The Differences in Managing and Sales Coaching is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
There is a reason that an outside coach can often be more effective than a sales manager that coaches their sales team. The reason that an external coach can be more effective is that the external coach is a stakeholder in a different set of outcomes.
What a Coaching Sales Manager WantsThe coaching sales manager needs his salespeople to make their number. She needs them to produce the results for which she is being held accountable. It’s easy to focus all of your coaching efforts on making the number when your quota as a sales manager is the sum total of your team’s individual quotas. That makes it easy to view everything you do through the lens that is making the number.
But being tied to the outcome only of making the number, coaching less effective. It makes it easy to focus always on pipeline coaching, opportunity coaching, and deal strategy—all of which are critically important. But focusing only in these areas misses one of the primary outcomes of coaching: the salesperson’s personal and professional growth.
Coaching is about the growth that helps the salesperson to make their number.
The Benefit of Being Divorced from the NumberAn external coach has the great benefit of being divorced from the outcome of making the number. Instead of coaching only to the numbers, the external sales coach can more easily and more naturally focus on the development of the salesperson, personally and professionally.
Honestly, the indirect approach is often far faster and far more effective in producing the results that produce the numbers. Those results are an improved salesperson, a better salesperson.
How to Coach as a Sales ManagerEven though an outside coach can more easily focus on the salesperson instead of the number, a thoughtful sales manager can easily adopt a few practices to make their coaching more effective.
Remember the outcome: The first and most important way to improve your coaching is to focus on helping the salesperson get the outcomes that they need from coaching. Instead of focusing on what you see as the sales manager (which is really a performance review), you focus on the areas in which the salesperson wants to focus. Good coaching skills will allow you to get to the root cause issues that prevent them from succeeding, but it is easier to make an improvement when the salesperson gets what they need from coaching, not a performance review.
Build the salesperson: The goal of coaching is to help the salesperson improve and to perform better. You can’t get the “perform better” without first getting the “improve.” A good coach helps the salesperson understand their blind spots and helps them identify new possibilities, new choices, new beliefs, and new behaviors. You’ll know you’ve got this right when the salesperson is empowered and when they exercise their resourcefulness to improve their results.
You want coaching to provide salespeople with the ability to grow and to know how to improve their own results.
Learn to use non-directive coaching: If you find yourself telling your salesperson what to do, you aren’t coaching. There are times when you need to use directive coaching, but it should not be your primary coaching approach. When you use non-directive coaching, you require the salesperson to do all of the heavy lifting. They have to do all of thinking about how they will change and how they will make improvements. This also means they make the choices about what they are going to do and, because it is all theirs, they own it. They don’t have to buy-in because the decisions are theirs.
Your role is to help them take the decisions they need and hold them accountable, not to tell them what to do. If you find it difficult to not direct your salespeople, you aren’t alone. You will learn a lot about yourself while learning to get out of the way.
Remember that to make the number, you first make the sales rep: A sales manager only has one set of assets to produce results, and that is their sales force. If you want to improve your results, you improve your sales force. If you want to make your number, you make the sales rep.
This is one of those cases where slow is fast and where fast is slow. The more time you invest in coaching and developing your sales people, the faster they will improve in their performance.
When you need to manage, manage. When you need to coach, coach. They are different outcomes, and they require different approaches.
QuestionsWhat are some of the obstacles to effectively coaching salespeople when you are also their manager?
How do you focus on the real outcomes of coaching?
How do you invest in building the salesperson that performs at a higher level?
How do you help salespeople to grow? How do you challenge them to find the resourcefulness within themselves?
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The Differences in Sales Coaching and Sales Training is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
I was recently asked what the curriculum for sales coaching might include for a salesperson. It’s a tough question to answer, because good coaching isn’t very much like event training. There are some standard exercises, but it’s not curriculum driven like training. You don’t normally move from one topic to the next topic like you might in training.
Even though it shares some common outcomes, like improved skills and improved results, coaching is a markedly different from training.
Frequency and UnderstandingCoaching isn’t an event. It is a relationship and, as such, it requires frequent communication. The frequency of the communication helps lay the groundwork for one of the major outcomes of coaching: a deep understanding.
By communicating with the salesperson frequently, their coach (or coaching sales manager) gets the opportunity to know the person being coached. They get to understand their world, their strengths, their weaknesses, and the obstacles that stand between them and greater success.
As the coach gets to know and understand the salesperson being coached, they get an understanding as to what the salesperson really needs in order to succeed. They can leverage that understanding to help the salesperson gain their understanding of what they will need to do to improve.
Event training doesn’t offer the opportunity to gain this level of understanding, and it isn’t designed to do so. Helping the salesperson discover what they need to improve is a coaching outcome.
Overcoming ObstaclesAs salespeople, we are extraordinarily resourceful when it comes to helping our clients produce better results. But when it comes to finding answers to our own challenges, we often have the same blind spots as anyone else might have. Coaching salespeople can help them to identify these blind spots and overcome them.
Sometimes you need a sounding board. You need to talk through ideas. You need to think through the possible choices of action you need to take to produce better results. Through non-directive coaching, a coach can help the salesperson to identify the resources available to them that may have been blind to before coaching. Through directive coaching (which is sometimes necessary), a good sales coach can share ideas that will help prevent the salesperson from making mistakes that might prevent them from succeeding.
Training isn’t this personal. It builds sales skills. It builds leadership skills. And it can help generate options. But coaching removes the personal obstacles that prevent salespeople from succeeding.
Accountability for Change and FeedbackA good coach holds the salesperson they are coaching accountable for the changes that they committed to make, as well as the actions they committed to take.
This is an outcome that isn’t obtained through event training by itself. That’s why, in my opinion, event training needs a follow-on coaching component if it is to truly achieve its outcomes.
Salespeople engaged in a coaching relationship want to be held accountable for their commitments. They want to be asked about the changes that are trying to make, and they want feedback on the new information they are taking in and the new results they are generating (or that they are not generating, as the case may be).
This accountability and feedback loop allows the coach to help notch the salesperson up by improving their effectiveness. Form week to week, month to month, and quarter to quarter, the salesperson acquires new beliefs, casts off old beliefs, and produces better and better results.
QuestionsDo you have a personal or professional coach?
How do coaches improve performance in fields outside of sales?
How does coaching differ from training?
What outcomes does a coach help their coach achieve?
Who holds you accountable and helps you to see your blind spots?
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How to Get Revenge on Haters is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
A few days ago I wrote a post about how to deal with haters and trolls. I wrote the post for my younger brother, and he found it very helpful for thinking about some issues he has in a new, and highly visible, job. But, I forgot the most important piece of advice for those who would wish for your failure.
If you really want to seek revenge on those who wish you would fail, that criticize you unfairly, or that disparage you and your efforts, the best thing you can do is to succeed.
