Like exercise, prospect a little each day and stay sales fit

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Like exercise, prospect a little each day and stay sales fit

May 26, 2011 in Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Self Development, Success, Time Management, Tips

Prospecting is considered one of the most daunting jobs in selling. Many people in sales or other roles charged with developing new business, especially with new prospects, find the task of prospecting anxiety provoking and tend to put off the prospecting task in favour of more desirable or less frightening tasks. Yet in their desire to escape prospecting they inadvertently set themselves up for greater issues in the future.

Prospecting is the oxygen that fuels the fire of sales. Prospecting involves a series of sequential activities designed to:

Identify your prospect
Qualify your prospect
Prioritise your prospect

Prospecting is therefore a step-by-step process for identifying organisations and individuals who have a potential need for your product or service, making contact with them to see if you can be of service and then generating a client & supplier relationship.

Having a plan or system is therefore critical to prospecting success.

Without a prospecting plan you cannot sell because you will not have anyone to sell to. Prospecting is not the most important aspect of selling, but it’s the first thing that has to happen for the sales process to begin. Prospecting is not just isolated to cold calling either. It’s essential for reigniting dormant accounts and clients or developing new business with existing clients.

Putting off the task of prospecting will leave your sales pipeline anemic and weak and put your job or business in jeopardy. In essence, if you don’t prospect you will become ‘sales unfit’.

If we’re serious about our physical health and wellbeing and want to be physically fit we know we need to exercise every day or several times a week in time blocks of 30minutes, one or even two hours. We don’t do little bits then stop. We do not leave our health to chance and instead set aside time in our day to pay attention to our physical wellbeing. So why leave our sales result and careers to chance?

Yet too many people charged with growing sales and healthy client relationships leave their sales fitness to chance by not prospecting on a consistent and regular basis.

One reason people find it hard to prospect is because they have never been taught how to prospect effectively. Prospecting is a skill like everything else and it can be taught. That is why at Barrett we find ourselves doing a lot of coaching and training in our 4 Step Prospecting Process. It is one of the most impactful training modules in our training program. Once people learn to master the skill of prospecting the results are fantastic. “Just wanted to say a BIG thank you to you for your assistance with one of my clients. I got them back! What helped most was omitting that “fear of rejection” like you said. You were right, I had nothing to lose as we had already lost them. In addition, making phone calls with a clear purpose or intention really assisted with this client, which eventually led to a meeting face to face, and it all went swimmingly. This client is now using us consistently since the meeting, and fingers crossed, this will continue. I am not taking chances this time, and will continue to manage this client carefully. Thanks again for all your help, the follow up phone call with you really made all the difference.” Testimonial from Specialist Recruitment Consultant.

Another important reason why a sales pipeline suffers is because people do not make the time to prospect. This can be because they’re either ineffective at prioritising or they’re afraid of prospecting and so avoid it all together. Either way avoiding prospecting makes matters worse.

If you have a fear about prospecting even if you have been shown how to prospect, you need to address those fears and then make time to prospect on a regular and consistent basis. Practice at prospecting will also help overcome your fears a bit at a time. If you have difficulty prioritising what is important then you need to make sure that prospecting is made one of your most important priorities. By doing a little each day you can achieve your sales goals and reduce your anxiety about prospecting one phone call at a time.

Here are some tips For Scheduling Your Prospecting:

Schedule specific time in your week for prospecting.
Chunk your prospecting calls in batches – maximum of 120 minutes, ideally 2-3 batches per week.
Consider doing your prospecting calls first thing in the morning. This works on two levels, 1) you get it out of the way first thing in the day and, 2) it is often the best time to call people.
Ideally make prospecting calls at the same time of the day, each day of the week.
Consider when you are at your best. It’s best to be clear headed, listening accurately, awake and alert (this varies for everyone). You are therefore less likely to have negative or self-defeating thoughts and least likely to take rejection personally.
Consider distractions – what time of day are you least likely to be interrupted?

