By Norman Behar, Managing Partner

This past Tuesday we sponsored a panel discussion on Leveraging Technology to Deliver Highly Effective Sales Training Solutions at the ASTD International Conference and Exhibition in Dallas. We were delighted to see the room packed with a highly engaged audience who were looking to extend their learning beyond the classroom.

The panel discussion was hosted by ASTD Community of Practice Manager, Learning Technologies, Justin Brusino. The panelists included me and the following participants:

• Jim Greenway, EVP Marketing & Sales Effectiveness, Lee Hecht Harrison (an SRG client)
• Torey Johnson, Sales Training & Development Manager, Renaissance Learning (an SRG client)
• Julie Dirksen, Instructional Designer, Usable Learning, LLC
• Chad Udell, Managing Director, Float Learning

Key takeaways included how leading sales organizations are using technology to drive participant engagement and skills adoption through spaced learning, mobile applications, sales simulations, coaching programs, and social learning.

To learn more about the key factors that drive sales training effectiveness, download our white paper.

A big thank you to ASTD for asking us to sponsor this event!!!

By Ray Makela, Managing Partner.  

LinkedIn Network Map

It may be time to get serious about how you use LinkedIn in your selling process.

We all hear the buzz about social networks, and especially LinkedIn for business connections. With LinkedIn network topping 200 million users, this represents a large group of prospects. . .and chances are good these days that your target prospect at a specific company is on LinkedIn.

We often hear the response from sales professionals in our Comprehensive Selling Skills and Comprehensive Sales Management programs that they know they should be using LinkedIn more strategically, but haven’t really made it part of their sales process. They often feel like they should be doing more with LinkedIn, but don’t know how or don’t have the time. Read the rest of this entry »

By Norman Behar, Managing Partner

There is an ongoing dialogue in sales organizations about the development of selling skills and the importance of consistently following a sales process.  This conversation has become much more amplified as sales organizations continue to implement CRM systems with a pre-defined sales process (or more accurately sales pipeline stages), and are trying to figure out how to align their sales skills training with their pipeline methodology.
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By David Jacoby, Managing Partner

One of the most nerve wracking experiences for any sales professional is the formal sales presentation to a buying committee.

Public speaking is always a challenge for people, particularly when a sale may be depending on the presentation.  The challenge when presenting to a buying committee is targeting your presentation to the differing (and sometimes conflicting) needs, interests, concerns, buying motivations and influence of each member of the group.

A simple but powerful technique we recommend is to create a R-E-A-D profile of your audience before you make the sales presentation.  The R-E-A-D Profile enables you to read people more effectively, and becomes a springboard for anticipating or predicting which roles each person will assume when in a group setting.
Read the rest of this entry »

By David Jacoby, Managing Partner

Here is a troubling statistic: the average sales person stays with a company for about two years.  Considering all of the costs associated with such turnover – recruiting, training, salary, missed sales, lost time, etc. – effectively hiring and onboarding sales people is critical.  We previously discussed how to systematically hire great sales people; now let’s focus on onboarding them.
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By Steve Braverman, Director of Sales & Marketing Programs

With March Madness tipping off this week, I plan on getting my annual fix of college basketball. What I find striking about the annual NCAA basketball tournament is how often the same coaches – Pitino, Boeheim, Krzyzewski, and Williams, just to name a few – achieve great success. Great coaches are consistently able to get their players to play at full potential. The names are synonymous with winning, bringing their precision-tuned style of basketball to spring time like a papal conclave descending upon the Vatican.

So while you’re engrossed in this year’s tournament, ask yourself, “What are the behaviors and characteristics of successful coaches? What coaching behaviors lead to consistent success?

While we’ve written extensively on sales coaching, in our experience great coaches create a coaching culture. In other words, everyone on the team is trying to improve their skills all of the time, even the star performers.

Here are three things you can do to create a coaching culture on your sales team:

Focus on behaviors, not judgments. A great basketball coach wouldn’t say, “You really stunk it up out there!” but rather, “Let’s focus on better execution.  Put a little more strength behind your passes and the result will be fewer turnovers.”  Behaviors are observable, objective, specific acts or actions, whereas judgments are subjective beliefs, assumptions, or generalizations. Moreover, judgments are not helpful to the salesperson unless it is followed with a specific description of behaviors. Saying “You did a great job” is not helpful.  Contrast this to “You did an excellent job when you responded by clarifying the client’s objection.”

Build trust with your team.  Great coaches are trusted and respected by their teams. So how can you build trust with your team? Start by exhibiting trust behaviors since trust is earned by what you do, not what you say.  These trust behaviors include:

• Not ridiculing their mistakes. No one likes being made fun of, and more importantly, it will cause your team to become defensive and not open to feedback.
• Demonstrating genuine concern for each sales person on the team and his/her development, while giving the sales professional freedom to make mistakes while learning.
• Making agreements and keep your promises.