Ignoring the haters is a good first step. But if you want to make them crazy, you succeed. You do your best work. You give it everything you’ve got. You show up early. You stay late. You dig in, and you make a difference.
The ultimate act of defiance isn’t to argue with trolls. It isn’t to try to win them over (although there is something to be said for killing them with kindness). It isn’t trying to convince them to leave you alone.
The sweetest revenge is success. That’s where you put your effort and energy.
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Your Clients Don’t Want to Retrain You is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
Over time, selling to and working with your clients, you gather a lot of information. You gather insights about how to create value for your clients, their individual preferences, and their unique needs. All of this information is useful in serving your clients and executing on the solution that you sold.
It’s inevitable that there will be changes in the team that serves your clients. These changes can be disruptive to both you and your clients. When you have changes to your team, you can lose some of the situational knowledge that helps you serve your client. Losing this information can be mean service interruptions, missed commitments, and it can mean mistakes.
It’s frustrating to your clients to have to provide the same information over and over again. They don’t want to retrain your team.
Retraining You and Your TeamMost of us in sales could do a better job of capturing the information we acquire in a format that we can share with our team. When we do capture the information and share it, we often transfer that information through the conversations we have with our teams, instead of providing a more permanent record.
Not providing the information in a format that can be retrieved and referred to later by your team makes for a poor handoff. By making a poor handoff, we set up the conditions that cause us to lose the information that allows us to help a new team member serve that client.
Sometimes the information we lose causes problems in execution early. More often, the failures occur later, after you have been serving your client for some time. When you lose a member of your team or they are moved into another position, the lack of a retrievable source of all of the information on how to serve your client means that the information left with the employee.
Now your client must provide the information again. Your client then has to retrain you and your team in how best to serve them.
Capture Information and PreferencesThere is some situational knowledge that is going to be lost when you lose a key member of the team that serves your client. But the capturing of critical information about your client’s needs, their preferences, and their issues over time can make it much easier to bring a new team member up to speed. It makes it much less likely that the situational knowledge is lost. It also makes it less likely that a new employee will make mistakes.
Instead of requiring your client to retrain you and your team by providing information and preferences over and over again, you are better off to capture the information once, and in a format that allows you to quickly bring a new employee up to speed. This is impressive to your clients, and it’s worth a little extra effort.
There isn’t a good argument against capturing all of the information about your relationships with your clients in an electronic format that makes it easy to retrieve and share with your team. It takes time to capture the information, but that investment of time helps to prevent mistakes later, when the information would help someone else serve your client. It’s also an investment that prevents your client from having to invest the time to retrain the new person serving them and their account.
QuestionsWhy are your clients frustrated when they lose a member of their service team?
In what format do you handoff information to your team?
How do you ensure your handoff builds your team’s ability to execute for your client over the long term?
What format allows you to quickly bring a new team member up to speed quickly?
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Selling to Prospects Loyal to Your Competitor is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
Most of the time that we spend looking for opportunities is spent in two segments of our competitor’s loyalty continuum. We seek opportunities within their at-risk clients, where we know dissatisfaction lives, and we compete for their inevitable-loss clients.
If you hope to win your dream clients, it’s likely they exist in one of the other two segments, the loyal and secure segment or the loyal and unsecure segments. Here are some things to consider.
Selling to the SecureYour competitor’s most loyal and most secure clients are your dream clients. They spend a lot in your segment, and they have the types of needs and challenges that allow you to create massive value. But you don’t spend time selling into this segment. Why not?
You don’t spend time selling in the loyal and secure because it’s difficult to penetrate. Your competitor has earned their client’s loyalty, and your dream client isn’t going to easily let them go just because you called claiming you can create more value. It’s easier to give up and call on more easily won prospects.
It’s also problematic to call on your competitor’s loyal and secure clients when you have a quarterly number to make. It’s not easy to win these clients, and it isn’t likely that an opportunity can be created or won quickly. Sales management frowns upon missed numbers, and all the happy talk about long-term thinking is for naught when people don’t make their numbers.
So instead, we avoid our best prospective clients and move downstream.
You have to both create and win opportunities with your dream clients, especially the ones loyal to your competitors.
You win these clients over time by nurturing the relationships within your dream client’s account. You make frequent, meaningful deposits in those relationships by providing them with ideas and insights that create value for them—even though it is counterintuitive to share your ideas with your competitor’s dream clients. You make yourself known as a value creator so that when your dream client experiences some change, when there is some opening, you have paid in advance for the opportunity to work with your dream client.
There is no alternative to working on your dream clients. If you are not known when they experience a change, you will not get an opportunity to serve them, nor will you deserve one.
Selling to the UnsecureYour competitor’s loyal clients may be less secure than you might believe. These clients may not be in the at-risk column, but they may have stakeholders that are unhappy with their present results and they believe that they someone in your space to do something to help you.
It isn’t difficult to believe that because you have some key stakeholders that are loyal and secure that your client isn’t going to look at other potential offerings. This is a dangerous belief—and it’s a little naïve. A little dissatisfaction can create an opening for someone else long before the account is at-risk, especially someone who is willing to find their way in at a level low enough not to raise eyebrows or sound the alarms.
To sell to your competitor’s unsecure clients, you work on finding the pockets of dissatisfaction that do exist. You build and nurture those relationships. You build consensus around you and your ability to create the value that they really need. You have a presence deep in the bowels of the organization, your create relationships, and you make sure that you are known. You learn the ground truth and make yourself valuable while you build towards an opportunity.
You can do all of this while you are nurturing relationships with the contacts that are still loyal. You may not be able to directly approach and sell to the loyal very easily (they are loyal, after all), but you can build consensus all around them.
Regardless of your strategy and your tactics, you have to sell within these two most difficult segments. This is where your dream clients live.
QuestionsHow do you sell to accounts that are loyal to your competitors?
How do you nurture relationships within these accounts while your competitors are doing good work and while they have secure relationships?
How do you find pockets of dissatisfaction within your dream client accounts?
What do you do to develop consensus around you and your ideas while your account is still loyal to your competitor?
Why isn’t it enough to call on your competitor’s at risk and lost clients?
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The Client Loyalty Continuum is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
There are countless ways that you can classify your clients and prospects. While you should never pretend that any client is yours forever, lest you become complacent, there is a loyalty continuum that helps you determine what actions you need to take to create value for—and retain—your clients.
Loyal and SecureYou can classify your client as loyal and secure if you can objectively prove that this client uses no other services in your space. If asked, these clients wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of using one of your competitors. Many of us in business-to-business sales have these anchor clients who, at least for the period we are reviewing, are loyal and secure.
It’s not that there is no conceivable event that could cause the client to be lost. There are countless events that could cause this to be so, including mergers, acquisitions, severe economic downturns, etc. But for purposes of managing clients, the clients in this category should be managed as if they are loyal and secure.