Remember follow-up with persistent daily effort
Choosing your state of mind and your attitude is also critical when prospecting and selling. Successful salespeople know that prospecting doesn’t happen by chance as it requires a consistent and persistent effort. Successful sales people:

Diarise follow up calls
Use Sales Pipeline to track activity
Keep a number of activities on the go
Prioritise
Persist

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au

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Do you miss out on growing sales because your clients’ pigeon hole you?

May 4, 2011 in Attitudes & Behaviours, Coaching, Communication, Sales Assessments, Sales Training, Tips

Do you have trouble introducing your clients to new products and services? Does their memory seem to spring back to what you used to do or your initial offering to them? Do they seem to pigeon hole you in a certain category, unable to see or acknowledge that you offer other products or services?

This is a common problem for many businesses especially when they start out as one thing and evolve into something more than a ‘one trick pony’. For instance, one of our client companies has recently merged their new product business with their service and spare parts business requiring their sales people to promote and sell both offerings. They are finding that their clients are having trouble incorporating the new model in their perceptual bandwidth. Like Pavlov’s Dogs or a rubber band the sales people keep finding that their clients keep associating them with one or the other of their divisions, not both. Now the sales people have a part to play in this as well – they must make sure that they represent the whole business message every time they meet with the client whilst attending to the specific need to the client at that time. Not always an easy task as the sales people can have their own difficulties adapting to the new format with some falling back into their comfort zones. The challenge to get both clients and sales people on board is to have a clear message that is easy to understand and a contextual framework by which all of your products and services hang off. Ultimately the sales people and clients can understand what the whole business is about and where they all fit in.

I, too, have direct personal experience of this when I set out in my own business. Back in 1995 when I launched Barrett I had very little of my own product to sell at the time other than my consulting and facilitation skills – essentially I was the product supported by other people tools, mainly assessments. I happened to be a licensed distributor for the Call Reluctance assessment – SPQ*Gold where I could sell direct and build sub-distribution licenses. The SPQ*Gold was relatively new to the market back then and had a real competitive edge, and I did such a good job selling it, my business became the Number 3 distributor in the world for this tool. However I knew strategically that if I was to grow my business on solid foundations I either needed to secure distribution license agreements or develop my own products. It was in 1998, three years after I started my business, that I made the decision to make my own products, with an aim to have more than 80 per cent of my revenue come from my own products such as sales training modules, sales simulations, sales recruitment kits, sales performance management systems etc. and less than 20 per cent come from other product manufacturers. To build my own products takes time, energy and investment, and 16 years on I now have over 200 items on my IP (intellectual property) Assets Register.

As I began to introduce my Barrett built products a funny thing happened with my existing clients. They couldn’t see my new product offerings. Instead, they kept pigeon holing me as ‘SPQ SUE’. It turned out I had done such a good job growing the brand of SPQ*Gold in the Australian marketplace that people thought it was my product, when in fact it was not. I did not have an exclusive license arrangement and I knew that if I did not rectify this perception problem I would be at risk of being the unofficial sales and marketing arm for the makers of SPQ*Gold and therefore put my business at risk. If they ever came in and took away those licenses I would be left with nothing, yet I would have been the person that would have done all the heavy lifting in the market place.

As I transitioned from majority of my revenue coming from other product supplier sources, I not only had to invest in building good quality products and resources, which takes time, but I had to begin to change the perceptions and mindsets of my clients so they could begin to expand their views about what my business was capable of.

Little did I know how long that would take. They just seemed to hold on to ‘SPQ SUE’ for such a long time and didn’t want or couldn’t see that we were able to offer so much more. There appeared to be a myopia, a near sightedness that existed but they weren’t to blame – it turns out I had done such a good job building loyalty and brand awareness for this tool and my expert use of it that I had inadvertently confused my brand with another company’s key product. In short it took me only three years to get them to think of me as brand ‘SPQ SUE’ but it took me another six to eight years to finally get them to see what else we had to offer that wasn’t just SPQ*Gold, such as sales and sales management training, sales assessments, sales coaching and sales consulting. I had to rework my business brand to represent a Sales Transformation and Sales Mastery Business rather than just an assessment business. Now with careful planning, consistent messaging and persistence we are known in our own right and SPQ*Gold is only part of what we offer.

