Inside Our Head

While delivering our Sales Management Leadership workshop recently, a medical equipment sales manager in the audience raised his hand and said, "I see myself as more of a "player-coach." I asked him to elaborate.

He went on to share a recent example when he was working with one of his more productive and experienced salespeople. They had just concluded a meeting with a physician in a hospital and were walking toward the exit. Their next appointment was not for another two hours, so the sales manager asked his rep, "Is there any reason why, now that we're inside this hospital, you aren't going to pick up the house phone over there and call a few more prospects for appointments?" Calls made from a hospital's in-house phone don't get screened like calls from outside the building.

The salesperson replied, "Physicians don't like to be interrupted in that way, so I don't do that."

Where-upon the player-coach marched to the nearby house phone, picked it up, and succeeded in scheduling an appointment with the first person who answered, a physician. "See, the house phone works," he said. He made a few more phone calls for the salesperson, and then the two of them went on their way to her next appointment.

Indeed, this sales manager was a player-coach. He did demonstrate to his salesperson that once in the hospital, the house phone is an effective tool for setting new appointments.

But the sales manager made a big mistake - he demonstrated how to perform an important sales task, but he didn't obtain commitment from the salesperson that she would start making these types of calls in the future. In sales vernacular, he made a great demo but he didn't "close the sale" by obtaining commitment.

Every sales coaching discussion should conclude with a request for commitment to change. And, every coaching discussion should include a follow-up step by you. By following-up, and inspecting what you expect, you show your commitment to helping the salesperson be the best he or she can be. And, you send the message to your sales team that your expectations of performance are not to be taken lightly.

Our August 10-12 "Getting Into Your Customer's Head" sales training seminar is now sold out.

Please contact us regarding future dates and locations.

July's Sales Management Leadership open enrollment workshop was a big success! The "overall effectiveness" rating from participants' program evaluations scored 4.75 out of 5, which equates to a rating of 95%. A few comments from program participants include:

A Director of Sales for a digital marketing solutions company headquartered in New York City says: "Kevin kept it lively and engaging. I think good instructors can make or break a session like this. In this case, Kevin knocked it out of the park! Great job."

A new sales manager for a medical equipment company says, "This class is great for new sales managers. The fundamental teachings are important."

A VP of Sales for an industrial manufacturing company says, "Held my attention – opened my eyes to new ways to look at leading, developing and motivating my salespeople."

With the success of July's workshop, we're really looking forward to our next Sales Management Training Seminar to be held on December 1-2, 2010 in Salt Lake City at the Airport Hilton.

We look forward to seeing many new faces at this great workshop for sales managers!

Click here to enroll today.

When you view a signed deal from the customer's point of view, you are ready to engage Sales Role #7: The Teacher.

At this stage, you teach your customer how to achieve maximum value from the new product or service you have provided. Don't expect that one training session with a few end-users will be sufficient. It won't.

When a new product or service is introduced into an environment, it means change for the users there, and change is always difficult. For customers to achieve their expectations of value, they must first pass through a learning process--and learning can be annoying, frustrating and time-consuming. It is difficult at first, but gets easier.

If we walk through the sales process of helping customers learn, change, adapt and grow, we help them realize the value of working with us. The promise we made in the beginning of the sales process was: work with me, I'll do the best job for you.

Failing in the role of Teacher essentially means we fail to keep our promise by missing the opportunity to truly deliver all the benefits of our products and services.

It's like working hard for months to paint a beautiful forest landscape, but nearing completion of your work of art, you decide not to add any green, and walk away.

Is it easier to sell to a current customer or to a brand new prospect?
Do satisfied customers hammer you on price as much as new customers?
Do dissatisfied customers provide referrals?
Do you enjoy spending time with dissatisfied customers?

You know the answers to these questions!

If you are having problems, it's time to attend our Sales Training Seminar. Get on the road to success in sales.

Your prospect signed on the dotted line! All your hard work... the sales calls, the meetings, the sales presentations... it's a done deal! No it isn't!!!

Have you ever noticed your customers who are the most enthusiastic and pleased on day one are the most likely to suddenly be dissatisfied on day two? What precipitates this plunge from paradise to purgatory?

The root cause of most customer dissatisfaction is a difference in perception between buyers and sellers. For most sales people, the sales process comes to an end when the customer says "yes." For most buyers, the sales process is just beginning when they say "yes."

To keep customers for life, you must change your frame of reference, Get Into Your Customer's Head, and see things from the customer's perspective. You must start seeing the "close" of a deal as the beginning of a new sales process.

People in sales should know the importance of making a good impression: without it you can't earn the right to do business with people. Each customer contact provides us as sales people the opportunity to make a good impression. Remember the maxim in sales and marketing: the prospect must be touched five to ten times with high-quality, compelling messages before business is transacted.

If you don't make a good first impression, what makes you think your prospect will want to see you again?

Business letters--to ask for an appointment or other reasons--are so important in making good impressions. Make sure your sales proposals are well-written. Take time to check for spelling and grammatical errors. Ask your sales manager or a colleague to proof your letter. Often times someone else can see errors the writer often misses. Even Hemingway needed an editor!

Sales proposals and business letters are critical. Think of ways of making your communications shine. Remember, every contact you have with your sales prospect is an impression.

Make a good impression every time you "touch" your client, and you will close more sales.

Inexperienced sales managers assume that if they solve the problems salespeople bring to them then sales reps will automatically sell more. Not true.

Sales managers must expect salespeople to solve their own problems instead of doing their thinking for them. When a salesperson comes to the manager with "a monkey on his back" it is the manager’s duty to:

a) Ask the sales rep how the problem should be solved.
b) See that the rep leaves with the monkey!

The next step is to follow-up. A lot of untrained sales managers make suggestions to their sales reps on how to improve sales, then assume salespeople will implement their suggestions. After all, when the manager was a salesperson, he/she implemented the boss' suggestions. Sales managers who fail to follow-up create a team culture that lacks accountability.

Without sales team accountability there can be no team excellence.

Questions every sales managers should consider in their strategic/team development plan include:

Which salesperson is ready to step up and assume the lead role on this team?
If I were to set a team goal to increase sales by 30% over the next 12 months, what obstacles would stand in our way?
Is there anyone I need to let go? Who is my low performer?
What step of the sales process are we weakest in, and what specifically can I do to correct this?

Every good sales manager needs to spend time focusing on issues such as team morale, individual rep motivators, career planning for sales reps, etc. Get a strategic plan for developing your sales team.

There are actually 29 specific time-wasters that a lot sales managers suffer from. Sales managers become buried in busy work, putting out fires and feeling overwhelmed.

They're working harder than ever--unable to catch up--and no time for their number 1 priority: sales coaching.

The result? The individual on the team with the most highly developed sales skills--the sales manager--has zero time for coaching the sales team. No time to teach his or her talents, skills and energies to those individuals on the team who need and want it the most.

If you are one of these sales managers, we can help you! Our consultants at TopLine Leadership are highly successful, experienced practitioners of effective sales and sales management behaviors. We've trained over 35,000 sales managers, and tens of thousands more salespeople, for many of the most successful sales organizations in the world.

Sign-up for our 2-Day Sales Management Workshop. Get on the path to sales success.