In this blog, we discuss why prospects object when it comes down to buying time, and why we can't always blame the prospects in these situations. Overall, salespeople must ask better questions to help increase sales, build better relationships, and help uncover their prospect's compelling reasons to buy. 

On the other side, their sales managers must be present for their salespeople at the beginning, middle and end of every sales opportunity, sales meeting, and coaching session. 

I’ve been working on growing sales for over 30 years.  It’s been about 25 years since I heard David Sandler say,

“There’s no such thing as bad prospects, just bad salespeople.” Not bad as in character, morals or integrity; just bad at selling.

But as I read Dave Kurlan’s blog about choosing between bad salespeople and bad sales management, it got me thinking about what Sandler said those many years ago and what we continue to hear from salespeople today when discussing opportunities won and lost. Let’s take a look at what’s happening or not happening. 

List of reasons for a salesperson not getting the sale:

• The prospect had a long-term relationship/the incumbent matched our proposal
• The decision maker wasn’t involved in the selling process 
• Our pricing wasn’t competitive/ we didn’t have the right products for them 
• The timing wasn’t right

There are many, but in a nutshell, the overall question (from a sales manager) to a salesperson would be;

“When you asked them (the prospect) about, discussed, made sure that...(fill in the blank with any of the reasons listed above) What did they say?  What was their reaction?”  

If you read this as a salesperson you might be thinking one of a few things: 

1. I’m not asking those questions 
2. Those are good questions to ask
3. I should be asking those questions 
4. I would never ask those questions 

If you are thinking #4, then your reasons for not getting the business are never going to change! That is what Sandler and Kurlan are talking about when they discuss bad salespeople. You cannot blame the prospect for having objections to buy. Heck, you have your own set of objections/reasons every time you decide not to buy or change. 

But what about the sales manager? Where does that person fit into the equation? They fit in at the beginning, middle and end of every sales opportunity, sales meeting, and coaching session. 

Solution #2: Pre and Post Call Sessions and 1-on-1 Coaching

Pre-call coaching sample questions:

• What buying process questions will you ask? (These are questions about compelling issues, stages in the buyer’s journey, options they are exploring, other solution providers they are exploring, etc.) 
• What answers do you anticipate?
• How will you handle those answers?
• What questions are you anticipating?
• What will your response be?
• What objections, delays or stalls should you anticipate?
• What is your response?

Unfortunately, what we do know from the thousands of sales managers assessed for coaching skills, is that less than 10% of them have adequate skills to be effective at developing salespeople. 

What does this all mean?

1. To eliminate bad prospects, eliminate bad salespeople
2. To eliminate bad salespeople, eliminate bad sales management/ lack of sales coaching
3. To eliminate bad sales management, hire people that have the skills to be effective in the role 
4. Don’t use sales management as the next step in the career path for successful salespeople
5. Provide the training, development and coaching your managers need to be effective

Need further assistance with the post-call session? Click HERE or the button below to view our Post-Call Debrief Analysis Worksheet.

Recruiting new sales talent and hiring better salespeople are complicated and time-consuming processes. Especially, when you're not prepared to fill a vacancy, don't have a pipeline of candidates, or have an idea of what "better" means for your business. 

In this article, Tony Cole discusses what to start doing and what to stop doing to upgrade your sales force and increase sales starting today!

What are the keys to hiring better salespeople?

In our weekly huddle today, Jack Kasel shared a parable about a woman who asked the pastor at a revival meeting to pray that the cobwebs in her life be removed.  She appeared a second night and a third night with the same request.  The pastor granted her wish the first two nights, and prayed that the cobwebs in her life be removed.  When she appeared the 3^rd time at the revival with the same request, the Pastor stopped her mid-request because he realized he had been asking God for the wrong thing.

The Pastor instead prayed; "Father, we do not ask you tonight to clean the cobwebs from Ms. Rameriez’ life.  In fact, Lord, keep them there for now.  But tonight, we ask for something much greater.  Tonight, we ask that you kill the spiders in Ms. Ramirez’s life."

What does killing spiders have to do with recruiting and hiring better salespeople?  Well, indirectly nothing, but metaphorically speaking, it has a lot to do with hiring better salespeople. 

