How well can you relate to the following situations: producers not meeting sales expectations, there aren't enough opportunities in the pipeline, too few of the people are carrying the sales production load for the entire team? In almost every sales organization, these three situations exist no matter how many sales meetings are held, what CRM system is used or how closely the sales team is managed- these problems persist.

Now, why does this happen? Is it because your salespeople aren’t armed with the right tools to go out, find and close business? Nope. Maybe it’s because they don’t have the required skills? Possibly yes. Maybe they just don’t care about their own success? Or maybe it's because YOU don't care enough about their success.

That seems harsh, I know, but let me explain. According to an article "You Can't Lead People You Don't Know, written by Jim Bouchard, creator of Black Belt Mindset Productions, less than half of the leaders they work with report knowing the people who report to them. They obviously know the role that they play and the features of their job, but they admit to not knowing them on a personal level. So, my question is this: how can you expect to motivate someone to meet sales expectations, generate opportunities and produce results when you don’t know them? You don’t know what drives them, what gets them out of bed in the morning. Your salespeople don’t care about shareholder value and year over year growth of the division or the department. They care about their kids in school, paying off college debt, building a deck on the back of the house, saving for the wedding, the vacation home and the retirement years. That is their sales motivation. 

Our partners at Objective Management Group believe that there are three ways people are motivated- altruistically, intrinsically and extrinsically. Salespeople who have altruistic motivation are those who care more about the success and well-being of those around them. They are more relationship focused and they thrive off of doing great work for the benefit of others. Intrinsically motivated salespeople find motivation in the praise that they receive for a job well-done. And those that are extrinsically motivated are considered the “original salesperson”- they’re motivated by making money. The point is you obviously need to know your salespeople personally in order to understand what motivates them to succeed.

So, what do you do now?

First, watch this short video featuring Tony Cole on the importance of motivation and personal goals. Next, create an environment where your salespeople believe their dreams can come true. You foster the ability to pursue those things that are near and dear to their heart. You create a recognition program (or incentive process) that recognizes the things that are important to them. You find a way to mesh what they want, with want you want (more sales) and what is required in their role. Motivating your salespeople is crucial for the success of your organization, so go out and meet your team. Learn what is important to them. Discover what drives them so you know how to drive their success.

Download this free e-book "9 Keys to Coaching Sales Success" to enhance the management skills required to run a successful sales team.

Companies are constantly trying to figure out how to drive organic growth by:

• Acquiring a revenue stream by buying a business or lifting out talent from a competitor
• Developing current talent

If you are not in the acquisition business, then you must develop your talent.  One of the keys to doing that is to understand how to drive sales improvement.  You must determine what is really happening with your salespeople when they fail to acquire a new piece of business.  (See LinkedIn Article: What You Don’t Know Can Kill Sales Growth) Are your people just making excuses for failure or do they have deficits in the required sales competencies or will to sell?

For a free pre-hire assessment for a potential sales candidate,

You will receive instant results that are easy to understand and immediately actionable. Find out if they are recommended or not recommended for hire and how long it will take for them to get up to speed. Discover the strengths that will support or weakness that will sabotage their sales success and what you must do to help them achieve their potential.

To be successful in determining the real issues with your salespeople, you must have a system

I read a blog the other day by Dave Kurlan.  We’ve had a strong business partnership with Dave and his company OMG (Objective Management Group) for most of our 24 years in business.  With OMG, we have the ability to determine the answer to the question – is it excuses or is it a talent issue?

Dave’s post  - 12 Reasons They Didn’t Like You Enough To Buy From You – helps address some of the issues associated with “not getting the business”.  It primarily focuses on the area of matching styles.

This got me thinking about the issue of “style” as it relates to talent, which relates to sales competencies and excuse making.  The challenge for the sales manager is determining if the reason a salesperson did not get the sale was really a talent issue or if they are just making excuses for failing to execute the skills or sales process of the organization.

