John is back in the new year with his first “On the Road Again” video of 2015. Here he is, literally on the road in his hometown of San Diego, CA, talking to us about what we have to look forward to in this month’s Flannery Sales Systems newsletter. Features include an interview with Brian Tracy, one of the world’s leading experts on personal and organizational performance and results, as well as an article on the growing importance of Sales Operations as sellers increase their reliance on technology to interact with today’s more sophisticated buyers.
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John and team traveled to the snowy East Coast last week to lead a workshop in Ithaca, NY. In this video, John previews our upcoming newsletter featuring a video from Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power magazine and long-time FSS partner and colleague. Flannery Sales Systems will be heading to Australia in January (Sydney and Melbourne) and Spain (Barcelona) in February. If you’d like to join us for a session, or meet John for a coffee if your city is listed on our calendar, reach out to john@drive-revenue.com.
This is a question I often ask Sales Managers.
Many of them respond that they do on the grounds of fairness. They try to distribute their time evenly between all team members and provide similar opportunities for coaching and development.
While I appreciate the intent, I disagree with the practice. At the end of the day, being a great sales manager doesn’t lie in giving your reps a similar dose of the same medicine, but rather in tailoring your prescription to each individual, which will likely result in a disproportionate amount of your time and energy spent with some reps and not with others.
Here’s what I recommend:
First, divide your team into thirds in order of performance – top 10%, middle 60% and bottom 30%. Many managers find this exercise difficult, as they’re reluctant to label certain reps as bottom performers. But it’s a critical first step in optimizing your coaching time.
Next, allocate your time with each rep according to his or her grouping.
Contrary to popular opinion, the bulk of your time should not be spent with the top performers (because they’re the most valuable), nor should it be spent with the bottom performers (because they have the most room for improvement). It should actually be spent with the middle 60%. The middle performers are the group that has the most to gain from focused skills coaching, and statistically speaking it’s with this group that you will see the biggest performance lift.
Of course you should still allocate time for your top performers. But your time with this group should be spent focused on retention rather than skills coaching – are they happy in their current position? Is there anything you can do to make their jobs better? Where do they see themselves 3 years from now?
Very little time should be spent with bottom performers. These team members can be an extreme “time suck” with very little payoff, and allocating the bulk of your time to coach the bottom tier very seldom translates into sales results.
So, is this a fair management strategy? Maybe not. But it is effective. It allows you to align your time and talents with the sales reps that stand to make the biggest gains, thus improving your ability to impact overall team performance and revenue generation. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what you were hired to do?
Flannery Sales Systems traveled to New York last week to conduct a training workshop. In this video, John talks about our upcoming content for the month of October. With the beginning of Q4 upon us, we’ll be focusing on how to effectively coach your reps to hold margin and maximize their revenue performance. Click to play video.
The following is a guest post by Jackie Meyer, a former customer and current colleague of Flannery Sales Systems.
The idea of 180 Degree selling is not a new sales methodology, rather it is the strategy of selling internally into your organization. Most sales books, seminars and classes teach how to sell into an external customer, but what about your internal customer? Everyone in business has internal customers, and they range from the C-Suite all the way down to your subordinates. Selling 101 has taught us to find the Coach, Fox or Sponsor inside the organization to which we are selling, and if this is your unofficial title in your organization for the third parties you partner with, take note of how to find success as the leader of any project you need to get off the ground.
Do Your Homework – What is the situation in the organization or market that would help you support the project you need executed? Are there secondary research reports that can help you with your facts? Have you interviewed people internally to get their thoughts and identify their needs – rather implicit or explicit? Most importantly, how and what are the internal politics you need to manage?
Build Your Concept Pitch – With the data you have collected so far, what correlations can you draw? Do you need to include some education about the project to help others understand its scope? What are the organizational weaknesses you need to consider, and how will you overcome them? Set expectations of what the project can and will do so there is no second guessing for both you and others in your organization.
