Coaching Sales Reps on Selling Skills

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*A guest article by FSS colleague and friend Tom Martin.

 

What is the best approach to coaching sales reps to improve their selling skills?  Why of course the answer is … it depends!

To help guide better managers on how to coach their teams I’ll spell out a few points to consider and include a simple framework that can be adapted for use in many situations.

Similar to a sales conversation, it is always a good idea to understand the current environment,  the problems caused by it, and your desired future state.  Following are some items to consider.

What style learners do you have?  The generation of the seller (GenX, Milennial, etc) is often used as a proxy for guidance. Some members of your team will learn best by doing role plays, others will need to receive “just in time” coaching in the field, immediately following a sales call.

As I have heard John Flannery say in a workshop, “People are best convinced by reasons they themselves discover.”   Similar to client conversations, coaching conversations are usually best when they include great questions to help a seller understand where they need to change their behaviors.

Microlearning is a popular topic in the Training & Development world.  Selling skills can’t typically be trained and coached in a single interaction. Instead, consider how you can provide snippets of coaching to help your sellers learn.  Include some topics in a weekly team call; send weekly tips that reinforce concepts learned in the last live training session; etc.

Coach to what is most important to your company.  Consider the overall business objectives or key initiatives for the company to guide your coaching.  Is “decreasing ramp time of new hires” a top 3 item?  If so focus your new hire coaching on the specific skills and behaviors needed to be productive members of your sales society.

These ideas, and the hundreds of others that can help, can get overwhelming and lead to Random Acts of Coaching.  To help drive some order out of the chaos the best approach is typically to follow a coaching system that can help organize your thoughts. Find a system that works for you and violently implement it!

Here are some key elements in a relatively simple system that I use:

  • Behaviors
  • Model
  • Approach
  • Cadence

Behaviors: Focus your coaching on the behaviors that support the Skills you want to put in place.   For example “asking great discovery questions” is a behavior that supports selling skills like prospecting, negotiating, and closing.

Model: When coaching behaviors consider the matrix of whether they are capable of doing it, and do they want to.  Sometimes called Commitment & Competence, or often Skill & Will in coaching parlance.

Approach:  Screaming at the scoreboard doesn’t yield great results.  Instead you should ask people how they think they should be doing things, potentially show them a better way, observe them trying to do it, and then give them feedback (Ask-Show-Observe-Feedback).

Cadence: With so many tasks to focus on, the best coaches have a regular rhythm around what and when they will be coaching (and doing the rest of their management duties).

For additional insights on coaching be sure to read other posts by Flannery Sales Systems like Are You a Great Sales Coach?

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Join FSS in Krakow for the European Language Industry Association (ELIA) Sales Process Workshop

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Sales Process ELIA Riga Apr 25 2014 - Copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John is pleased to be invited back to work with ELIA’s member companies to help improve their selling skills and ultimately their sales results.

How you begin a sales opportunity is just as important as closing the deal. Although the excitement of negotiating the final agreement gets much of the attention in sales, how you behave throughout the sales cycle will play a large part in the successful completion of winning new revenue for your company.

Please click on the link here to learn more about the session and how to register. For any specific questions you can email John at john@drive-revenue.com.

We hope to see you in Krakow September 30th and October 1st 2015.

 

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On The Road Again: Tokyo, Japan

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Click the arrow above to view John in Tokyo, Japan and hear what he has to say about our upcoming newsletter, including our 10 Year Anniversary, Marketing Qualified Leads and Coaching Skills.

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A Customer Success Story in Life Sciences

 

Kevin Leak is a two time customer of FSS, and a 25 year veteran in the Life Sciences/Pharmaceutical market and has lead teams in Sales, Product Management, Marketing and Customer Service capacities. His Leadership experience includes an Executive role in a $ 3 billion dollar science product distribution organization, as well as Sales and Executive Leadership in a $ 200 million dollar organization that provided translational models for research and testing in the Pharmaceutical and Biotech R&D markets.

