer.

The first problem was Chuck did all the talking. Now he really knew his product and the benefits of leasing over purchase. But throughout his presentation as he covered feature after feature pointing out all the benefits to the customer, Chuck just kept talking never giving his customer a chance to confirm or comment on anything he was saying!

At one point his customer even responded to a benefit of his leasing program by saying “Now that would be a significant improvement over what we’re doing now!” But instead of drilling deeper to better understand why his customer was so excited, Chuck just kept going by turning the page and continuing his presentation.

During his 45 minute sales call Chuck did over 90% of the talking! That meant his customer only talked for about 5 minutes of the entire sales call! And Chuck was trying to get his customer to buy and to sign the lease! What percent of the time did you talk during your last sales call or customer presentation?

Next time you ride with one of your salespeople listen to see what percent of the call the buyer, the one with the money by the way, actually gets to talk during your call. Most salespeople I have ridden with spend 80 to 90% of their sales calls talking.

Chuck’s second fundamental skill gap was in addition to doing all the talking…he also didn’t ask enough questions. How many questions do you ask during a sales call?

There are several goals of asking questions during a sales call. The most obvious are to learn and to qualify a prospect. But there are two additional goals of questioning that are equally important. The first is to use your questions to pull your customer into your presentation so they feel a part of what you’re trying to create. The more involved a customer is the more likely they’ll also be positively involved and connected to what you’re proposing. The more questions you ask the more your customer will feel a part of what you’re discussing.

And the second additional goal of asking questions is to learn which of the points you covered were of most importance to your client. Because Chuck asked so few questions he really didn’t know what to highlight from his presentation as he started to ask for the order. Asking questions during a presentation or sales calls allows you to make adjustments to what you’re saying based on the comments and feedback you’re getting from your buyer. Because Chuck asked so few questions he was really clueless to the customer’s interests and motivation, even as he was asking him to buy.

I believe this problem is caused by the strong experience levels in sales reps. A strong experience base also means you’re more aware of the common problems faced by all of our customers. As we were driving back to the office Chuck and I discussed the call. I asked Chuck why he asked so few questions and he responded that he had gotten his questions answered weeks ago during his initial sales calls so he didn’t need to ask anything else while he presented his proposal.

But because Chuck asked so few questions, he didn’t get much of a connection with his buyer and he never knew the most important “hot buttons” or areas that will most motivate that fleet manager to want to buy.

And Chuck’s third fundamental skill gap was in addition to doing all the talking and not asking enough questions most of what he did say was all about him and his company. How balanced is your communications with a customer? What percent of your comments focus on how great your company is compared to talking about how great your customer’s experience with your company will be?

It’s what my Dad taught me growing up, he always identified that you don’t go into the hardware store to buy a drill, you go in for the opportunity to make holes! But the majority of sales reps, like Chuck, spend all their call talking about how great their company and products are. Is your team selling drills, or the opportunity for your customers to make holes?

There’s a simple test called the “X’s & O’s” test that you can do to discover the balance or bias of any communications.

Take any letter, proposal, presentation or brochure and mark it up. Put an “X” through every time your document says your name, your company name or uses the words “us,” “we,” and “our.” Then circle each time you use the customers name, their company name, or say “you” or “your.” Now all you have to do is count up all your marked “X’s” and “O’s” to see the bias of your communications. How customer focused is your letter? I got to look through Chuck’s proposal on the drive to his customer and his proposal was about 95% “X’s” only talking about himself. He went into great detail in his proposal telling how great his company, products and service would be for his customer, but he never took it to the next level by describing how positive his customer’s experiences would be if they did business with Chuck and his company.

When you present do you make statements like “This has been rated as one of the most reliable products in the market”…a very “X” focused statement? Or do you make it much more persuasive and customer focused by saying “Because this has been rated as one of the most reliable products in the market you’ll see less down time and a much higher reliability in your usage.”

