Sales Coaching: Why do Companies Continue to "Not Coach"? Today’s organizations have finally realized the importance and value of sales coaching, but that doesn’t guarantee that it is always happening. The sales coaching process starts at the top of an organization with managers, whom are responsible for coaching down. If managers are unable to grasp the learned skill of coaching, it will affect the rest of the organization as well. In this video blog, Richardson’s Andrea Grodnitzky, Senior Vice President, Global Performance Solutions, discusses what is preventing organizations from fully adopting coaching as a universal skill. If you cannot view this video blog, please click here ————————————————————————————- Richardson provides customized Sales Coaching training, in the classroom and on the Web. Our highly interactive and learn-by-doing approach helps to quickly deliver the process and skills that sales managers can immediately implement to coach their salespeople to their next level of sales excellence.  Whether managers have 1 minute or 30 minutes, we can help them develop an effective, practical process to empower their people to stretch beyond their comfort zone and learn new ways to accelerate performance and improve productivity. To learn more, please contact us at Click Here   The post Video Blog - Sales Coaching: Why do Companies Continue to "Not Coach"? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Consultative Negotiations: What Roles can a Senior Play in Negotiations? Negotiations tend to be high-stress and emotional situations for sales reps who are heavily invested in closing the deal. A senior leader plays an important role in the process, acting as an objective player who can help the client to further understand the value of the deal and can acknowledge their needs from an alternate perspective. Join David DiStefano, President and CEO of Richardson, as he shares some of his best executive practices for participating in and improving the environment of negotiations. If you are unable to view this video blog, please click here.   Richardson’s Consultative Negotiations sales training programs provides participants with a consistent process to achieve win-win negotiations that preserve profit while building effective, long-term relationships. The program covers every facet of a negotiation, from preparation, to controlling the opening and counter-opening, converting demands to needs, justifying value, trading concessions, and effectively closing. To learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Negotiations program, please click here. The post Consultative Negotiations: What Roles can a Senior Play in Negotiations? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

How can sales reps prepare for resistance from a client? Clients are likely to challenge a sales rep in order to test their credibility and knowledge of the subject matter. In anticipation of resistance, sales reps should be thinking about the prospect or client and trying to turn a piece of data into a relevant insight. Without that connection, the information provides no value to the customer. In this video, David DiStefano, President and CEO of Richardson, discusses which resources sales reps should be leveraging to successfully navigate resistance from a client and offers advice to reps about when to seek additional help. If you are having issues viewing this video, please click here —————————————————————————————— The post How can sales reps prepare for resistance from a client? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Improve Sales Results in 2014 with Your Sales Performance Value Chain In 2014, how will you better enable and support your sales force? Do you plan to tackle a major sales force transformation, or … Do you aim to fine-tune the processes, systems, and tools that you have in place? In either case, but certainly the latter, it makes sense to consider your Sales Performance Value Chain. The Sales Performance What? What’s a Sales Performance Value Chain, you ask?  Why, it’s a phrase I just strung together (read:  made up) to refer to the series of places where we uncover and deliver value to our clients.  If we can improve performance in these areas by better supporting the sales force, we’re likely to win more deals and effectively grow current accounts. If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you know I’m a fan of what I call the Sales Performance Ecosystem.  Some find the ecosystem daunting.  Aligning all of the parts of the ecosystem is certainly a major sales transformation effort.  No one (worth listening to) is going to make recommendations for your specific organization without conducting an analysis first, and neither should you, but I will at least attempt to offer a relatively simple way to approach pieces of the ecosystem that have the potential to make a big impact quickly. To do that, let’s look first at the approach we’ll take in each of the links of the value chain that we want to strengthen and support. People | Process | Methodology | Technology (PPMT) In the immortal words of Winston Zeddemore in Ghostbusters:  "We have the tools, and we have the talent!" In slightly different words, we often hear the phrase, "people, process, and technology" bantered as a framework for improving organizational performance.  Because there are key differences between process and methodology, and because sales methodology is a big piece of sales performance, let’s expand this phrase to "People, Process, Methodology, and Technology" (PPMT): People Do you have the right people in the right roles? Process What steps do they follow to accomplish objectives? Methodology What do they do in each step to move forward in the process? Technology What tools can they use to support the process or methodology? This is over-simplified for a short blog post, of course, but it is "directionally correct."  