Here is how Kevin’s teams benefitted from the services we provided:

“The Flannery Sales System’s Selling process has provided our sales team with a clear roadmap that has substantially improved how we turn new leads into fully qualified opportunities. The sales team has become much more effective in successfully closing highly qualified opportunities in a way that creates a win for the customer and a win for our company.  We now have the tools by which we create proposals that cover the total value that we can deliver, not just price quotes for our products and services.”

We thank Kevin and his teams for their repeat confidence in selecting us for helping them reach their objectives.

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On The Road Again: The Great Wall of China

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John had an amazing opportunity to travel to China for this month’s On The Road Again video. He discusses features in our upcoming newsletter which include our Ask A Sales Leader article, Prospecting and a customer success story.

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Ask A Sales Leader: Paul Doherty

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This month’s “Ask A Sales Leader” is Paul Doherty. Paul is the Vice President of Sales in Europe for SDL International. He has over twenty years of experience managing operations at multi-site service-based organizations in the commercial translation services industry.

Paul and John worked together at Berlitz GlobalNet 17 years ago, and shared trans-Atlantic sales leadership responsibilities for driving revenue. In addition to working together, the gents share a friendship through common interests in story-telling, travel and the adventures of parenthood, and recently caught up on all three over dinner in Munich in May (see picture).

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1. Describe how your customer facing teams use your organization’s sales process.

Our customer facing teams need to do their homework on the prospect’s company and industry sector before their initial meeting. We help our sales teams with industry sector-specific information and messaging around the business problems typically faced by companies like the one we are targeting. Since we are selling a complex solution of technology and services, we have a team approach to developing well qualified opportunities. Most deals we win have had at least four people involved in the sales process.

2. What is your Management’s approach to Coaching sales reps?

My approach is to get in front of the prospects and customers, together with the sales people. In this way, I can check the sales meeting preparation, the messaging, the meeting objectives and the post meeting follow-up and documenting the agreements and next steps. More importantly, I find out more from one face-to-face customer meeting than from any number of weekly sales reps calls. Customers are brutally honest, whereas sales reps often tell you what they think you want to hear or what they themselves honestly, but mistakenly, believe about the opportunity.

3. How do you reinforce sales skill development for sales reps?

Most sales skills are developed by the consistent use of a methodology or “best practices”. Simple things, done consistently, make the difference. Part of my job is to make sure the sales teams are doing these steps consistently and not falling back into their comfort zone of “winging” it.

4. What advice would you give to other sales leaders ?

Get out from behind your desk and get in front of your prospects and customers. Meeting prospects and customers is the biggest buzz in my job. If isn’t for you, what are you doing in sales?

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Transitioning from Sports to the Corporate Athlete

Kerri Pottharst Rips One

 

If you’ve ever changed careers or moved into a new position within your existing field, you know that the transition can be a challenging one. Research shows that skilled workers will change jobs nine times during the course of their careers, which has the potential to create a tremendous amount of both personal and professional disruption.

Athletes are no different, and my good friend Kerri Pottharst, a decorated Olympic medalist in Beach Volleyball (Gold, Sydney 2000, Bronze, Atlanta 1996) helps them transition from careers in sports to business. Kerri’s own transition from hours of training as an elite athlete to a successful businesswoman follows a proven blueprint that she teaches others to build and execute.

The following is from Kerri’s writings on “Corporate Athlete Training”, a program that she delivers within the context of other nutritional, fitness and wellness services. For more information, go to www.kerripottharst.com

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Today’s challenging business and social climate requires you to be perfectly fit – mentally, physically and emotionally.  Regular movement, consistent and adequate sleep, great nutritional habits and a winning mindset all add up to peak performance.

