Tag Archives: Business Growth

Sales Coaching

5 Ways to Prevent Sales Reps From Saying I Quit!

There is nothing more frustrating for a sales manager than to have a senior-tenured sales rep resign.

Many companies are coming to realize that the #1 reason why productive salespeople leave is because of their relationship with their sales manager. The decision a sales rep makes to quit your company doesn’t occur in an instant. When there is too little coaching from the sales manager and very little feedback (other than negative), a salesperson becomes gradually disengaged with what is going on. He or she perceives they are not growing and they begin to wonder if the grass might be greener somewhere else.

Here are five things sales managers can do to prevent sales rep attrition.

1. Adopt a teaching mindset

How do you do that? Simple: you just do it. Decide that, going forward, you will coach at least one rep every day before lunchtime. Make it a priority and do it now! To make time for more coaching, limit the amount of time you spend on your email. Or, better yet, delay looking at your email until after you have coached somebody.

2. Provide more accurate feedback

Nothing can be more destructive to a relationship than to make vague generalizations or judgments during a one-on-one. Be specific in your comments. If a salesperson is not updating CRM on a daily basis then that is what you need to say to him or her-not something like, “You are not supportive of company management.” Stick to the facts and you will be a better sales coach.

An effective coaching conversation is based on what you actually observed, not on generalizations. If you make general statements, you sound judgmental, which will tend to make people defensive.

3. Instruct your new hires to ask you for coaching when they need it

Since your goal is to speed up the development of each salesperson, you want more coaching moments. That means don’t limit coaching to only when you want to provide it. Teach your salespeople, and especially new hires, that they should be comfortable asking for coaching whenever they are unsure or simply want help thinking through their strategies.

4. Support your “B” players

Think about a salesperson you would consider a solid “B” player on your team. Can you remember the most recent occasion in which you provided this rep with one-on-one developmental coaching?

Your B players have the energy and skill-set to be selling enough so many sales managers don’t consider them performance problems, so it’s likely you don’t work with them as much as the poorest performers (who need the most help) or perhaps even the best performers (who are working the biggest sales opportunities). But B players are the hungriest for coaching and development, and can become disengaged if they don’t get it. Not good.

5. Teach your admin people to be very careful about the information they share with callers

Here is how a headhunter/recruiter once obtained the names of the top salespeople in my sales office:

He called my receptionist and said to her, “I’m a lawyer downtown and one of your salespeople was out here a few months ago to demonstrate your copier to me. Now, I think we’re finally ready to do something. Trouble is, I misplaced your salesperson’s card and can’t remember his name. But I do recall that he told me he was the #1 producing rep in your office. Do you know who that is?”

Receptionist: “Does the name Ed Jones ring a bell?”

Recruiter: “No, it doesn’t. Perhaps the person I met with was your #2 rep. Any suggestions?”

Thereafter, every time a new receptionist started for us (which for many businesses is quite often) we made sure to share the above story, and emphasize the importance of keeping information regarding the sales team secret.

Losing good performers is bad for any business. Use these five strategies to help prevent it in your company. And think like a leader: As Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) described in Jack: Straight From the Gut, “In GE every day, there’s an informal, unspoken personnel review – in the lunchroom, the hallway, and in every business meeting.” That’s because GE wants to make sure that their employees have the feedback they need in time to use it for the customers’ benefit.

Contact us about our sales coaching and leadership courses and training: http://www.toplineleadership.com/our-team/contact-us/

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kevin_Davis/2019818

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Sales Coaching

When to Hire a Sales Coach

When would be a better time to visit a doctor: after you are sick or before you get sick? Though many choose to see their doctor only after symptoms create enough of a demand for them to seek help, a more logical approach is to see your doctor for preventive care to ward off illness.

The same is true for your career. Why wait until your career is in jeopardy, your income falling and your stress level climbing before hiring a tenured, skilled and professional sales coach?

