Sales Management Tips | By Peak Performance Sales Training
The Impact of Unpaid Consulting
All Business Owners and Sales Managers are held to certain expectations by their sales team. After all, no matter what happens you are expected to pay your sales team when pay-day rolls around no matter what their performance has been during the pay period
However, have you ever asked yourself what return on investment (ROI) you get from your sales people? When engaging in this analysis you need to consider more than salaries: How much do you invest in advertising, management, motivation and other sales support? In exchange for this enormous outflow on your part, do your sales people provide you with more business than they do excuses?
Presidents and Business Owners, take our complimentary CEO Growth Barrier Diagnostic to uncover the gaps in sales and sales management inefficiency that create anchors to your success and growth.
The Information Dump!
Have you ever had someone give you a sales pitch on something you clearly had no need for or no interest in? You stopped listening and began to think of the excuses you would use just to get out! Sound familiar?
Presentation of a detailed solution without first clearly understanding the problem and more importantly the ramifications of the identified problem is a recipe for objections and excuses. It leads to wasted time, energy and a drain on self-esteem. Excuses from prospects create overloaded pipelines which in turn create complacent sales people and as such adversely impact your bottom line.
The typical traditional salesperson spends his or her career wasting their time pitching, presenting and demonstrating towards surface issues, or problems that their prospect has been managing to date. The premature sales pitch is then followed by the handling of objections, which are often excuses and reasons for not making a decision. After all, would you make a buying decision regarding an issue that in your own mind is not essential or critical, in particular when your budget is tight?
For more on modifying sales routines, implementing sales criteria/process and attitudinal training contact Peak Performance today at 1-866-816-0991. Hoping your team will change is not an option. Visit our Complimentary Sales Problem Diagnostic for More Information
Unpaid Consulting and the Impact to Your Bottom Line!
Unpaid consulting starts when sales people cross the line between diagnosing the prospect’s problem and detailing the solution. In other words the sales person provides a solution without first uncovering the negative effects the prospect suffered in the past and future negative effects the prospect will incur if the problem isn't fixed.
This eagerness to provide premature solutions can be attributed to the traditional sales training provided by most companies to new sales recruits: Feature-Benefit based training. Therefore, unknowingly companies put their sales people in a position where they automatically try to fix a problem the prospect has not yet concluded requires a fee based solution.
When sales people begin to present detailed solutions, without first allowing the prospect to acknowledge a problem exists, and that this problem merits a solution they immediately begin acting as unpaid consultants. It is this common sales method that wastes your company’s time and money and reduces your opportunity for growth.
The Trusted Advisor
The most successful salespeople are not salespeople at all. In fact they are seen as trusted advisors. Are your sales people seen by your prospects as trusted advisors or as an interruption to their busy day?
For example, when you visit a physician after you conclude that you have an illness or have experienced pain, would you want to think about implementing their prescribed course of action? Would you refuse their calls?
In the physician hypothetical, the patient makes a decision because he has come to the conclusion that the illness, and associated pain or discomfort may continue, and potentially get worse in the absence of action. The technique inadvertently used by the physician to solicit action is priceless in the sales arena. It is of particular value to any business that is considered a commodity by its customer base; where it is essential that sales people do not prematurely present or demonstrate solutions as it inevitably leads to objections and longer selling cycles.
Trusted Advisors spend the majority of their time focusing on why the prospect has taken time to meet with them. The problems, fears, pains or simply the level of dissatisfaction a prospect may be experiencing are only the tip of the iceberg. These are simply the reasons why the prospect has decided to meet with you; however they do not always translate into why they will buy from you.
The Physician!
Remember in the previous example how you met with the physician because of the surface discomfort, concerns and pain. However the decision to move forward with the treatment, or in some cases the operation only comes after a detailed discussion regarding the problem, its symptoms and potential for progression and the associated negative effects.
You usually don't price shop the physician although there are a multitude of physicians willing and able to provide the same solution. In fact, because of the standardized practice of medicine, physicians are one of the biggest commodities in the marketplace, yet they don't suffer from the price shopping and objections that the corporate world suffers from. Could this be because the physician never received feature-benefit training and therefore focuses on the pain, symptoms and adverse impact not implementing a solution would entail?
For specific information on how to overcome these and other sales obstacles please Call us Direct at 866-816-0991 or Request Information Online
So, you want to break the self-destructive cycle of poor hiring decisions that have cost you so much money in the past and may continue to cost you money going forward if left unchecked?