Corporate athletes are under more pressure and face more serious consequences if they fail. They have more demands on their time and there is no real “off-season”. The work-life balance is always precariously held by conflicting loyalties to family, business and self. And it is no longer about time management. It’s about ENERGY management. To succeed, excel and optimize your energy creation and usage, there are four areas we help you to plan and develop:

Mindset

You are what you think. And if you have a clear plan of what it is you want to accomplish, this is half of the journey. Sure, hard work and resilience may turn you into a good performer, but if you are looking for peak performance, you must think like a champion AND make a plan of how to get there. As Brian Tracy says, there are no “accidental” over-achievers.  Sorting through the normal periods of doubt and limiting beliefs will come and go, but the mental aspect of success must be planned and practiced.

Nutrition and Hydration

The health consequences of not eating well are well documented in all mediums of traditional and social media. And while it has become easier to “eat right”, there is still a tendency to grab the wrong foods when in a time crunch. One simple thing to do is plan for strategic snacking while at work, by bringing a few simple items with you from home that steer you away from the sugar-laden vending machine. Bananas, raw nuts and homemade granola are a few examples.

And where coffee, alcohol and energy drinks may seem to be the right fit for a moment, over the long run too much of any of these liquids will do more harm than good. Water is the key fluid you have got to take in, and if you weigh 150 pounds you should be drinking 100 ounces of water per day. The amount will flux in relation to your weight and exercise level.

Movement

YOUR CHAIR IS KILLING YOU! If you didn’t already know this, sitting in front of your computer for hours at a time does long term damage to many different parts of your body.

Many companies now offer “exercise at work” options to include on-site gyms, classes ranging from yoga to Pilates and more. Taking the time to step out for an hour and attend one of these sessions puts a whole new perspective on the day. And there is more and more empirical evidence around High Intensity Circuit Training, or HICT. This is a “less time, more effort” way to get an impactful workout, one that will ultimately restore your energy and increase your productivity.

Recovery

You all know a workaholic, or maybe you are one yourself. We all need a break from the rigors of work. Take a TIMEOUT! For some, a formal sabbatical from career is required when things get way out of balance. But before you get too burnt out, make sure you take regular breaks, daily breaks to “sharpen the saw”. One simple way to refresh that often gets overlooked is to get the proper amount of sleep. Seven to eight hours per night is suggested for most people.

Other ways to keep mentally refreshed include meditation, or just mindfulness of being in the present and concentrating on your breathing, There are piles of scientific evidence that show the benefits of slowing the mind down for even 10 minutes per day, and how this helps to reset your mind and body. Basic stretching routines can also help you to maintain flexibility, especially as middle age approaches.

The blueprint is above for how to make a successful transition, or stay on the path if you are already minding the important factors to creating and managing your energy, and being a well-rounded corporate athlete.

 

 

 

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Seven Steps To Greater Sales Forecast Accuracy

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Matt Heinz has been a trusted advisor to FSS since we met him at a Selling Power conference in May of 2013. In addition to the insight he shares with us on regular quarterly updates, Matt has also contributed the following article for our blog. If you want to know what is happening in the world of Marketing, and its critical connection to successful selling, schedule a 15 minute call with him. Thanks, Matt!

 

A lack of discipline around sales forecasting can kill your sales organization’s credibility. And as a sales manager or executive, it can also damage the trust you’ve built with your executive team and board.

Of course, sales forecasts are never going to be perfect. But these seven steps can make a material impact on how consistently and accurately your forecasts predict actual sales results.

Consistent definitions
Does everyone across the sales floor have the same definition for a qualified opportunity? What does it mean for an opportunity to be in the “negotiation” stage, for example? Is procurement actively engaged? Do they have an agreed-upon close date in mind? Ensuring these and other stage definitions are detailed and consistent will save you a ton of time, plus ensure that forecasted-to-close deals actually are on track.

Faster CRM updates
Many sales reps fail to update their opportunities simply because they don’t have time, or updating records takes way too long. Make it easier and faster for reps to update CRM – from the road, their mobile devices, and even at their desks. Minimize the information required, or use tools such as FactorLab to ask for, collect and leverage the right information that has the most meaning and correlation to qualified opportunities and pending closed deals.