You create value for these clients by continually executing, by moving to strategic, and by continually bringing them new ideas. You cannot rest on your laurels if you hope to keep these clients in this category, and you cannot afford to be complacent.
The following questions are used to verify that a client belongs in the “loyal and secure” category:
1. Do I have all of this client’s decision-makers, decision-influencers, and end-user’s commitment to our relationship?
2. Are their dissenters or opponents within this organization that at some time in the future could damage the commitment from this client? Are there some who are presently dissatisfied?
3. What do the client satisfaction surveys (formal and informal) indicate?
4. Do I have client satisfaction surveys from all decision-makers, decision-influencers, and all other affected parties?
5. Are the contacts within this client promoters of my product or service?
6. Are there members of my own organization that at some time in the future could damage or destroy our commitment from this client?
7. Does this client ever meet with, take calls from, have lunch with, or entertain offers from my competitors?
8. Is any portion of this client’s business given to one of my competitors?
9. Do I have a contractual commitment from this client that obligates them to use my products or services for some period?
If the answer to any of these questions gives you pause, then it is likely that the client doesn’t belong in this segment. Your value creation might need to be different if the client belongs in another category.
Loyal and Not SecureSome clients will have demonstrated loyalty over prior periods, but may be experiencing any number of changes that require them to be classified as “not secure.” The client may be experiencing changes in their business.
There may be changes in their personnel (particularly your contacts and sponsors), they be merging with another company or being acquired by one, they could make changes to their product or service that change their need for you product or service, or they may just no longer have a need for your service or product.
Or, there may be issues that are not as predictable but every bit as dangerous. Dissatisfied decision-makers or decision-influencers may be a future threat to your commitment. Even more damaging are true dissenters that have a strong negative opinion about your company, your services, or your product offerings. A vigilant salesperson will most likely be aware of these issues.
These clients are loyal because you have deep enough relationships to be able to predict that you will retain the account. But as long as there is dissatisfaction at some level, they cannot be considered secure.
You create value for clients in this segment by executing, by resolving outstanding issues, and by working to improve the experience of those that may not be satisfied with you or your service.
The following questions can be used to assess whether a client belongs in this category:
1. Do we have a history of unresolved problems, issues, or complaints that have been left unaddressed?
2. Is there a seriously dissatisfied or dissenting decision-maker or decision-influence within my client’s company?
3. Does this decision-maker, decision-influencer or dissenter have a known preference for another firm?
4. Does this decision-maker, decision-influencer or dissenter have a prior relationship with another firm? Do they have a strong preference for someone else in my space?
5. Are there any known factors (like annual RFP or RFI) that would indicate an overall continuing commitment to shop the market regardless of your present relationship?
Anyone in business-to-business sales for a significant period of time understands inherently that some clients, as a much as we would like to believe otherwise, fall outside of the above two categories. An honest assessment will require that some clients fall into the following two categories.
At RiskClients that are very likely to entertain offers from your competitors, that regularly meet with your competitors, that have a price orientation, or that may have serious service or product issues with your firm should be classified as “at risk.”
In some cases, it would be easy to classify these clients as loyal and not secure. You may simply think of this as a client who may just as easily be lost as will be retained.
You create value for these clients by making major adjustments to what you do. This means you most likely to develop far deeper—and far more strategic—relationships. It probably requires that you correct the issues that prevent your client from capturing the value you create (likely execution issues).
Most sales organizations don’t have any trouble figuring out who goes in the at-risk column.
1. Are the factors that put this client at risk within my company’s control?
2. What changes and what effort would be required to move this client out of this category?
3. Is the effort to move the client out of this category feasible? Reasonable? At what cost?
4. Would the retention of this client take away from our effort to serve and obtain other clients?
5. Does my company have a strategic interest in keeping this client?
6. Is this client a low revenue or low margin client?
Inevitable LossThese clients have notified you that you that they are leaving, or they have given you some indication that their loss is inevitable. There are many reasons we lose clients, some of which are unavoidable, including price, changes in their business, their loss of clients, and personnel changes, among others.
You have to decide whether it is worth the effort to pursue lost clients or move on to greener pastures.
The following questions will help you decide whether or not a client belongs in the category.
1. Has this client notified you that they will no longer be using your products or service?
2. Are their known changes at this client that indicate its loss in inevitable?
3. Does this client have needs that you can no longer serve (or that might be too expensive to provide)?
4. Are there changes in your business that will cause you to be unable to serve or provide this client?
5. Is it worth the effort to try to retain this client?
6. Do I have some way to create more value for this client than I have been able to in the past?
7. Are they willing to pay for that value creation?
8. What would it take to regain an opportunity to serve this client?
In order to use the above analysis, take a printed list of your clients and assess each for the above listed criteria. Place each client in the appropriate category. If you make an honest assessment, you will end up with clients in each category. If you do not have clients in each category, ask yourself if you are being realistic and honest about these clients. There is nothing to be gained by avoiding a truthful assessment of your present client category classifications, and there is everything to be gained by managing these clients accordingly.
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Balancing Your Buyer’s Two Fundamental Needs is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
Have you ever had a prospective client who convinced you through their words and their actions that they were ready to move forward with you and your solution, only to later disengage completely from the you and the opportunity?
Have you ever struggled to understand why your dream client agrees that they need to make changes, and the closer they get to the end of the sales cycles, the further away they are from agreeing to move forward?
There is a reason that this occurs.
Your dream client is pulled in two directions by two deep fundamental human needs. You have to help balance these needs.
GrowthTo make the improvements that your dream clients need to make, they have to change. They have to make improvements, and they have to grow. The status quo may be as warm and comfortable as an old coat, but the status quo isn’t a path to growth and improvement.
Your dream clients and clients know that they need to grow. They know that they need to change. And they know that they will need to forego the status quo. When you show them what is possible, it’s easy for them to be excited by a vision of the future. Because they find the future compelling, they agree to commitments that move both of you down that path together, you moving through your sales process, your client moving through their buying process.
Growth is a human need. It’s also one of business’s fundamental needs.
But then, as you move closer, another deep human need surfaces. This human need slows things down and puts the brakes on the commitments.
Certainty and Risk AvoidanceAs you move closer to a commitment that would mean the client is required to act, the human needs for certainty and risk avoidance start to take precedence over other needs. You might be surprised when certainty and risk avoidance appear late in the game because they weren’t visible earlier in the process, but you would be wrong. These needs were there the whole time, but they were latent, hidden behind the excitement and enthusiasm of the better future results.
The need for certainty and risk avoidance are no less important than the need for growth. The stakeholders within your dream client’s company need growth, and they need certainty and risk avoidance. It’s your job to give them both.
A Balancing ActIn my experience, it’s the mark of a professional to bring risk into the discussion early in the process. The sooner it is brought up, the sooner you can effectively deal with it together with your dream client.
When you wait to address the uncertainty and risk, your dream client gets there themselves—and alone. Avoiding the issues of certainty and risk can cause a serious problem.
