Managing Sales Force Change - Factors You Need to Consider for Successful Execution It’s hard to believe but the end of the first half of the year is only a few weeks away. As you reflect back on where you are today versus where you need to be, you might be considering some minor adjustments or major changes to your sales organization. If so, you need to determine if you are prepared for change.  To provide you with some additional insight on sales force change, Richardson recently underwrote a benchmarking study, Managing Sales Force Change,  by The Sales Management Association to determine: The frequency and intensity of sales force change initiatives The amount of expected future sales organization change Organizational perceptions of change efficacy Key areas targeted for change Management practices in directing change initiatives Leadership’s priorities for implementing sales force change Here’s what we found: A significant number of firms have undergone greater change in the past 18 months than they expect to enact in the next 18 months. Larger firms anticipate more organizational changes in the future than smaller firms. Sales training represents the area requiring the most change, yet companies are less likely to make changes to sales training than they are to the sales coverage model or sales headcount. Salespeople believed their organizations were changing far too much; heads of sales too little; and sales managers somewhere in between (though clearly on the "too much change" side). Your company holds a dim view of your organizations’ ability to implement change. The following is a list of questions within the survey along with a summary of the data points: 1.      How would you rate the intensity of organizational change your sales force has undertaken in the past 18 months? Wow! 89% of participants indicated that their sales force has undergone some form of change in the past 18 months, where either moderate adjustments were made or in some cases, everything was completely restored and rebuilt. 2.      How would you rate the intensity of organizational change your sales force expects to take in the next 18 months? As participants contemplated future changes in the next 18 months, 93% of them responded with an expectation of moderate to extreme change showing slight variation from what has been experienced in the past 18 months. 3.      In order for your sales organization to be highly successful in the next 18 months, how much should you change the following things? The top response received across the board was Sales Training. Sales Training is said to make the difference between success and a series of unfortunate events in the next 18 months. Runners-up were Sales Headcount, Coverage Model, Performance Measures, and Technology. Interestingly, product or service offering came in at the bottom of the barrel, placing responsibility on the sales force to capitalize on each opportunity, but as demonstrated with this response, they must first know how. 4.      How much will your organization change the following things in the next 18 months? Although Sales Training is believed to be the most needed change made to be successful, it is not expected to be implemented by your organization. Participants indicated that Sales Headcount and their Coverage Model will be first in line for change, above Sales Training, in the next 18 months. There is a clear disconnect here. 5.      Are sales organizations changing the right things? The Difference in need vs. Expected Change Ratings. There is a lack of correlation between what is needed and what is expected across many functional level s in an organization. High variations between the two point us to draw upon the conclusion that sales organizations are not changing the right things. If you are trying to change your sales force, you must first know what is needed. 6.      How is change perceived in your organization by salespeople? The majority of salespeople believe there is slightly more than enough change going on in their organization. Interestingly, nearly 20% of salespeople believe there is just the right amount of change while nearly 20% of salespeople believe there is far too much change. 7.      How is change perceived in your organization by salespeople, and sales managers? A higher percentage of sales managers vocalized that there is far too little change occurring within the sales organization. However, still about 40% believe there is slightly more than enough change happening. 8.      How is change perceived in your organization by salespeople, sales managers, and your senior sales leader? Contrastingly, 59% of senior sales leaders believe there is far too little change within their sales organizations, while only 14% believe there is far too much change. These results are almost polar opposites from the responses received from salespeople and sales managers. 9.      When our sales organization undertakes a significant change initiative… When asked to agree or disagree with nine change capabilities, it is clear that participants seem to hold a dim view of their organizations’ ability to implement change. Out of the nine change capabilities rated, the lowest were 1) We are able to quantify the impact of future changes using accurate performance modeling and data; 2) We support the change with sufficient resources, staff, and training; and 3) We make sure the sales organization is able to effect change, or adopt a new program, before asking them to implement it. How effective can your organizational change be if your sales force does not believe in your ability to implement it? Download our Complimentary Sales Force Change Report Managing Sales Force Change             To learn more about the Managing Sales Force Change study, please click here to download the full report. The post Managing Sales Force Change - Factors You Need to Consider for Successful Execution appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Video Interview with SellingPower: Managing Change in a Sales Organization Today’s BLOG, Managing Change in a Sales Organization, appears Courtesy of SellingPower Magazine.  If you are having any difficulties viewing this video, please click here We most certainly live in an age of accelerated change. In this interview, President and CEO of Richardson David DiStefano shares with you Richardson’s view on change management. Change is often tied to chaos and uncertainty, which makes implementing change difficult. Richardson responds with a change model outlined by A.D.K.A.R. - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. These components help to build a process and a platform for leading a successful change initiative. As stated by DiStefano, when a company is in sync with change, the outcome is a smooth, continuous course toward achieving greater operational effectiveness. Watch the interview here to see how you can facilitate change across your sales organization. At the Boston Sales 2.0 Conference on July 15, Mr. DiStefano will reveal how sales leaders can introduce, execute, and reinforce strategic initiatives in a way that takes the chaos and uncertainty out of change. Register now to join us in Boston; special discounted rates expire June 24.  Follow David DiStefano on twitter and LinkedIN ——————————————————————————————- Download our Complimentary Sales Force Change Report Managing Sales Force Change To learn more about the Managing Sales Force Change study, please click here to download the full report. The post Video Interview with SellingPower: Managing Change in a Sales Organization appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Transformation - No Guts, No Glory I read somewhere recently that organizations should consider very carefully whether to undertake a full-blown sales transformation initiative, because of the time, effort and cost involved. Really?  Whatev! (Sorry, I live with teenagers.) Yes, perhaps if your basic strategy or business model is flawed, your product has serious quality or value-delivery issues, your service delivery destroys customer loyalty, or your costs or pricing/profitability are grossly out of line, you might plug another hole first, while bailing water. But before long, you need to address revenue, profit and growth. No organization has ever cut their way to the top. Sales remains the lifeblood of organizational success. As the old adage goes, "Nothing happens until someone sells something." I simply have a hard time imagining a more worthy corporate endeavor than transforming your sales force into a more effective, well-oiled machine. And I’m not talking about 3 or 5 percent incremental improvements, either. Aim Low, Hit Low You’ve probably heard the quote that we use only a small portion of our brain’s potential capability, right? I’d argue that generally-speaking, we’re in the same boat with our sales effectiveness. Perhaps you’re thinking that so many organizations are already doing extraordinarily well at growing sales year-over-year, that sales transformations aren’t necessary? I do know this is true in some specific cases. Some organizations are doing quite well;  have already taken a logical, organized, piece-by-piece, evidence-based approach toward sales transformation , have addressed multiple parts of the sales performance ecosystem, and are steadily progressing toward system and organization alignment. I tip my hat to these company leaders, but I don’t see enough of them. Frankly, I haven’t walked into an organization as an employee, where I didn’t believe that we could double sales, with the right people, focus, attention and effort. Yes, I said double. But if my zeal makes you uncomfortable, pretend I said 25 percent improvement. Anything but 3 to 5 percent. Look, I want to be more positive about our current state of affairs, but when we look at the big picture, let’s be real. Week in and week out, I continue to come across these and similar data points: See this news from SAVO and notice the stats listed under the five critical failure points. Over the past four years, various sources, including CSO Insights, have reported that 36 to 46 percent of sales reps do not achieve quota. According to Xactly Corporation, 40 percent of sales teams make less than 80 percent of  quota. The average  tenure of senior sales leaders is 18 to 24 months. ES Research Group, Inc. estimates that 20 to 33 percent of salespeople do not have the capabilities to be successful at their jobs. ESR also estimates that 80 to 85 percent of sales training produces no long-term impact (after 90 days). Sixty-five percent of top sales leaders surveyed by CSO Insights said their top objective for the year was capturing new accounts - yet 67 percent of those same leaders said that their team  "needs improvement" in generating leads. In ASTD’s report The State of Sales Training, 2012, half the respondents felt that 50 percent or less of the training they received was relevant to their job. Seems to me that there are a few more opportunities for sales transformation initiatives. Sales Performance Ecosystem In a post for ASTD’s Sales Enablement community recently, I talked about the Sales Performance Ecosystem, as I see it I suggested that we’re not doing more because it’s daunting and complex, and so many sales leaders are under short-term pressure to make their numbers. I believe that’s true. Our short-term, stock-price driven economy sometimes pulls us toward the urgent and away from the important. Fact of life, though, and it is not changing. Note that panic is not a business strategy. Over the years, I’ve seen some recurring themes that hold companies and leaders back. No clear ownership: Look at the various functions that are involved in managing different aspects of the ecosystem. Coordinating sales, marketing, IT, HR, and others is like herding cats. Sales transformation, like any major organizational change effort, rarely is (fully) successful without top-down involvement, support and accountability. Whether or not an "owner" is clear or assigned, or whether it’s a coordinated team effort, top leaders need to be involved and coordinated project management is required. 