Archive for category: General Information

Sales leadership is always on the hunt for new sales tactics and strategies to transform their sales team into the dream team. When you take away sales training and costly CRM’s, what resources are left? Free (or almost free) tools and tactics are coming to light with the new age of selling. With a culture consumed by social media and the idea of marketing combining forces with sales, the industry’s relationship with its prospects is being challenged. Here are three, cost-efficient tactics to help improve the performance of your sales team and ultimately fill the pipeline:

1.    Social Selling

Free, simple and effective are three words to describe social selling. Encourage your sales team to leverage platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ to listen, engage and establish relationships with prospects. Hootsuite does an incredible job of outlining the pillars of social selling; the process is as follows:

1. Listen and learn
2. Research and relate
3. Engage and impress
4. Collaborate and close

Take advantage of everything social platforms have to offer. Get into the conversation; encourage your employees to respond to posts on the LinkedIn and Twitter newsfeeds. This is an almost effortless way to engage with prospects in the social community. Speaking of effortless, LinkedIn offers something called the Daily Digest which is an alert that it sent to you daily informing you when a contact changes jobs, gets a promotion, or even tells you when it’s their birthday. Similar to LinkedIn’s Daily Digest, Newsle is a free online tool that connects to your Facebook or LinkedIn accounts and alerts you when one of the people in your network are in the “news”.

These are all opportunities to engage, which can have a big impact for a small about of work. Just remember, social engagement is the gateway drug to lead generation.

2.    Partner with Marketing

Does your sales team understand the role marketing plays in the success of the business? Marketing exists to make the sales process easier so the company can hit its bottom line. Break the communication barrier and explain to your team where marketing fits into the sales process.

Sales can provide marketing with valuable information, including hindrances, prospect objections, customer feedback and market activity. With this information marketing can create programs and materials to streamline the sales process (follow-up emails, communication scripts, collateral, etc.). Working together can prove successful for both departments and the company as a whole.

3.    Identify Your Purpose

How does your business change the life of your customer? Everyone on your team should have an answer to this question. What are your customer’s issues? How will your product make their lives easier? Can you list product benefits?

1. Among the obvious reasons, your team should be able to communicate an understanding of customer pain points when speaking on behalf of the organization. It’s easier to believe in something if you are able to relate to it; case in point, if you can’t relate to the customer then they surely won’t be able to relate to you or the product you’re selling. Once your staff understands the overall purpose of the organization from the customer’s perspective, their role in the company and how it fits into the big picture will become clear.
2.  Identify the individual’s purpose and department purpose so they are able to see how their actions can help or affect the success of other departments. For example, we help marketing accomplish x, y and z. Sales helps marketing with a, b, c. When all team members understand not only their role, but the role other departments play to determine the success of a company.

Ultimately, a clear understanding will help build the foundation for good communication with clients. As well as helping the team identifies aspects of their conversations that would be helpful for marketing or trending issues so you can continue to relate to customers at their level.

These three strategies are designed to help you and your team reach your goals the most effective, cost-efficient way possible.  I hope you’re able to take these ideas back to your team and put them in action to help create your sales dream team.

We all go through times when we love our jobs, but at other times, lets admit it:  We don’t.  Whether it’s the after-the-holiday-let-down, discouragement, boredom, a skill deficiency, or a desire to interact with other salespeople for new ideas and motivation, we’ve got the perfect program to get you pumped up and primed to renew your love of selling!  My colleagues at the Whetstone Group are conducting a Sales Boot Camp February 20 and 21, in a place that everyone loves: San Diego!

The best way to renew your love of selling, is to take a couple of days to catch your breath and join some entertaining and experienced instructors who will help you look at selling with a new perspective.  Take the time to catch up on the latest buying trends, evaluate your personal selling skills, and learn advanced theories and ideas while re-focusing on the basics of what there is to love about selling!  Increase your confidence and credibility, and you’ll love your compensation: earning power!

Attend our Boot Camp; click here to learn more: http://www.whetstonegroup.com/training-programs/css-2-day-boot-camp/
Be sure to mention John Flannery when registering, and call us at 866 518-7039

Although the word “profiling” has a negative connotation in the world of police activity and airport security, according to Merriam Webster, profiling in sales is not only permissible, it is paramount to success:  “Profiling – The act or process of targeting a person (or organization) on the basis of known traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors”.