The job of a sales manager is one of the most stressful and pressured positions within a company. But it’s also one of the most powerful positions within an organization because of the profound impact you can have as a coach improving the selling skills, tactical structures and strategic philosophies of all members of your sales team.

But to improve their selling skills requires you to actively coach each member of your team…no matter what their experience or success level. So how much time can you carve out of your otherwise over-full schedule so you can work with your team?

We know you and your team are good….now the question is…are you good enough…and involved enough to coach and lead your people as they improve the consistency and effectiveness of their day to day selling skills?

To your continued success,

Jim Pancero

You Can Always Sell More…By Spending Only Half Your Time Selling To Your Customers

2011-07-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

Where do you focus all of your selling efforts? The immediate assumption would be to respond by answering that of course you’re spending as much time as possible selling to your customers!

But there is a better long term answer!

I got some of the best advice for my sales career as I started my first job out of Graduate School in 1975. I was about to start work for the Data Processing Division of the IBM Corporation. The night before my first day of work with IBM my uncle, Dick Salisbury, happened to be in town to visit. As a Vice President of Calumet Steel at the time he took me for a walk to offer me some coaching advice as I began my corporate career.

As a life time sales pro either selling or leading salespeople, my Uncle Dick offered that to be truly successful as a sales professional it was critical I spend half my time selling outside to my customers and to spend the other 50% selling within my company.

He said the only way I could achieve long term success as a salesperson was if the rest of my company and especially the customer service, technical support and administrative people were on my side and wanted to help me.

He shared with me how many salespeople continue to fight an uphill battle because of their over-sized egos, their unrealistic demands of staff, or because of the ways they’ve talked down to and pushed around their company’s support staff. He warned me that selling is never an individual effort but instead can only work if and when you have a strong and supportive team who wants you to be successful.

How do the various members of your administrative, technical and customer service support team feel about you? Are they excited to be helping you support and grow your customers?

Uncle Dick also explained that it’s not realistic to expect a member of your support team to want to go the extra distance for you and your customers unless they feel you’ve already gone the extra distance for them first.

How do the various members of your support organization feel about you? Are they happy to be helping you and your selling efforts?

What’s your philosophy of how you treat your extended support team? Over my selling and consulting career I’ve always remembered my wise uncle’s advice. I’ve also observed how many others never seemed to understand how success in selling outside your company only occurs when you’ve already been successful selling or maintaining strong personal relationships within your company and support team.

Four Styles Or Philosophies Of Working With Support People

There are four distinct styles or philosophies of how salespeople treat and work with their support staff, which one of these four best represents the way you’ve been treating and working with your staff?

1. As “The Problem”

The first and worst of the four styles of treating and working with support staff is when you view, or they feel you view them, as the problem.

Several years ago one of my customers went through some tough financial times due to a significant downturn in their industry and were forced to file for bankruptcy so they could reorganize and find new owners.

As you can imagine, as they worked through their bankruptcy and their search for new owners, they were constantly short of working capital causing them to struggle to fill orders, to complete warranty repair work and to support their dealer customers. All the employees were stressed working long hours, not knowing if they’d have a job in a few months and worrying if things would improve under their new ownership.

When the sales reps called into their customer service department trying to help their dealers get product or answers they started treating their inside support team as a part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Now the reality was the customer service people were the most overworked and under the most hassles from customers and management. But because of the aggressive style the sales reps were using to try to get answers and solve problems from customer service, the customer service staff decided the sales team was no longer their friends and were no longer on their side.

Customer service continued to support their customers, but they also used the miracle of caller ID to let the salespeople’s phone calls just go directly to voice mail.

Do all the members of your support team feel you and the rest of your sales reps are on their side?

2. As “The Servant”

While not quite as bad as treating support people as the problem, treating them as the servants or hired hands isn’t much better. I see too many companies where the sales force treats their support people as if they were the clerks or assistants they could just order around and make demands.

3. As “The Co-Worker”

The third style or philosophy of treating and working with support staff is to treat these people as co-workers or peers. This is a positive approach where the support people are treated with the respect you would give any co-worker. Co-workers ask each other for help instead of giving orders. They also work to build a personal relationship to help insure everything continues to run smoothly.

