INTERCONTINENTAL ICE MELTER

What passes for sales training in many selling organizations is hardly a laughing matter. Ask any business leader or executive what the most important part of his or her business happens to be, and they’ll say “my people”. But when you look into how little time, money and attention they invest into their training and development process, you’ll be left with a much different impression.

Far too many sales managers and business owners believe that they cannot afford to set aside the time or the money to get their sales representatives deeply and rigorously trained in a manner that is customized for their organization’s needs.

Instead, they send newbies on half-backed orientation sessions, stick a bunch of binders in their hands, and sending them out on “ride-alongs” with senior salespeople (internal selling mentors). While this may work here and there, the occasional success of this method when implemented alone has as much to do with dumb luck as with anything else.

The Downside of Relying Mainly On Internal Selling Mentors For Sales Training

In a large sales organization, there may be as much as a 2100% gap in productivity between the top performer and the bottom seller. This wide range of variation in productivity means that sales managers usually pick out the top performers to be the “victim” of a sub-par mentoring process.

Here are a few reasons why internal sales mentoring should never be relied on as a substitute for a more robust sales training system.

1. Without special preparation, and with no special incentive for doing something that could potentially interfere with their own productivity, many of these top performers come to resent what should be a profitable and practical team-building (and business-building) process.

2. Instead of a systematic process for capturing the knowledge, behavior and attitudes of the best performers, and then sharing it with the whole sales organization, this information is inefficiently dispersed one-on-one. The organization loses out on the aggregate power of this transfer of intellectual capital.

3. Bad sales habits of the hapless “trainer for a day” may get passed on to an impressionable sales trainee during these unguided “sales training” sessions in a way that is damaging to the long-term success of the trainee.

4. Many average or under-performing salespeople end up being assigned to mentor the new staff member because the top performers refuse to dent their productivity by doing a task for which they are unsuited and untrained.

5. Training business development professionals in this way is potentially disastrous for overall production because different trainees get exposure to different training. Such a system is not duplicable or systematic, and therefore cannot be incrementally improved over the long haul. It is not improvable… so when a problem arises, no sale manager, executive or consultant can fix the system. It will have to be replaced wholesale – from planning, to scripting, to behavior.

Conclusion

I am not against using more experienced sales professionals in your organization as selling mentors. However, this cannot take the place of a robust and systematic sales training process.

The most effective sales training systems are customized to the needs of your organization. They are built from the ground up to acknowledge the realities facing your business and your sales professionals when they knock on the doors of prospects. Such sales systems are integrated and into metric-based sales management systems so that you can improve on behaviors rather than relying on empty rhetoric (or even insults) to motivate.

Gogo Erekosima, The Small Business Digital Coach is the CEO and Lead strategist at Idea Age Consulting – a Denver Marketing Sales Consulting firm that promises to grow your small business by 24% or more in 24 weeks or less using their customized Business Growth Action MAPS.

Sign up today for a Sales Improvement Opportunity Analysis. This consulting module uncovers strategic marketing and business growth opportunities. This Consulting Package is valued at over $1500 dollars.

By Gogo Erekosima

And before you commit me to the happy home, I am not saying that sales is not about results and ideally overachieving them. So bear with me while I share a few concepts with you.

Many years ago while I was a sales manager (in nappies) one of my team of great sales staff said to me, “Aldo, have you ever wondered why we humans have two ears and one mouth?” Well, you get the message; in one word “Listen”! That set me on another excellent path of discovery landing me in a place that is all about listening and feeling, or putting myself in the customers’ shoes. I am so privileged to have worked and continue to engage with so many great people whose pearls of wisdom have triggered the ongoing awakening of my being.

We have so many times heard this cliche, “put yourself in your customers shoes”. But do we actually believe it? Do we actually truly listen to what the customer has to say? Or are we driven by the latest product launch and cannot wait to vomit this new found knowledge all over our prospect, totally losing them along the way. And I am not saying product knowledge is not important, it is vital.

I’ll tell you another thing that I have learnt along the way. Sales people who talk too much go through a process of unselling. In this mode, we impart so much information onto the poor unsuspecting prospect that they feel bewildered, inept and rather threatened by their lack of knowledge, preferring instead to politely exit the scene with a few brochures and “let me think about that”, undoubtedly never to be seen again.

A simple example is the person that walks into a car showroom and says to the sales person, “every day, I have been admiring that car, while on the bus to work, as we passed this showroom. I am here to work-out a deal”. Now, the sales person, sensing blood gets excited and start “up selling” (another very dangerous sales process if done recklessly). He takes the brochure and starts optioning-up, talking about V6, direct rail injection, turbo charged, after sales package, tinted windows, etc….. The excited customer is now totally overwhelmed at the complexity of buying a car and walks home needing a rest! Rather, all the sales person had to do is “work-out a deal” as the customer indicated.

Obviously, there was another option if one wanted to upsell, and that is to “step into the customer’s shoes” asking the right questions so that the customer gets engaged, starts talking and (as customers always do) tell the sales person those things that are truly relevant to him, for the sales person to upsell towards. So I agree with upselling but this needs to be done from an empathetic space and not a “let’s see how much I can get him to spend” space.

So stop selling and start listening.

