No matter what field your business is in, there’s no such thing as a one-time customer. Even if you’re in the business of selling caskets, you know that a one-time client can become a repeat client with the right amount of work. What exactly is "the right amount of work" you need to get repeat clients? It all starts with high client satisfaction rates. As a performance improvement firm, we’re in the business of helping our clients make the most of their clients and employees. We’ve come to the conclusion that the old business adage is true: 80% of your revenues come from just 20% of your clients (the Pareto Principle). While you obviously want to satisfy every single client that your business serves, it’s especially important that you satisfy that top 20%. Achieving Perfect Client Satisfaction… … is virtually impossible. And that’s okay. Over the years we have worked with some incredible business leaders and business models. Despite impeccable customer service, even the very best businesses were unable to make 100% of their clients happy 100% of the time. In some instances, a good business leader will make the decision to cut loose those clients that can never be satisfied. There’s no sense in wasting energy on those clients who will not be satisfied despite your best efforts. So what can you do to improve client satisfaction where it is possible?   Respond to dissatisfied customers in real-time. There are numerous reputation management software programs and systems that can alert you immediately about dissatisfied customers. Let the client know that you understand their issue by repeating it back to them. Use a personal tone to deal with clients who are dissatisfied. Never make a promise that can’t be kept - even when you feel under pressure to recover a bad situation. Go over and above what you deem "satisfactory" in resolving a customer’s bad experience. Keep a regularly updated database of your client’s satisfaction history. Good or bad, you need to know how a client has felt about your company’s treatment of them in the past. Remember, you can’t please everyone. But, of the clients you can please, anything you can do to keep the account is worth it. Good "client satisfaction practices" don’t just keep the client you’re dealing with. They also bring in additional clients through referrals and recommendations! How important is client satisfaction to your business? What strategies do you use to satisfy your clients?    

Ron Shapiro, co-founder and Chairman of Shapiro Negotiations Institute (SNI), was recently featured as one of the Sports Business Journal’s 2013 class of The Champions: Pioneers & Innovators in Sports Business. The article details Shapiro’s accomplishments, experience, and expertise in both the sports and corporate world.   To read the full article, click the link below. http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2013/02/04/Champions/Ron-Shapiro.aspx   Along with the article above, the Sports Business Journal also featured the story of his first contract with Brooks Robinson. The story can be found here: http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2013/02/04/Champions/Shapiro-contract.aspx?hl=Champions&sc=0. Some of the valuable lessons he learned from this contract are still applicable in teaching training sessions today.

Think that social media isn’t for B2B companies like yours? Think again. IBM did it. In fact, IBM reports "one-third of its B2B buyers were already using social media of various kinds." Sure, the 54-year-old executive that you negotiate with might not be using Twitter, but the 37-year-old one level below him (who has significant influencing power) is on Twitter… Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+, too. The Lesson? Start Getting Social It’s time to start getting social. Here’s what that doesn’t mean: creating a Facebook, Twitter, and other social media profiles just for the sake of having them. When we say, "get social," we want to encourage you to learn more about the power of social media in terms of sales. According to a 2012 study by the Aberdeen Group, 56% of sales representatives that used sales intelligence were able to meet or surpass their quotas. Compare that to the mere 26% of sales reps who did the same, but without using sales intelligence. The sales people using intelligence aren’t necessarily working harder; they’re working smarter. Of course, we don’t want to confuse "sales intelligence" with "social media" because they’re certainly not one and the same. However, as social media platforms continue to grow, the wealth of information available on these networks is becoming a bigger piece of the "sales intelligence" pie. Here’s one last impressive fact before we cover how you can get started with social selling: According to another commentary on the Aberdeen Group study, sales reps that use social selling "are 79% more likely to attain their quota than ones who don’t." How Your Sales Team Can Be More Social Here are a few ideas for encouraging social selling that are - at the very least - worth experimenting with: Ask employees to perform "social research" on the buyers and decision-makers they’re targeting. Offer interested employees the chance to spend the first 15-20 minutes of their day building their own professional social network and reaching out to prospective clients through social media channels. Encourage company leaders and employees at all levels to contribute to a company blog. This is a great way to demonstrate thought leadership and have something to share with your online professional community. Is your sales team using any "social selling" techniques?

