Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, May 08, 2012 @ 03:17 PM
An article in today's Wall Street Journal caught my eye, "Science Reveals Why We Brag So Much." It talks about a Harvard University study that finds:
"Talking about ourselves...triggers the same sensation of pleasure in the brain as food or money..." It goes on to say "In several tests, (the neuroscientists) offered volunteers money if they chose to answer questions about other people...rather than themselves...Despite the financial incentive...(volunteers) willingly gave up between 17% and 25% of their potential earnings."
Ask a sales manager who has been on a joint sales call recently and they'll tell you the test subjects got off easy. When sales people talk about themselves instead of engaging the prospective customer in tough, timely questions they almost certainly give up more than 17% to 25% of their potential earnings!
This is one of the most common issues we run into when we work with a sales team. Instead of asking good, tough, timely questions....questions that help the prospect think about their situation in a new way....questions that challenge the way a prospect is doing things currently....questions that reframe the issue and create urgency....questions that highlight the consequences of NOT acting to fix a problem....questions that help your sales person earn respect and credibility....questions that uncover compelling reasons for the prospect to move forward and more importantly to move forward with your company. Instead of doing all of that, what do most sales people do? What do your sales people do?
If they're like many of the sales people we meet when we first get started, they probably do exactly what the test volunteers in the Harvard Study did. They talk about themselves. They talk about their product. They talk about the features and benefits of their service. In short, they puke all over themselves and stick to what they know rather than engaging the prospect in a real conversation by asking great questions.
What would happen to your revenue growth if your sales people learned a different lesson from this Harvard Study? What if they learned how to ask good, tough, timely questions that got your prospects talking about their problems and challenges? About their strategies and plans? About their company and their job?
This study cuts both ways. When your sales team learns to get out of their own way and ask questions that get your prospective customers talking, you'll have more awards to hand out and bigger bonus checks to sign at the end of the year. How many of your sales people are capable of making that transition? Do you have a sales team or just a group of professional braggarts? How does your sales team measure up?
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Apr 03, 2012 @ 06:37 AM
If you are the person who signs the checks (the President, CEO or business owner) for all of the expenses that go along with exhibiting at trade shows, one of the things that can drive you absolutely nuts is trying to figure out how to get the maximum return on your marketing investment while also ensuring enough new business closes to justify the expense.
As many of our clients get ready for "trade show season" and prepare to send their sales teams off to exotic convention centers across the country, here are the top five (5) trade show mistakes we see VPs of Sales make that can absolutely destroy your return on investment.
- Planning as an after thought. Running a sales organization can be a tough, demanding job. There are so many moving parts to manage and often meeting with the VP of Marketing to provide input and feedback into trade show planning gets put on the back burner. Huge mistake. Your marketing team always needs a longer lead time than your vice president of sales believes. If your sales team is busy talking about problems solved by product X and your marketing team produces materials and give aways for product Y, you've got a big problem. Make sure your VP of Sales and your VP of Marketing schedule some time to plan well ahead of the show(s) you plan to attend.
- Customers or Prospects? The great thing about exhibiting at the right trade shows for your industry is that everyone is there, including your current customers and prospective customers. To maximize your sales teams time make sure there is a clear strategy about how to handle both groups and where sales people should spend their time. Our advice is typically to talk with customers before the show to find out if they will attend and perhaps schedule some time with them before or after the show or during off hours. It could be a dinner or a cup of coffee or just a quick hello. Let them know that you value and appreciate their business and then set the expectation that your goal is to focus on new business.
- Focus on Getting Leads. Many sales people (and sales leaders) attend these events expecting to get a lot of leads and connections - and they are often disappointed when they fall short. In our experience the sales people who leave the show with the most leads and connections are the ones who focus their time, energy and efforts and making connections for others first. What would happen if before the show everyone on your sales team invested some time thinking about who they could connect, who they could introduce, and what they could do to help your clients and prospective clients? Get your team focused on giving first, and they will receive plenty of leads and opportunities.
- Missed Opportunities. If all you are going to do is set up your booth and stand there for 8 hours, don't even go. Get involved with the show. Offer to moderate a panel. Use the event to learn more about your competition and your market in general. Leverage the opportunity to have hundreds of short conversations as a training opportunity for your newer sales people. Provide on the spot coaching and feedback as you observe them interact with tradeshow attendees.
