Archive for Training
The Selling Professional — 2010 Version
Posted by: | CommentsMy most recent post, “Persuasive Selling is Dead” generated an unusually high number of positive comments. There is obviously an ongoing struggle here. Most people agree with the premise of the effective sales professional, yet too few are able to successfully apply these highly productive skills.
“Why do so many sales professionals continue to engage in unproductive, annoying tactics and behaviors?”
The answer lies squarely on the business owner for not really understanding what constitutes effective selling behaviors, not hiring the best sales types, and for not providing a foundational learning environment for the effective development of the salespeople on their team. There have also been significant shifts in the market that creates a greater productivity gap between what was tolerated in sales and what is expected from sales professionals today. The opportunity for change and improvement in the development of the selling professional of 2010 lies in the following critical activities:
- Analyze the performance of all of your salespeople. Define what you expect of your sales professional. If they have the skills, the results, and the commitment to be the professional you expect keep and develop them–eliminate those who are not.
- Developing the sales professional to the skills of good selling behaviors. Don’t confuse sales development activities with product training, they are not the same. And sales development is fundamentally the more difficult of the two.
- Sales development is not “hit and miss”. Effective sales development requires a specific program of principles, skills and behaviors centered on daily activity and a focused, consistent effort. Effective sales development is not simply a class or a course, it is an ongoing and sustained program.
- Sales development takes time and commitment and experience. Effective sales development requires the experience and guidance of a mentor or expert who is able and committed to provide continuous tutelage. Doctors and lawyers spend years training and practicing for their careers. To become a sales professional also takes years of consistent education and effort.
- Successful sales development requires an ongoing financial and resource investment. If you don’t make the investment in developing your salespeople, who will? People don’t learn sales in school, it is an education you must provide. If you will make the investment in your salespeople, you will absolutely receive the reward.
(Note: The foundation for these suggestions were contributed by Timothy B. Huffaker, President, The Business Performance Group in his previously recognized article “Are Your Sales People Professionals?“)
Your Sales Call is a Learning Call When…
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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.
What Defines Effective Salespeople?
Posted by: | CommentsA recent slide show on Inc.com discussed six characteristics of a great salesperson. I found the slide show informative and somewhat insightful. What captured my attention the most was the words used to define a great salesperson:
- Passion for the Product
- Great Listening Skills
- Understanding Early Adopters
- Perfect Execution
- Being Trusted by the Customer
- Bottom Line: Can They Get the Order?
The words that caught my attention were: passion, listening, understanding, execution, trust, and bottom line. At the end of the day, great salespeople are usually defined by the same general characteristics. The ones in this group fit those descriptors.
If every great salesperson has these qualities, what differentiates great from the ordinary?
Of the six descriptors, the two that stand out as differentiators more than any other: Execution and bottom line. The entire sales profession suffers from the ability to listen, understand, and build trust. As a credit to our profession, we have never been more sensitive to our weaknesses in these areas. We are getting better at it. A sales professional with passion is a no brainer. There is not a sales professional in the world who does not have passion. If they don’t, they are a bad hire waiting to be eliminated. What’s left: execution and bottom line.
When it comes to high performing sales professionals, nobody is better than them at efficiently and effectively creating a sales process that gets the job done. High performers have the ability to install a methodology to build relationships, solve problems, close deals and add value. And they waste no time getting it done. If you are attempting to identify a high-performer from a collection of other sales professionals, ask them how they organize, manage and define their activities and their strategy. Their answer will tell you everything you need to know.
What Does That Mean?
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Every product and service sold has a litany of features and benefits associated with it. As sales professionals, we use those terms in our pitches to describe these offerings. So when our customers use one of these adjectives to describe what they are looking for {i.e., convenient, flexible, customer-friendly, innovative, cost-effective, open, affordable, reliable, etc.} we jump to the instant conclusion that we have what they need.
- Do you realize that everyone in your industry uses the same words to describe their product offering?
- Do you recognize these are very generic terms, subject to interpretation?
Next time your customer describes what they are looking for in a solution and they use one of these very generic descriptors ask them one very direct question:
You mentioned {fill in the blank} to describe one of your needs, what does that mean to you?
