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 …

Costing cutting at the expense of sales? Bad move Read Post »

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 …

The Power of Women in Sales Leadership Read Post »

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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MYTH: Cold calling is a good idea

By / / Prospecting, Sales Skills

In the “olden days” when I first started my business, over 95% of my sales came about through cold calling, which I had learnt to do really well when I worked as a sales recruitment specialist with Morgan & Banks.

At M&B – and in my business – it was very clear that if I didn’t bill anything I didn’t earn anything. So I got on the phones and I prospected to people I didn’t know – that is, cold calling.

This was well and truly before the internet was in mainstream use and I had the privilege of learning how to …

MYTH: Cold calling is a good idea Read Post »

Motivation or manipulation?

By / / Ethics & Values, Sales Coaching, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Research, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy

What is the line between motivating sales staff and manipulating sales staff? How do you make sure you don’t go over the line and place people under extreme pressure to achieve?

Research both here and overseas shows that high performing sales people identified how important it was to their performance that they remain motivated, which they recognised can be influenced by both internal and external factors, with a sense of self satisfaction found to be the most important contributor to their motivation.

The recent 4 Corners program on Telstra staff and a bullying culture that is supposed to be being cultivated in …

Motivation or manipulation? Read Post »

Exceeding customers’ expectations?

By / / Communication, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Teamwork

If I hear “Oh let’s exceed our customers’ expectations” one more time I will scream.

Usually my response is: ‘Why don’t we just meet their expectations in the first place?’ Too many times the marketing hype (the promise) does not always connect with the sales expectation set up by the sales team, which doesn’t always translate into a service experience we were promised in the first place.

We are often left disappointed, jaded and, if it happens more than once, cynical.

Too many of us have stories of where we have been let down by businesses not fulfilling our expectations. We see broken …

Exceeding customers’ expectations? Read Post »

Selling and managing are not the same

By / / Coaching, Performance Management, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Results

Last week I spoke about sales burnout and the challenges many SME business owners have of being all things to all people including, usually, the main sales person and sales manager.Like many people, I have known that selling and managing are not the same thing. They are two very distinct jobs with different demands and expectations.

Some home truths about sales management:

  • Sales teams cannot be lead from behind a desk.
  • Sales people cannot be cloned into the image of the top sales-person-now-sales-manager.
  • Mediocre supervision can put a big dent in the effectiveness of good salespeople.
  • Sales people need sales leaders and coaches, not administrators …

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