- Poor Execution. The details matter. From pre-show planning (meeting with marketing to get the message right, identifying clients who will attend, calling prospects who will attend to book a cup of coffee during the show, etc.) to post-show follow up, successful sales organizations nail the details and execute with ruthless efficiency. Compare that to what you typically see as you walk a trade show floor (bored sales people nursing a hang over) and ask yourself which side of that coin you want your sales team to be on?
Investing in the right trade show can provide oppotunities to connect with current clients, fill your sales pipeline with propsective clients, increase your company's visability, and learn more about your competition and your market in general. Make sure your VP of Sales avoids these mistakes and you'll be on your way to a strong return on your tradeshow investment. If you need some help we have our free Trade Show Checklist.
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 06:52 AM
What would your revenue look like if your sales team had one extra day to sell every year? This year we get a bonus "leap day" and every person on your team will make a series of decisions about how they invest their time. Those decisions will have an impact on the results they produce - not just on leap day, but every day! Let me share a sales secret that can create an "extra day" of selling every single year, not just every four years during leap year.
First, let's spend a moment talking about sales measurables. What do you measure? How do you measure success for your sales team? If you're like most CEOs we work with, you probably have a very solid understanding of your proposal conversion rate. You know that if you send out X number of proposals every month you will win $Y in new business. A few CEOs understand how many productive sales meetings need to take place to generate X number of proposals. And it is a very rare CEO (or business owner, or VP of Sales) who understands the daily activities required by every sales person, in every territory, to drive the right number of meetings (and frankly the right type of meetings), to drive the highly qualified proposals that lead to reaching or exceeding your monthly, quarterly, and annual revenue goals. If you have this down, great! If you don't, contact me and I'll quickly help you figure it out.
Whether or not you understand the daily activities required by each sales person on your team to drive the revenue results you want, here's a sales secret you can implement right away to add an extra day of selling every year. Have everyone on your sales team form the habit of making one extra call before they go home every day. That's it. One small change - a simple decision they can make every day - that will drive massive results over time.
- One extra call every day.
- Five working days per week.
- 50 weeks per year (assumes two weeks of vacation).
- 250 extra calls per year.
How many days do your sales people make 250 phone calls? For most sales people (unless they work in a call center or highly transactional environment), 250 phone calls would be an outstanding day. Even if they only made an extra 200 phone calls per year, that would still be a great day of sales activity. Once you understand your sales measurables, you can easily calculate the impact an extra 200 calls from every person in your sales organization could have on your revenue. Hold your sales team accountable to this one simple decision - every day - and your sales will take a leap every year, year after year.
What would happen to your revenue growth this year if your sales team formed this habit? What can you do to make sure that happens, starting today?
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Feb 14, 2012 @ 06:51 AM
Here's another excellent Ted Talk with an important lesson for your sales team. In this 18-minute presentation, Nancy Duarte highlights "The Secret Structure of Great Talks." And while her focus is more on presentations and speeches - she uses her structure to map and highlight Steve Jobs' 2007 launch presentation for the iPhone as well as Dr. Martin Luther King's famous speech, "I Have a Dream." If you listen carefully there are several key points that apply to sales conversations:
- Creating awareness of the gap between "the way it is right now" and "the way it could be" will pull the audience toward you and create more urgency to take action.
- Establishing a rhythm by traversing between various aspects of "the way it is now" and "the way it could be" creates a more compelling and interesting conversation, building momentum until you end with a new vision for the future.
- Harnessing the natural resistence we encounter as we ask people to change by tacking back and forth from "what is" to "what could be" and using that natural resistance to actually draw them closer to our vision and idea.
- The difference between an audience (or a prospect) choosing a mediocre idea (or product/service) over a more clever idea (or product/service) is often simply a matter of how you communicate that idea.
- Using archetypical examples, personal stories, appropriate emotional examples, and familiar analogies makes it easier for the audience to engage and understand your vision.
As you think about the type of conversations your sales team has, how often do they start by spending some time on "the way things are now" and end with a vision for "the way it could be if you used our product/service?" Do they spend enough time asking questions about "the way it is now" and helping the prospect discover the problems and consequences of sticking with the status quo? How effective are your sales people at creating as wide a gap as possible between what is and what could be? What would happen to your sales results and business growth if everyone on your sales team mastered this approach?
Please enjoy a great presentation from Nancy Duarte on "The Secret Structure of Great Talks."
If you would like talking points and a meeting outline with ideas about how to use this at an upcoming sales meeting, please let me know.
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Feb 07, 2012 @ 07:58 AM
My friend and client Bob Scherer took an exercise I had given to his sales team one step further and it's absolutely brilliant. After reviewing one of our sales modules on "The Rules for a Proactive Day" I sent Bob a worksheet to help each sales person on his team understand the true value of their time. It's pretty straight forward. Just take your income last year divided by 2,080 and you will get your earning rate per hour.
