Sales Coaching? 3 Reasons Why You Don’t Do It?

I saw this Article some time ago and it made me think back to when I was first a sales manager in the pharmaceutical industry. So often fear gets in the way and we are all full of Ego admit it ??

The thing is now we have to manage a team and if we don’t work with them they will never hit the heights to pull in the big numbers.

So have a read of this. If you are really series have a look at our sales coaching product that is less than the price of a pizza for 2.

Sales Coaching

Reason 1. They’re Focused on Selling, Not Coaching

Because many sales managers rose through the ranks to become the “uber” salesperson in their company, their instincts are always to go after the big deals. They have never been trained on the sales management skills needed to develop an elite sales team. So they do what they feel comfortable doing and what they have become very good at: selling. They see something going wrong (or at least not going well) in a sale and they step in to “fix” the problem for the sales rep.

This fix-it-myself mentality may solve an immediate problem (no guarantee) but even if it helps close one sale, it has serious downsides in the long run.

It undermines the salesperson’s credibility with the customer when the boss intervenes. Why would the customer ever want to do business with the salesperson knowing that the real power lies with the boss.
It undermines the salesperson’s self-confidence. Not good.
It does nothing to help the salesperson improve their skills. “Sales interference” from the sales manager just makes it more likely the problem will recur the next time around.

As a sales manager, one of the kindest things you can do for your people is to not be there for them. If a rep asks you a question, respond with a question: “What have you done about it so far? What do you think ought to be done?” Involving your salespeople in solving their own problems is what will break the cycle of constant need. That is what will help them develop their own skills so they become more accountable.

In short, stop seeing yourself as a problem solver, and start seeing yourself as a solution facilitator.

Reason 2. They Under-appreciate the Need for Coaching

A lot of stellar salespeople are building on natural talents and instincts. They needed only minimal coaching to reach the elite levels. When they become sales managers, they don’t pay much attention to coaching because they never needed (or received) much coaching themselves. They leave inexperienced sales people to sink or swim on their own, expecting their reps to pick up good techniques through osmosis, just like they did. They don’t recognize that coaching could be a way to break an experienced salesperson out of a slump or rut.

Think about how you spent your time over the last week, the last month. How much of it was spent helping your reps develop their skills or think through what they need to do to move a client forward in the buying process? If you can’t answer at least 50%, you are mis-spending your time as a manager. (See the next point.)

Reason 3. They Don’t Have the Time

Recently I was retained by a Fortune 500 company to examine their job description for the sales manager position. Fully 85 percent of the duties were directly linked to coaching salespeople. (I’ve reviewed many sales manager job descriptions over the years, and this was one of the better ones.)

I then conducted face-to-face interviews with a number of the sales managers and found that less than 5 percent of their time was actually spent on coaching. Five percent! Another way to say this is that sales managers were spending 95 percent of their time focused on 15 percent of their job responsibilities. Why such waste?

One big reason was that these sales managers were spending three hours each day responding to about 150 emails, virtually none of which came from their sales team. And that’s not counting all the meetings, paperwork, and fire fighting. The list of “urgencies” for sales managers today is endless.

With all the distractions sales managers face, the first thing to go out the window is developmental coaching-time spent helping their salespeople improve their skills (not just closing one sale). They haven’t observed the salesperson selling, or intervened at key points of the sales process, so when a sales rep is 75 percent of quota, they’re not sure why.

The solution? Start by stopping unproductive interruptions. Make a list of the top five interruptions you experience and come up with specific steps you’ll take to minimize their disruptions to your workday. Maybe it’s turning off the your Smartphone, or closing your office door, or simply ignoring that little “you’ve got mail” sound from your computer. Maybe it’s a salesperson who is “Needy.”

Next, take just 30 seconds to quickly write down your top three goals for your sales team. Then take a few minutes to identify the six tasks that you as a manager need to be doing, day in and day out, to help your team achieve those three goals? For lack of a better label, let’s call this your “3-6-No List.” Carry this list with you throughout the day. If anything comes up that’s not related to what’s on this list Just Say No. Yes, that’s going to be hard at first. Most sales managers are unwilling to say no. But you need to spend the vast majority of your time working on either sales development or business development tasks, and anything that eats into that time is a very low priority.

High-Leverage Coaching

Based on my contact with thousands of sales managers over the past 30 years, one of the most common mistakes I see is sales managers who spend most of their time with either their poorest performers or their top producers.

