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Why Are You In Sales? – Sales eXchange 20020

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

At the end of this post I will ask you a specific question that I would love you to answer, and I thank you here in advance.

Two things happened this past week or 10 days that led to this week’s Sales eXchange being a bit different than the usual, and isn’t that what we always strive to be in sales. First is the fact that this is the 200th Sales eXchange post, and while I had given it much thought, someone asked if I will be marking the fact in any way. The person that asked me was a young person at an event I participated in recently. The event was organized to present young people with different options for their life after school.

One of the questions going into the event was “What do you want to be?” Some had very clear ideas, knowing exactly where they want to go. One young lady was determined to become a speech pathologist due to a friend she had in grade school. She structured her high school curriculum to set her up for a path of success in post-secondary school, and to her dream career. Others stated a number of different career plans, some very specific, marketing, finance, construction, software design, and more. Others were a bit more general, the young man who asked about the 200th post simply stated business. As an aside, it seems he had been spying my blog (and others) to glean ideas for his high school business class, at least someone is getting value at an early age. But in the end no one said they wanted to go into sales, not one.

Consider that according to the United States Department of Labor, there just under 14 million people employed in sales as of May 2012 in the USA. The same department pegs the number of lawyers at under 1 million, and software developers (systems and applications) also under 1 million. Yet fewer than a handful of institutions offer a degree in selling or sales.

There were a number of kids who talked about becoming lawyers, software developers, doctors, even golf pros, but not one said sales. Which begs the question that if no one sets out to become a sales professional, where the hell did we all come from? Are we progressing as a profession, or just a modern day version of post war refugee camps full of people making due while they find their next destination? Are we a repository of other professions outcasts, with the occasional diamond in the rough? After all, almost 50% of sellers do not make quota, this would not be tolerated in any other department.

So here is my ask – take a minute and think about where you are in sales as a career, how you got here, how you’re doing. Then take a minute and in the comment box below, tell me:

Why Are You In Sales?

Tibor Shanto

On Thursday October 18, The Proactive Prospecting Workshop is coming to Houston, specifically to Four Points by Sheraton Houston Southwest, at 2828 Southwest Freeway, Houston.

If you are in B2B sales, and need to engage with more new prospects, mark this date on your calendar, then sign up for this full day interactive prospecting program.

Whether you are with a small company or large, veteran or just launching your career, this workshop will give you the fundamentals needed to connect and engage with more qualified buyers.

We leave dogma at the door, this is not about old school vs. new school, this is about executing a proven methodology for prospecting more effectively and filling your pipeline with the quality prospects in the right quantities. This is the same program that has helps thousands of sale professionals improve their skills and increase prospects and sales. Sales professional in dozens of companies are using the methods and process delivered in the Proactive Prospecting Workshop to deliver consistent results.

What you’ll learn…

Overcome the fear of cold calling
Develop techniques for making successful cold calls
Take a proactive role in filling your sales pipeline
Write effective e-mails – Leave voice mail messages that get returned
Handle Objections – win more appointments

To learn more about the results sellers have realised just click here to read success studies, or watch what they said after attending the Proactive Prospecting Workshop.

Every New Customer begins as a Prospect!

Start filling your pipeline with Real Prospects!

Learn more at www.proactiveprospecting.com
Sign up today, seating is limited to 100 people!

