Sales Progress Blog

You’re late for work.

You spilled your coffee.

There’s construction causing a traffic jam.

We all have bad day, but we are supposed to be able to leave our problems at the door. However, most of us have trouble doing this, and it can severely affect our work. Who wants to deal with angry customers when you just had to deal with an angry spouse or kids? So, how do we drop our problems to help others with theirs?

• Be aware of your stress and your emotions.

If you are aware of them, then you can focus on controlling your interactions when you are dealing with customers.

• Visualize a good day and believe it.

If you think positive, then your attitude will become positive.

Read on…

admin Sales Training coaching, customer relationship management, customer service training, linkedin, positive attitude, Results

As managers, it is important to provide your employees with sales training, and a lot of what you teach them is because of successful practices that have been crafted by sales gurus. We can learn from the people who have come before us, the people who have made it to the top because of hard work, determination and good business sense. In 2003, Accenture published a list of the 50 top business gurus, and it is important to understand why their ideas made them successful:

“Strategy 101 is about choices: You can’t be all things to all people.”
Michael Porter
-If you try to satisfy every customer’s need, you will stretch yourself thin. Furthermore, you cannot excel in one area if you are trying to cover everything.

“The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.”
Tom Peters
-Oftentimes, we are so focused on profits and getting customers that we forget about our employees, but they are the ones that deal with clients on a day-to-day basis. So if you want to see progress in your organization, treat your employees with respect.

“Your most precious possession is not your financial assets. Your most precious possession is the people you have working there, and what they carry around in their heads and their ability to work together.”
Robert B. Reich
-Your employees are your biggest asset. They know the products, they know the customers and they have ideas to make the company better. Encourage your employees, and you will see results.”

Read on…

admin Sales Training coaching, linkedin, Results, sales, sales gurus, Sales Training, top 5

With millions of companies out there, how do you make yours stand out? You need to have a competitive edge. Sure, you can have flashy promotions and expensive advertisements to draw customers, but it is going to be your employees that make or break a sale.

Sales without Customer
Service is like stuffing money
into a pocket full of holes.
-DAVID TOOMAN

Managers need to make sure that sales reps have extensive knowledge of product, but not only that, they need to be personable, friendly and there for their customer’s needs. Higher-level management should provide sales teams with constant coaching so that they can land more clients. When it comes to sales training, there are four steps that managers need to take in order to be successful:

Read more…

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admin Sales Training coaching, Enhance Performance, linkedin, practice, Results, sales team, Sales Training, training reinforcement

A while ago I was in the market for a new car; so, one afternoon I went down to the dealership to look around, and a sales man approached me. He asked me if I was looking to buy a car, and when I said yes, he asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was in sales and training. He immediately took this information and went on to tell me that as a sales man I must travel a lot and probably needed a car with a lot of miles. Not just any car though, I needed a sporty car that would impress my clients. This was not what I was in the market for; so, I left. I went back to the same dealership a week later and was approached by a different salesman. He started the conversation by asking me what type of car I was looking for, and he listened while I explained that I wanted a large SUV. He then proceeded to ask me why I wanted a large car, and I told him that I had kids. Once he realized that this was my value driver, he brought me to look at SUV’s with high safety ratings. This man realized what I needed in a car because he took the time to listen and understand why I was buying.

There is a point to this story. As salespeople, we sometimes get caught up in the selling part. We go on long-winded stints of telling clients about the product, it’s benefits and it’s features without realizing that the customer may not even be in the market for the product we are describing. Instead, we need to actively listen to our prospects and find out what drives them; why are they in the market for our product?

Read on…

admin Sales Management active listening, coaching, communication skills, Enhance Performance, inside sales, linkedin, needs based selling

Today is an important day for most Mid-westerners because it marks the beginning of summer and the end of those cold, brutal winter months. With all the distractions of summer days, managers may begin to worry about one thing: their employee’s sustainability.

Sustainability - to keep up or keep going.

Everyone has those days, when work is the last place you want to be, and you’ve already started to think about weekend activities…but it’s only Monday. The sun is shining outside, the pools are packed and you’re stuck in an office. As a manager, how do you keep sales up and employees going during the summer months?

There are many things you can do to keep your employees motivated and train them to increase their sales sustainability :

admin Sales Management, Sales Training Add new tag, coaching, effective coaching, Employee Coaching, employee training, Enhance Performance, linkedin, management leadership training, motivation, sales, sales coaching, Sales Management, summer sales, sustainability, sustained learning, teamwork, training reinforcement

In honor of the NBA playoffs, we have decided to go with basketball themed blogs, and how could we write blogs without mentioning Kobe. Kobe is one of the greatest basketball players of all time (being a Bulls fan, I won’t say he’s as good as Jordan), but with greatness comes controversy. Over the past few years, Kobe has been great and not necessarily fair to his teammates.

During these playoffs though, there has been a change. He constantly congratulates his teammates and only has good things to say (even when a reporter asked him what he thought of Artest’s shot in a game versus the Suns). What caused this change?

Well, from a business perspective, it has to be related to the fact that teams perform better when they work together; it’s part of the definition. It takes time to change and constant positive reinforcement, and as a sales manager, you should be helping your employees along. Provide them with constant feedback and encouragement, and you’ll start to see your sales revenues rise, just like Kobe’s fan base.

