Inside Our Head

Today we're going to cover the The Doctor’s role in sales training. The Doctor’s role in sales is to ask questions for two essential reasons: to find out what kind of prospect you’re working with, and to establish their needs, problems and opportunities.

Your prospects (patients) fall into three categories: sick, fairly healthy, and "in-denial."

Sick patients know that they are falling below normal performance levels. They will describe their symptoms freely.

Healthy patients may be experiencing acceptable levels of performance but they seek the opportunity to improve. They speak in terms of making a good situation better.

"In-Denial" patients believe their performance is optimal but they are mistaken. Perhaps they resist change. Maybe they don’t want to admit to a need. These are the toughest patients to help.

A word to the wise: don’t waste too much time, but keep in touch. You can prescribe medicine but if they don’t take it, what’s the benefit? Often, a crisis will be required to change their thinking, moving them to real discontent, and thereby away from denial.

THE DOCTOR OF SELLING
A good doctor seeks to "do no harm." He/she asks questions to establish problems, uncover big needs and prescribe solutions.

There are five types of questions a good doctor uses in selling:

Question 1: History questions
Your goal here is to identify optimal vs. actual performance levels.

Question 2: Symptom questions
Your goal here is to identify discontent.

Question 3: Cause questions
Your goal here is to define the real problem.

Question 4: Complication questions
Your goal here is to clarify the seriousness of the problem.

Question 5: Cure questions
Your goal here is to identify the prospect’s expectations of value.

You can increase your sales and enjoy greater customer satisfaction by changing your approach to match your customers' changing perspective throughout the sale. Our sales training summarizes the eight specific roles that match customers' needs at each of the eight buy-learning steps. Click the link below to learn more.

Sales Roles That Match Buying Behavior

Coaching "symptoms" instead of underlying causes does more harm than good.

Accurate diagnosis of a performance problem means looking for the common threads, then applying a bit of detective work to consider:

• Is this a skill problem? If so, teach.
• Is this a willingness/motivation problem? If so, help the rep understand the reasons why they need to improve.
• Is this a self confidence problem dealing with C-level prospects? If so, encourage and coach the rep. Have them take a class to improve business acumen.

As all doctors know, prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Don't throw a bunch of symptoms at a sales rep. Instead, think it through. Then prescribe the coaching solution that will address the underlying cause of the performance problem.

A common mistake sales managers make in sales training, is to give salespeople a laundry list of things they need to improve upon. However, most salespeople only have the capacity to improve one or two things at any given time. You don't want to overwhelm them because you may hurt their self confidence - not good.

The solution? Years ago I learned a great technique for diagnosing performance problems from Andy Grove, the former CEO of INTEL, in his book High Output Management. Grove suggests you pull out a clean sheet of paper and on the left side write down as many positives as you can about the sales person and down the right side list all the things that the rep needs to improve. Then look at the whole thing and try to pick out the common threads among all the items listed.

For example, suppose a rep's strength is a high amount of prospecting activity. But weaknesses include low lead conversion rate and a low quote-to-close rate. Now, look for the common thread. Potential common threads that tie these observations together include:

a) The sales rep isn't asking 2nd or 3rd level diagnostic questioning. If so, why?

b) Perhaps he/she is spending too much time talking about the exciting capabilities of your product/service, rather than focusing on underlying customer problems.

c) Perhaps he or she lacks the self confidence to engage C-level prospects in a thought-provoking way.

d) Does the salesperson lack business acumen?

Companies interested in increasing the professionalism and productivity of their sales force often select a sales training program to solve this need. This decision, however, places the cart before the horse.

The success of a company’s sales training initiative is absolutely affected, both positively and negatively, by the company’s sales managers’ ability and commitment to coach and reinforce the sales training after the event. Our clients have come to recognize that improving the coaching skills of their sales managers is a necessary precursor to delivering effective sales training that achieves lasting results.

Recently, one of our clients, a $10 billion industry leader, conducted and in-depth assessment of their sales managers. First, they asked their sales reps to grade their manager’s abilities on several sales leadership skills. From a collection of 35 skills, the top three weaknesses identified were:

• My sales manager doesn’t identify my obstacles to performance.
• My sales manager doesn’t provide ongoing coaching, encouragement and feedback.
• My manager doesn’t review my performance on a regular basis and make plans for me to improve.

