All the sales training and coaching programs in the world will not help businesses grow, unless the business itself understands what constitutes an effective revenue growth model.
The behaviors and the skills necessary for effective revenue growth in a business are generally in the hands of the sales professional. Most organizations rely on sales training and coaching to develop these skills for their team. Many businesses believe that parading their team through a sales training program is going to help improve their performance. Training alone is not the answer. According to Paul McCord in his blog, “training does not change the behavior, attitudes, or results of the vast majority of salespeople. To be effective, sales training requires that negative of ineffective behaviors be replaced with positive or effective behaviors.”
Unfortunately, effective coaching is not the answer either. In one of my previous blogs, I advocated for an effective coaching methodology to augment, support, or even replace the training regimen. I argued that participating in actual sales calls and observing sales behaviors in their actual environment provided a more effective development environment for the sales team. McCord agrees with this also, saying that behavioral changes can only be implemented with the support and guidance of a coach actively encouraging those changes.
At the end of the day, neither will work effectively unless the organization itself understands and is committed to the effective and productive behaviors required to grow the business. There is a sense that the sales team is responsible for sales. Revenue growth is their problem. And they are the only ones who need to know how to accomplish this effectively. I disagree.
Growth is an organizational issue. Effective revenue generating behaviors requires the full engagement of the entire business. Too many sales managers, executives, owners, and other functional departmental heads have determined they are exempt from the developmental activities they put their salespeople through. They are wrong!
Effectively applying all the requisite behaviors and skills that lead to great sales results requires the full participation and skills of your entire organization. Without it, the message is lost, diluted, and unsustainable without the cultural influence of an entire organization embracing it. Salespeople behave independently from the organization and selectively choose to embrace the coaching methodologies presented them not because they don’t get it, it is because they don’t have to. No one else in their organization gets it either.
If you are looking to effectively develop your growth team, remember to find someone who can customize a program that reflects how you envision adding value to and how you desire to communicate with your customers. Then, create a development program for your entire organization so that everyone engages in these behaviors in a productive and effective manner.
Taking the time to learn and understand everything you can about your client is one of the biggest challenges we face as sales professionals. In this video, I talk about my learning methods and how I transform into learn mode in the sales process.
“The Sales Cooke” pursues his passion by presenting unique and interactive programs designed to productively increase revenues, effectively improve customer relationships and integrate team and organizational behaviors into the sales equation. His approach brings refreshing insight and enthusiasm into the current trends and complexities of a growing global business environment.
He has authored of two powerful books, “Cooked Up Sales” and “Your Daily Sales Guide”, which emphasizes his philosophies on the power of relationship building and solution selling behaviors.
My business is all about strategy and education. My business provides organizations with a definitive strategy and implementation model that will enable businesses to grow effectively and efficiently. Note, I do not call myself a trainer or a consultant. I avoid these words as both of them imply the application of some standardized methodology that is not as closely engaged to the process of a customized strategy, implementation or results model. My clients bring me in to help them get things done. My methodology and philosophy for effective revenue growth is melded into their business to create a new and powerful sales program. We are in the program together.
A key component of this process is coaching. Buried deep in the Wikipedia definition is this explanation that
“coaching is a recognized discipline used by many professionals engaged in people development.”
In a recent blog, Coaching Results Speak Louder Than Words, there were some excellent points about the powers and benefits of coaching in sales organizations. The author, ForceLogix CEO Patrick Stakenas, makes some great points about the impact of coaching in producing high performing sales teams. Here are two thoughts I would like to focus on:
1. The coaching of sales individuals and leveraging the experiences of existing talent to improve the performance of the entire sales organization has become a requirement.
2. Winning sales organizations are providing a methodical approach to defining, analyzing and managing sales performance indicators.
The emphasis here is on leveraging the experience and the methodologies that make effective sales programs high performing programs. There is a distinct difference between coaching and training. Training is similar to a clinic where people learn and practice sales tactics. Training is facilitated in order to indoctrinate a sales team on a process methodology that they are to learn and embrace, even memorize. In training, you practice the methodology over and over again until you are conditioned to do it effectively, maybe even perfectly.
Coaching is like watching game film. Every sales call is a coaching opportunity. Great coaching takes place when the sales team applies and practices their skills and reports their results and experiences. It is this approach that facilitates the learning process and helps individuals improve and define their skills and abilities. While training provides the fundamental learning of how to understand what to do, effective coaching utilizes those real life results and experiences as learning opportunities. It is those learning experiences that coaches can use to re-inforce the processes more effectively, provide guidance for better technique, or more readily adopt tactics that can enhance performance. Effective coaching is an art that requires insight, experience, and the ability to utilize everyone’s experiences as learning tools.
The next time you are looking for a program for your sales team, skip the classroom stuff. They have had enough of that already. Turn your program over to a coach who has the commitment, the experience, and the passion to help them apply the right skills and abilities to be effective selling professionals.