For process and methodology especially, you can drill a lot deeper through the 5 Ws and 1 H (who, what, why, when, where, and how), but hopefully, this is clear as a starting point. Sales Performance Value Chain Now, consider these select elements or "links" of the Sales Performance Ecosystem.  I call this subset of the ecosystem the Sales Performance Value Chain because it’s through our people (our talent) and these three activities (aka support opportunities) that we deliver our value to clients. Sales Talent Management Support How you select, onboard, train, and develop your sales professionals, including both frontline sales reps and their managers/coaches Lead Acquisition/ Management Support How you generate, nurture, qualify, and pursue leads to create opportunities Account Development Support How you review, analyze, strategize, plan, and execute with current accounts to grow them and pursue possibilities to create opportunities Opportunity Management Support How you manage both the above new and growth opportunities through their buying process and your pipeline to acquire new accounts or grow current ones. PPMT Meets the Value Chain For each of these four links in the chain, you can use the PPMT framework to identify what’s working, what’s not, what top producers do more effectively, where gaps exists, and what you can do in each area to close them. If you have the same staff doing the work across all these tasks (perhaps in a smaller organization where the work may not be segmented by functions like Marketing, Inside Sales, Field Sales, Account Managers, Sales Operations, etc.), you may need to separate out the People/Talent piece of the equation because you’ll only be asking it once in the Talent Management section, versus asking it across the other three links.  For the most part, however, you should be able to consider PPMT in each of the above chains beyond the Sales team to ensure the right people are in the right roles in all functions that support Sales. As an example, in Lead Acquisition/Management, you can now ask questions about each piece of PPMT: People:  Do we have the right people in place in each of the roles that support lead acquisition and lead management?  How do we know?  What can we learn from studying the top performers?  Can we coach and develop others to do similar things (close a knowledge or skill gap), or are gaps more related to things like culture fit, job/role fit, motivational fit, and occupational interests?  How can we ensure we have the right people in the right places to get the best results? Process:  What steps do they follow to accomplish objectives?  Are these steps effective if followed well?  Do they consider the buyer’s perspective?  Is there flexibility when needed?  What do the top performers do similarly and differently than average performers?  How can the process be fine-tuned to be more effective? Methodology:  What do the players do in each step to move forward in the process?  Add all the 5 Ws and 1 H, and also, compare top to mid producers.  Build training around top-producer practices or known-effective practices, and develop Continue | Start | Stop lists, highlighting differences between what top producers do versus others. Technology:  What tools are performers using to support the process or methodology?  How well are these tools working?  Are they being used as intended and to maximum effectiveness?  What can we learn from top performers? Lather, Rinse, Repeat This is just one example.  You can ask similar questions using the PPMT framework as you move through the other links of the value chain (or almost anywhere in the larger Sales Performance Ecosystem).  By doing this each time, you can begin to identify areas for improvement and create plans to close gaps. Make sense?  I hope so.  Either way, please drop a comment and let me know.  As always, I’d be pleased to answer questions, bounce ideas, or refer you to someone who can help if you’d like to take a deeper dive.  Whether it’s tackling some low-hanging fruit early in 2014 to improve your chance of making the numbers this year or preparing for a large-scale sales transformation effort, there are few things more important than enabling and supporting your sales force to the best of your ability. And, just in case … if you haven’t officially documented our purposefully designed your sales processes and selected effective methodologies to support them, make 2014 the year you do it.  If you need support, we can help. The post Improve Sales Results in 2014 with Your Sales Performance Value Chain appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Mind the Gap!  Five Gaps That Impact Sales Effectiveness and How to Fix Them (Part 2 of 2) This post is based on the white paper "The Five Failure Points of Today’s Selling System" by Savo Group. We began writing about this topic in a recent post.  To review, there are critical gaps in your business that prevent sales effectiveness.  If these go unresolved, you’ll continue to struggle to hit your numbers.  You might be thinking "I’m not struggling to hit my numbers!"  If that’s true and yet you still have any of these gaps, then you’re selling yourself short (yes, pun intended) and underachieving against your potential.  And that would be a waste. The first two areas where gaps are commonly found are The Lead and The Process.  You can read about those problems and recommended fixes here.  In both of those instances, the alignment (or lack of alignment) between sales and marketing was often at issue.  Let’s finish the list of gaps and see if that persists. 