Sales Planning – First Impressions are Key

Let’s say it’s a week before your first meeting with a new client. This is the time when proper sales planning is critical. As a result, many sales professionals spend this crucial lead-up time on activities like the following:

  • Compiling anything and everything already known about the client, which may require asking other sales associates who may have had previous touch points
  • Role-playing with other associates about how your products or services can help achieve any known goals
  • Creating a considerable list of needs-discovery questions
  • Preparing responses to a few possible client objections

But what key preparation point is missing from this list? Everybody tends to get so caught up in the impression and impact they can make with their words, but what about the non-verbal messaging that will precede you before you even open your mouth?

Personal Appearance

Your personal appearance is the very first nonverbal clue to your client about how well you do or do not understand them.

While you were spending time getting to know your client’s needs and pain points, did you ever bother to learn anything about their company culture, i.e., how do they communicate, how do they typically dress, with what level of formality do they interact with one another?

For example, if you’re visiting a sports apparel company with a casual atmosphere and company policies but you’re dressed to the nines in your best suit, what message does it send? By the same token, a high-end client will be none too impressed when you rely on your tried-and-true khakis and company polo shirt to do the job.

Aside from potentially making the client very uncomfortable, it shows you didn’t put in the time to learn what would be an appropriate way to dress and present yourself.

In short, your very first job in sales is to make your client comfortable. Your personal appearance is the very first opportunity you’ll have to make that happen.

Body Language

Assuming you’ve come dressed in the appropriate attire, next comes the rest of your nonverbal communication: your body language. Unlike the appropriate appearance, which changes from company to company, appropriate body language is pretty much universal:

  • smile
  • appear welcoming
  • give a firm handshake
  • maintain eye contact
  • stay engaged
  • avoid crossing your arms

Not doing any of these things can appear rude and leave a poor first impression that will be hard to shake for the remainder of your relationship.

Not sold? According to Forbes magazine, studies have found that nonverbal cues have over four times the impact on the impression you make than anything you say.

Control the Controllable

If you think about it, sales planning should be the easy part – it’s all about the things that you can control and properly prepare for. The rest of the sales process is where the unpredictable variables come into play. So do yourself a favor and control the controllable. Score the first point by dressing appropriately and conducting yourself with respect for others.

Is your CRM running your sales department?

If so, catch it and stop it!

While a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system has become an increasingly important part of most sales organizations, there is a danger of it becoming a hindrance rather than an enhancement to the sales process.

The problem is, there is a tendency to force feed a sales process into a CRM – carefully embedding each step and shifting things around so that it “kind of works.”

This thinking is backward and can be extremely counterproductive. Once you figure out how successful people in your company should be selling – READ: after you’ve designed a dynamic sales process – why would you use an application that doesn’t fit the way successful salespeople sell in your company?

In other words, CRM should be a tool, not a driver.

Many organizations fall victim to the seductive promises of CRM applications. And, that’s not all bad. CRM can add value for the salesperson by making useful information easily available. It makes a sales manager’s life far easier because he or she can access the information required to coach each sales rep’s performance. However, there can be a downside.

If the way the CRM application is configured doesn’t match the way you want to sell you can put your sales reps and their managers in a sticky situation. Do they do what the application says, or do they do what they know will work?

The last thing you want to have happen is to go through the exercise of creating a highly-detailed custom sales process only to have to find “workarounds” to get it to fit within an existing CRM. Before you know it the process could become a virtually unrecognizable version of itself. Remember, processes don’t sell; people do.

Implementing CRM should always start with the relationship model and sales process your organization uses. You may have to make the tough choice that not everything can be automated because to do so means losing subtleties in the way you sell. And, that’s okay. It means you are being thoughtful in how you use technology, for which your sales reps and sales managers will thank you.

For much more on best practices for implementing a sales process across your organization, download our free e-book: Design and Execute a Dynamite Sales Process in Just 5 Steps.

Sometimes all you need is a little spark in order for sales to explode!

Sales Coaching Looks a Lot Like the Sales Process

In speaking with, and consulting sales organizations across the country, one thing that appears to be a commonality regardless of size or industry, is a general misunderstanding of sales coaching.