Here are 10 things to "Start doing" and 3 things to "Stop doing" when it comes to recruiting and attempting to hire better salespeople:

Start Doing:

1. Create a profile of a salesperson that describes exactly what success they need to achieve. This will work more effectively than writing a job description and posting it to a job site, or telling your network that you're looking for a "great salesperson".
2. Use a pre-hire assessment in the 2^nd step of your hiring process. Before you have a phone or face-to-face interview, assess EVERY candidate with a sales specific assessment that can match sales experience with your specific sales success requirements.
3. Interview only those that have be recommended for hire as THE salesperson you are looking for.
4. Create an interview process that mimics the sales process. If they have to be great on the phone, then interview them on the phone before you meet, and give them the same amount of time to impress you that they would get with a prospect.  If they can’t impress the hell out of you in 3 minutes, they won’t impress a prospect either.
5. In your first face-to-face interview, make them do the "hard stuff".  Such as:
   • Make them establish bonding and rapport.
   • Make them ask you questions about what it takes to be successful, what do the top salespeople do in your organization and what do they have to tell you to make sure they make it to the next step.
   • Schedule only 30 minutes but make sure there is an extra 30 minutes for an interview with another person in your office. I promise you that you will know if you should proceed after 30 minutes.
6. Make sure that when you are ready to make an offer, they are ready to decide. Inform them of that process so they are prepared to tell you "yes" or "no".  Your offer should meet their expectations, you must be able to answer all of their questions and you must know what you are willing to negotiate to get the person you want to hire.  DO NOT let them use your offer to get a better deal.
7. Onboard them so that they clearly understand what it takes to be successful and what is expected of them in the first 90 days. Make sure they understand that there are no excuses accepted for lack of compliance to training, onboarding and any sales activity required.  Additionally, you must be able to answer all the questions on this list.

Stop Doing:

1. Using behavioral and/or personality tests to determine if someone can sell. Stop using cold calling assessments to make your hiring decisions. Stop thinking that you have to sell the position early on to get a candidate interested in you.  (If they respond to a call, an email, a job post then they have already taken the first step TOWARDS you).
2. Stop thinking that the decision is about money. In today’s working world, it’s about providing an opportunity that can be transformational.  Money will only get you people that will leave you for more money.
3. Only recruiting when you need someone. Being reactive is a horrible position to be in.  You are held hostage and being held hostage will force you to make hiring mistakes.

So what does this have to do with spiders? The Pastor was attempting to make the point that we cannot (when it comes to recruiting), deal with symptoms; we must deal with the root causes.  We can try and train people longer, we can try and work on the compensation model, we can implement and execute PIP programs. In the end, the right end of the problem is dealing with the spider. 

Start with the right person and the cobwebs go away.

In this blog post, we dive into the 5 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching & Growth and the idea that data can help you discover real-time information about your salespeople.  This data allows everyone in your organization to make real-time decisions and real-time and intentional coaching decisions.

If you're looking to increase sales in 2020 and beyond, utilize these 5 keys starting today!

The article might disappoint you if you are looking for the latest and greatest in financial technology, sales technology, or any kind of technology for that matter.  Data is part of this article but not super BIG Data that you read about in the recent issue of Big Data Quarterly. 

The 5 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching & Growth have more to do with consistency in execution then any specific kind of sales enablement or CRM tool that you use. 

Successful sales executives and managers rely on data because they realize that it can, and will, provide you with real-time information.  The real-time data allows everyone in the organization to make real-time decisions and real-time and intentional (Thank you Bill Eckstrom) coaching decisions.

That being said, the technology and the data is useless unless you have these 5 keys on your sales management "key ring":

1. Performance Management
2. Coaching for Success
3. Motivation That Works
4. Sales Talent Acquisition Routine
5. An Effective Selling System 

1.) Performance Management – In our Sales Management Certification and Quick Start Programs, we start with Performance Management.  Performance management should not occupy a lot of time, but must the be the base of everything else that you do. 

Performance management is a process of making sure that you: 

• Establish consistent metrics to determine success
• Conduct 1-on-1 meetings where people self-determine what success and failure is
• Agree to a coaching process and methodology
• Gather real-time information via Huddles
• Report the findings of the data
• Catch people early when they are not performing to the level they committed to

2.) Coaching for Success – Based on the extraordinary discussion and the subsequent Success Formula built for each person you collect via Huddles, you should:

• Compare actual against the model
• Identify choke points
• Determine if outcomes are a result of effort or execution
• Conduct 1-on-1 coaching sessions to help change behavior or improve skill.

3.) Motivation that Works – As you see in the graphic below, salespeople are motivated in various ways.  How could you possibly motivate someone if you don’t know what motivates them or how they are motivated to be successful? 

