Sales Progress Blog

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.

admin Sales Management business coaching, coaching tools, linkedin, Sales Coaching Methodology, Sales Management

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

Last week we talked about a post from Selling Power discussing the top issues on the minds of sales leaders in 2010.  Shortly after posting I came across these interesting new stats published in the December/January edition of E-Learning Magazine from the Spring Board Project.  I would say these statistics create a strong case for why we need to continue to train our employees.

50% of employers say they currently have such a serious gap between their needs and employees’ skills that if affects their productivity.  In today’s business world, there is no room for drags on productivity.  According to this statistic 50% of businesses could improve their productivity by providing additional training for their employees.

48% of employers do not provide ongoing education or skills training primarily because of cost.  Budgets are tight so this is certainly a valid point, HOWEVER if you are one of those company’s whose productivity is struggling due to lack of training you may be costing yourself more money to your bottom line because you won’t spend the money to invest in your employees.

80% of workers show keen interest in pursuing further education and training.
Give the people what they want, it just may be what your company NEEDS.

62% of workers say a convincing reason to pursue training is that the future economy will be extremely demanding, and if their skills are not to up to date, someone will pass them by.  This is very true; you could also take this stat to a broader view.  Given that the economy will be demanding, if you do not update the skills of your employee who is to say that your customers won’t pass you by for a competitor with better-trained employees?

Certainly training your employees can be expensive, and in tough times there may not be the financial resources available to run a true training program or to hire an outside resource.  With that in mind it’s time to get creative.  Take advantage of free resources available via the web.  Article sites, blogs by sales trainers, websites like Selling Power which offer thousands of free resources, coaching your employees, role playing, all of these things are free and can be beneficial to the needs of your employees.

If you know someone is struggling with handling price objections you could first send them an article on handling price objections, and then schedule time to role-play and practice handling those objections.  These two simple things can really spring board the employee ahead, and will cost you nothing but a little bit of time.

This year stop using budget as an excuse to not train your employees, and get creative with free resources.  Your bottom line will thank you.

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Management, Sales Training coaching, Leadership, sales, sales coaching, Sales Management, Sales Managers, Sales Progress, Sales Representative, sales skills, Sales Success, Sales Training, sustained learning

When a sales person happens to display leadership abilities, typically we promote them to management or lead sales rep.  But shouldn’t all reps have sales leadership skills?  Skip Anderson made a great point in his recent blog post he said, “Leaders have the ability not only to lead, but also to easily get others to follow, a helpful skill during sales interactions.”

We associate leaders with many great qualities, they can incite passion in others, have the ability to get others to see their vision, and are trustworthy.  Shouldn’t we want all of those qualities in all of our sales people?  A sales person with passion is believable.  A sales person who can get others to see their vision is persuasive.  And a sales person, who is trustworthy, gets repeat business.  Yep, I think these are all good traits to have in a sales person, not just in a manager.

If you’re a rep, think about these qualities as you go about your daily work, and strive to exhibit them everyday.  And if you are a manager, coach and inspire your team to exhibit these qualities, in the long run they will out perform the followers because they will pave the way to success.

Visit Skip’s Original Post

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Management sales leadership, sales leadership skills, Sales Management, sales skills

I often laugh when I hear people say they could never do sales. When I ask why, they state all that rejection and hearing the word "no". It hit me, that’s why so many people actually fail at sales because they hear the word "no" so often. The sad fact is they should never hear that word if they follow a simple to use sales formula.

1. Ask (open-ended questions, these usually start with "what" or "how")
2. Shut Up & Listen
3. Address what the client said and seek a way to help or solve a problem

THATS IT

Isn’t that what sales is suppose to be about? Asking clients questions to see how we can or maybe cannot help. Most sales people have preconceived notions of what they are going to say or do in a sales call. What a BIG mistake. This puts you in the frame of mind of "Saying" and not asking. This is the biggest mistake I see when working with clients. Sales people who know what they are going to say before hearing a word coming from the client.