3. The Meeting Failure:  Prospects are unengaged; sellers aren’t equipped to deliver or are often off‐message The primary challenge affecting sales reps’ productivity is the amount of time it takes them to become competent with delivering your company’s messaging. -       According to research from Forrester, only 14% of prospects say that they receive relevant messages from sellers in sales meetings. -       From the same research, only 7% of sales reps manage to get called back to a second meeting. It appears that there’s a significant disconnect between buyers’ interests and what sellers are bringing to the meeting.  They aren’t listening to the buyers’ true needs, aren’t armed with the right messages, or aren’t savvy enough to connect or convey those pieces effectively. Fix:  Bring the right solutions at the right value to the deal The meeting is your opportunity to shine.  Your company has been vetted for consideration, but there are still many obstacles to be avoided.  Obvious ones include your personality, how well you interact with your colleagues on the sales team (are you meeting for the first time on this gig or have you built a rapport over many years?), and how well you engage the buyer and influencers. Other key obstacles are materials and messaging.  The buyers have researched your company, and you’ve likely sent them additional materials that support your work.  Your job is to identify with their needs and connect what you can do to resolve them, demonstrating that you have the experience and ability to add value without question.  If you want to make it to the next round, your ability to make those connections with confidence could be the deciding factor. When the discussion gets very narrow and specific, be knowledgeable about (and better yet, able to access) cases and examples of similar client situations that represent your awareness of the issues and mastery of the solution.  This takes time, discipline, and close interaction with colleagues in marketing to generate this valuable content.  Consider leveraging your content management system and linking it to your sales automation system for the best results. 4. The Proposal Failure:  They’re non‐productive time‐drains The task of preparing proposals often falls to sales reps, who spend up to 60 hours a month cranking these out.  Too much of your sales reps’ time is wasted searching for information and formatting documents, for example, the results of which could be off‐brand and non‐compliant.  Does this extra time and effort lead to closing more sales?  Not often enough. Fix:  Validate and automate, monitor There are ways to automate this process and relieve sales reps of the burdensome proposal writing to which they can’t add value.  Work with marketing (see the pattern?) to lock down the branding and produce standard content for typical sections.  Then, let your sales reps focus their energy to customize the proposal for the buyer and their specific needs and goals. But don’t stop there.  Once you have the basic proposal elements in place, collect and leverage information about each individual selling situation throughout the stages of the selling cycle to take automation to a new level.  This information can be used to automatically assemble the right proposal team and develop a first draft of the proposal at the push of a button. Companies using a sales automation system with proposal capabilities can track a deal’s progress from the presentation phase to the prospect’s validation and verbal commitment to you.  Dashboards are automatically updated in real time for sales management monitoring as the deal moves through negotiation and close.  The end result is far greater forecasting accuracy that increases sales effectiveness — both operationally (the staffing and delivery of the solution) and for revenue growth. 5. The Analysis Failure:  Inaccurate information damages forecasting accuracy Many businesses cite information breakdowns when it comes to tracking and gaining intelligence from their sales process.  Over half those reporting to the SAVO Maturity Benchmark said that their CRM system is not configured to do the job, and two‐thirds lack basic KPIs and dashboards.  A separate study by IDC found that nearly half of sales forecasts are less than 70% accurate three months prior to close. Failure to collect and analyze critical pieces of data about the sales process is a huge gap for many sales organizations.  What don’t you know that you should be tracking?  How, where, and when is information collected and stored?  Are you connecting all of the dots?  Who owns and is responsible for the data?  An incomplete or inaccurate data collection and analysis process will sabotage your ability to forecast and will most certainly hinder your sales organization. Fix:  Capture Success Indicators to Correct Course, Replicate Best Practices You need to know what’s working (and what’s not) and from that determine what needs to be done to correct or improve the situation.  That requires timely, accurate, and relevant data and analysis. Marrying more sophisticated tracking and analytics with the ability to capture behavioral intelligence allows marketing, sales, and operations to gain insights that have never before been available.  Here are a few examples of what should you be looking for in your analysis of sales automation data: Sales managers can track what actions their top sellers take and try to replicate those patterns for lesser-performing sellers.  The tracking capabilities allow sales management to use data and executive insights to better align resources.  These capabilities also shed light on where and why prospects are being lost in the sales process so that sales and marketing can better collaborate to fix the failure point. Product managers can get leading indicators of the success of new product launches and other initiatives in order to learn and adjust future initiatives. Marketers can receive direct feedback from field personnel — which is unfortunately still a rarity.  