Inside Our Head

Hanging on to low producing salespeople is detrimental to your sales team!

Untrained sales managers aren't coaching reps on a consistent basis. This leads to the manager not understanding why the sales rep continues to turn in a poor performance. The sales manager then reacts to a rep's poor production by "buying" the rep's excuses, assuming the rep will turn it around soon. But by this time the problem is too old to fix. The opportunity to correct this problem occurred months ago, and the sales coaching opportunity was missed.

Most sales managers know this. She blames herself for the rep's continued failure to perform and, out of guilt, gives the rep even more time on the job to fail some more. The manager's acceptance of one salesperson's mediocrity brings the entire team down.

When untrained sales managers don't know how to be an effective sales manager, so they continue to do what comes naturally - they continue to sell. But this leads them to spend more time with their top salespeople, who are working on the biggest deals, which leaves the rest of the sales team out in the cold, without a leader/coach.

Effective sales management is a skill set that is altogether different from selling.

I don’t understand why many companies seem to believe that, without any sales training, a great salesperson will automatically become a great sales manager.

One thing I do understand, however, is that the companies that do train their sales managers will see faster ramp-up time for new-hires, increased sales productivity and morale, and more satisfied and loyal customers. In short, the entire sales team will improve results if a company will make a training investment in a their sales managers.

The role of the Therapist in sales is to understand and resolve the buyer's fears. Here is the Therapist's Four Step Treatment Process to help the customer work through the fear of buying:

1. Be sensitive and observe
2. Explore concerns
3. Empathize with feelings
4. Discuss alternatives

You cannot resolve a buyer's fear until you understand the source. Therefore, exploring the buyer's concerns is the first step. "Tell me more about that." "Why do you feel that way?" "Can you elaborate?" These are good statements along the line of exploration.

Like a Therapist, you can guess out loud to try and bring information to the table. "I sense you are concerned about the reliability of the technology." "Are you concerned about our ability to support you technically?"

Note that the first concern verbalized by a customer is usually a smoke-screen. You have to dig deeper to get to the real issues in sales. Keep asking open ended questions until the real concern emerges.

When was the last time your company took a hard look at your sales proposals? The value your company provides to customers likely changes over time. Has your sales proposal changed, too? Does your sales proposal persuasively communicate that you are the preferred solution provider in your marketplace?

At TopLine Leadership, our sales training seminars can help you define and prepare a great sales proposal.

Our next sales training workshop is August 10 - 12, 2010 at the Peppermill Hotel in Reno, Nevada. This fast-paced, well-structured sales training course will help you think and feel like a customer, that is, how to Get into Your Customer's Head.

Spend less time trying to close the sale -- and more time positioning your solution as the customer's best choice.

If you don't know by this point in the sales process at least three reasons why your customer should buy from you -- reasons that have been connected to explicit customer needs (so you know they're important to your customer) -- then you have no right to ask for the business. If you have done your homework, however, now is the time to put your understanding to the acid test of preparing a convincing proposal or presentation.

Enjoy greater customer satisfaction and increase your sales by changing your approach to match your customers' changing perspective throughout the sale.

If you sell to businesses, somewhere during the sales process your prospects may send out a Request for Proposal or ask you to make a formal sales presentation.

Here's an important tip: if the RFP is the first you've heard about the opportunity, it means you're entering the game late (whether or not there are other competitors) and the odds of winning are low.

The way I handle the situation is to call up the customer and say, "Thank you for sending the RFP. I need an hour of your time to ask some questions and fully understand your needs." If the customer says no, I know there is little chance I can make a sale. If they are unwilling to give me one hour of their time, why should I spend 20 hours responding to an RFP?

If you are a sales manager, your sales training must include this important tip.

If you don't know your customer's buying criteria, or if you find yourself guessing, consider it a signal that you haven't placed enough emphasis on uncovering customer needs. You will have added significant value to your customer's buying process if they come away with a better understanding of their buying criteria and with a greater awareness of important issues they had not previously considered.

If you want to achieve greater sales success, you have to participate in the creation of a unique sales solution that meets your customer's needs. When the solution you design for your prospect includes certain buying criteria that you are uniquely qualified to address, you have set the ground rules in your favor. But, in order to achieve this result, you must, again, resist the temptation to pitch your solution too soon. Instead, design a customer-focused solution that locks out your competition.

During a first meeting with a customer, it’s unlikely they will tell you everything going on in their decision process. For all you know, the first need they mention may be something identified by one of your competitors in a meeting the day before! By failing to probe for the second need, you may be allowing your competitor to define your customer’s mental picture of a solution. Not good. Even if your customer hasn’t talked with your competitors, probing for a second need is a good way to get him or her to increase their desire for change and allow you to make the sale!

My sales career began 30 years ago selling office equipment for Lanier, something like the "Marine Corps" of business-to-business sales. I'd take the elevator to the top floor of an office building and cold call my way down to the lobby. I was taught to walk into an office and ask to see the General Manager for "just 10 minutes." With good technique and 20 cold calls per day, I could see three prospects. Then in the afternoon I'd call the 17 prospects I didn't get in to see that morning, seeking a pre-set appointment. After a few years on the street I moved up to major accounts, where our "system sale" to hospitals could run $500k and up, a complex sale to multiple levels of decision makers. I then became a sales manager, and eventually a General Manager where I hired, performed sales training, and coached over 200 salespeople.

One day in April of 1989 I was out working in the field with one of my salespeople. I stopped into a bookstore in La Jolla, CA looking for a book that might offer me new ideas for improving the quality of my next sales meeting. That's when I saw it: Why People Buy by John O'Shaughnessy, Professor of Business at the Columbia University School of Business. Professor O'Shaughnessy and his research assistants interviewed both businesses and consumers about their buying decisions. The researchers found that when buyers feel uncertain about which product or service to buy (and who doesn't?) they will seek to resolve their uncertainty with a rational and predictable buying process. For me, it was a blinding flash of the obvious! My entire sales career had been spent thinking about sales techniques and not buying behavior.

Three months later, I resigned from Lanier and hung out my shingle as a sales trainer. Operating in start-up mode out of a spare bedroom in a small suburb of San Diego, I knew I had found the right calling. Six years later, in 1996, my first book, Getting Into Your Customer's Head, was published.

Since 1989 my company, and our valued and talented distributor partners in the U.S. and Canada have implemented the Getting Into Your Customer's Head sales approach in many successful corporate sales organizations from dozens of major multi-national corporations and hundreds of small and medium-sized firms. Our clients have come from many different sectors: software, document management, transportation, business services, career/staffing services, financial services, professional services, wireless, telecom, healthcare, heavy equipment, media … you name it.

Years ago I was selling an office equipment solution to the CEO of a 100-person company. I was selling to him the way I had been taught: I established comfortable conversation while building trust, asked questions to diagnose his needs, then presented my solution as an answer to his needs. Everything, seemingly, appeared to be going along as planned. Suddenly he leaned forward and asked, "Aren’t you going to close me now?"

Why is it that customers know more about selling techniques than most salespeople know about buying behavior? That’s not right. An understanding of buying is where selling should start. We need to redefine "selling" to mean helping people buy. As a sales manager, this should be an important part of your sales training.