Tag Archives: Business Growth

Sales Coaching

My First Sales Coach

Why would a person become a Sales Trainer? Let’s go back in time to my initial sales experience and to my first sales coach. In my early teens, my first job was selling newspaper subscriptions. It seemed easier that delivering papers so I gave it a try. The idea was to get people to agree to have the paper delivered and for every account, the commission was 1 $. After a week of knocking on doors and not getting one new account, I wanted to quit.

My father took the time to listen to what I was saying to people. Since he worked at the newspaper, Dad was uniquely qualified and he had a deep love for journalism. Dad said that I had all the benefits down, but my message needed a small change: “It’s not about home delivery – it’s about the coupons and how a newspaper can help educate families.” I said “whoa- that wasn’t in the manual!”

  • We pulled all the coupons out of the Sunday paper and put the best ones on cardboard paper.
  • Then, we cut out articles about current events and glued them to the other side of the paper.
  • Dad said to “stress how much money could be saved every week by just taking the coupons to the store.”
  • Then, explain: “how families could help their kids in school by reading and talking about stories in the newspaper!

 

The next day, I was little nervous. It was a Saturday and my Manager would soon be pulling up in the Van. Dad asked me “so you go to each house and knock – right?” I replied “Yes – he takes us to neighborhoods and drops us off.” My father said “that’s takes guts to go door to door.” I swallowed hard. My Dad said I had guts.

As I was leaving, he handed me the coupons and articles and said ‘take it one house at a time.’ I don’t mind telling you that I was not only reluctant, but just plain scared. But with every step, and each new knock, my internal confidence grew. That afternoon, I returned with eight subscriptions! “Dad – it worked!”

I showed Dad my book of business and he said “you seem surprised!” Well, I was surprised and amazed. I did as well or better than the rest of the team. Dad asked “what was different today?” My comments bubbled over about:

  • “how people liked saving money”
  • “the newspaper really is a way to help educate their children.”

 

So what happened here? You can see how fortunate I was to have a Father who cared. He helped me craft a very persuasive message. Dad re-focused me on one house at a time. My efforts were on helping people buy more with less money and to make their children smarter! If no leadership had been provided, I would not have had a good experience and I would have stopped selling. Instead, I fell in love with selling and have dedicated my life to learning every aspect of it. There is no mystery then why I enjoy being a sales coach.

This story is an excerpt from Charlie’s book “Target 10 to Win!”

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6960234

Sales Coaching

Decrease Employee Turnover With Sales Coaching

One of the most significant costs to a company can often be the employee turnover in the sales department. This is can be costly because the success and quality of the sales organization has a direct impact on top line revenue. There is always going to be some level of turnover, but if there is something that a company can do to decrease employee turnover, there can be strong financial benefits.

Employee turnover in the sales department creates two different types of costs for a company: direct costs and indirect costs. The direct costs are the hard-dollar expenses that are incurred when sales resources are recruited, hired, trained, and terminated. These costs can be tracked and will typically show up in financial reports.

The indirect costs that a company will see are in the form of opportunity cost. This cost is all of the business that is lost or missed while sales positions are open due to turnover and then while new sales resources are being trained and ramped up. This cost can be a tremendous amount, especially when you factor in recurring revenues that are missed for future years. Unfortunately, opportunity cost can be difficult to truly measure and will not show up in financial reports.

The main cause for employee turnover in the sales department is poor sales performance. Either sales resources are not performing at a high level and not making the money they want to be so they chose to go somewhere else where they feel they will be more successful. Or the sales resources are not performing at a high level and management determines that a permanent change is necessary in order to drive better sales results. This is how sales coaching can help as it can improve sales performance and that alone can decrease employee turnover.

Sales coaching will decrease employee turnover by working with sales resources on an ongoing basis to help them to perform at their optimum level. Coaching will help bring clarity to sales resources with where they are in terms of attainment, identifying what they need to do to be successful, and then help them with dealing with challenges and hurdles as they occur. Sales coaching will help the sales person to be more successful than they would be if they were completely operating on their own.

By being able to decrease employee turnover, the company will stand to retain a tremendous amount of knowledge. This includes knowledge on company information, processes, products, customers, etc. By being able to retain this knowledge, the company will stand to perform better in the area of sales effectiveness, which will decrease the amount of business lost or missed driving down opportunity cost. In addition, the cost to replace this knowledge can be tremendous in terms of both time and money. This is a hard-dollar cost and to decrease employee turnover will yield immediate savings.