Coupled with analytics on what’s working and what’s not, marketers will be better able to determine how to allocate future resources. Summary:  The Path to Smarter Selling Making sales more effective is a critical imperative among businesses today.  It starts by taking a keen look at the points of failure in your selling system and identifying the fixes — both in terms of the thinking and advanced technological tools — that will close those gaps and enable your sales organization for long‐term success. Let us know in the Comments section below whether you’ve experienced and conquered the gaps described here and which ones we missed that should be mentioned.  We look forward to hearing from you. The post Five Gaps That Impact Sales Effectiveness and How to Fix Them: Part 2 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Maintaining the Sales Machine In their November 2013 Harvard Business Review article Dismantling the Sales Machine Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman of the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) assert that "Leaders must abandon their fixation on (sales) process compliance."  In place of "disciplined sales process" they favor a flexible approach to sales in which salespeople rely on their own insight and judgment.  That they find sales process  discipline and a sales force capable of insight and judgment incompatible seems untenable.  The CEB has long brought much to the sales space with its research.  They have been at the forefront of recognizing the new sales environment and helping define the new buyer.  In their article, they rightly point to many significant developments: The new sales environment favors creative and adaptive salespeople. Deals vary from one to the next. Performance trumps protocol. Salespeople must have latitude. Managers’ roles are to guide, support, and serve as coaches rather than enforcers. The new world of selling demands greater collaboration among team members. They also acknowledge that many average performers benefit from clear direction regarding their activities and being held accountable for specific milestones, which are primary goals of sales process. This is all true.  But contrary to the assumptions and conclusions the authors make, the sales machine/sales process discipline does not work against the above trends, but it enables them.  I believe far from dismantling the sales process, sales organizations need to embrace it and make it part of their sales DNA. The predominance of research I have seen from firms such as Salesforce, Aberdeen, and CSO Insights  shows that there is a high correlation between best-in-class sales performance and the discipline of sales process.  This correlation is supported by everything I know from my client work and specific feedback from the managers at my sales management program at Wharton.  Rather than most sales organizations operating as well-oiled sales machines, we learn from Aberdeen that too many organizations lack a defined sales process, and according to McKinsey, many of those that do have adoption problems. Having a defined sales process that spells out objectives, best practice activities, customer actions, sales tools, and models for each stage does not have to suppress creativity and flexibility.  Dashboards provide valuable information and don’t by nature dash creativity.  An effective sales process serves as a critical guidepost for salespeople to follow and managers to coach and track to.  The goal of a sales process is not only to be efficient but to be effective. A good process replicates the best practice performance of star performers.  This eliminates the need for each salesperson to reinvent the wheel or operate without the knowledge the wheel exists.  One salesperson in a team I am working with shared a "secret" (best practice) to reengage with prospects who have gone dark.  Using this best practice, team members increased their ability to reengage by 50%.  This shared best practice did not strip away the use of judgment by members of the sales team, some who at first resisted it and others who use the tactic judiciously. I have found over the past two years that when salespeople and sales managers are provided with a clear sales process that is linked with formal, but even more importantly informal, coaching, coaching conversations become easier and more productive.  I have gone so far as to align coaching questions to each phase of the sales process — not to confine but to support manager, peer, and self-coaching.  Having the right questions provokes judgment and creativity.  And while a lot of the coaching is around deal review, deal review is more than numbers and includes developing insights and judgment and the strategies and skills needed to execute.  Effective coaching is coaching by asking, not telling, and it is important not to conflate what to coach with how to coach:  one is knowledge and one is skill.  Both are needed for dialogue. Maybe we are just speaking different languages.  If a sales machine/sales process operates as the authors describe it, "inflexible governance that works through formal rules," meaning that salespeople are turned into robots, then the sales machine indeed is in destructive overdrive and should be turned off and repaired.  If this is the case, the problem is in the design.  But generalizing that the sales machine/all sales processes should be dismantled is a huge step backward for sales.  The key is to make sure that the sales process mirrors and influences today’s customer buying cycles and buying habits and is supported with a collaborative coaching methodology. Provocative titles grab attention.  Just as the customer need dialogue (solution selling) is not dead, neither is sales process.  Both must evolve, and have but they should not be abandoned.  An effective sales process does not prevent a salesperson from exercising judgment and being creative in dealing with highly knowledgeable customers.  