To determine the root cause of the results, a sales manager must work more closely with the relationship managers and implement a process that Bill Eckstom calls “intentional coaching”.  This process of working closing with your RMs is addressed in our Sales Management Certification Program in the Coaching for Success Module.

Here are the 5 steps you must take to help you determine if your people have skill issues or an excuse-making issue:

1. You must gain insight. You gain insight by using various data points. The data points you MUST use are: 
   1. Observational joint sales calls – You do not run the sales call; you observe your RM
   2. Data from your CRM or SAT program (SAT – Sales Activity Tracking)
   3. Sales meetings – In all your sales meetings, you need to include a segment on skill development where you drill for skill, role play and conduct strategy development discussions
   4. 1-on-1 coaching – Each week, you should have time set aside for 1-on-1 coaching with those people that are NOT in the 1^st quadrant of the “Where’s Walter?” matrix
2. Provide feedback. In advance of the discussion about lost opportunities, you want to provide your RM with the data you have – no ambushing.
   1. You discuss – ask the RM questions about what they see in the data
   2. You provide them feedback based on what you see and where the problems might be
   3. You discuss what the future might look like if the current trends continue
   4. You agree that there is a problem
3. Demonstrate – Once you identify the problem as either an excuse or a skill issue, you demonstrate to the RM what you expect them to execute.
   1. If they are making excuses – ‘They didn’t understand the value of our offering” – You ask, “If I didn’t let you use that as an excuse what would you have done differently?”
   2. If it’s a skill problem – “I asked them if they had a budget and they said yes.” “When you asked them what it was, what did they say?”  “They said they didn’t want to tell me.”  “When you asked, ‘why not?’, what did they say?”  “I didn’t ask that question.”
4. Role play – The scenario above allows you to now role play with you playing the prospect. You need to start with Drill for Skill and then graduate to the full role play.  Getting them to practice what you expect them to do takes patience and repetition.  Do not believe for a minute that one role play will be enough.  You need to start your RM on a weekly coaching session repeating the required skills over and over again.  (Note: At this time, you will also want to review their OMG results to uncover a real root cause for the failure to ask.  In this case, it might be a problem with need for approval or buy cycle issues.)
5. Action steps – each coaching session must end with action
   1. Bill, so what I want you to do is call Mary and have this conversation we just role played.
   2. I want you to report back to me by end of business today what happened as a result of that conversation.

Implementing a process of gaining insight, providing feedback, demonstrating, role playing and establishing action items will go a long way in helping your team discern the difference between making excuses for failure and the need for skill development.

5 Reasons Consultative Selling Skills/Techniques Inhibit Organic Sales Growth

The events that Wells Fargo Bank found itself in the middle of brought to the bright lights one of the biggest challenges facing banks, credit unions and financial services (including insurance) companies.  How do we sell, distribute our products and services, gain market share, and grow organically without “selling”?

When I got into the financial services segment in 1987, it seemed as though organizations would find every way possible to describe their representatives and the work that they do:

• Account Executive
• New Business Development Officer
• Financial Advisor
• Loan Officer
• Insurance Broker
• Consultant
• Risk Manager

What is interesting is that - when you attend workshops, conferences, and industry meetings - there are always discussions about what their people/reps are failing to do.  When you look at the list of shortcomings, you see a list of things that you would normally associate with challenges of salespeople. 

• Won’t or don’t prospect
• Fail to qualify opportunities
• Not getting to decision makers
• Not fully understanding the depth of the problems of the prospect
• Failing to uncover the strength of the current relationship
• Challenges with overcoming budget or price issues
• Difficulties explaining the value proposition
• Not differentiating themselves from the rest of the market place.

What is the problem?  There are at least two BIG problems: 

1. Perception
2. Process

Perception:

In our first workshop of the Effective Selling System, we take participants through an interactive exercise using the old TV show, Password.  If you are unfamiliar with the game, the set-up is this:  A celebrity knows the “password” and gives clues to the contestant that might get them to correctly guess the password. 