Treating support team members as co-workers means you work to build a personal connection or friendship in addition to your work efforts. It means you occasionally ask about their day when you call in and go out of your way to thank them for their help when they were instrumental in solving one of your customer’s problems.

4. As the “Behind the scenes expert and problem solving partner”

As strong as it is to treat the support staff as peers or co-workers there is still one more philosophy that’s even better and that’s to treat the support staff you work with as the “behind the scenes experts and problem solving partners.”

Treating these critical individuals as “behind the scenes experts” is more than just dealing with them as co-workers, it’s making sure they get the recognition for their expertise and ability to help your customers. This recognition is both within your company and from your customers. Treating support people as “Behind the scenes” experts means you work to recognize they bring unique skills and awareness to their job that helps improve your customer’s experience buying from your company.

When was the last time you wrote a letter or made a phone call to a support person’s manager to point out how they went “above and beyond” in their efforts?

Six Ideas to Implement

The pace of business has definitely picked up requiring everyone to work harder and to do more to satisfy customers. You now need the support and technical people within your company to do an even better job than they have in the past.

Consider these Six Ideas that can help improve the service and support you and your customer’s receive:

1. Separate the person from the problem when dealing with some customer issue or challenge. Dr Spencer Johnson, pediatrician and co-author of the “One Minute Manager” with Ken Blanchard was one of the first to identify that children, and really most adults, can’t separate themselves from their actions. He says if you tell your child she’s bad because she spilt her milk then your daughter, not having the maturity to separate herself from her actions, will now feel bad about herself.

When you have to deal with a customer problem, or especially a mistake made by the service department, be sure and separate your comments about the problem from the actions of the person you’re talking with, even if they’re the one who caused the problem.

Say things like ”you didn’t cause this problem but we sure need your help to get it fixed” or “I know everyone in service is overworked and are doing the best they can, but I sure need your help to get this fixed.”

2. Use your manager if you do need to complain. People tend to remember the one who has complained or yelled at them, even when your complaints were valid. You need the service department to be on your side. When you do need to complain, use your manager. It will be a lot easier for your manager to go to the service manager to complain about a lack of response or a problem with support and you can still maintain your relationship with the people needed to help with your customers.

3. Do something to provide recognition to the technical or service people who have done an exceptional job solving problems or helping your customers. Write a letter or send an e-mail to their manager. Mention their “above and beyond” efforts when in conversations with other members of your company, especially your company executives.

Everyone wants to feel loved and important but the inside people tend to get neither in the normal course of their work. What can you do to help make sure the people who are putting in the extra effort also get recognized for their positive contribution.

4. A suggestion or idea that can help improve the service and support you and your customers receive is to ask your customers to help identify and recognize the technical and support people who were the most help and value to them. Too many times I watch a thankful customer tell the sales rep how happy they are with the support efforts they’ve received, and the sales rep says thank you. Then the sales rep never says anything else to anyone else in their company.

While at IBM, Lenny, one of my mentors always said ‘the greatest formula for success in selling is to give the recognition to the support staff and give the commissions to the sales rep.’

5. Make sure you stop in and spend even a few minutes to visit and thank the technical and support teams when you are in the office. Attention is one of the best way to convey to someone their importance to you. When was the last time you ate lunch with the staff or shared a coffee break? Too many times the sales reps all hang with the other sales reps and the support team keep to their own as well. If they feel you respect and like them then they’ll be more likely to want to help out and go the extra distance for you and your customers!

6. Do something extra to say thanks to the people who are making you successful. When was the last time you sent a thank you note to someone who helped save one of your accounts? What about arranging to buy donuts one day for the support team as a thank you for their help with a big installation?

Remember that it doesn’t even have to be something expensive that you do, your efforts will be considered much more important in the long run.

Final Comments

So what have you done lately to help make sure the support and technical people you work with all understand how much you value and appreciate their efforts?

