Insanity – Watching businesses stubbornly go through the painstaking process of attracting experienced sales professionals, expecting great results and getting mediocre outcomes.
If you believe that the best process for improving your sales results is to lure your competitor’s salespeople you are in for a painful lesson. It is much like free agency in professional sports. Very few free agents ever live up to the hype of expectations — they don’t have to.
First, the reality:
“Shitty managers give orders, they do not give permission.”
I blame it on our education. We were taught long ago — when the educational system killed our creative side — that the person at the front of the room had the only right answer. As students, it was our job to discover and embrace this sole correct answer. Since then, we have been living a life chasing the approval of the right, safe and correct answer from those in authority.
What have we learned? Very little. Today’s business climate is made up of far too many task driven managers, who think in the short term, only expect immediate results, and instill the fear of failure and termination at every opportunity. Being in...
There is a myth in the business world that applies the theory when it comes to sales more is better. Let me be the first to say that more is not necessarily better, more is simply more.
Here are three examples of more that simply does not mean more:
More sales people does not equate to more sales!
More customers does not mean better profits!
More leads does not translate into more clients!
More only leads to more when there is a defined strategic process associated with the plan for more. Here is how more becomes more when applied to the three examples:
1. More salespeople to boost sales: Simply hiring more sales professionals does not equate to an increase in revenues. The process for hiring, training, managing and developing sales professionals is the first part of the success model. Successful salespeople do not simply arrive with the skills to be successful, they merely come with the...
“The program you put your customers in is not nearly as important as the process you utilize to get them there.”
I have been actively and excitedly involved in a new program rollout with one of my clients. The program they are introducing is innovative, unique, and of tremendous value to their future and their existing clients.
What excites me the most about this entire program rollout is not the package-which is quite good– but, the process the client went through to educate, inspire, and guide their team through the introductory phase. Of the five educational segments provided, only two could be considered features and benefits focused. And, it would be a stretch to call either one of them completely product centric.
The balance of the education and training emphasized:
I was recently asked about the personality and behavioral profiling tools people use in the hiring process and which one I recommend. I have come across a wide variety of capable programs and systems. While they are tools that can assist in the hiring process there are none that are a sure-fire panacea for improving the hiring results. While these programs provide a variety of helpful insights, they are simply tools and are not a predictor, indicator, or prognosticator of any assured successful outcome.
While there are many processes, programs, and approaches designed to assist in identifying and selecting the best candidate for open positions, there are no guarantees these decisions will be successful. Quite frankly, no program in itself is going to improve or increase the odds of success.
One need look no further than the...
A few weeks ago, I jumped into the compensation discussion with a post about commissions. My opinion is that heavily and solely incentivizing a sales professional for their selling results might not be the most effective compensation model. There are aspects of the sales process that involve the expertise, support, and follow-through of others in bringing new business and retaining existing business. Providing a large portion of the rewards to the sales professional for these results diminishes the significant and valued contributions of others in supporting these outcomes.
The purpose of this post is to offer a follow-up to the commission conversation. And, provide a little more perspective into what is rapidly becoming the organizational and process trend for most businesses.
“Put yourself in a position to give your clients opportunities to say ‘yes’ rather than reasons to say ‘no.” – Chris Still
How many times have you been in that sales call where the sales professional started talking about all the wonderful aspects of the product they wanted to talk with you about? And, in the course of this conversation, they are sharing all the really cool features and benefits of which — they are hoping — you will find one feature that is of interest to you.
Effective sales behaviors and great selling outcomes are not dependent upon your ability to sell, position, or extol the wonderful products you are offering. In reality, your ability to make your product compelling is the effectiveness with which you concisely focus a particular benefit of the product on a very specific customer driven problem and solution.
Effective product positioning...
I have long been a passionate proponent of commission only sales programs (including draw against commissions). While revisiting the wide ranging reality of the sales professionals’ role and interactions with their organizations as they produce and help grow the business, I have had a significant change of heart.
The notion that most sales professionals are solely responsible for their growth efforts is, in many cases, outdated and misapplied. In most businesses, the salesperson now relies on a team of resources to assist them with the client acquisition and management. That they act in concert with the commitment, support, and dependence of a team does not make them solely responsible for, or deserving of, a compensation system that rewards merely one aspect of their role — results.
You know your sales machine is working in the right direction when you have people coming to your business more than you are reaching out to them to bring them into your business. Once the demand cycle swings your way and most of your growth related activity is spent following up on leads you now are in the enviable position of responding to demand, not creating it. Unfortunately, until your business reaches this exciting level of nirvana, your sales machine is responsible for driving and creating demand. And, once you successfully create demand, the other challenge is maintaining and developing it.
At its fundamental core, the most important component of the demand process is knowledge. For it is through the application of knowledge from our successful experiences that we are able to examine, understand, duplicate, and repeat those accomplishments.
Every single successful sales engagement is a lesson.
If you do not treat each of...
For the first time ever, there are as many as four different generations engaged in our workplace — Traditionalists, Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y (Millenials). Besides the increased ethnic diversity of our global economy, our workforce is proliferated with an incredible mix of generational cultures, as well. As effective communication is at the foundation of our relationship building behaviors, educating sales teams on the best approaches to connect with these various groups is not simply a one-style fits all solution.
When discussing the first phase of any relationship building activity, I encourage everyone to pay close attention to everything. The old school methodology of mirroring or matching is antiquated, overused, over-applied, and known to all. The worst thing you can do is begin to engage someone based on your mirroring and matching techniques. First, it is rude. Second, they have see that show before. Finally, it is not genuine or authentic.
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