It can lead your clients to believe that you are unaware of the risks or that you are aware and don’t want to address them. This exacerbates the uncertainty and the perception of risk. Instead of a reasoned discussion of the risks kept in context and a discussion of how the risks might be mitigated, your avoidance makes it worse.
It’s easy to believe that if you bring up anything negative that you will you ruin your opportunity. But because both of these needs are important, you put your deal at greater risk by not addressing the uncertainty and risk that accompany significant change.
Professional salespeople don’t avoid the tough discussions. Instead, they have discussions about risk and they take the actions to mitigate those risks. This is what prevents your dream client from getting cold feet down the stretch.
QuestionsWhy does your dream client need growth?
Why do they also need certainty and risk avoidance?
What are the risks of addressing only growth and avoiding dealing with risk?
How do sales professionals help their clients address the risk and uncertainty in a healthy way that allows them to move forward with growth?
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What If You Were Great at Cold Calling? is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
It’s interesting the effect a core set of beliefs can have on your sales results. Many of the salespeople I know that struggle to produce results prospecting have a very negative set of beliefs about cold calling.
The salespeople I know that produce the best results have a different set of beliefs about cold calling. Many of them know that they are good at it, and they prefer to pick up the telephone and call their prospects. Some don’t have any strong feelings for or against cold calling. All of them make calls.
You may want to believe that things have changed and that you no longer have to cold call. You may want to believe that you can gain enough prospects to make your number through social media and referrals. You may want to believe these things, but that doesn’t make them true.
Maybe you aren’t worried about cold calling.
But you should be worried about your competitors that are effective at cold calling and who are willing to pick up the phone and call your clients and dream clients. You know, the dream clients that you are waiting to develop through your drip campaign.
What if?What if you were to change your beliefs about cold calling? What if, instead of convincing yourself that cold calling sucks, you told yourself that cold calling still works—as long as you approach is professional and it creates value?
What if, instead of resisting cold calling, you embraced it? What if you were really good at it?
What if you used cold calling along with all of the other prospecting methods available to you to build an effective prospecting plan, one that produces and develops enough opportunities for you to make and exceed your number?
What if you were really good at cold calling? What if you were able to open the relationships that open opportunities effectively on the telephone? What if instead of worrying about your competitors calling into your clients and dream clients effectively they had to worry about you calling into theirs?
What if you were such a tremendous value creator that you could cold call and build an unassailable pipeline?
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Why You Have Low Wallet Share and What To Do About It is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
If you are going to exert the effort to go and win a client, why not put forth a little more effort and win the whole account? Sometimes we can succeed in winning orders and do so in a way that makes it more difficult to get what we were really after.
Below are a few reasons sales organizations have low wallet share and some ideas about how you can increase it.
Transactional SellingThere are differences in selling transactional business and selling more strategic accounts. The activities are very different, and what allows you to succeed in one can cause you to fail in the other.
If you treat a strategic account for whom you could create tremendous value like a transactional account, creating little value and closing for orders, you often get exactly what you asked for. Because you did so little value creation and avoided a strategic level of value creation, you are perceived as transactional. Now you have orders, but you don’t have the conversation and the opportunity that allows you to move up the levels of value creation to strategic.
Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you have to prove yourself and earn trust. But more often than not, it’s better to treat the sale as strategic from the beginning, foregoing transactional orders now in order to capture the lion’s share of wallet later.
Treat transactional clients as transactional and provide them the right value creation. Treat strategic accounts as strategic and create the right level of value for them so that you can capture the wallet share.
Too Few RelationshipsIn larger, more complex organizations, it’s difficult to capture wallet share when different segments of the company can make their own decision as to who to use. It’s easy to get trapped in a department or pigeonholed into some segment of the business when you are really capable of providing more and earning greater wallet share.
To capture wallet share, you have to develop the relationships that allow you to capture new segments and new divisions. Sometimes, you have to work your way up to high-level decision makers to be able to make a case to consolidate their spending across divisions or business units. The relationships you develop are what allow you to find your way through your client’s organization and to build consensus along the way.
Make relationships throughout the organization so that you are known, so that you are trusted, and so you can create the opportunities to improve your wallet share.
Poor ExecutionIt’s ugly, I know. Sometimes the reason you have low wallet share is because you deserve to have low wallet share. If you aren’t executing now, it’s difficult for your client to imagine trusting you with even more work.
Sometimes the only way to gain an opportunity to improve your wallet share is to execute on what you already have. You might need to have an honest and candid conversation with your team about execution. You might also need to ask your client for a do over.
However you proceed, to earn a greater share of your client’s spend, you need to first deliver on the promises that you have already made.
Poor Account ManagementAn account manager can make the difference in gaining wallet share. Ensuring that you have the right team with the right people in place is a critical factor in growing your wallet share.
Large clients are built on exceptions. Much of what we do to create value for them requires us to customize what we do for them and how we do it. In a lot of sales organizations, it’s tough to get these exceptions made. Having an account management plan and the right account manager can make a difference in successfully serving large clients and gaining wallet share, especially an account manager that can sell inside the organization.
As a salesperson or sales manager, you have to sell inside to make sure you have the right resources—and the right people—in place to earn greater wallet share.
QuestionsWhat are the reasons that you have low wallet share in some of your clients?
What changes would you need to make to increase your wallet share?
Do you sell differently to transactional clients than strategic clients?
How can you gain the relationships you need to improve your wallet share?
How do you ensure that you execute in a way that earns you the right to improve your wallet share?
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Owning the Outcome Means No Hiding is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
Your brand new client is upset. Your team is having trouble executing. They aren’t getting the results that they need, and your team is having trouble getting things right. Your client calls you to discuss the issue, but you are on sales calls and available.
You call your team, you pass on the message, and someone from your team calls to resolve the issues. That’s all well and good, but it isn’t enough. You own the outcome.
Problems Are InevitableIt’s inevitable that you are going to have challenges serving your clients. You are responsible for resolving those issues. You own what you sold your client. You owe them outcome, so you own the problems.
You Own the OutcomesYou own the outcomes, not the transactions. This means that you are responsible for ensuring that your team executes and that your client’s get the outcomes that you sold them, even if you aren’t the person that can make the changes that gets them the results. Your team owns the transactions.
You OrchestrateYour job in sales requires that you make sure that you apply the resources needed to help your client achieve the objectives you sold.
You are responsible for orchestrating their efforts. It is right that you would call your team and pass on the message. It is right that you would have your team begin to take action on behalf of your client.
All of this is good, but it isn’t enough.
No HidingWhen your client is struggling, you don’t hide. You call them back, and you handle their problem.
You might be tempted to wait to call your client, hoping that your team calls your client and deals with their issues before you call them. You might hope that you don’t have to take the brunt of the blow when your angry or upset client unloads.
