Bryan Neale, Brooke Green,
and Bill Caskey
Excerpt from post on:
December 14th, 2007
You're cordially invited to attend an Executive Seminar called "Building Your Sales Dream Team" on either May 29 or May 30 from 7:30-10:00AM. Click here ...READ MORE
You’re cordially invited to attend an Executive Seminar called “Building Your Sales Dream Team” on either May 29 or May 30 from 7:30-10:00AM. Click here to register.
It’s primarily for CEOs, VP Sales or Sales Managers. The intent is to discuss the pros and cons of builing a “sales dream team.”
Click on the VIDEO (below) to get more information. We’re limiting this to 25 people on each day.
I can't stand when people don't take accountability for their outcomes. Sales managers, I don't know how some of you do it - listening to ...READ MORE
I can’t stand when people don’t take accountability for their outcomes. Sales managers, I don’t know how some of you do it - listening to excuse after excuse after excuse after excuse…you get the picture. I know many CEOs want nothing more than to create a more ACCOUNTABLE work team. But no one has seemed to come up with a magic bullet that gets everyone on the accountability track.Here are some top of mind ideas for you and your sales team:
1. Start from the TOP. If you want others to be accountable, guess what, you have to go first. Every single business success or failure includes responsibility from everyone. Think about this. Tom is a salesperson. He’s been struggling—hasn’t hit quota in 5 quarters. Most would say Tom’s the problem. ERRRRR (Price is Right Buzzer). YOU’RE the manager. YOU hired Tom and YOU kept him. I’m not letting Tom off the hook (read below). I’m just trying to help you get in the mindset of accountability.
2. “What did YOU do to affect the outcome?” Ask this question over and over and over. If you display behaviors of accountability, you give yourself permission to ask the same of your sales group. DON’T LET THEM OFF THE HOOK. Keep asking until they give you an answer that comes back to them. Not the market. Not your pricing model. Not their territory. THEM!
3. GIVE CREDIT and TAKE BLAME. Encourage your entire company to practice this saying, “Give credit and take blame.” Make it a slogan that you live by in your firm. Don’t just say it, DO IT.
I’d be happy to come into your company and take your group through an accountability boot camp. Just be sure you’re ready for it before you call. Oh, and I’ll take accountability for its success or failure. Call me-317-440-6391.
The economy is slowing. If you haven't seen it yet, you will. And what will you do about it to get ready? Afterall, your quota doesn't ...READ MORE
The economy is slowing. If you haven’t seen it yet, you will. And what will you do about it to get ready?
Afterall, your quota doesn’t get reset. Your income needs don’t go down. And your desire to grow personally and financially doesn’t either. So what’s a high performer to do?
We’re hosting a teleseminar on March 27 from 12:00-1:30 EST (Tuition: $79). The intent of this is to give you 5 Strategies that you can use to continue to grow your business during a slowdown.
We’ve also enlisted the help of Alan Beaulieu, an economist for EcoTrends (www.ecotrends.org). Alan has a unique perspective since a) he’s been predicting this slowdown for some time and b) he works every day with businesses helping them prepare for this slowdown.
Watch this 5 minute video. It takes a few seconds to begin so be patient.
Last month I was giving a sales training seminar, and one of the participants voiced his opinion on how he does something in the sales ...READ MORE
Last month I was giving a sales training seminar, and one of the participants voiced his opinion on how he does something in the sales process. He was actually saying all the right things, but the “way” he said it turned other people in the room off a little.
I got to thinking about what he said and was curious about why that had such an effect on people, I determined that certainty kills curiosity.
Whenever I hear someone say, “This is how I do it and it’s always worked,” they almost certainly have killed themselves off from being curious about other ways to do it better. You’ve heard the saying, “only fools are positive.” To me, that is exactly what happens when you are so sure of yourself that you are not open to other ways to improve your results.
As you think about your sales approach to prospects and clients, be careful that you don’t “have all of the answers and don’t need more input,” because you may be cutting yourself off from one easy tactic that can monumentally affect your business.
A study recently conducted by www.siriusdecisions.com in conjunction with the H.H. Gregg School of Sales at Ball State University, revealed (not surprisingly) that sales people, ...READ MORE
A study recently conducted by www.siriusdecisions.com in conjunction with the H.H. Gregg School of Sales at Ball State University, revealed (not surprisingly) that sales people, when calling on CEOs, are ill prepared.
And the CEOs don’t like it.
The report says 82% of the CEOs experience sales people who have not done their homework.
So Now What?
Good information. But if you’re a sales professional who “should be” calling on higher level contacts, exactly how do you do your research? The report didn’t talk about that, (most reports don’t tell you how to solve the problem) but I will.
Here are a few ideas:
The Bottom Line
Be careful that you don’t do so much research that you fail to ask questions because you think you know it all. I’ve seen that happen. Nothing is more annoying (not even an unprepared sales person) than one who thinks they have the answers before they ask the questions.