Building effective relationships at a networking event are important. This video provides four simple steps to make the relationship building activity more productive and effective.
With all the attention paid to social media these days, I am amazed at how limited the depth of knowledge and insight many “experts” actually provide their attendees. There is simply too much talk about the tools and way too much talk about what has worked for other businesses. There is not enough fundamental education and strategic planning information for business owners looking for real applicable answers to their social media challenges.
A case in point is this promotion on “how to make the most of your time meeting people online.” This presentation features benefits like “why you should update your status and with what kind of information” and “how you can use social media networking to further your brand” and “which four social media networks you should be using and why.”
This is all good tactical information. Where is the real strategic planning for businesses? What worked for these experts, or examples of what some random business accomplished, simply does not mean that these results automatically translate to success in other situations.
Here is another event that asks, “tired of social media discussions that tell you to ‘just do it?’ Wondering how to make key decisions and how to manage and track your effectiveness? Have you signed up for a few accounts but aren’t sure what to do next?” The attendees will learn “which social media options are best for your company, how to measure your social media efforts and how to maintain these efforts in tough times.”
Tactics, tactics, and more tactics. It is no wonder people keep going to these social media seminars. No one has provided them a template to build a social media plan that makes sense for their business. These events are missing the most important element—a strategic planning component. A social media strategic plan asks several simple questions: What do I want to accomplish; Where is my market; and, What is my brand? The result: A social media strategy that meets the business objectives in the targeted market with a clear understanding of the brand and value proposition.
It is not the tools that define the strategy or the tactics. It is the strategy that defines the necessary tools.
Before going to another expert presentation on social media, ask yourself, “do I even have a social media strategy for my business?” If the answer is no, stay home and work on that first. And, if you need help understanding how to develop a social media strategy for your business, call me. I have built the plan and I actively help businesses develop one. Otherwise, keep wasting your time getting little nuggets of what everyone else has done and work backwards – you will eventually figure it out.
Some other blogs for perspective and reading pleasure:
Say you had a trusted friend with 25 yearsof sales experience willing to give you three hours of his time to help you with your sales challenges…and all it would cost you was lunch…would you accept that offer?
I have an even simpler, more accessible solution….“Cooked Up Sales – Another Great Selling Recipe”
This is not your traditional “how to” sales book. Cooked Up Sales provides you with the recipes for:
Building effective customer relationships
Presenting the solutions that motivate your customers to buy
Effectively qualifying “real” sales opportunities
Simplifying the sales process into a real-life application model
Transforms “pushy” sales people into a professional resource
For the cost of a nice lunch, “Cooked Up Sales” offers you the best of 25 years of insights, ideas, and tools to transform your sales process into an effective and productive process.
This is not your typical sales book—no tricky or tacky phrases, no complicated step-by-step process, and nothing insincere or cheesy to memorize. This is a simple, concise, and easily applied recipe for selling success featuring real life sales and sales management experiences of the author, The Sales Cooke.
Look what those who have read this book are saying…
“Cooked Up Sales, is a winner. Cooked Up Sales helps readers develop the critical processes necessary to build the performance they only dreamed of.”
“Forget spending thousands of dollars on sales training…Cooked Up Sales gives you all the ingredients you need. In plain English, Dave explains the entire sales process – everything from how to qualify a prospect to closing a deal and managing the relationship beyond. Read this book and start selling the right way NOW!”
“Dave is an expert at the business of sales and sales process. Cooked Up Sales… is a quick read full of insightful examples and sales process tips. Following Dave’s recipes will result in a bountiful sales dinner indeed.”
“‘The Sales Cooke’ has taken a very straight-forward, no-nonsense approach to sales and the sales cycle. His clever use of analogies is simple, understandable, not to mention easy to execute. This is one ‘recipe’ you don’t want to overlook.”
“Too many authors try to makes sales more complicated than it really is. Cooked Up Sales is a refreshing return to basics that provides some excellent insight into managing the sales process, building relationships and understanding your customers. All of this leads to a roadmap for creating and communicating compelling win-win solutions that get you to ‘yes’.”
Still lost after attending all those educational seminars?
Trying to figure out how social media can help you with your business?
Don’t be. Social Media is a very powerful tool that can help you build your business.
That success involves going about it in the right way.
Strategic Resource Group, LLC has developed a program that is removes the mystery, the frustration and the confusion to help you effectively understand and engage your business in a social media program.
Before You Do Anything, Have a Roadmap
The keys to an effective social media program starts with a strategy.
Understanding how to use the tools do not help until you have a plan and a strategy. We have developed a simple and effective process to formulate your strategy, plan your implementation program, and introduce you to the tools first. Once you know where you want to go, what you want to do, what the commitment and the process is, you can then embark on the learning process as it relates to the tools.
You Can’t Learn Until You Understand
Most people “don’t get it” because they are trying to learn how to use a bunch of gadgets without understanding how these gadgets can help them. If you knew what the plan was, what you need to know and understand about the tools becomes clearer and the education process is simplified.