Example: The password is Grass.  1^st celebrity clue – meadow; contestant guess – cow.   2^nd celebrity clue - lea, contestant guess – hill.  3^rd celebrity clue – mow, contestant guess – grass.  Ding, ding, ding!!! Next word.

**Password with Emma Thompson, Michael Cera, JIm Parsons and Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show.  For fun, click the link and watch

So, in our workshop, the password is Salesman (this works better than salesperson). The clues and guesses given include crooked, commission, insurance, slick, Herb Tarlick, plaid pants, fast talker, product pusher, aggressive, etc.

I promise you this is what we hear.  I’ve done this for dozens of groups for almost 3 decades now and these are the responses we get. This is the perception that many people have of salespeople. Isn’t any wonder why people don't want that on their business card?

Process:

According to Wendy Connick, from the blog post, The Balance, consultative selling techniques were “developed in the 70’s and came into their own in the 80’s.”  I don’t know what “came into their own” means - I assume that it means consultative selling obtained critical mass and became part of mainstream sales thinking and approach and it was considered new-wave selling technique compared to the traditional Dale Carnegie approach. Of course, times have changed and what worked then does not necessarily work now and companies are struggling to find the latest effective sales approach.

Per Connick’s article:

1. Think how a doctor or a lawyer treats a client: The thought here is that, as salespeople, we need to ask appropriate questions that will help to diagnose the problem(s), further our relationship with the prospect and allow us to go to the next step.  In most selling situations, the account executive is an invader and, to the author’s point, our prospect isn’t openly willing to share. The prospect almost always holds back information, thoughts and feelings and rarely commits until he has made a decision.
2. The trick is learning the specifics. It is truly a “trick” to ask all the questions and to learn how to ask the right question at the right time and in the right way. Ask the wrong question and you won’t get the information you need. Ask too early and you risk alienating the potential buyer. Ask too late and you’ve missed an  Ask the question in the wrong way and you could be eliminated as a possible source.
3. Online resources like Google – Online search engines have replaced consultative sales people. Not long ago, sales people provided the necessary information. Now a tremendous amount of information is researched online and purchases are made without sales people or with minimal involvement of sales people.   
4. Once you fully understand the prospect's current situation and the problems that he's facing, it's time to present him with the solution.  Be careful. This is a trap. You have much to cover before presenting. You must still cover specifics of the decision-making process, determine the budget and uncover the competition. What do you have to do to win the business? Oh, and while you are at it, make sure you say the following: “After I present to you and your people, you must give me a “yes” or a “no”.

How many times have you presented and come away feeling great about the sale? How many times have you told your boss “They loved me. They loved us.  They loved the presentation and should get back to us next week!”.  Then you are hunting them down two weeks later. They’re not returning calls and you can’t get any response at all.

5. When you both agree on the nature of the problem, step two is showing the prospect how your product is a good solution for this particular problem. No, there are steps 2, 3 and 4 (at least) prior to showing a prospect how your product or service solves a problem.  Think about how many times you’ve demonstrated your product and the prospect said something like, “Let me think it over…It has to go to committee…I’m waiting on two other proposals…I have to crunch the numbers.”  Why does this happen?  We missed the other steps because consultative selling says to 1. find out what the problem is, 2. agree there is a problem, 3. demonstrate that your product solves the problem and, if you did everything right, voila, you’ll get the business.

A guest post by Mark Trinkle, President & Chief Sales Officer 

Should your days or evenings include any down time, here is a great book recommendation for you.  

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading “Go-Givers Sell More” by Bob Burg and John David Mann.  I just don’t think I have ever read a book that is more consistent with the approach to selling that we both take and advocate to our clients, particularly along the lines of not sounding like a salesperson.

Listen to this quote from the book on the supreme importance of creating value:

“There is something quite utilitarian about the Law of Value.  Its pragmatic beauty is that it places the principal determinant of your success squarely in your own hands, rather than letting it be a factor of your circumstances.  While you cannot control what others do, you can control what you do.  If your goal is to make the sale, then you are dependent on the buying decisions of others.  But, if your goal is to create value for others, you are dependent on nobody but yourself.”

