Tag Archives: Sales Training

Sales Coaching

Do You Have A Sales Coach?

Over 35 years ago, I made what I feel is one of the significant decisions of my life. I decided that for the rest of my life I would invest 10% of my time in personal growth. In order to make this time of value I knew I needed a personal coach, a mentor and I needed to belong to a mastermind group. Of the three, the use of personal coaches has done more for my career and life success than any other career decision I have ever made.

During my speaking career I have known hundreds of people and spoken to thousands of salespeople who have said they want a better lifestyle, increased income and greater satisfaction from their career and life. Many of these same people have turned over the responsibility of their personal development to someone else. Unfortunately this is not the most effective way to ensure a life filled with success and personal freedom.

Over the years, one common denominator I have observed in successful salespeople is their willingness to invest in the continued improvement of their skills, attitudes and philosophy regardless of how they did it – books, seminars, audio products and so on. What I have also learned is that the most successful of these, had a personal coach helping them learn new skills as well as the value of discarding unnecessary habits and attitudes.

There are different coaching relationships and I am distinguishing here between a coach and a mentor. I have a lot of mentors who are no longer with us. I can think of people like; Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Will Rogers as three very important ones. I can learn from them through the written words they left behind but learning from a coach is different. A coach is in your life to help you; self-discover, think, create, unload old baggage, re-invent yourself, learn new skills, improve your powers of imagination and much more.

Do you have a personal coach? Have you ever had one? Every professional athlete from Olympic champions to the tennis and golf greats of the past and present have or have had personal coaches. Why? Because a good coach doesn’t have to have the ability to be better than you on the court or course. Their role is to help you get more out of you.

I am a personal coach to a number of salespeople, speakers, authors and CEO’s. Each month we talk about their objectives, goals, challenges, decisions etc. My role is not to tell them how they should be or what they should do. I don’t have that right. One of my coaching clients runs a $300 million dollar company. I have never run even a $10 million dollar company. I do not have the right or the ability to tell him what he should do different or better. My only role is to help him become a better CEO by asking good questions, holding him accountable, listening between the lines and helping him get in touch with his real intent.

Life is an interesting relationship between paying the price and winning the prize. Between self-investment and rewards. Between investing time in personal development and your ultimate success.

It takes commitment, patience, persistence, and goals to invest wisely in yourself over the long haul. It takes nothing whatsoever to postpone investing in yourself until it is too late and the die is cast. We are talking about a philosophy of ‘life-long learning’ – not learning as an event. It is never too late to begin an aggressive on-going self development program.

Many of the salespeople I coach want praise that they don’t get from their supervisors, validation of their methods or attitudes and permission to do something new or different. That’s not the role of a coach – that’s the role of a mother.

Where can you find a coach? Do you have to pay for coaching? What will you get out of a coaching relationship? How long will it or should a coaching relationship last? These are all very good questions so let me give you a couple of things to consider.

A coach can be anyone you trust, respect, knows how to listen, is not judgmental or critical, does not give advice and believes in you and your potential.

You can find them anywhere but there are organizations and professionals in all walks of life who spend a certain amount of their time coaching others. This may take a little digging on your part but it will be worth it.

A personal coach can:

-Improve your performance

-Save you time and resources

-Help you identify personal weaknesses

-Accelerate your career

-Help you learn new skills faster

-Improve your lifestyle

-Sharpen you existing skills

-Increase your income and net worth

-Improve your effectiveness

-Help you make better decisions

For personal coaching to be effective you must be willing to:

– Be held accountable

– Accept new ideas and approaches

– Change behaviors

– Get in touch with your real intentions

– Spend 5-6 hours per month working on your goals, plans and actions

What can a personal coach cost you? Anywhere from: $500 to $75,000 a year.

A coaching arrangement if it is to be successful requires commitment, follow-through, persistence, time and a desire to improve. There are no guarantees. Life offers no guarantees, but after over 30 years coaching a variety of people I have learned that if you will bring these attributes to the coaching process you will get back – ten times or more – the investment you made. Remember you are investing in yourself and your future.