70 percent of change efforts fail: So why try? If that’s true, as we’ve heard from John Kotter for a while now, 30 percent of initiatives succeed. Change leadership and management is not a mystery, with arcane secrets locked in a vault somewhere. It’s just not typically done well. Do it right, or work with experts who can guide you. There is a difference, by the way, between change leadership and change management, just as there is between leadership and management. To maximize your chance of success, you need both. Boiling the ocean: Whether they try to do too much at once, or hold back because they fear it requires doing that to transform a sales force, I’d like to have a nickel for every time I heard "let’s not boil the ocean," in a meeting room. Sales transformation usually requires an overhaul of many areas. They don’t need to all be done at once. Prioritize initiatives based on potential impact, and do a few at a time. Do, however, have a master plan to get everyone and everything in alignment eventually, and continue to execute over time. Continuous improvement is also not a mystery. Just be clear that expecting it to happen without a purposeful, evidence-based, well prioritized and orchestrated plan, is like wishing on a star. Not knowing where to start: Like "paralysis from analysis," this is "paralysis from overwhelm." The ecosystem is big, spread out across the organization, and has a lot of moving parts. Using analysis, problem-solving methods, decision-making tools, and some plain old logical thinking can help you cut through the clutter. Sometimes, a tool like Kurt Lewin’s force field analysis can help. It’s public domain, free, simple (not necessarily easy - the thinking needs to be valid), and has helped many. Check it out. Not sure how to do it: There are so many moving parts these days, who can possibly be an expert at everything? In this case, the previously-perceived downside of ecosystem functions being spread throughout the organization is a benefit. Capitalize on the distributed nature of talent in your organization and involve people who are experts in areas where you are not. And if you don’t have experts in a particular area, charge someone with becoming one, hire the expertise, or outsource. Then, if you’re a senior leader; listen. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of real expertise squashed at a conference table, in favor of an idea, which had little validity in comparison. I hesitate to say this, but very often, training leaders know how to maximize the impact from training, but can’t get buy-in to execute on what will really work, because it involves more than just putting people in classrooms or taking courses This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it does cover themes I’ve seen frequently. If you’re struggling with any of these issues and unclear about whether you should tackle a sales transformation, or how to best proceed, feel free to contact us to explore your situation and possible options. We’ll do our best to guide you. And as always, I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts in the comments. Additional reading: Selling Power recording of SunGard sales transformation webinar: http://bit.ly/SunGardSalesTransformationWebinar Previous posts on change management, change leadership and sales transformation: http://blogs.richardson.com/tag/change-leadership/ http://blogs.richardson.com/tag/change-management/ http://blogs.richardson.com/tag/sales-transformation/ ——————————————————————————————————— Download a complimentary copy of our ebook - The Roadmap to Scalable and Sustainable Sales Transformation The post Sales Transformation - No Guts, No Glory appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Success Story: Making Sales Training Stick and Extending Knowledge Retention through Mobile Gamification "How do we make sales training stick?" That question keeps many learning and development leaders (as well as senior executives) up at night. You want your efforts to train your employees to take hold and be leveraged in their work, not wasted as a moment-in-time intervention. Here is an example of what one company did to help its leaders sleep more soundly while improving their sales reps’ performance. The Challenge: Making Sales Training Stick You know the story: Your sales reps spend a day (more likely several) out of the trenches in a conference room being trained. You don’t want to pull them offline, but you want the reps to be taught new knowledge, learn new skills, close performance gaps, and adopt new behaviors in order to maximize their effectiveness in selling your products and services. But as soon as they leave the building, they begin to forget what they have learned. Research shows that regardless of quality or delivery method, salespeople will forget 79% of their training within 90 days. Yes, they might refer to some of the handouts from the training once or twice, but materials get lost or shelved and then forgotten. Another risk is that they simply revert to their pre-training habits and abandon what they learned during their training experience. One of our clients, a large manufacturer in the life sciences industry with sales in more than 100 countries shared the concerns listed above along with their solution to making learning stick after training. The Solution: QuickCheckTM After the training, our client used our QuickCheckTM tool to keep their sales reps engaged and thinking about what they learned. The QuickCheck tool is a software application that: Reinforces learning and other selling initiatives Asks relevant questions circulated over several weeks post-training (e.g., 2 questions asked 3 times per week over 6 weeks) Can be accessed on any device (e.g., laptops, smartphones, or tablets) for convenience and maximum participation Has a low impact on time (about 5 minutes per day) Experts work with your learning and development team to devise a series of multiple choice questions to be sent to users several times per week. It’s not just a matter of selecting the answer and moving on, but choosing the best answer from among several close possibilities. When incorrect answers are chosen, users will see an explanation as to why one answer was better than the other options. Users must answer each question correctly twice for it to be retired from the program. The Results Our client used QuickCheck™ with very positive results after two rounds of training. Here are the highlights: 1.  Actively Engaged Sales Reps Through the repetition of receiving two questions per day three times per week over a period of six weeks reps were engaged well after the training. The questions asked weren’t generic, but customized to reflect the training and keep reps thinking about what they learned and were expected to do differently. During their first round of using QuickCheck, 80% of trained reps were actively using the tool and thus stayed focused on the training. Over 95% of reps kept up on a weekly basis in the second round. That level of engagement - and therefore continued learning - might not be achieved if not for the ease and relevance of the tool. 2. Scoreboard Encouraged Healthy Competition and Visibility Reps don’t use QuickCheck in a vacuum. Yes, they receive their own emails each morning and respond to their own questions, but so do their peers. Another important aspect of the tool is that it allows users to benchmark themselves against their competitors (i.e., their colleagues). Over the 4-6 weeks it takes to cycle through 20 questions, users (and just as importantly, their managers) can see scoreboards on a weekly basis to gauge the progress of individuals and peer groups. Are you tracking on time or falling behind? Are you getting the answers right or stumbling more often than not? Are you keeping up with others? The leaderboard creates visibility and healthy competition among users to spur them along, while also arming sales managers and training and development leaders to see the extended impact of the training (see #3 below). Not wanting to be the one not participating or scoring well, most sales reps will use that incentive to take it seriously giving it the time and thought it deserves. 3.  Created Opportunity for Sales Managers to Coach Learners are practicing the skillset you are trying to teach them; taking advantage of technology to reinforce the desired behaviors. In order to really move the needle on your efforts to transform your business, you need your front-line supervisors to coach their employees, not just babysit them and take attendance, or just look at reports. They must take a genuine interest in helping employees and sales reps improve themselves and advance their skills, which will of course also improve the department and company. QuickCheck’s scoreboard provides managers with just such an opportunity, specifically to see what to coach to whom. For example, if users aren’t getting a series of questions right, then perhaps more training or communication is required to help. It is not intended to be punitive in nature, but a way to see what’s working and where to place more emphasis. If you don’t have a coaching culture, this presents a good reason and context to start. Sustain the Conversation and Learning through Social Media All of that’s great, but what happens after the QuickCheck period has ended? Hopefully your reps took advantage of the post-training Q&A and reinforcement, and that some of the questions and situations sparked dialogue and debate among the reps. We suggest that you leverage your internal social networks as a way for reps to continue the discussion. Of course there should come a time when your target behavior has become the norm and you can set your sites on the next phase of development, but until then conversation and communication can help you to maintain the momentum and give your change the best chance to succeed. Companies realize the value of maximizing their training efforts (and dollars) by extending knowledge and fostering a culture of continuous learning beyond the event. Next time you schedule a training program, look beyond the days spent in the classroom to have a greater impact on your trainees and ultimately your business.     ————————————————————————- Click the following to learn more about making your sales training stick, Richardson QuickSkills The post Success Story: Making Sales Training Stick and Extending Knowledge Retention through Mobile Gamification appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Insights on How Marketing Contribute to SunGard’s Successful Sales Transformation Initiative Sales and marketing alignment is vital when establishing a solid content marketing strategy. Content is not there for only marketing to use and publish, but also exists to enable a sales team to go out in the field and speak to their customers in a meaningful way. Many companies are trying to train their sales organizations to provide insights in order to add value to the customer conversation. Over the past year, Richardson has worked very closely with SunGard to help implement an Insights-based sales training program. In the video below, Lucia Marchese, Head of Marketing at SunGard Financial Systems, sits down with Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO of Selling Power, discuss their successful sales transformation at SunGard and the benefits of a newly aligned marketing group and sales team gained through content sharing and thought leadership practices. Watch the video below to learn how SunGard implemented a content marketing strategy as a part of their Successful sales transformation. ———————————————————————————————————————————- Download a Complimentary eBook, The Roadmap to Sustainable Sales Transformation   The post Video Blog: Insights on How Marketing Contribute to SunGard’s Successful Sales Transformation Initiative appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The Richys, Recognizing Excellence in Salesforce Enablement  We get to see and test-drive a lot of sales support and enablement tools at Richardson. And, as a leader in sales training and performance improvement, we know a winner when we see one. We created the Richys in response to the great feedback from our post on Top 10 Disruptive Sales Technologies and as a way to recognize cool, innovative, and standout products that make an impact on improving sales effectiveness and efficiency. The Richys - the latest addition to our blog, Richardson Sales Excellence Review - will offer unbiased reviews of some of the great products and services in the sales ecosystem. Each month, we will recognize a company or product for the excellence and innovation it brings to sales. This is strictly our own opinion based on our observance and interaction with the product or service as used by our clients, Richardson internally, or from our personal use. Let’s get started with the first-ever Richy. And the Richy goes to… Our first Richy goes to Salesforce.com’s Chatter. Chatter can best be described as a one-to-many collaboration platform that connects your teams with critical business information. It sits within Salesforce.com, but is also available in a desktop version. Richardson recently implemented Chatter within our own sales team, and we saw immediate improvement in communications and information sharing. At first I was apprehensive about the product, thinking it would be one more tool to manage. I quickly saw its’ power and the benefits in posting information, accessing internal teams, and providing data to the sales team. Here is why our team thinks Chatter should