This is not to say that these organizations don’t value or see the need for sales coaching, but rather that their current approach is not utilizing the most effective sales coaching methodology.

Here are some ineffective sales coaching practices we have witnessed:

  • Once-a-year performance evaluations
  • Asking a rep why they aren’t making their numbers
  • Demanding better performance without providing a means to achieve it
  • Providing a few positive platitudes in a sales meeting
  • Telling all other reps to just do what your top rep is doing
  • Firing the bottom performers and warning the remaining staff to improve their performance

It’s not enough to simply tell reps to focus on vital sales skills or to cajole them into better performance. Good sales coaches engage in a two-way exchange of information with team members to understand their perspective and are capable of offering insights, resources, thoughts, and ideas for improvement.

This happens as coaches ask questions to:

  • Learn about a person’s motivation
  • Uncover the challenges and opportunities a salesperson is facing
  • Identify key needs and developmental opportunities

Does this sound similar to the sales process? It should.

Good coaching is about being genuine; building trust and rapport to more easily uncover sales representatives’ key needs, challenges and opportunities. It’s then helping representatives find the appropriate solutions and moving forward together toward those solutions.

Very practically, the best way to help sales reps implement new skills is to role-play. Role-plays sometimes get a bad rap because they can feel contrived or uncomfortable for sales people. However…isn’t it more uncomfortable to practice new skills in a live environment with results on the line?

When sales reps know and trust their manager as someone who wants to help them, they will listen. Remember, sales coaching is about them and their development as a person and improving their sales skills. Coaching is not about hitting a number or achieving short-term results. Sales coaching is long-term development of individuals to help them perform at their highest levels.

In the meantime, please explore our dedicated sales coaching services.

Selling Skills for Account Executives

With the New Year upon us, many sales organizations have their gazes fixed forward with a focus on obtaining new business. This plan, at its core, is a good and positive thing. Where the issue arises is when this plan for growth depends solely on that new business coming from new customers.

This makes the plan astronomically harder than it has to be.

By shifting that forward gaze backward, onto existing clients, companies can realize a plethora of untapped revenue possibilities.

And the key to tapping into that revenue lies within the selling skills of your account executives. They are the ones who have the established relationships and rapport with their list of customers; it is they who hold the keys to these “hidden” revenue sources.

Here are some things that every sales account executive should be doing – and not just during the first quarter – but all year long.

Plan key accounts.

This can begin with a review of past buying habits. The longer the client has been a customer the more data should be available for assessment. Ask and answer questions like:

• What was your customer doing last year, last quarter, or last month at this time?

• Were they stocking up on your products or enlisting your services?

• Are there any noticeable buying patterns, habits or cycles?

• Do you have record of the sales tactics that worked for this particular customer – and those that didn’t?

Hint: if you haven’t been keeping helpful notes and detailed records for each account, now is the time to start!

Once you’ve refreshed your memory on the history of each customer, begin collecting current information that could be helpful.

• Identify what your customer is currently doing and identify competitive advantages

For example, has your customer switched over the majority of their paper supply needs to your company but has been hesitant to trust you with their hardware needs, like copiers and printers? Maybe they have an existing and comfortable relationship with an old vendor for that segment of the business.

This would be your chance to jump in and explain not only the ease of having just one point of contact and reducing accounting hassles, but also the savings they could experience by “bundling” the services and products from your company.

• Next, consider other divisions within the same company – are there departments that could be using your products or services but aren’t?

This is an opportunity to leverage the existing relationship with your customer to help you get a foot in the door with those other departments. In other words, ask your contact to make the introduction.

Hint: If you’ve done a good job of fostering and growing the relationship to ensure you have a happy customer, there’s a good chance that they’ll not only make the introduction, they’ll put in a good word for you, making your sales job that much easier.

With these tips we’ve barely scratched the surface on the potential business that lies within existing accounts. The point we’d like to make is that new business doesn’t have to be synonymous with new customers.

Selling Skills: Inherent or Acquired?