Focusing on the poorest performers is misguided. Suppose your coaching efforts result in a 10% increase in production amongst your bottom-producers. How much better off are your numbers? Not much.

Focusing your one-on-one coaching time on your top performers also is misguided. How much of a difference can you really make in their sales effectiveness? Should you talk to them about their career goals? Absolutely. Recognize them for their valuable contributions to the team? Yes, for sure. But don’t spend all your hands-on sales coaching time with them because they have less room for improvement.

The solution is to steal a lesson from the medical profession and “triage” your sales team. Chances are, your peak performers and highly experienced/tenured people will survive regardless of how much time you spend with them. Praise and recognize them – continue to motivate them – but don’t spend precious hours with them in the field conducting one-on-one coaching sessions.

The same is true in reverse with your bottom performers: chances are they won’t make it, so why give them all of your time. (Come to think of it, why are they still on your team?) But you can’t ignore them. It’s the middle performers who have potential to become high performers that deserve most of your attention.

Therefore, the high-payoff strategy is: Spend group time with your bottom producers. Spend most of your precious one-on-one field coaching time with your “emerging contributors” – those salespeople who have the best chance to develop into peak performers, if they could learn what you know.

This strategy of focusing on your emerging contributors can pay you multiple benefits in your sales management career. You may start to see emerging contributors sprint past your senior salespeople! Another benefit is that you’ll have more top producers, so the gap to the bottom producers will widen. The bottom producers who are committed to survival will fight harder to pull up their production.

No More Excuses

There are many similarities between selling customers and coaching salespeople. Both require understanding another’s problems, diagnosing the cause of that problem and helping the other person to understand the complications/ripple effects if they don’t solve the problem. Sales managers already possess many of the abilities that they need to become a great sales coach-but habits or misconceptions have prevented sales managers from utilizing these skills to develop an elite high-performance sales team.

For those sales managers who want to become a better sales coach, the implication is clear. You can’t achieve that simply by learning how to coach. Your solution must also solve the obstacles that prevent proactive, hands-on sales coaching from actually happening.

Best Wishes

Denise and Sharon

How To Prepare For A Sales Manager Job Interview

Some of you reading this will be sales managers others of you will want to get your first sales manager position. If it has been a while since you had an interview you can download a free report here.

Free Interview skills report.

Now that you have an interview, there are certain things you will want to do in advance to prepare for it. In this blog postwe will provide practical tips on how to prepare for a job interview. Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so you’ll want to do you best on preparing for your sales manager nterview in advance.

1. Pick out what you are going to wear on your job interview. What you wear on your interview is an absolutely crucial part of how to prepare for a job interview. I know this sounds shallow and trust me thius can make a huge difference:-)

After you choose your outfit, make sure it is cleaned and pressed and you have the appropriate accessories and shoes to go with it. It doesn’t hurt to try the outfit on ahead of time, just to make sure everthing fits and you look great. Then put your outfit aside for day of your interview and have it ready to go. NOw that you have this crucial step out of the way, you can concentrate on the rest.

2. Practice greeting your interviewer. You should always greet your interview with friendy smile and firm handshake. If you do this right, you will set off the right energy and the chances of the interview going well will increase. This is a small and simple step that you should always to do to prepare for your interview.

2. Study your resume and know everything on it. Any work experience or skills you have listed on your resume are fair game to talk about during the interview. Your resume is all the interviewer has to go by in order to get to know you. They may pick things out from it and ask you to elaborate. Even though you may have a previous job listed that was many years ago, the interviewer may ask you to explain what you did at that job and your are responsible for providing an answer. This is one step you absolutely won’t want to skip on how to prepare for a job interview.

3. Practice your answers to the most common interview questions. If you don’t know what these are, do your research and find out or see one of my other articles. You’ll want to have your answers ready and practice them. You should always be able to answer “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you think you would be great for this job?” The employer doesn’t know, so it’s up to you to sell it.

Don’t completely memorize your answers so they come out rehearsed, but have a clear idea of what you are going to say. When you are asked, you want your answer to come out intelligently and natural. Be open to other questions as well and really know what you can offer to the company.

4. Research the company and the job position you are applying for. Write down any questions you may have about either so you can ask during the interview. If there any requirement of the job that you are unsure of, you should definitely ask during the interview. It always looks nice when you go into an interview with intelligent questions. It shows you put effort in preparing for the interview. However, never ask questions just to ask questions. The interviewer will see right through that. Your questions should be genuine and relevant.