But this exactly what you must do. You cannot hide. Hiding means you are avoiding dealing with your client’s issues. It means you can’t be trusted. It means your client is alone in the foxhole.
When you can, you call your client first. You get in front of the issue. You listen to them explain their situation and what they need from you. And, then you delegate the transactions to your team, keeping your client informed as to the actions being taken the whole time.
Less than this is hiding, and it can cost you your professionalism, as well as your client’s trust.
QuestionsHow do you respond to client issues over which you don’t have direct responsibility?
Should you be the one to take their calls, even when you aren’t the one that can really help them with the transaction part of solving that problem?
Does it destroy trust to pass those calls on without listening and addressing them at some level?
How do you handle client issues and orchestrate resolving them?
What does your client want from you? What do they expect from you? What do risk by avoiding their calls and hiding?
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How to Defend Your Price is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
It’s okay to lose on price. It’s okay—and it’s necessary—to walk away from business where you will lose money. Your company’s business strategy requires that you walk away from this business.
While there are still plenty of buyers that buy on price alone and refuse to admit that they buy on price, there are even more salespeople that have trouble defending their price and that don’t make the effort.
You Must Believe: If you don’t believe you are worth paying more for, neither will your clients. It is amazing how much belief matters here. Not your client’s beliefs, your beliefs. You have to believe you are worth paying more for if you are going to defend your pricing. If you don’t believe that you will create more value at your price than your lower-priced competitors, then your prospective clients won’t either.
You Must Explain: You have to be able to explain the difference between price and cost in a way that is meaningful to your prospective clients. It isn’t enough that the pricing difference makes sense to you. It must make sense to your prospective client.
If you have a higher cost structure when it comes to producing what you produce, you have to make the translation as to how your higher cost structure translates to greater benefits for your client. It’s not your client’s job to figure this out on his or her own.
If you don’t know how to talk about the difference between price and cost, you are going to have to learn. You can’t defend your price without defending the additional value that you create. You are going to have to demonstrate to your dream clients how the greater investment is going to be put to use in getting the result that they really need.
You Must Teach: If you won’t defend your pricing and teach your dream client how to help you defend your pricing, they won’t defend the decision to choose you—and it’s likely they won’t choose you.
Your contacts are going to be asked why they are spending more on whatever it is you sell. They are going to be asked to justify their decision. You have to provide them with the ability to make that defense. You need to provide them with the argument they need, as well as evidence that it is a good decision.
If you want to capture the price that you need in order to produce the value your client needs, you have to believe that your price is necessary and worth defending. You also have to be able to explain how your pricing helps your client to achieve their goals, and you have to teach them to defend your pricing and their decision to choose you.
It’s okay to lose on price when that is your prospect’s primary decision criteria. It’s not okay to lose on price because you could not—or didn’t—defend your pricing.
QuestionsAre you prepared to defend your price?
Do you deeply believe your price is right and that it allows you to create differentiated value?
Do you know how to defend your price? Can you tie it directly to the value you create?
Are you prepared to prepare your clients to defend your pricing inside their organization?
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Making Do With What You Do Have is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
It’s easy to look at other sales organizations and believe that they have advantages that you don’t have. This is especially true when the sales organizations you compete against are larger than yours. When you look at them as someone outside their organization, you believe that selling would be easier if you had some of what they had, namely more resources.
You don’t need what they have. You can make do and win.
More Money EqualsSome of your competitors have more money. More money translates to more resources. More resources equals an easier time selling—or so you believe. But what does this money really do for your competitor?
Money allows them to invest in marketing and sales collateral. They have a slicker presentation. They have four-color, glossy brochures that were designed by a major marketing firm. They provide their salespeople with a greater travel and entertainment budget. They may have more internal resources with which to serve their clients, and they have offerings that you don’t have.
While all of these things may be helpful, you can create and win opportunities without any of these things, and many salespeople and sales organizations do just that.
You can make do with what you have, because you already have what you really need to succeed.
Making DoOpportunities are created and won by salespeople that create value for their dream clients. The ability to create value for your clients does not depend on your having a slicker presentation or a glossy, four-color brochure. These rarely shift the balance in favor of the sales organizations that use these tools.
Make do by creating value for your dream clients and clients.
None of the money and resources that your competitors have converts to the real currency we in sales trade in, and that currency is trust. While it’s true that larger companies with greater resources can look like a safer choice, the trust that the salesperson creates to open and win an opportunity isn’t dependent on their company’s size and resources. In fact, many people distrust larger sales organizations because they feel that they won’t get the attention that they need.
Make do by being someone that your client can trust to help them achieve results.
Money and resources can help to open relationships, but it is easier now to open relationships when you have the ideas and the ability to help your dream clients produce results. There will always be prospects that require you wine and dine them in order to get their attention or gain business. But it’s more likely now that your clients need you to create value for them by helping them improve their business results. Your ideas are a resource and a currency that can tilt the playing field deeply in your favor.
Make do by opening relationships by nurturing the relationships that you need with value creating ideas. Be a deep well of resourcefulness and ideas.
Your clients need you to own the outcomes that you sold. A salesperson from a larger sales organization with greater resources has no advantage when it comes to owning the outcome, to leading change, and to orchestrating the efforts of their team. Money and resources does nothing to prove that your competitors will own the outcomes that sold. In fact, there are clients who will choose you because they believe you will be there and own it.
Make do by being proving that you have the skill sets necessary to lead your team and your client’s team to the outcome that they need.
You can make do, and you can win without all of the perceived advantages your larger competitors have.
QuestionsDo money and resources alone make selling easier?
Would rather have more resources or a seriously value-creating idea that could help your client produce real results? Which would your client prefer you to have?
What are the skills and attributes that level the playing field for salespeople?
How do you make your smaller size and lack of resources a competitive advantage?
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How to Deal with Haters is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
There are some people that can never be happy seeing someone else succeed. They believe someone else’s success makes them something less. It makes them jealous. They don’t believe that someone else deserves a success that they themselves don’t already have.
They mock those that try. They hate.
Some people will judge you based on their own self-imposed limitations, and they will mock and criticize you for pursuing greatness. They believe that others should be forced to accept the limitations that they have placed upon themselves, even if it would make that someone less than they might be.
They are puny people, and so you must be puny with them.
There are some who will try to tear you down as a way to not feel inferior. They will do this so that they don’t have to feel bad about themselves. In their little minds, you are stupid for putting forth the effort required to succeed, you are stupid for trying so hard, and you are stupid for drinking the Kool-Aid. You are stupid, and they are smart for being able to see what you have missed.
Many haters are too lazy to pursue their own ambition. Many more are too afraid of being criticized the same way that they criticize others. Because they never try, they have no idea that their supportive tribe is ready and waiting for them. Because they would never open themselves up to being criticized by their small-minded and feeble friends, they never know greatness. They instead know only hate.