We’ve all heard the terms “born salesman” or “born seller,” both insinuating that a person can be somehow blessed with a gift for gab or a knack for persuasion, but really, how accurate are those assumptions? Are these skills that a person is actually born with or are they learned behaviors? The question then becomes: Are selling skills inherent or acquired?

Let’s start by examining how the art of sales has evolved.

In the not-so-distant past, inherent qualities used to move, and keep, someone at the top of the sales totem pole. These qualities included:

  • assertive
  • persuasive
  • aggressive
  • persistent
  • sly
  • smooth talking

If these qualities read like a list of “typical” sales characteristics, it’s because they are – at least, they used to be. The old sales mentality was centered around the big push, and the idea that no should never be taken for an answer. It wasn’t so much a question of whether or not a product fit a prospective customer, but rather, how do we make it fit?

And, perhaps rightfully so, the resulting assumption was that it took a special kind of person to exude this type of consistent, unrelenting confidence while also dealing with a great deal of rejection. Thus, this person was considered a born seller.

Things have changed a bit.

The mentality behind the sales process has shifted largely to a more Need-Based or consultative approach – an approach that demands elements of strategy and preparedness, which, previously, hadn’t been considered important. Because of this shift, the skills required to be successful have also shifted.

Today’s top salespeople must be equipped with the right learned skills, including:

  • a complete understanding of products and services
  • the ability to listen, and craft intelligent questions
  • the ability to problem solve in real time
  • knowledge for when to gain customer commitment
  • the ability to use empathy correctly
  • the ability to appropriately and positively handle objections

These skills are very specific and it’s extremely rare for a person to instinctively exhibit them. But the good news is: these skills can certainly be taught.

If a salesperson (or an aspiring salesperson) is open to instruction and has the desire to learn, with the right sales training, ongoing coaching and reinforcement, they can achieve mastery of modern sales skills. We have no doubt about this.

Suffice to say, success today in the world of sales is less about personality and more about the necessary skillset. Now, that’s not to say that certain personality traits won’t aid a salesperson in achieving success. Inherent qualities like being a good listener and possessing genuine curiosity are helpful, but again, these things can be taught, fostered and mastered.

If you’ve ever found yourself asking if you or any of your team members are really “cut out” for sales, try repositioning the question:

Have I exposed my sales team to the proper sales training to equip them with the modern sales skills required to be successful?

___

Being a top-performing sales professional is not simply reserved for those gifted with natural skills and abilities, nor is it an easy designation to earn. At Janek, we believe that succeeding in sales requires understanding and performing core strategies and tactics – and adhering to a proven methodology that focuses on solving customers’ problems and understanding where they are in the buying process.

Don’t Forget the Value in Face-to-Face Meetings

Yes, we’re talking about physical, in-person, face-to-face meetings. And we can guess what you’re likely thinking. Why spend the time and money to meet in person when we’ve grown accustomed to nurturing and closing deals over the phone and with the help of email and other instantaneous forms of communication?

While you pose a good argument, we’d like to present a counter argument:

How many deals are you not closing due to lack of personal touch or perceived effort?

As a society we have strayed so far from the need for physical business interactions, the mere thought can shake us right out of our comfort zones. Don’t let it. When feasible, there is always room (and appreciation) for a good, old-fashioned handshake and the ability to look a prospect or customer in the eye. And sometimes, it can make all the difference in the world.

But, yes, the question then turns to logistics. When is it logical and feasible to schedule a face-to-face meeting?

Here are a few things to consider:

1) At what stage are you in the selling process?

If you’re in the beginning stages, a personal visit may appear intrusive or overly ambitious. Once you’ve laid the groundwork and established rapport, a visit could be a logical next – or even final – step.

2) What is the overall value of the sale?

Not just immediate value, but value for the long-term. If the customer could eventually yield recurring revenue for your company, it would be well worth your time and the cost of a plane ticket.

3) What is the personality of the buyer?

If your customer seems to be a warm and social person, all the better. But don’t count out the customer who comes off more shy – perhaps an in-person visit would be a flattering and welcomed change for them.

Once you’ve taken these factors into consideration and you feel there is value to be gained from an in-person visit, here are some possible benefits to doing so.