Indeed, an effective sales process is an indispensable tool for sales force development and productivity.  The world in which salespeople operate with judgment and creativity that the authors describe is a world I subscribe to, but with sales process in it. Today, in the sales space, we have the advantage of technology and data not available to us just a short time ago, and we also have research into the new buyer and what it takes for a salesperson to succeed in the new world of selling.  Judgment, creativity, and expertise are essential to selling today.  If I had to choose between a sales force run by data and cognitive patterns or what I will call for shorthand "human talent," the latter would win hands down.  But I don’t have to choose.  I can have both — and so can you. The post Maintaining the Sales Machine appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Achieve Stronger Sales Results Through Better Preparation "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." - Benjamin Franklin, Scientist, Inventor, Statesman It’s early January and many New Year’s resolutions have already fallen by the wayside. If there’s room for one more on your list, I encourage you to add this one: Preparation. Anyone who has painted a room knows the importance of properly preparing before painting. Proper preparation generally takes more time than painting itself and can be tedious, which is why many choose to skip or cut short this step in favor of "just getting on with it." A true professional might get away with less prep than the average person, but a sloppy job is a constant reminder that cutting corners rarely pays. Doing the job right from the start requires a good plan, patience, and discipline. The resulting satisfaction from a job well done likely includes the realization of how important those preparation steps were to the process. In sales, the need to prepare is no different. Even the greenest sales rookie knows to take time to prepare before a sales meeting or call. But what’s the proper way to prepare? What boxes should you check before proceeding? We take preparation very seriously and categorize it into three groups: strategic, client, and technical. Here are a few ways you should prepare when going after new targets: Strategic Planning Look at the big picture. Where are you in the sales cycle with this client? What do you hope to achieve as a result of the meeting? Envision how you want the meeting to end and then build from there. What are the possible curveballs that can be thrown your way and how can you avoid them? The devil is in the details, and knowing what challenges may arise and how to overcome them will greatly aid your level of preparedness. Client Planning This step includes multiple layers to be researched and explored before sitting down with your client. Company - What does the company do? How do they make money? Who are their customers and what do they want? What division are you targeting? Is the company growing, stagnant, or struggling to compete? Has their leadership changed recently? What does the company say about themselves, and what are others saying about them? Individual buyers - Hopefully you have an internal project champion to help guide you. Try to find out about your target buyer and influencers. How senior are they? What’s their position and role? Is their focus local, regional, national, or international? Do they have buying authority, or are they researching for their boss? Look them up on LinkedIn to find out what groups they belong to and whether or not you have any common contacts and to see what topics they are posting or commenting on to get a sense of their level of experience and sophistication. Competitors - Who are your target’s key competitors and what are they up to? How might that influence your sale? Is your target leading their industry or playing catch up? Past projects or history - Have your companies worked together in the past? Not doing your internal homework is a rookie mistake that can make you look really bad in front of the prospect. Even the smallest project in another business unit from 10 years ago counts as history. Know who did what, when, for how much, and with what results before talking to your buyer. Technical Planning Once you have answered the strategic and client questions, you need to align that information with your company’s products, services, and capabilities. Capabilities - What challenges do they face that you can help resolve? How do your products or services fill a void, fix a problem, or otherwise help them improve their business? What features and benefits of your services directly relate to their needs? Don’t drown them in every last detail about your business, but rather pick your specific capabilities that can help the client. Industry and market trends - What are the trends across the industry? Not only should you know what’s going on, but try to dig deeper to uncover an insight that would be of interest to your prospect. It could be something they already know but perhaps weren’t aware of the scope, or it might be something significant that presents a threat or opportunity. Show that you’ve done your homework, but be careful to be respectful and not insulting when presenting the insight. Objections - How would you respond if confronted with "We don’t need your help - we can do it ourselves. You’re only here because my boss wants a dog-and-pony show." What other objections might you face and how would you overcome them? Where should you look for answers to these questions? Search Google, LinkedIn, Twitter. Industry publication websites are also great sources of information. Simple keyword searches will usually yield helpful results beginning with basics such as "banking industry trends" or "top issues in banking 2014." Of course, using keywords that are specific to their business or issues will get you more granular results. Your New Year’s Resolution: Preparation We’ve all been guilty of Ready-Fire-Aim at some point. But when it becomes an everyday habit, your ability to be successful will likely be extremely compromised. Good preparation takes thought, time, and discipline to set yourself up for success (and avoid failure). Sales managers need to encourage action and monitor progress, but also to instill the importance of properly preparing for sales meetings and calls. As you look to the New Year ahead, resolve to make preparation a priority. What are your tips for preparing for client meetings? What pitfalls have you encountered along the way? