Here are 6 key concepts for innovation in sales:

1. Do Whatever It Takes. We call this WIT, and top producers in sales understand that they really must do whatever it takes—assuming actions are ethical and legal, of course—to help their clients, sell the next deal, and attain their goals. What this really translates to is commitment: commitment to taking the time to think broadly when it comes to a prospect or an opportunity and doing what the other salespeople do not do. This might mean staying later at work to send a communication that includes helpful resources, or it might be calling a client to ask who they might know that would benefit from meeting with you. Bottom line, WIT translates to innovation in sales because your prospect or client benefits from your willingness to serve them to your fullest potential. How committed are you or your salespeople to doing whatever it takes for your prospects and clients?

2. Overcome Self-Limiting Beliefs. Napoleon Hill said, “Your only limitation is the one you set in your own mind!” This applies to everything in life and certainly impacts success in sales. High self-awareness is especially important for salespeople. Self-awareness helps you better understand the belief systems that you're consciously or unconsciously bringing into your sales calls. It also helps you understand how you might interpret a client's response to you. Here are some examples of self-limiting beliefs and more supportive beliefs: “Prospects are honest” vs. “I maintain healthy skepticism about what prospects tell me.” “Any lack of results is due to my competitors” vs. “Any lack of results is due to my own efforts.” We all have beliefs; however, being self-aware and analyzing what happens when these get in the way of a sale demonstrates innovation in sales.

3. Eliminate Non-Prospects from Pipeline. True or false: You or your salespeople have stuffed the pipeline with prospects that will not close, and you know it. There is safety in numbers, another saying, that when it comes to pipeline is unfortunately not true. Top salespeople are adept at fully qualifying their prospects along the process and eliminating them as soon as possible from their pipeline when they know that they are not qualified. In most cases, these salespeople have some mental or actual checklist they follow to understand if a prospect “fits” their criteria. Here is our Prospect Qualifying Scorecard that can help you and your salesperson make sure to eliminate non-prospects from the pipeline sooner rather than later.

4. Follow a Sales Process. The data is clear on this one: 93% of top producers follow a stage-based systematic sales process. Following a process keeps them from skipping a step in the buyer-seller journey. For example, do you or any of your salespeople skip too quickly from uncovering a problem/pain issue to providing a solution? This is a common example of not following a sales process because the salesperson has skipped over fully uncovering and understanding how painful the problem is, if the prospect has the time, money, and resources to fix the problem, what the decision-making process is, and if they are committed to fixing the problem. Following a consistent and systematic sales process is like following the instructions for assembling a piece of new equipment. It helps to ensure that it is constructed properly and will work! While sales processes themselves are not new, being adept at effectively executing a sales process truly is innovation in sales.

5. Prospect & Bring in New Business. This one is clear and short. Prospect every day. Find all potential avenues to reach prospects that fit your target. Innovation comes from the execution of this effort, as most do not execute on a daily basis. Prospecting for a salesperson must be Job #1.

6. Overcome Rejection. This is one of the most important findings from the sales evaluation that we utilize—the pioneer and leader in the industry, Objective Management Group. Here is a short description below:

   a. When this is a Weakness, an individual might feel hurt and hesitate for some period of time before reaching out to a prospect after being rejected.
   b. When this is a Strength, an individual might get back on another sales call immediately after being rejected without feeling hurt.

Elite salespeople are fast to get back on the wagon, and doing so helps them move on to the next, perhaps more positive experience, so that they do not dwell on the negative perspective of being rejected by a prospect. Top producers also take the time to analyze what happened and identify what went wrong in their process, enabling them to self-correct. In this area, innovation lies not in recognizing errors but in learning from them and applying those lessons to future opportunities.

But keep in mind this one very important idea – your sales goal plan has to be tied to YOUR personal goals. It must be a number or objective driven by your needs and not the needs of the company. For example, maybe you want to pay off your credit card debt, a significant portion of the mortgage on that new house you bought, or pay for an upcoming vacation in full. When your work plan is directly tied to one of your personal motivators and objectives, you are much more likely to see the success you want.

Get started by downloading our Personal & Business Workplan template!

The Manager’s Role in Sales Goal Planning

When asked, most sales managers say that one of their greatest challenges is their ability to motivate their salespeople. If a sales manager can figure out what makes their team “tick,” they can better help them hit their goal numbers. Motivation seems like hard work because salespeople often value different things. There are, however, several steps a sales manager can take to establish a motivating environment.

The first step is to recognize that motivation is an “inside-out job.” When the topic of motivation is discussed, we typically think about incentive compensation, sales contests, and recognition programs. All of these certainly encourage your sales teams to focus on generating new business because these are rewards. However, you will gain true engagement and enthusiasm if you create an everyday environment that encourages each individual to identify and visualize their own internal motivation.