Early Bird Specials Available – Multi-Attendee offers
ADDED BONUS – 500 FREE leads from LeadFerret.com
The Proactive Prospector’s Guide to Objection Handling Booklet

www.proactiveprospecting.com
Call – (855) 25-SALES

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Sep 8th, 2012 Appointments, Attitude, Business Acumen, Buying Process, Change Management, Cold calling, Communication, Disqualify, EDGE Selling, execution, Impact Questions, Leadership, Metrics, Next Steps, Objection Handling, Persistence, Proactive Prospecting, Prospecting, qualifying, Referrlas, Sales Cycle, Sales Leadership, Sales Mistakes, Sales Process, Sales Strategy, Sales Success, Sales Training, Success, Time Management, Voice mail, Workshops

Accountability, Appointment Setting, Appointments, Attitude, cold calling, e-mail prospecting, execution, Houston, how to sell better, Objection Handling, Pipeline Management, Proactive, Proactive Prospecting, Prospecting, qualifying, Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., Sales Technique, Sales Training, sell better, Selling to Executives, Texas, Tibor Shanto, Time Allocation, Voice mail, Workshop

Sales Summer School34

The most valuable, complete sales training of the summer!

Featuring me and 18 other well-respected sales innovators, authors and trainers from across North America, Sales Summer School delivers ideas and actions that you can take immediately to improve your sales results.

You can select from over 30 courses with a wide variety of topics ranging from tips and techniques for interviewing for your next sales position to obtaining strategic referrals and partners, through to coaching your sales teams as an effective leader.

My course is GAP Selling – Leveraging Process and Execution, is coming up next Thursday, August 2, at 4:00 pm Eastern. GAP Selling – Looks at hoe to deliver value. Almost every sales conversation starts or ends with the concept of value; at the same time there are as many different understandings and definitions of value as there are sellers and buyers. Without a clear and actionable definition of value, many conversations between buyers and sellers are less than effective, and do not help create a buy. Starting with that definition of value, participants will then learn the five step process to leveraging that value right through the sale, from the initial engagement to winning the client. The overarching goal of the process is to focus on the buyer’s objectives, and delivering specific means of helping the achieve those objectives. Steps include: 1) Identifying and validating buyer’s objectives 2) Understanding why buyers really buy 3) Why Buyers buy and don’t buy from you and your company 4) Converting the above to impact questions and quality conversation 5) A structured follow-through approach to maximize impact and progress Participants will learn how to use the above to create alignment with the buyer, their objectives and buying process.

You can see the other courses, schedules, and register by clicking here.

Each course is scheduled for 60 minutes and there is always time available for live Q&A with the audience.

You would have to pay thousands of dollars to hear these speakers live. Your investment of $47.00 per event will prove to be the most valuable career investment you will make this year.

Look down the list of Presentations and Speakers, select those that you would like to attend, and the rest will be taken care of behind the scenes.

As an attendee, you will receive access to a recording of the event for your review later on, and will also be given exclusive access to a private LinkedIn Group reserved only for attendees of Sales Summer School. Each of the instructors is an active member, and are available to answer your questions on sales and sales management. Private access to this group of experts is worth more than the price of the ticket itself.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Last week I met a young man, fresh out of school, entering real estate as a career. He seemed excited when he discovered what I did for a living, only slightly deterred when I kept insisting my work is best suited to B2B sales, not the residential or consumer focus he was dealing in. He was keen to tell me that he had just started a company sponsored prospecting program, one his company had employed for all their new realtors with great success.

As he was telling me about the program, which based on what he told me seemed sound and effective, and has delivered consistent results for his employer, he seemed to be hiding a question or a comment. It turned out that there were aspects of the program that “didn’t appeal” to him, and he was going to ignore or change them, and he was looking for some “expert advice” as to how to change the prospecting system he was being taught.

While it would be easy to write this off as being due to his inexperience, the reality is that you run into the same thing with “experienced, tenured” reps. In fact the latter group is often worse, the newbie reps want to change or avoid things they don’t understand or scare them, which is the likely scenario with prospecting. The tenured reps, ostensibly should know better, but they still change things they are presented by sound sources, because they’re experienced, have “earned the right” to do it their way. Often this “right” is absent when looked at through the filter of results. Much better to do it the right way, despite rights you think you may have earned.

I since looked up the trainer and their system, and it has a solid track record, what I read made sense, and the broker my new friend works for has been number one or in the top three realtors in their region every year in the last ten years; despite my ego, doesn’t sound like it would improve instantly or measurably from my input.

