Sales Progress Blog

When it comes to making sales, you need more than luck. While it doesn’t hurt to have it, you need to have product knowledge and the ability to sell. Salespeople need to have great communication skills and be memorable. There are three techniques that a great salesperson uses to get in front of customers and make sales.

1. Create an online presence.

It is important that customers have access to you and your company, and these days, customers will go out and look for a service they need on their own. Create a website. Get involved on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Write blogs and whitepapers. All these tools allow customers to easily find you. When you are constantly putting out information, your SEO increases and you move up the Google ranks. Make sure your website is easy to navigate and your blogs and whitepapers have good, reliable content that people will want to read.

2. Be engaged.

When you are engaged with your customers, you are developing a bond. It pays off in the end to take the time to find out specifics about your clients. If you send them articles of interest, they are more likely to believe that you have their best interest at heart and that they can rely on you. However, it is not only beneficial to be engaged with your customers; it also helps to be active in groups and discussion on social media site such as LinkedIn. Join groups and participate in them. By doing this, you create credibility.

3. Communicate with your customers.

This is more than just sending them articles of interest. Follow-up with your customer. Find out if they have any questions or concerns. Make sure they are enjoying their product. If you are in constant communication with your customer, then they will be more likely to come back to you in the future. You can also include surveys on your website. This allows for constant feedback, and it will keep you aware of how your clients feel about your product or service.

Want More? Click Below to download the 7 day audio series: “7 Great Questions to Guaranty to Improve Your Sales Success”

Setting goals is an important part of coaching employees. It is vital that goals be within reach while still demanding concentration and effort from the employee. If a goal is too easily attainted, chances are that it did not generate any value, ie) knowledge gain or skill improvement. Conversely, if goals are unattainable employees may begin to feel defeated or devalued, and again, no value is gained from the goal.

Setting goals for all coaching sessions will:

• Give purpose and direction to coaching session
• Keep sessions from veering in an unplanned direction
• Keep both you and your employees focused during sessions
• Help both you and your employees to track improvement and progress

All coaching goals, either personal or team, wide should:

1. Be clear, concise and specific. If goals are too broad they can become misinterpreted and fail to give proper direction.
2. Have qualities that can be measured and directly related to tracking the progress of the goal.
3. Be realistically achievable without being too easy or difficult to accomplish.
4. Be significant to the purpose of the coaching session. Be sure all aspects of the goal are on point with the topic of your coaching session.
5. Be connected to a timeline and/or precise end-date. Non time-motivated goals are less likely to receive the focus and attention needed to reach it.

The chart below lists each type of coaching session and tips for creating and incorporating effective goals.

To learn more about motivating employees, doenload the whitepaper below

When coaching to build customer relationships, whether it be sales reps or customer service reps, there are a few key coaching questions you can work into a coaching session to boost an employee’s level of awareness and ultimately change behavior to consciously work to build relationship with customers.Coach-to-Employee

Observe your employee’s interaction with a customer. When providing feedback, challenge your employee with the questions below to get him or her to focus on details and think outside the box.

• What did you learn about the client that you found interesting
• How will you use this information to deepen the relationship?
• What can we do together to deepen the client relationship?

Coach-to-Coach

Relationship Building is a Skill, but it’s also your choice! As a manager or leader, it is important to set the standard for your employees. If you want customer relationship building to be a priority then it is important that you commit to helping employees build their skills, boost their confidence, and create a realistic, measurable method of evaluation. Ask yourself the questions below to determine your level of commitment as well as degree to which you are achieving your goals.

• Are we saying relationship building is important or we are doing it?
• Can we quantify how we are doing it?
• Can we teach others?

Marketing, advertising, public relations. These are tools that we use to make sure that consumers are aware of our product and service. We can spend thousands of dollars (and most companies spend more) just to make sure that consumers know about us, but here’s the catch: it takes more than brand awareness to influence a customer’s decision. The ultimate objective of any campaign or marketing effort is to affect behavior because if we don’t, people won’t be driven to purchase what we have to offer.

