Tag Archives: Business

Sales Coaching

The Sales Training Series – Make Every Buyer a Coach

In a selling situation with multiple buyers, what is your sales strategy for getting through to the ultimate decision maker?

“By any means necessary,” you say? Then you have no sales strategy. What you have is a recipe for failure.

Of all the tragic misconceptions that afflict salespeople in selling environments with multiple buyers, the worst might be the notion that lower-level “influencers” are mere obstacles in the seller’s path to the big honcho-the person with final buying authority. Do you believe that the ultimate decision maker (UDM) is the only buyer who is really worth your time? Do you think that “strategy” means figuring out how to bypass or maneuver around the lower-level customers so you can get to the UDM?

If so, you are losing a lot of business. That’s not a strategy for anything but disaster.

For one thing, a lot of those influencers may not have the power to make your sale, but they do have the power to kill it-and they will, if you alienate them.

There is much more to this, however, than just the danger of making enemies. Lower-level buyers can be your most valuable resource. They can actually direct you to a winning strategy.

After all, what is an effective sales strategy? It is a plan that guides you from one logical step to the next as you move toward a sale. In order to know what those steps must be, and how to complete each one successfully, you need information. Somehow, you must discover the client’s key needs, the forces driving the buying decision, the stakeholders involved, the way the buying process works in the client’s company, and more.

Wouldn’t it be nice if some expert guides within the company would give you this information freely? How about if they also would coach you through the steps necessary to complete the sale? And suppose they’d willingly bring you to the top decision maker because they actually want you to win?

Such guides exist in every client organization and every one is a potential sales coach. If you can get them to see you as a valuable consultant and partner, capable of serving their needs, you can stop worrying about how to get to the ultimate buyer. They will take you there-and root you on to victory.

In The Field:

Dan Crear, a sales executive for Action Selling of The Sales Board, was in hot pursuit of a great opportunity at a thriving global bank. (Yes, even today there is such a thing as a successful bank.) The ultimate decision-maker was the kind of person who liked to spread the decision-making authority around. Nine people surfaced as key influencers.

Crear assessed the situation and determined the role of each player. Then he devised questions to draw out their personal stakes in the buying decision. One key question was: “What evidence do you have that your current situation is producing an ROI?”” This led each decision-maker to define what ROI meant to them.

Once the payback was defined in individual terms, every one of them wanted him to win the deal. With their support, he did.

Duane Sparks is CEO of The Sales Board, Inc. and author of the Action Selling Sales Training Series. Action Selling is a sales management training program that creates a culture of sustained revenue growth. This success is based on a researched-proven selling process; an easy-to-follow road map that shows salespeople how to consistently win more sales, shorten sales cycles, protect margin and cultivate loyal customers. Over 300,000 have been training in Action Selling and consistently show results of selling at a rate that is 6 times more than those without training.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Duane_Sparks/17945

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Sales Coaching

Effective One on One Sales Coaching Sessions

Recently I have read posts on this subject on a several popular blogs. My most recent “snooping around” session revealed on one of those blogs that an “effective One-On-One coaching session should be planned six months ahead of time”. My curiosity ended, as did my snooping session. If you are holding your coaching session every six months you should be fired as a sales manager! You sales people are customers of your leadership, and they need service from you more often than every six months.

There are four types of coaching sessions:

Behavioral – something has come to your attention that must/should be shared. Though we think of these sessions as addressing negative behaviors you should use them to recognize positive behaviors also.

Discovery – As a manager you have uncovered a developmental issues that should be addressed. This is the first session of a field training program that should end with a bi-lateral contract between you and the sales person.

Follow Up – These are frequent mini-sessions to check up, and exchange feedback.

Bottoms Up – If you are a great leader this should happen often. Instead of you discovering a developmental issue one of your team members seeks out your help. Why? Because you are trustworthy and they know you are there to serve them.

First a note about tone. Attitude is everything. If this is a behavior coaching session do not send mixed messages. If a negative behavior issue is serious enough to warrant exploration and coaching, don’t mince in other topics. The outcome of behavioral coaching sessions are usually uni-lateral next step contracts. If you have discovered a specific sales skill that needs improvement you do want to recognize those other skill areas that are best in class. If this session is a follow up you should summarize previous discussions, recognize progress and discuss next steps. The key to follow up coaching sessions is that this is a bi-lateral agreement to next steps.

Coaching sessions should be orderly. You should control some parts of the discussion and you should let your team member control others. However, this is not a free flowing, never ending conversation. You may end up being friends with some of you sales people but remember, friendship is the outcome of effective leadership, leadership is never the outcome of friendship.

The coaching session outline;

Warm Up – I guess you could just hit them over the head, but why? This is a team member. The only reason to minimize this part of the discussion is if you have uncovered a negative behavioral issue that if not addressed could result in the termination of this team member. Initiating a serious conversation with frivolous small talk is disingenuous.