Recession, depression, or economic boom… it doesn’t matter. Creating a winning sales team isn’t just important. It’s possible no matter what economic conditions your business or industry might be facing. Winning sales teams aren’t "winners" because of any one, single thing that they do. Management alone or a great CRM system isn’t enough to push your team beyond the competition. Then again, there’s no "magic formula," but we do have some tips and tricks from our own experience for creating a dynamic sales team… #1 Powerful Lead Tools We have found that successful sales teams have powerful lead generation and lead tracking tools at their disposal. If you want your sales team to really hit their stride, then you need to give them the appropriate tools to do it. On any given day, we all have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of clients that are riding the fence. Having the ability to know where each one of those clients sits is key. Start tagging leads (#7 on this list) with essential information. #2 Unified Front Furthermore, those powerful tools need to be housed in software programs that are used across the board. Mobile technology and high speed internet have made it possible to do business from just about anywhere. Chances are, you have people working outside of your main office(s). It’s more important now than ever before to keep a unified front. One effective way to do this is by making sure all of your sales team is using the same CRM software in the sales process. This also makes things easier for you when you have to transfer accounts to new team members. #3 Vital Signs = Vital Competition Doctors are able to make effective decisions only when they know the patient’s vital signs. In the same way, your sales team must have a grip on its own vital signs: How many leads convert? Where are our leads coming from? What’s the protocol for engaging a customer we haven’t heard from in 6 weeks? These are a few of the countless questions that your sales team needs answers to. Hopefully, your CRM system will help provide those answers. Once you have those vital signs available, leverage them to foster a competitive atmosphere, which is also vital to your team’s success. For example, if you know what your average conversion rate is, then you can incentivize individuals on the sales team to attain higher personal conversion rates. #4 Grow or Get Out of the Way Lastly, members of a winning sales team are growing individuals. Be intentional about inner-promotion and increasing responsibilities. Sales people are especially focused on growth, numbers, and promotion. If members of your sales team aren’t growing and improving, it’s time they step aside, and move out of the way. What makes a winning sales team in your opinion?

Role-play has been a common training method amongst military branches, emergency response groups, and companies where quick decision making is highly valued. So, why not in the world of sales? Over the last few years, we’ve noticed the use of role-play becoming even more common in business training curriculums - and for good reason. Sales teams that continually engage in role-playing are more likely to outperform their non-role-playing competitors.   3 Benefits of Role-Play Here are just a few of the benefits of making role-playing a part of your business training. Build Confidence: When your team role-plays, they’ll have a number of situations thrown at them, from unhappy customers to customers who don’t know what they want to buy. Role-playing provides a safe environment to encounter these scenarios for the first time, which builds confidence in team members that can help them in the field. Develop Listening Skills: Good role-playing requires good listening skills. In addition to understanding the words the other person is saying, it’s important to listen to body language and non-verbal clues (more on that here). Have your team develop those skills while role-playing - not when they’re trying to close a real sale. Creative Problem-Solving: Over the years, we’ve found that no matter how outlandish a situation you create in a controlled environment, something even more bizarre is bound to happen in the real world. Role-playing will at least give your team the chance to get some experience in handling difficult situations and developing creative problem-solving skills.   How to Start Role-Playing While we strongly encourage you to hire a professional facilitator for the most effective role-play, here are a few tips for doing it yourself: Use actual locations. The best role-play is as realistic as possible. Put participants in the physical locations where they would actually experience the scenarios you’re trying to replicate, whether that’s the boardroom, warehouse, or an executive’s office. Imitate sales calls. This is perhaps one of the easiest forms of role-play training to execute yourself. Give the "customers" a personality profile and list of objectives that the salesperson doesn’t know about. The goal isn’t to make the sale, but to determine the "customer’s" objectives. Hire consultants and actors. Getting an authentic role-play experience from your team may be difficult to do on your own. Bring in consultants and professional actors to get the training your team deserves! Have you ever used role-play in training your sales team? How did it go?

