Inside Our Head

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.

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.

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.

The next seminar is April 14-15, 2010 in Reno, Nevada.
We only have 3 spots left!
Sign-Up for Our Sales Management Seminar Today!

If you have not signed-up, please hurry. This is an excellent seminar for Sales Managers!
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About TopLine Leadership's Sales Management Seminar
Our program combines the power of introspection, knowledge, skills and an application-driven methodology into a single, high-energy workshop. Leverage your most valuable and loyal sales resource – your sales managers – into higher sales, reduced rep turnover and increased profits.

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.

Situation: a company's top sales rep is promoted to sales manager, but does not receive sales training on how to perform a sales manager's duties and responsibilities. Here's what happens next...

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.

Allow the inmates to take control of the asylum. Untrained sales managers don't define standards of performance and they don't coach to standards. When unsuccessful sales behaviors occur the manager fails to confront the situation, and what you don't confront you condone. Without sales discipline there can be no team excellence.

Hang on to low producing salespeople far too long. Because sales managers aren't coaching reps on a consistent basis, the manager doesn't know why the rep continues to turn in a poor performance. The manager then reacts to a rep's poor production by "buying" the rep's excuses, erroneously assuming the rep will turn it around. But by this time the problem is too old to fix, the sales manager's opportunity to correct this problem with the sales rep occurred months ago, and the coaching opportunity was missed. Intuitively the sales manager knows 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.

Become high paid, administrative assistants to the salespeople. Untrained sales managers think that if they solve the problems that salespeople bring to them then reps will automatically sell more. Not true. Managers need to 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 rep how the problem should be solved
b) see that the rep leaves with the monkey!

Fail to follow-up. Untrained sales managers make suggestions to salespeople on how to improve and then assume salespeople will implement their suggestions. After all, when the manager was a salesperson, he/she implemented the boss' suggestions. Managers who fail to follow-up create a team culture that's lacking in accountability. Without accountability there can be no team excellence.

Don't manage time effectively, or set priorities. There are actually 29 specific timewasters that sales managers suffer from. Sales managers become buried in "stuff" work, reactive fire-fighting, feeling overwhelmed. They're working harder than ever, but unable to catch up, and no time for what should be their #1 priority - to coach. The result? The individual on the team with the most highly developed sales skills - the sales manager - has no time to coach. No time to teach his or her talents, skills and energies to those individuals on the team who need and want it the most.

When sales managers somehow do find the time to coach, they jump in and take over the customer meeting, which prevents the salesperson from learning, and implies to the customer that the salesperson is unskilled. This is the syndrome I refer to as, "Move over Rover, let the great one take over."

Unsure how to diagnose a sales performance problem, so problems in sales competence and willingness persist. Managers harp on the bad results, but don't address the unsuccessful behaviors and activities that created those poor results.

React to the issues of the day with no strategic plan for developing the team. Questions that sales managers should consider in their strategic/team development plan include:
Which salesperson is ready to step up and assume the role of the "bell cow" 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 de-hire?
What step of the sales process are we weakest in, and what specifically can I do to correct this?

Think primarily of job tasks, spend little or no time thinking about non-task issues such as team morale, individual rep motivators, career planning for sales reps, etc.

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 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.

Here is one of the most common reasons why competitive sales opportunities are lost - and specifically what you can do to win more often. This is one of the mistakes to avoid if you want to give your competitors fits.

Your competitor understands the prospect's needs better than you do. Sun Tzu wrote his classic book, The Art of War, 2,500 years ago. In it he said, "If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you'll also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle."

Between you and me, Sun Tzu had it easy! In 500 B.C., all he had to do was learn about himself and his enemy. Today, it's not enough to know about yourself and the competition. You also have to know about the customers' needs. When you know the specific ways in which you're different from your competition - AND you know your customers' needs - you'll know which differences are going to be the most important to your customer. And that knowledge is what will put your name on the scoreboard.

One simple strategy for understanding your customers' needs better than your competition is to resist the natural temptation to talk about yourself, and instead, keep the conversation focused on your customer's needs. If your customer asks you about your product or service - as they often do - answer their question, then redirect the conversation back to your customer's needs. A good rule of thumb is to identify at least eight customer buying criteria before you start talking about your product or service.