Sales Progress Blog

The Sales Training Webinar

admin — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:09:02 +0000

Picture this scene: an inside sales team is gathered in an office, taking notes and actively listening as a speaker gives a presentation about sales training…but the speaker cannot be seen. That’s because this group is listening to a webinar, the newest tool for speakers and businesses. Webinars let large amounts of people attend a single presentation from anywhere in the world. You just simply have to register and log in to gain access.

Companies can utilize webinars for just about anything. They can use it to teach their employees about a product or service’s features, advantages and benefits. They can also help sales reps improve their skills and behavior. Webinars allow for customization, and sales reps can attend events that target a certain problem that they may be experiencing. So, if one employee has a fear of cold calling and another needs help finding ways to prospect, both can register for their separate events. This saves the company money and the employee’s time. Furthermore, webinars work better with the adult learning style. Typically, adults learn more when they are sent to seminars that are short and to the point. Since webinars are normally only an hour and they are usually about a target area, adults will have an easier time focusing and engaging.

In the long run, webinars benefit both the speaker and the salesperson. For speakers, webinars allow for instant feedback. At the end of the event, they can ask participants to fill out a survey, or they can send a follow up e-mail asking them what they liked, disliked or would change. Webinars offer speakers a way to connect with their audience. They can set up polls or surveys or open a live question and answer segment. Salespeople also benefit from the instant engagement. They can have their questions answered right away, and they can learn from the questions or experiences that other people are sharing.

Download our free webinar whitepaper to find out more ways that webinars can help with sales training and sales progress.

An Insight into Webinars

admin — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:43:19 +0000

When it comes to sales, the person with the best pitch, the most product knowledge and the highest level of confidence will usually be the one that makes the close. Becoming a great salesperson takes time, and it requires constant learning and practicing. Salespeople need to pick up different tips, tools and techniques that they can apply to their day-to-day work, and these can often be found in a sales seminar. Furthermore in order to retain that knowledge and garner confidence, managers need to set up a training reinforcement program that allows inside sales teams to practice their skills and increase their confidence. Typically, the first part is accomplished by sending a team to a one-day event, but that no longer needs to be the case. There is a new tool that is rapidly taking over the training world, and it is important to catch on.

Webinars are a great tool for training reinforcement. While most people typically use them for their initial sales training, the technology can be used to keep learning sustainable through practice and coaching.

Use the tips in our newest whitepaper to find out how to apply webinars to your traditional sales training. Click here to download your free whitepaper.

Three Looks at Traffic for Lead Generation

admin — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 18:00:13 +0000

Let’s face it- we live in a world that is becoming more and more technology based. Customers are turning to the World Wide Web when they need a new product or service, and companies are relying on websites, blogs and online articles to boost sales. Inside sales people need to know where traffic is coming from in order to efficiently gather leads and prospects. There are three important ways that potential customers are brought to a website: direct traffic, organic traffic and social media traffic.

1. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic involves people accessing your website through a bookmark or by “directly” typing the web name into the URL. This sort of traffic does not depend on your SEO ratings or the popularity of your blog. It is important to understand how direct traffic works because it tells you that people view your company as credible, and they came directly to your page or blog to look for information and updates.

Direct traffic is great for lead generation because you know that the people purposefully came to your site, and they are interested in your product or service.

2. Organic Traffic

Any traffic that comes to your website or blog because of words typed into a search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, is known as organic traffic. It relies mostly on keywords and search engine optimization which help your website appear earlier in any search. The more content you have built surrounding your company (this can include multiple website pages, blogs, whitepapers and articles), the more likely you are to increase your sites popularity.

Organic traffic tells inside sales people that there are people out there that are in need of their product or service, and if prospected properly, they could become long-time customers.

3. Social Media Traffic

This is the traffic that comes from people reading your blogs, clicking on twitter links or visiting from sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Typically, these people can constitute both customers and competitors. Include an RSS feed button onto your blog to keep people coming back and measure the amount of time people spend re-tweeting your information and participating on your Facebook page.

If you monitor social media traffic properly, inside sales people can generate leads from the active participants because it shows that they are genuinely intrigued by the information that you are posting.

If companies want to see their sales progress, they need to help their inside sales reps fully understand how to create leads from the tools that are out there.

7 Steps for Sales Training Success

admin — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 16:05:24 +0000

“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction”
-John Kotter

In business, it is important to have a strategy that will take your business to the top, and managers need to be the ones stepping and taking charge. Training reinforcement needs to be part of that sales strategy. In order for any inside sales team to be successful, they have to possess knowledge of the product, the skill set to sell it, and the right behavior and confidence. All of these things can be tailored and cultivated by any sales manager.

There are seven steps that managers can take with sales training if they want to see their sales progress.

1. Include the three main tiers into any sales training.
Those three tiers include: knowledge, skill and behavior. If any sales person is going to go from average to great, then they need to have the confidence that they can successfully perform in each area. Managers may have to tailor sales training around one specific area or around all three, but before they start coaching, they need to define which area a specific employee is having trouble in.

2. Make sure sessions are short and engaging
Most people have short attention spans, and you do not want to spend money on something that an employee is not going to be able to sit through. So, make sure that seminars are short, two to three hours at maximum. Encourage reps to participate during events. If they are engaged and attentive, they are going to learn more and apply more.