I’m sure you have done most if not all of these ideas at some time in your past. So now the question is how frequently are you doing these things, and would you increase the support and attitude your customers receive if you did more of these things on a more frequent basis?

Success in sales occurs when you act and communicate like a leader. And a leader knows they will only be successful when they have the support of their entire team. Consider increasing your communications, attention and time you invest in the people who make sure your customers are satisfied with you and your company.

We know you’re good, now the question is, are you good enough and committed enough to invest the extra time and effort to help make your support team feel like the hero’s they most likely already are?

Jim Pancero

You Can Always Sell More…By Making Sure Anyone Talking To Your Customer Is Properly Trained and Coached

2011-07-07T14:10:00.000-05:00

How many different people from your company talk with your customers?

Consider asking your team to evaluate and discuss two different selling scenarios. The first scenario deals with your newest customers. Ask your team how many different people from your company will talk with a new prospect (either by telephone or “face-to-face”) from the time someone identifies a new selling opportunity until you have a signed agreement in place? When I ask this question of my clients we quickly can identify as many as five or six different people from their company who will interact with a prospect before they have a signed agreement in place. People talking to a prospect include the sales person and usually you, as their manager. Will your prospect need to talk to your credit manager? What about any of your senior management? Will anyone from technical support or your administrative/order entry team be involved? What are your numbers? How many different people from your company are involved with a new prospect/client before they say yes?

And what about your existing customers? The second scenario to discuss with your team deals with the majority of your business that comes from your existing clients. From January 1^st until December 31^st, how many different people might interact with one of your existing customers? Whatever your number of contacts were with a prospect, the number talking to an existing customer to maintain their business is usually higher.

So how many “non-salespeople” in your company are talking to your customers on a daily basis? And what kind of impact are they having on your team’s selling success? Are they contributing to communicating your uniqueness and value or are your customers buying from you in spite of these “non-salespeople’s” best efforts?

A “selling non-salesperson” is someone who actively (and independently) talks to your prospects and customers on a regular basis as part of their responsibilities but still don’t consider “salesperson” a part of their job description. For a number of companies these “selling non-salespeople” have never attended a sales training class or been coached by anyone with a strong sales bias (like you as a leader of the sales team).

An interesting phenomenon exists in selling today. Just about every sales organization has non-salespeople talking directly with both new (and still un-sold) prospects as well as existing customers. But almost none of these “selling non-salespeople” have ever received any sales training, or ongoing coaching on how to be more persuasive in their responsibilities. How much sales training and coaching have you implemented so far this year with your list of “selling non-salespeople” who are actively talking to your prospects and customers? For most…the answer will be none.

Increasing The Selling Skills of Your “Non-salespeople” - 1^st - Get a “Sales Champion”

Your first challenge to increasing the persuasive skills of your “selling non-salespeople” is to identify who will take on the responsibility of becoming your support team’s “sales champion.” To increase the selling skills of your team’s “selling non-salespeople” you need to identify the leader who’ll be responsible for “championing” this effort. Their responsibility is to lead the efforts to make these support people, including your administrative, technical and managerial people, more sales aware and sales focused in their normal efforts in front of both prospects and existing customers.

This type of special coaching and training cannot and will not work if you only conduct a one-time “sales training” event for these support people. Generating long term change and improvement with support individuals requires ongoing attention to first train and make them aware of your selling expectations and then second to continue to coach and remind them of the important contributions they can make to your selling efforts and results.

There’s a good chance you, as the sales leader, will not have the time required to become this ongoing “sales coach to the non-salespeople.” But you can potentially have the time to “coach their coach” so the support team leader understands what, and how behaviors and selling language need to improve. Who can you recruit to be this ongoing coach and champion who’ll understand, or at least appreciate the critical importance of having a single sales team offering a consistent level of support backed up by consistent selling and branding messages?

2^nd - Does everyone supporting your prospects and customers understand the basic components of persuasion and selling?