• Start by giving meaning to your product.
  • Say for instance, you were a small sales training company looking to use the Internet to promote your service (we’re really thinking out of the box here). How would integrate meaning? If you create a website, make sure to include informational pieces that will somehow benefit potential customers. Whitepapers and blogs are a great way to do this.
  • When you put free information out there for everyone to read, you are immediately building credibility. The more people view your company as a credible source, the more likely they are to invest their time and money into your service.

• Gain credibility and influence people’s behavior through relationship building.
  • You can begin with your current client base and then build outwards to warm leads. There is no end to the possible business opportunities if you really take the time to cultivate and maintain relationships. They are an enduring link, and oftentimes, they lead to repeat purchasing and loyalty.

• Build Trust.
  • Create an experience that will make a positive and lasting impression on your customers. So, send out thank you cards whenever a customer makes a purchase. Follow up with them to make sure that the product is working. Send out items of interest to show that you remember more than just the fact that they purchased from you.

Consumers not only have to be made aware of a product or service, but they also have to be moved to purchase it, otherwise all marketing has been a waste. So, if you’ve been asking, “How can I increase my sales?” The answer is to create a marketing campaign or to train your sales people to affect consumer behavior. It’s one of the best ways to see your sales progress.

To learn how to use coaching to drive your selling process, download the whitepaper below.

You have probably seen your fair share of articles or blog posts telling you exactly how that person did their coaching and how well it worked for them.  Well, I have decided to take a different approach.  I wanted to get the word out on the top 5 coaching no-no’sthat everyone should follow.

When a good manager becomes a good coach, then you know you are ready to succeed no matter what industry you are in.  The best way to bring about that change in your managers, is not only showing them the right way to perform certain tasks, but also what they are currently doing wrong which is decreasing their performance.

The following 5 blunders are being done as we speak and can all be changed as long as the manager realizes what they are doing and how they can fix it.  Please continue on by reading the attached article.  Take some notes while you are reading on what blunders you, your sales managers, or your sales staff are committing and what you need to do to change those behaviors.

The 5 Biggest Sales Coaching Blunders

To learn more about common coaching mistakes and how to avoid them download the whitepaper below

With Summer quickly approaching, you may be feeling the pressure of hitting your sales numbers. This is the time to hone you sales skills, and improve upon your sales techniques to make keep sales up through the summer months. Here are 10 tips to help you stay on track.

1. Do NOT assume people stopped buying, that’s what average sales people do.  If you make the assumption and don’t put in the effort, what opportunities are you forfeiting? They could mean the difference between barely making it through the summer or making your whole summer.

2. Ask more open-ended questions than ever.  The more information you find out now, the better position you will be in later.  As warmer weather nears, people tend to be in a better mood and more open to conversation.  Take the opportunity to build a stronger relationship; people buy from people they like!

3. If you have hit all of your goals, don’t coast set more for yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to go into the fall with a little boost?  Don’t get comfortable, keep pushing hard.  Slowing down because you know you have hit your goal, can give off a negative impression to your manager and your customers.

4. If you have not hit your goal do NOT give up. Work with your manager now more than ever to close deals. They want to see you succeed and will admire your ambition to hit your goals, don’t be intimidated to ask for help.

5. Make sure you are utilizing your time well. People tend to get distracted with meetings, emails and other unproductive activities.  Before you know it, its already mid morning and you haven’t made a single call!  By just making yourself aware of time wasted you can consciously focus on getting on the phone more, and pushing those other activities off for early morning or after hours.

6. Longers days means more time to sell. Commit to making just 10 more prospecting calls per day over the summer months. Ten extra calls doesn’t seem like that much more, but do it for one month and you have touched an extra 200 prospects or clients.  A little can go a long way.

