Firstly, may I wish you a wonderful Christmas or Holiday season.
I was going to write an article about ‘what are you grateful for?’ - and the importance of intentionally cultivating an attitude of gratitude, being present and thankful for all you have - as my Christmas/Holiday message.
After all, being grateful and content with what you’ve got is often overlooked or completely forgotten in sales because selling is an exercise focused on ‘future pacing’/future outcomes - things that have not happened yet (note: for anyone who suffers with anxiety, it’s because your mind is focused on and preoccupied with things that may or may not happen in the future). Much of my coaching work with sales leaders and salespeople are spent working on how to counteract the effects of ‘future pacing.’
Yet, in the spirit of providing immediate value (tis' the season), I thought I would share my biggest takeaways from working with sales forces in 2019.
1. Salespeople are simply not speaking with enough decision-makers. They are prospecting to and sending proposals to influencers who they hope can sell ‘up’ for them. “Hope” is not a… (fill in the blank).
2. Salespeople are having ‘sales’ conversations. If your salespeople are going into calls and meetings to have sales conversations about your service, product or solution, then you’ve already lost. The best salespeople understand sequence – they need to have a business conversation first (makes the case for change – after all, all sales is about change), then have a conversation about the customer’s criteria for product/service/solution. Most sales leaders don’t know or do this well either.
3. The people being asked to build sales onboarding and transformation programs don’t know what good looks like. This is an issue for companies with large sales forces. Many of the executives who are tasked with building ‘transformation’ sales onboarding, process, programs or approaches have never been top salespeople or sales leaders. They may be great at designing curriculums and programs, but they’ve no track record in sales. They’ve never “carried a bag.” That’s why salespeople roll their eyes when they go to internal training courses or your internal facilitators aren’t respected. These people lack the “intellectual horsepower” or “DNA.” Not my words. The words of very experienced sales leaders who were concerned that their internal programs were being designed and run by people who wouldn’t know what good looks like. The result: see points 1 & 2.
YOUR ACTIONS for 2020
1. If you’re a leader, make sure that your salespeople’s proposals are being sent to the decision-maker, not an influencer.
You do this by guiding the influencer to share what decisions will be made and when and who will be involved. You need to get good at articulating why it’s in the influencer's best interest to get everyone’s perspective before proposing (you risk a 'not invented here' reaction otherwise).
2. Recognize that there are 3 kinds of sales conversations. There are:
i. Business conversations
ii. Technical or feature conversations
iii. End User/Customer conversations
Most salespeople only have ii and iii conversations. These are all input focused conversations – or what it is and how it works conversations. They are not outcomes – what it does or changes for the customer and what the $ value of that change means. Run a workshop specifically designed on how to have business or outcome-focused sales conversations. Your win rates will increase by 30%+.
3. Leaders - by all means have internal experts design your sales onboarding and transformation programs. AND, get input from your top sales leaders, producers or outside sales experts to make sure that the program will get adopted and executed willingly by your salesforce because they immediately see, hear and smell that it has had world-class sales talent involved. Secondly, start with an outside-in approach. Too many sales programs focus on “why choose us” and neglect that sales is about introducing change and should start with “why change” and “why now.” That focuses salespeople on being curious and understanding and discovering what their clients are looking to achieve. If you need an introduction to a world-class program, let me know. I will be happy to make an introduction. I also advise on what good looks like and I am hired as a sounding board to ‘stress test’ internally developed programs.
So, there you have it. My 3 top picks for addressing sales performance in 2020. Set these aside for, or set a calendar reminder to, revisit this list on January 6th 2020.
Now go and enjoy time with your family.
If you’ve been struggling with these sales issues or others for more than 30 days, it’s time to get outside help. Give me a call.