• If your customer’s product has a factory, it could be immensely helpful for you to get up close and personal to glean product benefits that aren’t tangible over the phone or online.

• If it’s a service they offer, the opportunity to see their service offering in action could be very helpful for you in identifying additional needs and opportunities.

• If your customer has someone he or she answers to, it could be helpful for you (and appreciated by your customer) to speak directly with a supervisor or board group. If you’ve been having trouble winning the executives’ time over the phone, showing up in person could make them take you and your company that much more seriously.

• In addition to meeting other stakeholders, an in-person meeting would allow you an introduction to other departments who may have use for your products or services.

• And lastly, your customer will begin to see you not only as a vendor, but as a person. In other words, you humanize the process.

So come on, put down the phone, close the email and crawl out from behind that computer monitor. There is a whole world out there of personal connections to be made – connections that customers will remember and appreciate more than you realize.

Closing the Sales Call with Clear Next Steps

As sales professionals, at one time or another, we’ve all been in a situation similar to this one.

It’s the point where a sales call is going really well – rapport has been established, the prospect is showing real interest in your product or service (perhaps they’ve even given you insight for their budget or about your competition), but ultimately, they are going to need more time to make a decision – and then, you close the call with a phrase that sounds something like this:

“Okay great, I’ll follow up next week and we’ll see where we are.”

And just like that, momentum has been killed.

The “high” experienced during a successful sales call at times has a way of clouding our thoughts, causing us to lose track of the fact that a good sales call is not the same as closing a sale. And now that we’ve ended the call without defining clear, actionable next steps, the chances that the sale will close diminish – despite the fact that the call went so well.

Two ways to close the call in your favor

The goal here is to capitalize on the hard work you’ve already done: gaining the appointment for the call, establishing rapport, and creating awareness of needs. In other words, the iron is hot! Don’t let it fizzle with a cold, lackluster closing of a sales call.

Here’s an example for how the call should have been closed:

“Okay, great. Here’s what I’d like to do. I will revise the proposal to stay within the parameters we discussed, and that will give you the opportunity to share the new features with your stakeholders. I’ll return the proposal by Friday morning, and it would be a great idea to connect that same day – how does your Friday afternoon look, say 3pm?”

This call closing displayed two critical action items.

1) Involve the prospect.

By asking the customer to do something – anything – on their end, you instantly involve them in the next steps. This gets them vested in the sales process. And by establishing action items for both parties, a feeling of joint accountability is fostered. You’re in this together.

2) End with the next call or meeting scheduled.

Instead of hemming and hawing over upcoming joint availability, remove the guesswork and narrow the follow-up window. By pre-picking a day and even suggesting a time, it forces the prospect to take the follow up seriously. It’s much easier (for both parties) to brush off a call arbitrarily scheduled for “next week.”

Try keeping these two simple points in mind when you close your next sales call – we’d love to hear how they worked for you!

Lay the Sales Pipeline in 5 Steps

If you ask an engineer how to build and maintain a pipeline, you might hear this:

  • Dig
  • Lay down the structure
  • Keep the flow going
  • Take measurements
  • Keep the contents at the right ratio

Well, the process isn’t much different for building and maintaining a sales pipeline. Here are the steps as we see them.

1. Dig

Salespeople know all too well, you have to dig for leads…then dig through leads, dig for prospects, keep digging for good prospects, dig further for hot prospects, and then…keep digging some more.

If you don’t have the luxury of having a company-fed lead pool, then you’ll need to know where to dig—and what are good sources for the kind of leads you need.

2. Set Structure

Set your parameters. Know exactly what qualifies as a good prospect. No matter how hard it is, stick to this structure. The moment you start wavering from what is a good prospect, your pipeline is clogged or breached.

No company software to help keep structure? Then develop a paper system or invest in an affordable CRM system. Keep in mind that your pipeline is only so big, so set and stick to your parameters.

3. Keep the Flow Going

You must constantly keep the new, fresh prospects coming in as you work through the hot prospects, perform follow-up calls, and conduct actual sales. Remember, your big sale started out as a new prospect. Regardless of how many hot leads you have working, set aside the time you need each day for finding fresh prospects.