Use the 80/20 rule for feedback. Once trust is established, the sales professional will be more receptive to receiving your coaching feedback. When giving feedback, use the 80/20 rule: 80% of feedback should be positive; 20% should be negative (or constructive). Positive feedback should be shared publicly. “Let’s hear it for Mike. He scheduled 20 appointments this month and closed five deals.” By contrast, negative feedback should be kept private. “Mike, I noticed you’ve been getting to work a little later each morning. Let’s focus on getting here by 8:30 every morning and make additional 8-10 phone calls per day.”

Creating a coaching culture is a foundational first step for building a winning team.

By Ray Makela, Managing Partner.  

A true Sales Management Training program should be more than just “Managing the Sales Process Training,” it should teach sales managers how to be good managers.

 We often get asked by sales leaders if our Comprehensive Sales Management training program is compatible with brand X or Y sales methodology.  Compatible with other programs, yes, but our premise is that sales management training should be a lot more than just a bolt on to an existing sales training program.  Too often we see clients procure a sales management training program only to find out that it is just a reconfigured version of the sales training curriculum that includes “managers” in the title.  Typically the program is heavy on training the manager’s role in enforcing the sales process and light on the other skills that are necessary to build, manage, develop and lead a high-performing sales team.

A true Sales Management Training program should be founded in a behavior-based performance management system that can be used in conjunction with any existing sales methodology. Training sales managers should be a lot more than just training someone in how to manage the steps and activities in a sales process – it should teach them how to be good managers first.  Sales Managers are often promoted into their role because they were exceptional sales professionals, but they may not have any background as a manager and lack the skills to adequately perform in their new role.  An effective management training program focuses on addressing these skill gaps.

So what are the key sales management abilities?  A good sales manager needs to be able to recruit and select the right talent, manage and set sales performance objectives, coach individuals to improve desired behaviors, and inspire and motivate the team.  These core topics go beyond teaching about how to manage the activities and steps of a sales process, they help to turn great sales professionals into great sales managers.

By David Jacoby, Managing Partner

“I need my sales team to be more proactive.”

It’s a comment we hear frequently from sales leaders.  The lagging economy is one obvious reason for it, but so too is the changing nature of many industries today due to heightened competition, new customer buying habits and technological changes. Whatever the reason, reactive selling doesn’t cut it anymore.

As sales organizations look to become more proactive, one common initiative is transforming certain non-selling roles (e.g., customer service reps or account managers) within the sales organization into selling roles.  The thinking here by a typical sales leader is that “the customer service reps are talking to customers all day, why not also have them sell?”

Intuitively, this is immensely appealing. For example, imagine if your customer service reps made outbound prospecting calls during their down time, how much more productive would your sales team be?  Or maybe your account managers could focus on upselling.

So what’s the problem?  In our experience, these transformation initiatives often fall flat because of the “reluctant salesperson syndrome.” Specifically, these non-selling job roles were never designed to include proactive selling responsibilities, and, as a result, the people hired to fill these positions don’t have the desire, nor the skills, to be sales professionals.  In fact, they often perceive themselves as customer advocates, and view sales professionals as having an inherent conflict of interest when dealing with customers.

As a result, they only reluctantly perform their selling duties, and ultimately gravitate back to their comfort zone – i.e., customer service or account management.  This is usually the case even if they are incentivized to be more proactive.

So what should a sales leader do?  The most effective solution is to address the root cause of reluctant salesperson syndrome: the mindset that sales is somehow bad for the customer.

This can be accomplished through a training program that initially focuses on how the elements of great business relationships – trust, listening and providing value – are the same for both sales and non-sales people.  Sales professionals provide value to their customers by helping them solve their business problems through the solutions that they sell.  They are not in conflict with their customers; they are in partnership with them.

Once people in non-sales role change their mindset about sales, they will be much more receptive to engaging in proactive selling activities.

By Ray Makela, Vice President of Strategic Accounts

As a Northwest soccer dad, I have had the opportunity to coach and watch hundreds of youth soccer games over the past decade. One of the biggest challenges I’ve observed from the sidelines has to do with finding the balance between trying to dictate what should be happening on the field (e.g. do this, go there, etc.) and the need to let the players make their own decisions and learn. On top of this is the overall objective of trying to win games.