5. Find out the type of interview you will be going on. There are several common types of interviews such as one on one, group, and behavioral. You shouldn’t assume you will get a certain one. Don’t be afraid to ask your recruiter what kind of interview will have if you don’t know. The interview will be more beneficial to both parties if you are prepared.

6. Print out the directions to the interview and be on time. Allow enough time to get there and anticipate traffic. It’s ok to be up to 10 minutes early, but no more than that. Otherwise, the interviewer may not be ready for you. Bring the phone number of your interviewer just in case you get lost or are going to be late. If you are going to be late, call to let the interviewr know.

Follow these tips and you will successfully know how to prepare for a job interview. Interviewers can tell whether or not a candidate has prepared for it or not and they will appreciate it if you did.

To You and Your Interview Success

Denise and Sharon

Sales Manager Duties are many and varied. Changing your sales team regions or districts is one of them. It can produce great results along side total disasters. I could not resist this one. In my own career having a a number of new sales regions and areas “given” to me this video reminded me of thinking through the levels of communication!

By the way this was a classic comedy show in the UK some years ago and many wonder if the Office was based around this.

Best Wishes

Denise and Sharon

If you asked the majority of salespeople what “Wrapping Up the Sale” means, they will in most cases say it means to “close the sale”. “Wrapping up the Sale” starts at the beginning of the sales cycle – most sales are lost at “Hello!”

Reaching an agreement or “clinching the deal”, tying up all the loose ends, and getting to a yes decision is a critical selling capability in the sales process. As a salesperson, even getting a “No” decision is preferable to holding onto a “China egg” (an egg that will never hatch!). However, there is more to “Wrapping Up the Sale” than meets the eye.

The 6 Key Elements of Wrapping up the Sale

Assuming you have laid a firm foundation to the sale by qualifying your prospect, effectively discovering and helping the customer to self-discover their needs, and clearly demonstrating how your product/service meets the needs of all parties concerned with the decision, then there are 6 key elements involved in “Wrapping Up the Sale”. These include:

1. Resolving concerns

2. Negotiating

3. Reaching an agreement

4. Implementation Plan

5. Follow up

6. Repeat business & referral strategy

Resolving Concerns

Prospects and customers present concerns and objections when they don’t understand or agree with the claims you are making about your products and services. Many salespeople disengage from selling at this point and concede the victory to the prospect. Top salespeople, on the other hand, consider concerns and objections raised by the customer merely as a roadblock and an opportunity to question the prospect further and gather more data about their issue, with a view to further educating them on how they can help to solve their problem or dilemma.

Some concerns and objections may simply be intended to disarm you. However, if you panic in response to a concern that is a sincere obstacle, you may lose the prospect’s confidence. The key is to:

First, concentrate on identifying the foundation of the prospect’s or customer’s concern. Is it a fear of buying something new? A pricing issue? A lack of technical knowledge? A lack of credibility or capability?

Second, because many customer concerns and objections are either covert or unspoken, or based on unclear requirements, further probing can reveal what you need to learn to satisfy their needs and wants. Objections are simply data requests – neither good, nor bad!

Third, when you allow the prospect to express the negative and unfavourable aspects of your offer, it brings the issues out into the open and allows you the opportunity understand the customer’s uncertainty and provide the pertinent information to resolve it.

To help resolve issues, a great strategy is to include the customer in the solution process, as they’re likely to prefer a solution in which they were involved. When you stop trying to overcome objections and instead work and partner with your prospect as a consultant or coach, you will be far more effective (and less fearful).

Negotiating

How you handle your selling negotiations will determine two key things:

Whether you bring home the sale and
At what margin you bring home the sale

Many salespeople mistakenly believe that negotiating is something you do at or near the end of the sale. Being an effective sales negotiator begins with your first contact with your customer or prospect. Your prospect is evaluating you; your company and the value of your product/service, right from the moment you make first make contact. Your goal is to be able to clearly demonstrate the value your solution will provide and negotiate a profitable agreement with the customer. There are a number of factors from your customer’s perspective that have an influence on the outcome of your sales negotiation:

What is the extent of your customer’s problem or pain?
How much do they want your solution?
How do they perceive the value of your expertise?
How specialised or unique is your solution?
How urgent is their need?
How much would they be willing to pay to solve their problem?
How much do they perceive your solution as merely a commodity with you as just another vendor?
How large is their risk quotient?
How much do they like you and/or your company?
What is their timing need?
How much do they need to WIN?
Can they approve the sale?