After all, the majority of your time is dedicated to these poor hires not to the top producers. Why is it when we initially hire a new sales person, we have such high hopes for their ability and future production levels only to be disappointed down the road? Your gut feeling was that this was the one. However this was merely another one who cost you time, energy and money. How much has it cost you? How much will it cost you going forward?
Presidents and Business Owners, take our Complimentary CEO Growth Diagnostic to uncover the gaps in sales and sales management inefficiency that create anchors to your success and growth.
Frustrations Associated with Hiring
In an economy infested with contracting capital budgets, cynical decision-makers, and sales professionals with poor outlook and morale, selecting the right sales person is vital to your bottom line. Hiring practices today require a novel approach that cuts through all the time-consuming feel-good bonding and gets right to the root of who WILL sell, as opposed to those who have sold.
Most Business Owners are frustrated by:
- The high rate of sales staff turnover.
- Their high expectations being met with low productivity levels.
- Sales people who constantly drain their company of time, money and energy.
- Sales people who spend more time making friends than money.
- The investment of time, energy and capital to get sales people in front of decision-makers only for inadequate results in return.
- Spending the majority of their time, energy and money (turnover) on the weakest sales people—those who consistently fail to confront objections, side with the prospect's reasons for deferring the sale, and who build a particularly bloated pipeline.
For more on modifying sales routines, implementing sales criteria/process and attitudinal training contact Peak Performance today at 1-610-878-9400. Hoping your team will change is not an option. Visit CEO Common Sales Problem Diagnostic
Common Flaws in the Hiring Process
During the hiring process, many business owners and sales managers unknowingly seek the sales person who “fits in”. But, fits in to what? Without behavioral matching, you run the risk of hiring someone who may have succeeded, but not through use of the same behavior required to succeed in your position. Without analyzing the position and applying certain criteria (behavioral standards) necessary for success, you increase your chances for low productivity and turnover.
Another common mistake made is that the guidelines for selecting and ranking top performers have not been defined properly. For example, sales statistics, in and of themselves, can be very misleading when used to rate performance.
Example 1: Joe Sale has been selling for your company longer than anyone else. You hired him in 1996-97 when the economy was just beginning to really take off. Capital spending for most companies, namely your prospects and customers was at an all time high. His figures, when taking the good times into consideration make him look like a top producer. In other words Joe is the only one left from that fine bunch of order takers you hired that left for the promises of dot com promises. In fact he took over most of their accounts.
Example 2: Sue Sale came on board in order to relieve the sales manager or business owner of his or her selling duties when the good times kicked in. They needed more time for golf and other important activities. Sue was assigned major accounts in order to take some of this burden off of their plate. Sue, on paper seems to be a top producer. Besides coddling pipeline hopefuls and maintaining communication with her assigned clients, she actually has developed very little in the form of new business.
Are you having trouble differentiating your company from your competition? Call Peak Performance today at 866-816-0991 for a proactive approach toward uncovering why buyers buy, differentiating your company and taking you to the next level! Visit https://www.peakperformancesalestraining.com/Recruiting for more details
Risks Associated with Benchmarking
Most sales professionals you interview today have never sold in a down economy. Competition is fierce and prospects are extremely selective as to who they do business with and where they put their money. If Joe or Sue had to start from scratch in today's market, how would they fare?
- How long would they last?
- How much would you spend?
- What would your opportunity cost be in lost sales?
- How long would it take to build that client base now, if they could at all?
If you base your sales position's benchmark on people like Joe and Sue because their statistics (misleading statistics) look good and you proceeded to hire people with this same benchmark as your guide, you will probably hire ineffective people with the same characteristics and negative traits as Joe and Sue.
Sales people—and companies—who become top performers have one thing in common: They know what they want to be.
Many sales professionals do not enter colleges or universities with the hopes that they will get a high paying position in the field of sales. Instead most sales people fall into sales, not really knowing what area of sales they would be best at.
Furthermore many sales managers who do not get the results they deserve fail more often than not because they hired "good all-around players" instead of behavioral specialists. Or they failed to look beyond past success. Why were they successful? What did they do behaviorally within that position that made them so successful? Does their past behavior match what is critical for the position you’re trying to fill. Although in the past they may have been exposed to similar behavior, have they been disconnected from the front lines too long? Quite often sales managers who “manage” have been just that “disconnected” from the behavior that would be required for success in the position.
Some quit and leave, others quit and stay
For specific information on how to overcome these and other sales obstacles please call us direct at 866-816-0991 or visit Complimentary Recruiting Diagnostics
