Sales Training To Grow People. And Grow Businesses

Don Hewitt, the Executive Producer of 60 Minutes for 37 years died last week.

A stirring salute was done on 60 Minutes last night, but here is my “two lesson” version.

My lessons were:

Lesson 1) Tell Stories

That was his motto–”Tell me a story.” That was all 60 Minutes was–stories. I love this because every sales professional should be good at that very skill–story telling. Make them short, concise, compelling and relevant. But tell them.

He said during an interview, “Why don’t others get this? The reason for my success was that all I did was tell stories every Sunday night. There is nothing magical about it.”

Lesson #2) Control The Details To Everything Important.

You should have seen Don work to make sure every detail came together perfectly–for every episode. Was he arrogant? Of course. Was he right? More often than not. Was he visionary? Yes, every week.

He knew exactly what he wanted each and every episode. He could see it. He visualized it.

Do you pay attention to the details? Are there misspellings in your blog? (I’ve been guilty of that before). Are there mistakes in your presentations? Is your grammar correct in your letters? All are details. But all worth getting right.

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Isn’t it time you took inventory of your skills and competencies as a professional salesperson? Is it possible that, over time, your skills have deteriorated? You know the saying, “You lose what you don’t use.” In this episode, Bryan and Bill review several of the 10 Skill Sets needed to be a great salesperson.

You can email them at listener@advancedsellingpodcast.com  (Subject line: Skills) to get all 10. In the document, you get  a chance to rank yourself. If you’re sales manager/leader, there’s even space to assess your entire sales team.

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David Frey, who I admire because he’s one of the few of us that aren’t afraid to deliver great content, hosts a Sales Telesummit that begins next week.

Full disclosure, David asked me to be a part of it–and I told him I’d promote it to our blog readers.

There are something like 13 trainers/speakers/experts. I can’t vouch for the value of every one of them, but there are thirteen hours of content. You will be able to find something of value (in mine, I revealed a couple of things you may not have heard from us before).

It begins next week–there are three teleseminars/day.

COST: It’s free to be on each call. Or, you can pay $67 and own them all–all 13 hours. (The thing I like about this is that if you don’t like what you’re hearing, hang up and move on!)

Register Here.

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Not an especially sexy topic but one that every sales manager/ceo/leader should understand as we look to change results–and change behavior. (And for your extreme achievers, knowing how you learn might not be a bad idea).

In our sales training practice, we get asked in to companies to solve sales problems. That’s just what we do.

Every Sales Problem is a Behavioral Problem

But every sales problem (can’t get to the right person; can’t sell a premium price; can’t overcome the objections; can’t close; can’t prospect) all have to do with “behavioral issues.” And for behavior to change, you must understand how adults learn (to change their behavior).

Here are our findings:

1. Relevancy. If you’re teaching someone, it had better be relevant to them. Ever sat in an all day training/presentation and been able to predict at 8:30am that it would be a total waste? Of course. It’s a waste because the teacher/facilitator never helped it be relevant. And it’s so easy for sales curriculum to be relevant. Just ask the learner, “What do you want to work on? What’s important to you?”    Why is that question seldom asked?
2. Problem-Focused. Every new piece of content you give to a sales person (or to yourself) had better solve a problem. And it’s more useful if there is a connection between the problem to be solved and the pain of the learner. How to do that? (OK, Sales Leaders here it goes- ASK! Yep, it’s that simple. Ask your team what they’re struggling with–and PRESTO, they’ll tell you.) Make sure that every core piece of curriculum you teach solves a problem.
3. Technical. What I mean by this is that it has to be very tactical, technical and detailed. If you were teaching me how to post a blog, you wouldn’t just say, “Go get a blog and write.” There’s a lot more to it than that. Yet, when we’re teaching someone, we skip the details. Don’t skip the details. The learning is ALL IN THE DETAILS.  When you’re coaching someone how to overcome prospect objections, don’t give them several one liners to combat it. Go through, in detail, how you would deliver the reaction–try out new words based on their personality.
4. Attack The Real Resistance. This is a well-kept secret. It’s where most real income growth comes. It’s in the attention that should be focused on the thinking behind the actions–not just the actions.  Sales is a thinking game. We call it the Inner Game–the emotional and mental constructs we’ve set up that limit our success. Unless you change an adults thinking behind the behavior, you will get only moderate change. (One example of this is our belief that the prospect should sell you. That’s a VERY different way of thinking. Yet, when you get that right, the words follow very easily.)
5. Reinforcement. This is the #1 law of learning–the mother of all laws. Yes, Tiger Woods probably gets damn sick of practicing 6′ putts. But he knows that he’s made millions on 6′ putts. You probably don’t hear Roger Federer say to his coach “No, don’t need to practice that drop shot anymore. I got that one down.” You don’t hear that because great performers never stop practicing. What about you? How many hours have you practiced your Upfront Agreement in the last month? How many hours have you spent role-playing the handling of objections? How many hours have you spent practicing the asking questions in a way that allows the prospect to actually tell you the truth? (Here’s an idea no one will like: Spend less time making cold calls to people who don’t want to talk to you–and spend more time in the practice facility working on your game).

