Do you ever hear that your salespeople don't have enough time to prospect? Share this video with your people who might struggle with consistent prospecting. This video is a part of our new series with Mark Trinkle: The 10 Commandments of Sales Success. Today we dive into number two-Thou Shalt Always Be Prospecting.

Transcript:

Welcome to today's message, which is the second in a 10 part series on the 10 Commandments of Sales Success. Today we are looking at the second commandment, and as you can see from the screen, the second commandment is Thou Shalt Always Be Prospecting. Now, I know you probably don't land in the office in the morning, necessarily fired up to prospect, but it's kind of like being a kid and eating your vegetables. And I can remember when I told my mom and dad, "Mom, Dad, I don't like vegetables." And their answer was (and you probably know where I'm going), "You don't have to like it, you just have to do it. You have to eat 'em." I think that's the same with prospecting every day. And here's the real danger.

You don't have to prospect on any given day. You can take a day off. You can probably take a week off. Heck, you can probably take two weeks off and you won't notice any concern right away or any danger right away. But down the road, your pipeline is bound to take a hit. Great prospectors prospect just enough each day, each week, each month to continue to put flow into the top of that pipeline.

One more thing about prospecting before I let you go... don't tell me you don't have time. You can tell me a lot of things, but don't tell me you don't have time. That's a myth. Our good friend Bigfoot is on the screen here to remind us that is a myth and here's why. If I ask you to go call a hundred different people, to make a hundred dials, our math tells us you're probably gonna talk to 10 people.

Now, I'm gonna try to trick you. I'm gonna ask you, "How much time will it take you to not talk to 90 people?" One more time. "How much time will it take you to not talk to 90 people?" And of the 10 people that you will talk to, my guess is you'll probably have short conversations with some of them. You might even set a few appointments with some others, but it's just not going to take much time out of your day.

You can add up the time and then you have to decide for yourself. Do you not have the time or do you not have the drive and the ambition to get after it?

Have a great day and as always, thank you so much for listening!

Watch all of the Commandments Here

Are your salespeople following the first commandment of sales success? Our new video series with Mark Trinkle introduces the 10 Commandments of Sales Success. Today we start with number one- Pre-Call Preparation.

Watch all of the Commandments Here

With the past couple of years working remotely, many of your bankers’ skills are rusty and they may not be using the tech tools they should be. During these times, they must be better than ever before at reaching out and communicating effectively and consistently.

Here are 3 keys to evaluating the right banking sales training program that will help your relationship managers adjust to the new selling environment.

It’s no surprise that, with continuing pandemic issues and concerns, many clients and prospects are avoiding our bank lobbies. And why not, with online access to almost everything? So how will your salespeople continue to build relationships and keep your best customers? With the past couple of years working remotely, many of your bankers’ skills are rusty and they may not be using the tech tools they should be. During these times, they must be proficient, actually, they must be better than ever before at reaching out and communicating effectively and consistently. This is key for most banks to sustain and build relationships, grow loans, and achieve higher net interest margins.

Here are 3 key ideas to make sure that your banking sales training is helping your relationship managers adjust to this new normal, and increasingly remote selling environment:

1. Make certain that your bank is focused on helping your salespeople blend the value of human touch with digital assistance. According to a recent Banking Exchange article, this is the new frontier in customer engagement. So, what does that mean? They must be able to assist customers and prospects in navigating these digital options and provide a holistic, consultative approach. Because of our new “anywhere economy,” our customers expect the ability to conduct all their business remotely and on any device. Think about your own experiences with digital platforms – you might love the convenience but often need that human interaction to make the experience successful. I am working with a new platform for prospecting called ZoomInfo Intent. The system helps to understand what companies are searching for keywords that describe our services, which could be very helpful but I have encountered the need to have human help along the way. This is your relationship manager’s greatest opportunity – to be ready to ask the questions to help more fully understand and serve the client. They must be adept at answering the question at hand and comfortably probing further to more fully understand the goals of the client. How good are your people at doing this?
   
   
2. Speaking of prospecting… There are so many different tools to be explored to connect and build relationships virtually but it is harder. The second key to your banking sales training is to make certain that your salespeople are proficient at using the tech tools to connect. Some may want to avoid this but today, there is no choice. Calling is still a prospecting option but with so many people working remotely, you must have cell phones to connect with any consistency. Here are some of the “must-haves” in prospecting now:
   • Regular outreach and activity on LinkedIn every day
   • Industry research and pre-call planning tool like IBISWorld
   • ZoomInfo or a similar tool to gather company and contact data of your target
   • HubSpot or similar marketing platform to identify lead activity on your website
   • Strong and effective use of video email – take a look at OneMob as a tool
   • Networking opportunities with target audiences – conferences are back in person
   • A strong and compelling value statement to share
   • A system to consistently ask for introductions (not referrals) from your clients and COIs
     