The answer provides you the place to engage in a powerful learning exercise that will help you define what your customers really need and how they define it. This is where you can truly understand how their vision and needs actually match up to your product offering.
Your Daily Sales Guide
Posted by: | CommentsThe latest book by the Sales Cooke, “Your Daily Sales Guide – 50 Effective Selling Tips“, is scheduled for release on February 1, 2010.
This is the next in his series of great relationship based, solutions oriented selling guides. “Cooked Up Sales – Another Great Selling Recipe” provided the recipe for a perfect sales model. “Your Daily Sales Guide – 50 Effective Selling Tips” brings the special ingredients into the mix.
SPECIAL OFFER!!
Order your pre-release copy of “Your Daily Sales Guide – 50 Effective Selling Tips” today for only $10 plus S&H. To obtain your pre-release, autographed copy of “Your Daily Sales Guide – 50 Effective Selling Tips” order below:
To learn more about this book or the other great products offered through the Sales Cooke please go to our website at www.salescooke.com. 
Defining Fundamental Sales Behaviors
Posted by: | CommentsIf you had to define an effective sales professional, what terms, words, or adjectives would you use to describe one?
I have been suffering from writer’s block lately and have not contributed much in the blog department. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of talking sales, my favorite subject, at the Arizona Entrepreneur Conference in Phoenix. There are several valuable excerpts from this presentation. This is the first of several that I look forward to sharing. Enjoy. I look forward to your comments.
Sales Down? Skip the Training, Hire a Coach
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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.
Never go in Without a Name
Posted by: | CommentsCold calling as a prospecting activity is something that requires focused commitment and skill. Effective cold calling requires abilities that go beyond the simple, numerically driven tasks of “banging on doors” or “dialing for dollars.” There is an art form to cold calling that makes those activities effective and efficient. 
Around nine years ago, I participated in a two-day training program on cold calling. The instructor was Dave Hibbard. On the second afternoon of our two-day training, our sales team took to the streets and put our newly developed skills to work. We made cold calls. We divided the geography around our training location into segments and banged on doors. In one three hour “test”, our team:
- Got past the gatekeeper and met with someone over 80% of the time we “knocked on the door”
- We uncovered a business opportunity over 20% of those calls
Aside from the many unique techniques that are too much to detail in this blog, there was one crucial component that I never forgot about this experience. Whenever you make a cold call, always know the name of the person you want to see. If you do not have the name when you walk-up, the gatekeeper will tag you as a salesperson and you will likely not get through. Part of the preparation or the organization required to make contact with your targeted audience is knowing who you want to talk to. Do your research, ask around, and plan your activities and approach. When you have a contact name, you have a more legitimate presence other than “cold calling.” The chances of you speaking with your contact go up significantly.
To learn more about effective cold calling techniques, contact me: dave@salescooke.com
First things First — Relationship Building Fundamentals
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The following is an excerpt from the book “Cooked Up Sales“:
“Sales is about relating, learning, solving and informing. Let’s take a moment and imagine you are on a first date. If your date comes on really strong, with an overly assertive personality type or, worse yet, overly pushy, you’re hardly motivated to listen, learn or connect. Fundamental relationships require that unique ability to give and take, talk and listen, share and comprehend, and to be genuinely interested and engaged.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a great talker, cleverly persistent or even supremely focused and determined. Bad fundamentals in establishing a relationship will prevent you from building strong, lasting business relationships, period!
The truth is, it doesn’t matter how great your product is, or how wonderful your company sounds. These are not the reasons your client will choose to buy or want to continue to buy after that initial sale.
What does matter and what will affect your ongoing rapport, is how well you have personally developed an understanding of what the customer is trying to accomplish and how they envision your ability to address their needs.”
“Cooked Up Sales” is a refreshingly concise sales book founded on the principals of effective relationhsip development and solutions oriented behaviors as the key to productive selling activities. For more information on “Cooked Up Sales” and the author, Dave Cooke “The Sales Cooke” please click on the links or engage us in discussion on the “Cooked Up Sales Fan Page.”
