For Sales Managers Only
This one is for the sales managers and VPs. If you’re a salesperson, forward it with high priority. If you’re a sales manager or VP sales, print it out and laminate it.
It’s the ECONOMY, STUPID. Remember this piece of political wisdom imparted to Bill Clinton by one of his top advisors? It all but won the election for President Clinton.
So here is my advice for CEOs, sales teams and sales managers: It’s the SALES MANAGER, STUPID.
Inevitably, when we’re invited to train a group of salespeople, the focus turns to fixing or helping the “salespeople.” A deeper investigation almost always reveals a more significant problem—the sales manager.
Unfortunately, the typical path to become a sales manager involves a pit stop in the #1 slot on the sales results chart. You’ve likely heard it or said it. “Susan’s our best salesperson. If we could just get 15 Susan’s, we’d kill it. Let’s make Susan the SALES MANAGER.” Hoo hoo hoo hoo (while pumping fists, hi-fives and chest bumps by grown men).
WAH, WAH, WAH (Price is Right loser sound) WRONG ANSWER, CHIEF!
The skills of strong sales managers RARELY align with the skills of strong salespeople. I repeat: The skills of strong sales managers RARELY align with the skills of strong salespeople.
Here are some observations as one who observes sales managers all day everyday:
- It can’t be ABOUT the sales manager. IT HAS TO BE ABOUT THE SALESPEOPLE. Your #1 job as a sales manager: To help every salesperson reach their own personal goal. That’s it. It’s NOT TO HIT YOUR NUMBER. IT’S NOT TO HIT YOUR BONUS. You should only focus on helping them.
- It’s your role to remove any and all useless administration that distracts from their prospecting and selling efforts. Sales managers usually do this one backward. They require reports and data and analysis and forms and call sheets and expense reports…and, and, and. STOP IT! Find someone else to collect and analyze the data. Share the results with your salespeople with an idea on how to use it to help them reach their personal goal.
- Realize they WON’T DO IT LIKE YOU DID IT. If you’ve gotten to the management spot via the typical path, you were a stud or stud-et salesperson. You did things uncommon to the game. You were proactive. You were personally accountable. You were an anomaly. That’s why it’s a bell curve. You’re now dealing with people who couldn’t hold your jock or sports bra. It’s your job to MEET THEM WHERE THEY ARE and get the most out of them possible—which might be way less than you could get out of the same territory.
- Find each person’s PERSONAL EMOTIONAL MOTIVATION (PEM—but I hate acronyms). Here’s the question: Do you know what personally motivates each person on your sales team? You probably assume everyone wants to make a lot of money and be #1. That’s what they say, isn’t it? That’s a lie! They all want something different. Some want balance in life. Some want security. Some want your job. Some want to save money to start their own business. You will be INSANELY effective as a sales manager if you know each individual’s motivation and manage them to that. It’s the most efficient approach to getting sustained behavioral change.
I could go on, but I think that’s plenty for now. If you’re a sales manager, inject these into your sales management DNA. If you’re a salesperson, forward it (and then stop in the next day and see if he/she has read it).
Does Your Sales Manager Want You To Be In Debt?
It’s such a backward way of looking at things.
It hit me as I read an article where the author interviewed Pete The Planner (Peter Dunn, Fox News analyst). In it, Dunn says “Sales managers love to see their young reps get in over their heads” meaning, they love to see them in debt because then they’ll be more motivated to sell.
Is this true? When you’re in big debt because you’ve overspent, are you more motivated? You’re a better sales person? You’re more attuned to the customer and their needs? You’re stronger?
NOT!!
No way. It’s old thinking. When in debt, you have one thing on your mind and that’s ‘pressure’ to earn. When you feel that pressure you can’t pay attention to the prospect and their issues—hell, you’ve got your own issues.
So, if you’re tempted to be blinded by “debt as motivator,” stop. If you’re a sales person, create wealth instead. It gives you great power to be detached from the deal. (People in debt are desperate.) Not a good platform to be operating from in sales.
I Hope You Aren’t KEEPING Buyers From Buying – Like One BMW Dealership
My wife really needs a new car. She just went back to work full time for her (telecom) company and she needs a new ride.
Since I have a BMW, I suggested she go and drive the X3 (small SUV).
We walked into the BMW dealership and asked if we could test drive one. We were told that our name in the database was assigned to a sales person who was busy with a prospect at the moment so we wouldn’t be able to drive one.
