Sales Tips and Marketing Strategies

With all the technology now available, brain research can actually help your sales training and coaching programs deliver better results. Now is the time to get ahead of the flow instead of being in the flow of traditional training if you truly wish to increase sales.

Have you changed your sales learning curriculum to reflect current brain research? From my experiences, the answer is probably not because much of this research is new.

Of course there are individuals like Daniel Goleman who has written about social and emotional intelligence. His writings reflect a lot of brain research and should be mandatory reading for all salespersons and especially sales trainers or facilitators. Continue reading ‘How to Use Brain Research Within Your Sales Training and Sales Coaching Programs’ »

I can’t help but compare Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to selling. Tiger Woods came in second place at the Tour Championship, yet walked away with $10 million as the FedEx Cup champion and $800,000 for his second-place finish. Phil Mickelson walked away with $3 million for the FedEx Cup and $1.35 million for winning the tournament. The comment by Phil was “Let me get this straight. I shoot a 65 and win $1.3 million and Tiger shoots a 70 and wins $10 million?” That’s right. Tiger was consistent over time. Phil had a great day.

How many Tigers do you have in your organization? How many Phil’s? How many struggle to make the cut?

If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Tiger was consistent throughout the playoffs and throughout the year. Phil was not. Tiger Woods, the consummate in consistency, work ethic, and diligence, plus a lot of skill, stays the course. He works golf as a process, continues to get coaching, and continues to come in usually first or second, and always within the top 10. On the other hand, Phil Mickelson has a ton of skill, but not overly diligent in his work ethic, and just within the past two years has embraced coaching. Tiger produces every time he plays. Phil has moments of greatness, and then ends up down in the pack at other times. In all fairness to Phil he did have personal problems this year. However, over the long run he’s just not that consistent yet Tiger is.

Continue reading ‘C-Level Selling: Are You a Tiger, a Phil or Struggle to Make the Cut’ »

I thought I would share some ideas about the sales pitch.

At some point in the sales process we need to make our pitch. This is an area where most salespeople could do a lot better. Most people in sales present a standard pitch that all their customers get to hear. This doesn’t work! People are different and buy for different reasons.

When people buy things buyers have what we call buying criteria. These are the overriding reasons for buying that are most important to them. Think about a Mercedes car. Different people buy a Mercedes for different reasons. Having trained many Mercedes salespeople I have learned that their customers buy for different reasons and these can be summarised as image, performance, finance and safety.

Image, or ego is a big motivator for some people. They love the look of the Mercedes and the tri-star on the front says so much about their status. Other people are interested in performance issues. A Mercedes is a very sophisticated piece of machinery with billions of ponds in research and development that have made it what it is today.

Finance can be a big motivator for some Mercedes customers. The residual value of a Mercedes is high. You get a lot back for your car when you sell it making it a good investment. This is what motivates some Mercedes buyers.

Finally, safety. Until you speak to a knowledgeable Mercedes salesperson you have no idea just how safe these cars are. There are many safety features that could be integrated to form a sales pitch to a safety minded Mercedes customer.

Continue reading ‘Perfecting your sales pitch’ »

We all instinctively know that learning and development within the corporate space is ’supposed to’ make a difference. Yet, far too often the programs (not necessary the people) fail due to the following reasons. Some of these reasons are structural, but too many times it is just poor project management.

A primary reason many programs and courses fail is because there is no “Accountability”. Learning and Development departments think that they provide accountability by counting the number of seats in the program, or talking about how and why this program is valuable. But they fail in the correlation of the program to the participant job or position.

If accountability exists, then the second most prevalent reason programs fail would be evident. Most programs lack any type of “Monitoring”. I see many programs that do not have any requirements on monitoring the participants. Monitoring is not just watching the student sit in the program, and do some exercise. Monitoring is an actively engaging effort that is time-consuming, yet highly valuable. Monitoring is done by everyone involved: it involves the student, the direct supervisor and the HR department. The work is hard in this arena and yet the payoff is highest. It is a shame that far too many Learning & Development groups miss this. Monitoring is more than just happy sheets. It needs to include pre, mid or post program testing and a 30-60-90 day post program implementation of the concepts taught in a course and/or program.

Continue reading ‘6 Reasons Why Corporate Training Programs Fail’ »

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Attitude, the right starting point to making a sale.

For many people in sales they quit before they have a chance to taste success because they don’t spend enough time and consistent effort working on developing the right attitude.