So now you have some idea of how adults (you) learn. If you’re a sales leader, keep this article next to you as you do your next sales meeting. If you’re spending all of your time on ‘Funnel Activity’ you’re wasting time. Work on these thing above–and you’ll be amazed at the invigoration of your team.

Adults do change behavior.  We do have it in us. But stale PowerPoints don’t do it.

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[This is part two of a six part series on the questions you should be asking yourself--not customers--but yourself. The main article appeared in early August: The Questions You Should Be Asking Yourself.]

Have been thinking about the idea of “how do we better communicate our value?” lately. Was interviewed by David Frey’s group for a sales mastery program–and spoke with my friend John Hirth at Selling Dynamics.

It seems the question always turns to “message.”

What Should My Message Be?

It should be a) focused on the prospect (not on your company and your products), b) focused on the pain they might feel (from your experience) and c) join the conversation already going on inside the prospect’s head/company.

But the reality is that unless you know what their issues/situation is, then you have no idea what your message should be.

So before you rush to creating your message, slow down a little and decide how you bring value to your clients. That will help you communicate a compelling message.

A compelling message is only compelling if it speaks to the heart of the prospect’s problem.

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Lynn Hidy founder of UpYourTeleSales.com, is the expert at creating profitable telesales salespeople and organizations. She knows you can make six figures over the phone—she does it!

Lynn‘s 10+ year telesales career started with her earning a Golden Circle award her first year. Then she moved up to President’s Club status two years in a row. Looking for new challenges, Lynn migrated into inside sales leadership roles.

She is now involved with Debbie Mrazek on an innovative book club to help people reach their goals.

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They probably don’t. We’ve known for decades that “sales people lie.” I know you don’t (no one every admits to it), but prospects THINK you do. And of course, we know prospects lie.

Seth Godin’s blog this weekend about Vague Claims was about the realtor who advertises “Top 10 Realtors In Nation.” He maintains, if you can’t be specific about something don’t claim it.

We say, “If you have to lie to get noticed, then don’t expect the rest of the sales relationship to be based on honesty.”

This is especially true of you sales people who come in to the prospect’s office making un-demonstratable claims. “We can save you money!” “We’ll enhance your business.” “We’ll get you on the first page of Google.”

Lies, all.

Then, we sales people flip out when we make yet another unsubstantiated claim–and the prospect doesn’t believe us.

Don’t you understand that you started all this lying by putting forth something without proof?

Solution: Make No Claims

Then, its easy. Besides, why are you so intent on making claims the prospect may care nothing about?

• The Realtor above says he’s Top 10 In Nation, but maybe I don’t want that. Maybe I want someone down the list that I feel can take care of me. Someone who has more time (and isn’t as arrogant).
• You say you want to cut costs for me. Maybe that’s not my #1 concern. (Be careful about that assumption.) Maybe it’s more important for me to know what those costs even are–before I can cut.
• You say you can “grow my business.” Maybe I don’t want that. Besides what “grow the business” means to you is totally different than what it means to me. (And you haven’t even taken the time to ask me about it)

Find out what the prospect wants–where their mind is–what’s on it–and why they invited you in. (Oh, you begged to get in? Trouble. We’ll have to deal with that one in the next post.)

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The world is full of articles on techniques—golfing—tennis—internet—marketing—and of course, selling techniques. Today, Bill and Bryan address this in a slightly different light. There is a “technique” (singular) to selling that is more important than the “techniques” used to sell. We don’t like the idea of “sales techniques” – it becomes rather manipulative. So listen in today and get some good “technique” advice.

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How many times have you become aware of a tool that you didn’t know existed–and as soon as you saw it, just had to have it?

There are tons of examples, computers, email, the lightbulb, The Clapper (OK, so maybe you didn’t “have to have” that).  But imagine yourself doing without the first three.

The issue is that if you don’t think a problem is solvable, do you really spend a lot of time searching for a solution? No.

In sales training, we hear all the complaints that sales people have about the way they’re treated, but seldom do we hear the questions we should be hearing.

• “Bill, is there  a way to keep the prospect from lying to me?”
• “Bill, what can I do to keep the sales process from stalling?”
• “Bill, how can I create a stream of prospects lining up outside my door to buy?”
• “Bill, is there a way to communicate my message so it is more compelling?”
• “Bill, is there a way to differentiate myself from everyone else that calls on that prospect?”
• “Bill, is there a new method of selling that would help me avoid the frustrations I’m feeling in this economy?”

We Should Be Getting These Questions

But we don’t. We wonder why. Is it because we don’t think there are solutions for these–so better to save our selves the frustration of looking for something that isn’t available?

Or, have we relegated ourselves to a sales life of mediocrity and sameness?

We hope it’s the former–that until someone gives us a tool–we don’t even think about a solution.

There Are Tools Available

There are ways around these issues. In fact, over the next several days, I’m going to be addressing each of these six questions in six different posts.

Hope you can join me–and see that there are solutions to problems you didn’t know you had--but that might be costing you money.

Flickr photo by Faith Goble

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