7. Show your customers you work hard and are dependable, if you hit your numbers and go missing in action what would your customers think?  Don’t lose face with your customers or prospects because you have gotten complacent.

8. Show customers, you are there to assist them even if they are not buying. This shows true value and credibility.  Use the nice weather as an excuse to take your customers out for a little appreciation golf. Keeping up on relationships, this will keep you in their minds even if their minds may not be on business.

9. Send thank you cards and be more upbeat on the phone. If you’re enjoying your summer chances are your customers are too. Be sure to maintain the correct disposition when communicated with customers. If they seems to be causal and lax than match this attitude. Nothing is more of a turn off then a sales person giving extra pressure to buy when it’s clear your customers aren’t in the same mindset.

10. Don’t let the summer take over your work ethic.  Employers do not have the right to send partial salary so don’t give them partial work. Work hard and go above and beyond the call of duty. Why? Because few people will, and it will set you part. It’s called character!

Download the whitepaper: “Selling Value and Avoiding Price Objections” to give to a head start on your summer selling success

Bad attitudes can hinder a business. When even one employee has a less than sunny disposition you run the risk of having it wear off on others. Bad attitudes can tear co-workers apart, can decrease productivity through out the office, and can become transparent to customers. I believe attitude impacts our ability to learn, work well with others, and help customers, which is why it is absolutely essential for managers to focus on developing the right attitude through employee coaching.

Click below to hear how to coach employee attitude development

Coaching Attitude Development Audio

Want more? Download the whitepaper: “Building a Powerful Attitude for Sales” below clicking the button below

Coaching is all about driving performance through developing employees. Each employee will progress in different ways. Not every employee is going to need development in the same areas. Coaching is fundamentally based in discovering each employee’s area(s) in need of improvement and developing each targeted area. The fact is every person, including coaches, can always be better at something.

If you think of a high performing company as a car then each part in the car will represent an employee. When all parts in the car are functioning at optimal levels the car performs at its highest level. However if the breaks in the car struggle to engage in a timely manner, the rear shocks fail absorb all rough terrain and the left windshield wiper fails to motion in sync with the right windshield wiper then you can say that the car is not performing at its highest level. In fact, if these imperfections are left unaddressed their ability to function will continue to decrease and/or bring down the functioning levels of adjacent parts. Each employee within a company performs a function that drives the overall performance over the company itself. A sales person struggling with price objections, a customer service person in need of problem solving skills and a manager with leadership issues prevents the company from perform at it optimal level. When each of these employees focuses on developing their area of weakness, they will function at a higher level, thus driving the overall performance of the company.

A coach is a leader (manager), who creates a coaching culture that encourages employees to be comfortable with addressing weaknesses, guides and supports employees through their development, as well as provides the necessary tools and avenues needed to improve. However coaching is not one sided with all of the heavy lifting on the manager’s end, employees must also be willing to participate and work their coach to improve and drive performance.

To learn more about being a coach click below to download the whitepaper: “Coaching and Motivating Employees to Perform Better”

The coaching culture in any organization is only as strong as the organizational structure that sustains it. Creating a successful coaching culture doesn’t happen over night. Building a coaching culture requires a collective effort from many different individuals within the organization. However, when this collective coaching effort is backed by a strong organizational structure, the result is the creation of a unified coaching culture that will impact your bottom line.

Luckily, we have created a simple, easy to follow process that will enable your organization to support your coaching movement.

1. Conduct a best practice session to learn and share with each other coaching tips and procedures that have proved to be successful.
2. Have managers attend a coaching workshop to hone the skills needed to become a top-notch coach.
3. Conduct regularly scheduled practice sessions that incorporate role-play scenarios and case studies to boost coaching skills.
4. Develop Management Coaching Commitment Plans that will paint a very detailed picture of all future coaching strategies.
5. Obtain executive-level commitment to demonstrate a unified coaching movement from all leaders.

To learn more about creating and sustaining a coaching culture, click below to download the whitepaper: “Creating a Culture”