receive the inaugural Richy: Social selling research - allows the quick sharing of information between reps that could benefit a current prospect or account, including research on prospects, clients, companies, or former projects. Social learning or reinforcement - allows the sharing of knowledge, support tools, competitive info, and the like to targeted team members in specialized groups…or to the entire team. Mobile convenience - the team can access Chatter anyplace, anytime using desktops, smartphones, or other mobile devices. Adoption - it’s easy, because it’s intuitive and sticky, like Twitter or Facebook Enterprise collaboration - it supports our ability to not only align Sales and Marketing, but to collaborate more effectively across the enterprise to support sales and, in doing so, to support our clients. Client engagement - allows you to create controlled-access groups and drive improved collaboration and communication with clients. The value of this feature can’t be underestimated. System integration -it’s integrated into Salesforce.com, so it’s easy to get up and running. Removes silos - as a truly open social collaboration tool that you can use internally, Chatter removes barriers to collaboration. Whether there’s a discussion around opportunities and implementation or simply knowledge to share, Chatter gives people the ability to automatically become involved. Improves data cleanliness and accountability - by being linked to Salesforce.com, Chatter forces sales reps to continuously update data, which then becomes the new reference point for the entire company. The ability to passively follow deals or join groups allows users to be updated in real-time of any changes or posts; there’s no need to chase answers or be officially "in the loop." Low adoption costs and ease - Baseline Chatter (ChatterFree) is free and allows you to include the entire company. The cost comes from the level of Salesforce.com access you want Chatter users to have. As for ease of use, Chatter mimics other social media platforms, which has the additional benefit of forcing employees to be more social media savvy. Congratulations to Salesforce.com’s Chatter on being named the first Richy. You can learn more about the product here. If you want to suggest a great product for our review, email me at jim.brodo@richardson.com. ————————————————————————— Sales Organization Change Checklist Click here or on the image below to learn more about how ready you are to effectively implement change within your sales organization with Richardson’s Sales Organization Change Checklist The post The Richys, Recognizing Excellence in Salesforce Enablement appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Four Essential Factors for Building Trust  with Sophisticated Buyers, Part 1 of 2 This is the first of a two-part guest post written by Andrea Howe, co-author of "The Trusted Advisor Field Book" and creator of The Get Real Project. Here’s something I’ve learned about sales professionals in the years I’ve been leading training programs: they’re avid learners in hot pursuit of excellence. And for the best of the best, "excellence" is determined not by numbers, but by the difference they make. Use this four-part checklist to gain insight into ways to raise your game. Do the Math In this day and age, there are very, very few who dispute the importance of building trust in the sales process. While trust-based selling is far from formulaic, it helps to approach it with a formula in your back pocket. That’s where the trust equation comes in. David Maister, Charlie Green, and Rob Galford first wrote about the trust equation in The Trusted Advisor in 2000. Eleven years later, Charlie and I reprised it in The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. It’s proven to be a perennial favorite. One reason for the trust equation’s popularity is that it has many uses. As a conceptual framework, it demystifies what it really takes to be trustworthy. It can also be used in a more specific way to "score" a particular person (you) or a particular relationship (yours with a client). The key to getting the best use out of it is to understand the distinctions between each of its four variables, along with the direct impact of each on your sales success. I’ve described each of the four variables below from most to least provocative. Here’s the critical question: How do you fare on each one? Get Off Your "S" We know him from a mile away: the stereotypical used car salesman who’s all about him. I doubt there’s a single person reading this blog who falls into that category because you wouldn’t be interested in the kind of content that’s posted here. That said, I bet there are a lot of readers who succumb to the self-orientation trap, as the trust equation defines it. I say that because we all do at one time or another, and more often than we realize. Self-orientation is essentially about your focus—is it directed at you or your clients? It lives in the denominator of the trust equation; therefore it’s the only one we want to be small, as it is naturally when you’re focused on others. For most of us, self-orientation expands in subtle and sneaky ways, such as when the high achievers among us succumb to "premature solutions," or when those who prefer to be in control begin to steer a conversation towards our own agenda, or when our desire to be liked interferes with our willingness to have tough conversations. Generally speaking, as our discomfort and anxiety increases, our "S" gets bigger and bigger. And if these shoes don’t fit you, take this litmus test: are you willing to refer your client to a competitor when you know the competitor will do a better job? If the answer is "no," or "it depends," that’s high self-orientation in the works. It’s also a failure to embrace a critical paradox of sales, by the way, which is this: the best way to close more deals is to stop trying to close more deals and instead get relentlessly focused helping your client make the best decision for her right now. (And now you see why I said self-orientation is the most provocative variable for salespeople.) If you’re looking to transform your relationships with your clients, and your sales results in the process, then get off your "S." Go Soft I work with a lot of professional services people who don’t see themselves as salespeople and they almost universally assume the following about those who are: "They’re great at the ‘soft stuff.’ They have to be." Sadly, I’m not at all sure that’s true. If my direct experience is any indication, salespeople don’t score any higher on the next most provocative variable of the trust equation, which is intimacy. And that’s not because I’m leading remedial programs for the mediocre (in fact, it’s usually the opposite). I believe it’s because so many of us in business are taught, either directly or indirectly, to eschew anything that seems touchy-feely. Intimacy is about safety and your ability to form and maintain relationships that are comfortable and secure for others. A trusted advisor (and an exceptional salesperson, which I’d argue are one in the same) is a safe haven for tough issues. So then intimacy is yeast to leavened bread: a have-to-have, not a nice-to-have. There are many pathways to intimacy. Time on the golf course with a client is only one of dozens of options, and not necessarily your best one. Other possibilities include listening deeply and with a real demonstration of empathy, sharing something personal about yourself, asking questions others would be afraid to ask (in a respectful and appropriate way, of course), and telling your client something you really appreciate about her—just to name a few. If you’re not getting called in by your clients as early or as often as you’d like, do the work that’s required to go soft. Stay tuned for the second of this two-part post where we will cover the remaining two variables, each with its own twist: "C" (credibility) and "R" (reliability). About Andrea P. Howe Andrea P. Howe is the co-author, with Charles H. Green, of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust. She is the creator of The Get Real Project and also a lead consultant for Trusted Advisor Associates. A veteran consultant, seminar leader and speaker, Howe specializes in serving global professional services firms. She addresses strategic topics such as customer intimacy, client loyalty, the dynamics of influence, dealing with conflict, and developing business with trust. Described by her clients as pragmatic and engaging, Howe shares with her audiences a rich and diverse toolkit to increase trustworthiness in any stakeholder relationship. ——————————————————————————- Click the following to learn more about Richardson’s Trusted Advisor training solutions!   The post Four Essential Factors for Building Trust with Sophisticated Buyers, Part 1 of 2 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The Trust Equation - Four Essential Factors for Building Trust  with Sophisticated Buyers Part 2 This is the second of a two-part guest post written by Andrea Howe, co-author of "The Trusted Advisor Field Book" and creator of The Get Real Project.   In Part 1 of Four Essential Factors for Building Trust  with Sophisticated Buyers, I suggested that even though trust-based selling is far from formulaic, it helps to approach it with a formula in your back pocket: the trust equation. So far we’ve covered two of the four variables of the trust equation: "S" (self-orientation) and "I" (intimacy). My advice in a nutshell: "Get off your ‘S’" and "Go soft." Part 2 reveals some unexpected aspects of "C" (credibility) and "R" (reliability). Tell the Truth, Especially When It Makes You Look Bad People don’t want to buy from people who know everything; people want to buy from people who know enough to meet their needs and who have a track record of dealing with others directly and honestly. In other words, they need to be confident in both the message and the messenger. That’s because credibility, as the trust equation defines it, is as much about truthfulness as it is about knowledge and experience. Building others’ confidence in you as the messenger is harder than it sounds in a profession where the very dictionary definition of "sell" references synonyms like "betray" and "cheat." As a salesperson, you’re doomed to some extent before you even walk in the proverbial door because the prevailing mindsets about the profession. It is for this very reason that there is a silver lining: truth-telling in sales becomes a critical differentiator, especially when that truth is personally risky. Saying "I don’t know" when you don’t, and when you’re a tinge (or a lot) embarrassed about that, is paradoxically one of the best ways to increase your credibility. Admitting you screwed something up when you did is another one—times 10 if you’re afraid it might cost you the sale. The key, of course, is to be genuine about it all. Do you have a client relationship where things have stalled in spite of your certainty that the message is clear and compelling? The problem might be the messenger. Ask yourself just how honest you’ve been willing to be. Remember Follow-Through = Table Stakes There’s a telling activity that I run in my training programs. It goes like this: Close your eyes and bring to mind your own trusted advisor—someone you can talk to about a wide range of issues, professional as well as personal, including those sensitive in nature. Then jot down the first words that come to mind to describe that person. When I chart everyone’s words on the board for all to see, one trend is always true: instances of words like "dependable," "consistent," and "predictable" are noticeably lower than instances of words like, "caring," "good listener," "objective," "has my best interests at heart," and "willing to say what I don’t want to hear." This is partly due to the way the question is asked, true, since the question ties directly to the definition I use of a trusted advisor (safe haven for tough issues). That said, I’ll assert that it’s mostly due to the fact that traits like dependability, consistency, and predictability are assumed. They’re table stakes. The variable that’s getting short-shrift here, according to the trust equation, is reliability. Reliability refers mostly to the extent to which others can count on you to do what you say you will do, as well as the extent to which they can count on you to get in communication about it when you don’t or won’t. Reliability is essential for trustworthiness—in fact, all four variables are equally important. The best salespeople take their promises very seriously, including the littlest promises, because they know that trustworthy people can be counted on for tasks of all sizes. That said, reliability isn’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to building trust. And because