Do you remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid? The bottom two tiers, Physiological and Safety, are the most basic needs of every individual. This same concept holds true for new salespeople. Hopefully, they will make their way up to self-actualization at some point, but they must first have income for food, shelter, safety, etc. Only once they realize they have attained all of these basic necessities and have established a cushion, can they turn attention to the higher tiers of Self-Actualization and the bigger dreams and goals to which they might aspire.

To put it another way, salespeople do not care about corporate shareholder value unless they are shareholders themselves. What they care about is food, shelter, clothing, recognition, paying for a college education or a wedding, buying a vacation home, etc. These are personal desires and make up the vast majority of things that are important to people. So, the solution is to create an environment where this internal motivation can take place. Refer to The Dream Manager by Michael Kelly for more insights.

This means that it is up to you to help your salespeople identify what is important to them. Make the effort to set up time off-site that is dedicated to planning and spend time developing each individual’s dreams and sales goal plan. This is time that you and they will spend ON your business instead of in it. Take a day or two that will help you and your team take a giant step forward to plan for the future.

Create a process where people can establish personal goals because this is where true motivation, passion, and desire are born. Hence, it is from this process that each salesperson’s business plan must evolve.

Create an environment where people get a chance to unplug, sit down, and outline their goals and dreams; a time when both of you can establish timeframes and attach financial values to these items. Once you have attached financial values, you will know what level of prospecting and selling activity is necessary for each salesperson.

Reward yourself and your people when they have a success. As your people go through this process and identify their sales goal plan; as you sit down, and establish your own personal goals, be sure to specify how you will reward yourself and your people as each of you achieve these goals. Make sure that you take time to find and celebrate the joy of this wonderful world of selling and helping customers make sound decisions, as that might just be the most rewarding goal of all.

Don’t wait to get started—download our Personal & Business Workplan template!

Think about your own salespeople. There are many reasons they fail to close business. Too often, they fail simply because they don’t muster the courage required at the beginning of the sales process. When they are prospecting, they are not prepared to ask the right questions, and they aren’t ready when their prospect asks them unexpected questions.

Closing should refer to the whole sales process, not just the end. Closing is about asking questions versus pushing a client in a certain direction. “The sale should close itself” – the process should be natural, not forced. If you’re a good negotiator and influencer, the close should happen on its own. According to Objective Management Group, the pioneer and leader in the sales evaluation arena, there are 13 specific skills that lead to success. In essence, closing is not about expert closing techniques; it is about having excellent qualifying skills.

Let’s focus on the top two attributes that are essential for closing:

1. Gets prospect to agree to make a decision: In your sales process, do your salespeople even ask the prospect if they are willing and able to make the decision? It is not uncommon for salespeople to deliver a proposal or a quote only to find that their “person” is not the ultimate decision-maker. Is that because they did not ask about the decision-making process? Or did they fail, in general, to communicate that they would deliver the proposal with the agreement that a decision would be made, Yes or No? Or did they even fail to clarify if the problems uncovered were compelling or costly enough to make a decision now or soon?

2. Not Likely to take “Think it Overs”: We call these TIOs, and they are the death of most unclosed deals. They can come in the form of “I really like your proposal and will get back to you,” or “Let me think about it and talk to the team.” These are all understandable responses, right? Not if you have utilized this expert closing technique: “When I deliver the proposal that addresses all of the issues you have shared, within the budget we discussed, I ask one thing – and that is for you to make a decision, yes or no. I would prefer to hear yes, but no is okay.” Think about your own pipeline and deals lost. How many of them are attributable to the dreaded “Think it overs”? When faced with this response, skilled salespeople know how to go back to the pain and the cost of not fixing the problem. They are able to remind the prospect of the urgency they shared, why it is a priority, and balance that with the right amount of patience.

Closing is not about the close. It is about understanding and helping the client solve their problems and take advantage of opportunities, acting in the role of a valued business partner.

by Alex Cole-Murphy with contributions from Objective Management Group and distributors

Eloquently stated by Howard G. Hendricks:
“The measure of you as a leader is not what you do, but what others do because of what you do.”

This mindset of developing others is the hallmark of great leaders and effective sales coaches. How does that translate into actions and behaviors? An effective sales coach monitors the performance of their salespeople to identify areas for improvement and reinforces behaviors that lead to success. They also build confidence in representatives by providing them with the tools, skills, and training they need to succeed. This is what they do, but the importance of sales coaching lies in the how of coaching—helping a salesperson discover for themselves what is hindering their success by asking insightful questions and providing feedback at critical times. Practicing for upcoming calls, offering feedback on potential questions and challenges they may encounter—these are integral parts of the coaching process.

Here is a short list of opportunities a sales coach has to support their team, illustrating the importance of sales coaching:

• Make sure they have written goals.
• Help them follow those goals with a plan.
• Encourage them to take responsibility for their behaviors and success (no excuses).
• Provide tools and training to build strong self-confidence.
• Help them understand and develop supporting sales beliefs.
• Encourage them not to shy away from tough questions due to a need for approval (desire to be liked).
• Support their recovery from rejection.
• Provide opportunities to practice and get comfortable discussing money.
• Help them understand their own buying cycle and how it influences their sales process.
• Improve effective listening and questioning skills.
• Offer tips for building rapport and bonding early with prospects.
• Help them get comfortable uncovering budgets and price tolerances.
• Guide them in understanding why prospects buy.
• Increase their win rate with qualified proposals and quotes.
• Teach them the importance of reaching the decision-maker for decisions.

