Keeping Sales Moving Forward

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Selling can be a tough profession. Keeping sales moving forward can feel like you’re slogging through mud.

Even though every living human being is selling himself or herself every day that they interact with others, you have chosen to sell in order to house and feed yourself and your loved ones. You face rejection on a daily basis, and the level of success you achieve is really all about the no’s.

You may very well hear something like this on an average day:

“Well, Jim, that new equipment you showed me sure is nice, but unfortunately I’m just going to have to say, ‘no.’”

“We appreciate all the information you’ve shared with us, Mary, but we’re not going to do this right now.”

How you respond when you hear things like that is what makes the difference between eating peanut butter sandwiches at home and being served your meal at a nice restaurant.

So, how do you respond when you hear the word “no?” Does your gut react by wrenching a bit? Do your shoulders sink in defeat? Does it show in your eyes that you’ve given up and are mentally moving on? If so, you’re probably only earning an average income, if that.

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About the Authors

Tom Hopkins is the founder and president of the renowned sales training service Tom Hopkins International. He is a member of the National Speakers Bureau and is the author of the national bestseller How to Master the Art of Selling. Today, more than 35,000 corporations and millions of professional salespeople throughout the world utilize his professional sales training materials.

Ben Katt is a multi-million dollar producer in corporate sales, and has a long track record when it comes to ‘sealing the deal.’ He has been instrumental in turning around several top companies and their sales records.

The Advisor’s Corner – How do I ask for a raise or promotion?

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How do I ask for a raise or promotion?Question:

How do I ask for a raise or promotion?

StrategyDriven Response: (by Roxi Hewertson, StrategyDriven Principal Contributor)

Think about it this way – you lose nothing by advocating for the pay and position you deserve. If the answer you receive is ‘no,’ then you’ll be right where you are now except you will know a lot more about whether or not you should stay.

Reframe your thinking. While you certainly have everything to do with the way the job is being done, there is more. When you take the emotion out of it, you will be talking to your boss about the business value of the job you are doing. This can help the conversation to be data driven vs. personal.

5 TIPS to Help You Self-advocate

1. Know yourself. Make sure you are 100% sure the job you are doing IS actually a great job. Ask for feedback about what you are doing well and what you can do better from your boss, peers, customers, and if you have them, direct reports. Write down what they say and keep a log. Another part of knowing yourself is knowing what you are and are not willing to do for that promotion. Are the hours longer, is there travel, do you have to manage others? All of these factors will impact your life. So consider what matters most to you.

2. Know your stuff. Make sure your work is truly adding value to your company/organization and be prepared to prove it. Speak to your results – behavioral and business. Your behaviors are critical to your success. Do you ‘play well with others?’ What about your business results? Answering the questions about your behavior and business results will help you think clearly about what data you need to collect.

3. Know your people. Make sure you know how your boss needs to hear and see things. Does he/she like just the facts, conceptual framework, objectivity, ideas? If you don’t know, you’re missing the train. HOW you ask is as important as WHAT you ask. This includes timing. Don’t have this conversation in the midst of a crisis, on Friday afternoon, or just before you or your boss go on vacation. Have it when you are prepared, he/she has a heads up (bosses don’t like surprises) that you’d like to discuss changes/new expectations/results in your role.

4. Know your system. Make sure you know how and when your organization allows for raises. Is there a new job description needed? Is there a pay scale system that can back you up? Are raises only given once a year or are there bonuses, etcetera? Talk to your HR people to learn what is possible in your system.

5. Know your options. Make sure you are aware of your and your job’s value in the market place. Search Salary.com, Glassdoor.com and job sites like Monster.com, Snagajob.com for a similar job to yours or the job you want to be doing. Identify the education/experience/competencies needed to be qualified, and then do some ‘mining’ of the data that’s out there on the internet. You now have even more objective data to include if it supports your request.

Finally, if you feeling undervalued, ask yourself why you feel this way. Is it your relationship with your boss or is it the job or is it the pay or some combination? Sometimes we confuse these. Getting objective will help. When you know the answers and have collected your data, you are ready to change what needs to change – your pay, your title, your boss, your job, your company, or… yourself.

About the Author

Leadership authority Roxana (Roxi) Hewertson is a no-nonsense business veteran revered for her nuts-and-bolts, tell-it-like-it-is approach and practical, out-of-the-box insights that help both emerging and expert managers, executives and owners boost quantifiable job performance in various mission critical facets of business. Through AskRoxi.com, Roxi — “the Dear Abby of Leadership” — imparts invaluable free advice to managers and leaders at all levels, from the bullpen to the boardroom, to help them solve problems, become more effective and realize a higher measure of business and career success.