it seems relatively easy to fix or address (compared to finding the courage to deliver a controversial message), it often gets undeserved attention. Does it seem like you have a good thing going with a client, only she never puts herself at risk of having to rely on you for much? Get your reliability house in order. Then train your sites on the other three variables. Don’t Trust Me; Take It for a Test Drive Don’t take my word for the value of the trust equation; try it out. One way to do that is to take a good, hard look at a relationship that isn’t as prosperous as you’d like it to be. Reflect on how your own scores on credibility, reliability, intimacy, and (low) self-orientation might inform your next move on the path to sales excellence. I’ll bet you your next commission check that if you put the four variables to good use they’ll give you an edge you can count on for the duration of your career. About Andrea P. Howe  Andrea P. Howe is the co-author, with Charles H. Green, of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust. She is the creator of The Get Real Project and also a lead consultant for Trusted Advisor Associates. A veteran consultant, seminar leader and speaker, Howe specializes in serving global professional services firms. She addresses strategic topics such as customer intimacy, client loyalty, the dynamics of influence, dealing with conflict, and developing business with trust. Described by her clients as pragmatic and engaging, Howe shares with her audiences a rich and diverse toolkit to increase trustworthiness in any stakeholder relationship. ——————————- Sales Organization Change Checklist Click here or on the image below to learn more about how ready you are to effectively implement change within your sales organization with Richardson’s Sales Organization Change Checklist   The post The Trust Equation - Four Essential Factors for Building Trust with Sophisticated Buyers Part 2 appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

September Richy - Can a Sales Gamification Tool Drive Sales Team Engagement and Better Sales Results from Sales Contests?  It’s the start of a new football season and for millions of people there is a huge focus on Fantasy Football. For Adam Hollander, CEO of a new company, FantasySalesTeam, he is not only managing his Fantasy Football team, but helping clients manage their Fantasy Sales Team through his new sales gamification and sales enablement tool, FantasySalesTeam (FST), the winner of my September Richy. FST is a software platform and sales gamification tool that allows you to run incentive contests based on the principles of fantasy sports games. Developed by Adam and his team of experienced sales professionals, FST mimics that of your very own Fantasy Football Leagues, but instead of tracking touchdowns, you can track performance, productivity, and sales team engagement. As a sales manager, with a SPIFF program, FST enables you to track sales metrics like calls, revenue booked, number of opportunities, and percentage of quota achieved. Additionally, FST gives you the ability to focus on the behaviors and results most important to the success of your sales force. Currently, FST has full integration with Salesforce.com, and is working on integrations into other CRM platforms.  Though integrating FST with a CRM is completely optional; FST now allows Excel uploads for scoring data, giving any customer, on any CRM, measuring any metric imaginable, the ability to easily run games. Two newly- added features are interactive discussion boards, where the incentivizing and motivating exchanges occur (or more plainly, where the beloved smack talk happens) and new game formats. The fact that FST is flexible and customizable to fit any sales environment, can monitor dozens of performance metrics without operational hassle, and rewards competitive as well as team based selling appears to be a game changer. We had the chance to sit down with FST’s Founder & CEO, Adam Hollander: Where did the FST concept come from? "When we were developing FST, we interviewed dozens of sales managers and reps.  Most shared with us that their sales contests weren’t performing up to expectations.   We identified that in most cases this was because (a) they were rewarding the same top performers every time, (b) most of their reps were losing interest once they fell too far behind the leaders/goal and (c) they were basing prizes solely on results, ignoring sales behaviors and activity.  We didn’t create FST to jump on the sales gamification bandwagon.  We developed it because we’ve designed a more engaging and higher- performing model for sales contests.  With overwhelmingly positive feedback from our customers, I feel highly confident in making that statement." What success have you had to date with FST? "Since our official launch in June 2013, we’ve brought on dozens of customers including Cisco, LinkedIn, Harte-Hanks, TechTarget and others. We have customers of all company sizes; ranging from as few as 4 sales reps in a single location to as many as 400+ across 5 countries. Our clients are also from all types of industries: software sales, marketing services sales, medical device sales, transportation sales, financial sales, home improvement sales and more." What’s up next for FST? "As mentioned, we have full integration with Salesforce.com and are working on integrations into other CRM platforms.  We are also in the process of adding new sport templates to our existing options of Football, Baseball and Soccer, such as Basketball, Hockey, and F1 Racing.  Beyond this, there are a number of other really fun things in the works; but I don’t want to spoil the surprise!  You’ll hear about them very soon." Take a look for yourself at this month Richy winner and learn more about how this sales gamification tool leverages sales contests to drive sales team engagement - click here to watch FST’s video introduction. ————————————————————————————————————— COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Download a copy of our newest research report, Content Marketing and Sales Effectiveness  The post Can a Sales Gamification Tool Drive Sales Team Engagement and Better Sales Results from Sales Contests? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Richardson and its Clients Honored with Eight Brandon Hall Group Excellence Award We are very excited to announce that Richardson and some of our clients were recently recognized with eight Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards. The Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards recognize excellence in learning, talent management, and marketing and sales training programs. The Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards were announced on September 26, 2013, and included the following for Richardson: Gold — Best Use of Performance Support — Richardson QuickCheck™ Silver — Best in Competencies and Skill Development — United Airlines Silver — Best Onboarding Program — James Hardie Silver — Best Program for Sales Training and Performance — SunGard Silver — Best Sales Leadership Development Program — Chubb Bronze — Best Learning Measurement Approach — SunTrust Bronze — Best Results of a Learning Program — Chubb Bronze — Best Integration of Learning and Talent Management — SunTrust The entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group Sr. Analysts, and Executive Leadership based upon the following criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation, and overall measurable benefits. All winners are listed at http://go.brandonhall.com/Excellence_Awards_Home. "We are very grateful to Brandon Hall for its recognition of the work we do in partnership with our clients. On behalf of the entire Richardson team, we would like to thank our clients for their continued innovation and dedication to sales training excellence," says Richardson CEO David DiStefano. "Our clients are our motivation; they are what drive us every day to stay fresh and find the best sales training solutions to help them achieve their business results. Never in my more than 20 years in this industry have I been prouder of our team and the value they provide to clients around the world." "We are extremely proud to honor our 2013 award-winning organizations for their remarkable achievements," said Mike Cooke, Chief Executive Officer of Brandon Hall Group, Inc. "This elite group of organizations excelled in developing measurable, sustainable programs that produced outstanding business results." To learn more about Richardson’s Awards and Honors, please contact Jim Brodo at jim.brodo@richardson.com. About Richardson Richardson helps leaders prepare their organizations to execute sales strategies and achieve business objectives. Richardson has the expertise and resources to help clients scale their initiatives quickly and confidently across their entire sales force and supporting functions. Working together, Richardson identifies sales best practices, evaluates talent, builds capability and consistency through world-class sales training, and sustains necessary change. Through a proprietary customization process, Richardson ensures that each solution reflects the unique culture and values of its client, driving rapid adoption and lasting results. (www.richardson.com) About Brandon Hall Group Having worked with more than 10,000 clients globally, and after 20 years of delivering world-class solutions, Brandon Hall Group is the preeminent research and analyst organization focused on developing research-driven solutions to drive organizational performance for emerging and large organizations. Brandon Hall Group has an extensive repository of thought leadership, research, data, and expertise in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Sales Effectiveness, Marketing Impact, and Executive Management. (www.brandonhall.com)   Best Results of a Learning Program The post Richardson and its Clients Honored with Eight Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Transformation: Can you take Control of a Customer Conversation? Engaging in meaningful dialogue with a prospect or existing client is one of the best ways to assess how your organization can help them achieve goals, address challenges, and discover new opportunities. Sales reps need to be listening as much as they are presenting in order to gain perspective from a customer. Please join David DiStefano, President and CEO of Richardson, in this video blog as he discusses the benefits of a two way dialogue and not to control the customer conversation, but to gather relevance and information from the customer. Please click here if you are having difficulties viewing this video. The post Sales Transformation: Can you take Control of a Customer Conversation? appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Lessons from the Super Bowl — Improve Sales Training ROI through Gamification Super Bowls Can Produce Super Memories — But How Many Do You Remember? Super Bowls are quite the spectacle of glitz and glitter, pre-game and halftime shows, over-the-top commercials, and of course the actual football game. It’s a nonstop distraction for anyone interested. Social media will be buzzing with chatter about the funniest commercials and maybe even some spectacular plays. But by the time you get to the office the next day, the details will have already begun to fade. You’ll often hear, "I liked the commercial with the baby and the horse, but I can’t remember what the product was," or, "That touchdown pass was awesome" without being able to recount the details of the drive that made it possible. Next-day recall is tough enough, but now, fast-forward a month when Super Bowl memories have faded and March Madness is coming into focus. How many of those Super Bowl commercials or play-by-play details can be accurately recalled, or are even top of mind? There’s that rare person with a steel-trap memory, but most of us lack that ability (or inclination). So for all the super hype and build up, as soon as the trophy is hoisted, the event itself quickly gets relegated to the cluttered shelf of experiences and memories. What does that have to do with sales training? One can draw a compelling analogy between our differing abilities to recall anecdotes about a football game and your efforts to train your sales reps to learn new information, techniques, and behaviors. Bear with me … Information and Skills Taught ≠ Remembered and Put into Practice You’ve spent considerable expense, effort, and time (including lost opportunities) to train your sales reps, presumably with goals of developing your sales team and increasing sales. You have specific desired outcomes that sales reps should take away and apply to their selling. But we don’t retain what we learn for very long after it is taught. In fact, studies have shown that within 90 days after a training event, 79% of