1. He wanted a strategic sales process that would gain buy-in from reps from different countries and cultures throughout their world-wide sales organization.
2. He also wanted a process that was not complicated. His goal was to get everyone on the same page around a simple model, because his experience had been that if the model was too complex, sales people don’t adopt it.

This executive’s request reinforced for me the reasons why I developed my 8-step sales- model that closely ties actions a sales rep should take with customer needs during the buying process. While cultures certainly differ around the globe, the process that human beings go through when contemplating major decisions is the same everywhere: Customers have to know what’s at risk if they change, and what’s at risk if they don’t change. They will be happier with their choice after the purchase if they have carefully thought through all of their needs, and if they can justify why purchasing from you would be better than purchasing from your competitors.

The better a salesperson understands that their customer’s buying behavior should influence their selling behavior, the more successful they will be. Having a simple model they can refer to makes it easy for them to put that principle into action.

Kevin Davis

Turns out that a few years prior the execs had implemented a major territory realignment – making existing producers “names account reps” by pulling their geographic territories away, and back-filling with 50 new hires.

While the change initiative had been largely successful, results-wise, execs were very troubled by the recent turnover of a few key peak performers. And, to make matters worse, they had recently hosted their Top Producers trip and heard a bunch of complaints from their winners.

So what caused the silence in the room was the execs’ collective realization that their sales leadership style was effective for driving change, but not for retention and ongoing morale of the troops. They had all taken their eye off this all-important ball. Their change initiative had worked in terms of increasing sales, but their peak performers were getting restless. So, the president halted my session, took over the whiteboard, and they made a “relationship development plan” tasking each senior exec with reaching out to a certain specific list of peak performers.

My key point is this: Check in with your peak performers on an individual basis soon. If you lose one of them it will have a devastating impact on your entire sales team. If and when you do lose a peak performer, you will be the last person on the sales team to learn about it……

But often, a manager’s high activity level can actually inhibit the development of the sales team. As author Steven Covey says so well in 7 Habit’s of Highly Effective People, “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership is determining whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. “

To be a successful sales leader, then,you must continually ask yourself, “Regarding what I am about to do–will it result in a tangible, lasting and beneficial impact on the improvement of my team, or individuals on my team?” If the answer is“no”, the best leaders choose to do something much more important.

What did you do today that you really didn’t have to do, or should not have done? Leadership is answering this question, and then following through on the answer.

Positive confrontation is the discussion that a sales manager has with a salesperson in a timely manner, regarding an unsuccessful behavior or attitude exhibited by the salesperson. “PC” just means that you slow down a bit, and talk to the salesperson about the issue. That’s all.

Like many words in the English language, the word “confront” has multiple meanings. One is “to face or oppose antagonistically.” Not good. But another meaning of the word confront is “to stand or meet face-to-face.” It is this 2nd meaning that I am referring to.

Many sales managers, when they see a sales rep do something that is not successful (or don’t see something happening that they should be seeing) fail to “address the issue” face to face in a timely manner. Because of all the other pressing issues and ”fires” the manager is dealing with, he or she is often reluctant to slow down and discuss what the manager just observed and why it is not consistent with the company’s expectations.

As a sales manager, you are responsible for keeping your salespeople focused on the behaviors you need for sales success. If you see something happen that is not successful you must use positive confrontation, stand or meet face to face with your salesperson, and just talk about it. Because what you don’t confront, you condone.

• Set a clear meeting objective. Ask yourself, “One month from now, what will be happening differently as a result of this meeting?” The answer is your sales meeting’s primary objective.
• Anticipate which salespeople are typically less involved during your meetings. What questions can you ask of them, individually, so as to get them more involved?
• Keep the meeting moving along! Every now and then, shock them by ending a meeting ahead of time.
• Perhaps the most important thing is this: when you are coaching an individual salesperson, and you observe a developmental need, assume that others on your team have the same developmental need. In other words, when deciding upon sales meeting topics think back to your individual sales coaching sessions, and use individual developmental needs as group meeting topics.
• Don’t just lecture to your team! Consider alternative methods of content delivery. One of my favorite methods for a sales meeting is called “Circle Response” State the issue or question to be addressed, then give each person 30 seconds to state their personal opinions and ideas. Make sure to have somebody take notes and summarize because this is a great way to generate ideas!