So in effect, what this young man and every other wannabe, was looking for was my permission to skirt the hard work needed to succeed in his field. When taken to its logical conclusion, he was looking for me to OK his plan to be at best average, or in many cases where people fail to apply the discipline of success, a failure.

These same sales people don’t apply the same approach to their own athletic pursuits, the need to challenge and stress to improve. The young man in question and I initially started talking about the Toronto Marathon which we had both run the week before, he told me about his training routine, how he not only keeps to a training regiment, but how he continues to ramp up the routine in order to improve each race he runs. He spoke about the challenges, pain, recovery and the process of improvement. The same process he should apply to his sales. He finally connected the dots when he realised I was telling him that to achieve the improvements in his sales that he was experiencing in his race times, he would have to adopt the complete program, stick to it, and execute it day in and day out if he wanted to see the improvement in his sales result.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

If you are in sales you have likely seen or participated in a discussion about whether sales training works or not. You have likely heard that it works when there is follow-through, or if there is buy in from front line sellers, or the degree to which management is committed to supporting the new training. While these and other factors do play a role, I see a variation the last point as key.

While most have framed their reasoning and discussion around the argument of
management/leadership commitment, I believe it comes down to something more profound
and less often discussed, intent.

Just as intent will differentiate sellers in their buyers’ eyes, intent is more often than not the determining factor is sales training success. Many companies embark on a training program because it is one of the things they (feel they) have to do. While there is the underlying understand that training is a good thing and does lead to improvement at some level, it is often something that is done to satisfy a KPI, or is one of the things that was an initiative on the calendar for that fiscal year.

I recently was involved in a discussion with a company that typified this approach. Several times we talked about the “need” for training, but when we tried to dig down and understand what were the specific objectives for the initiative, the discussion was held to a superficial level. Any attempt to understand what the underlying factors were, how they wanted to see the team be different as a result of the initiative were met with generalities, “more revenue”, “better interactions”, “more profitable relations”, and more.

When we tried to take the discussion to a deeper more specific level, we met with surprise about the questions, and told that it was part of a greater plan. We felt that if we were going t contribute to their success, it would be integral for us to understand the plan, what had already been addressed, if or how was it adopted, we were met by surprise for the question, rather than specific answers.

As part of any engagement we like to meet with reps and managers in advance, as an informal assessment (we often will conduct formal assessments), yet this is at time seen as a foreign request. When it is, I have become suspicious about the intent and nature of the commitment. It is as though they were telling us that the important thing is to have training, not necessarily to help the team sell better.

To me if the intent going in is wrong, the results will not be far from that either.

Next Step

Understand what specifically you intend to get as a result of any training
Spend longer sourcing the training than it takes to deliver it
Share your goal with the chosen training partner in advance, not after

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Contest – Enter To Win!29

PROACTIVE PROSPECTING!

As you may have noticed over to the right, we are presenting the Proactive Prospecting Workshop in Toronto/Markham, scheduled for April 13. We want your help in spreading the word we are holding a contest.

Prizes:

First Prize

A collection of three top sales books, including my award winning book on Trigger Events. PLUS, if the winner is in the Toronto area the day of the workshop, you will be our guest free, bring a friend, and hey we’ll find a seat for them too!

Second Prize

A copy of the award winning book on Trigger Events

What you need to Win

Simply promote the workshop by tweeting it to your friends, followers, neighbors, former lovers, etc. But to qualify and win the tweet has to include three things:

The following tags – #ppmark #contest #toronto (all three tags need to appear in each tweet)
This specific link to the workshop site – http://bit.ly/PP-contest
Your twitter ID – very important as we it to tally your totals

Here is an example: I wanna go to the Proactive Prospecting Workshop in #Toronto http://bit.ly/PP-contest #ppmark by @you #contest #toronto

And remember if you get your friends to retweet, it adds to your total.