Usually customers meet you or come to you because they are in the buying process and they are looking for the best value for their money. They might not always articulate it in this way and there are some that, try as you will, will never be your customers, as their value needs do not fit your business value-add. This heightens further the importance for good dialogue with your customer. If it is the case, be prepared to admit upfront that you are probably not able to meet their value requirement. Trying to deliver what your business is not structured for is a receipt for disaster, because even if you win the sale, you probably end-up with an unhappy customer.

On the other hand, once you have given the customer the opportunity to openly share his needs and let’s say, you cannot meet their value equation, and you are prepared to say so, amazing things happen. The pressure of the sale is gone and then usually the customer is perplexed that you are walking away from a sale and will ask why. This is the best opening for you now to talk and truly explain the intrinsic value-add of your business/product.

In some circles they call it “solution sales” which I find exceedingly humorous. As, are we saying that in the car case above, we were not selling a solution? Whether it is a car, a home, an iPad, or a corporate purchase, the customer has a problem or at least a need. If we are prepared to truly listen, we are able to hear from the customer what his needs and priorities are and this is where the product knowledge comes in (as well as the organizational and industrial). This is where, once we have listened and listened and listened, we are able to then articulate the vision of a solution as sometimes the solution and the value-add is beyond the product itself. Maybe it is financing, maybe it is the finish, maybe it is the customer service, maybe it is something that is so easy for you to supply that you would never have thought of promoting and is so critical to the customer that you have an easy sale on your hands.

Maybe you do not have the answer and are comfortable enough to tell your customer that you would get back to them once you have thought through their needs and have a tailored offer for them. Maybe it simply is that car in the showroom.

I cannot give you the answer and neither are you able to come-up with it. But if you truly listen the customer will certainly tell you, and you will easily over-achieve your target and end up with a trail of happy customers.

Happy Listening (selling).

ezine@aldogrech.com

Aldo Grech – CxO Consulting

Success Principles – 3 Proven Techniques How to Achieve Amazing Results in Life
By Shawn Lim

This is the perfect article for you if you are looking for ways how to be successful. What you are going to discover in this article is the top success principles that never fail. You will discover the 3 proven techniques how you can produce outstanding results in your life.

If you are serious about achieving great success in life, you must be willing to constantly learn and improve yourself. Reading this article and discover these 3 proven techniques are one of the keys to constant improvement. So are you ready to discover the 3 proven techniques that you can implement into your life right now?

1. One of the best techniques you can use is goal setting. Writing down your goals and constantly review them are going to be helpful in achieving what you want. Setting a goal will help you to better focus on the direction you are heading and it will also condition the idea of achieving the goal into your subconscious mind. Most people do not have a goal, and this is why they are not successful.

2. Commit to constant learning and improving. Do you know that success is not a destination? It is a process? Success takes time and you need to constantly improve yourself to produce great results in your life. Commit to read at least 2 books in a month. Read those books that will help you to improve and move you toward your goals. Try this for 1 year and you will see amazing things happen to your life.

3. Finally, take consistent action each and everyday. Do something that will take you to your goals each day. If you are not doing anything, you will never accomplish a thing. Success requires action. Therefore, decide right now that you will take at least 3 actions each day so that you will move toward the direction you want and reach your destination eventually.

Want to know more about the author and his work?

Visit his latest website, Bayu Puteri to learn more now.

For more information, please go to http://www.BayuPuteri.org/

It is the dream of everyone to live a life of luxury and splendor. After working for many years, most find out that it is not easy to live luxuriously while working for someone else.

Little wonder that everyone seems to search for that perfect business opportunity. Problem is that most of these business opportunities are not easy to come by.

Your email box is a treasure trove of business opportunities for all manner of things. There is no shortage of the business opportunity, which will change your life. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff in this scenario?

The first thing to do before considering starting any business is to look within you. Running a successful business is not easy.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have the time to run a successful business?
• Do you have the finances to run the business?
• Do you have enough saved to keep your family afloat?
• Do you understand the business you intend to start?
• How long do you think you will run the business before getting bored?

Most of us are so busy looking at the prospectus of a business opportunity we received we never think about the challenges we may have to scale.

We know we need money to run a business, but we forget that during the first one or two years, we may run a business that may not be profitable.

Most businesses fail within the first one year. This is not because they do not have a good product or service, but because the business owners cannot sustain the business. They do not have either enough money to run the business, or enough money to live on.

There is also the danger of starting a business to make money. Granted your goal to start a business is to make money, but you may find yourself losing interest in a business that you do not like.

The best business opportunities usually have something to do with what you like.

Not everyone offering you the perfect business opportunity is honest or willing to help you when you need help. You need to do proper research to find a company that is honest and willing to help you out.

The best business opportunities need to:

• Offer low initial startup costs – the lower the costs of your business, the higher the chances of success.
• High Returns – Unless you wish to start a hobby, you are aiming to make a profit. Look for a business that has returns high enough to keep you interested.
• Low Risk – the best scenario is to find a no risk business. That is, where you have invested no money. Low risk or no risk business opportunities have a high chance of success.

Anyone can be financially successful once one finds the best business opportunities. You do not need an education of loads of money to find your perfect business opportunity.

Peter Watson, Director of Business Trader Australia http://www.business-trader.com.au