Today I will cover one of the ways we at Anthony Cole Training Group, LLC coach sales managers to help them coach their salespeople to have more and better initial sales calls: Your USA!

USA is the terminology we use at Anthony Cole Training Group as part of our Effective Selling System (ESS). It stands for unique sales approach.

Yes, my staff recognizes me as the king of ACRONYMS. I Googled acronyms this morning and discovered that I may in fact be king of INITIALISM. This is not the point of this article.

The point is that most, if not all sales growth development and training programs, teach something along the lines of the elevator pitch / value proposition as part of the prospecting section of the sales training program. You can download a free copy of "Better Than the Best Prospecting Book Ever Written!"

Next week I will be working with one of our community banking clients on this very issue. Executive leadership is so convinced that this is the key to greater productivity and effectiveness, that they want to have a special session with just their market presidents.

Here are the key things I will convey to them to keep in mind, consider, remember when writing, developing, delivering the USA for their company.

1. Everyone of your competitors is attempting to do the same thing as part of their marketing strategy.
   
   
2. None of the people you compete with will have a USA that includes any of the following:

• Our prices are high
• Our service is just about average
• Our products are out of date
• Our people are kind of dedicated and semi-professional
  
  

3. Keeping in mind #2 – your USA SHOULD NOT include any of the items listed above

4. The USA should describe the outcome of what happens when clients choose to work with you, your people, and your company.

• Earn more, keep more, pay less
• Eliminate the frustration, anxiety, madness about…
• Find a relationship that provides solutions consistent with their overall business objectives.  (one of my favorite examples for banking is this:  We work with companies that want more out of a banking relationship then just a place to put or get money)

5. THIS IS THE BIG: Your USA should result in one of the following three reactions:

• Tell me more about that.
• How do you do that?
• That’s me! (This is something they will be thinking when you say something like, “My clients are those in the ag business that are sick and tired of short term solutions to insuring their operations and on-going negotiations over rates)
  
  

In addition to what I just covered, keep the following 3 suggestions in mind:

1. Have a very specific target market. i.e. If the go-to market strategy of your company is to be a high value, high price, custom solution provider, then you need to make sure you are talking to people that are looking for and willing to pay for that kind of offering
2. Know exactly what the problems and opportunities are within that target market
3. Role play your USA with the most critical person you can find, and ask them to be completely honest about one thing: Did my 10 second ad cause you to say or think: Tell me more, how do you do that or that’s me? If it didn’t, start over and get it right.

I would like to provide you with an alternate perspective to LinkedIn's article- a list of 9 Do’s you can use when looking for and hiring new talent. Because we specialize in helping companies Sell Better, Coach Better, and Hire Better, my comments will focus specifically on sales but understand that these principles will apply for most hires in your company.  

Linkedin Talent Solutions wrote this article focusing on the mistakes or “don'ts” of hiring talent. The Linkedin Talent Solutions 9 mistakes include:

1. Your hiring team’s roles aren’t clearly defined
2. Your job post isn’t clear or compelling enough
3. You’re not targeting your job post to the right audience
4. You’re not tapping into your personal LinkedIn network
5. You’re not revealing what makes your company unique
6. You ignored red flags during the interviews – the first interview should be based on what they must be great at
7. You’re not getting to know the candidate
8. Your evaluation criteria is unclear
9. You don’t close the loop with all applicants

We have a Hire Better Salespeople program that helps our clients who are working to upgrade their sales teams. We train our clients on how to identify, and understand the importance of, people who are strong in the following areas:

• Hunting for new opportunities
• Relationship building
• Consultative selling
• Selling value
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Closing
• Following a consistent sales process
• Managing accounts
• Farming opportunities  

Using the LinkedIn article as a guide, I would like to provide you with an alternate perspective- a list of 9 Do’s you can use when looking for and hiring new talent. Because we specialize in helping companies Sell Better, Coach Better, and Hire Better, my comments will focus specifically on sales but understand that these principles will apply for most hires in your company.  

• Make sure the same people execute the same role, every time.
  
• Make sure the people you assign have the skills required for that role. For example, your interviewer must be willing to ask challenging questions, be able to disqualify candidates, have a great deal of healthy skepticism, etc.
  