WHAT??!!!
“You mean if I had $40,000 cash and wanted to buy that car, I couldn’t because “my salesperson” was busy?”
“That’s right, sir.” (And here I thought the auto market was struggling. Guess not). So we gave her our number and told her to have “our salesperson” call us. He never did.
So here’s my question to you: Do you practice “sales prevention” anywhere in your company? I know your answer will be a quick “NO!” But think about it for a moment. I’m sure the BMW dealer would answer “No”, too. But he actually does prevent sales…by his systems (or lack of).
Think about the following ‘points on the path to a sale:’
- When the prospect first calls in to talk to someone….how does that sound? Does the prospect get “engaged” or just passed through? Does your voice mail system work to ‘help the caller?’
- When you go out to the first call–do you send an agenda in advance? Do you have an agenda with you? Do you follow up with notes after the call? (I find most sellers fail miserably at these.)
- When you come back to the office, so you take a few minutes to take notes so you don’t forget to follow up, or the important points?
- When you go back out to meet with that person, do you lead with an ‘historical review’ of what you covered the first meeting–and any open items? Or do you just start in and hope you’re in the same place?
- Are you constantly educating the customer as to where they are in your sales / their purchase cycle? Or, do you just assume he’ll follow you blindly?
- And, when I go to your company website, does it help me sort out what I’m looking for…or give me mountains of links?
So, before you answer NO to my question above…answer those. I hope you’re practicing “Sales Facilitation” rather than “Sales Prevention.”
By the way, we ended up at the VW dealership, test drove a Tiguan (Oh, how I hate their model names) and she loved it. No X3 in her future.
How Adults–And Sales People–Learn (And Achieve)
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:
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
- 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.
Question # 2. How Do I Communicate My Message So It’s More Compelling?
[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.
The Horror Story of Training That S***ks
Just got a note from an old friend who was complaining about the sales training experience he was having in his large company.
They hired a “Positive Mental Attitude” guy who creates no value other than saying to everyone, “HEY, ISN’T IT A GREAT DAY?!!”
Do you believe there are actually trainers still around like this? Getting big bucks from companies who know no better?
Yep, there are.
Death By Powerpoint!
I heard from another past client who said the PowerPoint number for the day in sales training just eclipsed 150! Awful. Wasteful. Soulless.
Good Sales Training Components
So what should good sales training look like? Here are a few tips:
- Detailed survey upfront about what all constituents think they need to learn and grow. It can either be positioned as “What problems do you have that we should solve?” or, “What would you like to be profoundly better at in the sales cycle?”
- Detailed Curriculum Plan laid out so everyone knows what to expect. It doesn’t have to be ‘down to the minute’ but everyone should know before the event begins.
- Attention to each participant. How will each participant interact with the trainer? (There should be a chance for that). If you’re not giving your team a chance to ask private questions of the trainer, then they aren’t getting much.
- Role Playing – and other learning vehicles. Even on phone calls, role playing should be used. It’s the best way for the trainer to know what work needs to be done.
- Lessons Learned. At the end of EACH section of training, the trainer must leave time to discover what lessons each person learned. To not do this sucks the life out of the learner.
- End of Day Lessons. Everyone should leave an event with a to-do list of things to take back to the field and try.
- Survey. There should be a post-event survey so the trainer can learn what worked and what didn’t. If your trainer doesn’t do this–or doesn’t verbally check back in to see how it went– find another one. He probably doesn’t care–as long as your check cleared.
Sales training might be exactly what your team needs right now. But don’t blow it by bringing in a clown.
They’re In Your Sales Funnel. But Are You In Theirs?
Isn’t it interesting how we sales types are always talking about our sales funnel–always predicting when something will ‘close.’ Yet, have you ever wondered why we have no discussion about whether they prospect is having meetings at their office talking about dates their problems will get solved? (Or when they plan on buying).
Why not?
Our sales philosophy is that the optimal sales process is when the prospect is selling you on why he/she needs to spend their money to solve their problem.
So, why is it only our funnel that gets attention?
Here’s an interesting thought: Next time you’ve forecasted a sale closing within 30 days, call the prospect and tell them that’s what you have in mind. See what they say. If they say, “Whoooooaaaa. Hold on. We’re not going to make the decision in that time frame, then take them off your 30-day report.”
Just a thought.
