Whada ya rates? ‘Cos I’m a wholesaler and I can do better rates than them.  I can look at your thingos and give you a better deal…”

This is an excerpt from a call I received from a telecommunications wholesaler the other day.  As you can see this is not someone asking about my business rates but what I am paying for a particular service.  I am the supposed client in this exchange.  To make matters worse, when the caller introduced himself he said his name was John – that’s it, no where he was calling from or why he was calling.  This information only came to light after I asked him ‘who’ and ‘why’.

Furthermore, what is with “your thingos”?  After he blurted this out he did try to correct himself by replacing “thingos” with “bills” but the damage was already done.

On the same day as John, there was also the young woman from a well known travel agency who rang to offer me their services for corporate travel.  While pleasant enough (if not a bit too familiar for my liking) she had trouble listening to what I had said.  I had to repeat myself on numerous occasions which I found rather annoying and a waste of time.  I was later informed that her poor listening was due to a recent case of pneumonia – which she went on about for a few minutes.  This listening issue further escalated when she called back to our office three times to check the details I had given her.  As my staff took these calls on my behalf, here are some of the things that caused us to think less of this company:  She didn’t know who she had spoken to when she called back (even though I gave her my name initially); she assumed she was speaking to me when she was speaking to another member of my team; she didn’t take down my email address correctly and had to call back to get the correct one; and so on.

I am sure you can see me throwing up my hands in despair.

I do, however, give them credit for making the calls as this is usually the first and hardest step for people. To then go and ruin it all by poor telephone skills such as poor manners, poor diction, poor listening skills, and no clear purpose that the client/ prospect can understand. What a waste.

You may wonder why I bother taking these calls.  Well, it is research. And you never know, I might just find something I want or need from them as well (this does actually happen).

While I get a few very good calls every now and then (and yes I do let them know that they did a good job), sadly the vast majority of calls we get are below average or substandard.

Businesses must understand that this substandard approach to prospecting and telephone sales is ruining their business – both in terms of lost sales opportunities in the short-term and tarnished reputations in the long-term.

The good news is there are no secrets to making effective prospecting calls.  There are well document processes and tips some of which I have written about before in

Getting prospects to call you

How not to make a prospecting call

Please train your people in how to make proper, well intentioned business/sales phone calls – it’s not difficult.   A half day session in the ‘how to’ will get you started, followed by some pithy little sessions with your team on a regular basis to share what’s working well, etc.  I know I sound like June Dally-Watkins (famous deportment teacher) but as the saying goes ‘You never get a second chance to make a good first impression’.  Good manners, grace, and courtesy go a long way.

Training your people does work.  For instance, a large sales transformation training project we worked on earlier this year has seen their people having great success with their prospecting and sales conversion rates despite tough markets.  One of the key factors is that their people have been well trained in how to make purposeful, client focused, prospecting calls, and how to have effective client meetings.  Their conversion rate from call to appointment is at an all time high. And their client meeting up-selling and cross-selling rates have improved markedly as well.

The feedback from management is that they have noticed that a number of people who were initially afraid to prospect via phone are now much more confident, having been given the right skills training.  Others who were doing it instinctively but with no conscious framework have lifted as well.  This has helped them transform into professional business people who can prospect and sell well with dignity and grace.

It makes good business sense to train your people in the right way to conduct telephone prospecting and sales calls.

As we have seen from previous articles there is a chorus of people who think no one is allowed to prospect to anyone via the phone, however as I have written before prospecting by phone is a legitimate and effective way of opening and forging good business relationships.

If and until, the web can do all our prospecting for us (which seems unlikely for the foreseeable future) telephone prospecting is here to stay.  So, please for your own, your people, and your prospective clients sake please train them in how to prospect in a professional and purposeful manner.  If done properly, it can be a great source of revenue and a quick and efficient way to unearth new opportunities.

Happy prospecting.

‘My sales people are not closing sales’ is the most common complaint we hear.

The biggest cause for people not being able to close sales it not the close itself.  It often starts at the beginning of the sales call.