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Or, if you would like to learn more about Richardson and we may be able to help your sales team with their preparation, please contact us at info.richardson.com or visit our web site at http://www.richardson.com     The post Achieve Better Sales Results Through Better Preparation appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Can you please shut up? I’m trying to share an insight! Over the past 18 months, we’ve had numerous conversations with sales leaders wanting to adopt an insight-led approach to selling. Through these conversations, it is very clear that there is confusion over how insights come to life in a sales situation. Some of the people with whom we’ve spoke have the impression that an insight is communicated through a presentation. We believe that there may be situations where that is the case, but the more likely case will be for an insight to be communicated in a sales conversation. This is important not only because a sales conversation requires a different skill set but also because it requires a different mindset. Let’s run through an example to see how all of this plays out. Say, for example, the wizards in your R&D group discover some breakthrough innovation that gives you this unbelievable capability to solve a difficult challenge for your customers far better than your competition. Excited by the potential, you have your marketing team produce a slick PowerPoint deck and take time to train your sales reps to deliver the commercial teaching pitch. Then, you issue a directive to line-up appointments with our customers to close some business. So far so good, right? The real challenge takes place face-to-face in front of the customer. You’ve prepared your sales reps to deliver a presentation — a silver bullet shot straight to the heart (or mind) of the customer. A presentation that is so insightful and compelling that once delivered, your customer will take out his or her pen, sign on the line that is dotted, and cut a check on the spot. Seriously? Does this ever happen? Probably not, unless you sell all-purpose steak knives at the mall that can hack through an old leather shoe and a beer can and then cut a tomato like a hot knife through butter! In reality, your buyer will have questions and possibly doubts about your point of view. As buyers, the notion of someone trying to "sell" to us puts us on the defensive. We live in an age of content marketing overload, and we’re skeptical from being carpet bombed with self-serving thought leadership. However, we also know the importance of staying well-informed in a competitive and rapidly changing market. Every decision is scrutinized. We have doubts, we have questions, and we have our own thoughts and opinions about issues related to our business. And, when we hear a thought-provoking idea, especially a novel one, we need time to process and internalize the concept before we buy in completely. This doesn’t mean that your sellers can’t trigger new thinking or ideas, build credibility, add value, and eventually sell something, but sellers must be sensitive to how buyers process information, manage through resistance, and keep the buyer tracking with their point of view. Shut up and listen, will ya? "Telling Isn’t Teaching" is a popular phrase in the world of learning and development that insight sellers should take to heart. When you train your sellers to deliver insight through a presentation-led approach, you risk putting them into a "telling" mindset. Being in that frame of mind exposes the seller to two significant risks. The first risk is that they are so focused on delivering their pitch that they miss signals that the buyer has questions or isn’t tracking with them. I’ve personally observed sales reps shut down a buyer in the critical early stages of their commercial teaching pitch, effectively asking them to shut up for 20 minutes until they finish talking. This is extremely annoying for the buyer and very detrimental for the seller who fails to keep the buyer tracking with their thinking. The second risk is that the insight isn’t very insightful for the buyer. Again, the seller is so focused on delivering the pitch that they assume that what they have to say will be of interest to the buyer. At no point does the seller check with the buyer for validity or support. It creates an awkward situation when the buyer shuts down the seller halfway through their teaching pitch because they have some experience or opinion that does not support the seller’s point of view. When you think "Insight," think Conversations, not Presentations. It is helpful to think of a customer sales conversation as a pendulum, and through the course of the conversation, the pendulum swings between asking questions, listening, and sharing insight. There are times in that conversation where you will want to lead with questions, such as when you need to sell understanding or seek confirmation. Then, there are times in the conversation where you lead with an insight, such as when you want to seed new ideas or influence thinking. And of course it is necessary to listen for both verbal and nonverbal