When you consider the above points, you see that your role as a negotiator proceeds all the way through the sales process. Your role is to constantly probe and seek out information that may be invaluable later should issues like price, terms, quality, delivery, etc. have to be negotiated. Don’t wait until you’re in the last round to begin negotiating! Remember that as a sales negotiator it is very important for both you and the customer to come away feeling positive about the experience. At the end of the day, the chances are very good that you will want, or need, to do business together in the future.

Reaching an Agreement

Assuming you have laid the groundwork correctly by uncovering and answering the prospect’s needs and concerns during the diagnosis and capability presentation phase of the sales process, then “closing the sale” becomes a mere formality as opposed to an overworked and stressful affair for both buyer and seller. If you are struggling to close sales, you will need to examine your current methods for discovering your customer’s needs and requirements and the way you demonstrate the value of your product or service.

Before you attempt to “close” the sale ask yourself “Do I know…”

The problems the customer wishes to solve
The objectives/goals the customer wishes to achieve
Company issues that will be impacted by the decision
Personal issues that will be impacted by the decision
Financial issues – What funding is available to solve these issues? What or who else is being considered?
Time frames
Buying influences – Who makes and impacts on the decision?
Decision Criteria – How are decisions made? What are the Next Steps? and
Have I clearly demonstrated my and my company’s capability to meet the needs and specifications of the customer?

Implementation Plan – Sell back from the date they need it

When salespeople and their managers get together and discuss where the “sale is at” within the sales cycle, they tend to focus on what the next steps are to bring the sale to a conclusion. Their focus is on the “close date”. However, to the customer, what is most important is the implementation or use date. It is vitally important that you work with end users and buyers in a collaborative effort to identify and work towards their implementation date. In other words, find out when your customer needs the product or service you are selling and then work back from that date to make a case for why closing now is important.

“Salespeople sell forward – but buyers buy backward” Skip Miller

The professional salesperson:

Works with the customer’s buying schedule, which begins from the implementation date.
Identifies the activities and actions the customer must accomplish prior to the implementation date.
Gains agreement from the customer on the actions they must accomplish prior to the implementation date.
Sets their selling plans, scheduling them to align with the steps in the customer’s timeline, working backwards from the date of implementation.
Uses the implementation date as a means of accessing senior managers and users (to clearly understand their implementation and other core issues).
Selling to the customer’s implementation date allows you to accurately set your sales milestones and forecasts. It is also a great tool for bringing your proposals to life because it will include implementation considerations when many organisations only consider implementation after the purchase

Follow Up

Much of your success in selling can be attributed to what you do after you’ve made the sales call or the sale. Constant and persistent follow up is the key.

We work and live at a very hectic pace and the prospect or customer who hasn’t called you back might well be interested in your product/service, but they just haven’t gotten back to you yet. There is a great quote from Patricia Fripp, which says, “It is not your customer’s responsibility to remember you, but your responsibility to ensure they never forget you.”

The frequency and amount of follow up required is very dependent on the complexity of what you sell and the lifetime value of a customer in your industry. Research demonstrates that most potential customers or prospects won’t buy the first time they meet with you. On average, they have to encounter a marketing or sales message on at least 5-7 occasions before making a purchasing decision. This makes follow-up an essential ingredient in the selling process.

Mark Victor Hansen said, “Don’t think it, ink it”. When you rely on your memory you are very likely to forget. Imagine for a minute that your brain was like a PC. What happens if you open too many windows on your PC? Eventually the system gets clogged and clunky and in some cases will just freeze! Something as critical to your sales success as follow up, should not be left to your memory; it simply doesn’t work. The best and most effective sales and business people have developed their own follow up system to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.

Follow-up isn’t just about selling; it’s about developing relationships.

Efficient follow-up demonstrates that both you and your company have your acts together and really care about ensuring customer satisfaction. However, a large percentage of salespeople don’t conduct sales follow-up. Afraid of what they might hear, they avoid the follow-up, often blaming their busy schedules for not getting to it.

During follow-up, it’s important to ask open-ended questions and then listen. Asking open-ended questions gives you an opportunity to gather more information from the prospect to pinpoint his or her needs accurately. Ask questions that begin with; who, what, when or how many. Ask something that will engage the prospect and get them talking. Ask “How did you feel about what was included?” as opposed to “Did you get my proposal?” Or “Did it all make sense?”

Your follow-up should convey:

I am still interested in you and your current concerns and opportunities.
I have something specific and valuable to contribute that would benefit you and or your company.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.

