Being authentic in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Ethics & Values, Sales Relationships, Value Proposition & Value Add, Vision, Mission & Purpose

The 20th century approach of one-upmanship, although still encouraged by many traditional sales managers, seems to be slowly retreating into the shadows of the past as crude and old-fashioned. Polar opposite to the latter, but just as unproductive, are the approaches of:

  • A whining puppy (pleading for a sale trying to make customers feel sorry for you).
  • A chameleon (always bending and twisting yourself to fit any situation, often losing yourself in the process).
  • A parrot (not adapting your approach enough to suit the style if the client).

These approaches often annoy customers and elicit pity rather than trust.

Too many sales people (in particular …

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Not all customers are good customers

By / / Business Acumen, Ethics & Values, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

Ever had some customers who spend very little with you but take up enormous amounts of your time? Nothing’s ever right, they quibble about every cent and they do not intend to spend much with you anyway.

Or those customers who are really nice and you get along with them very well, but you know they do not have the potential to develop into long-term revenue generating accounts for your business.

What do you do? You need sales, but at what cost to your business? These types of customers, in effect, keep you from working with customers where you can get a …

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Ashamed of being in sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Ethics & Values, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Value Proposition & Value Add, Wellbeing
  • Need you daily fix of self-help tapes/CDs or guru books to get you pepped up to sell.
  • Have a fragile positivism about sales, which bursts at the slightest criticism.
  • Can’t wait to get out of sales to get a “real” job.
  • Secretly ashamed of being in a sales career – this isn’t what I should be doing, my mother wants me to be a dentist.
  • Fear the loss of approval of your friends, family or peers because you think they will think less of you if you are in sales.
  • Don’t like being called a sales person – prefer titles like marketing consultant or pre-need …

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Missed & Lost Sales Opportunities

By / / Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Planning, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Time Management

Not enough new business coming? Sales drying up? Not making a satisfactory impact when in front of prospective clients?

If this is happening to you, consider your sales effectiveness and your sales efforts from these two angles:

  • Missed sales opportunities.
  • Lost sales opportunities.

    • If market conditions are right, and you have good products or services, then you may want to take a look at your own efforts. Your poor sales efforts may be due to:

    Missed sales opportunities: Put simply, missed sales opportunities are all about a lack of prospecting activity. If there is little or no prospecting for …

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    Costing cutting at the expense of sales? Bad move

    By / / Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting, Sales Leadership, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Training

    I don’t know about you, but when markets start to tighten or when things feel a bit uncertain, instead of cost cutting and bunkering down, I have found that you need to do precisely the opposite. You need to invest in your sales efforts with good strategy, sales training, good sales management and good sales coaching.

    I have experienced selling in tight markets over the years and found these times to be some of my most successful sales years. Why? Because I took advantage of everyone else’s pessimistic approach as they sat around complaining, and I got out there and learned …

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    Influencing vs Negotiating

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Negotiation, Sales Relationships, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training

    It has often been said that very strong negotiation skills are critical to being a high performing sales person. However, findings from our “sales force fitness” profiling work, where we profile critical qualities for successful sales performance in many businesses, large and small, is telling a very different story.

    Before you invest your training dollars into negotiating skills training for your sales team, you might like to think about investing it into influencing skills training instead.

    Why? The ability to positively influence prospects or clients towards your brand and product offering – more so than negotiation – is what is needed in …

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    Getting Sales Recruitment Right

    By / / Assessments, Attitudes & Behaviours, Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Role Clarity, Sales Assessments, Sales Consulting, Sales Psychology, Sales Talent

    Your small business is growing and diversifying. You’ve experimented with bringing in an inexperienced sales person (who did not work out). You realise you need a more experienced direct sales person, but you don’t know where to go or what to look for.

    All you know is you need a sales person who is able to prospect for, and win, new business opportunities on a consistent daily basis, however you are not really able to detail anything else. You know your recruitment approach is haphazard at best. And what’s worse, it’s costing you big time.

    You are not alone. Many SMEs …

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    The Power of Women in Sales Leadership

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Gender & Sales, Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Relationships, Sales Research

    As the New York Stock Exchange is now looking at “employee engagement” as a significant predictor of higher share value and market return, and given we are all competing, not just for clients and market share but for good employee talent, maybe a key performance indicator for sales management could be in Organisational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB).

    I came across some recent research into sales management, and it got me thinking about how team leaders were not allowed to “mother” their sales teams.

    A loaded term, “mothering”, and without proper definition creates myths and innuendo where none should exist. The following research piece …

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    Sales and emotional intelligence

    By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Relationships, Self Development, Success, Wellbeing

    The “gender” discussion highlighted by my Sell like a Woman project, articles and other research leads people to believe that women are doing things men cannot because of gender. And this is causing sighing and forelock tugging in some male circles. “Not another feminist on her soap box” or “all men are useless” I hear some say.

    As stated previously, my approach is not to denigrate men or idolise women, but to bring you information and findings that give you food for thought to help you make decisions so that you can be more successful at what you choose to do …

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    Changing sales perceptions

    By / / Sales Relationships, Sales Skills

    Stop for a minute and reflect: What is your view of selling? Has your perception of sales changed over the years?

    Your answer is most likely ‘yes’ if you are a customer or salesperson in business to business (B2B) sales. But not if you are a customer of retail. More about that another time.

    Today’s changing B2B and high-end B2C sale practice styles are an adaptation to the environmental forces. The change towards people-centricity is evident in a number of organisational functions, in particular the sales function where there has been a significant shift from product-focused selling to relationship selling.

    To serve their …

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