In the 2nd post in our "2020: The Year for Sales Growth" blog series, our Founder and CLO Tony Cole, discusses the importance of maintaining core sales values within an organization, how these values relate to organized sports, the erosion of these said core values, and the impact they have (or can have) on your attempt to grow your sales organization and sales numbers in 2020.

I have been playing tennis for close to seven years now.  If you watched me play, you would describe me as a "football player who plays tennis."  I play hard, I compete, I hate to lose, and I play to win.  But at my age, I recognize my limitations, and I accept them. 

It really doesn’t matter that my chosen sport was football. What matters more here is what it means to have participated in organized sports for many years, and what has happened to the core values and benefits passed down from generation to generation. 

One thing I have noticed is the erosion of those core values and the impact they have (or can have) on your attempt to grow your sales organization.

Last night, when I went to play in my weekly tennis league, I noticed a banner that you may have seen at the beginning of this blog (I'll Never Be Benched, Subbed or Picked Last).  With every movie I see, song I hear, or book I read; I always apply them to sales, selling, sales management or recruiting.  It happened when I saw the banner and it distracted me for the remainder of the evening.  I couldn’t help but think that the rest of the banner might read:

• I won’t get the grades I need to get into school or a good job
• I won’t get into the school of my choice
• I won’t get the promotion
• I won’t get a raise
• I won’t win the part in the play
• I won’t win the heart of a significant other
• I won’t be able to beat my competitor in a tough sales situation
• I won’t get the loan I need for a place to live

As you think about what is required of a successful salesperson, what attributes or characteristics are required to be successful? Dave Kurlan at Objective Management Group knows the answer to that question, and by extension of our relationship with him and his organization, we know the answer as well.

Click here to identify what your top performers look like compared to 1.8 million others and top performers in your industry segment.)

Sample Sales Candidate Assessment

What we know is that the top 25% of all salespeople have The Will to Sell which includes: 

• Desire to succeed in selling
• Commitment (willing to do everything possible to succeed) in selling
• Taking responsibility for outcomes – they don’t make excuses
• A strong outlook
• Very motivated

Their Sales DNA scores exceed 68%.  This means that they have strengths in the following areas:

• No need for approval
• Control emotions
• Supportive believes
• Supportive buy cycle
• Comfortable discussing money
• Handle rejection

This research, based on close to 2 million sales evaluations, shows that perhaps the most important contributing factor in the DNA score is, "Handles Rejection."  Meaning, that the most significant factor in determining if your next salesperson hire will be a fit, comes down to if they can handle rejection from prospects. 

Simply put, if they can't, then they are probably not a fit for the role!

When evaluating your current talent or looking for new talent, put a check mark next to the attributes you think are important to succeed in your organization.  Then, make sure that in your vetting process, you look for those attributes.

Finally, make sure that your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephew are put in positions where they have to overcome adversity, work hard to succeed, and are recognized for what they actually accomplish, rather than just competing.

In this article, we discuss the "5 Keys to Sales Coaching", or 5 critical steps you must know and execute in order to get the best effort and results out of your salespeople, to help increase sales in 2020 and beyond.

They include:

1. Insight
2. Feedback
3. Demonstrate
4. Practice
5. Action Plan

Coaching salespeople is hard work and it helps to have a consistent and effective process to help keep you on course.

As a sales coach, there are five critical steps you must know and execute in order to get the best effort and results out of your salespeople.

These are the 5 Keys to Sales Coaching below:

1.) INSIGHT- As a coach, you must be able to see what is happening and what is not happening out in the field.  Without real insight into what is going on, you will have difficulty understanding your salespeople's choke points.

10 Sales Management Insights

2.) FEEDBACK - As a sales coach, you must continually give your salespeople specific feedback on their activities.  This includes both positive and constructive feedback.  If you ask your salesperson if they will allow you to coach them to help them reach their goals, you will usually gain permission.  And that makes the journey better for everyone.

5 Effective Ways to Coach Your Sales Team

3.) DEMONSTRATE - Part of a sales leader’s job is to be effective at demonstrating the behavior they want their salespeople to execute in the field.  And they must take time out of their busy day to schedule time with their team members to demonstrate specific situations from a sales call or meeting, role play with their team, identify gaps in the selling process, ask specific questions, and most importantly, coach their salespeople to become better salespeople!

The Top 10 Behaviors of High Performing Managers

4.) PRACTICE - We have all heard the saying, “Practice makes perfect”. This is particularly true in selling. Practice is essential in improving selling skills, specific techniques, interpersonal skills, and attention-to-detail in the selling process.  Without practice, your salespeople will only go so far, and as a sales coach, you must role play with your salespeople in order for them to practice and achieve success!  Be prepared, they might not like it but they must do it.