Use better qualifying questions
Are reps asking the right questions, the sometimes hard questions, to ensure deals are on track? Or are they assuming deals are pending because of misinterpreted signals? Chatty prospects aren’t necessarily qualified prospects. And just because the prospect loves what you’re selling doesn’t mean they have budget and/or authority to move forward. Ask the right questions (and consider adding custom fields to your CRM to record them) so that pending deals are in fact pending.

Tie opportunities to a “compelling event”
Budget may exist. You may be talking to a decision maker. They love what you can do. But if what you’re selling doesn’t correlate to a “compelling event” – something happening in the organization that makes your solution (and the outcome it represents) a top priority, then it’s way too easy for your sale to slip through the cracks or fall down the priority list at the last minute. Sales tied to a top-priority – something that has visibility broadly and publicly – are far more likely to stay on track and close when expected.

Map the entire buyer ecosystem
All too often, a deal feels on track until a “surprise” influencer pops up at the last minute to squash or delay the sale. In most B2B sales opportunities, the buyer ecosystem involves at least a handful of people – decision-makers, influencers, endorsers, users, gatekeepers, etc. The better you understand the entire playing field, and have a story for each individual, the more likely your deal stays on track.

Map the entire purchase/procurement process
For complex purchase and large companies in particular, it’s extremely important to know exactly how the procurement process works. Who is involved, what are the stages, how long does it take. If you assume the deal is a go, and expect procurement to be a breeze, you’re kidding yourself. Some procurement processes take weeks or months to complete. Managers, consider requiring a complete map or understanding of the procurement process at an earlier stage of the sales opportunity development so there aren’t any surprises late in the game.

Reward reps for forecast accuracy history
This can be tricky, as you don’t want to discourage reps from “committing” to closed deals for the month or quarter. But if you follow the steps above, reps should have an easier time hitting their forecasts. And that’s definitely behavior you want to reinforce, reward and continue.

Curious to hear what’s worked for you as well to increase sales forecast consistency.

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On The Road Again from London and Munich

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After spending 10 days in England working with a customer on their global sales process implementation , John is now in Munich doing the same with the European operation. Click on the link below to learn more about this extended engagement in Europe, as well as the upcoming items in the  May newsletter. The newsletter includes contributions from friends/colleagues of Flannery Sales Systems on how to improve personal and organizational performance. And, if you are in Munich over the weekend, reach out to John for a coffee (john@drive-revenue.com).

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How Sales Process Helps with Focus and Execution

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What will you do differently in the next 12 months to drive revenue?

Now more than ever, your sales organization must be able to focus and execute on key opportunities for success. The approach that you took over the past two years may not work in the new business environment. As you refine your plans for the balance of this year, let’s make some reasonable assumptions:

 

  • Your customers may spend only where they “have to”.
  • Companies with the most clearly defined value (as agreed to by their customers) will excel.
  • Weaker organizations may not have the resources to compete.
  • The competition may be gunning for the embedded revenue that you currently hold.
  • You must have a way to protect your base while pursuing targeted accounts.

We help organizations to define and implement a repeatable process for revenue generation. To recalibrate, we have moved some of our client’s resources to “refine” their efforts towards a new approach.

Are you positioned to proactively identify and go after those situations? Standing on the sidelines “waiting” for something to happen won’t get you there. Here is how we begin that process with our customers, aka FOCUS:

  • What mid-sized opportunities reside in the competition’s hands that we could make a play for?
  • Once this is determined, how well do we match up in a comparison of capabilities?
  • What are the most profitable opportunities we can develop?
  • Who in the target organization do we need to speak with to facilitate a change?
  • What internal and external resources do we need to compete?

Once these questions have been answered, we then develop a tactical approach on how to EXECUTE on these revenue opportunities from both the sales and marketing capacities.

Are you ready? Let’s get started.

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