A consistent, well-executed follow-up system that keeps past clients and customers close is the most effective method of ensuring a steady flow of referrals and repeat business. Whatever follow-up system you adopt, make sure it’s easy to use or implement. All too often, when the system becomes too complicated or unwieldy it gets sidelined and placed in the “too hard” basket. A good follow-up system is essential for building a healthy pipeline. Take the onus off yourself as far as trying to remember things and build a system to do it. If your company already has an effective CRM system, use it. If not, develop your own. It is up to you as a responsible salesperson to drive the sales process; therefore, you must drive your own follow-up system.

Repeat Business and Referral Strategy

Today the best salespeople, selling to both Business-to-Business and individuals, are constantly looking to increase their focus and effort on attracting repeat and referral business. Most astute business people understand that customer loyalty is the most vital aspect of their business because their organisations will live or die from repeat business. No company can exist without customer loyalty and retention.

Customer retention is well known to be much cheaper than customer acquisition. As a result, top salespeople place a big focus on their customer retention and customer relationship management strategies. They constantly look at improving the share of business coming from their existing customer base.

Information technology helps both companies and their salespeople to achieve customer loyalty by providing tools for analysing customer data. This assists with making informed decisions, as well as managing the customer relationships from the sales process all the way through to fulfilment and ongoing follow-up support.

A customer’s repeat business is earned by the salesperson that continually provides their customers with what they want. Without effective strategies or processes for consistently offering customers more of what they want, repeat business is earned less frequently. When you communicate news and offers frequently to both past and present customers via telephone, mail or email, it generally increases the frequency of repurchase and is a powerful step salespeople must take to grow their business.

Effective referral strategies

Referral marketing is a vital part of your sales strategy that you cannot afford to do without. Every salesperson knows that one of the most effective ways to grow their business is through referrals, yet most salespeople do not have a means of generating an ongoing source of referrals.

Referrals work because they come from a trusted source that has already benefited from your product/service and yet has no vested interest in your business. The recommendation is independent and unsolicited. In sales terms this means a rapid conversion rate. The sales process is rapidly accelerated because the service or product has already been tried and tested by a reputable third party.

As a salesperson asking for, and getting, referrals is a powerful and low-cost way of building or developing your career. It is a simple approach, which feeds on its own success, but has to be built on secure foundations. Most salespeople don’t get enough referrals because of one obstacle – they don’t ask for them! An effective referral generation program will take care of this problem by creating a system that generates a steady stream of referrals from your network.

Referral marketing is simple: if you provide excellent products or services that people need, they tell others of their experience. Those others will trust you and want to do business with you because of the recommendation of the original, satisfied customer.

As one of Australia’s leading authorities and coaches in sales management, Ian Segail has been involved in the coaching, training and development of sales managers and salespeople for over two decades.

Drawing on 25 years of experience in sales, sales management and leading an HR and training team, Ian brings a strong dose of fiscal reality and practicality to his works as a Sales Performance Coach.

Engaging directly with business owners and both novice and experienced sales managers alike, across a wide variety of industries and selling disciplines, the focus of Ian’s work is to transform sales results for companies by improving sales management practices.

Ian is the author of “Bulletproof Your Sales Team The 5 Keys To Turbo Boosting Your Sales Team’s Results” and a number of business articles, business reports and white papers including “The fish stinks from the head!” and “Why Sales Training Doesn’t Work.”

Ian has an insatiable hunger for studying selling and people management and has passionately pursued answers to the question “How come some people can sell and most can’t?”

http://www.salestutor.com.au

How to motivate people who work for us is an endless question. Have a look at this video from You Tube that gives some great ideas.

Best Wishes

Denise and Sharon

We have had a theme going about Sales manager duties over the past month or so.

One of them “should” be to watch this video and take inspiration about a number of things including:

1. Any thing really is possible……………………………….yes even for you!

2. The power of connecting with an audience……………if you dont get emotional watching this there
really is no hope for you

3. Viral marketing and the use of video……………….now for some reason You tube wont let me embed the video player so you will need to click the link. At 9am UK time today this had received 18 million views in under a week.

4. Giving your market what they want……………Simon revels in mopments like this. He understands what audiences want do you know your audience that well.

Paste the link to watch Susan Boyle on Britains got talent inspire you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

To You and Your Teams Success

Denise and Sharon
PS. If you didn’t realise the people that watch this might include some of your market? do you know how to tap into their emotions and give them what they want?……………think about it.