Obviously, for a sales training initiative to succeed each of the above three skills must be performed effectively by sales managers. So, it’s easy to see why so many sales training initiatives fail: they fail because the sales managers don’t possess the skill and will to coach and reinforce these new behaviors in the field. Investing in a sales training program, without managers who are committed and capable at holding salespeople accountable for implementing those new skills, is just an expense.

So, the solution is simple, right? First train sales managers to coach the sales process, then deliver sales training to the field. Right? WRONG! The same client previously mentioned also asked their sales managers, "What are the top challenges you face that prevent you from being more effective on the job?" The top four reasons were:

• Too much time on email.
• Too much time reacting to unplanned events.
• Too little time available to devote to my sales reps.
• I’m unsure- where should I spend my time so as to have the greatest impact on goal achievement?

The four preceding barriers to effective coaching have nothing to do with coaching the sales process! Rather, they are related to self management skills – the sales managers’ ability to manage themselves differently: to eliminate time-wasters, be more proactive, build more self reliance in salespeople so the manager is not perceived as the chief firefighter in charge, have a plan and stick to it, etc.

TopLine Leadership’s Solution: Phase One

This is where TopLine Leadership’s comprehensive solution comes in. Our first component, Sales Management Leadership, is an intensive two, or three-day workshop that provides both the self management skills as well as the sales process coaching skills that sales managers need to make sales training stick.

Over 35,000 sales managers from many of the world’s most successful companies have participated in our program. The goal of our program is to provide sales managers with the skill, tools, and process for managing themselves differently, and coaching salespeople more effectively. Click here for more information, and a course description.

To help our clients achieve maximum impact we will often deliver a three-day Sales Management Leadership workshop as follows:

• Course pre-work
• Two-day session (during which each manager completes a 90-day implementation plan.)
• Conference call reinforcement at 30-day and 60 day and 90 days intervals after the initial session.
• Approximately four months after the initial training a second workshop, one day in length, is delivered. A second 90-day plan is created, which often includes how to successfully implement a sales training program.
• Conference call support

Phase Two: Sales Training

The second phase of our solution is Getting Into Your Customer’s Head sales training. For years, the focus of sales training has been on the selling process – while ignoring customer buying behavior. But tomorrow’s big winners in sales will be those who learn to join customers in their buying process.

When it comes to selling, have we had it all wrong?

At TopLine Leadership, our sales training programs are designed to help your sales team to think and feel like a customer, that is, how to get into the customer’s head. In short, your sales team will learn how to sell based on how customers buy.

The buying process unfolds in a series of eight predictable steps that your salespeople can anticipate.

Our sales training programs teach your salespeople eight easily understood sales rules that correspond directly to the steps of the buying process. Our sales rules: Student, Doctor, Architect, Coach, Therapist, Negotiator, Teacher and Farmer, provide a disciplined, repeatable method for closing more sales, faster, while your competition wonders why they lost out.

Most of our clients have salespeople who make complex sales – selling to multiple decision-makers for a single sales opportunity. For these clients we add on our Winning the Complex Sale.

Getting Into Your Customer’s Head is a sophisticated sales approach made simple.

Many of our clients are looking for a common language, a consistent and measurable process for solution selling. Without a common language salespeople tend to sell on their instincts, and some wander aimlessly through a sales process without a plan, missing many opportunities during the buying process to intensify the customers’ needs and differentiate your solution.

At TopLine Leadership, we understand what it takes to improve your team’s closing ratio – a thoughtful sales training strategy combined with effective sales tactics on each and every sales call. Our sales training programs will show your salespeople how to add more value, sooner, to your prospects and customers. Reinforcement tools include a hardcover book, CD book, Coaching Guide, and even a customizable web application tool.

Is your sales team lagging well behind where they should be? You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “success breeds success.” Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: failure can breed failure.

Here are some specifics about how you can turn around a lagging sales team. Even if your team is doing fairly well, you’re bound to pick up some tools and techniques for immediate sales improvement. Below are a few of the topics we will discuss at our upcoming Sales Management Training Seminar:

• How to set minimum standards with consequences for poor sales results.
• How to gain the buy-in for team development by involving your top salespeople in setting standards.
• De-hire those not making a positive contribution.
• How to leverage your best people to contribute more to the team’s development.
• How to manage yourself better, and make better decisions about how you allocate your time.
• Lead from the front. Get out in the field and make coaching salespeople your #1 priority.
• How to create a contest that will get everyone fired up and focused on making those extra sales calls that can make the difference.
• Coach sales skills. Coach sales strategy.

Click here for more information on our Sales Manager Training Seminars.