The StrategyDriven website was created to provide members of our community with insights to the actions that help create the shared vision, focus, and commitment needed to improve organizational alignment and accountability for the achievement of superior results. We look forward to answering your strategic planning and tactical business execution questions. Please email your questions to [email protected].

Management Observation Program Best Practice 11 – Anyone Can Write an Observation

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StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Best Practice ArticleThe name, Management Observation Program, suggests that authorship of these documented performance assessments are or should be limited to those who supervise work. Yet, in a healthy organization, workers are encouraged to provide upward feedback and report conditions adverse to quality. All organizations should embrace a safety culture within which individuals are responsible for both their safety and the safety of their coworkers. (See StrategyDriven whitepaper, Preventing Catastrophic Industrial Accidents) So why not allow everyone within the organization to submit management observations?

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Is it a sales plan or a state of mind that feels support?

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All salespeople are given a plan, a quota, or some kind of ‘numbers’ to achieve as a major part of their job requirement.

The key word is ‘part.’ The plan or the quota is a SMALL part of the achievement process.

How the company and leader supports the salesperson and his or her sales effort is another part – the MAJOR part.

The tools, the training, and the encouragement to achieve will determine the salesperson’s ultimate belief, effort, and outcome. (AKA: Results)

Sales leaders will always make value judgments on their salespeople’s ability to produce numbers, but rarely will they step up to bat and self-evaluate their own effort to support and encourage their salespeople.

Sales leaders are quick to judge the capability of their salespeople strictly by the numbers. They get reports to keep accountability high. They get reports to check on activity. They get reports to check the numbers.

CLASSIC EXAMPLE: If the number each salesperson is to achieve requires cold calling as a major part of the sales function, more than 50 percent will NOT make the grade. They will become discouraged by a 95 percent or more failure (rejection) rate, be unhappy, feel pressure, most likely lie on their sales report, and ultimately quit (or be fired).

SALES REALITY: Most salespeople resent the fact that they are held accountable for certain numbers that don’t have anything to do with actually making sales. In addition, most salespeople resent the fact that their sales training is focused on the product rather than selling skills.

BIGGER SALES REALITY. Sales is not numbers, it’s a rhythm. Any kind of sales requires you to get into a rhythm, and that rhythm be consistent. It’s not the song, it’s the backbeat. Backbeat provides the glue to music. Bass and drums, not lead guitar or vocals. Consistent beat, not a one-minute solo.

BIGGEST SALES REALITY. In order for salespeople to feel ‘in the groove,’ and get the sales rhythm, there has to be leadership support, and there has to be leadership encouragement.

Leadership has to change the word accountability to the word responsibility. The salesperson is responsible for himself or herself, responsible for their outcomes, and responsible to their boss and their company for productivity.

Once the salesperson becomes a responsible salesperson they are automatically accountable to everyone without ever saying the word ‘accountable.’

But the boss and the company also have their own responsibility to support that salesperson 150 percent.

Here are the 7.5 responsibilities sales leadership has to salespeople in order for them to make their numbers happen without ever saying the word ‘accountability’:
1. Impeccable company, product, and service reputation. This is foundational and fundamental to a salesperson’s belief system, and a prospective customer’s belief system. Belief fuels enthusiasm. NOTE WELL: Reputation arrives way before salespeople arrive.
2. Social media attraction. Active participation in social media is no longer an option; it’s an imperative. And active participation, including one-on-one communications with customers, creates attraction. Attraction is also known as leads.
3. On-demand, web based sales and personal development training. Salespeople need information and answers in order to make sales. The right training will both help the salesperson and encourage the salesperson. If they can access sales information on their mobile device while they’re waiting in the lobby for a sales appointment, salespeople will gain a new self-confidence that will help them make the sale. (Go to www.gitomerVT.com to see an example.)
4. An easy-to-implement philosophical approach to the sale. There must be an approach and a strategy to the sale that salespeople are comfortable with, and will employ during the selling process. One that takes the emotion of the selling process and converts it to a customer buying process.
5. The ability to differentiate FROM the competition. Salespeople need a value proposition, value-based statements, and value-based questions to genuinely engage any customer or prospect. And that value must be perceived as value by the customer.
6. Genuine, real-world, hands-on leadership encouragement. Salespeople want to feel the love and the support of leadership, not the pressure. Senior-level executives, and sales leaders, must be out on sales calls as often as possible. This way they discover the real world – the real world of making sales that will help them when they make the next sales plan.
7. A generous comp plan. When the comp plan changes, make sure the compensation goes up. Salespeople need a monetary carrot in order to perform at their highest level.
7.5 Internal harmony. Whatever your internal process is, there must be a harmony between sales, accounting, shipping, and any internal administration that deals directly with salespeople and/or customers.