Day One or Day 1,000

While some coaches, eager to build their business will suggest that everyone in sales should hire them on the first day of their career, it may make more sense to delay even beginning to select a coach.

Why wait?

Actually, there are a couple of reasons why a rookie sales professional should consider waiting a while before hiring a coach. The first is the fact that many are in a sales position only because they are unable to find a job in a career or industry that really interests them. Sales has been called the “default occupation” for this very reason.

Hiring a sales coach on day 1 of your sales career may be money ill spent. A good coach will be focused on helping your increase your sales and may not be driven to help you decide if sales is really right for you.

Another reason to hold off hiring a professional coach is that your company will (should) have plenty of sales training for you to go through and master. Adding sales models and techniques on top of the training you are already receiving may be overwhelming. Beyond being potentially overwhelmed, you may not devote the time and attention to fully learning the training your company is giving you which probably wouldn’t impress your sales manager.

When the Student is Ready…

There’s an old expression that says when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. As long as your search for a coach begins before “crisis mode,” the time you begin searching for a coach is the right time for you.

Very few sales professionals who hire a sales coach would say that they were 100% certain of their decision to hire a coach. In fact, if you wait until you are absolutely certain that hiring a sales coach is the perfect way to advance your career, you’ll probably not hire a coach until it’s either too late or when your sales are so bad that you feel you have to do something.

T Patrick Phelps is the President of T Patrick Phelps Writing Services, Inc. He has worked with across many different vertical markets and specializes in writing for the sales, IT and personal development industries. Phelps is a Certified Life and Sales Coach and the founder of the Essential Needs Sales Paradigm. Visit [http://www.tpatrickphelps.com] for contact information

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8338995

Sales Coaching

The Benefits of Hiring a Performance Coach to Help Your Sales Team

There are many benefits to hiring a performance coach to boost your sales efforts. Here are some of the major ones:

Gain New Tips to Help Your Team Sell

Some people simply struggle with new ways of selling an existing product. It doesn’t matter how long they have been in the role for. One benefit of hiring a professional performance coach is that he or she will encourage your sales team to dig deep into their chest of ideas and come up with new benefits or processes that streamline their sales efforts. Choosing a sales coach with a strong commercial background will also help your team put these new ideas and processes into practice.

Specific Advice for Your Product or Service

As already mentioned, your sales coaching will be specific to your product or market sector. If you simply search online, or in a book for generic sales advice, or if you choose to generic sales training from a qualified trainer (not experienced sales professional), the chances are that you get what you pay for. Generic tips rather than proven, actionable ideas. Generic sales books are geared for the majority of people who have never sold anything before, you will only find a handful of texts for advanced sales professionals.

A sales coach will take time to work through your ideas, your current sales experiences, your revenue targets, your personal growth goals and help you prioritise your conflicting demands so that you start seeing progress more quickly than if you attempt to sell alone. Your coach will act as your sounding board for you to bounce ideas off or review your failures so you reduce your learning curve and are more effective on your next sale. A great sales coach will help you navigate your corporate world and ensure that your prospecting is more skilled, more targeted and more fruitful than ever.

One-on-One Time with the Sales Team

Sales coaching is not just about creating a plan. If is about working with the individuals in your team to understand their backgrounds, help maximise their strengths and minimise their weaknesses. If you hire a sales coach from a sales background, you can request mentoring support, if relevant, so that your team can draw on their coach’s actual sales experience. This has the added value of reducing learning curves, bringing forward conversion dates and increasing revenue more quickly.

While popular sales texts and online resources may seem like a cheaper option, the guidance and experience that can be drawn from a sales coach who has come from a corporate sales background is invaluable.

Carla Cotterell has 17 years experience in sales and marketing roles, gained at high-growth technology start-ups and media giants such as AOL Time Warner. She is an experience Sales Coach, qualified NLP Practitioner and works with DiSC personality profiling.

You can contact Carla Cotterell here: http://www.ccotterell.com.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/C_Cotterell/1285840

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MyOrbit Blogs, Sales Coaching

Coaching an Effective Selling System

An effective selling system is a requisite for success in the world of sales. Follow those who are true leaders in selling, and you will find each has a system that allows them to excel.

