Sales tips, skills, fundamentals ideas and practices to help sales people sell more.
When you hire a new salesperson you only have one chance to get off to a fast start. Give it your best shot with a complete Onboarding/Orientation Plan. https://youtu.be/X8nB__8iYcg 1 - Understand Your Core Values To have onboarding success, you…
Your salesperson is not performing up to par and it feels like you've done all you can to help them. It's probably time for an improvement plan. Here are four keys to having a successful improvement plan that will either help…
I want to share with you 3 keys to improve and increase the trust level you have with your sales team by focusing on and understanding when to use each of these areas and how they have the greatest impact…
I want to share a scary truth about sales. It's a truth that we would prefer not to acknowledge or think about because we really want to believe we're in control of our sales results. https://youtu.be/x7S5xLoTXBQ So Here's the Scary…
Should I pay salary or commission? I have that questions asked of me often. It will take a little bit of homework for me to answer it for you, but what I’d like to share in this video is a…
There are 5 qualities I look for when hiring a sales person. Do you have a list of qualities you look for when you enter an interview? If not, it’s easy to be sold by a person who knows how…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip video, I want to share the benefits of team goals and bonuses and why they will work for your sales team. In search of ways to motivate a sales team, leaders often turn to…
When you do a book study with your sales team you get a low cost, high return way to bring education and training to your team. Let me share some of the benefits of why I use book studies more…
Here you are again. You have a sales opening to fill and you need to know how to interview a sales candidate. So, what is your interviewing process? Are you trying to get better at it? Have you actively done…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video, I'd like to share with you how you can transform your conversations with your sales team. I know that sales people can exaggerate and complain. I know this because I've been around a…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video I share with you how to get the feedback you need from your sales team to help you make business decisions. https://youtu.be/5QKTVPdlSLM Salespeople always have something to say, they have ideas and ways…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video I explain how to approach poor performance in your sales team and how to build trust while delivering bad news. https://youtu.be/tzBIOhjEAcE Have a Trusting Relationship You need to have a trusting relationship; one…
I have a few points I'd like to share on how to show your sales people you care about them. When people know that you care about them, then they will care about what you ask and expect of them.…
In this Sales Leadership Quick Tip Video I share a personal experience where I learned that pushing content material and over prepping for sales meetings is not always the best way to facilitate learning. After this experience, I decided to…
plan-ning (noun) : the act or process of making plans. Sometimes we need to go back to ‘Webster’ and look up what a word means. My guess is most of us have never looked up the meaning of the word…
Communication is not just important but critical in any of our human relationships. Whether it be with family, in a marriage, with friends or in our sales role. Communication plays a pivotal role in reducing misunderstandings or improving clarity and…
I recently heard a speaker say that a lot of people are crazy busy. As salespeople, with all the “busy” around sales responsibilities, it does get “crazy” and managing it can be a struggle. We either let fear get in…
Just about everyone is familiar with this simple fire safety technique. Most of us learned it in elementary school, but they never told us back then it might help us win or keep a customer one day. Fires create panic…
Every now and then a boost in sales is called for. At times, you’re “feeling it”, and setting a new personal record might be up for grabs. Maybe you’re behind on sales and something needs to turn around. The normal…
While recently leading a webinar I mentioned how creativity, which I consider one of many selling strengths, can work against me. Being creative helps me solve client problems and present ideas in ways that help others understand. Creating is also something that…
Just for fun, imagine one of your prospects from a recent selling opportunity who has no sales experience is asked to join your sales team and sell in your place. They are now the salesperson and you are their coach. You can coach them from the office, but you can’t meet with prospects and customers any longer because that is their job. Would you be willing to put your income and job security in their hands? Here’s the scary part of this story. It’s already happening to most of you during your current selling situations. When you’re not allowed to meet with all the parties involved in the buying decision (the buying team) you’re left with little choice other than hoping your prospects can do your selling for you.
It’s not always easy to be granted access to the buying team, but it should be your goal to do so. Improving your ability to convince your initial contact of the value of having you meet with their buying team will be very profitable. Here are nine steps to help you be more successful at doing your own selling while better serving your customers.
Do potential client/customers trust you? Of course they do, right? How do you really know? Most of us base this answer on a gut feeling more than on factual information derived through meaningful selling conversations. The best indicator of trust according to Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig, authors of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play is the “flow of meaningful information” between a buyer and a seller. This of course begs the question, “What is flow of meaningful information?” Let’s take a look at that question as well as eleven behaviors you can practice to build trust.
I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play by Mahan Kalso and Randy Illig. The authors not only provide an easy to implement methodology but they address what we as sales people need to do to get and keep things real. So what is getting real? At the core of “getting real,” is honesty. This includes honest communication between a seller and a buyer during selling conversations as well as being honest with our self. Honest communication is not only about what we say, it also includes what we’re not saying. When our intentions are in service of our buyers and we are transparent and honest in our communication, we make room for the buyer to be completely honest with us. The four-letter word that prevents us from reaching this honest place during selling conversations or managing people is FEAR.
We sell in a time that has an abundance of sales communication tools at are our disposal. The more tech forward tools include email, smartphones, text, and social media for the most part. Then of course, there’s what might be considered “old school” tools like faxing, a hard copy letter and a hand written note.
Some of these “old school” methods are not being used much any more as times and technology has changed. At the same time some methods that took their place can become less effective due to the volume of messages being sent daily. To stay at the top of your sales game you can’t fall into a trendy trap. The smart sales person will assess what selling and marketing methods are obsolete, new and effective, and which need a retrofit. Let’s take a look at the old and new methods of communication and see if we can find some new ways to use them to keep our selling conversations plentiful and moving along.
The value that matters most in a sales conversation is the one the customer can connect with. Are your prospective customers making a value connection with your offering, or is it possible you are trying to convince them of the value you believe in?
When the iPhone hit the market I couldn’t see the value in paying $400 for a phone when others were free. On top of that I was required to toss in an additional $360 annual fee for a data plan. It looked cool, it was kind of big, but it wasn’t what I needed. At that time I believed my Motorola phone was the best value I could buy for my needs. It wasn’t till a year or two later that I made the connection with the value I was missing in the iPhone.
Steve Jobs and the Apple team understood the value. Why didn’t I see it? The sales person saw the value, they showed it to me, told me all the great things it could do, and let me play with it. Yet, I still couldn’t connect the value between the iPhone and my needs.
Dear Salesperson,
I’ve seen the hard work you put in all day. I see you making calls, doing research, sending emails and making more calls. You put in this effort to produce selling meetings required throughout your sales process. You then prepare for your meetings and engage. May I ask, “Are you really prepared as well as you should be for each meeting you enter?”
Selling meetings are where decisions are influenced and made. In most cases it’s during these meetings where we have the greatest impact on the outcome of a sale. If selling meetings carry this much opportunity shouldn’t we ask ourselves, “Are we really prepared for our next meeting?”
In my personal selling experience as well as watching others sell, I’ve come to appreciate selling conversations that are enjoyable. They’re not a struggle or stressful. There’s no guessing or worrying involved. They’re simply a series of conversations that are enjoyable. We keep the conversations enjoyable by staying in the present. When you focus on the end (the order) during a sales conversation you can easily remove yourself from being present. Of course “the order” is a point of reference and a job priority, but it’s important to keep it in the proper perspective. The order will take place at the proper time if your buyer chooses to purchase with you. Before that happens staying present in your selling conversations will keep the process enjoyable and profitable.
