New Sales Training Blog

Thank you for reading our Sales Mastery ‘Lead the Pack’ Sales blog.     The new blog posts can be read at http://blog.leadershipconnections.com.  Please view our new blog on our sales training and consulting website and feel free to leave us a comment.  

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Rejection

Rejection in sales may say more about the person giving it than it does about you.  The prospect’s reactions may be more about self-protection than about rejecting you.  Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t mean you have to share them.  Putting yourself in someone’s shoes is different than putting yourself into someone’s mind.  Have you ever rejected someone who makes a sales call on you?  Avoid the big mistake of universalizing rejection by saying all prospects will reject you.  That is not true, so don’t let the actions of a few speak for all.  Avoid the second big mistake of assuming they are rejecting you versus the product or service you offer.

Psychoanalysis shows the human infant as the passive recipient of love, unable to bear hostility.  Development is learning to love actively and to bear rejection.  Karl Stern

Question of the week:   “What are ways you regain confidence and conviction after defeat?”

Success Might Require Updating Your Belief

Because you have believed something for a long time, or convinced yourself that things “are” a certain way does not make it true.  Be willing to challenge virtually every single thing you have ever believed, especially about yourself.   Assuming that you believe doing the right things in sales will provide the success you want, why don’t you do the right things?  You don’t do the right things, or take the right actions, because your belief about yourself, product, service, company, industry, prospects, or the sales process control your actions and reactions.  Recognizing self-limiting beliefs, excess baggage, and discarding them or updating them will propel your sales career forward and lead you to success, more than skills ever will alone.

A new way of thinking has become the necessary condition for responsible living and acting.   If we maintain obsolete beliefs, a fragmented consciousness and self-centered spirit, we will continue to hold onto outdated goals and behaviors.  Dalai Lama 

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Question of the week:  Have past successful methods failed to produce current results? 

Sales Quota Important and Relative Feedback

Imagine going bowling with your friends but the bowling pins are behind a shield of smoke and you cannot see the results of your effort.  Or, imagine playing basketball with no hoops, just running the ball up and down the court.  Sound boring?  Yes!  Think of the similarities of your sales management effort without a scorecard.  Consider having no feedback on how you are doing against goal and no feedback on how you are doing compared to your colleagues.  How will you be able to make adjustments?  How will you know whom to use as an advisor and mentor?  How will you know what to change and what to keep doing?  Feedback is important and rankings are part of feedback.  See how you compare to your colleagues and learn from them.  Measure success in context.  If everyone is 85% of sales quota and you are 90%, then you are a hero.  If everyone is 120% and you are 105%, then you have work to do.

Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback.  They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.  Michael J. Gelb

When have you learned the most, from disappointments or successes?

Don’t Overlook the Value of Fear

Pain is the primary motive sellers look for in prospects to generate a buying decision, and for good reason.  PAIN is the strongest motivator, but don’t overlook Fear as a buying motive.  Insurance and Michelin tires, to name two examples, have long used fear to motivate buyers.  God forbid you should pass prematurely!  And, what about that baby inside the tire?  Fear of something happening to that child is a strong motivator.  Studies show a majority of people will try to avoid losing what they have before trying to gain something.  That means many people are willing to take greater risk to avoid a loss, than they are willing to risk for gain.  In other words, telling a prospect how much money you can save them might not be as effective as telling them how much they are losing.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves-regret for the past and fear of the future.”  Fulton Oursler

Question of the Week:  What are your experiences when fear was a major motivator for your customer?

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An Easy Mistake to Avoid

 As salespeople, we learn to correlate sales success with our sales process and activities. The correlation can easily lead to incorrect and costly assumptions. For example, a costly mistake is the illusion that you control the buying decision with your sales process and persuasion skills. Why? Every organization has its own buying process with its own decision timetable. The results of not knowing the buyer’s process are delayed decisions, surprises, or no decision at all. Discuss how the buyer or the organization goes through the buying process. In addition, ask what criteria they will use to make a decision. Meld your sales process into the buyer’s process. Consider if your prospect is in the acknowledgement of need phase or the assessment of options phase. Reaching mutual understanding early creates a win-win for everyone.

He that can have patience can have what he will.  -Benjamin Franklin

Question of the Week:   What are the clues that indicate what phase a buyer is in?

View our website www.leadershipconnections.com for upcoming events in 2011.

Referral Partners

A symbiotic relationship exists between young wolves and ravens.  Evidence indicates ravens may locate elk and attract the attention of wolves to the elk.  Biologists report Ravens and wolf pups in what appears to be play with each other.  Independence and individualism seem woven into the DNA of great sellers but do not let those traits cost you business.  Vendor relationships are important to success too.  Develop referral partner relationships with non-competing sellers who call on the same client base or vertical.  Ask your current customers who else calls on them that they like and who are good at what they do.  Trading leads, customer information, and referrals can be very profitable.

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation.  It is better to be alone than in bad company.    George Washington

 Question of the Week:   What are ways you can develop symbiotic business relationships?

Leading is the Most Important Skill

Managing and leading are prerequisites for sales success.  Managing time, resources, projects, calls and a dozen other tasks all at once is mandatory.  However, leading is the most important skill.  You have to lead the dance, the sales process, in a way that buyers want to follow.  If no one is following, you are not leading.  The adage, buyers love to buy and hate to be sold grows in significance daily.  So how do you lead?  Lists of leadership traits abound but remember this:  Followers first buy into the leader as a person (character) and secondly into their cause.  What is your cause?  Is your real purpose a quick buck, meeting a number, or truly helping, solving problems and providing the best solution that will cement a life long relationship?  Buyers see it, feel it, and hear it. 

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”  Dwight D. Eisenhower    
 

Question of the week:  For what reasons would someone follow you into a buying decision? 

Is Your Product Service a Commodity?

“Our edge is service!”  Does that sound familiar?  Every provider claims to give good service.  Service has become the differentiator for many products and in that role, service itself, is becoming a commodity.  Exactly what does good service mean?  It is different for everyone, and like value, it is in the mind of the buyer.  Think of visiting your favorite fine dinner restaurant. You may prefer frequent interruptions by the waiter to check on your needs, while others prefer intimate conversation with fewer interruptions.  What is good service to your prospect?  Is it a relationship, faster delivery, easy returns, automated ordering, live attendant answering, availability, expertise, or something else?  Make the customer important and simply ask!  Then remember and implement the answer! 
“Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.”  -W. Edwards Deming

Question of the week:  What are specific words you can use to define service?