Sales Training Sales Java™

 The benefits of off-site sales training are clear.

1.  You don't get distracted.  It never fails; if you go to a training session that is held in the same building where you work, you will get distracted.  Either as a sales person or a sales manager, you won't be able to help yourself. 

•  During the break, you will go to your office and see the phone light blinking, and just like Pavlov's dogs, you've been trained to check the message. Inevitably, it will be someone leaving you an urgent and important message that you just MUST attend to now.
• Even when you are not on break, someone will poke their head into the meeting, point over to you and indicate that you have a phone call or that they need to speak with you urgently.

As a result of the interruption, you don't get back into the training session on time and you miss critical conversation or concepts. Not only does that happen, but you've also become distracted mentally, and even though you are now back in the session, you are not fully back 'into' the session.

2.  When you go to an off-site, during the breaks you spend time with your peers instead of going to your office or dealing with staff in the building. Over coffee and a plate of fruit, you get the chance to hear what others are doing that is working as well as hear about their challenges and failures.  These learnings are as important, and in some instances, more important than what is being said as part of the agenda.  This free form conversation carries back into the session and now becomes part of the agenda via questions and open discussion about what others are doing well and what they are facing.  Any well facilitated training program will have an agenda of important items to discuss but the facilitator must customize that content to meet the current needs of the participants.

3.  I am 30,000 feet above Kansas as I post this blog and I have internet connectivity.  That, in itself, is way cool.  I'm heading home from an off-site that I just participated in and facilitated. The 3rd benefit of having an off-site is that you can get the chance to learn Texas Hold'm.  

Post our training for the day, we had a wonderful dinner prepared by Allison and then we started our last learning for the day.  How to negotiate and influence people by subliminal suggestions, body language, asking questions and having fierce conversations about someone's actions and intents.  Certainly, practicing these skills while participating in a game like this has a direct correlation to improving skills in sales negotiation.

So, if you are going to have training sessions, make the investment of time, resources and money to maximize your return on the investment and get out of the office, focus on learning and have some fun.

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'm reading the book ‘Who'.  No, the author is not Dr. Seuss it is Geoff Smart and Randy Street of ‘Topgrading' fame and fortune.  The book is about prospecting, evaluating, assessing, interviewing and selecting the right candidate for the job.  The job could be sales, management, finance, or operations; it doesn't matter.  As Jim Collins states in his book ‘Good to Great', "it is about getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats."  I'm thinking the same thing applies to you and your sales business.  You need a sales scorecard.

The best way to upgrade your client is to have a preferred customer or client base.  In banking, they identify segments such as business banking, middle market, retail and private banking,  just to name a couple.  Why wouldn't this make sense in all sales?  The short answer is that it does.  I was with a group yesterday, Melink, a company that specializes in helping companies and entities build or retro build ‘green buildings'.  They have sales people that specialize in specific market segments.

If your company doesn't look at marketing and sales that way, it doesn't mean that you can't.  You should have a scorecard of sorts to make sure that the people you are getting introduced to fit the mold of the ‘perfect client' for you.  When you work with your ‘perfect client', you provide greater value because you are more familiar with that particular market segment, you know the solutions they typically need and you have a product that fits their specific needs.  However, the problem is that you don't have a system or process in place to make sure that you are really getting the ‘ideal' client for your ‘book of business'.  You need a sales scorecard.  So here you go.  Feel free to use, edit or reproduce any way you feel is appropriate to your specific business, but keep the concepts in place and make sure that you have some sort of accountability process in place to ensure you adhere to your scorecard.  If you would like further discussion on this feel free to call.

Once completed, share this scorecard with anyone that can potentially interface with your clients to make sure there is synchronization in focus, effort and support for this type of client.

I hate having these discussions because the typically come out the wrong way in writing. When I read articles like the one from Fast Company - The Most Valuable Player in Sports - I can't help but think about sales people, selling and sales results.  Check this out.  In 2006 major league baseball spent $311,000,000 (14% of payroll) on players that didn't play.  I automatically think - hmm, how much money was spent by companies on sales people that didn't play / perform?