Provide Project Options – Most people do not like to be told what to do, so provide options with pros and cons. Do not assume everyone understands the opportunity costs involved or that there is money to pay for the project you want to spearhead. In fact, in most cases the money is not budgeted. You must determine how you can mine for it or even plan for its future in the next quarter or year.
Beta Test Your Pitch – You might think you have it all figured out, but after gathering all your data, circumstances and people often change. Find your own coach, fox or sponsor within; gather their feedback on your pitch; and fine tune your knowledge and budget.
Commercialize Your Pitch – Plan it far in advance so you can work through how best to present in order to ensure your content is absorbed in the various minds of the people from whom you need to gain approval. Can you apply the ‘so-what’ test to everything you plan to say? Can you address likely objections that will come your way? Are you confident under pressure? If not, seek help from a trusted friend or colleague to practice your pitch. Besides the fact that Mom was right – practice makes perfect – remember how you need to influence your audience and brush up on your Aristotle philosophy on the art of persuasion.
John E Flannery of Flannery Sales Systems sits down with long-time friend and Olympic gold medalist Kerri Pottharst. Since retiring from professional volleyball in 2005, Kerri now works with businesses executives, managers and staff to help them overcome fears and reach their goals. John and Kerri discuss these topics as they relate to sales professionals.
Earlier this week, we introduced you to the idea that thoroughly understanding your customers’ key business objectives and the challenges inhibiting their fulfillment is the most important element to the sales process, and that traditionally salespeople do a poor job in this phase. If you haven’t read the first part of this series, “Why It Matters,” you can check it out here.
So, the question becomes – how can we help sales reps be more successful? First and foremost, we can arm them with a series of questions designed to get their prospects talking about their challenges in their own words. People are most convinced by ideas they themselves originate, so getting your prospects to define their own objectives and challenges is critical to getting their buy in throughout the sales process.
The following are three types of questions designed to get your prospects talking about their challenges.
Open Questions. Your prospect has discussed his primary business objective – now how to get him talking about why he’s not able to accomplish that objective. These questions are designed to do just that. They uncover the tip of the iceberg, and are the first step in the discovery process.
- “What are the main concerns you’re having with respect to…..?”
- “Usually people come to us for help in one or more of the following areas (list 2-3 problems you solve for people); are any of these issues for you?”
- “Tell me more…” or “Tell me why…”
When you ask questions like this, look for the prospect to make statements like:
- “My sales are not where I want them to be.”
- “We’re spending too much on…..”
- “We’re not happy with…..”
Cause Questions. Now that you have the problem defined, the next step is to look for the reasons for the challenge. What’s causing the disparity? Typically there are several causes. Pay close attention as these are the issues you will ultimately try to resolve for the prospect. This information leads you to your presentation.
- “What are the reasons this is going on?”
- “Why do you suppose this is happening?”
- “Do you know what’s causing these problems?”
It’s vital for you to understand – even better than the prospect – what’s causing their challenges. You’ll hear things like:
- “Our current supplier is having quality and delivery problems.”
- We don’t have the right software and our people need training.”
Keep Them Talking. Learn to direct the conversation and keep your prospects talking. When they are talking, they are giving you valuable information. When you’re monopolizing the conversation, you’re losing an opportunity to discover what will motivate them to take action. Add these types of questions to your repertoire and you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the issues.
- “Tell me more about that.”
- “What else is there?”
- ”Is there anything else?”
- “Could you be a little more specific?”
With these three types of questions, your sales reps should be able to encourage prospects to fully define their key challenges, which is a critical first step in the qualifying process.
But, there is more. Next sales reps need to get prospects to quantify the impact these challenges have on their business. What is the cost of doing nothing? Here’s where they will be able to establish the value and ROI of your offering. To learn more about quantifying your prospects challenges, stay tuned next week for the third and final installment of our series.
An elevator pitch is a short summary designed to simply define your company or product. As the name implies, it should be short enough that it can be delivered during the span of an elevator ride.
Why the brevity? The truth is that when you are “cold calling” into a prospect, ten to fifteen seconds is all you have to make an initial connection and get permission to continue the conversation. In light of this, it is critical that you can quickly establish trust and pique interest.