• It works to disqualify candidates.
• Instead of selling the position, it states what the candidate is required to SUCCEED at rather than have experience doing (You will get people with the experience, but they probably have a failing experience). Have a list of “must haves”- must demonstrate the ability to, has a proven track record of, etc.
• In the case of salespeople, we would write the following in the job attraction post; “Must have a strong desire and commitment to be highly successful in selling in a very competitive market, selling high quality, high priced, non-tangible business solutions to prospects that are price-focused, difficult to get in front of, and tend to “shop around.” You must be very comfortable working in an environment where you are expected to manage yourself to success, undergo high pressure to hit goals and be coached by your manager to improve skills and change behaviors. During the interview, you will be expected to roleplay your outreach phone call and initial qualifying conversation with a prospect that already has a great relationship with the incumbent.”
  
  

• If they have to be great on the phone, your first interview step MUST be a phone interview.
• If they must be able to close on the phone, make sure they close for the next step during the phone interview.
• If you expect them to establish bonding and rapport on the first call, make them do that when they walk into the room for your first face-to-face interview. Make them do the hard work.
• If they must be great at asking questions, take note of the number and quality of questions they ask during the interview process (other than ones about compensation, vacation, CRM, benefits, etc).

It is also critical to identify in advance what you want to hear from your candidate:  

• I have 30 new appointments a month. I’m passionate about success in sales because I have huge dreams and goals for myself and my… which require a lot of money.
• When I fail, it’s because of something I didn’t do.
• I make sure that I know the budget the prospect has before I ever present a solution.
  I call on nothing but CEOs and Presidents.

Next, write down the questions you need to ask to get the answers you are looking for. What you should be looking for (link to sample pre-hire sales evaluation)

• Will to sell
• Sales DNA
• Sales competencies

• Hunt for new business
• Qualify prospects by asking enough, and the right, questions
• Ability to call at the decision-making level
• Close for the next step
   

9. “Closing the loop” in our world means making sure the candidate is always closing for the next step. Make sure you completely define your decision-making process (like the one below) and gain an agreement to that process:

1. Identify the candidate's compelling reason for looking at your opportunity.
2. What are the monetary, and contractual considerations that have to be met?
3. Deal with competition: Current employer, other opportunities they are considering, etc.
4. Present everything there is to know about the opportunity and make sure that it is a career change the candidate would make if the monetary and contractual considerations were met
5. Allow them to think it over before making your offer
6. Make an offer that meets their criteria
7. Ask them to decide once the offer is made

If you would like to attend a zoom meeting webinar to learn more about Hiring Better reply to this post, or email Alex Cole-Murphy, our Hiring Manager, at Alex@anthonycoletraining.com.

In an economic environment that is like the one we are in heading into 2023, your growth strategy may not be so much about sales growth, but rather more about holding on to what you have! If your clients are deciding to participate in the assumed upcoming recession, then your biggest questions / challenges won’t be:

• Can we be competitive with our pricing?
• Are our salespeople skilled enough to qualify and close business?
• Will we have enough revenue to keep our people?
• Can we meet demand?

No, your biggest challenge will be with your own sales team and their willingness, drive, and commitment to do what needs to be done to reach out each and every day to find new names / logos to add to their pipeline.

Addressing and solving this problem requires great coaching from your sales leadership and sales management people. Your sales managers and people responsible for developing sales talent MUST HAVE a coaching bias. They MUST have an innate desire to help people improve skill, attitude, will to sell, and behaviors. The will to sell alone though, is not enough. There are a set of skills / competencies that will either support the coaching effort, or hinder the coaching effort.  

If you follow Anthony Cole Training Group regularly, you know we are one of the top distributors for Objective Management Group suite of sales talent assessments and evaluations. We are a top distributor because we are absolutely convinced of the truth as spoken by our own sales development expert, Mark Trinkle, “You cannot fix what you cannot see.”

What you see in this graphic is information that we have when we assess an organization's sales management team. When you look at this, what jumps off the page at you? I don’t know about you, but I see three things that would hinder sales coaching effectiveness:

1.     Consistently coaches and debriefs

2.     Beliefs Support Coaching

3.     Doesn’t rescue the Salespeople

And just for good measure let’s add this one:

4.     Effective at getting commitments

Each one of these has a video that you can access for further clarification.  But for the purpose of this article let me attempt to craft the narrative this way.

