Tag Archives: sales growth

Sales Coaching

The Secret Behind Swedish Sales Success

In a recent article, Annika Wihlborg interviewed sales consultant Björn Strid about his book: Let Your Heart Beat Your Sales Record (Låt ditt hjärta slå ditt säljrekord).

According to Mr. Strid, the Swedish way of selling is highly respected by clients worldwide. Several factors contribute to the excellent reputation that many Swedes have earned in international business.

Based on his many years of selling a range of products (from ice cream to complex logistical solutions), Mr. Strid concludes that the typical Swedish way of selling has five guiding principles: creating trust, showing empathy, being well-prepared, taking action and knowing the relevant profit-loss figures for a company.

These principles can be seen to have grown out of the Swedish business environment. In Sweden, flat organizations are common and this enables people to take initiative and maintain a high level of sales-driven activity.

Also, successful Swedish sales people have an exceptionally high level of competence in the services and products they sell. They keep up with the latest developments in their field, and often have a strong professional background in their area of expertise. Swedes value competence and the ability to explain a product or service, as well as its full value to a buyer.

Empathy – A Very Valuable Sales Tool

But Mr. Strid believes that the most important success factor is the Swedish capacity for empathy. He says, “We Swedes also see and encourage colleagues of the person we are meeting with. That makes us different from many other international sales people who for the most part, focus only on the person with the highest formal title.”

Keep Track of the Numbers!

Another very strong success factor is, according to Mr. Strid, the tendency that Swedes have to keep track of their own sales numbers. This makes them especially good at asking relevant questions of their prospects in international sales meetings.

Taking Action to Make Sales Happen

The consistently high level of activity that many Swedish sales people are known for is another success factor. This is largely due to the relatively flat and non-prestigious organizational structures typical of Swedish companies.

The traits that Swedes bring to the negotiating table are highly appreciated by company leaders throughout the world. Swedish sales people are good at asking questions, leading meetings and – not least of all – taking the time to really see and encourage others.

They have learned that empathy is a very valuable characteristic when it comes to sales, no matter which product or service you are selling. “Swedish sales people have demonstrated consistently that our capacity for empathy, combined with our knowledge of English and our way of taking action, is a very dependable recipe for success,” according to Mr. Strid.

Mr. Strid’s five tips for sales people who want to improve their capacity for empathizing with others:

1/ Meet with people on all levels of an organization – from decision-makers and others who may be influential in the company, down to the user-level.

2/ Don’t be so eager to talk about and share what you think. Focus on asking questions instead.

3/ Follow up with the contacts you have already made. Take the time to do this instead of always looking to find more business contacts.

4/ Get in touch with your clients, even when you are not planning to sell anything. Just let them know that you care about them and that they are important. This will often lead to more business, even if that was not the original intention.

5/ Practice building empathy by asking questions about people’s personal lives as well as their business. Allow the other person to finish what they start to tell you. Avoid jumping into the discussion and talking about yourself. It’s better to ask more questions, than to move the focus onto your own experiences.

Mr. Strid is a sales coach and popular speaker who helps companies develop their sales and marketing initiatives. He is the owner of Strid & Co in Stockholm, Sweden.

About the Author: Janet Boynton Runeson is a freelance web copywriter and director of Entrepreneurial Copy. With several advanced degrees in the Humanities, Fine Arts and Economics, she has extensive experience in international marketing and specializes in cultural awareness.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Janet_Runeson/1267986

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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

Strengths Based Sales Leadership Tactics

If you have been given the important position of acting as the leader for your sales team, then it should be your primary goal to increase productivity and lead your group of sales professionals to success. Company growth and a solid reputation all rely on the efforts and success of your sales force; so you will want to do what you can to build up the strengths of your sales team and find out ways to overcome the weaknesses. When you start to lead your sales team, you will find that different teams and different team members have different strengths and as an effective leader you will first need to identify these strengths before you can lead or make any changes.

Keep in mind that different individuals on your team will have different strengths. This is important as you will want to make sure that you treat each member of your team as an individual instead of treating the group as a whole. In addition to identifying the strengths of each sales member, you need to identify the best way to build up the weaknesses of each of your sales members and turn them into strengths. A great deal of this has to do with proper motivation. Just as each team member will have a different strength or weakness, each team member will be motivated in a different way, so if certain approaches don’t work at first you will want to keep trying.