Tim Connor, CSP is an internationally renowned sales, management and leadership speaker, trainer and best selling author. Since 1981 he has given over 3500 presentations in 21 countries on a variety of sales, management, leadership and relationship topics. He is the best selling author of over 60 books including; Soft Sell, That’s Life, Peace Of Mind, 81 Challenges Managers Face and Your First Year In Sales. He is also the CEO of Sales Clubs Of America. He can be reached at tim@timconnor.com, 704-895-1230 or visit his websites at [http://www.timconnor.com] or [http://www.SalesClubsOfAmerica.com]

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Sales Coaching

It’s How You Say It That Increases Sales – Sales Coaching

The way you present your services is how you package them. The way you package your services determines “sale” or “no sale”. Even when what you’re offering is the very same thing it’s how you say it that makes the difference and increases sales.

When you were a newbie you were trained, perhaps I should even say grilled, to follow a prepared presentation. It didn’t take you long to figure out when you use a “presentation” you’re selling no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And people hate to be sold.

And now, you’ve put your presentation away and you focus on holding a sales conversation. Good for you. However; you may have some of those old features, advantages, and benefits statements hanging around keeping you from selling more.

Believe me you want to have a sales conversation because when you do it feels far more natural for both you and the prospect, and you close nearly every prospect who’s a good match. To do that you have to identify where the prospect is in the buying stage, and then you adjust your conversation to meet them where they are. This makes it possible for you to achieve far greater success in less time.

By the way, sales people have a tendency to either presume each prospect is in the first stage or the last stage of buyer readiness. When you’re wrong you start off on the wrong foot and it’s very difficult to connect with the prospect, and obtain them as a client. You’re out of sync and they won’t feel comfortable with you or buying from you.

Just think about it: when you connect with a prospect

  • they may have no idea they have a need for your solution,
  • they may have some recognition they have a certain level of need for your solution but they aren’t ready to do anything about it,
  • they may be thinking about your solution and investigating their options,
  • or they may have an immediate need for your solution and be looking to buy now.

These are the four very distinct levels of buyer readiness. You don’t want to treat each prospect as though they’re in the same stage of readiness. The only way you can know is by asking questions. 

Listen to what they say before you respond and adapt how you respond to what they say. You’re very familiar with feature, advantage, and benefit statements. All three are absolutely worthless if they don’t match the buyer’s needs.

Plus those statements are focused on selling someone something not helping them buy what’s right for them. Instead, you only talk about features you’ve determined from your conversation are of interest to the buyer. You’ve gotten down to the details of their current situation and what they need, so you know when something about your service is an advantage and only point that advantage out if it’s relevant. You also understand the only time something is a benefit is if it directly fulfills a want the prospect says they have.

You’ll be glad you’ve made these little adaptations in your sales conversation because you’ll immediately notice an increase in sales. You’ll also notice both you and your prospects feel very comfortable talking to each other because they don’t feel like they’re being sold, and you don’t feel like you’re swimming upstream in a white water rapids. It’s a win-win leading to loyal clients willing to do repeat business with you and refer you to others.

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Sales Coaching

Live Sales Coaching

“Live” coaching is coaching that you do based on your observations of your people. Certainly it is critical to look at the metrics of how salespeople are performing against objectives to guide your coaching. Equally and maybe more important is to sit down and work with your salespeople to find out firsthand what they are doing, what they know, and where they need support so they can achieve the metrics.

Since most of you have come up through the ranks of sales as top performers, you may be tempted to keep on selling during team calls. But the role of the sales manager is not to sell but to develop others to sell to achieve their objectives. In reality it is sometimes necessary for you to sell, but “when and how” is what differentiates great sales managers from sales managers who continue to be great salespeople.