Good luck, and if you have question, just write us at info@sellbetter.ca

Start tweeting and Good Luck!

Earlier this week, I posted on two related or intersecting topics sales leaders need to manage and improve. First, their view of, and approach to sales training; second the alignment of their sales assets with clearly identifiable market segments.

Based on some feedback, I want to expand on some key points and make sure that the wrong message is not being taken away.

With respect to KPI’s and training, I was not saying that KPI’s do not belong as part of training initiative. In fact there needs to be metrics, measures and other indicators to ensure that the training is effective, implemented and is delivering the desired behavioural change. Those same indicators should then be utilized to refine training strategy and implementation. What I was saying, and don’t apologize for, is that sales leaders need stop making decisions on training in order to meet one of their KPI’s. Not only does this not result in training that moves the dial forward, but more importantly communicates a clear message to their sales teams. The message is that it is OK to just go through the motion to meet the basic requirement without regard for the end result. After all, if the VP can get by with training that does not change sales behaviour, than why can a rep take a similar view, “you wanted five face to face visits, you got five”; KPI met, sale or not.

The question of alignment extends in to training as well. Just as you don’t want to misalign the resources based on the type of buyer involved, you also don’t want to assume that all your sales people will benefit from the same type of training. I have written in the past that there needs to be no democracy in sales training. Indeed, when it comes to sales training, one size does not fit all. Many have taken a forward step of separating new recruit training and some form of “advanced” training; others created online programs better matching requirements and content. When actively managed this moves things in the right direction, when not, which is often the case, this type of training just invites the KPI mentality highlighted above. This happens eve when there is testing built into modules.

In the end, as with anything strategic and core to business success, it is about having a long term view and the backbone to execute, especially when long term results and success will materialize after the next fiscal quarter or year end. Let’s start by removing the KPI for cosmetic band aide initiatives.

Next Step

Develop or ensure your sales process aligns with and reflects your market’s buying process
Make sure you have the right people on the bus
Use the two above to determine he right training to create success behaviour

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

There has been a spate of articles of late questioning the value of sales training, a worthwhile discussion, but often circular in nature. In many ways, I can understand why it is easy to blame the trainers, especially if you follow the money, since we seem to be the last ones to have it, but that is also very simplistic approach.

The reality is that change, continuous and sustainable behavioural change, requires hard work, commitment throughout the organization, and the understanding that it is not tied to artificial time-frames or a specific point in time. In fact, when you do work with organizations that have success in their sales training, you will also see evidence of a healthy and robust sales culture, that itself is an element and extension of the company’s culture.

It is important to remember that training does not deliver or result in revenue; it delivers, or should deliver, behavioural change. Change in the behaviour delivers results and revenue; but that takes time, much more time than the ADHD driven sales world most live in. The challenge is that in these days of unrealistically short-term expectations, many organizations lack patience and/or resolve to allow themselves to benefit from sales training, they lack the culture, and as a result lack the results.

In these days of searching for “efficiencies”, management by spreadsheets and KPI’s, served up on a platter of instant gratification, it leaves many without the chance to achieve the results they could realize if they looked past the end of the current quarter. If your sales cycle is 90 days, your team will not change their habits on a dime or overnight, so rather than focusing on when and how much? It makes more sense to focus on what and how to change things in a way that not only presents incremental change, but creates a culture of consistent improvement. This certainly is not easy when there are tremendous pressures on organizations, sales leaders and sales people to change outputs by the next quarterly report.

This requires leaders have the resolve to commit to a plan that may see near term results, but is certain to deliver long-term results. Leaders who are committed to change the entire environment, including personnel to not only maximize near term ROI from training, but to drive cultural, long-term systemic change, including in themselves. These are sales leaders who can look past the end of the quarter and strive for a sales organization that see success as both a destination and a process, but not as an event. This not to be confused with the debate as to whether sales training is ongoing or event based, live or online, etc. It is more about what one is trying to achieve with the training, revenue is the by-product of training not the goal of training. Doing training because you, or you directors, or your sales managers have that as KPI, does not mean you will see the change required to have your front line reps achieve. Without that change in behaviour, you will not see the resulting improved revenues, and that change is cultural.