So if one of your sales people made $100,000 in income last year their earning rate per hour was $48.07. $100,000/2,080 = $48.07. Of course this assumes your sales people only work a 40 hour week and in our experience most successful sales people usually work more than that, but that's a topic for another day.
The idea behind this exercise is to generate a productive conversation during a sales meeting to help your sales people understand that:
- Not all sales appointments are created equally;
- Time is scarce;
- Time is money, and;
- Time is a resource that cannot be replaced.
Look at a sales person's calendar and ask, "Was the cup of coffee meeting with Sue Smith really worth $50?", and then follow up with a question like, "If you had to pay me $50 to go to that meeting, would you still go?" Typically the discussion that follows has distinct and positive results. First, it brings this issue into focus with a living example. In addition, it helps your sales team understand the importance of proactive planning and how to best manage their calendars. And it leads to making smarter decisions about which prospects a sales person should invest their time with.
We've been doing this exercise with our clients with great results for years and years, but Bob wasn't satisfied. He took it one step further. Instead of calculating the value of a sales person's time based on their earnings from the prior year, he looked at it from the perspective of what do they need to quote per hour to hit their sales plan. This extra step created even more focus and clarity.
We've since done this exercise with other clients and the results have been eye-opening. For example, some of the people on the sales teams we work with need to quote on average $2,000 per hour to reach their sales goal. That's quite a bit more than $50 per hour. Keep in mind, that's an average target per hour - the reality is they may go a whole day without a quote and then have a $10,000 opportunity. The other thing to keep in mind is as we work with sales teams on planning a proactive day, we plan five (5) hours per day so these averages are based on that number. This time management approach builds in time for interruptions, got-a-minute meetings, returning voice and e-mails, sales meetings, and so on.
How does this impact your sales managers and how they monitor the proactive planning their sales people do? Let's say you have a sales rep who wants to go to Cleveland to see a prospect. It's a good meeting with strong potential. And it's a full day out of the office. If the answer to the question "Is this a $10k opportunity?" is anything but a resounding "Yes!" then your sales manager needs to raise expectations. Who else can the sales rep meet with while they're there? Could they have their initial discovery conversation on the phone instead of face-to-face to make sure there is a good fit?
What kind of decisions would your sales team make if they understood the true value of their time and how much they needed to quote per hour to hit their plan? Is the "cup of coffee" meeting really worth $2,000 (or whatever the opportunity cost per hour is for your sales people)? We can send you a free spreadsheet and meeting discussion guide so you can do this exercise at your next sales meeting.
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Jan 31, 2012 @ 07:29 AM
I recently finished reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis (I still look forward to watching the movie). Great book with lots of examples and stories that apply to sales, sales management and leadership in general. At one point in the book the author is sitting in a video room with Paul DePodesta (one of Billy Beane's lieutenants) watching a live feed of a game. Rather than watching the commercial broadcast they just watched the video feed from the center field camera because that provided the best view of the strike zone. DePodesta wasn't interested in watching the whole game as an ordinary fan would; rather, he was watching the fragments of the game that provided the information he was interested in.
"It's looking at process rather than outcomes," Paul says. "Too many people make their decisions based on outcomes rather than process."
By narrowing their focus to specific process components Beane and DePodesta were able to see things other baseball insiders missed. They were able to see the remarkable value of a disciplined approach at the plate that lead to consistently taking pitches rather than embracing the "swing for the fences" mindset that is more commonly accepted in baseball.
In our sales force development consulting practice we often see CEOs, Presidents, and Business Owners who put more value and emphasis on sales outcomes than sales processes. It's similar to coaching a basketball game by only watching the scoreboard. When this happens your sales team can get the wrong message and focus on the wrong behaviors.
We've seen "award-winning sales people" fail and sputter six months later, unable to reproduce the big deal that got them the award in the first place. We've seen sales people absolutely crushing their sales quota one month lose the big account driving those results the next month.
Focus on the sales process by picking 2-3 key metrics to track to create better discipline and more consistent results across your sales organization. Remember:
- Sometimes sales people do everything right, and still don't get the deal. Celebrate their discipline and fidelity to the sales process.
- Sometimes sales people do a lot of things wrong, and still win the deal inspite of what they did. Be grateful for the revenue then point out where they could have done better by following the process.
