Why addressing Risk is 3 times more important than the benefits

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Neuroscience in Sales, Sales Psychology, Sales Skills

Plenty of time and effort is put into talking up the benefits of our products and services in a selling situation. Sales people often focus on why the benefits are important to our clients and how our client will be better off if they buy from us, etc.  This has been the mainstay of sales for years. Think of all the time, effort and money that goes into meetings, brainstorming sessions, designing and creating glossy brochures and marketing materials (hard copy and virtual) to define and promote the benefits of what we do and offer. …

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Why ‘Point Solutions’ ruin sales operations

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Consulting, Sales Culture, Sales Results

What is a Point Solution? A point solution solves one particular problem without regard to related issues. Point solutions are usually called for when there is a need to fix a specific problem or fast-track the implementation of a new service. Unfortunately, point solutions often don’t deliver meaningful or sustainable results. The sales training/consulting industry is littered with point solution providers, all promising ‘sales excellence in a box’ ranging from the latest selling style [1] you must adopt to a New York best seller book promising the golden nugget that will turn your sales around. When it comes to …

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Tips for using email and web leads effectively in sales

By / / Customer Service, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Skills, Social Sales

Sales can be made in several ways: face-to-face, over the phone, web-based, direct mail or via e-mail.  With the plethora of internet businesses now transacting sales online you’d be forgiven for thinking that you could dispense with sales people all together but in many instances you would be incorrect.  There are very few businesses that can run purely on the internet with no sales people interaction required.  At the very least these online businesses need customer service or ‘live chat’ enquiry centres where customers …

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The University of Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Self Development

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” overlay_strength=”0.3″ column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Until now, there has been no officially recognised benchmark for Selling at tertiary level nor salespeople who can claim a university qualification as their own. On the other hand Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Production, Engineering, Business Administration, IT, Research & Design, Human Resources, Logistics, Procurement and even Entrepreneurship all have recognised tertiary qualifications in the business stream with many proud graduates. The nature of the sales role is one that demands practical implementation, so many salespeople have …

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Why managing sales inputs leads to sales disaster

By / / CRM, Education in Sales, Performance Management, Sales Forecasting, Sales Management, Sales Measures - Inputs & Outputs, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Pipeline, Sales Results

‘Selling is a numbers game’ has been said more times than any of us care to remember.  And yes, numbers are critical to sales, however some organisations place far too much emphasis on the managing the numbers, especially their obsession with their salespeople’s input activities – i.e. number for prospecting (cold) calls, client meetings, numbers in the pipeline etc. This “management by numbers” approach is flawed and leads to confusion, distress and worst, poor sales results over both the short and longer term.  The approach fails to grasp that up to 80% of the activities of a sale are outside …

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Selling Professional Services

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Education in Sales, Sales Skills, Sales Training

This article first appeared on June 12, 2013 on BRW (now closed magazine as of 2016)

Professional services providers face a challenge that many within the sector are struggling to come to terms with. For centuries the sector – comprising doctors, lawyers, accountants engineers and the like – enjoyed a somewhat exalted position in society.

Ignorance among the general populace, fuelled primarily by the high cost of education, made studying to be a doctor, lawyer or other profession out of the reach of most, and created an impression that being a professional made the individual somewhat special.

However today, wide, relatively easy access …

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Is your business Customer Focused & Customer Centric?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brand & Reputation, Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations

As with many things these days, words or expressions get bandied about with little regard for what they really mean.  For instance, when we ask people how they define ‘Prospecting’, the overwhelming response is ‘Cold Calling’. Prospecting is far more than cold calling: it can happen anywhere with new, existing or lapsed accounts – anywhere you are trying to uncover and develop new business opportunities.  And with social networks abounding, very few people ever have to make a true cold call.  See what I mean?

And so we enter the confusing world of …

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Questions deliver answers. What questions deliver sales?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Results

It is well known that questions deliver answers.  The real question in sales is ‘What questions deliver sales results?’

Asking questions and listening are at the heart of any effective selling situation.  Questioning and listening are critical; without them you have salespeople conducting monologues to an audience of bored, disengaged, frustrated customers.  Any self-respecting sales person couldn’t image not asking questions in a sales situation, yet many well intentioned salespeople still fail to sell effectively because of poor question choices.

is selling about making friends?

like me …

follow me …

tweet me …

poke me …

WHY?

Many salespeople describe themselves as ‘people …

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How much valuable selling time are you wasting?

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Culture, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Uncategorized

When it comes to sales productivity and sales performance many companies are shortchanging themselves and, unfairly blaming their salespeople for poor sales performance results.

How can that be? Well too many businesses pay salespeople for business development and then lumber them with non-revenue, non customer oriented activities such as administration, unnecessary internal meetings, service delivery or transactional account problems.  And whilst acknowledging that these are very much a part of managing the client’s experience and classified under the sales portfolio, the haphazard manner in which these are structured does little to encourage optimal live …

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