You have a sales manager that really loves to coach and develop people, but:

• Doesn’t spend enough time coaching to improve skill and change behaviors. The coaching takes place only when the salesperson needs to discuss a strategy for creating the solution or attempting to figure out how to deal with competitive pricing – how much lower can we offer our product?
• In addition to that, this manager believes that only those new people need coaching, and their experienced, tenured salespeople already know what to do and are hitting their numbers.  (The question that needs to be asked is this:  Is hitting their numbers the same as producing to the available opportunity?)
• When this manager does joint calls with prospects, they fail to let them fail.  Rescuing the salesperson once they make a mistake is also tied to beliefs. They believe that it is more important to make the sale, not look bad, make corrections then it is to let a salesperson fail and let them learn from mistakes.
• Finally, when a manager of this make up does meet with their salespeople, they don’t get caught up in the ‘emotions’ of the minute, they won’t sugar coat questions because they are afraid of the salesperson not liking them, but they will struggle with getting a firm commitment to do the right activity, engage in training to improve skills and change behaviors.

As you can read from this narrative, the bias towards coaching is important and yes, even critical, but the skills to execute are just as critical. Here’s an analogy: I loved playing basketball and thought my road to an NCAA scholarship was via basketball. I had a couple of problems that overwhelmed my enthusiasm for the game: I couldn’t jump or shoot. I played basketball like a football player. The good news is that my love for football paid off and I attended UCONN on scholarship!

Find out what our Sales Managed Environment Certification program can do to help you drive sales. https://anthonycoletraining.com/sales-managed-environment-sme/

It has been almost a month ago, but real fans will remember. It was a game for 45 minutes and then it wasn’t. I am talking about the Michigan, Ohio State rivalry football game played November 26, 2022.  Up for grabs was the Big Ten Football Championship Game and a shot at being in the NCAA football playoffs.

As I watched the game, I thought about all those sales opportunities that were close to being won for 45 days and then, they weren't. Up for grabs was a sale that would make hitting goal ‘easier’ and a chance to be identified with the other top salespeople in the organization.

Here are the 10 key lessons to take from this game and apply to your life or the lives of your sales team as you / they pursue wining sales opportunities.

1. Follow the game plan.  Obviously, this requires that you and or your sales team have a milestone-centric sales process in place AND you have processes in place to manage execution of the sales process.
2. Don’t panic. Things will go wrong.  

• The prospect won’t always be completely honest with you about pricing, the competition, the budget, decision makers, timeline, commitment to take action or the decision-making process.
• Your backroom may not be able to underwrite / approve / support this type of sale in the fashion to which they are accustomed.
• The competitor may undercut your pricing or make other concessions to keep the business.

3. Make sure you coach or get coaching every step of the way. It DOES NOT matter how many years you’ve been in the business. Great salespeople become great salespeople because they consistently hone their skills (practice) and they understand there are things that they don’t know.
4. Be patient. You are not in control of the timing of the prospect’s process. You can do your best to influence timing by asking questions about the value of acting or the potential cost of waiting but, be patient and stick to your plan.
5. Don’t be afraid, GO FOR IT! Get to decision makers, ask about budget, find out if the prospect will in fact leave their current provider if you solve their problem and /or provide a better solution.
6. Keep track of everything. There isn’t anything that happened in the OSU / Michigan game (any competitive game) that isn’t tracked.  The information / data you get helps you make better decisions within the overall framework of your sales process. Pre and post call planning and weekly huddles are effective tracking strategies.
7. Stay clinically detached. This is easier to do when you have a plan. Remember SW3N.  Some will, some won’t, so what, NEXT!
8. Avoid feeling pressure to ‘score’ or win every sale by having a consistently full pipeline of opportunities.
9. 9. Be discerning as to what you listen to from others. (The announcers were commenting early in in the game on how Michigan couldn’t win if they didn’t establish the ground game.)  Michigan threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to go ahead 17-13).  Lesson, take what the prospect gives you vs trying to force your game plan. Eventually MI did establish the ground game – stuck to game plan – and ou trushed OSU 252 yards to 143 yards.
10. Be better than your competition.