Much like a salesperson follows a stage-based sales process, a sales coach is more effective if they follow a coaching process.

If a sales coach does not provide insights, feedback, demonstrations, or encourage role-play, the salesperson may practice on clients without the chance to improve before critical calls. Sales coaching is all about helping salespeople get better at asking questions, listening to understand, drilling down, discovering motivation, securing commitments, practicing skills, refining strategies, and demonstrating effectiveness in qualifying, presenting, and closing situations. It is a daunting responsibility, but also highly rewarding when coaching leads to improvement and success.

Tips to ensure the most effective coaching approach:

• Determine specific coaching needs.
• Coach consistently with planned repetition.
• Keep sessions short.
• Determine the content or agenda in advance (pre-call plan).
• Prepare (the sales rep should practice the pre-call plan).
• Always agree on outcomes and actions to take.

Need more information on sales coaching? Click the button below to download our free eBook on the 9 Keys to Successful Coaching! 

Creating a winning sales pitch that gets a decision 100% of the time is all about the qualifying process that salespeople follow. They certainly must have uncovered a compelling or multiple compelling reasons to take action from the prospect. There has to be pain or what we call severe mental anguish over something that is either a problem that exists today or a problem that will exist if action isn’t taken. Or there is an opportunity that has to be leveraged. That problem or opportunity has been monetized. The salesperson must also have identified that the prospect has the capacity to invest and has shared the decision-making process. The salesperson must have a solution that meets their specific terms and conditions. All of that contributes to creating a winning sales pitch, prior to presenting.

A salesperson’s ability to create winning sales pitches can be evaluated by checking their close ratio closely and understanding what contributed to the wins and losses. Salespeople and their managers must identify the choke points in their qualifying process. What are they hearing from the prospect at the pitch? What are their objections to buying? What are they ‘thinking over’? How often are they losing to the incumbent, not talking to the decision maker, or facing a money objection at presentation time?

To close 100% of qualified buyers, salespeople must also have the right attitude about the presentation. Attitudes are driven by beliefs. If they don’t believe that they must uncover all of these issues prior to pitching, then they will not gain a decision, and if they do win it, it will mostly be luck, which is not a winning sales strategy.

Salespeople should start preparing for their winning presentation as they are qualifying the prospect. That’s right, preparing starts at the very beginning of creating a winning sales pitch. Too often, salespeople make one of three assumption mistakes when it comes to presenting a solution:

1. They make assumptions that because they have extra features and benefits in their solution, the prospect will want them even if those come at an additional cost.
2. Assumptions are made about price—salespeople too often assume that every prospect will make a decision based on price. We know that is not the case. Or worse, that the price is not important to discuss prior to presentation.
3. They assume that prospects will be honest and not share their ‘stuff’ with the incumbent. How often have they lost a deal because the other company lowered the price of their offering to match theirs?

How often do salespeople lose sales to the incumbent? In many cases, salespeople are not creating a new sale; they are gaining market share by taking business from the competitor. That means that virtually 100% of the time, they are in competition. They must find out more about that relationship and the prospect’s willingness and capabilities to end that relationship.

They must ask questions like:

• When you told your current advisor you were going out to shop around, what did they say?
• When you told your current advisor that you were unhappy and were going to find someone else to work with, what did they do?

Understanding this in advance helps a salesperson better prepare for their presentation to get a decision. Dealing with it before the pitch will help eliminate the “I need to talk to my current provider” objection at the time of close.

Money is always a factor. Unfortunately, many salespeople fail to approach this part of the discussion, either because they are uncomfortable talking about money, don’t know how to ask, or don’t believe it is relevant to their type of sales. Insurance brokers are notorious for believing they don’t have to ask about budget because the prospect is already paying premiums. But when they get copies of policies and do a risk assessment, the premiums are ‘blacked out’ in the policy. Why? Because the prospect is playing the price game to leverage the current relationship.

Here is a recommended approach to set up a winning sales pitch with the prospect:

• I will present a solution to solve those problems we discussed today.
• I will provide a solution that meets your specs and fits within the terms and conditions, including budget.
• I will be in a position to answer all of your questions.
• When I’m finished, I will ask you three questions:

1. Do you feel like I understand your business and what you are trying to accomplish?
2. Do you believe that I can help you accomplish your goals?
3. Do you want my help?

• When I ask that last question, you will be in a position to say yes or no. Either one is okay. I’d rather hear yes, but no is okay. What objections do you have to that process?

This is when the rubber meets the road, and the salesperson finds out if, in fact, they have a 100% qualified prospect!