     
3. The third key is understanding The Will to Sell of your sales team. Do your bankers have the desire, commitment, outlook, and motivation to sell despite the challenges? Do they take responsibility for their actions and outcomes? Let’s face it, many industries have been affected by the pandemic; some have suffered and others have thrived. What does your bank need to do differently within its own culture to adapt, grow, and achieve 2.0 ROA and NIM over 5? Your client-facing salespeople are key and they must be highly skilled. There is a blueprint for elite performance and science to selling – the 21 cores sales competencies, identified by the industry-leading sales evaluation company, Objective Management Group.
   
   
   Make certain that you know why your top performers are so successful and how your sales team stacks up against the other banks. Make sure that your banking sales training is focused on helping your bankers be stronger at the 21 core sales competencies listed above. When mastered, these skills will help your lenders and relationship managers differentiate from fintech firms and other banks and position their value so that they can hold pricing steady when your competitors are dropping their rates.

In this article, we discuss the 3 challenges facing salespeople today: 

1. Will to Sell
2. Sales DNA
3. Sales Skills

During training discussions over the course of more than 20 years, the #1 most common answer when asking sales leaders how their teams could sell more consistently over the years has been, “If I had more / better prospects to call on.”

In order to address the problem of getting more qualified leads, sales leaders and salespeople need to first understand these three challenges.

In the last 30 days, I’ve talked to more than a dozen company executives, sales people and sales managers.  I’ve asked them, “What is the #1 constrictor to hitting your sales goals?”  The answer every time was: getting more qualified leads.  I know this is not a large sampling and I would be concerned about the validity of this finding if only 25% of them said that getting more qualified leads was the main problem. But that isn’t the case.  The consistency of answer in this survey indicates a trend to focus on.

There is further validation of the current finding:

During training discussions over the course of more than 20 years, I’ve asked sales executives, presidents and sales teams to complete the following statement:  I (we) would sell more, be more productive, more effective if only I (we) … 

The #1 most common answer consistently over the years has been “If I had more / better prospects to call on.”

In order to address the problem of getting more qualified leads, sales leaders and salespeople need to first understand these three challenges:

1. Will to Sell
2. Sales DNA
3. Sales Skills

Let me use an example to explain.  We are currently working with a financial institution that is hiring a new private banker in an expanded market.  Using the pre-hire assessment from our partner Objective Management Group, we created a ‘tailored fit model’ based on the performance of the top and bottom current private bankers.  Then, we assessed the 5 candidates they were still considering.

Take a look at these findings:

Figure 1 – How well did the candidates match the clients’ work history criteria for success?  The client created a profile that indicated that the non-negotiable sale success criteria where: 1) must be competition resistant (successfully sold in a competitive environment), 2) Successfully sold value rather than price, 3) Sold to executives, 4) Has successfully hunted and sold new business (this addresses challenge #3 sales skills – specifically skills for hunting/ prospecting), 5) Is an entrepreneurial seller.  As you can see all the candidates being considered marginally met the client criteria for success with 3 of the 5 having an 80% match.

When we look at other findings, we find the 3 challenges most common to organizations that are trying to consistently hit / exceed their sales goals.

Figure #1 -When we look at Challenge #1 – ‘Will to Sell’ we find the following:

Only 1 candidate meets all the criteria for Will To Sell. The question becomes:  How important is the will to sell when attempting to overcome the challenges of finding qualified prospects to talk to?

If 1/3 of your current team lacks the will to sell, what is the likelihood  - despite all the ‘prospecting’ training you provide them – that they will actually execute?  Also note that one of the candidates with strong desire, commitment and outlook will still be prone to making excuses for not prospecting, asking for introductions and networking. (Desire for Sales Success)

Figure #2 – Sales DNA (Sales DNA Audio) findings for the 5 candidates looked like this:

This post won’t go into the definitions of all the criteria you see here, but understand that green is good, and red is not so good.  If you look to the right of the graph and look at the Total Sales DNA, the scores in green and red told our client what they needed to know.  If everything else is equal in the equation, then your people with strong sales DNA are more likely to do the activity of prospecting and will be more successful.

*Candidate #2 meets the criteria of the client, has a very strong will to sell, and has the highest sales DNA score.  How many of the people on your sales team measure up to this ‘elite’ candidate?

The world of selling is certainly different today than it was just 5 years ago.  Your prospects in the marketplace have more ways to find more information about you, your products and services. They have more ways to compare you against your competition and all of this happens without you or your salespeople even making contact with them.

To meet the challenges of today, you need a sales team with the right stuff to get the job done!