Today’s prospects are receiving so many incoming sales calls, that they are particularly wary of being “sold”. The old way of delivering your company’s message is no longer good enough.
Let’s take a look at how elevator pitches have traditionally been made and how they should evolve to become more effective in today’s selling environment.
The Old Elevator Pitch
The call starts with, “I’m Bob with XYZ Printing. How are you today?”
The “clever” segue into the sales pitch, assuming we still have the prospect on the line, goes something like this. “We’re the premier printing company in the area. We’ve been serving the local market for over 20 years and have the most advanced digital printing equipment in the area. Our specialty is quick turnaround and competitive pricing. I’d like to set an appointment to meet with you to show you how we can save you time and money on your next printing project. Would Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning be better for you?”
Does that sound familiar? It probably does and there are many problems with this approach:
- “How are you today?” Every telemarketer in the world starts the call by asking about the prospect’s “well-being.” While this is an honest attempt at politeness, prospects know you don’t really care, so it comes across as insincere and makes you sound like a telemarketer.
- The “compelling” pitch by the printing salesperson sounds like the other printing company that called the prospect yesterday. They said they were the best in town and could save him time and money too. Whom should he believe?
- “Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning?” How many times have we heard that over used alternative choice close? Nearly every salesperson uses it.
- The salesperson wants an appointment but doesn’t want to take the time to find out if there’s any pain. This is the typical product pusher’s strategy and the prospect knows it.
- The easy blow off that the prospect can, and often does, use is to say, “Just send me some information about it.” And you know how sincere that request is.
The New, Improved Elevator Pitch
Never fear, there is a better way. Take a look at this new, improved approach.
This call starts with, “I’m Bob Smith with XZY Printing. Did I get you at a bad time?”
If you get permission to continue, you’d say, “Thanks for taking my call. Can I take about 20 seconds to tell you why I called, then you can tell me if we need to talk further?”
When you get permission, you’d say, “I’ll be brief, right to the point. We’re one of the leading commercial printing companies in the area. Typically companies switch to us because they’re upset with long turnaround times, concerned about the inconsistent quality of the final product or frustrated that their printer can’t offer any creative ideas to improve the job. Are any of these issues for you?”
Or, you may want to give a specific example of how you’ve helped a competitor with a specific pain, something like “we recently helped [competitor’s name] save $2,000 per month on printing fees and reduce their turnaround time to 48 hours. Is this something that would be helpful to your business?”
If the answer is affirmative, you’d then go on to explore the pain further.
If the answer is negative, you could conclude the call quickly by saying, “Sorry to have bothered you. Have a good day.” And make another call. Remember, you’re trying to find that gold nugget quickly and not waste time with people who are not good prospects.
There are many benefits to this approach:
- Asking if you got him at a bad time is respectful of the prospect’s time. (The overwhelming majority of the people we train say this tactic has been very effective despite the initial concern about making it too easy for him to say that he is busy.)
- The “pitch” focuses on possible problems your company can address, thus begins the qualifying process quickly.
- It’s different.
- You won’t have done anything to destroy rapport.
- You won’t sound like every other salesperson that calls.
Your ability to differentiate yourself in your initial call with a prospect will dramatically improve your success at developing new business. Try our new and improved elevator pitch for yourself – we’d love to hear how it works for you.
The Challenger Sale has been a huge trend in the sales training industry in recent years, and one that has garnered its share of conversation and controversy. Co-authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson proclaim their ideas to be “the biggest shock to sales wisdom in decades.” However, much of their work is far from new.
Their key insight is that in order to sell successfully, salespeople must teach their customers something new about their business, providing them with unique ideas that improve the bottom line. Unfortunately, this approach is not new. It originated with Xerox nearly 40 years ago, and was again explored in a recent Harvard Business Review article by the Chasm Group suggesting sales people should start buying cycles with leading edge information that can give them an industry advantage.