In observing some really great coaches (and some that were not in that category), I have come to the conclusion that coaching youth soccer is a lot like coaching a sales team (no correlation to maturity level intended). The best coaches/managers I’ve seen in both disciplines are the ones who were able to focus on a few key priorities and communicate expectations clearly to their team. They are able to observe and develop their “players” without micromanaging. These skills are critical ones we reinforce in our Comprehensive Sales Management training program and apply in either “game.”  I think the following six concepts are especially important:

1.  Communicate expectations clearly and identify the key behaviors needed to succeed

Communicating expectations is one of those things that people take for granted. “Isn’t it obvious what you’re supposed to do?” The response is often “no.” When asked, coaches/managers feel like they set clear expectations, but when you ask the employees/players, they will tell you they’re not really sure what’s expected. The focus is often too much on the end result, not on the behaviors that are needed to produce the result.  Results show what has already happened, and it’s impossible to change them after the game. The key is to identify and focus on the behaviors needed during the game and then communicate and manage them accordingly.

2.  Catch them doing something right

We’ve all heard we’re supposed to provide more positive feedback than negative. Unfortunately, that often sounds more like cheer leading than providing tangible, positive feedback that reinforces the behaviors we’re seeking. Once you’ve identified those behaviors you want to see, then point them out and reinforce that behavior when you see it. Start with the positive and build on the behaviors you see that contribute to the results you’re looking for. Do this often.

3.  Provide one-on-one feedback as close to real time as possible

The best coaches I’ve seen are the ones who don’t wait for Monday morning (or the formal performance review) to give feedback. They do it every time someone comes off the field and every chance they get. This looks like a friendly hand on the shoulder and the non-threatening discussion that says “Great job. You’re working hard. Now try to do this and change the way you do that next time and see if it doesn’t improve the result.”

4.  Let them tell you where they need to improve

An age old tactic that works extremely well is to let the individual and team tell you where they need to improve – at least let them go first in the conversation. We often find that people are very aware and often extremely critical of their own performance, and likely the one or two points they make are right on target. Spend the time refining (and sometimes tempering) these comments and exploring “what can we do to improve from here?” Not only will they be more likely to “own” the solution, but they will often surprise you with the suggestions and insights they bring.

5.  Prioritize one or two things to work on at a time

It’s easy to create a long list of behaviors that need improvement. It’s difficult to keep track of so many things and it’s painful to look at all the faults at once. If you look back to the expectations you’ve set and the behaviors you’ve identified that will produce the desired results, the performance gap likely boils down to one or two things that if improved would really change the game. This could be subtle selling skills or personal behaviors, or defending techniques that will shut down the offense. The same concepts apply.

6.  Make getting feedback accepted and appreciated

Finally, the best coaches I’ve observed and the most successful teams are the ones who make it okay, even desirable to give and receive feedback. High-performing teams relish in the fact that everyone is practicing and improving his or her game every day. The star players and newest recruits all get attention and they all receive feedback – with clear priorities for improvement. It’s not punitive, it’s not criticism. It’s a supportive dialogue about how to improve performance. Talk about it. Celebrate it. Make it infectious to improve, and see if it doesn’t improve the “game.”

By Steve Braverman, Director of Sales & Marketing Programs

Mom was right: “Honesty is the best policy.”  This point has been driven home in the world of sports over the past several weeks.  First we had professional cyclist Lance Armstrong confessing to the world about doping during his years on the Tour de France.  Then we had Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o acknowledge that he maintained the illusion of his dead girlfriend in the weeks after he received a call claiming that Lennay Kekua and her death were hoaxes.  Now we have Alex Rodriguez (A-Rod) implicated in yet another performance-enhancing drug scandal.

People hate liars. So once trust has been broken, it is difficult to recover. This is because trust forms the foundation of all relationships, including sales relationships.   When a customer trusts you, they place confidence in the information you provide them and the solutions you propose.  So building and maintaining trust with your customers is absolutely critical to successful selling.

Unlike fallen sports heroes who can go on the Oprah Winfrey show and beg the American public for forgiveness, sales people typically don’t get second chances to build trust. So sales professionals must always be mindful of engaging in behaviors that will build trust with customers.

Research has found that there are five factors that build trust:

• Reliability – Be predictable. Do what you say you will do and then follow-through.
• Honesty – This is apparent in the very way that you communicate. It’s okay to admit you don’t know an answer to a question. Just make sure you look people in the eye and always speak truthfully.
• Responsiveness – Consider and act on the customer’s priorities in a timely manner. Being responsive and really letting the customer know you care will increase trust.
• Objectivity – Give fair consideration to both sides of an issue, being/remaining empathetic and sensitive to the customer’s point of view.
• Competence – Perform to expectation technically, personally, and in business. If you don’t know, don’t try and fake it. This can cost you all of the trust you have earned.

Being considerate of these five factors will increase the potential of developing strong business relationships.