Sales people need to be able to properly understand client’s needs and discuss possible solutions that meet those needs with the relevant products and services before any close can take place.  Once this has happened they can close the sale but not before. If a sales person cannot meet a client’s needs with their products and services then it is a ‘no sale’.

Some people also expect every sale to be closed in one meeting.

Closing a sale as a ‘done deal’ in one meeting can happen in a number of industries, particularly in simple sales, however with more complex sales it often takes more than one meeting to progress to a final close.

In some instances, however, even simpler sales are experiencing a lengthening to the sales cycle.  We are seeing a trend with clients not wanting to make hasty decisions and needing to take a more time to make informed decisions.  Does this mean if they do not say ‘yes’ in the first meeting you have lost a sale?  No, not necessarily.  If you need to go an extra stage or two, make sure you get an agreement on the action that moves the sale forward to the next logical stage.

Where sales people often fall down in the actual closing of a sale (that is assuming they have understood the client’s needs properly as stated above) is that they do not gain agreement from the client as to which solution is the best for them. They then fail to gain commitment from the client to move forward with the sale to a close.

In ‘pressure selling tactics’, sales people are conned into believing that if you don’t get the customer to sign there and then you won’t get them back or get the sale.  In most cases, this is simply not true.  Some people like to take their time to make a decision and forcing them to ‘sign’ will actually turn them away.  The desperation displayed by sales people in these situations can be very unappealing and can be a turn off to prospective clients.   At worst this behaviour  becomes bullying on the part of the sales person, often at the expense of less assertive, confident customers.

Another common misconception is that you need to ‘ask for the sale’. If you have done a good job asking questions to establish needs, properly matched your solution to these needs, and then asked questions to check that this is what the client wants then closing the sale is easy.  We should remember it’s the client who makes the buying decision and the sales person who facilitates the process.

Top performing sales people stop asking questions here and they start telling the client what they are going to do for them. They take charge and ownership of the process. They are confident but not arrogant. The client should, and usually does, feel supported and happy to proceed
If you are in more complex sales and have several steps in the sales process, you need to make sure that at each stage you to get a commitment to move to the next logical stage of the sales process. This is a close as well – a mini close that leads to the final close.

So, what’s stopping people from saying “Ok, this is what I will do for you. Let’s get started.”?

1. They are being told that they need to keep asking questions.
2. Many sales people do not know how to conduct an open transparent purposeful conversation. They do not take charge and they make too many assumptions leaving the client, and themselves in no man’s land.

If you are direct and upfront, and confirm what has been discussed and take charge of the situation, then real viable clients will move with you and get started. Those who are tyre kicking will show their true colours and bail out.

This assertive, positive approach makes no assumptions. Both parties are clear about what will happen.

Closing the sale should be the easiest part of the process if you do everything else right.

Happy Selling

In today’s market selling skills training does not equal product training or pressure tactics.  If product training or pressure selling (the hard sell) are on the top of your sales training agenda or the only training you offer your sales people then you may want to rethink your sales training strategy.

What is expected of sales people today by way of skillful thought and action goes way beyond the product or the hard sell.

Let’s first look at what clients want.  This will then help us determine what sales people need to be able to do.

Clients today have access to more information than ever before. Clients can make product versus product comparisons very easily.  And most clients know what they are after even if they don’t know how to articulate it. Clients don’t expect to be coerced, bullied, tricked or intimidated into buying either.  They don’t expect to be treated like an ‘idiot’ or a ‘sucker’ by sales people who just talk at them and flash brochures or product sheets, looking for someone to boost their commissions.  Nor on the other hand do they necessarily want to make ‘friends’ with sales people.
Clients expect to communicate and deal with a real professional who knows their own business and how they can best serve their clients’ needs with creative solutions and fresh ideas.

So, what do clients want from sales people?

• To deal with a real professional
• To be ‘helped’ and understood
• Business acumen and commercial awareness
• A definition of what ‘success’ will look like
• A planned approach for change
• Conceptual thinking and empathy

In effect, clients are now after ‘business people’ who can sell that think about possibility and take information to the imagination phase.  Clients tend to value subject matter and solution expertise which is not the same as product knowledge.  They are looking for partners to help them map a pathway forward into the future and integrate a myriad of components, one of which is product.