Putting aside the fact that the Challenger approach is not new, how sound is this concept of insight-led selling? One thing to consider is that only a small percentage of buyers are Early Adopters, as John Holland wrote in his October 2013 article on “Aligning with 80% of Your Market”. To take an aggressive position with the mainstream or laggard buyers, and/or tell them what the focus should be on in improving their business will alienate many of them quickly. These types of buyers want to be nurtured and led to a decision that minimizes the risk for themselves and their organization.
Even more potentially dangerous is their recommendation that salespeople should be “assertive, pushing back when necessary and taking control of the sale.” From our experience, this is very bad advice, as buyers become distrustful of anything that reeks of a “hard sale” (for more on this, see our previous post on giving customers the OK to say “N0”). We work with sales organizations to enable them to use the way that they sell as a key capability, and telling is not part of that persona.
How else are we different? We teach proven techniques to help salespeople establish trust and uncover key customer pain points. Rather than telling your prospects what they should be doing, we encourage our clients to use illustrative stories and/or directed questioning to help customers tell you where their pain lies and how you can help them.
In addition to teaching selling techniques, we work with companies to develop a buyer-centric, end-to-end sales process and management reinforcement plan to ensure lasting revenue generation.
We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Tom Martin, former president of Miller Heiman and 20+ year veteran of the sales methodology and training industry. During our time together, we discussed many of the big ideas pervading the space today.
Below, please find an excerpt from our conversation on one of today’s biggest topics – social selling.
John: There are a lot of trends affecting B2B salespeople, and one with a huge buzz is social selling. Can you walk us through what “social selling” means to you?
Tom: You’re right John, social selling has a big buzz about it, and does not seem to be going away. In most industries, sellers need to adapt to how social selling is impacting their sales process because of how it is affecting their prospect’s buying process. Sales managers also need to adapt their sales training and reinforcement activities to coach their sellers in this new competency area.
John: Tom, tell us what social selling means to you. How can salespeople utilize social networks to improve their overall results?
Tom: When I think about what social selling means, I look at three different dimensions – three ways sellers can utilize “social” in their selling.
The first is listening. As Stephen Covey wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”.
Adapting this to social selling, the advice to sellers is simple: use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs to read what your prospects are reading and writing … and then after you understand what is important then, and only then, should you start “talking” in the social world.
Another key for listening is another quote from Covey, “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply”.
John: Interesting…that ties in nicely with Flannery Sales System’s methodology on how important it is to qualify prospects by listening and uncovering their pain before presenting solutions. You mentioned three dimensions. What are the other two?
Tom: The second is researching. While closely related to listening, I think the use of social tools for research is so critical for sellers it needs to be called out separately. Typically this means using social to support their sales process, or opportunity and account management methodologies.
Researching also includes “searching & stalking” – and by that I mean searching out your friends (champions and coaches), and stalking your enemies (gathering competitive intel).
Finally, the third is telling. Only after you’ve understood your prospects by listening and researching should you start responding with your own social content.
John: This sounds very similar to how I would advise a seller to approach a sales call or meeting – seeking to listen and understand first and only then to solve the problems they have uncovered. Anything else we should know about social selling?
Tom: Some people start with social selling assuming it is the silver bullet they were looking for, and that all they need to do is post a few blogs and tweet once a week. These people inevitably end up disappointed.
I think about a concept I learned as an Advertising major – “impressions.” It was said that it takes seven impressions for someone to fully ‘get’ who you are, what you do, and why they might need your services.
Adapting this to social selling means sellers need to consider integrating their social selling and traditional selling efforts to complement each other and achieve more impressions. They can’t plan on a single tweet magically converting new prospects into opportunities.
One final Covey-ism for today, “Begin with the end in mind.” To drive revenue and add qualified opportunities to the pipeline, your social sales message needs to be in sync with your overall sales message.
John: Any advice on integrating social selling into your sales process?
Tom: To create a lasting impact, you need to build social selling activities into your normal sales cadence – so set aside time each week to listen, research and tell across multiple platforms. In business that typically means LinkedIn posts, blog entries, and Twitter, and possibly SlideShare and YouTube channels.
Stay tuned for more from my conversation with industry expert Tom Martin.