Your sales team fights hard for your company, which is probably a big reason why you’ve been successful so far. While a healthy sense of external competition is good for the company, internal competition can work wonders for your sales team.  What is Internal Competition? "Internal competition" describes that sense of competition that the salespeople in your company feel amongst themselves. This kind of competition can increase conversions, drive sales figures, and allow you to promote and grow your team more effectively. Here are seven ways to turn that sense of "internal competition" into an actual internal competition.   The 7 Essentials to Creating a Great Sales Contest  1. Keep it short. You can give out quarterly and annual sales awards, but it’s unlikely that you can sustain the energy of a true sales contest for more than 2-3 weeks. In addition to keeping it short, keep it moving with daily updates and announcements. 2. Create personal prizes. There are few - if any - prizes other than cash that can motivate every single member of your sales team. Therefore, we recommend allowing the individual who wins to pick his or her own prize. Create some parameters, and allow their imagination to run wild. You can even have them pick out their prize before the contest even starts, which is a good way to incentivize. 3. Give everyone the chance to win. The Houston Small Business Chronicle wrote a great article about how to create a sales contest in which everyone can win. While one grand prize is fun for the winner, it won’t encourage everyone to participate. What would you rather have: one person performing at 150% or an entire sales team performing at 100%? 4. Reinforce training. If you’ve been trying to encourage your sales team to use specific elements of their training, make it a requirement that salespeople use those techniques if they want to win. 5. Use a CRM system. Your CRM system probably has the ability to tie-in with a sales contest. Why not start using it? If you track the contest solely through your CRM system, then it’s a great opportunity to get salespeople who aren’t as skilled with the CRM system more accustomed to using the platform. 6. Encourage checkpoints. Prospects don’t go from the receiving end of a cold call to the buying stage without some events taking place in between. Unfortunately, from the upper management perspective, it can be difficult to know exactly what is taking place between the initial pitch and the final decision to buy. Use this contest as a way to encourage your sales team to update the CRM system on more than just the accounts that are buying. 7. Have fun. If your team isn’t having fun with the contest, then you might have more negative long-term effects than positive short-term ones. At the end of the day, your sales team should be a team above all else! Have any tips of your own for creating a great sales contest?

Let’s face it, negotiation has a bad reputation. Often an analogy is drawn between negotiating and swimming with the sharks or entering the lion’s den. You could just label all other bullies, tyrants, and impossible people and lump them together under the title of the Big Bad Wolf. Though I’m no history buff, but I like to rename all impossible people Robespierre, because sometimes dealing with them is like being at the epicenter of the Reign of Terror. So how do we deal with these sharks, lions, big bad wolves, and Robespierre types? Well Thomas Jefferson thinks it’s as easy as counting, "When I am upset, I count to ten. When I’m very upset, I count to one-hundred." That may be easy enough but how many times have your reactions mirrored the attitude towards you? Do you yell when yelled at? When someone challenges you, do you accept?  How do we harness these emotions and keep them in check? How can we become better negotiators to avoid becoming a screaming and yelling Big Bad Wolf? A strategy of intimidation is often the easy way out (the easy and often ineffective way out). To get around this we’ve developed a new approach that answers all of these problematic questions. N.I.C.E. is a philosophy that maps out how to beat them without joining them. N:        Neutralize Emotions I:          Identify a Type C:        Control the Encounter E:         Explore Options This general approach will hopefully calm the boiling blood in your veins. It’s important to remember that emotions trump reason, the better you’re able to neutralize your emotions, the more rational you’ll become. You should know the type of person you’re dealing with also. Identifying their personality on a scale based on their relative difficulty, that will help you hone your approach towards them. Once you have a feel for their personality type you can try to use appropriate techniques to help shape and better determine the outcome of the encounter. Finally, if you find yourself stuck, look for alternative solutions within your strategy.

Any salesman who has been in the game for any amount of time knows what it’s like to see a decline in sales. A sales forecast is projected in advance using data, experience, and educated guessing. This sets the standard for your business over the next 1-5 years, creating vision and a sound strategy. Business plans give you a point of reference when you or your employees are losing focus. However, considering slumps in sales is an integral part of any strategic business planning, especially with the current unsteady economy. Looking at the bigger picture and thinking ahead is a key to success, and these tools can help you anticipate a decline in sales: 1. Specify the volume of sales. For example, how many 2 liter bottles of soda do you sell? What is the value of each sale? Knowing the volume of your sales and when they tend to fluctuate will increase your ability to predict decline. This is also a great way to be realistic in your goals. You are not simply thinking up a target figure and doing whatever you can to achieve it. Wishful thinking is a common error and most often results in a pitfall. 2. Consult your sales associates. If you are not the one who is spending face-to-face time with those who are doing business with you, consult those who are. They probably have a good idea of what your customers are thinking. Get your sales people to give their opinions on the goals you’ve set. This guarantees a realistic anticipation of sales or lack thereof. 3. Get counsel. The greatest advice you’ll find is that of someone like a senior accountant, who has more experience in the industry and knows the tendencies of the business you’re in. Preparing for sales declines is a part of any seasoned businessman’s plan for sustained success. Sound counsel from the wise is an essential element of preparing for hardship. 4. Get innovative. An ice cream shop owner, for example, could serve crepes and hot chocolate during the winter months when no one is buying ice cream. Creativity is a great gift in preparing for sales declines, and will keep you afloat in times when businesses are sinking. These ways of preparing for sales decline put you in control of your own fate. Times of feasting present an opportunity to prepare for famine. These tools allow you to take responsibility for your company by focusing on the goal.   Are you properly planning for a decline in sales?