Once you have your sales champion in place for these “selling non-salespeople,” your second challenge is to design and identify the structures and stepped selling processes you want these support people communicating as they do their regular jobs. Individuals who support a selling process don’t need to receive the more complete sales training that would normally be provided (but rarely is) to your regular full time sales team. But they do need to understand key selling concepts including:

The basic steps of a sales call and how to ask questions.

How to communicate or handle an angry customer.

How (and when) to take responsibility for a problem or customer request.

How to persuasively say no to a customer request.

How (and when) to share information or insights with the rest of the sales team.

Consider organizing a series of simple training outlines that will cover these, and any other sales ideas you feel they need to understand and master. Design a series of one hour training classes. These one hour classes are best conducted by spending up to ten minutes for debriefing of successes from trying last week’s sales ideas, twenty minutes discussing or presenting a new sales concept, twenty-five minutes role-playing or practicing this new skill or sales concept, and then five minutes reconfirming what everyone has agreed to try between now and your next sales class. This topic or idea covered then becomes a central focus of any sales coaching from both you and your sales support champion who’ll coach and lead your team as they work to practice and implement these new ideas.

3^rd - Is everyone from your company delivering the same selling message of uniqueness?

Your third challenge is to insure all members of your extended sales team understand and can explain why your customers buy from you and your company. The toughest question a sales person is asked by their prospect or existing client is “Why, based on all the competitive alternatives available to me do I want to buy from you?”

As important as this question is…most sales teams have never worked to define and strengthen their single best response to this question. Not working on this question as a team means you’ll likely discover each sales team member communicates a different message to their buyers. This “each person communicates a different message” challenge wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact they’re not the only ones from your company talking and persuading your customers. How many different selling messages are you as a total organization delivering to your customers and prospects?

What can you do to better define your single best answer to this “Why buy from you?” question. You don’t need your support people being able to present your newly defined complete message of uniqueness but you do need them understanding what your selling message is and also understanding their responsibility and role to help remind and confirm your message when they talk with a prospect or client.

4^th - Does everyone understand when (and how) to pass a problem onto someone else who can better solve their customer’s problem?

Your fourth challenge to increasing the selling skills of your “selling non-salespeople” is to make sure everyone understands how to quickly, persuasively and effectively hand a customer or prospect over to someone else who can better respond. The majority of support people have never been trained on the best way to pass on an angry customer or to get a customer or prospect help from someone better qualified than them to address this customer’s problem or challenge.

These skills sound simple and self-evident…until you lose a customer to a competitor because someone on your team didn’t handle a challenging situation properly or persuasive enough to satisfy your customer’s concerns. What can you do to better train and coach your people on this team-focused way to support and grow your customers?

5^th - Will you now integrate these support people into your normal sales training and coaching efforts?

Once you start to train and coach your team on these first four challenges, then your fifth longer term challenge is to now continue the coaching and skill growth of your support team.

6^th - What can you do to insure the attention and structures are put in place to keep this an ongoing coaching and leadership effort?

Your sixth and final challenge to increasing the selling skills of your “selling non-salespeople” is to make sure you and the rest of your leadership team maintain the attention and sales structures you’ve put in place so they become an ongoing component of your persuasive selling and customer support efforts.

What can you and the rest of your leadership team do to confirm your support and belief in the ongoing maintenance and improvement of these critical persuasive skills? Customers notice when someone other than a sales person asks additional questions, expresses an interest in their business and challenges, confirms why their customer is buying from them or helps strengthen the overall customer service experience.

These are hyper-competitive times. Today you have stronger and more consistent competitive pressures to sell against. And these hyper-competitive times also demand the best efforts and involvement of your entire team. You need to have every member of your team “rowing in the same direction” so they deliver a consistent message of value and uniqueness that continues to be proven and confirmed.