I also think how many goals were washed out because the sales professional in charge lacked the desire, commitment, or responsibility to overcome obstacles to executing the game / goal plan to make sure they got the sales results they stated they would get.  And, as a result, failed to achieve some, if not all, the personal goals they had set?

The article goes on to talk about how Dr. Andrews, in addition to his orthopedic wizardry, developed and honed his therapeutic  mastery as well.  He would engage the prospective athlete in dialog that allowed him to identify a multitude of success factors ‘post' operative procedure.  Here are just 6 of his questions ‘translated' into sales talk to assess a sales person's acumen and preparedness for recovery.

1. What exactly is your current sales problem? Where is / are the choke points to successful selling?
2. What happens if you don't fix it?
3. What are your short- term, intermediate and long term sales goals?
4. How committed are you to rehabbing or turbo charging your sales career?
5. What is your appetite for change?
6. What are the other external factors that will help or hinder your success?

Powerful and insightful questions that need to be asked before engaging in any sales training, individual coaching or on-going development plan.    Too often people jump into the fray of training and or self - help only to find themselves light in the checking account, lost investment of time and very little improvement in results. 

My suggestion to you is that you should look at those 6 questions before  you begin to re-invent yourself or re-commit yourself to ‘really getting it done this year'.  Honestly answer those questions and then decide on what your sales goals will be, what your goal plan will look like and how you will hold yourself accountable over the next 12 months.  Oh, and one more question once you've decided that this time you are really going to get it done:

Why should I believe you?

Too many times salespeople fail to close business simply because they didn't muster the courage required in the beginning of the sales cycle - when they were prospecting.  Instead of calling at the top of the organization or as Anthony Parinello describes this person "VITO - Very Important Top Officer" the timid sales person calls somewhere below that level where the only qualifying capabilities of the HR director or Risk Manager is to say ‘no'.

You want to close more business more quickly at higher margins do the following:

1. Always call at the level where the person as the authority to say yes to your proposal. Even if you get shifted down to another level you can always get back to your initial contact
2. In those situations where you do your best to call at the top and can't get there, but the prospect is on your top ten list, then make sure your inside coach will get you to the decision maker before presenting
3. When preparing for your closing meeting make sure you always - ALWAYS - send an ‘as we agreed to letter', follow the letter with a phone call and then, before you present to the decision maker, review everything discussed so far, the purpose of the meeting (make a decision) and close your review by asking, ‘what's changed'.

For more great information on calling on the right people follow this link to Dave Kurlan's blog: sales development blog.

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.

Effective and successful selling requires excellent technique.  One must excel at asking questions and listening.  One must have skill at telling stories and using metaphors and analogies to make a point,  Certainly, one must be expert at dealing with stalls, questions and objections; however, what drives a sales person's ability to execute these techniques and skills will be hard to find in a traditional sales training setting from traditional sales trainers.  As Curly said in the movie City Slickers:  "One thing, just one thing, you stick to that and the rest...

The one thing that drives consistent execution in sales is courage.  In our sales training classes, we talk about commitment, desire, outlook and taking responsibility.  Those components help drive courage.  If you think about each one of those, you would soon discover that they are not very trainable.  As a salesperson, that is what you have to bring to the dance if you want to get good at dancing, or in this case selling;  I can't teach it here and I don't try to teach courage in my sessions.  What I can do is give you some insight as to what having courage can and will do.  In the end, what matters the most about any discussion around courage is:  Start.  Just start.

