Sales Blog for Sales and Sales Management

I work with CEOs that are afraid of what the current economic environment will do to top line sales revenue.  Certainly they can get more creative with expenses, but eventually that will have a negative impact on leveraging  new opportunities.  It doesn't take talent to cut expenses;  it is a math formula.  However, it does take talent and creativity to drive new business sales when markets are like they are today.  That is where we come in.

At Anthony Cole Training Group,  we use an assessment built and constantly perfected by Objective Management Group.  The assessment and the resulting findings provides information about sales strengths, sales weaknesses and sale skills as they relate to 21 core sales competencies.  My question today, and in 2 additional blog posts, will be:  How are you addressing these core competencies in your sales development program (either individually or corporately?)  If you are reading this as a participant of one or our training programs, then this information will have a tone of familiarity, so you will be able to relate to the content.  However, you may have been more recently focused on technique rather than the core issues that may be hindering your sales success.  I encourage you to read these posts and identify how they can be additive to your current program.  If you are not one of our participants, feel free to go to our website and take the sales grader to find out how you are doing against best practices in sales.  Here are the first 7 core competencies:

1. Has written goals: this is where your courage and passion come from. Without written goals you won't have the passion or commitment necessary to ask the tough questions, continue to prospect when the market is tough and to consistently ask for introductions
2. Follows a written goal plan: Often people have goals that are written, but then fail this next critical step - establish a written goal plan. Without a plan your goals lack clarity and therefore the activity required to accomplish your goals is unclear as well. And when the required activities are unclear then they won't get executed.
3. Positive attitude: This isn't about looking through rose colored glasses. This is about keeping your head about you when all those around you are losing theirs. It is easy to get caught up the water cooler talk and the complaining about the company, economy, or what the competition is doing. Ignore the talk and focus on what you have to do to be successful.
4. Take responsibility: Excuses are like opinions - everyone or most everyone has them and, unfortunately in selling, we use them when we fail to accomplish our goals. The easy thing to do is to blame something or someone for our shortcomings. If you've been in sales long enough you know that something is always going to happen to make selling difficult for you, but if you are committed to your own personal goals, then you won't let anything get in the way.
5. Strong self confidence: This is critical to succeed. You certainly can't expect yourself to perform well if you don't feel fully confident in what you are doing, what you are representing and what you are saying to the market. But what drives all of this is how you feel about yourself. You must have the confidence to maintain your ‘posture' when you are faced with difficult selling situations. Keep in mind that external gimmicks and crutches won't support you when things are tough. You must consider yourself a ‘10' and maintain that assessment of yourself no matter what happens in your roles.
6. Supportive beliefs: What you believe dictates what you do. If you believe that the economy is too tough to sell in, then you'll be right and won't sell anything. If you believe that people don't want to talk about spending additional dollars in a tight budget environment, then you will have trouble scheduling appointments. You get the point?
7. Control emotions: You must focus on executing your sales system and be prepared for curve balls, and ‘tough' questions. If you anticipate ‘what can go wrong' then when something does come at you that ordinarily would be considered unusual then you will be prepared to handle the situation. If you haven't thought through your phone call, or sales call or presentation, then you will be vulnerable to surprises. When these surprises happen, instead of continuing to execute without ‘panic', you will ‘choke' and deviate from your tried and true sales methods and approach. The symptoms of losing control of emotions are during review of a meeting your self-dialog contains words and phrases like: "should have, shouldn't have, could have, why didn't I, I can't believe that". These are indicative of losing control of emotions.

The best thing to do is to pick just one of these that seem to be the area where you need the most work.  Tackle that one first.  Not the one that is easy, but the one that will have the most positive dramatic impact on your business.  And if you need me call me @ 513 791 3458.

I look at about a dozen blogs and newsletters a week.  That is not a lot of browsing according to standards set by Seth Godin, Verne Harnish, Dave Kurlan or Guy Kawasaki, just to name a few.  It is enough to know that when it comes to selling, sales training, sales coaches and driving sales results, no one person has all the answers and no one person is right or wrong. Therefore, here are a couple of links to blog post that I'm sure you will find helpful:

• Marketing: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/waiting-for-the.html
• Selling on price: http://www.sellingtoconsumers.com/art_offering_the_lowest_price_is_overrated.htm
• Quality Selling Activity: http://www.sixsigmaselling.com/six_sigma_selling/2008/04/how-to-avoid-th.html
• Sales training: http://www.omghub.com/salesdevelopmentblog/tabid/5809/bid/6914/10-Types-of-Sales-Advisers-and-How-to-Choose-the-One-That-s-Best-For-You.aspx
• Effective Prospecting: http://www.referralcoach.com/individuals/
• Closing: http://blog.anthonycoletraining.com/Sales-Training-Sales-Java/bid/4767/How-to-Sell-to-Close-the-Business