We know you’re good….now the question is…are you good enough…and strong enough as the leader of your sales team to insure all members of your extended sales and support team are working as a single, effective and persuasive selling unit?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More…By Asking Stronger Interviewing Questions”

2011-06-27T12:23:00.000-05:00

All sales managers eventually wind up needing to invest time and effort interviewing, hiring and training new members of their sales team. How effective are your interviewing skills and efforts?

The majority of sales managers don’t interview and hire new salespeople on a regular basis so their interviewing skills tend to be weak or “underdeveloped.” How strong are your interviewing skills?

Most sales managers keep making the same four interviewing mistakes every time they interview new sales candidates. What can you do to avoid making these mistakes?

Sales Management Interviewing Mistake #1 - You do the majority of talking

How much time do you spend talking vs. listening when you’re interviewing potential salespeople? As dumb as it sounds….the majority of sales managers tend to do most of the talking!

Most sales managers have never been formally trained on effective interviewing skills so they tend to “wing it” when conducting interviews. Most spend so much time “selling” the candidate on the benefits of working there that they have no time left to hear from the candidate.

What can you do to insure you do more listening than talking the next time you interview someone?

Sales Management Interviewing Mistake #2 - You are the only one interviewing potential sales candidates

Being the only one to interview potential sales candidates is the second major interviewing mistake made by sales managers. The goal of your interviewing process is to learn as much as possible about potential candidates as well as assess how they’ll integrate and work within your selling culture.

The best way to fully assess a candidate’s strengths as well as their weaknesses is to conduct an extensive interviewing process that exposes the candidate finalists to a variety of issues and challenges. The easiest way to gain this insight is to make sure multiple people from your company (or team) individually interview each potential candidate before making your final selection.

You also want to be sure and vary the tone and focus of each interview. Look at the insights you’ll gain if a candidate has to demonstrate their persuasiveness and ability to handle pressure interviews that are rushed, hassled or outright challenging. Selling is not an easy job and any sales person hired will face challenging and stressful sales calls working for you and your company. Why not find out how they’ll likely handle these stressful situations before you make them a job offer?

Sales Management Interviewing Mistake #3 - You don’t check resumes and backgrounds before making a job offer

The third interviewing mistake made by managers is to not check resumes and backgrounds before making a job offer.

We’re in a tough job market where candidates are fighting for the opportunity to interview….and be hired by solid companies such as yours. Today’s hyper-competitive and aggressive market has caused a lot of otherwise honest candidates to exaggerate…or to outright lie about their education, military experience or prior job timeframes and responsibilities. Various studies have identified as many as three out of every four business resumes include some kind of fabricated listing or false achievement.

Lying on resumes has become so prevalent that a number of corporations as standard policy double-check all major claims made on candidate’s resumes and conduct a police background check before any candidate is called back for a final interview.

What do you and your company need to do to insure you’re hiring an honest member of your team?

Sales Management Interviewing Mistake #4 - You don’t ask challenging enough questions during your interviews.

The fourth interviewing mistake made by managers is to not ask challenging enough questions during your interviews.

Selling is a tough job. How will you learn if a sales candidate can handle the challenges of selling if you don’t push them during their interviews by asking the tougher questions?

What kinds of questions do you ask during an interview? Do you have any of your questions organized and thought out in advance?

Try asking some of the 20 questions from the 20 question sales evaluation on www.GreatSalesSkills.com. A way to word these questions is to say…”Give me an example of how you have demonstrated success with…”

Understanding The Technical Side Of Your Business

#1 - Your technical knowledge of your products/services and how they relate to your industry is…?

#2 - Knowledge of your competitor's products and their customer success stories are..?

Understanding the Fundamentals Of Selling

#3 - Your knowledge and daily usage of the steps of a sales call is…?

#4 - Your understanding of personalities and ability to identify, and then mirror your customer’s communications style is…?

Understanding How to Manage Your Time and Information

#5 - Your personal “time and territory” organizational skills are…?

#6 - Ability to utilize technology to increase your productivity and effectiveness is…?

Maintaining and Growing Your Business

#7 - Your ability to proactively manage, control, and resolve customer’s problems…?

