Sales Training - Better Closer

Throw Out Your Sales System. Get a Sales Philosophy!

October 20, 2011 By Bill Rice

There are millions of sales systems. Just google it. 86.5 million sales systems to be exact. In contrast, there are only 57.7 million sales philosophies. I know, not terribly scientific.

Sales philosophy

Here’s the point:

Systems are like recipes. They can help you gather all the right ingredients, but great chefs have philosophy behind their good stuff. Your sales should be backed up with the same magic!

Let’s build your sales philosophy…

Believe in Yourself

It all starts here. You gotta believe in You. Have you ever heard these wet-noodle opening lines:

“I hate to bother you, but…”
“This might be a stupid question, but…”
“ I might be wrong, but…”

Ugh! These are dripping with self-loathing. I feel like I need to bring out the shrink’s couch and start the therapy session.

Instead pump yourself up. Use motivational quotes, self-talk, self affirmations, pictures of expensive cars and exotic places…whatever it takes. Pump yourself up and know you have something important that absolutely needs to get in front of your prospect, TODAY!

Then lead with some confidence, like this:

“This is going to be the most important conversation of your day.”
“I just had a customer cross (X) in new revenue. Here’s the story…”
“Barbara just got promoted at ABC Corp. and I don’t mind telling you it’s because of me. Here’s how it happened.”

Who do you want to talk to for the next 15 minutes? Alright then!

Sell Yourself

You can kind of see that creeping in on the last one, can’t you. If you don’t already know this Platinum Secret of Sales, get out your pen and paper…even write it on your wall:

A sale only happens when a customer likes you (because they think you will make them look like a rock star).

There are two very important parts to that equation and neither involve your company or prospect’s company. A sale is ONLY about you selling a prospect on yourself and how high you can take them.

Be an Expert

Now that they are convinced you’re the guy or gal to take them to the next level, you’ve got to have some substance. Naturally, this again goes back to making them a rock star.

Know your product, the industry, and their business like the back of your hand. Then become the teacher. Careful, don’t apply this in a condescending or egotistical way.

When I say be the teacher I mean become their one stop for quick solutions, answers, facts, stats, and background to convince others of their value. Be able to take their challenges and break it down into understandable nuggets they can feed up the chain. Write their memos, their talking papers, or their presentations–whatever it takes to make them the expert.

This is adding value to a busy executive (or soon to be executive).

Make it Easy to Buy

Another common stumbling block. Don’t make your product or service evolve into business-as-usual. Don’t become a utility when folks want an “app.” Don’t become a consultant when folks want a creative.

Continually be delivering ideas, creativity, and upgrades. This is value. This will make it easy for them to remember what they are paying you when they go ask their boss to write you a check.

Keep it Fresh

This goes hand and hand with the last. If you haven’t talked to all of your clients or been in their office this week, you’re wrong! If you haven’t called through your database of past clients this month you are leaving opportunity on the table.

Keep contacts and relationships fresh. This will propel your sales all by itself.

What’s your sales philosophy? Writing it down helps get in solid in your mind. Share yours in the comments below.

Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: sales philosophy, sales system

4 Ways to Improve Your Worst Sales People

October 13, 2011 By Bill Rice

Get them in their own skin

There are so many systems and gimmicks out there. Some are good, most are unproven, and all are bad if they can be executed naturally.

The best sales people are constantly educating and refining their sales processes with these inputs. The worse sales people bounce from one to another trying to use them like recipes.

Notice the best chefs rarely have a recipe book open. They know how ingredients, spices, temperatures, and presentation all work together to create the best dishes.

Here’s the important part—they all read and review recipes, they just never cook with them.

Get them personally excited about what they sell

Good sales people are genuinely excited about what they sell. Customers can tell this in 5 seconds and that makes all the difference.

You have to get your worst sales people to believe. That is a big part of the problem, always.

The best mortgage brokers know they are improving their customers’ lives with a new home or a refinanced mortgage.
The best pharmaceutical sales reps know they are improving their customers’ treatments and patients’ lives.
The best enterprise software field sales reps get crazy “geeked” when they improve the security or performance of a clients’ network, and save them a bit of money.

Show them why they should be excited about what they do.

Find what motivates them

Start by celebrating the little wins and find out what really motivates them.

The most important word in sales people to being a good sales manager is people. These guys and gals are all different. You have to figure out what trips their trigger to dig down when it’s hard—then use it.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is let them go

It’s true. Sometimes the best thing to do for the worst sales people and your best sales teams is to let the bad ones go.

Have a process though.

Do your training and vetting in a methodical way that sets the expectation, gives them the best management, gives them the best chance for success, and then identify and cut early and often. It gets your worst sales people on their way to something they can be successful at (it might even be selling something else) and keeps the performance expectations high for the rest of your team.

Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: bad sales, improve sales, sales tips, worst sales people

Who Should Be Kicking Your Ass?

August 18, 2010 By Bill Rice

: Image by BCR Librarian via Flickr

I had an interesting conversation the other day.