cues. Sellers must draw on the right skills at the right time, depending on what you know (or don’t know) and how the buyer responds through the discussion. When the opportunity presents itself to position an insight, we believe that the seller should first start by floating the issue to the buyer and then checking with an open-ended question to test for support. For example, the seller could say something like, "Here’s a challenge that we’ve seen with clients similar to you. What have you considered so far to address this challenge?" Then, if the buyer responds favorably, the seller can dive deeper into their insight, continuing to check along the way to ensure that the buyer is tracking and addressing questions or concerns along the way. This conversational approach has many advantages over presenting a canned commercial teaching pitch. First, it gives the seller an early out if the concept won’t fly with the buyer. There are many reasons why a buyer might not even entertain your idea, so why waste valuable time trying to push that issue? Second, checking along the way helps the seller keep the buyer on track with new thinking. Finally, by asking questions, the seller gathers more and better information from the buyer. This enables the seller to tailor the delivery of the insight message for even more relevance as the conversation evolves. As buyers become better informed and better prepared, competition becomes more intense, and sellers need more skill than ever to succeed. Presentations have their place in the sales process, but insights are best shared through the sales conversation. The post Can you please shut up? I’m trying to share an insight! appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Are Your Sales Reps Taking a "Show-up and Throw-up" Approach to Sharing Insights? Leverage our Insight Blueprint to Engineer Your Path to Success "The antithesis of selling with insight," as one of my colleagues so colorfully describes it, "is to show up and throw up." This negative metaphor illustrates the tendency to join a call or meeting with a prospect (or in trying to broaden an existing relationship) and overwhelm the listeners with information about your business and capabilities, which may or may not be of interest or even relevant to the purpose of the meeting. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. Would you rather hire the firm that struts in like a peacock and essentially says "Gee whiz, look at us, we’re big and great and can do all of these things and you should hire us!" or the one that turns the focus on you and your needs and opportunities by saying, "This is what we’re seeing in the market from our clients and the impact it has on companies such as yours. This is the solution we recommend, and yes, we have the capabilities to help and would love the opportunity to talk in greater detail if you’re interested"? There is little choice over which approach would be better received, but you’d be amazed by how few sales reps actually take the time to craft and deliver such a message. It takes effort, time, and discipline to get it right. Yet, most salespeople are guilty of bringing too much to the party in an attempt to impress when it actually overwhelms and disappoints buyers. Engineering Your Path to Success At Richardson, we work with our clients to teach their sales reps how to develop and refine insights to be pitched to their clients and prospects. At the core of our Richardson’s Selling With Insights® training is our Insight Blueprint, which is a roadmap to follow as you learn to develop and share your insight with your client in an attempt to connect the client’s challenges or opportunities back to your capabilities and differentiators to trigger an Aha Moment. It is this moment wherein the client realizes the value of exploring the issue with you further. The insight is the catalyst that spurs the link between the client’s issue, your ability to help them with that issue, and the client’s desire to explore this possibility further. A blueprint conjures images of building plans, architects, permits, diagrams, detail, and the like. It can be exciting or daunting depending on your perspective. When working with blueprints, it is ever important to be mindful of scope and scale. Scope: A blueprint for a building is just that — it’s not meant to include an entire block or even adjacent structures. Therefore, be careful to maintain focus on that which is pertinent to this insight, and don’t overload the blueprint with erroneous or distracting information. Scale: Similar to scope, yet different. It’s easy to give in to the temptation to make the issue bigger than it needs to be, as if the topic or insight on its own doesn’t carry enough weight to convince your buyer. (If that’s true, then perhaps you haven’t zeroed in on the best insight or compelling research to help drive your point across.) Keep the scale in check by maintaining a laser-like focus on only things relevant to the insight and nothing more. Our Insight Blueprint ensures that you stay focused on that which is relevant to the insight for your client and avoids scope and scale creep. Barriers and the Bottom Line As you might imagine, building a credible insight takes time and effort. Sales reps (and their managers) who are anxious to dive in and "just get on with it" will have less success than those who apply these tactics (and managers that encourage, coach, and foster a culture of insight selling). We talked about the importance of patience and preparation in a recent post. This culture and mindset represents a gateway or barrier to how successful you’ll be in connecting with clients and moving on to the next phase of the sales cycle — and hopefully being hired. You need to be able to cut through the daily clutter, noise, and distractions to get an executive’s attention. Personalized insights are intended to create an Aha Moment, capture your client’s interest, and stimulate dialogue. The bottom line is to find the insight that will create the openness to explore more with you. That is what the Insight Blueprint represents: a tool to align your client’s challenges and opportunities with your capabilities and differentiators and deliver personalized, relevant, and compelling insights through various channels to spark an Aha Moment and gain their interest. Have you had success using insights? What do you do to prepare for a sales pitch and connect with your prospects? Let us know in the comments below. Are you interested in learning more about Richardson’s Selling With Insights® program? Learn more about our approach and how we can help your company. The post Are Your Sales Reps Taking a "Show-up and Throw-up" Approach to Sharing Insights? