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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Negotiating power plays a major role in every type of sales negotiation, whether it's a labor negotiation, political negotiation, or a buy-sell negotiation. Both the buyer and the seller have power in a negotiation. Power is each side's perception of its strength or weakness in comparison to the other. This perception of power affects the ability of each party to achieve its own goals. The more negotiating power you have in comparison to that of your buyer, the fewer concessions you'll have to make.