#8 - Your ability to keep your existing accounts stable and under control is…?

#9 - Your ongoing new business prospecting process is…?

Managing Your Selling Process

#10 - Your ability to think and plan multiple moves ahead with each of your customers and prospects are…?

#11 - Your knowledge/understanding of competitor’s pricing practices are…?

#12 - Your ability to utilize company support resources in your territory is…?

Maintaining and Controlling Your Customer

#13 - Your ability to communicate what your customers want to buy instead of just what you
have to sell is…?

#14 - Your understanding of the political environment and decision process of each of your
accounts are…?

Ability to Manage the Strategic Aspects of Your Selling Process

#15 - Your ability to communicate your competitive uniqueness and value is…?

#16 - Your knowledge of your competitor’s strongest "value points" they use to sell against you is…?

#17 - Your ability to win business at a higher price/margin by communicating your stronger
value is…?

Your Philosophy Toward Ongoing Personal Development and Improvement

#18 - Ability to represent yourself in a professional, truthful and ethical manner is…?

#19 - Your ongoing commitment and efforts to grow and improve your selling skills and
awareness is…?

#20 - Your ongoing use of one or more coaches or mentors to help you get better is…?

By asking the tougher questions during a sales interview you’ll increase your success attracting the best, and most qualified candidates…and you’ll reduce the number of surprises hitting you once they are in their territory.

We know you’re good….now…are you good enough to invest the extra time and effort to increase the strength of your sales interviewing process?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More, If You Have Strong Competitive Awareness”

2011-06-20T16:04:00.001-05:00

How high is your competitive awareness? On a scale of one to 10…with 10 being strongest…pick a number you feel most represents your current level of competitive awareness. Most experienced sales professionals identify their competitive awareness level as around a seven to nine…what’s your number?

Having a comprehensive understanding of your competition and how they sell against you is a critical foundation to successful strategic selling. How can you effectively communicate your competitive uniqueness and added value if you have no idea what your competition is already saying when your prospect asks them…and you….”Why, based on all the competitive alternatives available do I want to buy from you?”

Product Knowledge Competitive Awareness

There are three levels of competitive awareness necessary for success in selling. The first level is product knowledge competitive awareness.

A strong level of product knowledge competitive awareness means you can explain in detail how and why your products or services outperform your competitors. About 90% of experienced sales professionals have a strong level of product knowledge competitive awareness.

Pricing Knowledge Competitive Awareness

The second level centers on your awareness of your competitor’s pricing and discounting strategies. Strong pricing knowledge competitive awareness means you can accurately identify what a prospect is likely paying for their competitive products once you identify current usage levels. Competitive pricing awareness also means you can accurately predict how much discounting any of your competitors are likely to do at the end of the selling process to try and close the business.

About 70% of all experienced sales pros have strong pricing competitive awareness.

Message Knowledge Competitive Awareness

Most sales pro’s have effective product and pricing competitive awareness levels. It’s the third and final level of competitive awareness….message competitive awareness….that causes the most challenges for the majority of selling professionals.

How strong is your message competitive awareness?

Even the most experienced selling professionals don’t seem to understand what their competitors are really saying when selling against you. Most sales professionals have a strong awareness of their competitor’s products…and they can accurately predict their competitor’s pricing and discounting strategies. They just don’t know what their competitors are actually saying.

Suggestions to increase your competitive awareness

Do you want to help increase your team’s competitive awareness?

The first suggestion to help increase your team’s competitive awareness is to discuss these competitive awareness ideas with your entire sales team. Evaluate how high your product, pricing and message competitive awareness levels really are and then decide this is a selling area that, when improved, can increase your team’s selling success and needs to become an integral part of all future sales meetings.

Next increase your competitive information collection efforts. Information is power, the more information you and your team have the more power and competitive advantage you gain.

Most sales organizations are already experts identifying and collecting competitive product information. Most are also skilled at capturing and understanding the pricing actions and strategies of their competitors…it’s the competitive messaging issues that are the most challenging for a sales team to understand.