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Prospecting Procrastinators: How to Better Manage Your Prospecting Time, Activity, and Focus "Your timing is perfect!" are words we probably don’t hear often enough. In sales, particularly when trying to connect with prospects, those words sound wonderful because they imply that the prospect is interested in talking to you. Sales reps can’t survive on luck when trying to get prospects on the phone. You can’t just block out two hours of your day to make your cold or warm calls because it suits your schedule. If that’s your "strategy," then you’ll likely emerge from your office having left a series of voice mails and messages that have a slim chance of ever being returned. Prospecting with insight requires careful and thoughtful planning. You’ve done your homework to find a target organization that has a likely need for your products or services, researched further to identify the best contact in the company, and tailored your insights to create the perfect pitch to get them interested enough to have a deeper conversation or meeting. But all of that preparation won’t mean much if you can’t get the prospect on the phone. Set Aside Sacred Prospecting Time The time and effort you need to put into prospecting depends on the amount of new business you are expected to self-generate. You have to set your priorities. If prospecting is vital to your success and livelihood, then carve out discrete blocks of time that you need to dedicate to it and let other activities take a back seat. Literally block the time in your calendar for yourself so that others know the time is reserved. Schedule your telephone time to coincide with when your prospects are most able and receptive to talking to you. There will be times when your prospect is inaccessible or simply too busy to talk. For example, finance and sales leaders are typically very busy near the end of the quarter and the end of the year. In addition, research shows that executives are more likely to answer calls on Wednesday and Thursday over other days of the week. This is because people get slammed on Monday, dig out on Tuesday, and check out on Friday. Research also suggests that executives have a greater tendency to answer calls from 7:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. This is because they are less likely to be in meetings during those blocks of time. Don’t fight nature! If you are really a hardcore hunter, consider working two- to five-hour shifts, and use time zones to your advantage: 6:30-8:00 a.m.: Call EST and CST 8:00-10:00 a.m.: Call CST and MST 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.: Call MST and PST 12:00-3:00 p.m.: Do non-call work; all prospects are eating or are in meetings 3:00-5:00 p.m.: Call EST and CST 5:00-7:00 p.m.: Call CST and MST 7:00-8:00 p.m.: Call MST and PST You would also be wise to schedule dedicated time on your calendar for researching target organizations and prospects. Consider how much time has elapsed between when you generated your target lists and conducted your research on them. If you compiled a list that will take several weeks or longer to get through before making your calls and pitches, be sure to do a quick search to see if anything new has happened that could help or play into your message. You want to be seen as current and forward-looking, not out of touch and irrelevant. When the Prospect Answers, Remain Calm and Professional This might sound like common sense, but it bears mentioning: consider your attitude, demeanor, and voice when your prospect actually answers the phone. Especially if you call early or late in the day, try to hide your shock, surprise, or relief that they picked up. Otherwise, you can come across as sounding: Desperate ("Thank God I got you!") Unprofessional ("I can’t believe you actually picked up this early!") Critical ("You’re a hard person to reach — do you ever answer your phone?") If they mention that you called at an unusual time, keep your response professional and straightforward. "I know that you have many demands on your time throughout the day, and I didn’t want to intrude on your busy schedule. I thought that calling you now might better accommodate your schedule." The right attitude and response can signify (even subconsciously) that you’ve thought about your prospect’s workload and schedule, that you know something about their business and how they work, and that you’re conscientious and willing to work hard (and possibly inconvenience yourself) in order to meet your clients’ needs. Prospecting is a very important activity, but few sales reps would say it’s their favorite thing to do. Like anything we don’t like (even if it is good for us), it is easy to come up with excuses to not do it. Successful prospecting requires discipline, persistence, resilience, practice, and coaching. The post Prospecting Procrastinators: How to Better Manage Your Prospecting Time, Activity, and Focus appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.