When it comes to strong leadership within your sales team, having a mutual respect between you and your team members is essential. This can be achieved with open communication. Sit down with your team and let them know what you feel their strengths are and what areas can be improved. Also show them by example the strengths you posses as a sales leader so that they can learn by your example. Never focus on their weaknesses as being problems, but being areas that can eventually become strengths. Since the sales environment of today tends to be so stress-driven, by focusing on strength and using your strengths to find success you will keep a more positive attitude within your sales force.

Keep in mind that strength within a team is often built by taking on challenges. You can not build up the strengths of your sales team by not pushing them or by avoiding difficult situations. Instead spin every tough situation, not as a moment where weakness can prevail but where your strengths as a team can come out. However, none of this can be possible without effective leadership. In addition to being able to point out and play up the strengths of your team, you need to be a strong leader yourself and never forget that your example and your approach to leading your team will impact the way they approach your current sales efforts.

Resource Box:

Visit The Sales Coaching Institute to learn more about effective sales leadership strategies. These professionals can be found online at http://www.salescoach.us.

Doug Dvorak is the CEO of DMG Inc., a worldwide organization that assists clients with productivity training, corporate humor and workshops, as well as other aspects of sales and marketing management. Mr. Dvorak’s clients are characterized as Fortune 1000 companies, small to medium businesses, civic organizations and service businesses. Mr. Dvorak has earned an international reputation for his powerful educational methods and motivational techniques, as well as his experience in all levels of business, corporate education and success training. http://www.dougdvorak.com

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Doug_Dvorak/54046

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Sales Coaching

The Coach’s Role on Joint Sales Calls

Normally, when a manager attends a joint sales call, it is at the time of the capabilities presentation or closing presentation. Though attending these meetings can be helpful, they do little to help sales people close more business that late in the process. That is like coaching a baseball team by showing up in the final inning instead of watching the entire game. As sales manager, you may know the outcome based on the data, but you will not know how the game developed. Knowing how the sale develops is essential to effective coaching. This is why observing sales people in action is so important.

Here are 4 steps to help you and your sales people have more effective joint calls.

1. A Quality Phone Call- Remember, the quality of the phone call will determine the quality of the appointment. Your sales person must follow the 8-Step Phone Process to make sure that the joint call is taking place with a qualified prospect versus a practice call.

2. Conduct a Pre-Call Session. In pre call sessions:

– sales people make sure they are prepared to execute their sales approach effectively
– The sales manager and sales person role-play the appointment
– Everyone agrees to and identifies who will do what during the sales call

3. Identify the Reason for a Joint Call – If it is for learning purposes, then the sales manager has a very small part in the call. If it is for qualifying or closing a large account, then the role of the sales manager can be more prominent.

4. Do a Post Call Debrief – This is an opportunity to help sales people recognize opportunities that they missed, questions they could have asked better and commitments they failed to gain. First, ask the sales person how he/she thought the call went. Listen and take notes. Compare their comments with your own observations. From there, share your insights about the sales person’s performance. Then schedule a one-on-one meeting to outline specific next steps and to develop an action plan that will address the “choke points” that were demonstrated.

A few tips for the sales coach. First, schedule these calls with your sales people. Do not wait for them to schedule.

Be proactive and select the calls to join. Secondly, observe the sales person during the call. Be present during different stages of the process so you know how the sales person opens, nurtures and closes a sale. Always do a pre-call before the meeting so that the sales person is prepared and so that later you can listen and absorb what is happening on the call. Make sure that the sales person is prepared to conduct the perfect sales meeting because you are there to observe. During a joint call, the coach’s role is defined as supportive, not as main character. This means that when you are on a joint call, you must let the sales professional run the meeting and make mistakes so that he/she will learn. If you “rescue”, this will not happen.

That being said, you probably wouldn’t let a sales person blow the sale of a lifetime. However, you should not ask a critical question that the sales person has neglected to ask. If you think you must assist, address the sales person with a question. As an example, if the sales person has forgotten to get clarity on the decision-making process, you should ask him/her about it. This would sound something like – “Mary, I must have missed this in the conversation – what is the decision-making process?”

You can access Tony’s entire eBook, 9 Keys to Sales Coaching Success, on Tony’s Sales Brew Blog. Make 2013 your year to become an even more effective sales coach!

Tony Cole, CEO of Anthony Cole Training Group
http://www.anthonycoletraining.com

Download Tony Cole’s Free eBook – 9 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching at http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/free-ebook-9-keys-to-successful-coaching/

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

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