So to avoid being pigeon holed by your clients here are some tips:

make sure your message is very clear and across everything you do
make regular and consistent contact with clients and prospects to ensure you keep them updated about your service or product offerings i.e. e-newsletters, product updates, face2face meetings, etc.
make sure your new products or services are presented in a way that makes sense to your clients and market place
when meeting with clients make sure you uncover all of their priorities which can give you the opportunity to present your broader capabilities and make them aware that you are more than just one thing
know how to present your complete offering as a system which can work as a whole or in parts

Next week I will write about the decision we made to shift from being mainly a distributor of products to a product manufacturer in our own right and the challenges and lessons we had along the way.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au

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Can a sales manager be an effective sales coach?

April 14, 2011 in Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Talent, Sales Training, Success

Coaching usually focuses on two areas of development to achieve excellence: skills and performance. Excellence in performance is knowing the right processes to apply in the right situation, coupled with the personal insight to know how to apply them wisely. An effective sales coach is there to help people achieve excellence and realize many more benefits.

However to be an effective sales coach your people must experience you as a support in helping them achieve higher performance and not a hindrance. Often people experience performance improvement initiatives as ‘threats’ or ‘aimless chats’ leaving people feeling negative, intimidated or that their time has been wasted.

For coaching to work at its best the relationship between coach and coachee must be one of partnership with trust, safety and minimal pressure. The pay cheque, promotion and performance axe have no place in a coaching relationship. Often, sales managers don’t know the difference between managing and coaching and find it hard to change hats when required. So can a sales manager reconcile the roles of manager and coach and can a manager really be an effective coach especially given time pressures and other competing priorities?

Barrett’s newly appointed Head of Coaching, Robyn Creed says ‘Yes, managers and especially sales managers can be fantastic coaches, however coaching demands the highest qualities of a manager.’

“Qualities include active listening, empathy, integrity, honesty, detachment and effective questioning. Coupled with this is a willingness to adopt a ‘performance enhancing’ mindset to staff development along with the skillful use of best practice coaching tools and frameworks. True coaches help people liberate their talent to realise mastery. Being able to set yourself a part from your managerial duties i.e. the KPI agenda, delivery of strategy, results, and firefighting and instead, approach each staff member as an individual when coaching, allows you to build a genuine coaching relationship. Creating a coaching climate can be a challenge for many managers mainly due to time constraints, competing priorities which often relegate coaching to ‘nice-to-have’ status, and the lack of proper training in effective coaching tools and strategies,’ Robyn said.

So how can a sales manager reconcile the roles of manager and coach? Knowing the difference helps. Review the following checklist on Managing and Coaching and see where you fall in relation to these roles.

Managers:
•   Do most of the talking and directing
•   Tell people how things should be done
•   Fix problems – sometimes preventing staff members from developing necessary skills
•   Presumes and makes assumptions (not having delved deeply into what is going on for an individual)
•   Seek control
•   Order people, provide directions
•   Works on
•   Keep distant
•   Assign blame

Coaches:
•   Spend most of the time in a coaching discussion listening to their staff member
•   Ask people how they think things should be
•   Prevent problems – when appropriate, skill people up to develop skills to manage situations effectively
•   Explore, providing staff with in-depth insight around a particular situation or what is going on with an individual)
•   Empower team member and seeks commitment
•   Allow people to develop their own path, but challenges when necessary
•   Work with (partnerships to develop skills and improve performance)
•   Make contact
•   Take responsibility (those who understand the importance of coaching appreciate the direct link between their coaching of their staff and their staff’s performance)

Many sales managers we work with have reviewed this list and realise they are not coaching at all. At best they have chats over coffee which is not the same as coaching. Yet they are ever concerned that their people may not be performing to the standard they require.