Performance improvement for any business requires intense attention to where time and energy are being spent. Time is a resource that you cannot afford to waste. An area where many companies commonly get hooked and expend unnecessary energy is during business negotiations. If an executive does not know the motives and needs of the prospect, discerning the direction of the negotiations can be very challenging. Rarely are consultations quick and easy processes, often leading to a standstill. The following systematic approach to successful negotiating will generate sales while leaving a lasting, positive impression on your client: Ask questions. When met with a reluctant client who wants to end the meeting with, "We need more time," it is essential that you ask questions like, "What’s holding you back?" rather than letting the sale walk out the door with a simple, "When can we contact you?". This puts the client on the spot, forcing them to reveal their true feelings about you and what you are offering. This also allows you to determine their goals and find out how best to proceed. Be timely with facts. Details that are sure to persuade your client need to be disclosed at the right time. When selling points are revealed in a timely manner, it can have a great positive impact on the progress of the negotiations. Make a firm offer. This is an essential key to success. It is best to be honest and reasonable from the beginning. This will often reveal how valuable you truly are in the client’s eyes. Being strong in a fair price will avoid bringing the negotiations to a halt. Leave ego out of the picture. Nothing can halt negotiations like ego. As Christopher Voss said in a recent Forbes interview, "Effective negotiating is more complicated than making an offer, considering the other side’s offer and then trying to basically shove those ideas into alignment." Clients will sense from the get-go if you respect them. Their sense that you want to treat them with respect will make or break a deal. Upon adopting these simple habits and tools of sales execution, you’ll find that you spend less time with the ball out of your court. CEO Kathleen Steffey refers to this negotiating approach as a way to ‘work on the problem, not the symptom.’ These tools can do wonders for the effectiveness of your approach to negotiations.   Sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/deborahljacobs/2012/11/19/three-ways-to-negotiate-about-anything/ http://salesjournal.com/2013/03/27/are-you-working-on-the-symptom-or-the-problem/

In the business of negotiating, companies can have a lot on the line. Often assertiveness and ambition can be misconstrued and interpreted as aggression. In order to succeed and bring about the results that both parties are look for, it is important to remember 4 negotiating skills: Keep to the facts. When money is on the line, things can get personal. Professionals, however, are able to see the big picture. They have a knowledge of what is being offered. The facts should be what drive the negotiations, not personal involvement or feelings. This results-oriented tool is sure to bring about the outcome that is most desirable, because it prevents the environment from becoming hostile. There is no "I" in team. Making the client or prospect feel that you are on their side is essential to having success. Using the word "we" and phrases like "let’s do this" can do wonders for a company looking to make a deal. Self-centered sentences that start with the word "I" will often make your prospect feel overpowered. This will often result in a halt and subsequent failure in negotiations. Body language speaks loudly. From the time the prospect walks through the door, your body language is of upmost importance. It is important for any salesman to always be conscious of their body language, as this speaks as loudly as words over the negotiating table. In a Forbes interview, Panorama Software founder and successful negotiator Rony Ross recalls many instances where people in negotiations would lean back in their chairs. This gesture, Ross claims, not only puts a physical distance between themselves and the other side, but an emotional one as well. For negotiators, this unwisely communicates that you are unwilling to find middle ground. Understand the prospect. The final negotiating tip that could perhaps sum up the preceding 3 is to understand the prospect. Prospective clients can sense whether or not they are being respected and understood. It is in your best interest as a negotiator to communicate this effectively. It is important to give the prospect the impression that your intentions are to serve their best interest. However, while giving this type of impression is beneficial, compromising and allowing them to manipulate you will lead to a solution that is less desirable for you. Using this approach to solve common negotiating problems will create a better and more cooperative environment, with great results for all involved. Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/10/08/the-secret-art-of-negotiating-take-your-ego-off-the-table/