what people have been taught is forgotten. (Read an earlier post on "The Forgetting Curve.") That’s a sobering thought as you consider what goes into training and what’s at stake if it’s not effective. Now, put that 79% recall rate in context. Think back to the Super Bowl story above. Four out of five of your sales reps are like me and my limited memory of the details of the game. ("Yeah, I remember going to that training, but I don’t really remember what they taught us. The dinners were fun, though!") Only one out of five of your sales reps have that steel-trap memory, who can recall what they experienced in your training and have a higher likelihood of applying it in practice. Small victory, but is it enough? How much of what you teach is remembered and applied? And more importantly, how can you reinforce these key messages and behaviors in order to increase your training ROI and move the needle as desired? Improve Recall and Mastery through Gamification The answer isn’t to scrap training — well, perhaps not in the traditional sense. The world changes, and so too do your product or service lines; the needs and desires of your customers; and the strategies, skills, and tactics your sales reps use to go after them. But you do need to be able to justify your expense and hold your sales reps accountable for applying what they’ve learned in place of old tricks and habits. The first step is to start to think of training not as an event, but as a series of related activities and initiatives to help you move the needle and grow your business. There are pre-training assessments, measurements, and planning followed by the training itself. This is where sales leaders and training managers typically fall down on the job and don’t follow through to ensure the "stickiness" of the training. One solution is to apply gamification to your post-training efforts. No, I’m not advocating Madden Football for sales reps, but a tool such as Richardson’s QuickCheckTM can be used conveniently to greatly extend the effectiveness of the learning for months beyond the close of the event. Here’s a brief overview of how the QuickCheck works: Designers of the sales training take important points and learnings from the course and create a series of questions to be asked — each with several possible answers but only one best answer. Then, a response is given and an explanation for the choice of answer. Sales reps are forced to cycle though each set of questions until they’ve completed all successfully before moving on to the next level. It serves to jog their memory and help them to recall and apply what they’ve learned in short bursts. Here are the driving principles that make it effective: Convenient — Above all else, if it’s not convenient, it will likely fall by the wayside and be ignored. Make it available through smart phones, tablets, or laptops so that your sales reps can access it when they want in their preferred method. Relevant — Keep the questions relevant to the training and how it should be leveraged in sales reps’ jobs. Don’t dig up minutia that they’ll never use. Keep it on target and they’ll appreciate it. Fast — The name is "QuickCheck" for a reason. The idea is that while you’re commuting to the office on the train or standing in line at Starbucks, a sales rep can launch the app, answer the questions, and get on with their day. Frequency — It’s not daily, but it’s also not once a month or quarter. The right "spacing" is two to three times per week in order to stay top of mind without being a nag. Incentive — If you give sales reps a choice, some might use the app while others will ignore it. Sales managers can access leaderboards to see the level of use and success rates. Some of these leaderboard stats can be shared within the team to create friendly competition and peer pressure to keep up with the rest. If you choose the right questions and answers, you’ll be able to significantly increase your sales reps’ abilities to recall and apply the training when they’re with clients. You’ll have successfully increased your sales training ROI and hopefully have achieved your goals from the outset. Not every company will make the effort to gamify their learning and post-training reinforcement, but those that do will certainly have a leg up on the competition. How have you helped your sales reps to recall and apply what you’ve taught them? Have you used gamification? Tell us about your experience in the comments below. The post Lessons from the Super Bowl — Improve Sales Training ROI through Gamification appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why Won’t My #@*&^ Customer Make Up His Mind? Common Causes and Fixes to "No-Decisions" No-decisions are to be expected, but too many can signify a larger problem. If you’re tracking more than normal, then you should try to uncover the cause and take corrective action. Your client’s decision not to change the status quo is now a significant "competitor" in many selling situations. According to a 2013 CSO Insights study of companies’ win/loss ratios, 26.1% of all deals were ending in a no-decision. As recently as 2002, the rate was only 17%. A few years ago, those numbers wouldn’t surprise many people given the effects of the economic turmoil. Surely more projects were abandoned, postponed, or brought in-house in the face of shrinking budgets and headcount. But most businesses and budgets have rebounded to the point where one out of four deals ending in a no-decision is excessive. Which Is Worse, a Loss or a No-decision? Losing a sale to a competitor is probably worse because it indicates that you were beaten on price, scope, reputation, quality, personnel, implementation, delivery time, or some other variable. And it means that the revenue and business that could have been yours is now going to your competitor. But no-decisions aren’t anything to cheer about. You’re investing time and resources without a return. Yes, something may pan out down the road, but that’s in another sales cycle — you need to eat today. Root Causes: What’s Going On? With the "do-nothing" or "no-decision" choice prevalent in more than a quarter of the deals studied, it is vital for salespeople to understand why a client is considering making a purchase and the business logic behind that decision to buy at this time. Either before or while engaging in a dialogue to position your insight to a client, ensure that you gather as much information about the client’s situation as possible. Assess the current situation and the pressure the issue is creating. Consider the potential impacts the issue is creating now and perhaps the worsening impacts over time. All of this can be used to reinforce the impact of making no decision. Whenever possible, try to quantify or monetize the impact. Some common causes for no-decisions are: Just browsing — The client wasn’t really intent on buying now or in the immediate future. Lack of budget — They might be serious about buying but didn’t appreciate how much of an investment it would cost. Insufficient internal buy-in — Your client wanted to move forward but perhaps lacked approval from higher up or support from colleagues in other departments. Not ready — Perhaps the client realized that they need to sort out where they are internally before proceeding. Never intended to buy — This circumstance is perhaps the worst because, let’s face it, you’ve been used. The client wanted to get smart by having you and some of your competitors present your suggestions, capabilities, and ideas to them, thus validating that, "Yeah, we can do this in-house and save some money." At a bare minimum, make sure that you can answer the following questions: What is the compelling reason or business case to change (from the client’s point of view)? Which decision makers or influencers are the driving force behind the change? Which decision makers or influencers are hesitant or resistant to the change? What are the possible outcomes and gains from making the change? What are the possible impacts and consequences of not changing? Addressing a No-decision If the client responds to your insight by not taking action, try to understand the underlying reason why the client is stalling and explore the reason for the no-decision. Has something changed? Is there something else that has taken on a temporary level of urgency? Use "CCBANT" (Compelling Event, Competition, Budget, Authority, Need, Trust) to explore any changes from the original state and any changes that might explain the stall. Is the issue something you can address? Attempt to reintroduce the insight, especially focusing on the implications of taking no action. Find the connections between the insight, taking action, and avoiding a potential negative impact. Use the insight as a motivator to show the consequences of doing nothing. You don’t want to nag or appear desperate, but these steps and efforts might get the sale back on track. Preventing Future No-decisions If you find that your sales team is suffering too many no-decisions, you need to determine the cause and stem the tide. Better prospecting — Take measures to more accurately ascertain the client’s level of interest and intent to purchase before you throw too many resources at the sales pitch. Responsibility for this should be assumed by both marketing (before handing off leads) and sales. Help your buyer influence internally — If you’re trying to sell a web project to marketing, you would expect them to involve colleagues in IT, sales, accounting, and perhaps other groups who have a stake in the project. As you go through the sales process and no one beyond marketing appears on the radar, that’s a red flag that your contact lacks internal influence or that they’re not a serious buyer. Train your sales reps — Are your sales reps having trouble closing deals? Consider whether a training offering to develop or improve skills and techniques could benefit your sales reps and avoid no-decisions. Evaluate your offerings — This is a long shot, but maybe the problem is what you’re selling. Especially if you are in a position to have no direct competition against which to compare, you may be offering too little ("We can do this ourselves.") or too much ("That’s too complicated. We don’t need all of that — we’ll stick with what we have."). Keep tabs on those undecided clients — As with most things, communication is key. If you don’t ask the client why the project stalled, you’ll be left with assumptions. Especially for those mystery situations when a sale stalled, follow up after a few months to see if anything has changed. You might learn that they’re finally ready or that they’ve undertaken the project themselves, but it will give you some insight into what happened and will keep you positioned for future work. COMPLIMENTARY RESEARCH REPORT Organizations invest substantially in sales training and development. This complimentary report from Training Industry and Richardson summarizes data and provides recommended strategies for maximizing the impact of sales training over time. Click here or on the image below to download this report. The post Why Won’t My #@*&^ Customer Make Up His Mind? Common Causes and Fixes to "No-Decisions" appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