In order to have a productive sales team, one must consistently teach and coach an Effective Sales System (ESS). If your team does not have an ESS, and you rely on sales people to operate within their own system, you will have a difficult, if not impossible, time affecting individual skills and behaviors.

An effective coach must clearly demonstrate what is expected of a sales person. At a minimum, one must be able to communicate how to employ concepts and tactics via stories, analogies and metaphors. Think of the athletic coach–while the coach may not physically demonstrate everything that is expected of an athlete, he/she must be able to communicate what is expected.

To effectively coach sales people, you must do the same. You must truly know and understand the selling process and the Effective Selling System. You must own the content and the process, and you must communicate the sales skills expected of your team.

Specifically, you must be able to demonstrate the 8-step phone process with an effective Unique Selling Approach (USA) opening. You must demonstrate an effective initial call starting with “What would make this meeting a great use of your time?” Your ability to demonstrate these skills will greatly enhance your sales team’s ability to execute an Effective Sales System. On the other hand, if you don’t know the system intimately, you won’t be able to effectively coach your sales people through demonstrations or identify sales-sabotaging behaviors.

Remember to ask open-ended questions. Help sales people discover their choke points through the questions you ask. Confirm that the sales person wants to fix his or her problems. Unless sales people desire to correct their weaknesses, you will have a difficult, if not impossible time, helping them improve. Verify each producer’s willingness and enthusiasm to work and get commitment that they will devote the time and energy necessary to master the skills.

A good sales coach must also be able to teach the theories and psychology which support an Effective Sales System, including: A. Why understanding the interpersonal dynamics of the buying and selling process is crucial, B. Why traditional phone approaches are ineffective, C. Why a sales person should not look, act or sound like every other sales person, D. Why effectively asking questions can make or break a sale and E. Why it’s critical to get commitment for a decision prior to presentation.

As well, a good sales coach must understand and teach the psychology and theory supporting: A. When and why a sales person asks for introductions, B. Why each sales person must have a robust pipeline, C. Why executing a personal success formula is vitally important, and D. Why participating regularly in sales huddles (weekly, 15-minute meetings in which sales people report critical numbers) is crucial to a sales person’s success.

You must coach your sales people at each step as follows: First, tell them the skill you will be teaching. Second, show them how to use the technique. Third, review what you taught and demonstrated. Next, execute with drill-for-skill and role-play so that your sales people can see the skill in action. Finally, have them practice using the technique with one another so that they are able to employ the tactic while they are under pressure in the field and on the phone.

Your team must demonstrate knowledge of the selling system and comfort while using it. Typically, human beings must perform an activity multiple times before mastering it.

Robert F. Bruner of the University of Virginia stressed the importance of repetition for learning when he wrote the following: “The deepest “Aha’s” spring from an encounter and then a return. Repeating the encounter fuses it into one’s awareness. The learning process is one of slow engagement with ideas; gradually the engagement builds to a critical mass where the student actually acquires the idea.”

Being a good sales coach is a full-time job, requiring focus, dedication and energy to learn and master the steps and processes of an Effective Sales System. The coach must then be willing and able to teach and coach theses steps and processes to the sales team. A good sales coach must be able to play “bad-guy/good-guy” and be able to motivate and mentor sales people while holding them accountable to the necessary activities.

Tony Cole, President of Anthony Cole Training Group
(877) 635-5371
http://www.anthonycoletraining.com

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Tony_Cole/54599

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Sales Coaching

Getting Sales Coaching to Happen – Target Trigger Events

People who are knowledgeable and experienced in sales excellence know sales coaching is worthwhile; it can make a difference; and it needs to be a priority. Sales pros agree coaching is a necessity if you want a world-class sales team.

While most sales leaders agree about the importance of sales coaching, most also admit “the job isn’t getting done.” Many great companies start coaching initiatives with tremendous energy and commitment. Far fewer exit the other end of the tunnel.