Let’s examine your role during a team call:

  •  First, make sure there is a compelling reason why you are going (i.e., add value, coach, show commitment, uptier …).
  •  Then make sure it is a team call and don’t go in place of the salesperson or you may have difficulty extricating yourself.
  •  Before the call, clarify roles by asking the salesperson what he/she thinks the roles should be and then give your view.
  •  Make sure the salesperson leads the call — not you.
  • Remember, all team members on the call must have a role and that, while there can be only be one lead, you must have a role. Together, look at the agenda and decide what it will be. For most sales calls, the salesperson should lead 85 to 90% of the call.

– As said before, there will be times when it is necessary for you to assume the primary sales role. For example: developing brand new salespeople, a very important opportunity/final presentation which calls for your skills (assuming in this case the sales manager is more skilled — which is not and should not always be the case — Think about a coach for a top athlete — the star athlete is the better performer, but the coach is nonetheless essential.). But you assuming the sales role should be an exception, not the rule. By preparing, debriefing, and coaching your salespeople, you will accelerate their development.

Debrief the call against those objectives and what you observed.

“Live” coaching is the best way to get the information you need and accelerate the development of your people. You will take a big step in making the challenging transition from exceptional salesperson to exceptional coach.

About Linda Richardson

Linda Richardson is President and founder of http://www.richardson.com, a leading sales training and consulting firm. She is a recognized leader in the sales training industry and is credited with the movement to consultative selling, which is the corner stone of Richardson’s methodology. Ms. Richardson has written 9 books on selling including her most recent, The Sales Success Handbook. She has been published extensively in industry.

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Sales Coaching

How Sales Coaching Can Increase Your Profits

The art of selling is commonly taught as a process involving 6 stages:

1. Before the sale begins

2. Understanding needs

3. Proposition of solution

4. Dealing with resistance

5. Gaining commitment/closing the sale

6. Follow-up and follow-through.

This is useful from the point of view of understanding where you are in the sale process and what you need to do next, but following the process will not necessarily get you the sale.

The fact is that ‘people buy from people’ – the decision to buy is made not because of the existing relationship with the company or even because of the features and benefits of the product – it is made because of the relationship with the salesperson as an individual. Successful salespeople know this and concentrate on building relationships as well as selling the benefits of their product.

Sales coaching begins where sales training leaves off and focuses on building relationships through understanding other people’s behavioural styles and dealing with them in the way they prefer, not necessarily in the way you prefer!

Sales coaching helps the salesperson to understand where their strengths lie and how to play on them, both in the sales process and building relationships. It also helps them to identify where they are not so good and how to develop these areas. It helps them to change strategy when things are not working, giving them more flexibility of behaviour.

Sales coaching helps your sales force to build the relationships that lead to more sales and is becoming an important way to deliver increased revenues.

Andy Britnell’s training and coaching products maximise the potential of your staff and cut out the unnecessary costs incurred by low morale, high turnover and repeated recruitment.

Visit his training website at http://andybritnell.co.uk/ for information on his powerful products and to subscribe to his FREE newsletter.

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Sales Coaching

Sales Managers: Get Your Team Up For The Game!

If you’re a sports fan, or an athlete, as I am, you know when you or your team are “flat” and are just phoning-in their performances, and when they’re juiced, and ready to go.

It makes a crucial difference in sports, as well as in selling.

In both situations, we have to get up for the game, and if you’re a sales manager, it’s your duty to psych up your players before every engagement, whenever possible.

As a former sales manager, and as a sales coach and consultant, I advocate having frequent sales meetings for this purpose. Meet, greet, and motivate your people before every shift, if they sell from inside.

If they’re outside sellers, try to arrange frequent telephone conferences to achieve the same thing,

Remind them of their sales targets, and try to tell inspiring stories, or share recent customer testimonials with them.

Every meeting should give them another reason to feel proud of themselves and what they’re selling.

You can use these get-togethers to review closing techniques, or to introduce better techniques of any kind. And most important, team members can discuss what’s working for them, which their peers don’t get a chance to see and to hear for themselves.

But the key deliverable from a successful meeting is emotion. They should get a boost, feeling higher and more energized than before.

One of my salesmen said to me, after our umpteenth meeting, “Gary, I might be able to make more money somewhere else, but nothing is going to be this much fun!”

Mission accomplished!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.

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