The Sales Learning Curve: Getting Sales Process, Skills and Tools Right before a Full-scale Product Launch Over the past 18 months we’ve launched three significant new offerings: Richardson’s Selling with Insights®, Richardson QuickCheck®, Richardson Sales Process Pro®. It is interesting looking back at how we prepared our sales team, especially in light of a very thoughtful and highly relevant article I picked-up from the Harvard Business Review.[1] The article was written by Mark Leslie, the managing director of Leslie Ventures, and Charles A. Holloway, an emeritus professor of management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. The article discusses the need for what might be called tempered, carefully considered and carefully planned enthusiasm for selling new products. You run a company, let’s say, and your engineering department has developed an impressive new product. You feel deeply that the product is really good - a conclusion borne out by technical research and testing — and will make a real impact on the market. Your strong temptation is to get out and make a full scale effort to sell the product. Don’t. In their very first paragraph, Leslie and Holloway set out the problems a company will face if it plunges in too quickly into a full scale sales effort. "When a company launches a new product, the temptation is to immediately ramp up sales force capacity to acquire customers as quickly as possible. Yet in our 25 years of experience with start-ups and new-product introductions, we’ve found that hiring a full sales force too fast just leads the company to burn through cash and fail to meet revenue expectations. Before it can sell the product efficiently, the entire organization needs to learn how customers will acquire and use it, a process we call the sales learning curve." The "learning curve" itself is a simple concept to understand. A person’s ability to do a task, a simple task or a complicated task, gets better and better the more practice they get - to a point. Learning starts slowly, and then speeds up, than slows down again after time spent doing the task. Basic ability should not decrease, just the rate of improvement of ability. An illustration of the process forms a bell shaped curve, hence the title "learning curve." With the launch of a new product, service or solution, your organization will need to climb a sales learning curve. That is, you will need to learn how to sell the product - ideally with a group of sales people who enjoy the novelty of a new product and who can work with the uncertainty of selling a product they haven’t sold before. As your company learns to sell the new product, you will refine your sales process, your sales messaging and your sales tools. Then, only after you learned to sell and support the sale of the product, should you roll out the product to your entire sales team. This seems counter intuitive to the natural sales instinct of selling as quickly and as much as possible. Remember, however, that though the process may be slower at the start, sales should speed up in the long term as you learn, in the field, how to most effectively sell and support the product. How do you find out how to sell your product "in the field"? You start with giving your sales people a good understanding of what the product can do. They should be able to use the product - but you are not training IT people. You increase the amount of contact with potential clients for the new product, even to the point of more client meetings in the initial phases of sales - or even earlier. Ask for their input. "You bought product x from us and like it. What do you think we should put in product X 2.0, or product Y?" Try to find a way of asking what would get them to replace the earlier product without making it seem like high pressure tactics. For those who buy the new product, check back and ask them how it is being used. The sales learning curve is learning how the product is actually used, what it can really do, and adjusting sales techniques accordingly. Gathering facts as well as sales, in the sales learning curve, gives will also technical feedback. Let your engineering people know about any problems and get to work correcting any problems. They gave you a good new product. They can help you make it a great, and a popular, new product that fits market needs. Selling a new product has to live with the reality of the learning curve. You start slowly, to see how your product fits in the business world. You research client needs, as a part of effective sales. You also monitor how your product meets these needs. (You keep monitoring, even when your sales forces ramps up towards a full scale effort.) With the new facts your "pioneer" and follow-on sales staff gather, you adapt and alter your sales approach to meet client needs better, to meet the needs of more clients, and to increase your sales revenues.   [1] July-August 2006 The post The Sales Learning Curve: Getting Sales Process, Skills and Tools Right before a Full-scale Product Launch appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Sales Reps Need to Earn Their Clients’ Trust — And Keep It Trust is tough to build and easy to lose. Buyers in the process of making a purchasing decision consider many factors, but none might be more important than trust. When hiring or renewing a contract with a product or service provider, a lack of trust can undermine any other variable and isn’t likely something that can be haggled over, such as price or delivery dates. This is especially true of large, long-cycle, complex sales typically found in sectors, such as financial and professional services, IT, HR, and accounting. Consider the fears weighed by your buyers: Does the seller understand my business? Does the seller have my best interests in mind and those of my company? If I give them my business, can I trust them to deliver what they’ve promised? -       On time? On budget? Without complications? The seller also works for some of my competitors. Can I truly trust them to honor confidentiality agreements and maintain an internal "Chinese Wall" of privacy? I’ve built a rapport with the sales rep. Once I agree to the sale, can I trust the team to do the work? Will the sales rep disappear for good? They trimmed their ranks not too long ago; do they still have the best people to take care of my account? Do I have my sales rep’s full attention, or is he looking past me to his next deal? Do I trust this sales rep/provider more than the others we’ve considered? Skeptical in Financial Services Each industry has its own set of trust factors, but there are poignant issues found in financial services. One of the lingering effects of what has been called "The Great Recession" is that many clients remain suspicious of financial institutions. The source of this distrust depends on the part of financial services in which you reside: Clients may have been subjected to tighter credit constraints; decisions that seemed to favor the bank’s interests ahead of theirs; exposure to illiquid, non-performing, or opaque assets; more stringent compliance requirements; or they may simply worry that you are the next Madoff or rogue trader. It is as true in your team’s professional relationships as it is in their personal ones that trust is tough to build and easy to lose. Other recent developments in financial services buyer behavior make it harder for you to build trust: decisions are being made by larger groups, buyers require more transparency into your organization, access to gatekeepers is blocked or limited (including procurement officers), and there is greater intent to shift risk from their organization to yours. Gaining (or Regaining) Client Trust Several years after the financial crisis, we find that clients remain skeptical and that client-facing professionals often avoid difficult conversations about that time or current conditions. After all, why open a can of worms? Well, if the can of worms still exists, acknowledging it conveys that your organization is attuned to and cares about what is happening on the client’s side of the table. Even today, you may have noticed that many of your client-facing professionals and partners favor talking over questioning and listening. By driving a shift in this focus, many sales leaders are prompting their teams to discover (or rediscover) that information is power, enabling them to more effectively frame responses to concerns, as well as offer solutions, ideas, and alternatives. This puts your team in a position in which they are actively engaged in building (or rebuilding) client or partner trust. Focusing on and strengthening your sales team’s questioning and listening skills also improves the impact and efficiency of your business, allowing your team to: Understand and better navigate more complex decision-making groups within client, prospect, and partner organizations; Identify gaps that need to be filled in the client’s understanding of your organization or your team’s solution; and Identify gaps that need to be filled in their understanding of the client, prospect, or partner needs. All of that listening will help you to know how you can best add value to the buyer, their organization, and your relationship. Concentrate on selling and delivering value to your clients and you’ll earn their trust. Keep your promises, and stay in close regular contact before, during, and following the sale. Nurture the relationship, and beware anything that could undermine the trust you’re striving to build. Mistakes are bound to happen at some point — if you’ve built a strong relationship, you may be able to overcome your error based on its severity and the trust you’ve earned. Download our newest E-book,  A Financial Services Leader Guide for Sales Success.      The post Sales Reps Need to Earn Their Clients’ Trust — And Keep It appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

      On behalf of the Richardson team, we wish you and your family a very happy and safe holiday season.     The post Happy Holidays From Richardson appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Why Consultative Selling Fosters Trust In my last blog post, I focused on why Consultative Selling is still relevant. Today, I am going to look at why using  a consultative selling approach can foster trust. A Consultative Selling approach comes to life in the dialogue between the seller and the client with use of the Six Critical Skills: Presence, Relating, Questioning, Listening, Positioning, and Checking. These skills give sellers the ability to navigate the dialogue in the moment by connecting with clients and gaining and keeping their openness and willingness to engage in productive dialogue. Being consultative helps sellers accomplish two important things: They gain needed information to deeply understand client needs, identify the right solution, and tailor what they say about products to ensure relevance and impact, and By maintaining their focus on and connection with the client, they create a positive buying experience for the client that fosters an ongoing relationship and trust. By using the Six Critical Skills in a consultative dialogue, sellers can make sure the client feels heard, respected, understood, helped, and genuinely cared for. Just as important is what the client does not experience: a true consultative approach means the client never feels manipulated. Thus, trust has a place to sow its seeds and grow. So, the outcome of a truly consultative approach is a closer relationship and trust. Consultative selling remains relevant and necessary in today’s selling environment precisely because it provides a foundation for building client trust. Sellers need to bring new ideas and insights to help clients better understand their business issues and identify the best solution to meet their business goals. But, just bringing ideas does not mean clients are receptive to those ideas or willing to invest in them. Trust is a necessary ingredient to the client being truly receptive the seller’s ideas and opposing viewpoints. If trust does not take root early on, the seller’s best ideas will remain suspect, and clients will look to other providers whose ideas they trust. Learn More About Richardson’s Consultative Selling Solutions Click the image below or the following link to download a brochure on our award winning Consultative Selling sales training solutions! Or you can contact Jim Brodo, SVP of marketing directly at Jim.brodo@richardson.com The post Why Consultative Selling Fosters Trust appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Becoming a Trusted Advisor Can Earn You a Seat at the Table "The hardest thing about B2B selling today is that customers don’t need you the way they used to." That is the first sentence of "The End of Solution Sales," an article about the changing environment in business-to-business (B2B) sales that appeared in the July 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review. At the heart of the matter lies the fact that buyer behavior has been radically altered by the Web, even in just the last few years. We have all seen the now magical statistic many times that buyers are 60% of the way through the buying process before they consult with a salesperson. Moreover, the buying process itself now typically has more decision makers, often involving a committee that must reach consensus, instead of a single contact. This adds delays to the selling process, resulting in slower pipeline velocity, more stalled deals, and even the dreaded "no decision" status. Only those who are transactional sellers in a transactional business or those who become trusted advisors have the ear of the right buyers and can move deals through the pipeline effectively. The problem is, "trusted advisor" status can’t be claimed. It has to be earned — and the only opinion that matters is the buyer’s. So, what can sales reps do to differentiate themselves and elevate their status with buyers to become trusted advisors? Here are five tips that I’ve found to be most effective in earning your seat at the table where decisions are made: You have to be proactive — not just reactive to RFPs — and bring buyers new insights and good ideas. You have to shape opportunities rather than wait for specs to be handed down. You have to look out for the best interests of buyers, building a reputation for knowledgeable and workable solutions that add value. You have to be more consultative than transactional. (This helps even in a transactional environment.) You have to balance the pendulum swing in the sales process, knowing when to ask questions and when to provide insights. I recently met with a buyer who told me, "You seem to really understand what I’m trying to accomplish. I’m taking a risk in doing training because we’re not really buying training, we’re trying to buy results. We want to move our business forward, and I see that you get that." What I also get are questions — lots and lots of questions. Buyers tend to bounce ideas off of me. They ask for my views on industry matters. They ask me about my competitors. They’ll also ask whether their competitors are experiencing similar issues and how I’m solving their problems. They see me as a credible resource, a kind of clearinghouse, for best-practice information. When buyers turn to you with questions, seeking your advice and counsel, it’s confirmation of your status as a trusted advisor. And when that happens, you should soon find yourself at the table, as part of the buying process, shaping opportunities rather than reacting to them alongside a crowd of competitors. LEARN MORE ABOUT RICHARDSON’S TRUSTED ADVISOR TRAINING SOLUTIONS If you would like to learn more about Richardson’s customized Trusted Advisor sales training programs, please click here or contact us directly at info@richardson.com The post Becoming a Trusted Advisor Can Earn You a Seat at the Table appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