Orientation – If this is the first coaching session to reveal something you have discovered, particularly if the team members overall contributions are satisfactory, this part of the discussion is crucial. For instance, if you are concerned with this team members prospecting skills you should discuss what lead to this discovery. “Jim, thanks for your first quarter results. It helped show the others that the goals are achievable even with this difficult economy. But I was exploring our CRM system and think I discovered something. I noticed that you not only made your goals, but had the highest proposal to contract closing ratio! In fact, you also had one of the highest closing ratios in moving prospects from the needs analysis to the proposal, congratulations! But that led me to think, are you motivated to dramatically increase your earnings? Because if you are I think I discovered something that is holding you back…” Now the stage is nearly set for you to focus the conversation.

Focus – This is the meat of the conversation and two-thirds of your time should be spent here. But step back a little. Dust off those sales skills from your past life. If you sold like I did, you’re best sales pitches were not about what you told a prospect right? First you need to sell the need. Continuing our conversation with Jim…”Since you have world class skills at the end of the sales cycle, I did a little arithmetic. You may already know this but if you were able to put 3 more prospects into your pipeline every quarter your earnings would increase by 10%!” My best sales presentations came about because of the questions I asked! You need to use your open ended probes, your directional probes and confirming probes. You need to find out if the lack of prospecting is a skill gap, or a will gap (see separate articles on each subject on blog). If Jim agrees he has a need to increase the number of prospects in his pipeline, you’re halfway home! You now have to come to agreement on how to satisfy that need.

Contract – Every coaching session should end with a contract. Simply put this is the agreement going forward, which defines each person’s action plan and roles. In my Sales Excellence Process there is a form which defines each person’s commitment. The contract (unilateral or bilateral) should be driven by what you determined to be the cause of the problem. If the issue is skill then you as the leader will have an obligation to the sales person to deliver the training. If the issue is one of will to do the task then the sales person will have more obligations to the contract while your role will be inspecting what you expect.

Coaching sessions are the most important duty of a sales manager. How you go about delivering a coaching session will define your leadership. Get your mind right! Are you there to help, or are you there to catch someone doing something wrong? Remember “Cool Hand Luke”?

Boss: Sorry, Luke. I’m just doing my job. You gotta appreciate that.

Luke: Nah – calling it your job don’t make it right, Boss.

Sales Performance Advisors delivers field ready tools to help sales people, sales managers, directors and executive management optimize their sales results.

You can contact Gregory Deming @ (925)216-5081
gregorydeming@gmail.com

You can view our blog @ http://www.peaksalesperformance.wordpress.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2063716

Sales Coaching

Buying Email Lists – Perspective From the Insurance Sales Coach

Are you thinking about buying an email list to increase your insurance sales? Before you make that purchase there are some things you should consider Before you throw money away that could be invested more wisely for a better return. Plus you want to make sure you aren’t getting yourself into legal hot water and potentially huge fines.

It sounds like such a great idea. You could buy a list of 1,000,000 names and then send your sales message to those people. Just think if even 1% of those one million people bought from you, why you’d get 10,000 new clients. Hold the send button email breath it doesn’t exactly work that way.

Exactly how did the company selling you those email addresses get those names? Typically those companies have a website where visitors have to agree to get messages either knowingly or unwittingly from a whole host of other companies in order to get something they want. As an example, during the political campaign season there were banners ads all over the internet you could click on claiming you would get a free t-shirt for your favorite candidate for free.

Once you clicked on the banner ad you went to a website where you had to jump through a bunch of hoops agreeing to get other free gifts from other companies in order to finally get your free t-shirt. So if you did everything you needed to do to get your free t-shirt does that mean you wanted email from those other companies? Not likely.

The legality of this process is tricky and one I’d never personally want to risk. I certainly would never want to jeopardize my personal integrity with the people I hope to work with in this way. The people who got on this list didn’t really agree to opt-in to your email list. They may have opted in so they could get a free gift, but that isn’t the same as opting in to your opt-in email campaign.

That’s exactly what could create a legal or technical nightmare for you. When you send out your email thinking these folks are happy to get your message you might just get a nasty surprise. When some of the big internet service providers get a sudden burst of emails from an unknown sender, you, going to their clients they’ll flag you as a spammer and block all your messages so no one on their service gets them. Your own internet service provider may also flag you as a spammer when they notice that all of a sudden you’re sending a huge number of outgoing messages and they could block you from sending any email messages to anyone through their services. Both of these nasty surprises are a headache and can take a great deal of time and sweat equity to correct. A third nasty surprise is far worse.

Either one of the internet service providers or even an individual email recipient could report you as a CAN-SPAM legislation violator. Guess who bears the burden of proof on that deal. Yep, you guessed it…you.

Even if none of those bad things happened a purchased email list is still a bad investment because they’ll opt-out of your email campaign in huge numbers. Even the ones who don’t opt-out are about as likely to do business with you as you are to win the lottery. So getting a return on your investment will be challenging to put it in the best way I can.