4. Take Measurements

Salespeople must quantify their success. Know the numbers to success. How many calls must you make per day? How many calls does it take to build a prospect using your particular lead pool? How many prospects does it take to build a sale? Know how many new prospects you need per day to keep your flow going.

5. Keep the Right Ratio

You know the numbers (see above). Consistently maintain them. If you’re short on hot prospects, then build up some of your good prospects into hot prospects, or get rid of them so new prospects can become good prospects. If you’re short on good prospects, filter through those “cool” prospects to turn them into good prospects or get rid of them so you have room for new prospects.

You can’t increase the size of your pipeline so you have to keep the ratio of cool, to warm, to hot prospects right. This means you must be accurate about identifying your prospects and continually reevaluate where they fit on the scale:

  • Solid commitment to consider offer
  • Client’s need has been identified and solution offered
  • Good discussion, but client’s needs and solution may not be clear yet
  • No real discussion, but client qualifies and agreed to a call back time and sending/leaving of material
  • Could only get permission to send/leave materials
  • Doesn’t really qualify but he was a nice guy to talk to…wait a minute! This one doesn’t belong in your pipeline…FLUSH IT!

So there you have it – the pipeline metaphor. It works, and helps us to keep in mind what we need to do to build and maintain a good sales prospecting pipeline.

Selling to the Informed Buyer – 4 Tactics

How many times within the past couple of years have you found yourself telling a customer something they already knew? Or has a customer rushed you through your spiel, urging you to get to the stuff they haven’t read about? Maybe you’ve misquoted a stat and your customer has corrected you.

None of these scenarios is positive but they all point to one thing: today’s buyer is more sophisticated and adept at finding information and increasingly less dependent on you to be their source.

Don’t just take our word for it. Thanks in part to the vast amount of information available via social media, blogs, reviews and smart technology, some research has indicated that the buyer has completed as much as 60 percent of the decision before even speaking to a sales representative.

What does this mean for you, the sales professional?

It means progressing past the finer points of consultative or Need-Based Selling, to actually analyze the buying process and uncover where the customer is in their overall decision. It’s finding out what the prospect has already accomplished, and determining their appropriate “point of entry.”

This is a new paradigm of selling – one which many sales reps may find uncomfortable and somewhat counterintuitive. But it’s not difficult; it’s just different. Following a different set of criteria, like the points below, will help reps to anticipate for and prepare to demonstrate real value for the informed customer.

1. Find the right opportunities.

When targeting companies, a sales rep needs to conduct a detailed analysis of the organization and determine the type of value that he or she can bring to the client that they had not considered previously.

This goes beyond simply analyzing what products/services they are currently purchasing and with whom they work. The rep must think about how he or she fits into the decision-making process, and how they can bring new ideas to the table – ideas that assist the client in moving forward in the process, rather than only consulting to identify needs.

2. Consider the general conditions within the company.

A company that has more unknowns and is more agile in how they will accomplish their objective in the future may be worth targeting. In any case, by understanding the capabilities and the current state of the company and its industry, a sales rep will be able to determine to whom he or she can potentially bring value and new ideas, and which individuals would pose more challenges in doing so.

3. Knowing when to interconnect within the organization.

Not only knowing when, but where, and what the process is for doing so. When the rep has identified their contact, he or she should be considering, “What unrecognized need does this customer have?” “What is the best method for making contact?”

Over are the days where we only have an option to make a call or send an email to connect with a prospective client. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other forms of social media all offer opportunities to make an initial connection. The better prepared the rep, the better idea he or she will have for where improvement can be made.

4. Ascertain the unique value you bring to the client’s buying process.

This is the final step or element. It goes without saying that maintaining a strong relationship with the client is another critical factor but it now goes well beyond the “relationship.”

The sales reps that embrace this change will choose to target clients that have already begun to change the way they buy. They will add their unique value to the process by provocatively providing meaningful insights, and will help guide the client in their purchasing decisions.

These are the sales reps that will become indispensable, and will continue to perform at a high level. Preparing for this shift in sales will put these sales reps ahead of the curve and far ahead of other sales professionals.

Don’t let the buyer be the only one who’s informed, keep learning!