You may not win every sale. But you have to be in the game every time you decide to move forward in your sales process AND it is critical that you have GREAT confidence that you will win BEFORE you present your solution.  In other words, reviewing your game plan score card, you must have a 75% chance of winning before you present your solution. Anything less than that will make you vulnerable to think it overs, second guessing by the prospect, price adjustments by the competitor and loss of momentum by the buyer. 

The start of any undertaking is the most important step. 

When it comes to building the confident and trusting relationship associated with a strong seller / buyer relationship, the start is especially important. I'm not just talking about the immediate "bonding and rapport" part of selling or a 5-minute segment of chitchat. The start I’m referring to is the entire first contact process whether it is a phone call or an association meeting or the initial meeting after the phone call.  The start will often, if not always, determine your finish. 

The 6 Steps to Start the Sale:

1. Pre-Call Plan
2. Have a Unique Value Proposition
3. Ask Thoughtful, Open-Ended Questions
4. Check Your Sales Attitude
5. Get a Clear Next Step
6. Qualify vs Disqualify the Prospect
   
   

1. Be prepared (pre-call strategy).  Be prepared for the sales process. Know what questions you are going to ask to move the sale forward. These are not questions about the technical aspects of your prospect's current position or status.   Anticipate the suspect's answers to the questions you ask and be prepared with follow-up dialog.  Too many sales people take this step for granted because "they've been in the business for __ years." Don’t fall into this trap. Also, be prepared for the inevitable curve balls the prospect will throw at you. This is your chance to build credibility.
   
   
2. Demonstrate your credibility by what you say and by how you conduct yourself.  You’re your value proposition different. Do this by the questions you ask, by your focus on the prospect and what is important to them, and by your reluctance to get into a sales pitch. Avoid doing the typical product dump.  Demonstrate your knowledge of the industry by stories, analogies and metaphors that work to show you understand their business. Demonstrate your professionalism by the way you ask penetrating questions.  Demonstrate your focus on their issues by not looking, acting or sounding like every other salesperson they have met.
   
   
3. Have the courage to ask tough questions and have fierce/ honest discussions. You probably know the questions, but do you often leave an initial call having failed to ask:
      
• How will you make this decision? 
• When do I meet the decision maker?
• If you don't have a budget, how will you pay for this?
• If you are shopping for low price, what happens if I show up and I'm not the low price? 
• Who wins a tie? 
• When you told your current provider that you were unhappy with the current situation, what did they say?
• When I show up to make my presentation, I need for you to be in a position to tell me 'yes' or 'no'. What objections do you have to that process?
4. Check your sales attitude – the head stuff will drive your sales behaviors so leave your need for approval at the door when you leave the house in the morning.  Re-write your personal beliefs about how and why people buy.  Think about the impact of your personal buy cycle at the car lot where you debated for the last three weeks over which make/ model to purchase and where you haggled over price with the manager. Go out expecting people to buy.
   
   
5. Qualify suspects / prospects to do business with you rather than the other way around.  Don’t go to a meeting feeling like you must audition for the business. You don't.  You shouldn’t. However, you should make sure that the person you are meeting with qualifies to do business with you. In an effective selling system, qualifying means the following:
• Does the prospect have a compelling reason to take action and when?
• Will they invest the time, money and resources to solve a problem they have or a problem they see coming?  Will they invest that time, money or resources in a timely fashion or are they in the information collecting mode of buying?
• Will they tell you "yes" or "no" when you present?  In order to accomplish this, you must have eliminated their current provider.  You must have heard them say they want to fix it, whatever "it" is. And you must have a solution that is appropriate for their problem. 
6. Get a clear next step.  There is always a next step even if you are in a "one appointment close" industry.  It doesn't matter if your business requires multiple meetings or is typically "one and done".  Always close per your identified objective for this meeting. Then move on.  I promise you, that if you get masterful at this step, you will have fewer meetings and your closing ratio will improve.  Ask for closure. Ask for a clear next step. Ask for the business Yes or No.

Master these 6 Steps to Start the Sale and you will close more business, more quickly, at higher margins.