If your sales team knows what to focus on and can focus on the right activities day in and day out, the results will follow. Are your sales managers focused on process or outcomes? What would happen to revenue growth if your sales managers understood not just what happened (outcomes) but also how and why it happened (process)? Which is more predictable? Which is more forward looking?
Posted by Mike Carroll on Mon, Dec 19, 2011 @ 09:49 AM
Most of our clients have longer sales cycles, ranging from 2 to 3 months up to 6 months or longer. Consequently the opportunities in their sales pipeline that will close between January and March, 2012, are the result of conversations that started in anywhere from July to October, 2011. We have identified a handful of action items the CEOs and sales leaders we coach can work with their sales teams to achieve as they plan their last few weeks of 2011 and their first few weeks of 2012 to make sure they get off to a strong sales start in the coming year. Here are a few of those ideas- how many would apply to your sales team?
- Gratitude - we rarely say "thank you" enough and you really can't say it too much. As your sales team makes the rounds this week delivering holiday gifts and spreading merriment, be sure they let their customers know how much they appreciate the business and how grateful they are for the opportunity to serve them.
- Re-Qualify - has anything changed since you first started working with a client? Have any new needs, priorities or challenges come up? Is your company aware of these changes and if you were meeting with them for the first time, is the program you have in place the program you'd recommend now?
- Referrals - there is no better sign of a strong relationship than when a customer feels good enough about the service you're providing to recommend you to another potential customer. And yet, while many customers would be glad to do this, they won't automatically think of it on their own. A simple "Is there anyone you can think of in your network that I should reach out to early next year?" can go a long way toward filling your sales pipeline if everyone on your sales team does it these coming weeks.
- Top 3 for 2012 - similar to the "re-qualifying" bullet point above, have your salespeople ask their customers about their "top 3" priorities for 2012. This takes a more focused approach and will help them better understand where your product or service fits in with the other activities happening in your customer's business. This is a great time of year to ask that question because as we turn our calendars we all tend to take a moment to reassess where we are, what we've accomplished, and what we need to focus on in the coming year. This is true even for those companies on a different fiscal year.
At your sales meeting this week ask your team to focus on these items as they finish this year and start up again in January. These are areas they should explore and be aware of all year, but right now as we change from 2011 and 2012 is a particularly good time to focus on these topics as you talk with your customers. What impact will this have on your first half of 2012 if you have every salesperson on your team focus on these questions and explore these topics? Good luck and good selling!
Posted by Mike Carroll on Thu, Aug 11, 2011 @ 06:29 AM
Our friend and mentor Dave Kurlan - a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert - posted this article on his blog yesterday. Many of you may remember Dave from a presentation he did in Milwaukee in late March at the Milwaukee Athletic Club. Nearly every CEO, President, Business Owner, and VP of Sales we talk with has expressed some level of frustration with their sales hiring process. Read Dave's article below and be sure to consider how you might benefit from signing up for the Free Trial he's offering for the first time ever.
Here's Dave's Article:
There are many keys to making the the sales hiring process work effectively yet most companies fail to get these keys right. Some of them are obvious, while some are more subtle. And most of all, the integrity, or in this case, the outcome of the process is only as strong as the weakest link. Ignore or fail to complete any one step the way it is designed and the entire outcome will be in jeopardy, as in, another salesperson that fails to launch, doesn't meet expectations, or succeeds at being utterly mediocre.
Here are some keys and comments:
- You must identify what experiences the new salespeople must have in order to succeed at your company, in this position, calling into your market.
- You have to nail the posting - get it wrong and the wrong people will apply for the position. When the wrong people apply, you have a pool that's green and unsuitable for diving in.
- You must use a customized, sales specific, predictive assessment to identify the candidates who will succeed in your positions and roles. If the assessment isn't predictive and you can't rely on it, you'll end up wasting your time with the wrong candidates.
- You must be able to determine, in less than 5 minutes by phone, which of the recommended candidates have the desired experience, sound great, and should be interviewed.
- You must be able to firmly but nicely cross-examine your candidates in a face-to-face interview to determine whether they are the person described on their resume or an imposter, meaning the resume was a work of fiction.
- You must have realistic expectations on your timeline. 30-60 days to fill an ordinary territory sales position, 90 days or more to fill a niche sales position, and even longer for the proverbial needle in the haystack.