Mistakes in sales are usually very subtle and are attributed to a lack of sales planning. The planning should require what questions will be asked to ascertain specific areas of need, and what are the possible solutions for those responses. What do we hate about sales people? They are too pushy, they talk too much, they didn’t even listen, etc. The sad fact is when asked what specific questions sales people use to ask their client to define needs they respond with a long-winded synopsis’s of what they try to do in selling. By the way, they never answer the question. Here are the top mistakes sales people make:

1. They ask close ended questions (questions that require a "yes" or "no" response).
2. They have no planned or defined questioning sequence.
3. They rarely listen to what clients say because they are already thinking of what they want to say next.
4. Their call objectives are usually centered on the notion of what they want to do versus seeking information to help the client. This mentality pigeonholes their thought process.
5. The biggest mistake I get from sales people is that they know what they are doing. The attitude is centered on the perception they have mastered sales. Sales is NOT an event you simply master, rather a process you can always get better at.

So how do we help sales people succeed? How can we get sales people to perform better? The first thing we need to do is break down the basics of sales techniques into a very simplistic components. Next, we need to condition their behaviors to follow the sales components. The trick is not how to do sales, rather getting people to break their habits into a very question-based approach that is centered around the client, NOT them. Sounds easy, but it is not. Sales people hate to change. Here are some basic methods to help sales people improve their sales

1. Use question sheets to be filled out by sales people.This helps steer them and provide a glimpse of what is actually said.
2. Start each question with the words "what" or "why". This guarantees the client will provide ample information.
3. Listen! OK, so what does this mean? We need to break sales people’s habits of thinking what they want to say while the client is talking. This inhibits the sales person from learning something that could actually help close the sale. You do this with listening games and role-playing activities.
4. Encourage sales people to come up with at least 1 new question before each sales call. This promotes the thinking and associated behaviors with asking and listening

Sales is really easy if we focus on what we want to learn, what questions provide that information, and ultimately how we can solve/address the customer issues. Sales people often have their own way of doing things, but let’s challenge them to look at the fundamentals.

Tim Hagen Sales Management, Sales Training Leadership, sales coaching, Sales Management, sales methodology, Sales Progress, sales skills, Sales Training, Tim Hagen

As the new year begins and we take off with a fresh start, many people are sharing the top to-do items to making 2010 a successful year.  We would like to share with you a great article from the Selling Power blog, a list of 15 things every sales person and 15 things every sales manager SHOULD NOT do.

Although this list of don’ts is a few months old, and some of the bullet points seem like common sense, I think it’s a relevant message for this time of year.  Sometimes we must be reminded of the basics, because often it’s the basic little things that we begin to let slide that can make all the difference in having a successful and profitable year.

Remember your basic sales techniques, and good luck in 2010.
Check out 15 Things Salespeople and Sales Managers Should Put on their Not to do List.

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Training Sales Management, sales performance, sales skills, sales techniques, Sales Training

I spend a lot of time reading other business, sales, and training blogs, and I ran across one today, written by Will Fultz, that really got me thinking.  His post, "Should I trust my Sales Manager’s Advice," caught my attention, as we are a consulting company that focuses a lot on coaching and employee development this question made me take a step a back.

We encourage managers to coach their employees to better performance, but should a sales rep take everything a sales manager says as the truth.  I thought Mr. Fultz’s insight was dead on.  For the most part, YES we should trust in a sale’s managers advice, after all it was probably their insight and experience that got them promoted in the first place.

HOWEVER! A sales rep should NOT take everything they say word for word, especially if they don’t agree.  Mr. Fultz points out that you should take their advice but also add in your own experiences and thoughts.  A great idea he brings up is engaging your sales manager with those thoughts.  You never know, your discussion could come up with a better solution than either of you had thought of on your own.  Your combined knowledge certainly adds up to more than each of you individually.  You have experience from the front lines your manager may be missing.

*NOTE: It is not ok to take advice you know is not quite right and then blame your manager for poor results.  It’s always a good idea to ask for help when you need it, but you have to own the results that come of taking it.

To recap:

* Trust your sales managers advice
* Add in your own experience and wisdom
* Engage your manager, 2 heads ARE better than 1 it’s not just a saying

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Management, Sales Training Leadership, sales, Sales Management, sales performance, Sales Representative, sales skills, Sales Training