3. Set up dedicated practice times
Dedicated practice sessions refer to time put aside at the workplace for employees and managers to review what they have learned after training seminars. They engage employees in activities that will help reinforce key points of a seminar, and they simulate and practice for real world application. The sessions should last about 30-40 minutes, and throughout the dedicated practice sessions, sales reps should be assessing themselves and their performance.

To read the rest of the seven steps to sales training, download our FREE whitepaper , and pick up some tips and techniques for successful sales training.

Three Techniques for Training Reinforcement

admin — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:36:24 +0000

As most coaches know, training reinforcement is the key to any salesperson’s success. It keeps learning sustainable, and it helps sales reps apply what they learned in the real world. There are a few sales techniques that managers can use when coaching:

Peer to Peer

Have employees work together. This way, they can coach one another through each of their problems. If you pair two people together that have strengths where the other has weaknesses, you will begin to see both people improve, and your sales team’s performance will begin to rise.

One-on-one

The Re-Tweet is the New Way to Prospect

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:39:23 +0000

Salespeople know that the best way to reach potential customers is through their current ones. It is important to work well with your clients and to build up trust because essentially you want them to recommend your product or service to their friends and family.

Prospecting by obtaining references from clients is a great way to conduct business, and the process has slowly begun moving to the World Wide Web. There are many advantages of computer based training, but the biggest advantage comes with using the social media site Twitter. Most people believe that Twitter is useless, that it is just a place for people to follow their favorite celebrities every move, but in fact, a study conducted by Deming Hill proves otherwise:

· 20% of all Twitter communication contains a reference to a product or a service
· 41% of business owners say that Twitter delivers great value to their business

Three Simple Techniques to Increase Sales

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 15:36:29 +0000

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.

Read Customers Better Using Proven Sales Techniques

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:24:21 +0000

Recently, I had a salesperson come into my office to try to sell me a service. He came in, sat down and asked me two questions: what I do and how I think the business is running. He then immediately launched into his sales speech. I sat back and listened as he made a classic selling mistake.

I had no need for his product, but he was intent on selling to me. He had an “I have to sell” mentality. This is oftentimes where salespeople go wrong. If you have to sell, don’t you think it would make the most sense to sell to people who have a need for your product or service? It is important that during any sales call we operate with a needs based selling mentality. People will only buy what they need; so, ask questions and listen to your customer.

Why Customer Service Training is Important

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:18:21 +0000

Recently, I went shopping to buy a new pair of jeans. Upon entering the first store, I noticed three workers standing off to the side talking and laughing…none of them acknowledged me as I walked in. I proceeded to pick out a few pairs and went over to the fitting room, where I waited, and waited, and waited for someone to unlock the door for me, and while I was waiting on the staff, two workers stood close by completely oblivious to the fact that I needed their help. Finally once I asked one of them for help, I was let into the fitting room. I tried on my jeans, and they just didn’t fit right; so, I made a couple trips back and forth without any assistance from the sales staff. Finally, I was so frustrated with everything that I just left. I went into another store across the way, just to look around, not expecting to buy anything. I was immediately greeted and asked if I needed any help. The employee led me to the jean wall, and she asked me to describe what I was looking for. After selecting a couple pairs for me, she led me to a fitting room and told me to let her know if I needed anything else. When I asked for a different size, she quickly brought a pair back to swap. A couple minutes later, I was walking out of the store with two pairs of jeans and a shirt that went so well with them that I couldn’t pass it up.

Good customer service is the key to running a successful business. Nobody wants to give their hard-earned money to a store that is not willing to spend time on them. In fact, US News reported that 82% of customers will go somewhere else because of a specific customer service issue. That’s a lot of customers. If losing customers does not make you want to improve your customer service behavior then listen to this: a Gallup survey found that over a one month period, a customer “emotionally connected” to an organization spend 46% more money than a customer that was satisfied but not emotionally bonded. If we develop a bond with our customers, they are less likely to leave. If we treat them right, then they will want to do business; in fact, they might even look forward to buying from us.

Download our free whitepaper on the Seven Pillars of Customer Service

Coaching Inside Sales People

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:35:37 +0000

Sales management is not always easy. We expect a lot out of salespeople because we want to succeed, and we always want to see better performance and increased profitability. Coaching is tough. Most of the time, sales managers delegate instructions and expect to see their employee’s automatically hit their goals and make their bottom line, but what we really need to be doing is coach. Business coaching is not just telling people what to do. It’s about asking and discovering. Sales managers need to sit down with employees and ask them to define their strengths and weaknesses. We need to clarify any issues that sales people have when it comes to selling. Once the issues have been discovered, managers need to define ways to enhance performance and help employees.
So, for example, if a sales rep has a tough time actively listening, then a sales manager needs to take the steps to fix this. Have your employee come back to you each week with two points of interest that they learned about their customers. This will force them to not only sit back and listen but it will also help them to engage with their client.
It is important to stop managing and start coaching. To get free coaching tools, download this free pointcast and learn our three step sales coaching methodology.

FREE Pointcast.