A successful sales organization knows all about targeting customers; understanding who they are, what goals they are working toward, what industry wide challenges commonly prevent them from achieving their objectives, and what motivates them to buy.  These “traits, tendencies, characteristics or behaviors” facilitate an understanding of how a company’s product or service aligns with the marketplace and provides a sustainable business model for success.  In a business setting, targeting may work for marketing, but on the streets, reps need the specific criteria to go out there and win.

Identify the Criteria to Increase Success

Have you fine-tuned the profiling expertise of your sales department?  It’s not hard to define your target audience at a high level, but have you taken a granular look at who the ideal buyers are in your market?  Who are your reps calling on?  Are they picking out prospects randomly from an organizational line up, or do they know whom they are trying to identify?   Have you profiled the roles of those who can actually make or influence a buying decision in your industry or market?  Do you have your finger on the pulse of how those buying influencing roles may have changed or may be changing in the current marketplace?  Do you understand what they’re trying to achieve, what challenges they may be facing, and how to align specific nuances of your product or service directly with their particular roles?  The profiles of the roles of each person at the decision maker level may only be slightly diverse, but a rep’s clear understanding of the individuals, carefully profiled, can make all the difference in their success.

Ready, Fire, Aim Won’t Work; How We Help 

At Flannery Sales Systems, our Sales Process Definition Workshops provide an opportunity to collaborate with our clients, utilizing research and our joint industry experience and expertise, to sharpen an organization’s profiling aptitude.  Together, we document the profiles of the compulsory decision makers and buying influences required to facilitate a sale.  We help specify the representative objectives, needs, problems and challenges of the decision makers and those in a buying influence role.  Next, we help our clients carefully determine how specific components of their products and services align with their particular targeted audience profile.  In a messaging session, we help build a customized strategy for the rep to use when preparing for a conversation with the target audience.

Decrease the Cost of Sales with Clear Targets

Putting profiling strategies into practice speeds up the sale by providing valuable tools for reps to help them deliver a focused and consistent message, which qualifies the prospect sooner, shortens the sales cycle, minimizes defeat, and keeps the reps on their beat closing more business and doing what they do so well.  Profiling?  Not only permissible…a powerful strategy for success.

This may sound like a career limiting statement coming from someone that you perceive as a sales trainer, but sales training that is conducted on an “event” type of basis simply does not work. There are ways to achieve positive change through training, and there are ways to spend several thousand dollars for no change.

Over the years we’ve been hired by clients for a 1 hour kick off motivational keynote, we’ve been hired for 3 days of intense sales process training and we’ve been hired for everything in between.  Different types of training accomplish different goals.  We’ve learned a few things along the way. If your goal is to transform the organization to achieve goals like increasing sales or increasing profit margin, then the actual training itself is only10% of the overall process.

Consider the following before you spend your valuable dollars on sales training:

Step 1: Change begins with the Implementation Plan

Begin your transformation with the end in mind.  What are the metrics that will be measured for the sales person, managers and related team members to achieve?  Is the leadership going to hold them accountable for achieving goals? For example, to achieve 10% growth in revenue, you’ve calculated that each sales person needs to meet with 1 additional qualified prospect per day; the skill being developed is new business development.  How do hold them accountable for that number? The measure of success could be an email that the sales person sends to the customer as a summary of that meeting.  This is an auditable measure by the manager and the manager’s manager.  Those emails not only provide a quantitative measure, but managers, even the CEO, can peek into an email and see the quality of the customer interactions. How well was the skill being utilized captured in the follow up e mail? Is this a qualified prospect as defined by the metric to add 1 new per day?

Step 2:  Reinforcement and Coaching as part of Management’s “Operating Rhythm”

Sales skills enhanced or gained in a training session are 80% forgotten after the first 30 days.  Why?  When not practiced or measured with a 3^rd party, there’s often little to no change in behavior.  The formula for reinforcement is:  a) apply the skill learned b) share results with the coach and then c) reinforce the behavior.  First, get attendees to apply new skills in the field, and do this one skill at a time.  This could be a verbal or written sales skill, then coach.  Ask the individual specific questions pertaining to the outcome desired. For the example above, did they meet (or converse) with 1 new, qualified prospect. Frame questions that help them to understand what went well and where correction needs to happen. Next, ask them how they can improve their results. Effective coaches help the person being developed to find their own answers.  Finally, ask would happen if next time you tried…. and insert a specific recommendation.  Another method is to reinforce a skill that’s lacking by reviewing a video of someone who is good at the skill execution, or practicing a future conversation with a recording.