I also love the section of the book that teaches that your compensation as a salesperson is not a reflection of your goodness, worthiness, merit or industriousness: instead, it is an echo of impact. In fact, revenue (or, for our purposes, new business) is the echo of providing value in your conversations with prospects.

So, how about you?  Do you worry about selling something?  Maybe it would be helpful to simply worry about whether or not your prospect conversations are providing value.  As the authors point out, that is up to no one but you.

So, give the book a try. Thanks for reading…now go sell like a champion today.

Summary: When your goal is to provide value, your success as a salesperson is in your own hands. The impact you make on others determines your compensation. So, worry less about selling and focus more on providing value.

When talking to presidents, executive sales officers and sales managers, I consistently have heard these 5 comments:

1. I inherited the team I have.
2. The people that I’ve hired are doing well.
3. About 10% of the people consistently meet and or exceed goals.
4. 10% of the sales team is failing miserably.
5. It’s unreasonable to expect that you can always hire ‘A’ players.

Though we started as, and remain today, a sales training and development company, how to recruit better salespeople was something we needed to add to our business solution toolbox.  As a result, we sought, found and partnered with a firm that is now the provider of the #1 pre-hire sales assessment in the world. What does this have to do with 3 things you must do to build a better sales team?

Everything!

In order to build an effective sales team to achieve systematic and consistent internal organic sales growth, every organization must do 3 things: 

1. Make sure that your screening process has predictive validity.
2. Mitigate future hiring mistakes by implementing a hiring practice designed to disqualify candidates
3. Implement training and development to help your current sales manager(s) and sales team(s) adapt to overcome gaps in required sales behaviors and skills

To make these points, let me share with you articles from the Harvard Business Review:

Page 23 of the July/August 2017 HBR Magazine - How to Predict Turnover on Your Sales Team The author is talking to Jay Minks, who is the executive vice president of sales at Insperity – a business performance firm. 

• HBR – “If you could design a dashboard to manage turnover, what would be on it?”
• Jay: “Actually, I’d be more interested in data predicting which of the salespeople I hire will succeed; that would be the Holy Grail. Our organization could save millions if we could find a way to use data to drive this number much lower.”

Page 103 of the same magazine.  The article, Managing Climate Change:  Lessons From The U.S. Navy, is about the two approaches being used by the Navy to deal with the impact of global warming over the next 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years.  These approaches are Mitigation and Adaptation.

• Mitigation – refers to actions that reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change
• Adaptation – refers to actions that make the organization more resilient in the face of the ongoing and forecasted changes in the earth’s systems

My tendency is to automatically start thinking about how information like this relates to sales and sales management.  In this case, I relate mitigation, adaptation and predictability to the business challenge of How to Recruit Better Salespeople.

Let’s look at just one: Predictability

Here is a simple screen shot from a pre-hire assessment that has been tested to have a 92% predictive validity:

This candidate is not recommended for hire.  Though the assessment indicated that the candidate has a great commitment to success in selling and a great outlook about selling AND takes responsibility for results, this candidate is missing some critical skills in other vital areas. The problem here is that these weaknesses could be hidden by the candidate’s strengths in the areas of hunting and presentation approach.

Mitigation and adaptation steps will vary widely from company to company and industry to industry.  The steps to guide those processes would look like the following:

• Identify and confirm the severity of the gap between where you are and where you need to be
• Identify the root cause(s): people, systems, process, or strategy
• Determine the immediate risk(s) to revenue and profit
• Generate 1-5 potential people solutions
• Find a partner/take action
  
  

Download a free copy of the Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis (SEIA).  You will get...

• Detailed information about potential breakdowns in systems and process that either help or hurt sales growth
• Granular information about the strengths, skills, and weaknesses that hurt or help a sales leader be effective at five critical functions: Performance Management, Coaching, Recruiting, Motivating and Growing a Sales Team.
• Critical information about the structure of a sales team and the potential for growth with the current team
• Finally, a clear idea of the types of hires you need to make to have a growth-oriented sales team.