In 2005, the Sales Executive Council conducted a survey of over 3000 Sales Professionals and their sales managers. Some of their findings clearly demonstrate the difference in sales professionals’ performance based on the effectiveness of coaching. In this study there was at least 19% improvement in sales performance as a direct result of one-on-one coaching which meant the difference between people achieving their sales quotas or not.

Recent results from ICF Consumer Global Awareness Study reported that more than 42.6% of the respondents who had experienced coaching chose “Optimise individual and/or team performance” as their motivation for being coached. This reason ranked highest followed by “Expand professional career opportunities” at 38.8% followed by “Improve business management strategies” at 36.1%. Other more personalised motivations like “Increase self-esteem/self-confidence” and “Manage work/life balance” rated fourth and fifth to round out the top five motivations.

Coaching is key to performance improvement in any role. So why isn’t coaching prevalent in the daily lives of sales leaders and managers?

Lack of time is usually the issue. Finding time to coach is a real issue for these managers. Too many managers find themselves firefighting, unable to devote sufficient time to long term planning, visioning and most importantly coaching and developing their people. The paradox here is that if they coach their staff properly the staff will be capable of shouldering more responsibility, freeing the manager from firefighting and allowing them to be available to manage and coach their people and grow and develop the business.

So how do we get managers to engage in coaching?

Help sales managers see the real value in coaching including the dollars and sales it can return to the business. We need to help managers see that coaching delivers far more than the effort put into coaching however, if you have never experienced effective coaching you are unlikely to value it. One solution is for managers to experience professional coaching themselves and see how it helps them achieve excellence in their own role. Engaging an independent coach to work with a manager i.e. a ‘coach-the-coach’ experience has great benefits. Ideally sales managers would be trained in best practice coaching tools and strategies to give them the confidence and competence to coach. Another solution some managers are resorting to is outsourcing the coaching of their team members to independent coaches or internal people specifically trained and assigned to a coaching role thus leaving managers to manage. This is a trend in some industries such as call centres.

Robyn Creed says that outsourcing authentic coaching can really help people experience an agenda free environment helping them to shift and move to higher levels of performance without the complicated relationship of their managers. However, she does warn that abdicating coaching responsibilities as a manager is dangerous. ‘Managers should not avoid coaching’ says Robyn, ’The skills and mindset of coaching need to be ever present in a manager’s tool box, especially in sales. The opportunities to coach present themselves at any time and you have to be ready to seize the opportunity and know what to do.’ Robyn’s advice is to adopt a blended approach: ‘train your sales managers and other managers how to be effective coaches and then, when needed supplement this with highly trained external coaches. These coaches are best used to coach the managers who are coaching their own teams as well as for high performing sales people who need that to move to a higher plain.’

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au

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Should ‘Selling’ be studied at University?

March 30, 2011 in Coaching, Education, Sales Research, Sales Training, Self Development, Success

Barrett Research invites you to express your opinion about whether ‘Selling’ should be an applied academic degree. Please complete our Graduate Degree for the Sales Profession’ survey and voice your views.

With the profession of Selling becoming increasingly more complex involving many more variables and the shift from product being at the heart of selling to strategic relationships, collaboration, true value, sustainability and transparency now on the agenda we believe it’s time for ‘Selling’ to step out under the shadow of Marketing and MBA’s to have its own degree status. Recently I was invited to speak at the Melbourne Business School’s MBA Entrepreneurs program on the topic of Selling. This was a great opportunity to put the topic of Selling on the agenda. The feedback was phenomenal – the mostly young students had many questions that needed answers to ranging from how to sell effectively, prospecting, what it the right way to sell, and the right sales mindset to name a few.

The emphasis was on the practical as well as the theoretical. Their concerns about having the Sales function and Sales Processes operating effectively in their start-ups and growing businesses were along the same lines as the questions many seasoned business owners and leaders ask every day. They were quite unaware just how much you need to know, learn and apply when it comes to selling, running a sales team and keeping up or ahead of your market on the sales front, especially now that social media is now making such an impact on sales and marketing.