Skillful thought and action are among some of the most critical skills in selling; diagnosing and solving problems, opportunity questioning, active listening, paraphrasing and verifying; advising clients on the best use of a product or a solution in relation to their priorities; linking the ‘big picture’ to details and strategy; thinking about possibilities; effective alignment of client and company objectives; listening closely to the needs of clients and being able to feed them back to marketing and technical people for product improvement and market relevance; and understanding the financial importance of client retention.

Effective sales professionals truly add value to client relationships well beyond the product.  The product is now only part of the sale, not the sale itself.

This approach to selling is seen as a distinct competitive advantage to businesses and any sales person or sales team not putting these skills into practice is at risk of losing sales and clients.   Training sales people in these skills has a significant effect on the profitability of a business.

The stereotype of the ‘smooth talking’ sales person whose job is to convince and persuade people to buy a product is outdated and, most of all, ineffective.

The skills we highlighted above are often described by those less enlightened sales individuals as ‘fluffy’ or ‘niceties’ and seen as irrelevant.  These people were either unable to extract themselves from the product  or at worst only saw their clients as a means to an end, i.e. it was only about extracting as much commission out of the client to serve their own needs – not a real partnership for a mutually beneficial relationship.

It may be worth noting that, both locally and overseas, there is an emergence of a critical skill which is ethical decision making in sales.  While not included in most selling skills programs, we are seeing a growing interest in this aspect of selling being included in training.  You have probably gathered that this always been a common thread through my writing and our work at Barrett – now it seems for obvious reasons.

Ethical training for all employees is coming through loud and clear.  This is also closely linked to ethical corporate culture, code of conduct, brand, reputation, and customer loyalty. As sales people have direct contact with prospects and customers, it would be advisable to have ethical decision making on the selling skills agenda as well.  I will discuss this specific topic in more depth in the coming weeks.

It is worth making sure your sales people conduct themselves with skillful thought and action as it may well deliver handsome payoffs.

Author: Sue Barrett is Founder and Managing Director of BARRETT.

You cannot fake real sales experience and sales wisdom.  It is one of the professions that is the hardest to teach and train because without real life sales experience you are at risk of being seen as inauthentic.

To help you make the best choice when it comes to selecting the right sales trainer let’s consider the following:

• What capabilities do you need to be a good sales trainer?
• What attitudes and mindsets can makes sales people and sales results worse?

To sell or not to sell

Without real life sales experience, you will are likely to lack empathy and real insight for the daily challenges of the intricate world of sales.  Those who talk about selling but have never had a sales budget to achieve, prospecting calls to make on a daily basis, or need to meet new people and quickly adapt to their styles while trying to understand their needs, will not be as authentic as someone who has been out there and experienced selling for real.

You can have certain knowledge about selling processes, sales figures, or selling strategy but talking about selling and actually living and experiencing a long-term sales career are two very different things.

Over the years of building my own business I have seen my fair share of good facilitators and trainers, but when it comes to training in sales those trainers who lack genuine sales experience find it hard to tackle sales training. They often don’t stack up when it comes to feedback from participants.

The overwhelming feedback from participants on sales training programs, based on research both locally and internationally, shows they want to be trained by a real sales person who understands them on all levels: the thinking and skills required to sell, the resilience needed to keep going, empathising with the challenges and setbacks and how to overcome them, the ability to deal with different people who are not always welcoming, and the business knowledge and street smarts that come from being in the field earning your way as a sales professional.

Based on this information you may well think that all you need to do is put a great sales performer up the front of the classroom and press play.

Wrong!

Many companies do follow this line of thought without the proper consideration for the other skills involved in being a competent sales trainer.  Here are some of the common traps companies often fall into when trying to deliver sales training:

Trap 1: Motivational speeches

Many companies think that all sales people need is a bit of motivation to make them sell more so they get in a pumped up motivational speaker with a bit of sales experience to tell war stories and how you can be like them if you only do this or that.  The effects of this approach are short lived. It soon wears off.  This type of approach is like a hot bath that soon gets cold.