Benchmarks to Becoming a Trusted Advisor In our  last blog post we  discussed, as a trusted advisor,  how to earn your seat at the table as part of the buying process so that you are able to help shape opportunities rather than just react to them. Today we are going to review the road to becoming a trusted advisor to buyers and the several relationship benchmarks that sales professionals need to keep in mind on their journey. Few things are more important than preparation when meeting with a buyer. How well you prepare can immediately differentiate you from the competition. The focus of your efforts should cover three important areas: Strategic impact: What business goals and objectives is the buyer supporting with this purchase? Buyer needs: What’s important to the buyer on both a business and personal level? Technical preparation: Do you have a thorough knowledge of the product or service you’re selling? Being prepared in the right ways, focusing on these three areas, can go a long way toward securing that elusive second meeting with buyers, especially on the executive level. If you don’t ask the right questions, if you can’t provide executives something they don’t already know, why should they buy from you? Another important consideration in your preparations is to focus on leading, not lagging, indicators of success. Doing so adds relevancy to the conversation. At Richardson, we talk about different value lenses, with different facets to view how we present these leading indicators, and ourselves, to buyers: Financial: How are we helping buyers meet their financial goals? Technology: Are we helping them to steer clear of the noise and hype that surrounds technology solutions to focus on what really matters? Strategy: Does our solution fit within the overarching goals of the buyer? Partnership: Are we making a solid case for the value of working with Richardson? In our Trusted Advisor Sales Training Program, we overlay the preparation model on these value lenses. This gives sales professionals a practical framework and the tools to think in depth about the behaviors needed to become a trusted advisor. And you get a better idea of how to address leading indicators, because these will be the measure of success, and how likely you are to close a deal instead of having it stall in the pipeline. By recognizing some of the benchmarks of becoming a trusted advisor, you can begin to have higher-level conversations with buyers about their current and long-term objectives, challenges, strategies, and opportunities. Then you can position your value while demonstrating insight and technical substance. And, in the process, become that go-to professional all your results driven buyers will want to have sitting alongside them at the table. ————————————————————- LEARN MORE ABOUT RICHARDSON’S TRUSTED ADVISOR SALES TRAINING SOLUTIONS If you would like to learn more about Richardson’s customized Trusted Advisor sales training programs, please click here or contact us directly at info@richardson.com   The post Benchmarks to Becoming a Trusted Advisor appeared first on The Richardson Sales Excellence Review™.

5 Sales Forecasting Techniques to Improve The key to improving the accuracy in sales forecasting rests with knowing what you need to measure to find out what you want to know. With today’s technology and the near ubiquity of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, it’s more important than ever to give forethought into how you construct your sales forecasts. Otherwise, the data that you get from your time and technology investment may not be what you need to make the right decisions or achieve a real difference in results. Here are five things that matter most in sales forecasting: Don’t bother with CRM if you don’t have a sales process. Without an effective sales process in place, how can you trust your CRM technology to provide relevant insights into where deals are stalled or progressing in your pipeline? How can you begin to measure verifiable outcomes and assess the performance (or coaching needs) of your sales force? How will you recognize leading indicators of customer engagement and gain greater confidence in forecasts? There’s an old saying: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Without a sales process, the metrics you pull from your CRM will often be just numbers. Forecast with metrics that matter. Many sales forecasts are built on probability analysis using weighted metrics. The scenario might go something like this: My historical win rate for opportunities in Stage Two of my pipeline is 50%, so by doing the math, I can forecast revenues of $X in the current quarter. But, win rates are only one layer of the answer. You need to ask more questions and fine-tune your metrics to get a better probability breakdown. How accurate are your sales reps at quantifying their sales opportunities? How well can they predict the timing of revenue once the deal is won? If you only look at win rates, you only get a myopic perspective. Dig deeper. A probability-based sales forecast assigns values to different verifiable outcomes within the sales pipeline. Let’s say those values are 25% for an opportunity in the "analyze and develop" stage, 25% for "position and follow up," and "50%" for "negotiate and close." The problem is that these analytical slices can give you a more conservative view of your forecast than necessary. That’s because you typically don’t win a percentage of a deal: it’s either win or lose. If you just use a probability approach, you will only consider part of the deal’s value in the overall calculation. What I do at Richardson is use different weighted-metric probability analyses as my pressure test for the overall forecast and to give the executive team better support for a scenario range. Then, I take a secondary look using a model that is based on risk and scenarios, focusing on a roll-up that is based on the likelihood that my sales reps and managers provide on the deals they have in the pipeline. Know your sales reps. One thing that gives me more confidence when using a risk-based approach in forecasting is knowing my sales reps. I also know that having a 90% win rate doesn’t mean someone is a super sales rep; rather, that sales rep might only be entering deals into the pipeline that he/she knows can be won. Conversely, someone who puts everything into the pipeline might have a low win rate, even though that sales rep performs well. I can look at the Richardson pipeline and know immediately how reliable I think it’s going to be based on which sales rep entered the deal, when it was entered, and where it came from. This kind of sixth sense comes from my knowing and working well with the entire Richardson team, including regional vice presidents, managers, and sales reps. I can do this because we are a small organization. In larger organizations, you have to rely on your sales managers and sales executives for this thin-slicing. In addition, tools like those offered by Marseli and others allow companies to automatically score opportunities based on criteria, such as how often a close date moves, to get a quick-strike thin-slice that is more data driven. Recognize the art and science of sales forecasting. There is no one right way to leverage your CRM for sales forecasting. You have to take into account various metrics and to trust those in the sales organization who can thin-slice the data. You need to understand the analytics and to develop an intuitive sense about what is credible and what needs further proof. Most of all, you should accept that forecasting is both an art and a science. Learn more about Richardson Sales Coaching Training Solutions! The post Sales Forecasting Techniques - The 5 Things That Matter Most! appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

How do you get the most out of your CRM for Sales Forecasting? If you were an early adopter of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, you probably found it to be an expensive, complex tool that often fell short of delivering on expectations. Today, CRM is easier to use, more cost effective, and a must-have for managing nearly every aspect of business data. Now that you either have or are probably considering a CRM system, how do you get the most out of it? Here are five tips for leveraging your CRM for sales forecasting to gain greater confidence in sales forecast accuracy: 1) Understand the primary purpose of your CRM. There are many, many applications that you can layer on today’s CRM systems, but the key is restraint. To get the most out of your CRM, you need to embrace its primary purpose as a customer relationship management platform. So, use it in that regard to manage your relationships and sales opportunities. Don’t get stuck in the trap of trying to make your CRM do everything it possibly can, or it will become too complex for the everyday use intended. 2) Don’t use your CRM to fix operational inefficiencies. Yes, there are cool systems and platforms that can bring rich functionality into your CRM. You can layer in project management and integrate it with your financial systems. These add-ins can provide a lot of additional data, and it’s tempting to use the CRM to try and fix operational inefficiencies. But, while a CRM can do many things, it first must be a customer relationship management platform. Your priority when configuring the technology should be to make it more useful for your sales team and managing those relationships and to not make it more complicated and cumbersome. The key is to think about marketing, sales, and customer service first. Once you have those nailed down, you can layer in additional uses more effectively. It’s when you lose sight of priorities that the CRM can become a jumbled, nonstrategic barrier to productivity. 3) Align your CRM with your sales process. You need to be thoughtful about how your CRM is initially set up. The first step should be to develop your organization’s sales process. Then, make sure your CRM can mirror and align with that sales process. At every step in development, you should be thinking from this perspective: How does this help me better understand and serve my customer? How does this benefit my sales team, and how does it get my sales rep, my sales manager, and the executive leadership the information they need to effectively manage this business, close deals, and gain insight into forecasting and predicting performance? 4) Add the right functionality. When considering what functionality to add to your CRM, approach it from a sales perspective. What does a sales rep need to do in order to manage deals effectively? What makes it easier for sales reps to gain access to the information they need about their clients and their deals? One key element to consider is a content management platform so that sales reps have easier access to marketing materials and other internally developed content that help them promote and sell. LinkedIn and other social media platforms can be integrated into your CRM so that sales reps can more easily connect with prospects, get leads, and gain insights into their contacts and industry issues. And, with e-mail and other communication systems integrated in the CRM, sales reps can approach prospects and contacts directly and avoid duplication of effort in taking notes and updating records. Accessibility on mobile applications and devices is a given in today’s on-the-go environment. Just make sure that your CRM mobile apps are thoughtfully developed and designed for ease of use. 5) Maintain good relationships across departments. Being in Sales Operations, I make sure to maintain good relationships across the company and stay informed about what’s happening in other departments. As people make decisions in their areas of the business, I need to be able to determine whether it makes sense to integrate their initiative into the CRM to both make their information more accessible to the sales team and better serve customers. Any time you create something that is supposed to provide more information or value to the sales team, make sure that the team can take advantage of it easily and without adding yet another place to go to access the data. Just remember, the CRM is first and foremost a sales tool. While it can also be useful in sharing knowledge and information across an organization, the key is to find a balance that works for your sales reps and your leadership team. Ease of use and sales support: those are my priorities with CRM technology. Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post 5 Tips to Leverage Your CRM for Sales Forecasting appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