The Sales Improvement and Effectiveness Analysis (Thanks Dave Kurlan and Objective Management Group) not only identifies the level of motivation for each salesperson on your team, but also tells you what motivates them. 

4.) Recruiting Talent that Will Succeed – There is a big difference between talent that can succeed and talent that will succeed in selling.  If your organizational growth is dependent on organic growth, then you need to have data that will tell you a couple of things:

1. Is my current team wired and do they have what it takes to grow to the next level?
2. Assuming you need more horsepower under the hood, then you have to make sure that your new hires have the:
   1. Will to sell
   2. Sales DNA
   3. Appropriate Sales Competencies

5.) An Effective Selling System – Must be staged with milestones to determine your salespeople's progress with their prospects. Too often, companies use a CRM system to get a numeric value of the pipeline and perhaps even values within stages of the pipeline.  However, if your data doesn’t include a numerical component that validates that steps are covered within each stage, then your pipeline forecasts are more subjective then objective. 

Additionally, it is THIS data that provides you insight into the effectiveness of the individuals on the sales team.  

Sales growth must become a priority and not just a problem that you continue to kick down the road.  Continuing to ignore the Grey Rhino will sooner or later cost you.

Are you evaluating sales training programs?  Can we help you find the right approach for your company?  Sign up for a personalized Demo of one of our programs below!

In our second blog post focusing on increasing sales in 2020 and beyond, we discuss the differentiating factors between "elite" salespeople and the rest of the pack.  

What do elite salespeople do that makes them elite?  

In this post, we help answer this question, while providing advice for sales managers to help guide their salespeople into greatness.

What do 11% of elite salespeople do that differentiates them from the remaining 89%, when they are faced with difficult questions, stalls and objections? 

According to Dave Kurlan at Objective Management Group (out of every 100 salespeople):

• 70 rush back to the office to begin work on a proposal to tell their bosses that their large opportunity is very promising, because all 3 prospects in the meeting were "very interested"
• 19 leave the call and make 2 entries in their journals - "propose" and "follow-up" - and they'll do both eventually
• 11 are still at the meeting, asking more questions

Going back into our archives of the Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis, we find that those 11 salespeople that are still at the meeting have a pipeline that looks like the chart you see to the right. 

Those 89 that rush back to the office and/or make entries to propose and follow up with their prospect have a pipeline that is represented by the chart you see below:

The difference is that the elite salespeople do a great job of meeting people and qualifying them to a point where the prospect can be defined as qualified and closeable, based on specific criteria, or they can be identified as not qualified, or not closeable.

Weak salespeople on the other hand, when asked to score the same "closeable prospect", criteria questions fall considerably short of having a robust, and closeable pipeline. 

Normally, we find out that these salespeople:

·       Have not met with decision makers

·       Failed to uncover compelling issues to make a change or purchase

·       Do not have a timeline

·       Did not create urgency

·       Did not get an agreement on budget to be spent

So, the question becomes; “How accurate is your pipeline – really?” 

If the pipeline volume for your entire team reads $4,000,000 over the next 90 days, but only 11% of that actually has a chance to close, then you shouldn’t be surprised that only $440,000.00 shows up in sales. (when compared to the $4,000,000).

The solution to the problem isn’t “run faster”; also known as “see more prospects”.  The solution is to get your people to schedule qualified appointments and then make sure they are capable of discerning between a suspect – someone that is thinking about buying – and a qualified prospect – someone that has made the decision to solve a problem.

To more effectively help your salespeople as a sales manager you must:

1.     Understand WHY they won’t qualify

2.     Get a complete understanding of their skills set for consultative skills, asking questions, creating trust and confidence and presentation skills

3.     Put less emphasis on closing skills and more emphasis on qualifying skills

4.     See how comfortable they are with having fierce and direct conversations

5.     Observe their commitment and willingness to do everything possible to succeed

6.     Understand their motivation to succeed and attain personal goals

7.     Gather data about their execution of the milestone centric sales process so that you can provide intentional coaching based on choke points.

The challenge(s), should you accept them are:

·       Find out exactly what the capabilities of your sales team are

·       Build and implement a milestone centric sales process and imbed that process in your CRM

·       Make sure that your sales managed environment includes the following elements:

• Performance Management
• Coaching for Success
• Hiring Better Salesperson
• Motivation that Works
• Coaching an Effective Sales System

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.