But if a sales manager focuses exclusively on results, so to do your salespeople. An intense focus on results can distract everyone from the sales process, which is the all-important input side of the sales results equation. Results-orientation can cause salespeople to push customers for outcomes, which when not combined with excellent selling skills, can be perceived by customers as over-aggressiveness. In extreme cases, a customer thinks they’re dealing with a “self-focused product-pusher with commission breath.” Not good.

A manager’s focus on results can also distract salespeople from focusing on the customer’s buying process. A sales director recently told me about a conversation he had with a salesperson. The sales rep had forecasted “XYZ Account” as 80% probability to close by the end of the month. So the sales director asked his rep, “What are the two biggest problems that XYZ Company has, and why are they experiencing those problems?”, and then, “Which of our company’s differentiators are important to this customer – and why?” The salesperson’s response was described by the sales director as a “dead-fish look.” No answers. And if your salesperson can’t answer these questions why should we expect the customer to know the answers?

So, in the New Year, take pride in your drive for results. But along the way, remember to keep your eyes and ears focused on the behaviors and activities that create those results. That is where you, and you alone, can make the biggest impact on your team’s sales results. Best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2012!

Polls are open until December 12th. There are several interesting categories in the competition including “Top Sales Job Boards,” and “Top CRM.” Check it out – you can see all the top sales & marketing products on a single web page.

The value of what you sell is determined by each customer and their business needs, not by your company’s sales person. So, your value will change from one customer to the next – depending on the perceived significance of the need(s) by the customer.

Value not understood by the customer is not paid for. A salesperson’s job, through effective questioning skills, is to identify and develop customer needs – so as to create greater value inside the customer’s head. When a customer doesn’t appreciate the value your products or services provide, they will quite logically default to price. Or worse, they will just go away.

The decision-maker that your salespeople are calling on can be a crucial factor in selling value. Often, salespeople will choose the path of least resistance. The critical question here is: Which decision maker is most adversely affected by not having the benefits of our/your solution?

In the case of the industrial products company, salespeople were calling on facilities maintenance personnel and support people, these are cost-conscious support personnel responsible for fixing existing problems and maintaining operational efficiency. That’s not where the industrial product company’s value has the most customer value.

But the value of my prospect’s product was not best recognized, nor appreciated, by maintenance personnel. The industrial products company’s product makes all the other products in the manufacturing process perform at a higher production level. And these concerns – overall production and output – were primary in the mind of the production manager, not maintenance personnel.

“Sell value, not price” means selling to the right decision-makers, decision-makers who value your product or service.

I tried hard in my approach to the sales process to keep it simple but not simplistic. That’s why I created a sales model where the tasks that a salesperson has to perform are visually linked to common professions that represent those tasks.

For example, one of the most important tasks for a sales professional is to diagnose customer needs, which means they have to act like a Doctor.

They also have to design a solution around those needs, just like an Architect designs a building.

Linking the job of a salesperson to a series of common professions creates an easy to remember and easy to apply sales process.

In this complex world of ours packed with sales data, sales tools, and sales intelligence how can salespeople effectively process all this information? Having simple visual metaphors such the apple and asking questions of customers just as a doctor might talk to patients is not a negative right? I sure hope simple hasn’t become a dirty word.

When I’m observing a salesperson interacting with a customer, my focus is to listen, observe, keep my mouth shut, and take notes. What “notes”? I make a list of the specific questions that I would have liked to have asked the customer.

The salesperson’s job is to sell, and my job is sales management – to coach my salespeople to become the best sellers they can be. So I resist the temptation to “jump in” and do all the selling. Writing down specific questions during the customer meeting helps me to resist the temptation to jump in and take over.

Then, when the salesperson and I have concluded the customer meeting, I have a list of questions that I would have asked the customer already written down.

In recapping with a sales person a sales call/client meeting; I will review what questions I would have posed to the customer that may not have been covered by the salesperson.

Good salespeople learn faster when the guidance you provide them is clear and specific. You can then re-purpose these questions into a custom sales training meeting. Chances are, everyone on your sales team would benefit by learning more specifics about important questions the boss would ask.