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

By / / 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 …

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Knowing your business

By / / Business Acumen, Communication, Procurement, Sales Relationships, Sales Research, Sales Skills, Sales Training

‘Knowing your business’ was voted as the Number 3 Sales Trends for 2011. With business becoming more complex it should come as no surprise that clients want to work with business people who can sell, think about possibilities and create a work partnership with their businesses. However, our studies with hundreds of sales professionals and middle management sales leaders reveal that the level of business knowledge and commercial acumen is poor or non-existent in many cases. Often trained on product but not on business practices, many sales teams are falling short in delivering …

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Transitioning from the old sales paradigm to the new world of social sales

By / / Communication, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Self Development, Social Media, Social Sales, Strategy

When I began my career as a professional sales person in the early 1980’s we were trained in product and client communication skills focusing on handling objections. We were given business cards, product brochures, a geographic territory of clients to manage and grow, and a car to get around in. We did not have mobile phones, let alone smart phones / tablets, laptops, or CRM’s. There was very little coaching and we were expected to make sales and make it work.

For a while there, let’s say 20+ years, it seemed like business as usual as many companies …

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The Yin Yang of Selling

By / / Sales Assessments, Sales Leadership, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Value Proposition & Value Add

In the 20th century the emphasis on B2B selling had a distinct aggressive ring to it. So much so, that you could walk down the halls of many businesses and think that you were involved in big game hunting. Many of these teams saw selling as an extreme sport, or more precisely, Big Game Fishing or Hunting.

  • Customers were ‘Targets’.
  • Getting a sale was referred to as ‘the Kill’.
  • Customers were regarded as objects to be possessed or trophies to be placed in their cabinet; to be shown off and admired (perversely so) like stuffed animal heads on the wall.

Little regard was really …

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Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

By / / Ethics & Values, Procurement, Sales Skills, Value Proposition & Value Add

I recently had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the 6th CIPS Australasia Annual Conference for the procurement profession. It was my third invitation to speak at a CIPSA event in my capacity as a professional representing the sales profession. The theme for this conference was ‘Managing Volatility’. A key message I gleaned from the conference was Value Management rather than the narrow band width of Cost Management.

Don’t get me wrong, the Procurement Profession is still interested in cost, however, there was a distinct awareness about ‘

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The real $ value of role playing

By / / Sales Skills, Sales Training

Tell almost any sales person they are going to participate in role plays as part of their sales training and you will hear a collective groan. In short most sales people hate role playing. It is often seen as a form of potential embarrassment, or something stilted and false. Many people feel self conscious and don’t want to look ‘bad’ in front of their peers. It doesn’t help either that over 90% of all sales people follow no logical processes when selling, so when it comes to role playing they don’t know what to work on.

When …

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Are your listening skills costing you or making you money?

By / / Communication, Sales Skills

Who is really listening? Genuinely, sincerely and honestly listening? I’m noticing a lot more telling and a lot less listening lately. You only have to watch the ABC program ‘Q&A’ to see the number of politicians who have great trouble listening – to anything except themselves. They interrupt others giving answers to questions that were never asked. No wonder we are a bit jaded and cynical.

If we reflect on our own approach to communication I suspect many of us would shudder if others described us in a similar fashion to those politicians. I am sure it is not how …

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More lessons from MasterChef – Can you take the heat?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Emotional Intelligence, Performance Management, Sales Skills, Self Development, Success

As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”. Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons. Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef. Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations. The time pressures and …

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What’s the difference between a member, a client and a customer?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Ethics & Values, Sales Culture, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Strategy

What’s in a name? Well, there seems to be some confusion in the market place around the terminology used to describe those people who pay us money for goods, services, experiences, donations, etc.

Different industries can have different terms for the consumers of their products and/or services. We see terms such as customer, client, patient, guest, patron, member, subscriber, donor, etc. used to describe a person who buys our products or services and intends to use them directly. In short, these terms are referring to the same person – the ‘end user’. However, not everyone ‘consumes’ our products or services or …

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We want more than a script

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Communication, Customer Service, Prospecting, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sales people around the world use sales scripts. Used properly, sales scripts act as scaffolding or bridgework to earn us the right to have a meaningful discussion with our prospecting customers, members, donors or subscribers. The sales script is a well constructed set of guidelines that support us when we prospect.

Good sales scripts:

  • are purposeful – have a clear reason why you are calling someone;
  • use language the customer understands;
  • are designed for the benefit of the listener with it always being “the prospects choice” to accept …

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