Sales coaching can be provided by a company’s internal sales management team or it can be provided by outside coaching professionals. The benefit of outsourcing the coaching responsibility is that outside resources will likely be trained in the area of coaching and will have experience that can be leveraged. In addition, if the internal management focuses on more strategic activities, there can be a better return on investment for the way their time and attention is spent.

Michael Halper has a passion for coaching individuals toward personal and professional development. For more information about coaching and development visit Compass Coaching you can read more about Decreasing Employee Turnover or Sales Coaching.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3462708

Sales Coaching

Training Sales Managers: Why It Could Be Your Best Investment Ever

Training sales managers is not always the first thing that sales directors think about. Instead the focus seems to be on training the new sales representative. Yet the reality is if a new sales representative is supported and coached they are likely to sell twice as much as a representative who is not.

You only need to look at some of the most powerful sales teams in any organisation and you will notice that they normally have a highly skilled sales manager behind them.

The facts are that to become good at most things in life we all need some help and support. This is especially so in business where core business and selling skills are vital to an individual and companies success. A well trained sales manager will be able to help support teach and guide their individual sales team members to success.

A sales manager has a wide remit to what he or she needs to deliver. Generally they are responsible for delivering on a sales target, managing the marketing plan, reviewing the budget and staying within spending limits. In addition they also need to ensure that each of their sales team members is hitting their individual sales targets and quotas. This is an area that many new sales managers struggle with. It is OK signing expenses and managing the process part of the role, yet a focus on sales coaching will potentially produce even bigger results.

We all I am sure know the saying, ‘teach a man to fish?’ and it is a popular saying because it is true. If individual sales representatives are coached on their selling skills it will improve your bottom line exponentially. Sales coaching is a process by which your sales training managers can enable your sales team to become more effective in front of both existing clients and potential prospects. Sales coaching will work with both new and experienced sales representatives. Depending on their level of experience different styles can be used.

A new sales team member might need more directive sales coaching. As the saying goes you don’t know what you don’t know. Their level of experience in coming across the different customer scenarios will be different and here a sales manager can really help in making suggestions of how best to move forward and get a desired result. Making sales coaching align with your current selling skills model make everything work smoothly for all concerned.

When the sales representative focuses their interaction on achieving the outcome they have set, results happen quickly. In today’s new economy, selling is a definite process. If a prospect is new it is unlikely that they will place a huge order in the first meeting. Yet this initial interaction is vital to set the tone and possibility of the next one happening. Rookie representatives can be helped in the process if your organisation has a focus on training sales managers in the sales coaching skills that will deliver results for everyone involved.

So when you are planning the improvement of your sales force if you want to accelerate your results make sure you factor in training sales managers as well.

Nic Hallett is the MD of Excel Enterprise and an expert in training sales managers [http://www.excelenterprise.co.uk] To Find out more about how Excel Enterprise can help train your sales managers to deliver superior results visit [http://www.excelenterprise.co.uk]

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Nic_Hallett/1231793

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Sales Coaching

Things to Remember If You Have a Sales Coach

There is a science to the art of selling that sets some minimum skills for a person to become excellent at the job. Books may describe these minimum skills but mere textbooks may have a hard time getting these skills ingrained into your system. Only experience can really do that. It’s great if you have been selling stuff since you were five. By the time you reach 20, you’re likely to be selling some really juicy stuff that can keep your wallet plump and your ego satisfied. However, if you started selling rather late, the only way you can speed up the process of really learning all the tricks in the book is to vicariously absorb someone else’s experience or be goaded to near perfection by someone who knows the terrain.

That is where a good sales coach comes in. If you have been a salesperson for some time, chances are high that you already know how rewarding, fulfilling, and frustrating the world of sales can be. If you have achieved some measure of sales success, it is also likely that you have learned not a few techniques from someone who–knowingly or unknowingly–has been a sales coach or mentor to you. Whether it is about how to get your numbers in order or how to make a good first impression on clients, your sales coach have been pivotal to your growth and performance as a salesperson.

The most ideal scenario is quite familiar: a new recruit working his or her way up the ladder and eventually getting under the wings of a wise and sympathetic sales veteran. Count yourself lucky if you found yourself in this rare and fortunate turn of events. This situation is rare simply because there are a lot of sales neophytes who do find themselves partnering with sales veterans, who, unfortunately are not as sympathetic or wise as they would have hoped. There are also greenhorns who eventually partner with sympathetic coaches who, unfortunately, either lack the communicative skills to share their knowledge or are in serious need of some training themselves.

Regardless of whether you are under the wings of a veteran office peer or have acquired the services of a professional coach, there are fundamental attitudes that you need to adopt in order to make the learning process more productive and more meaningful. When you start on a coaching relationship and you are the one being coached, remember to establish goals and expectations at the onset in order for both you and your coach to draw up the appropriate engagement plans.