You don’t do what you do to please the haters. You don’t do what you do to win them over. Everything that you do is for the people that need what it is that you do, the people that gain from it, the people that appreciate it. Your tribe wants you—needs you—to lead it.
You deal with the haters by not dealing with the haters. You ignore them. You turn their already too small, too rotten, and too vile voices down to a level that is imperceptible. It will drive them crazy, and their voices will get louder and shriller—for a time. Then their voices will disappear into oblivion as you move past them, as you move forward, as you become bigger.
So, you make the effort. You try. You pursue greatness. You reach your full potential, and you ignore those that hope for your failure. Their hope is all for naught anyway. The haters can’t stop you from succeeding . . . unless you join them.
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Build a Sales Kit for Your Car is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
A lot is made of first impressions. I believe a lot should be made about last impressions, too. But whether the sales call you are making is your first, second, or twenty-fifth call on the same client, you are leaving an impression. You don’t want that impression to be negative.
One of the things that you are being judged on is your discipline. Your appearance is one of the ways someone can discern your self-discipline.
Have Clean ShoesHonestly, good shoes are expensive. I used to buy one brand of business shoes because they were so reliably sturdy and held up well under all conditions. Sadly this is no longer true of that brand. I am trying a new brand now, and they seem to be far sturdier, and I am tough on shoes.
Here is what is important. Your shoes need to be clean and polished. It’s easy to keep them looking good with a little bit of care. But you also need to be prepared to clean them up enough for sales calls while you are out on the road.
Those little Kiwi Instant Shine Sponges work incredibly well to clean up your shoes. They cost around $6.00, and they take up almost no room. Put a couple in a box in your trunk or in your glove box.
You might also throw in a couple extra pairs of shoelaces, too.
Be OdorlessI don’t smoke, and I am not judgmental about people that do smoke. It’s terribly addicting, and I believe most people would quit if it were easier to do so. But because I am not judgmental doesn’t mean that your prospective client won’t be. When you smoke, you stink like smoke to non-smokers. Some will judge you.
If you are in the field making sales calls, don’t smoke in your car on the way to your sales call. If you can avoid it, don’t smoke before calls at all. If you have to smoke, find some way to minimize the odor without making it obvious by spraying something all over you (that just makes you smell like smoke and whatever you sprayed on yourself).
If you are putting your client in your car, it can’t smell like smoke either.
Clean Teeth, Fresh BreathYou are making a sales call. You are going to be talking, and you are going to be close enough to shake hands with your client and greet them. You need clean teeth and clean breath. Anything less is impolite.
Keep a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash in your desk. Keep another toothbrush and travel-size toothpaste in your briefcase or bag. I like the dental toothpicks with the built-in floss. You can toss a zip-lock bag with some of those in your bag, and you can keep another in your car.
Also keep mints in your desk, your bag, and your car.
Prepared to Capture IdeasHave you ever seen a salesperson borrow a pen from their client? How about paper? This isn’t high school, and you can’t show up unprepared and bum paper and pen from the kid sitting next to you. You are a paid professional, and you need to be prepared.
I like a good pen, so I never lose them. But pen and paper are cheap commodities. You can buy a bunch of legal pads and a box of pens and put them in a box in your trunk.
I am mostly paperless. I carry the iPad 2, and I use Evernote. I never leave the house without my iPad because it is my primary capture tool.
You don’t need to worry about making a good impression by having a fancy leather portfolio as much as you have to worry about the impression it makes when you aren’t prepared to capture what is important to your dream client. Don’t try to impress them with your memory. Impress them with your disciplined attention to details.
Clean and Crisp CollateralYour company paid top dollar to print four-color glossy sales collateral for you to leave behind on your sales calls. You have left on the back seat of your car, and now that sales collateral is dirty, dog-eared, and it’s embarrassing.
You can buy a plastic box for files for a few dollars. You can equip that with hanging files for a few bucks more. You can load that box up with all of the things in this post, and you can prevent yourself from being embarrassed to hand somebody your mangled sales collateral.
QuestionsWhat do you need to keep with you so you can make a good impression?
What are you sometimes guilty of that might make you appear undisciplined, unprepared, or unprofessional?
What mistakes have you noticed in others when it comes to the impression that they make?
What have you noticed others do that makes a killer first–and last–impression?
What might your client be judging you on?
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Managing Your Client Conversation Logs is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
One of the primary reasons that I use customer-relationship management software is because I find it more and more valuable to keep a client conversation log.
During the course of calling on and acquiring your clients, you have a lot of conversations. Later, it’s difficult to remember what exactly was said, who said it, and in what context. Your extended brain needs to include a record of your conversations.
Their Questions and NeedsAs you work through your sales process, your clients ask questions and they describe their needs. They share with you the outcomes that they need, and they have questions about how you will help them achieve those outcomes. It’s difficult to remember all of their ideas and their questions, but later you will need them.
Capturing the conversation in a conversation log will allow you to later recall what your client said. As you move through the process, and as you build a solution with your client, recalling the details of these conversations will improve your proposed solution and will also allow you to integrate these conversations into your presentation.
When you are working with your team, and when you are handing off the client to your operations team, these conversation logs will provide your team with insight into how the client’s need developed and how they are going to need to serve them.
When you capture your client’s language and their needs, you are capturing what’s important to them. That helps focus you on your client’s needs.
Your Promises and CommitmentsKeeping a client conversation log is also a discipline that helps you keep your promises and your commitments. Too often salespeople make commitments and promises that they intend to keep but don’t. I’m not thinking about overpromising here as much as I am the smaller promises like providing the client with information or following up to close some open loop.
Being trusted requires that you keep your promises and commitments. Keeping your promises and commitments means remembering that you made the promises.
Many salespeople still keep paper notes. Too few move their conversation logs into their sales force automation software. But taking the few minutes to add your client’s thoughts and your commitments is worth the time it takes to do so. It provides you with a chance to review the conversation while it is still fresh in your mind.
But it may be even more critical that you take the time to recall your commitments and promises. Your client’s remember the commitments that you made, even when you don’t. They do keep score, and they do believe that you keeping your commitments is a preview of what they can expect from you in the future.
QuestionsHow do you record and track the conversations you have with your clients and prospects?
How do you retrieve that information when you need it? How do you share the information you need with your team?
How do you recall the commitments and promises you made? What about the small promises that don’t seem that important to you but that your client remembers?
How does retaining this information and your commitments build trust?
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Confidence in Cold Calling is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
The Sales Blog Mailbag always brings something interesting. Today, I received this: “I need your motivation. Whenever I make outbound sales calls I get cold feet. The result is that I end up losing interest from the prospect.”
This salesperson doesn’t need motivation. She needs confidence. Here is how she can get the confidence.
Planned DialoguesThe primary reason that salespeople lack confidence when making cold calls is that they don’t have planned dialogues. It’s difficult to be confident when you don’t know what it is that you are going to say, how you are going to resolve your prospect’s concerns, and what commitments you need to gain.