There’s simply no logical reason to buy an email list when you could easily build your own list of highly responsive people who will buy from you. All you need is a one page website, a way to capture information from your visitors, and an offer to give them something they’ll want. Then once you send them the information they asked for they really have opted in to “your” list and you can legally prove it if you ever needed to. Plus you have the opportunity to develop a relationship with this stranger and convert them to a buyer.

Discover how to increase your sales without rejection. [http://increasesalescoach.com/yes.html]

Selling Insurance made easy. Get your free report here. [http://increasesalescoach.com/selling-insurance.html]

Increase Sales Coach Cheryl A. Clausen Gets Results Sales Training Can’t BECAUSE it’s never just a sales issue

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Cheryl_Clausen/56791

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Sales Coaching

Insurance Sales Coach – The Path to Insurance Sales Success

If you keep doing what you’re told to do you’re doomed. If you’re like 85% of your fellow producers, your career will end within your first 18 months. Of those making it 5 years the majority will burn out and give up. Thus if you keep doing what you’re told to do you aren’t likely to succeed.

Doing what you’re doing now guarantees a life of chasing after prospects who don’t want to talk to you, scraping to cover your bills each month, and living commission check to commission check. Most producers aren’t in the business long enough to even get a residual commission. If you want to eat you have to hunt fresh meat every single day.

While it’s great for the insurance companies if you continually sell new policies to new people it isn’t necessarily so great for you. That’s a hard life few can sustain even if they’re able to generate a livable income. Of course, the livable income is where the wheel comes off the wagon for most.

Many newbies innocently do exactly what they’re told to do by their sales manager because they think the sales manager knows how to succeed in the business. Plus they believe the insurance company wants them to succeed. In other words, you buy into not one but two fallacies. First, the insurance company doesn’t care if you succeed there’s another new agent coming on line to replace you as you read this. Plus if you fail they get to keep all the on-going earnings the policies you wrote generate long after you’re gone.

The second fallacy is your sales manager knows how to succeed in the business. If your sales manager were a super producer that sales manager would have a thriving business and wouldn’t want to be a sales manager. They’re struggling to pay their bills just like you and they think taking on this sales manager’s position will help them cover their expenses.

This is how it is, but it doesn’t have to be that way for you.

This is your business, your future, your family that’s on the line. Take responsibility and follow a path that leads to real insurance success. If you want to develop a successful insurance business one you can both sustain and enjoy there are a few things you’ll need to do. These are the things that will produce a path for your insurance sales success:

  • Discover how to market yourself so the people you want to sell to contact you
  • Narrow your focus and expand your expertise to better meet the needs of a select group of people
  • Develop a message that resonates with what your best buyers want to get, what they want to avoid, or what they want solved
  • Develop automated systems that transition strangers to clients
  • Develop automated systems to earn both repeat business and referrals from existing clients.

 

You see you can’t sell insurance until you know how to sell insurance. You’ll never learn how to sell insurance doing it the way you’re told to do it. You can choose to develop a business that produces real results or you can continue to eke out a bare minimum existence one commission check to the next. You can have your sales manager breathing down your neck or you can have your sales manager chasing after you begging you to tell how you’re producing the results you’re producing. As always the choice is yours.

Discover how to increase your sales without rejection. [http://increasesalescoach.com/yes.html]

Selling Insurance made easy. Get your free report here. [http://increasesalescoach.com/selling-insurance.html]

Increase Sales Coach Cheryl A. Clausen Gets Results Sales Training Can’t BECAUSE it’s never just a sales issue

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1888583

Sales Coaching

Sales Coaching During an Economic Downturn

“You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.” – Gene Mauch

Four Critical Tasks for Sales Managers

1. Now, more than ever, sellers need to spend time on prospecting for new business. Sales managers need to set clear expectations with each seller about the need to do more prospecting. But, the manager needs to do more than just set expectations. A down economy is a great time to be more creative in your prospecting. Brainstorm with your sales team about the best products/markets/regions to target in your prospecting efforts.

2. Managers need to spend more time motivating the sales team. It is easy for sellers to get discouraged when customers are slowing down and reducing the frequency and quantity of their orders. Use positive feedback and reinforcement whenever possible. Celebrate a new piece of business. Congratulate a seller who retains a critical piece of business, because a business downturn is when you are most at risk of losing business.

3. Lead by example. Partner with your salespeople at current clients, especially key accounts. Now is the time to go on more joint sales calls, even if the purpose of the call is to simply thank a current customer for their business. Personally get involved in prospecting for new business. Spend some time each week calling or emailing new prospective customers. This will help to motivate the sellers, and shows them that you are willing and able to bring in new business yourself.

4. Influence other departments to get involved in the sales process. STAR has endorsed the concept of team selling for several years, but a down economy is a great time to communicate throughout your organization that everyone, not just the sales team, needs to work extra hard during difficult times. If every person at your company who interacts with current and new customers can do something extra to impress a customer, you will do a better job at customer retention than your competition.

by Bill McCormick

Sales Training And Results, Inc. (STAR) is a sales management training company, providing customized sales training workshops and one-on-one sales coaching and consulting. Visit our website at http://www.salestrainingandresults.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1872145