I just did a search on Google for ‘sales techniques'.  In .19 seconds, I had over 7 million listings for sales techniques.  If prospecting, qualifying or closing seems to be problems for you, it certainly can't be because you can't get information on ‘how to'.  Maybe you haven't taken the time to learn how to, or are comfortable with the position that you've been selling for 20 plus years.  As the song goes, ‘the times they are a changing'.  If you haven't changed, then I'm guessing that in many cases, neither have your results.  Oh, you may be selling as much as you used to, but I'd guess it's not as easy as it used to be.  Come on, take a few minutes every week and brush up those sales skills.  It will make a difference.

The economy is in a tailspin?  Yes, that is a question because every sales person I've talked to this week tells me how great things are.  Every one of them has told me that they are getting calls and getting appointments.  People are willing to talk, people are worried, concerned, and they want help. That's the good news.  The bad news is that they'll talk to anyone, and in many cases, they want free advice.  Neither of those are good if you don't stick to a sales process that focuses on qualifying, asking questions and getting to a decision making process.

I want you to understand and put into practice the following:

1. Just because someone wants to talk to you because they are worried doesn't mean that they want to make a change or want to buy something. So your job isn't to just offer some comfort, but also to make sure that the ‘worry' is significant enough to do something. Take action, make decisions to change.
2. Yes, they want advice. But remember that they already have other advisors, and in many cases, they are working to ‘round out' the advice that they are getting. In other words, they are working to get a 360^o on their current status as it relates to risk they have or they might be facing. So as part of your advisory role and consultative approach, again, you have the opportunity to make yourself unique among the other advisors. That opportunity is to take the prospect to a point where they make decisions relative to the seriousness of their problem. If there is a compelling reason to do something, whether new or different, you must position yourself in the role of the one that will execute this change.
3. If your prospect or client needs to take action, you must now put yourself in a qualifying position to make sure that you are the one that they go to when they take action i.e. make a change or make a new or different purchase of a product or service. DO NOT, provide the advice, especially to a new prospect, free of charge. DO NOT let yourself believe that your expert advice alone will get you the opportunity to get paid in exchange for this advice. If they are a prospect they are most likely doing business with someone that is in your line of work. They are the incumbent and so they are already on third base ready to capitalize on any expert advice that you have provided THEIR client. Make sure that you get commitments from these prospects to take action and take it with you.
4. Be patient. I know from our own personal circumstances that we are in the process of making changes. Yes we are making changes, but we are a little more deliberate now about the timing of those changes. We are doing more risk and reward analysis than normal because we feel that there is more at stake currently, given the uncertainly of the marketplace. Chances are your clients and prospects are feeling the same way. So there are two really important steps here:

• Be patient. Set timelines for follow up and have clear expectations and outcomes for each step or meeting. Make sure that the ball keeps moving in a direction of a decision every time you talk or meet.
• Prospect like you've never prospected before. Again, now is the time that people are looking to get advice and help. The more people you contact the more you expand your database for current opportunities as well as in the future.

This too shall pass.  If you've always had a consistent and predictable approach to building your business your business will now zoom.  If you haven't had that kind of approach now is a GREAT time to start.

This is one of those moments.

For years I have preached that you must look at every step in the sales process, starting with the suspect database, to when the check clears, and the single most metric that I've looked at and encouraged others to look at is ‘dials'. You know, the number of times a sales person actually picks up the phone to ‘try' and talk to someone about their business and the possibility of scheduling an appointment? Dials equal effort. Without effort, results normally won't show up, unless the sales person is lucky.

Upon reflection, the item we should really be looking at is the conversion rate of prospecting effort to opportunities. We can't just look at prospecting effort in a vacuum. First of all, the effort recorded in your CRM application might be a work of fiction to begin with. Second, we don't get paid in sales for effort. Yes, effort is required first, but we have to have opportunities to convert to sales, not just names of introductions or names of people that we've met at a conference or luncheon.

So as you analyze your business or the business of your sales people remember the following:

- Effort is important to record but only as it relates to opportunities.
- Effort is important to record but only as it relates to coaching and motivating to goals.
- Sales people should be paid 0% commission on effort.
- Tracking effort to opportunity conversion will help you more appropriately assess the type of effort being put forth and the skills required to improve them.

In the end, even with the number of opportunities increasing, you still have to get them sold, so make sure that you are tracking the conversion ratio as well.

A moment of brilliance? No, not really. A moment that will help you improve sales results? As Rocky Balboa would say, "Absolutely".