A Simple Process that Works!
Here is our three-step Quick Start Strategy Program:
Strategic Planning: In this session we map out your strategic plan for social media. We focus on the Five Drivers that are the core of any social media strategy.
Implementation Planning: In this session we focus on putting the plan into action. We define the steps, the methodology, the keys and the responsibilities associated with making this plan work.
Training and Support: We provide several hands-on workshops that help you set-and up the tools and provide the training to get you started. Process.
Put your Social Media program on the right track today!!
I spend a great deal of time talking about the marvelous opportunities associated with social media. Following my talks, I always get one standard question: “How much time do I have to spend?” My standard answer is that it really depends upon your strategy and your commitment. I came cross two blogs in the past week which were starkly similar in some parts of their message. In his blog, “The Trinity of Social Media“, Steven Groves references the word “strategy” more than any other word in the blog. The most important take away from Steven’s blog is that there are three tools that are critical to your social program. How you use or link these tools is entirely dependent upon your “strategy.” Bottom line, what you do is determined by your strategy. This a good blog to read for some of his other good points, as well.
The other insight comes from one of my favorite blogsters, Kyle Lacy. In his blog, “Three Steps to Being Productive“, he talks about managing your time to make your social media program effective. If you have read any of Kyle’s previous blogs he has a great perspective on managing the process, the strategy, and the opportunities of social media. In this blog he shares that he commits “an hour each day to information sharing (writing blogs, commenting on blogs, perusing my Google Reader) and an hour a day to using my other networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Smaller Indiana).” This is not to say that you have to spend two hours a day. (For the record, I also spend two hours a day.) What he is saying is that to accomplish his goals for his social med program, he manages to and commits to a designated amount of time to reach those goals.
Both blogs reflect the need for you to define your vision and goals–your strategy and your commitment–for a social media program. The business world demands too much of our time and our energy for us to spend it simply trying to do things. To be successful in anything requires a vision, a mission, a goal, and a commitment. Before simply jumping into the social media pool have a plan, develop a strategy. And, if you need help, assisting business owners in developing a social media strategy is something that I do quite well. Make it happen!!
In my previous blog, I made a commitment that this site would become a resource site for identifying problems and utilize subscriber interaction to find solutions. I am committed to ending the rants that simply pick at the problem. The content from that blog elicited a great conversation on my Facebook site.
As we deal with the issues of our day, it is obvious most everyone is frustrated with our economic situation. Whether there is any one solution to the mess is quite debatable (see my Facebook conversation). That said, there is an opportunity for all of us to learn and collaborate and grow in the face of this adversity. The economic mess is a great challenge for all of us. Right now, as people are losing their homes, their jobs, their retirement, and their minds, the discussions around the economy are highly charged and very emotional. To that end I would encourage all of us to try three things as we discuss the pain, the challenge and the resolution to this mess:
1. Don’t look back: This is a new day with new issues. Whatever decisions, choices and policies that have been made cannot be undone. We can only create and implement new ideas and new visions to the challenges. Knowing what you know today, what do we need to do to really address the issue? And, how will that really help?
2. Listen for the opportunity: Too much of our communication today is about listening to people from where they have historically stood or believed. This enables us to shut down the conversation because we already know “where they are coming from.” Change that. Listen and explore the opinion, the thought, or the idea. Discuss and truly listen for the opportunity to learn, understand and adapt to differing opinions and beliefs. Of course, that would require a commitment on your part to be willing to modify, not protect, your opinions. Listening for the opportunity to develop an idea or solution through interactive dialogue is how great things are accomplished.
3. Take the time to listen to a different voice: We all have our favorite editorials, media voices, and information resources. We embrace them because they reflect what we know and believe. They speak our language in ways that effectively resonate with us. In this time of turbulence, the opportunity to listen to a different voice and look for the opportunities in their message is very powerful. These are unsettling times. It is time we got a little uncomfortable with different perspectives and explored new viewpoints. There is opportunity in opening up to the learning process. (Kudos to Leslie Knowlton for this suggestion.)
As Leslie says, “Until each of us understands our individual contribution to the problem we cannot move the blockages we are currently experiencing.” Let’s enjoy and embrace the opportunity to try out a different set of opinions and truly listen to and learn from them.
“The Sales Cooke” pursues his passion by presenting unique and interactive programs designed to productively increase revenues, effectively improve customer relationships and integrate team and organizational behaviors into the sales equation. His approach brings refreshing insight and enthusiasm into the current trends and complexities of a growing global business environment.
My business is all about strategy and education. My business provides organizations with a definitive strategy and implementation model that will enable businesses to grow effectively and efficiently. Note, I do not call myself a trainer or a consultant. I avoid these words as both of them imply the application of some standardized methodology that is not as closely engaged to the process of a customized strategy, implementation or results model. My clients bring me in to help them get things done. My methodology and philosophy for effective revenue growth is melded into their business to create a new and powerful sales program. We are in the program together.
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