Planned dialogues provide you with excellent language choices. Continually refining your language choices allows you to improve what you say and improve your effectiveness. Planned dialogues also provide you with guidance and direction that your sales interaction is supposed to take.
I have never understood the resistance to planned dialogues. Why wouldn’t you want to capture the most effective language choices? Why wouldn’t you want to rehearse the most logical and compelling ideas that would allow a prospect to agree to meet with you? This doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative when confronted with a novelty, but you don’t need to be creative on every call.
Planned dialogues build confidence.
A Compelling MessageWhy are you on your prospect’s phone? Do you have a message that your prospect is going to find compelling?
One of the other reasons that salespeople lack confidence is that they don’t have a compelling message. In order to be confident, you have to be able to help your prospective client. You have to have a message that they find compelling.
Your message can’t be about you. It can’t be about who you are, your product or service, or your features and benefits. That time has passed. Your message needs to help your prospective client know exactly how you can help them produce better results. What are the challenges that they face that you are going to help them tackle?
You need a compelling message that resonates with your client, piques their curiosity, and gives them confidence that spending time with you is worth their while. And speaking of spending time with your prospects . . .
A Commitment to GainYour confidence is greatly improved by knowing what commitments you need to gain from your prospect. The planned dialogue and a compelling message make it easier to ask for and gain these commitments, but you need know what you are asking for and you have to ask for it.
Sometimes, the reason that you are uncomfortable asking for commitments is that you don’t feel that you created enough value to deserve the commitment (that’s why you have to be a value creator). Or it might simply be your own resistance to asking for and obtaining commitment. Maybe you are too soft, or maybe you haven’t yet embraced that you are in sales.
Helping your clients produce better results requires that you ask for an obtain commitments. Your prospective clients need you to know what commitments you need from them in order to help them produce the results that they need—and they need you to ask for those commitments.
If you want to be more confident in cold calling, you need planned dialogues, a message your prospective clients will find compelling, and the ability and willingness to ask for the commitment that you need in order to help your prospect produce better results.
QuestionsHow important is confidence to selling well and to cold calling in particular?
How do planned dialogues help build confidence?
How does having a compelling message and value proposition help to improve your confidence and produce results?
What commitments do you need to gain? Do have the ability and the willingness to ask for them?
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Too Clever by Half: The Case for Fundamentals. is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
There is a tendency to believe that when we teach, train, develop, and coach salespeople that we can we need to deliver something more than they already know, some new novelty.
We mistakenly believe that the best salespeople need something new and that they will be insulted by receiving more training on the fundamentals. We also incorrectly believe that and that the salespeople that need the most help will benefit from something more than development of the fundamentals.
We are too clever by half.
Blocking and tacklingThe best performers in any field are those with the greatest command of the fundamentals. It isn’t the esoteric or the great subtleties that allow them to produce greater results than their peers. It’s their magnificent command of the fundamentals that allow them to produce better results.
In any endeavor other than business, performers spend more time practicing the fundamentals than they spend actually performing. In fact, that difference is an order of magnitude.
I learned this through aikido. A martial artist practices the same fundamental form thousands and thousands of times to be able to execute it effortlessly and perfectly. If they are called to use a technique, they can do so perfectly and without thinking about. In aikido, there are 39 basic movements, and that’s enough.
A professional athlete, like a football player, practices six days a week for hours each day, to play for a few hours on sixteen Sundays. They run the same plays over and over again, perfecting them. Then they spend this off-season training and studying for the next season.
The military continually runs drills to prepare for combat. They rehearse and study the fundamentals because it is the difference between life and death.
This dedication to practicing and developing the fundamentals is what allows the martial artist, the athlete, and the soldier to excel when they are called on to perform. Businesspeople—and salespeople particularly—are no different. But we behave differently. We do too little training, and we don’t often treat our performances as practice.
Instead of looking for the shiny new novelty, retrain and reinforce the fundamentals. The ability to deal with the novelties that your clients throw your way is almost always best handled by resorting to first principles anyway.
QuestionsWhat is it that consistent performance is built on? Is it the fundamentals, or is it the esoteric subtleties?
How much time to we spend training and developing our skills when it comes to the fundamentals?
What is it that the best performers in other disciplines do that allows them to perform at the highest level?
Why are first principles and fundamentals so critical to success?
What are the fundamentals that you should be studying to perform at a higher level?
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Why You Need to Establish a Meeting Rhythm (A Note to the Sales Manager) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
No one wants to have any more meetings than is necessary, and especially meetings that don’t have a solid agenda and real and beneficial outcome. Scheduling regular meetings—and keeping them—helps you to produce greater results through your sales team.
Create AccountabilityWith the easy access to reporting and information about sales activity and progress within the pipeline, the requirement that the salesperson report their sales activities and outcomes has been all but eliminated. While they do have to keep their sales force automation up to date, they don’t have to compile the data themselves and they don’t have to report it to their sales managers each week. The sales manager simply pulls the data each week.
This eliminates accountability. Something more is needed.
Holding regularly scheduled review meetings creates an irreplaceable culture of accountability. It creates the critical interaction of discussing the salesperson’s activity results and their progress. It also gives the salesperson an opportunity to ask for help and assistance where they need it.
These meetings can alert both you and your salespeople when they are off course and allow you to make adjustments before goals are missed and before problems occur.
Create AwarenessThe demands on a sales manager’s time have never been greater. Holding regularly scheduled meetings helps to create an awareness of what your salespeople are encountering in the field when you are not with them.
Regular meetings can help you to see the patterns, the challenges the salespeople face in the market, the new opportunities that are springing up, and an increased awareness of what might need to be changed to help produce greater results. In addition to reporting their numbers, asking your salespeople a simple question like, “So what’s going on,” can help surface issues and ideas that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Collecting feedback from the field provides you with an increased awareness of what’s going on in your space.
Sell Your PrioritiesAs a sales leaders, getting results through others means selling your priorities and making sure that your whole team is aligned and working towards them. It isn’t enough to set these priorities at the beginning of the year. Either you sell your priorities hard until you cross the finish line or you end the year short of those goals.
Creating a meeting rhythm gives you the opportunity to reiterate, restate, and refocus your sales team on your priorities. A great sales manager never says anything once, and your team’s commitment to your goals will only equal yours if you are committed to continually selling your priorities.
Schedule regular meetings with a rhythm that allows you to be effective in helping your sales force produce results and you to reach your goals.
QuestionsDo you keep regularly scheduled meetings with your sales force each week?
Do you review their activity and their progress each week?
Is yours a culture of accountability?
Do your meetings allow you an opportunity to capture what’s going on in your market? The challenges your sales force is facing?
Do you reiterate your priorities and your team’s goals each week and give them new guidance?