8 Sales Role Play Exercises

5.) ACTION PLAN - It is essential that YOU as a sales leader take time to sit down with your salesperson and establish an action plan – what are the specific prospecting and networking activities that they must do in order to reach their goals? 

This will undoubtedly include utilizing LinkedIn, attending association meetings with the intent to meet the right target profile client, etc.  This action plan SHOULD include getting introductions from current clients.

31 Tips for Using LinkedIn for Sales

Follow this link below to learn more about specific opportunities we offer to help grow revenue!

Are there certain characteristics that make someone (or a salesperson) assertive?  We believe so.

And if you are a prospect, you want to have honest, direct and assertive conversations with a salesperson so that they can make better, more critical decisions.

There are many contributing factors as to why someone may not be very assertive such as:

1. Learned helplessness
2. Having low self-esteem
3. Not having a "Go-giver" mindset 
4. False bravado
5. Living life out of balance causing a sense of desperation and a crisis management approach to work rather than a self-management approach to work.

Assertive people have certain characteristics.

• First of all, they have minimum acceptable standards for themselves and those people around them. They don’t associate with toxic people – they work with nourishing people.
• They have a goal philosophy; they have lots of goals and then they continue to pursue those goals and achieve those goals.
• They get outside the box. If you’ve seen the 9-dot exercise, you’ll know what I’m talking about. They get outside the dots- they expand their comfort zone.
• Next, they take risks and they understand that taking risks can result in failure. But, failure becomes defined as just another step towards success. They’re persistent. They find other ways to close.
• They make decisions themselves which makes it hard for them to understand why someone would want to "think it over".
• They know what they stand for and they won’t fall for anything that falls under the category of an objection or a stall.  
• They control the sales process. You can ask them about next steps and assertive people can give you specific details about what happens next.

To overcome the hurdles that might trip you up as you attempt to be more assertive, you might consider the following:

1. As they said in The Godfather, “It’s not personal; it’s business.” Don’t take it personally.
2. Take ownership of how you feel. Nobody can make you feel the way you feel in terms of being uncomfortable. You choose to feel a certain way.
3. Consider Emerson’s quote, “Do the thing and you’ll have the power.” There will be times during a sales process or sales step where you will feel the need to be assertive but you will be afraid. DO the thing… do the thing that you’re feeling and you’ll have the power.

As always, thank you and have a perfect day.

Welcome to our newest blog series titled, "2020: The Year For Sales Growth".  These blog posts will specifically focus on helping you drive (and increase) sales in the new year. 

Starting with today's post, we bring you 5 strategies to help increase your sales to have your best yet!

Somehow, it is already time to start thinking about your goals and resolutions for the coming year so that you can:

1. Fix problems
2. Leverage opportunities
3. Become the best version of yourself
4. Scratch an itch
5. Re-commit to previous resolutions

In a nutshell, we make resolutions to either achieve pleasure or avoid pain.  Unfortunately for many, the pleasurable outcome isn’t significant enough, or the pain isn’t severe enough, to make the resolutions stick. 

So, let’s do away with resolutions for a moment and talk about 5 Strategies that will help you have your best year yet.

#1 – Show Up and Show Up on Time.  When I was a product rep for Provident Life and Accident, my manager told me on my first day that the most important key to success in the business was to show up, and to show up on time. If you do that, you will already be ahead of the competition.  I believed that then back in 1990, and I believe it still holds true today.

• Show up –Just get there.  Be in front of the people that you need to be in front of to tell your story, discover their needs, uncover their desires for a great outcome or to avoid pain. 
• Show up on time – showing up on time demonstrates more about who you are than what you do. If you are a manager, make sure you show up on time for your 1-on-1 coaching sessions, your pre and post-call debrief meetings, and your sales meetings as well.  When you show up late or cancel/reschedule, you are sending a message to your people that showing up late (or not showing up at all) is okay.

#2 – Focus on Green, "Go-To" Activities.  I call them Green Activities because these are the activities that make you money. Make a list of all the things you do during the day, and then carve out about 20% of those activities that lead directly to making sales/money. 80% of your time should be spent on “Go-To” activities. Too often, we get caught up doing the other stuff that allows us to stay busy as opposed to focusing on what matters most. Don’t misunderstand me. I know other activities such as preparing for meetings, responding to emails and calls, and helping current clients are part of your role, but it’s important to prioritize the go-to activities to make sure they get done first.