Where can you go to learn more about what your competition might be saying when they sell against you? Check out their brochures, web sites, trade show booths and articles written about them. This is the best place to start but usually generates little usable information.

The single best source for this information is to ask newly acquired customers. Asking clients who have decided to buy from your competition instead of you is also a great source. Even though you lost the sale you hopefully have established enough effort and credibility that your prospect might share some information when asked.

Being professional (and persuasive), you want to make sure to only ask positive questions about your competitors. This is not the time…or place…to go on a “search and destroy” mission to learn all the negative dirt. We want to learn as much as possible about what your competitors are doing right, how they sell their message of uniqueness and what makes them most attractive to your buyers. You need to ask questions such as “What did you like most about the company you selected?” “What do you wish we were doing more of that impressed you with what they do?” or “What could we have done that could have helped make us even more competitive in your final selection?”

You can only communicate an effective message of uniqueness when you first know what everyone else is saying. With this competitive information you can now, with confidence, know that you’re actually saying something that is both unique and of value to your prospects.

We know you’re good….now…are you good enough to invest the time and effort to increase all aspects of your competitive awareness?

Jim Pancero

“You Can Always Sell More This Month…If You Can Increase Your Cold Calling Efforts”

2011-06-15T11:16:00.000-05:00

Cold calling, or contacting prospects you have never talked to, is one of the single toughest activities any salesperson can do. It’s not that cold calling is hard, it’s just takes a lot of work to generate a little new business and involves the highest rate of selling rejection. Most salespeople hate cold calling, not because it’s hard work, but because they can’t handle the high degree of negatives you hear when cold calling. No one likes to work in a negative environment where people are always telling you no.

Someone once related selling to farming. Most salespeople just keep replanting and harvesting the same old fields. The older the field, the lower the crop yield, and you keep loosing prime acreage to erosion (the slow, but ongoing loss of existing client’s business).

Cold calling is like clearing a forest to make a new field, very time consuming but will yield a much higher rate due to the “fresh soil” you now have to work with. How do you feel about all of the time it takes to clear a new field vs. planting and harvesting your existing ones? The ultimate goal is to spend time each week doing both.

Now a lot of salespeople are completely against any type of cold calling efforts. Reasons given include the low odds of success and the difficulty of finding and then talking to the people you want to reach. Both of these complaints are accurate. But how will you add now contacts to your sales territory? Would it be a worthwhile investment to try cold calling a number of prospects for awhile to see if this idea can help you expand your selling contacts?

I always viewed prospecting/cold calling as a game. I knew the majority of time prospects would tell me no or would not change over to me but I had a goal to wear them down with my tenacity and professionalism. After awhile, and after the time period most of my competitors would have already given up, I tended to begin winning this new business over. I’ve always believed that I can increase my personal competitive advantage if I’m willing to work harder, smarter or more creatively than my competition.

One of the mental attitudes I always thought about was to think, anyone can sell, but it takes a real sales warrior to stay in there long enough to win new cold calling business. Sometimes the toughest part of cold calling is just getting over the fear and negative feeling of not making any progress for all of the hard work you are investing. Once the mental attitude is under control, you now need to focus on your selling skills.

Do you need to improve your foundation skills of selling? How strong are your cold call selling “best practices?” The most important selling skill to improve is your ability to answer the question of “Why, based on all of the competitive alternatives available to me, do I want to buy from you?” That is the toughest question to answer in selling today, but also the most critical issue you need to cover to win over anyone’s business.

The reality is that every new prospect you call on is already buying from someone else and is most likely satisfied with their current relationships. You have to prove to them that you can do things better, cheaper, with lower risk, or greater service than their current supplier. How will you change your selling message to reflect these issues?

Prospecting for new business is definitely hard work, time consuming, and one of the few ways that can help you significantly grow both your territory and your income. What can you do this month to either increase your cold calling efforts, or to see if cold calling can work for you?

Jim Pancero