Sales Prospecting Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint! It’s OK to want immediate results from sales prospecting. In an ideal world, every call would lead to an appointment and the start of a beautiful business relationship. A more realistic view, however, is one that recognizes sales prospecting as the long-term activity it most often becomes. Too many people gauge sales prospecting success by the number of appointments scheduled. Yet, if your two-minute call only focused on getting in the door and your conversation didn’t cover any meaningful ground, you won’t be well prepared for any appointment that might result. So, your first meeting could easily be your last with that prospect. I judge sales prospecting success by engagement, the kind of dialogue conducted, and whether I was able to gain a greater understanding of the prospect’s needs. Success is being able to take the next step in forming a relationship or, better yet, a partnership. An appointment may not come out of the first or second or third conversation. But, when I do finally get in the door, it will be because I have engaged the prospect in learning more about how I can solve the needs or problems at hand. When you bring value to conversations and put the prospect first, it becomes easier to schedule follow-up calls. And your calls tend to get answered. At least, that’s been my experience with a high percentage of prospects whenever I take a long-term view. With repeated contact, I am able to identify the challenges that the prospect is facing, along with the current landscape and the scope of the prospect’s situation. By the fourth or fifth phone call, I have a good understanding of what’s going on with that person, and I can solidly position my message as a meaningful solution. For some sales professionals, picking up the phone to make prospecting calls is their least favorite activity. They do everything they can to avoid time on the phone because they don’t enjoy the rejection and hang ups. But, there are ways to improve your odds of getting through on the phone. In my previous blog post, I discussed the Do’s and Don’ts of Sales Prospecting, the following are several approaches to sales prospecting that work for me: Consistency and discipline. If you’re making prospecting calls week in and week out, dedicating a half-day each week, you might be able to reach out to a particular prospect eight times within 60 days. If you only get around to making prospecting calls twice a month, you’ll only touch that prospect four times. By making a consistent, weekly effort, your persistence should work in your favor. Watch the clock. If you’re trying to engage a senior leader, you might try calling at 7:30 in the morning or 5:30 at night. These slightly off-hour calls are more likely to be picked up by your target, rather than an assistant acting as gatekeeper. Build rapport with gatekeepers. It is the job of executive assistants to vet incoming phone calls. The person in this role is often seen as a barrier to entry, but if you can get them on your side, your calls have a greater chance of being put through. Sometimes, assistants can be your best resource, and if you show value by sharing some of the conversation you want to have with the executive, the task shifts from whether to let your call through to when would be the best time. The time spent sales prospecting should never be considered a waste. If you don’t get an appointment, you can always try again with that person — or learn enough to know that it’s best to move on. And, if you do get an appointment and you’ve made sure that first call began to engage the prospect, you’ll be better positioned when you do finally sit together, face-to-face.   Click the following to learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post Sales Prospecting Takes a Long-term View appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

Moving Beyond Price: Differentiating Yourself through a Consultative Selling Approach When we interview our clients to learn why they picked us for a sales training solution, the reason we hear given most often isn’t what you might expect. Although we offer comprehensive sales solutions, exceptional customization capabilities, outstanding facilitators, and many other tangible strengths, the reason we hear the most is that "you were the best fit." When we look further into that answer, we usually hear phrases, such as "you really got our business and our culture" and "we had confidence in your ability to deliver what we need." In a time when buyers have instant access to volumes of information at their fingertips, soft factors still matter. They can matter a lot. As a sales professional, you work in a world where your competitors may be able to match you in price, product quality, and even features. So, how do you convince a potential client to buy from you? You must use a consultative selling approach to help differentiate your solution and yourself from your competitors. You don’t just offer yourself as someone who can supply good solutions; you offer yourself as someone who is fully vested in the client’s success, not just someone trying to sell to the client. You strive to be the best "fit." So, how do you become the best fit? This process starts with preparation before the conversation. You need to identify the decision makers and understand what matters to them the most. Your preparation also supports qualifying opportunities and making sure you are going after opportunities that align with your strengths. Preparation ensures that you have enough competitive intelligence to not just compete feature against feature but also to really describe how your solution aligns with client priorities and the factors that matter most to the decision makers. It’s not just a one-way process sale, but a truly collaborative sale. To do this, find out how to connect what you offer with what the client needs. Move beyond price, but don’t forget about price. One of our trainers offers some sage advice on how this might be done: I think one of the first things is don’t ignore price. Acknowledge that price is a factor. I think early on in the process, try to qualify that opportunity with the customer. Is this somebody who truly is just price shopping? They’ve got a relationship already, and they’re just seeing if you could save them some ridiculous amount of money. Otherwise, they have no intention of moving. So, acknowledge it; seek to qualify it. When we get to discussing price understand the customer well enough at that time to be able to lean on real value, not generic value but value to the customer. If the client is basing a decision on more than just price and solution features, start by asking questions. Be curious. Seek to understand as much as you can about that person — his/her goals, aspirations, and accountabilities — before you start talking about the different ways that you can help them do specifics. But, too often, the questions are really eligibility questions — can the client afford what you are selling? — which then turns into a near rote recitation of product features and, possibly, some benefits. You will achieve much higher hit-rates if you just relax and qualify a little bit better and sooner. When your client is "in the moment," ask people questions. ask more questions; ask deeper questions; ask broader questions, ask open-ended questions. Ask comprehensive questions because what you’re after here is to learn about the client. Ask questions to get the information you need to create a win-win outcome. Ask questions to get at least some idea of how the client thinks. The client wants someone who provides a product or service that they need at a price that they consider a good value. The client wants a real solution to a real problem. The client also wants someone not only with whom the client can do business with, but with whom they want to do business. When you convince the client you are this person and company, you have differentiated yourself and are well on the way to a successful sale. Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post Moving Beyond Price: Differentiating Yourself through a Consultative Selling Approach appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.

Creating a compelling Case Against No Action is Critical in Closing a Deal. Learn 3 Sales Closing Techniques to Help Clients and Prospects Get More Invested So It Feels you’re Closing the Deal Together One of the skills we reinforce and model during Richardson sales training sessions is the Close: asking for the business or next steps to maintain momentum on sales opportunities. This is something sales professionals struggle with, as do clients who don’t want to be pressured into making buying decisions. That’s why getting clients invested in the Close early on in the sales process is so important. How this plays out is a lesson in role play — not the kind we do in our training sessions but in adopting different roles depending on the sales scenario. Here are three sales closing techniques and roles for getting clients invested in the Close: Be a cheerleader. Early in a sales call, talk to the person about desired results. Learn what is important to them both professionally and personally. With that information, you can become a cheerleader giving them a pep talk. "You are in a position where this could be career defining for you. Have you ever thought of it this way?" Then paint a picture with examples and evidence to support this statement. People who are fortunate enough to be leading these kinds of projects have the opportunity to make an impact in a meaningful way. Be a visionary. The more insight you can provide someone — from anticipating potential barriers or navigating within their organization to assisting them with their own internal business cases — you are helping them to become evangelists for the project, both when you’re there, and even more important, when you’re not. It’s this kind of behind-the-scenes support that can make a real difference. If you can identify sponsors and then develop them so that they have this level of commitment to the project, then the Close becomes very reliable. Be a politician. Often, there is more than one person involved in a buying decision. With complex deals, there might even be a steering committee or other groups of stakeholders. It’s important for you to understand the political currents that can affect the Close. For example, the steering committee typically will schedule an important meeting to discuss the pending decision. This is where the team leader will take a recommendation forward and the steering team will have a conversation and make a decision. In this scenario, prepare your clients for something that they may not expect: an anti-sponsor. Be ready for the moment when that person tries to turn the conversation in the opposite direction. Ask them to identify someone, in advance, who has high credibility with the team and can bring the conversation back on track. This is crucial because deals can be lost in that moment; however, if you protect the direction of the conversation, the moment passes, and the deal can be saved. When you take on these different roles, supporting and nurturing the deal, your clients can become so invested in the Close that it’s almost like you’re closing the deal together. Learn more about Richardson’s Consultative Selling Sales Training Solutions. The post 3 Sales Closing Techniques for Getting Clients Invested in the Deal appeared first on Richardson Sales Enablement Blog.