A friend told me he was considering hiring a personal coach.

(I know this is going to get me flamed by all the personal coaches out there. So be it. Maybe I’m wrong.)

Of course never considering that to be a paid profession, outside of personal fitness or professional athletics, my natural question was: Why?

His response was. “I think I need someone to give me a kick in the ass occasionally.”

It may just be me, but if you need someone else to make you work harder or get more passionate about your future then this is the only advice you need:

Make a change.

It’s not necessary to be radical or earth shattering just start by living one new simple short story and see what happens.

If you don’t understand what I mean give this a quick read: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (affiliate link). I think I will send him the book.

Side note: I have to confess that during our whole conversation with my friend this is the only thing that was running through my mind:

So back to my original question: Who should be kicking your ass?

Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: change, mentor, Motivation, personal coach

Selling without a Process

June 28, 2010 By Bill Rice

: Image via Wikipedia

Is it possible to sell without a sales process? Can you be successful engaging customers without a plan?

It happens all the time. I even hear sales people brag about “the art of sales.” The bravado of natural born rainmakers sounds good, but it’s a fool’s errand. It simply doesn’t work that way.

The best don’t sell by the seat of their pants.

Winning Takes a Process

To prove my point let me take you to the root of this little cliche–flying by the seat of your pants. Let me tell you no competent pilot wings it.

Back when I was in Air Force pilot-training we practiced procedures over and over and over again. We were tested on our knowledge of the most minute procedures and processes daily, in: stand-up, chair-flying, desk reviews, academics, simulator, pre-flight, and post-flight. That completely leaves out the actual hundreds of hours we logged in the actual aircraft practicing these same procedures.

All this practice and repetition reviewing the same procedures served only one purpose:

When the real pressure was on you executed flawlessly and instinctively.

Can you imagine putting millions of dollars on the line (in the air) without a plan? We do it everyday with our sales revenue–right? Why?

Learn to Win Over and Over Again

If you want to learn to win consistently and as frequently as possible you need a plan. This is the carefully measured and planned process to winning. It’s not that hard and we expect it in most things we want to do well–sports, music, education, (most) jobs.

Sales seems to be a notable exception. We win deals and we’re not sure how we got there. We look at a list of prospects with no idea of what a good one looks like. We email and call with no rhyme of reason. We talk to prospects without any clear goal or message.

Successful sales people don’t do it like this. Why are so many trying?

Questions and Answers

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Do you agree or disagree with me? Why?
How do you track and iterate your sales plan?
Do you have any systems you use (I’m thinking GTD-style)?
Has your organization adopted a common “sales process?” What is it?

Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: process, Social Selling, training

Same, Same, but Different

March 23, 2010 By Bill Rice

Image by samemovie09 via Flickr

My wife recently returned from a mission trip to Cambodia to support the Rapha House. In recounting her experiences one of the lighter moments was her description of the marketplaces.

Haggling over price is expected in their shopping experience. There are also an abundance of knock-off products. From this springs the colorful and frequent phrase, "Same, Same, but Different." The most common use is in response to, "Is that really a Versace, Rolex, [other popular brand]?"

"Same, Same, but Different."

Flash forward…last week I was talking to a client about a new B2B social media sales training program we are building out. This client (in the business of selling big ticket enterprise software) had already noted a few natural trends in their sales organization, as it applied to using social media. There were three distinct groups:

Sales people not using social media and showing flat or declining sales
Sales people using social media and showing declining sales
Sales people using social media and showing increasing sales

I was asked to explain these observations and recommend a solution.

My mind immediately jumped to my wife’s description of the Cambodia marketplace anthem–"Same, Same, but Different." The answer was simple, the results typical. The key to success in selling into today’s B2B marketplace is realizing that sales is, "same, same, but different."

Social media is not a sales silver bullet. It will not (or very rarely) yield that one Tweet close. And if you sit around staring at your Twitter stream all day you will fall into group 2.

Here was my explanation: Sales principles are the same, building relationships and trust with buyers is the same, some of the tools and much of the buyers behavior is different.

Here was my simplified answer (specific to enterprise software sales):

Selling quarter to half-million dollar software is still a complex sale. You have to really understand the customer, their pain and their decision makers. You have to lower their risk to saying, "yes." You have to demonstrate (typically an evaluation) how you are going to achieve the promise result.

What has changed? They don’t start with the vendor for education (the old RFI process). They start by querying their social network–Linkedin, Twitter, etc. They broadcast their evaluations and consideration on Linkedin, Twitter, or blog posts. They ask lots of questions, seek out communities of current users, and look for thought leaders. Multiple people significant to the buying decision are doing their own independent social media "research," being influenced, and reporting back internally.

Social media, if used efficiently, can give you a front-row seat to this whole process. If you don’t learn and use social media, you are always too late to call and confused why you never had a shot at the client.

Solution: Group 3 figured it out. We just need to teach the other two groups how their job is the, "same, same, but different."

What would you have told my client?

Filed Under: Sales Training, Social Media Tagged With: Sales Training, Social Media