#3 - Work with the Best of the Rest. Assume for a minute you have 50 clients.  Focus on asking your top 36% (18) of them if they know at least 5 other people like them.  That gives you a potential pool of prospects of 90! Let’s say your average revenue from your top 18 clients is $27,000. The potential revenue of the prospect pool is $2.4m.  Assuming ½ of the 90 will meet with you (45) and half of those people will be qualified prospects (22.5) and half of those people would buy from you (11.25), that means you could generate about $300,000 from that pool of prospects. The question I want you to answer is this:  How many of your bottom 36% clients would you have to sell to equal just 1 of your top 36%?

#4 – Answer the Question – What is Holding Me Back? Many salespeople and sales organizations go year after year without performing as expected.  Individuals and companies invest in training and sales enablement tools but still they find over 66% of the team members fail to reach goals.  There are exceptions but the studies we’ve done consistently tell us two things:

1. The top 1/3 of the sales team generates close to 80% of the revenue
2. The bottom 1/3 generates less than 5%

Sometimes what is holding someone back from being their best has nothing to do with technique or their ability to build relationships.  If your onboarding, training, development and coaching program does not focus on items where they specifically struggle it won’t matter or make a dent in your results. Stop treating symptoms and thinking you must work harder!  Find out what is holding you back and focus on the root cause. If you are a Sales Manager, VP or President: What is holding your team back from selling more business, more quickly at better margins?

#5 – Be Coachable.  Every great professional gets to be the best for reasons other than natural ability or God given talents. The example I normally use is baseball but choose any profession you like, and I guarantee you that the best of the best are coachable and they practice to perfect their skills.  Here is an example:

• José Carlos Altuve is a Venezuelan professional second baseman for the Houston Astros. The Astros signed Altuve as an amateur free agent in 2007, and he made his major league debut in 2011. From 2014 to 2017, Altuve recorded at least 200 hits each season and led the American League (AL) in the category. He won three batting championships as well as:

• 6 time MLB All Star
• MVP for the American league in 2017
• 5 Silver Slugger Awards
• 1 Golden Glove

The question is this, when spring training starts in February what does Altuve do? Does he sit on the sidelines and just watch because “he’s a pro”?  Does he participate in some of the drills and exercises but omits others because “he knows how to do that”? Does he skip batting practice or taking infield? The answer is no, no, no and no.  He’s a professional, he’s coachable and he recognizes that he can always be better.  

If you are going to continue to grow you must have the motivation, desire and commitment to become the best version of yourself. That is what will help you be coachable.

For more information on how to implement and execute these 5 strategies email me at tony@anthonycoletraining.com, Schedule a meeting using this link:  Schedule A Meeting or text “5 Strategies” to (513) 226-3913.

In this blog post, we compare an IH 1210 pickup truck to driving revenue growth within your sales organization.  Like an engine that needs three things to run, your sales organization also needs three things to run.

They include: 

1. Sales Talent acquisition
2. Sales Talent development
3. A crew chief with desire, commitment and skills

I’ve been working on this post for over a week. For some reason, it took a little while to pull it all together.

I think I was making it too complicated, so here it goes:

• In 1971, my dad got his new pickup truck, a powder blue IH 1210.
• Dad “pimped his ride” by installing an 8-track player with Panasonic speakers.
• My dad was a slow driver. No matter where we were going or how far, he’d drive 45 mph even when the speed limit allowed 55. 
• I thought it was a result of his old beater of a pickup.
• I thought for sure he’d drive faster with his new truck.
• Nope, he still drove 45 mph in a 55 mph zone.

I’ve been trying to connect this experience with the experience of watching sales organizations look for solutions to drive revenue growth.  Like an engine that needs three things to run, your sales organization also needs three things to run.

Spark, fuel and combustion are required to start an engine and make it run. If you have those things, the engine will run.  Get all three at a grade “A” level and the engine runs really well.  If you want the vehicle that the engine is meant to move to perform at “A” level, you need something else.  You need a driver.

Not just any driver; you need a driver that has two things: Competency and Drive.  Certainly, there are other contributing factors that determine if the driver is right for your vehicle, but basically speaking:

• Without competency, you might go fast, but there will be lots of damage, crashes and failures.
• Without drive, there will be no risks taken, no failures and no success.
• Without drive, there will be a lack of coachability and trainability.

My point is this:  The engine size, the transmission, the gear ratios, the tires, the steering, the paint job, the aerodynamics—none of these things really matter if you don’t have a driver or a team of drivers with competency and drive.

When you get ready to put your budget together and are considering where to invest money, time and effort in order to drive revenue growth, focus on three things:

1. Sales Talent acquisition
2. Sales Talent development
3. A crew chief with desire, commitment and skills

CRM and other sales enablement tools are nice but, just like my dad’s new pickup, it doesn’t matter unless you want to grow, and grow fast.

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