The adage that a good sales person is a good listener rings no less true when applied to a sales coaching relationship. If anything, listening skills are actually most needed in this particular relationship in order to turn the engagement into a transformative platform that will propel you to achieve success levels you have only dreamed about before. Remember that working harder is often inadequate to achieve the next level. Only learning new rope tricks from people who have been there can really bring you a notch higher.

Aside from attentive listening, you must force yourself towards meaningful improvement. This means admitting your weaknesses as a sales professional and being open to developing new positive work habits that your sales coach will ask you to learn. Simply put, this means that you should will yourself to change.

It’s your sales coach’s job to push and challenge you until it hurts and you have to commiserate by having the professional agility to roll with the punches. Otherwise, the relationship could develop into one of resentment, and nobody wins in the end. Argue and be honest about what you feel but remain anchored in the knowledge that being a pain in the neck is only incidental in performing the job of a sales coach. Your sales coach’s true mission is to goad you until you unlock a secret. And whatever this secret is, it will take you to the next level of your professional journey. At the very least, appreciate the fact that someone is goading you to perform beyond any of your previous successes and take every opportunity to leverage your coach’s energy to your advantage.

As a credit to yourself, develop the constant awareness that sales coaches generally work with people with considerable selling potential and that you happen to be one, yourself. That said, a sales coach is there to ensure that you consistently generate only outstanding results. There simply is no room for mediocrity. Think of your coach as an Olympic trainer, and yourself as an Olympic-grade sales professional. Nothing but world-class performance is acceptable; and that should be an all-pervading target.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6666058

Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching – The Means to Reaching Your Full Potential in Sales

If you are working in sales, you realize just how gratifying and financially rewarding it can be. Yet, to fail to achieve your full potential in this cut throat business can also find you caught up in one of the most frustrating, stressful and completely wretched ways of trying to make a living.

There are two schools of thought that emerge when it comes to selecting the ideal salesperson. One states the individual has to be a special type to thrive in the sales world; the other believes anyone who has learned the right techniques can perform this job. The truth lies somewhere between. Being an excellent salesperson requires a certain amount of specific skills, personal characteristics and knowledge. You can work your way through every book on sales and still not be a top salesperson. In fact the different and often outdated approaches in some of these books may result in confusion rather than a clear success. The same is applicable to relying solely on innate personal traits. If you do not have the knowledge to reinforce them, you are not going to make Salesperson of the Year.

If you want to be at the top of the sales ladder, you have to combine a wide variety of talents, skills and innate personal characteristics. You must be able to recognize the key-decision makers, develop a solid relationship with them and know just what to hone in to and how hard to press home your point. You must be compelling in your arguments, deal with a massive amount of diverse figures including costs and calculate correctly. It also means you need the perseverance to stick with the sales pitch and close the deal at the right time for the right price.

Many individuals have a few of these characteristics. They have the ability to persevere or are mathematic whiz kids. Yet, only the very best can combine all the ingredients. They are the few who can deliver on every single account. If, however, you turn to online sales coaching, you can work on and improve your sales capabilities on all counts.

Online sales coaching is not to be confused with those generic types offered through various books, videos and training courses. Online sales coaching is a personalized one-on-one approach. It allows individuals to discover and learn how to utilize their natural and learned abilities to achieve the best results possible.

When it comes to selecting a sales coach be cautious. The task requires more than knowledge of sales and sales techniques. It also needs the individual to pass on that knowledge in a positive manner. To teach someone how to be successful in the field of sales, you need to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the student and know how to support them towards their goal.

Another issue to consider is the relevancy of the knowledge. Sales techniques have changed over the years. Today’s approaches are not consistent with those of the past. You need to take care the sales coach you choose has completely accurate and current understanding of what has now become a global market. Today, technological advances dash in and affect the way you can sell products and services. Moreover, the aggressive sales techniques of past years are no longer in vogue. They have been replaced with more sophisticated means – the result of research into human behavior and other aspects involving sales. As a result, you need to be very careful, selecting only a sales coach who is aware of the latest methods and can introduce them into his or her teaching techniques.

Online sales coaching is currently available at http://www.freelancecoach.com, who ca provide you with an opportune and helpful way of addressing any of the issues restraining us. You can easily access the guidance and help of an experienced and professional mentor from your home at times that suit your often busy schedule. With one simple click, you will have what you need to get you back on the right track moving towards an exciting future – a future of which we have control and can direct to achieve what we are truly capable of achieving.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6528008