In sales, as well as in any other career or profession when you are working with other people it is very important that you do everything that you can to #1 make a good positive first impression and then #2 create a rapport with your prospect or potential customer.

Both of those traits are skills and habits that can be learned and developed, but what often happens is that when a person tries approaching their first prospect with a positive attitude, a smile on their face and a pleasant greeting they dive right into trying to make the sale without taking the time to establish trust by building rapport with the prospect.

Wikipedia defines Rapport as follows “Rapport is one of the most important features or characteristics of unconscious human interaction. It is commonality of perspective: being “in sync” with, or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking.”

Continue reading ‘The Importance of Rapport in Sales’ »

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Finding the best sales agents is among the most important duties a sales team manager undertakes. The catch is that the majority sales managers don’t have a proved process to hire top salespeople. Yet to develop a group of solid high performing sales agents, a sales manager needs a repeatable, established method to hire leading sales agents.

A word of warning nevertheless, no matter what company or business you’re in, don’t ever hire soon after one interview. It’s way too little time to really find out what someone’s about.

Regardless of how awful the tension gets to hire rapidly, always keep to the same six-step system we outline on this sales management training. This kind of sales management hiring technique ensures uniformity so you can consider each applicant in as consistent way as is feasible. Continue reading ‘Sales Management Training: 6 Actions to Hiring a Top Sales Person’ »

Last week I asked for the order from John, one of my prospective customers. I had sent him a working module from a sales simulation training program to evaluate. He listened to the audio, looked at the workbook and loved it. And, didn’t buy. Why? Because of timing. Because his boss, rightfully, had found a part of his business that could be fixed and drop money right to the bottom-line. Not top line as in revenue increase, but bottom-line, as in expense reduction. So he chose to use his only limited resource, time, to fix the hemorrhage of cash.

John asked me to visit with him in 90 days by which time he thought his boss would see increase in top-line revenue as a high priority and one he could fix with my wonderful sales simulation training program.

Now for the good news. He gave me a great referral. What’s that you say, how could you get a referral from someone who didn’t do business with you? I constantly ask for and get referrals from prospective customers who can’t or won’t do business with me. How do I do that? I start by taking notes during the rapport building process. Continue reading ‘Rapport Building Leads to Referrals – Even If You Don’t Make the Sale’ »

When you ask sales people about questioning techniques most people don’t know how to ask a question that will get their prospect talking.

Many courses, books, and DVD’s on sales training tell you to start the sales questioning stage with an open question, one that will get the customer talking, and one that makes it difficult for them to answer with one word or a short phrase. But then they go on present that an open question is one that begins with: what, who, where, when, or how. This is absolute rubbish!

You can ask a question that begins with any of these words and the customer can still answer with a short, closed phrase, and in some cases just one word. Here are some examples I have heard while coaching sellers who have been on these sales training courses: Continue reading ‘Questioning Techniques For Sales – Do You Really Know What an Open Question Is?’ »

Imagine this scenario: Company ABC introduces a very popular consultative sales methodology to its sales organization. The sales training event is customized to ABC’s products, customers and target contacts. The response is very positive. The sales training consultant and the sales methodology framework have provided insight into addressing some of the common sales challenges facing ABC; calling higher, selling across the product line, managing the closing process and better forecasting for examples. The majority of the team is anxious to implement the lessons learned. Now fast forward 30 or 60 days later and it’s as if the training event never happened. Everyone is back to their previous behaviors, and the results have not improved.

If this sounds familiar, then you can appreciate the term “training de jour”.

Dave Stein, CEO of ES Research, a firm specializing in providing research on sales training vendors, says that 85% of sales training events fail to produce lasting impact beyond 90 days.

So the question is, why does this happen so frequently and what can you do to avoid the predictable outcome? Or more specifically, how do you actually succeed with your sales methodology initiative and join the 15% who are enjoying lasting impact? Continue reading ‘How to Get a Sales Methodology to Produce Results’ »

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Is your training program a waste of time and money?

Quick Quiz

Which of the following statements best describes your feelings about the training programs you have taken or have put your Sales Team through?

1 = Completely satisfied – training always yields visible and measurable results

2 = Fairly satisfied – training seems to be beneficial, but does not always yield the required results

3 = Unsure – The Sales Team is generally happy and business is moving in the right direction, but I’m unsure whether training is a contributing factor

4 = Fairly dissatisfied – training is something “nice to have” that my Sales Team could probably do without

5 = Completely dissatisfied – training is an expensive waste of time and resources Continue reading ‘Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work – Is Your Training Program a Waste of Time and Money?’ »