Training delivered to meet the needs of a KPI rather than to meet the organization’s cultural needs, is a lot like a fitness program that consists of a visit to a gym once or twice a year.

Next Step

Align and connect your sales process to all key processes within your organization
Tie your sales training plans to your sales process
Train and evolve those skills that drive the process

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

The REAL Problem with Sales Training18

The Pipeline Guest Post – Jonathan Farrington

It seems that every week we are being told that sales training is not working in a very high percentage of cases – 85-90% was one statistic I read just yesterday

And actually I agree. In my opinion, hundreds of millions of dollars world-wide are wasted every year on irrelevant, unnecessary or inappropriate sales skills development. There are four obvious reasons ….

To begin with, the one off program may supply a short term motivational buzz and provide the delegate with a number of thought provoking ideas. However, in reality, once they are back at the “front-line”, the day to day pressures of hitting quota, etc. take over again and the reactive mindset returns.

Secondly, most – not all – but a very high percentage of courses on offer today deliver what I term “generalized” skills development.

For example, a person operating within the aerospace sector, negotiating multi-million pound contracts can find himself sitting next to a young saleswoman who markets insurance policies and is based in a call center. On her right is another person who is developing a successful career in manufacturing, selling hydraulic components and next to him…..I think
you will appreciate my point.

To achieve sustained success in all of these disparate industries requires specific skills sets and the “generalized” workshops simply cannot deliver them.

Thirdly, most – and again I would estimate it is at least 80% of – training organizations today make the assumption that all delegates are at the same level in terms of experience, expertise and have the same “commercial bandwidth”. This is of course, totally unrealistic.

Whilst it is not possible to equate age and experience with success, the reality is that, although some professional salespeople do have ten years’ experience, most have one year’s experience ten times! The very best salespeople – the ones that consistently exceed expectation, have usually received ongoing skills development from the “emerging” stage all the way through “advanced”, right up to “consultative” level if appropriate, but the keyword is “ongoing”

Finally – and this is the most significant and blatant error of judgment most Sales Directors make – every member of the team receives the same training, i.e.they are all dispatched off to the same course, regardless of whether or not they already have those skills or if indeed they need to have them in their current role.

The point here is that there is far too little planning, assessing and objective setting – it is much easier to abdicate responsibility to the training company… The downside to this approach is, of course, so much money is wasted!

So what is the answer? I don’t have all the answers, does anybody? But I have some of them, and I invite you to download the FREE white paper – registration is not required.

About Jonathan Farrington

Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, consultant, and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The jf Corporation and the creator of topsalesworld.com, topsalesmanagement.com and the annual Top Sales & Marketing Awards. Jonathan is based in London and Paris.

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Dec 16th, 2011 e-book, execution, Guest Post, Productivity, Sales Leadership, Sales Success, Sales Training

Attitude, Coaching, execution, Guest Post, Leadership, Sales Success, Sales Training

Strategic or Tactical Sales Training?31

A lot of sales improvement programs start at the strategic level and go light on the execution, the tactical side – the “how do I do this?” While this may seem to be intuitively the right and noble way to go, in reality it yields less results than approaching things the other way around; that is leading with the tactical, the tactics of “how to…” Unless you run your sales force as a military unit – with all the command lines, discipline, and rules – you will always face the challenge around the balance between strategy and execution or tactical aspects of sales success. This challenge is even more pronounced with sales training or education, do you build your training around your strategy; or do you deliver training focused on the tactical aspects of driving that strategy forward?

Read On…

Related articles:
CRM: Culture or Technology

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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