- You must be patient enough to do it all over again if you don't find the candidate(s) that make you happy. Once you have reached the interview stage, candidates will come in 12 flavors:
- Strong sales skills, perfect background and you like them;
- Strong sales skills, a background that is close and you like them;
- Strong sales skills, wrong background and you like them;
- Strong sales skills, perfect background and you don't like them;
- Strong sales skills, a background that is close and you don't like them;
- Strong sales skills, wrong background and you don't like them;
If you compromised on the assessment profile and didn't insist on it recommending only the strongest salespeople, you'll have 6 more flavors like those above, only showing Weak Sales Skills.
You need to select from Strong, perfect or close, and you like them. Period. You let the assessment tell you whether they are strong. You let the interview, not the resume, determine whether they have the right background. And only then do you decide whether you like them.
If you don't get what you want, you must answer this question: 12 months from now, will you be happy that you took three more months to find the right salesperson, or pissed off that you compromised, wasted a year, and have to begin the process all over again?
8. After identifying a candidate(s) you wish to hire, you must be able to effectively sell the opportunity to them.
9. Finally, you must be able to effectively on board the new salesperson(s) so that they go roaring out of the gate
10. You must be willing to coach at least twice per day, while holding the new salesperson accountable to all of the agreed upon startup metrics.
Hiring salespeople is not for the faint of heart, should not be performed without the right tools, and cannot be conducted without the right process. Most importantly, gut instinct is not a part of this process!
Posted by Mike Carroll on Tue, Jul 12, 2011 @ 10:45 AM
Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional.
Change will happen whether you like it or not. If you run a company long enough you'll see changes in your market, your competition, your customers, your customers' expectations, your position in the marketplace, your pricing models, how you deliver your product or service, and on and on.
Growth is different. Growth is a choice. You can choose to create an environment where the expectation is that everyone on the team grows all the time and growth is part of your culture. Or you can choose to just keep doing things the way you've always done them and hope your sales team can adapt to the inevitable changes your company will face.
While growth is a choice, it's not an easy decision. Growth is hard and you'll face resistance. Top sales people will say "look at my numbers, I don't need training and development...." And yet we find even small incremental growth, say a 10% improvement, for a top producing sales person can produce the biggest impact on your top line. Take a $1 million dollar producer and help her improve by 10% -- that's $100k in new revenue. Take a $200k producer and help him grow by 20% -- that's only $40k in new revenue.
Just ask yourself which company will be able to handle change better, the company with a sales team growing on purpose or the company letting each sales person fend for themselves?
What are you doing to help your sales team grow and improve? Can you see specific measurable progress?
If you're growing your sales team on purpose, you should be able to look at your sales team every month, every quarter, every year and say "Clearly we're getting better....we're having better conversations....we're asking better questions....we're getting better margins....we're generating more referrals....we're managing customer expecations better....we're handling the competition more effectively....we're calling higher and wider....we're hearing fewer excuses....we're winning more proposals....and on and on."
Do you know which sales people are capable of growing and by how much? Do you know their strengths and weaknesses and what to do to leverage the former and address the later? Do you know who on your team is coachable and trainable (and who is not)? Why would you keep someone on your sales team who isn't open to coaching and growth?
Growth is a choice and it starts at the top. You can chose to grow your sales team on purpose or you can leave it to chance. It's up to you. To help you get started we've prepared a simple checklist to help you focus on the right areas. You can get it for FREE right here.
Posted by Mike Carroll on Wed, Jun 01, 2011 @ 08:59 AM
Do you remember the golden rule you learned in 1st grade?
Does this rule work in sales management? Of course not. While doing unto others as you would have done unto you is a great lesson to teach our children, it doesn't work so well in sales management because everyone on your team processes information differently:
- The questions and tactics that worked when you were a successful sales person may or may not work for each individual sales person on your team.
- What motivated you to get on the phone and make prospecting calls may or may not motivate each sales person on your team.
- The optimal way for you to receive information and draw conclusions may be very different from how each sales person on your team gains understanding.
Successful sales people quickly learn they can be more effective when they adjust and adapt their communication style to match the prefered style of their prospective client. Talking with a busy, results-focused, bottom line CEO...... get right to the point and delivery your message in crisp bullet points. Talking with a cautious, detail-oriented CFO..... be precise, answer their questions with facts not opinions, do not force a quick decision.
The same concpet applies to sales leadership. Everyone on your team has a different communication style and manner of processing information, so match your message to fit what they need. Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.
Dave Kurlan's "Are Your Salespeople Jerks or Just Different From You?" post sums it up nicely. Kurlan writes:
"People are different. Your salespeople are different. Their prospects are different. The more we understand their differences and learn to work with those differences, the more effective we can become."
Well said. This is really the golden rule of sales leadership and the faster you embrace it the faster your results will improve.