Get serious about your pursuit of the CEO’s pain and dreams. Then you can position your solution in a way that is meaningful for him.
Here is the definition of an asset: "An asset is a resource controlled by the enterprise as a result of past events and from which ...READ MORE
Here is the definition of an asset: “An asset is a resource controlled by the enterprise as a result of past events and from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the enterprise.”
We have been teaching for years that your sales force is a killer-asset, a super-asset of sorts because it creates wealth for the organization.
As with any asset, it can provide mediocre returns, profound returns-or returns anywhere in between. I prefer to think about your sales asset (sales team) as a machine that prints money. Think about the three ingredients of such a machine:
What you can learn from this is to begin looking at your sales team (and all supporting tasks) as an asset that can deliver multiples of what it’s delivering now. Begin making a list of the things you see that could be improved.
Then sit down and review these with your VP sales and review the team one by one. When you start looking at things this way, you’ll be amazed at the possibilities this creates.
We often hear that our “way” of training and coaching is "great, as long as you’re not going after big deals." We’ve never bought into ...READ MORE
We often hear that our “way” of training and coaching is “great, as long as you’re not going after big deals.” We’ve never bought into that. Yes, it’s harder to detach from the outcome of bigger deals, but changing the way that you think is effective on any deal—$1 or $1,000,000.
We recently had a client land a $50,000,000 deal!
If you’re reading this, you know who you are. For the rest of you, it wouldn’t be cool to “out” our client, so you’ll have to keep guessing!
I wanted to share with you 3 of the fundamental principles that we’ve worked on with them. Please don’t get me wrong, we are not taking credit for the deal – they get that all to themselves. However, I do think they would agree that our work with them helped lay the foundation for a win.
Principle #1: Identifying and Communicating Your Value
• What is value? It is the relief that your prospect feels when you can find and solve a pain they have. Or, the excitement they feel when they recognize the possibility you can help them create with your product/service.
• What it is not. Value is never platitudes, claims or opinions. The more you claim and opine in your statement, the less believable it will be, and the more your prospect will tune out everything else you say.
• It is as if there is a conversation going on inside the prospect’s mind and your expression of your value meets him where he is.
• In creating your value statement, you should make two lists—one of the conscious pains that you help people solve. And the second of the unconscious pains you fix. The secret in this is that the true differential value you bring is in the discovery and solving of the unconscious pains.
Principle #2: Detachment
• What is detachment? The ability to emotionally divest yourself from an outcome that you can’t fully control anyway. We learned from an early age that there was a WIN and a LOSS—a winner and a loser. And we didn’t want to be the loser, so we became attached to the outcome of winning.
• What it is not. There is a difference between detached and “disengaged.” Disengaged is when you don’t care or your mind is distracted. Sometimes people use disengaged as a way to hide their true attachment. They will say things like “do what you want to do,” or “I don’t really care what you do.” Don’t be disengaged. You are attached to the process and detached from the outcomes. But if you become disengaged, you cross the line.
• What happens when you become attached to the outcome?
1. You are unable to take risks
2. You are unable to do the right thing for your prospect or client
3. You sell yourself short, trivializing your value in the process
4. You default to using someone else’s process even though yours has been proven effective• How do you get out of it? Simple. Change thought. Thinking must change from “how will this effect me?” to “how can I contribute to the well being of another (prospect/client)?” Have you heard the saying, “when you’re depressed, go help someone else”? It’s true. So one way to “get out of yourself” is to help someone else. In sales, that usually means the prospect.
Principle #3: Clear Future / Presentation of Solution
• What is a “clear future”? You need to understand the decision making process of your prospect. How does the decision get made? Who makes the decision in their company? Are you talking to them? Can you live with that process of getting to them? When you get really good at managing your process, you will be the only one laying down the decision process – not them.
• Presentation. Present to the pain. If it’s a written presentation, then a review of the pain is in order at the top of the document. If it’s a spoken, delivered presentation, then a review of the pain should happen first. This is not the time to talk to them (your prospect) about all of the other great things you can do for them. DO NOT take your eye off of the ball, and by all means, don’t force them to take THEIR eye off of it either.
I was invited down to Greenville, SC recently for the Chamber of Commerce NEXT training program. This Chamber is unique in that it brings in ...READ MORE
I was invited down to Greenvi
lle, SC recently for the Chamber of Commerce NEXT training program. This Chamber is unique in that it brings in people who can help their members grow. NEXT is a subset of the Chamber that is made up of technology companies who are emerging or in early stages of growth.
Here is the rundown on what we discussed:
Thanks to Jim Henderson and Brenda Laakso (Greenville Chamber) for organizing the program. We’ll be working with this group on an ongoing basis beginning in October.
If you’re in a Chamber that this would work for, call Debbie Rabb at 317.575.0057 or Skype her at “debbie.rabb” and she’ll set it up.
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