We get a lot of salespeople saying they are sick of these types of approaches to sales training because they are left with little to show for it – they are given no real skills or tools they can use in the field.  Here is some feedback from one of our training participants, “Your program was very down to earth and engaging.  A wonderful contrast from the loud music, gimmicky motivational speakers we often get.  A very effective style, we learnt real skills and took away real tools we can use.”

Trap 2: Promoting your sales person to sales trainer

Another trap can be promoting your sales people to sales trainer with very little support to become a good sales trainer and program designer.  As a result we have seen plenty of disasters when you let good sales performers loose on sales training.

If your sale trainer has not been properly trained in adult learning principles, classroom facilitation techniques and strategies, and is unaware about how to create practical learning content that works based on good instructional design, then you are likely to get a good sales performer up in front of the participants telling war stories about their experiences and telling everyone to be like them.   That is not training or educating people – at best it may be entertaining but that is about all you can hope for.

This is a recipe for disaster.

Just because you are a great sales person or great motivational speaker does not make you a great sales trainer.

Being a Competent Sales Trainer

The latest research shows that there are 5 competencies encompassing 18 separate skills, associated with being an effective sales trainer.  These include business acumen and communication, instructional planning, effective selling skills and experience, talent management, and teaching capability.

The sales trainer is one of the key factors that can influence the effectiveness of the sales training program.   Sales trainers perform many different roles including talent developer, coach, mentor, sales talent evaluator, sales skills evaluator, and training program design and implementer.

As facilitator lead classroom training is still a key component of sales training we would do well to examine the competencies and skills required to effectively run these sessions.  Barrett have developed a sales facilitator/ trainer competency model that helps us determine and identify skills and performance expectations for new, as well as experienced sales trainers.

Some of the main categories of competencies we look for in a competent sales trainer are:

Sales

• Planning and Organising
• Prospecting
• Building Relationships and Networks
• Consultative Problem Solving
• Results Focus
• Self-Management
• Quality Orientation
• Comprehensive communication skills
• Business acumen and Common Sense

Facilitation

• Create Collaborative Client Relationships
• Design and adapt course content for an effective learning outcome
• Plan Appropriate Group Processes
• Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment
• Guide Group to Appropriate and Useful Outcomes
• Build and Maintain Professional Knowledge
• Model Positive Professional Attitude

Within these main categories of competencies there are also several subsets of behaviours and capabilities.  Being an effective sales trainer takes more than you would expect.

Trap 3: Not passing on the right attitudes and beliefs

Besides skill, experience, and capability, you should also assess for the right beliefs, attitude and values needed for being an effective sales trainer.  Poor or inaccurate perceptions about selling passed on by the sales trainer can damage your sales training efforts on a grand scale.

If you hear a sales trainer say the following:

• “Oh we don’t call ourselves sales people here”
• “We don’t have to sell – we consult”
• “The product sells itself”
• “All sales people are pushy and rude and we aren’t like that here, are we?”

Stop the sales training and find yourself a new sales trainer.

Do your internal and external audits:

1. Be wary of sales people coming to you offering to be your sales trainer.  Check their motives.  Are they struggling with sales or ashamed of being called a salesperson and looking for an excuse to get out and find another role? Are they overly addicted to self help books and motivational pep talks which pump them up to feel positive, only to be in need of more when the effect wears off?  Do they look for or talk about getting ‘quick fix’ answers to theirs or other sales people’s emotional issues about selling?
2. Be wary of external consultants or sales trainers who are unable to accept that they, too, are sales people.  Ask you prospective sales trainer or consultant:  “Are you a good sales person?”  If they say anything that indicates an emotional denial of their sales role like “I’m a consultant not a sales person’ then that say goodbye fast.

You do not want people like this near your sales teams as they often unwittingly pass their negative, jaundiced views about selling on to their unsuspecting peers and course participants.

Think of the saying ‘watch who you let near your mind’ and remember that includes your sales trainers.

So, who’s delivering your sales training?

Author: Sue Barrett is Founder & Managing Director of BARRETT Pty Ltd