1. Start by making the decision that courage has to be part of your make up and that you will be courageous in your thinking, decisions and activities. Become a warrior for what you stand for and what you want to achieve
2. Start by identifying what is it that you really want out of being a sales professional. Did you get into this business to be average? Would you rather be extra-ordinary? Then start thinking that way.
3. Start by stopping. What I mean is decide what you will stop doing. This too takes courage because often we do things because they make us comfortable instead of difficult and uncomfortable sales activities that make us money. Not that you stop providing great service, but do you have to do that? Get your need for approval met by selling to more people, more quickly at higher margins. You'll receive all the reward and recognition that you need.
4. Start by leading others instead of standing in line with those willing to just get along. Don't buy into the bad economy or poor product excuses and stop hanging around the water cooler talking about company decisions. Start taking responsibility for your results and start being the leader on the leader board.
5. Start having fierce conversations. Read the book by Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations. She will tell you that the first fierce conversation is with yourself. Once you get your head straight and get honest with yourself, commit yourself to have fierce and tough discussions with others. Not in-your-face aggressive or mean discussions, just tough discussions about what is or isn't happening, and what has to happen to move a sale forward or to stop where you are.

                Courage, as they say, comes in a can.  I CAN.

Two years ago I did a keynote for one of our clients that our company does sales training for.  The company sells commercial insurance and the market was particularly tough at the time.  The message that the CEO wanted to send was:  "We understand, but our objectives are non-negotiable, go sell."

And so here we are agian,in a tough market where people are tightening their belts, cutting back, looking for the 'best' deals, or not buying at all.  I'll tell you the same thing we tell all of our sales people that we train.

1. There are always going to be challenges to hitting targets.  Ignore the problems, focus on the opportunities.
2. Think of one of your competitors that typically is the low cost provider.  Do they own the market?  Probably not.  It is never about low price no matter how tight things are. If low price were always the criteria for buying everyone would buy the cheapest most cost efficient vehicles available.  Doesn't happen
3. When the market is difficult people are always looking for help. Go see all of those people.  If your people want to see you guess what, chances are the competitors clients want to see them or somebody. Call the competitors clients NOW.
4. Nobody owns 100% of the market. You have competitors that have more market share than you do and some with less.  Go steal market share from someone. 

Conclusion:  The market is the market.  You can't do anything about it.  You didn't start it, you won't change it, you won't end it.  All you can do is stick to the fundamentals:  See people, find out what they need or want, sell those that need and want what you have.  Period. End of story.

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.

What is the hurricane that disrupts your sales and selling business?

On September 13^th Hurricane Ike slammed into Houston, Galveston and all along the Texas Gulf Coast.  On the 14^th the remnants of the storm left 788,000 people without power in my hometown of Cincinnati.  To compare the impact of the storm on Houston and Cincinnati is ridiculous.  That is not the point of the post today.

The point is that all of us as sales people have ‘things' interrupt our smooth operating business of sales and selling.  Unfortunately, most of the time the ‘thing' is an excuse:

1. I've got too many active deals working and I can't get to new prospecting
2. I'm understaffed and I have to take care of some of the new business paperwork myself
3. We can't handle the servicing of business we have now. I can't afford to lose clients.
4. Our products are not competitively priced right now, no one will listen to my spiel
5. I just can't seem to find time to get to making calls.

What I've decided to do is to offer you some sales and selling interruption insurance.  For a mere $4,500 you can insure against lost pipeline opportunities, not accomplishing personal goals and dreams, and the inability to exceed your production goals year after year.  Here is what you will get:

1. Someone to remind you weekly, monthly and quarterly that excuses are not accepted.
2. A scorecard every Monday that can be emailed directly to you and those people that count on you actually working when you say you are telling them what you actually did the previous 5 days.
3. Someone to coach you weekly when you actually get stuck in a slump or difficult sales situation.
4. A calendar that is marked every Monday with Prospecting Activity between 2 and 4 PM
5. A return on your investment of 10X if, in fact, you follow your own commitments to sales activity for 12 months.

If you don't want to send us the $4,500 find someone that cares enough about your success and give it to them.  Make sure they will insure that they will help you with the 5 features and benefits of this wonderful sales interruption insurance plan.

Do this and the power in your sales career will be back on before you can say natural gas generator.