Read more…

admin Sales Training coaching, effective coaching, employee training, Enhance Performance, linkedin

According to the experts the top 5 major forms of communications are:
(1) Face-to-face
(2) Telephone
(3) Texting
(4) E-mail
(5) Social media

The most EFFECTIVE forms of communication are face-to-face and telephone.  Keep this in mind when you need to speak to fellow employees especially when confronting someone. Bringing up an important issue may be more comfortable to do through email or text, but it can be totally ineffective.

Make sure you discuss important issues through face-to-face methods or at least  over the telephone if needed. In this overly connected world of social media, email, and text messaging meaning can sometimes be lost.  Written messages such as text or email leave your message open to interpretation.  People could take your message harder than you meant and become offended, or may fail to see the importance and blow it off all together. A real conversation is the only way to avoid the confusion.

Confrontation is never easy, but by facing the situation head on, you can ensure the problem will be addressed properly right away, and getting it taken care of right away means you can get back to work quicker. Using the right communication medium is the first step in developing strong communication skills.

If confronting someone face-to-face makes you nervous there are a few things you can do to put yourself at ease.  First, confront the other person when you are in a calm mood.  Attacking someone at the height of your frustration will only escalate the situation.  Second, practice what you want to say.  Having a script to go into the conversation with will help put you at ease and ensure you share everything you need to say. Third, if your really uncomfortable or the situation is a pretty big issue, ask a superior for help or even have them sit in on the conversation to help mediate.  A coaching session with your manager can help come up with the best plan of how and when to confront the issue. Being able to confront issues with strong communication skills is imperative to having a strong team, don’t let your comfort level or lack of skills create an on-going problem.

We would love to hear stories of communication gone wrong.  Share your stories or opinions below.

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Training Behavior, coaching, communication skills, employee training, Enhance Performance, sales coaching techniques, Sales Staff, socialmedia, team building, workplace training

What has the down economy taught us about training our employees? Quite frankly, A LOT!  It’s more important than ever to have effective training with a positive ROI. training reinforcement, tailored sales training, learning styles

Below are the top 5 things the down economy has taught us about training our employees.

1. We have less time to attend traditional training events, so we must look outside  the box to find effective solutions.
2. We need better performance right away, there is no time for ineffective processes, course, or programs.  We need to take another look at the types of training provided and align them with adult learning styles.  Once we get better performance, training reinforcement programs must be put in place to keep the skills sustained.
3. We have less people who need to do more, skills like time management are more important than ever.
4. We need to validate with metrics, we can no longer train our employees and hope they learned something we must have a way to measure success.
5. We need to re-assess and re-evaluate our current team.  With less people to do more work, we have to make sure the people on our team are as capable and motivated as possible.

For a look at how Sales Progress solves these issues, check out this free presentation .

admin Sales Training coaching, employee training, Enhance Performance, learning strategies, learning styles, Sales Training, Skills, tailored sales training, training and development, training reinforcement, training techniques

How many times have you heard that you should eat 4-6 small meals a day in order to get better results in weight loss and energy?  Yes many times, but what does this have to do with training employees?

Think of typical training (a workshop or seminar) as a huge dinner.  When it’s over you feel uncomfortable, groggy, and maybe a little overwhelmed.  A typical training session can take any where from a half today to even a full week, and at the end you feel uncomfortable, groggy, and don’t remember half the information taught.

Now think about how great and energized you feel after eating smaller meals or snacks through out the day, (Ok for most of us we will just imagine).  This is also how training is best digested, in small portions.

Research shows adults remember and learn more in the long run when information is fed to them a little at a time over an extended period. When considering your next taste of training, pick a program that will have great results and make you feel great not groggy when you’re done.

Tim Hagen Sales Training business coaching, coaching, effective coaching, Enhance Performance, Manager, training reinforcement

recently read a great and very short post from the blog of Seth Godin, titled
The relentless search for "tell me what to do". The post read:

If you’ve ever hired or managed or taught, you know the feeling.
People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: "If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe."
When asked, resist.

We typically think of people NOT liking being told what to do, but think about your staff and fellow employees, and even yourself, how many times a week do we indirectly ask, “What should I be doing.”  We may say, “what tasks should I be completing today,” or “I have the following problem, how should I fix it?” but all in all we are saying, “tell me what to do.”

This frame of thinking not only becomes a way to push off responsibility as Seth suggested above, but it can also breed laziness and a lack of accountability.

Managers can use coaching techniques to get employees to come up with their own solutions to problems.  Use questions like, “What do you THINK you should do,” or “If you were me, what would you tell yourself to do.”  These questions allow for a dialog to open, and you can now lead your employee to a suitable solution they essentially came up with on their own.  When your employee owns the solutions they will work harder to make it work because it is their own butt on the line.  If you simply give them a solution, they can half-heartedly attempt it, and if it fails they can blame you.  Don’t play the blame game; make your staff responsible for their actions.

If you are an employee, and you have finished your work for the day, proactively seek additional projects you can work on.  Go above and beyond, but keep your manager in the loop to ensure you are not wasting time.

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Training business coaching, coaching, effective coaching, Leadership, Manager, sales coaching, Sales Coaching Methodology, Sales Manager