While selling strategies have been around for years the actual function of being a sales person and sales leader have been poorly regarded and understood, however in recent years there has been a growing body shining light on sales as a complex and skilful profession with most of the academic work emanating from overseas. In Australia, there are currently topics or short courses (i.e. up to 7 hours duration) on the topic of selling at some Australian universities, however, they are not very comprehensive and do not cover all the aspects of Selling a skilled professional needs to know. There are certainly no Degrees in Selling in Australia. We understand that knowing how to sell effectively doesn’t happen until you get out in the field and start applying it, however, being well trained in the science of selling and understanding its many variables would help most people and businesses make a much better start. At last count there are 42 universities in the US with graduate and undergraduate sales courses on their curriculum.

At Barrett Research we view Selling as an applied science where it fits perfectly well into a business school framework and so do not see it on the pure end of academic education. I believe we need more accredited courses or at least dedicated business courses where people can properly study the science and art of Selling. Having tertiary trained sales professionals would certainly raise the standards of the profession.

We can take a leaf out of the procurement industry which is the fastest growing business profession. CIPSA has worked tirelessly to professionalise ‘purchasing’ and rightly so, given the enormous complexity facing the profession. There are now tertiary qualifications including degrees and post graduate programs in procurement.

To complete the survey, go to: ‘Graduate Degree for the Sales Profession’ survey

We will publish our survey findings soon.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.
Author: Sue Barrett, MD of www.barrett.com.au, a Sales Training firm.

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What are the 3 Sales Essentials that make for effective selling?

March 24, 2011 in Communication, Prospecting, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Training

When we meet with leaders to discuss their sales challenges in achieving sales effectiveness we find that the source of their problems often stem from three key areas: sales planning, sales prospecting and effective sales communication with clients.

Whatever our vocation, we all need to make contact with and communicate effectively to secure the ongoing custom of members, supporters, sponsors or clients to make a living. Yet too many people still leave selling to chance. They do not have a robust sales process in place that works for them or their business, product or service.

Because this optimal process is not internally articulated, Sales Managers are often left unable to teach and transfer the necessary thinking, skills, knowledge and frameworks needed for effective and sustained sales performance. These processes have not been mapped in a logical and easy to follow process. Instead, they often rely on experienced and successful sales people who sell by intuition and cannot explain what they do that makes them good at what they do.

For 16 years we have been putting Selling under the microscope and have been mapping the knowledge, skills and insights needed for successful selling into three essential processes that set the foundations of much of the work we do with clients:

A Sales Planning process – to create an actionable Go-to-market sales plan
A Sales Prospecting process – to prospect successfully
A Sales Communication process – to have productive dialogues with clients and prospects

When sales people and their managers are provided with these documented processes and taught how to use them competently and confidently, we find a dramatic shift in sales capability and sales performance. These three essential sales processes are the foundations to an effective sales team. They are not everything a sales team must know to be effective but without these three sales essentials in place sales success is left to chance. Delivered to sales teams in an interactive way where they can learn the processes whilst applying them to their business is the best way to get traction. Then reinforcing these processes with follow up sessions and targeted coaching means that these sales essentials have a chance of becoming a ‘way of life’ rather than a fad.

At the very least your sales people should be able to:

Develop a Go-to-market sales action plan that tells you:
- Who you need to be in front of
- How you need to get in front of them
- How often you need to do it to make it all worthwhile
Know how to make an effective prospecting call and prospect on a daily basis. It’s the first thing that has to happen if you want to make a sale.
Communicate effectively by asking people about their priorities, problems and objectives before you talk about yourself and what you have to offer.

When you give people what they need they start to get traction and grow. Do yourself a favour and make sure you and your sales people are well equipped with the three sales essentials.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.
Author: Sue Barrett, MD of barrett.com.au a Sales Training firm.

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