What are your Sales Coaching strengths? Areas to improve? There’s something I want you to do: define what your sales coaching strengths are, and what coaching areas should you improve? Next, I want you to tell one other person in your organization, two of your coaching strengths, two things that you do really well. One … Read full article
Concessions are an essential negotiating tool, but use them wisely. Consider the future impact of potential concessions. Today’s concession becomes tomorrow’s customer expectation. So don’t give away the store today or you’ll have nothing to give tomorrow. Make sure you get a concession for every one you give. Instead of saying, “Yes, I can reduce … 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.
Winning a complex sale is difficult. Complex sales are bigger-ticket sales, and because your competition wants them as much as you do, success takes more than simple desire and a strong will. Winning also takes skill, the ability to separate yourself from the pack and make a difference for your customer. Complex sales are also … Read full article
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
Preparation is important, but it’s not everything. You also need to understand how to work effectively during the heat of the moment when you are confronted with a skilled negotiator. Specifically, you should understand the guidelines for effective negotiations and conduct your activities in accordance with them—listening for your customer’s interests, creating innovative win/win alternatives, … Read full article
A common mistake sales managers make in sales training, is to give salespeople a laundry list of things they need to improve upon. However, most salespeople only have the capacity to improve one or two things at any given time. You don’t want to overwhelm them because you may hurt their self confidence – not … Read full article
Companies interested in increasing the professionalism and productivity of their sales force often select a sales training program to solve this need. This decision, however, places the cart before the horse. The success of a company’s sales training initiative is absolutely affected, both positively and negatively, by the company’s sales managers’ ability and commitment to … 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