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It’s Not Enough to Manage. Notch Them Up! (A Note to the Sales Manager) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
Your success as a sales leader and a sales manager depends upon your ability to achieve results through your salespeople. The more effective your sales force, the greater your results.
Developing your sales force means improving their skills and abilities, and it is the most direct path to improved sales results. But managing isn’t enough. You have to lead, and you have to help your salespeople to grow.
You have to notch them up.
There’s Not Enough TimeAs sales managers, we often believe that there isn’t enough time to coach our salespeople, so instead we simply direct them. We tell them what to do and how to do it, and in doing so we eliminate their resourcefulness and initiative. We often choose the fastest method of helping the salesperson instead of the most effective way.
We create dependents.
The truth is that there isn’t enough time to not coach your sales people. No company that I am aware of has the time or resources to train and develop their sales force the way they would want to. And none can keep their sales force out of the field long enough to train them on everything they would like to train.
Coaching bridges the gap between managing and developing the sales force (these ideas don’t have to be mutually exclusive). Coaching allows the sales manager to spend the time working with their salespeople not only on the problem, challenge, or opportunity at hand, but also on the more important outcome that is the salesperson’s continued development and growth.
Instead of managing the sales force, doing their thinking for them, directing their actions, and telling them what they need to do, coaching helps develop the salesperson’s ability to make the right choices in the future, to think about their challenges themselves, to engage their resourcefulness, and by doing so, eliminating their dependence on you, their sales manager.
In short, coaching helps your salespeople to grow.
Making Time To Notch Them UpAs a sales leader, you are charged with producing results, and that means you have to find a way to develop your sales force and make it more effective while moving fast and pursuing opportunities, revenue, and goals. The reality is that best opportunities for development are found in the concrete opportunities your sales force is working on now.
Coaching the sales force in real time and on live opportunities allows you take the salesperson’s development from the academic exercise it is in training and breathe life into by dealing with real challenges. It provides you the opportunity to continually notch your salespeople up, working with them in a way that improves their skills, improves the way that they think about and understand what they need to do to be effective, and improving their overall performance.
Over time, your investment in notching your sales force up through coaching will return dividends far beyond your investment in time.
QuestionsHow much time do you spend training and developing the sales force before you put them into the field?
How much time do you spend annually on continued development and training?
If you coached for a single hour each week, what percentage of an improvement would that be over the sales force’s current development and training plan?
What are the advantages of working on real prospects and clients instead of always training and developing in an academic setting?
What do you have to do to integrate coaching into your day-to-day routine?
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Irrelevance Avoidance Training (or How to Avoid Being Irrelevant) is a post from: The Sales Blog | S. Anthony Iannarino
Tom Peters is fond of quoting retired Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, who once said: “If you don’t like change, your going to like irrelevance even less.” I like the opening line to one of Tom’s books, I think it was Liberation Management, just as well: “The crazy past is going to look like a mellow prelude.”
We live in a time of extraordinary, exponential, and disruptive change. Society as we know it is being disrupted by the force of new technologies, the forces of revolution, the undermining power of commoditization, and the displacing power of disintermediation. Economic upheavals are not only coming with greater regularity, they are deeper and they last longer.
All in all, it’s disruptive change of the first order with the promise of more to come. Don’t stand by and wait for the gold watch. It’s scary . . . and it’s also so empowering for those that would embrace the change. You are the sharp end of the spear, and that means you are on the front lines of change. Being anything less is the fast track to irrelevance.
Your Plan to GrowTo avoid being irrelevant, you have to grow. And fast! You have to try on new beliefs and replace your old limiting beliefs. Clinging to the past won’t help you; you have to let go. You have to unlearn your learned helplessness.
My favorite example of an unhealthy belief and the learned helplessness that accompanies it is the ancient sales guy in his mid-40’s (of which I am one), suggesting that he doesn’t need to adopt the technologies that exist now to succeed in sales. Suggesting that he can’t learn to use computers doesn’t hold much water when the even-more-ancient 60 year-olds make up the fastest growing demographic on Facebook.
The belief that what you did in the past will be enough to allow you to succeed now is the most dangerous belief you can hold on to. It isn’t going to be enough. It’s time to grow. Or else.
Avoiding irrelevance means that you are going to need a new set of beliefs for a new age. You are going to need the accompanying skills for a new age, too. You are going to have to learn how to operate in the new normal that is constant and never-ending disruptive change, and you are going to have to level up your sales skills.
You are going to have to learn new sales approaches that you can add to your existing skill sets. You are going to have to learn to use the new tools of business, like it or not. You didn’t get to vote on whether or not you were going to use the telephone, and you don’t get to vote on whether or not you communicate with your clients using the methods that they prefer. You are going to have to learn to be a subject matter expert in whatever it is you sell as well as a subject matter expert in that area of the businesses you serve.
You are going to have to develop greater leadership, management, and change management skill sets. You are also going to have to believe that your very depends on your adaptability, your resourcefulness, your resiliency, and your ability to adopt new beliefs and new skill sets.
Surviving and thriving means growth.
Your Plan to Contribute and Create ValueThe way in which you created value in the past is no longer going to be enough, either. In sales, the idea that you create value simply by helping your prospective clients to understand your offering’s features and benefits hasn’t really been enough to allow you to win and create value for a long time, despite how easy it is to fall into this trap when you have a constant flow of new features and benefits to sell. It’s also no longer enough to deal with the tactical level challenges about how to benefit from whatever it is you sell.
You only avoid irrelevance by moving up the levels of value creation and moving towards strategic. The reason one of your plans for growth has to include business acumen is because that is where the real value creation for your client lies. You are valuable when you can help your clients further their businesses.
You are relevant when you are a strategic advantage by creating value for your clients in a way that helps them compete in their space, by helping them to create value for their clients and customers, by helping them to increase their revenue, by helping them to improve their profitability, and by helping them to control their costs.
You are relevant when you act as part of your client’s management team, helping to produce the outcomes that they need and helping them to create their future. You are relevant when you are a deep well of ideas that will help your client to further their business. You create value when you help your clients to see around corners.
If you would be relevant, you are going to be this new value creator.
Your Plan to Build Your BrandYou are your own brand. Your brand is made up of who you are, what you know, and how you create value for others.
Building your brand requires that you focus on growing your skills and abilities in a way that makes it easy for people to first buy you. You have to be relevant.
Building your brand also means improving your ability to create value for your clients and dream clients. You move away from pitching your product, service, or solution and towards creating a higher level of value creation, a strategic level of value creation.
Your brand must be relevant. You must grow, adopting new beliefs and new skills. You must create a different—and greater—level of value for your clients and dream clients. Anything less is irrelevant.
QuestionsWhat are the changes that make this time so disruptive? What forces are at work?
What is your plan to grow and develop new beliefs and new skills to take advantage of these changes?
How are you going to create a higher level of value for your clients and dream clients in the future? How are their expectations changing?
What is your brand going to stand for? Is it going to be relevant?
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