Two developments increase the urgency for a renewed dialogue about getting coaching to happen:

· Sales force performance is a bigger piece of the competitive advantage puzzle. Presently, it is extremely difficult to sustain a competitive advantage by product alone. Even if you have a winning product, the competition is likely to get a product to market that is just as good, at half the price… in half the time it took several years ago. Although a superior sales force is extremely difficult to assemble and train, once you have one, it is of the few sustainable advantages left.

· Sales excellence is more difficult to achieve. Not only is superior sales performance more important than ever; it’s harder to get there. Today, sales people must develop their knowledge and skills to an unprecedented level. Now top performers have to know more and know it at a higher level of competency than ever before. In many companies, a substantial number of the top performers 15 years ago would not make the first cut for this year’s President’s Club.

One step for making it happen is addressing a critical stumbling block for achieving sales excellence – why more companies don’t get serious about sustaining a coaching effort? In that regard it’s not that folks don’t think it’s important; they do – also is not primarily a lack of skill. Sure some front-line sales managers need to improve their coaching but even when they do, coaching often still does not occur.

We would submit the fundamental culprit is lack of commitment and discipline. Consequently another high priority coaching initiative or a new coaching training program, by themselves, are unlikely to fix the problem.

Enter Trigger Event Coaching. In organizations certain events occur that create an enormous amount of organic energy and focus. This is due to the strategic importance of these events and the time, effort, and financial resources the organization has committed to making them happen. Let’s call these occurrences – Trigger Events.

Launching an important new product, initiating a rebranding effort, implementing a merger/acquisition, and instituting a strategic sales shift like moving from selling individual products to selling an integrated solution are all examples of Trigger Events.

When it comes to coaching, Trigger Events are important because if you initiate a targeted coaching effort to making them successful, the importance of the Trigger Event will provide the focus and commitment necessary to make sure the coaching happens. All Trigger Events represent some type of strategic shift so the sales team will indeed need to adjust and adapt their selling skills to the new reality. So coaching is clearly needed and warranted.

Example – New Product Launches. Let’s take the example of a new product launch. In this case let’s assume the new product is a potential game changer. In such a case the company would have committed substantial R&D and Marketing dollars and lots of people would be interested in creating a success story.

In is also true if the product is a game changer, then the sales team will likely face new sales challenges and a need to upgrade their selling skills. So it will be easier than normal to get everyone behind the idea of implementing a six-month targeted coaching effort for helping the sales team get smart about selling the new product. And if needed, it will also be easier to get the budget to implement manager coaching training or purchase a coaching software package customized for the new product.

Summary

When it comes to sales coaching our observation is the problem is not so much about bad sales coaching but the fact that sales coaching does not systematically occur. When it does occur, it works.

So one answer to the dilemma is connecting the sales coaching effort to a high priority organizational Trigger Event that has everyone’s attention and focus. Our bet is under these conditions the right people will actually get serious about coaching, its merits will be demonstrated, and perhaps coaching will become institutionalized. And if the latter thing happens – that’s a good thing.

For more than 30 years Dr. Richard Ruff and Dr. Janet Spirer – the founders of Sales Momentum and Sales Horizons – have worked with the Fortune 1000 to design and develop sales training programs that make a difference. By working with market leaders – such as UPS, Smith & Nephew, Robbins & Minor, Textron, Boston Scientific, Owens & Minor – we have learned that today’s standard for a great sales force significantly differs from yesterday’s picture.

Sales Momentum offers companies a new generation of proven sales training programs designed with Fortune 1000 companies… that you can deliver, modify, and brand to your organization. Sales Horizons offers these programs to companies with a one-time license fee that is compatible with today’s economic realities.

To learn more about how Sales Momentum helps companies achieve sales success, visit our web site at http://www.salesmomentum.com or visit our blog at http://www.salestrainingconnection.com/.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Richard_Ruff/907121

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