“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker As the Student you studied the changes affecting your prospects. This was during the Need stage of the Buy-Learning Process. Then, as the Doctor, also during this Need stage of customer focused selling, you diagnosed “little problems” and uncovered BIG needs. When … Read full article
When doing your competitive analysis, be sure to include criteria that reflect the requirements of all decision makers on the Complex Buying Team—operational requirements of interest to users; compatibility information of interest to the Integrator; purchase price and full lifecycle costs for the ROI Authority, and so on.
Sales coaching has two components: performance management and developmental coaching. Performance management is a quarterly one-on-one meeting where you review a rep’s sales results, activity level, and evaluate their performance. Developmental coaching, on the other hand, is about developing the salesperson’s competence and willingness to sell better going forward. In short, performance management looks primarily … Read full article
Most salespeople include in their approach call a “benefit statement,” which is two or three generic customer benefits that attempt to create interest so the prospect agrees to an initial appointment. But the vast majority of prospects you call are either in the Change or Discontent steps when you call them. They may or may … Read full article
Coaching “symptoms” instead of underlying causes does more harm than good. Accurate diagnosis of a performance problem means looking for the common threads, then applying a bit of detective work to consider: Is this a skill problem? If so, teach. Is this a willingness/motivation problem? If so, help the rep understand the reasons why they … Read full article
Is your sales team lagging well behind where they should be? You’ve no doubt heard the saying, “success breeds success.” Unfortunately, the reverse is also true: failure can breed failure. Here are some specifics about how you can turn around a lagging sales team. Even if your team is doing fairly well, you’re bound to … Read full article
Webster’s defines the word solution as “the answer to a problem.” So why is it that so many sales organizations fervently believe that they are the “preferred solutions provider” in their marketplace, but their sales proposal document makes no mention whatsoever of the customer’s problems and issues? How can we call ourselves solutions providers if … Read full article
Paul Nutt, author of Why Decisions Fail, studied 400 decisions made by senior executives in medium and large businesses. Decisions studied include Disney’s EuroDisney failure, various components of the Denver International Airport construction, etc. Nutt’s research found that fully half of the decisions had failed. A decision “failure” was defined as a decision that either … Read full article
Is your sales team performing far below potential? Mine was. As a first-time sales manager many years ago, my office ranked dead-last out of 64 offices. We had ten salespeople, nine of whom had less than one year of sales experience with our company and were performing far below standards. The lone exception was Norm, … Read full article
I have a book published by Harvard Business Review titled Business Classics: Fifteen Key Concepts for Managerial Success. The book contains the 15 articles in HBR’s history that have sold the most reprints. One article, published in 1964, was titled, “What Makes a Good Salesman,” by David Mayer and Herbert Greenberg. The author’s research found … Read full article