Is Call Reluctance® choking your sales effort?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Call Reluctance, Coaching, Prospecting, Sales Coaching, Sales Psychology, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Self Promotion

Whether we are working for a private or public company, a “not for profit” or government institution, all of us are in some way competing for access to a revenue source to fund our existence.

How capable people are to take on the responsibility for improving the revenue line of a company is a hot topic in today’s competitive market.

Research shows that no longer can companies and their people rely on their technical competence, passive referrals, reputation, brand or blanket advertising to bring in new business and revenue streams as they may have done in the past. They also need to …

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Do you have difficult clients or are they just different?

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Sales Relationships, Sales Skills

Style adaptability is where a person can read another person’s preferred communication style and adjusts their own communication style to that of the other person, thus making shared communication and understanding easier. It is imperative to the principle of exchange and critical to any sales role, yet it is often one of the most poorly executed skills.

Time after time we come across teams of sales people who have no conscious idea about how to adapt their style to that of another. Instead when they come across differences, communication usually breaks down and they will speak about the …

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Sales is a team effort

By / / Communication, Customer Service, Sales Culture, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Skills, Teamwork

Sales numbers and sales processes should be understood and owned by everybody in your organisation. In today’s world if you are not directly in sales you are supporting someone who is. This is why sales really is a team effort.

Rather than being just about a feel good factor and great staff alignment, this has practical applications as well. For instance with the ability for customers (or anyone) to find and connect with anyone in your organisation through many difference channels (i.e. social networks, Google, etc.) the whole business needs to be sales fit.

With anyone being able to contact anyone …

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Measuring and managing the right things in sales

By / / Performance Management, Sales Coaching, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Leadership, Sales Management, Sales Motivation & Rewards, Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Training, Self Development

Who wants to work with accountable, responsible, and self-directed sales people? Of course we all want these types of sales people in every sales team. Yet, most businesses do not support this by setting up their sales team to clearly measure and manage their sales performance.

Sales performance management begins with accurate role descriptions and perception, data collection, and measurement in line with set goals and strategy, however many organisations measure only one variable, sale results (outputs measures).

This type of approach leaves businesses and sales teams in the dark about how they arrived at their sales …

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Whada ya rates?

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Negotiation, Sales Skills, Uncategorized

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 …

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Help my sales people can’t close sales

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Call Reluctance, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Negotiation, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Sales Training

‘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 …

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What do your sales people really need to know and apply?

By / / Business Acumen, Sales Assessments, Sales Pioneer, Sales Planning, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Sales Training, Self Development

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 …

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Who’s delivering your sales training?

By / / Education in Sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Driven Organisations, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Management, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Sales Training

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 …

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4 valuable life skills that make for success in sales and any other role

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Brain Science, Business Acumen, Communication, Emotional Intelligence, Mindful selling, Prospecting, Sales Excellence Acadamy, Sales Skills, Sales Talent, Sales Tips, Self Development

There are many things written and said about effective sales people, effective leaders, successful entrepreneurs, great teams and so on.

Many descriptions are in circulation. There is an overabundance of experts recommending this approach one day and that approach the next.

Those of us who want to be effective and successful often follow the advice of those experts however we are at risk of turning ourselves inside out and losing sight of what we are really here to do if we keep trying to bend to the winds and whims of the latest management trends, fads, findings, …

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Why you can’t have a one-type-of-sales-person-does-it-all approach

By / / Recruitment & Sales Recruitment, Sales Assessments, Sales Consulting, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

I find it somewhat frustrating when people make simplistic claims and statements about salespeople like: ‘super sales performers are all risk takers and oblivious to rejection and failure’.

Statements like this are simply not true and trivialise the complex world of selling by trying to box people without proper analysis and insight.

There is a large body of research that shows there are many types of sales people for different types of clients, products, and markets. Just because a sales person may be excellent in one market may not mean they are well suited for another.

Take call centres for instance. If the …

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