I’ve just given you the tip of the sales performance iceberg. Most of the iceberg is not visible if the salesperson is fighting market conditions, customers, and competition to gain a competitive and profitable edge.

NON-SECRET FORMULA FOR SALES SUCCESS: Give salespeople encouragement and support and they will give you sales.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

The Big Picture of Business – Communications Reflect Your Strategy

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The biggest problem with our business in our society, in a capsule sentence: People with one set of experiences, values, wants and perceptions make mis-targeted attempts to communicate with others in trying to get what they want and need.

Success is just in front of our faces. Yet, we often fail to see it coming. Too many companies live with their heads in the sand. Many go down into defeat because it was never on their radar to change.

One of the biggest cop-outs that businesses in denial use is the term Messaging. They say, “We’re in the right business. We only need to improve our messaging.” That’s a rationalization to avoid confronting key strategic issues.

7 Biggest Communication Obstacles:

  1. Lack of people skills, manners
  2. Wrong facts
  3. Denial-avoidance of the real issues
  4. Non-communication
  5. Saying the wrong things at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons
  6. Failure to pick up subtle clues
  7. Failure to master communication as an art

7 Levels of Communicating:

  1. Sending out messages we wish-need to communicate.
  2. Sending messages which are intended for the listener.
  3. Communicating with many people at the same time.
  4. Eliciting feedback from audiences.
  5. Two-way communication process.
  6. Adapting and improving communications with experience.
  7. Developing communications as a vital tool of business and life.

Lack of communication is symptomatic of fear, which is the biggest handicap for any company. Because of fear, productivity suffers, turnover increases and profitability drops. There are four main fears in the business environment:

  • Reprisal. This includes disciplining, termination, transfer to an undesirable position. When employees fear reprisal, more effort is spent on affixing blame to others than achieving pro-active progress.
  • Communication. Rather than risk going out on a limb, employees either don’t learn or use their communication skills. This stymies employees’ professional development and hampers company productivity.
  • Not knowing. Rather than admit areas where information is lacking, employees often cover up, disseminating erroneous data, which comes back to hurt others. The wise employee has the building of knowledge a part of their career path… sharing with others what we most recently and most effectively learn.
  • Change. Managers and employees with the most to lose are most fearful of change. Their biggest fear is the unknown. Research shows that 90% of change is good. If people knew how beneficial that change is, they would not fight it so much.

Each member of the organization should understand and covet the position they play. It is just as important how, when and why we communicate with each other:

  • Shows that the company is a seamless concept… an integrated team working for the good of customers.
  • Indicates sophistication by each representative… that every team player knows how to utilize each other for mutual benefit.
  • Reminds customers that the company is detail-focused and quality-oriented… with an eye toward continually improving.
  • Underscores how internal communications are comparable to the way we will interface with customers.

Pictures Convey Impressions, Symbolic of Corporate Culture.

One of the hottest and most accessible vehicles is the photograph. With cameras now on phones, people are snapping more pictures than ever before. Some get distributed on the internet, through social media and in direct transfer to friends.

This resurgence in photography comes after a conversion of the industry from film to digital. Photography is presently at an all-time high in terms of societal impact. The irony is that its principal corporate contributor (Eastman Kodak) fell by the wayside, a victim of changing technologies. The same fate had fallen the electronics industry, whose innovator (the Thomas Edison Electric Company) fell behind others in leading the trends and usage.

Photographs convey thoughts, ideas and experiences. Hopefully, their usages represent thoughtful communications. Organizations can see photography as a boon to their business, if utilized properly.

Every business person and company needs a website and social media presence. Photographs convey what you’re doing new. They’re indicative of the scope of your business activity.

Use photography to personify the company. Pictures draw relationships to the customers. Think of creative ways to show employees doing great work. Show customers as benefiting from the services that you offer.

Most companies would do well to devote a portion of its homepage to its charitable involvements. Show employees as being engaged in community activities. Promote and graphically portray your company’s designated cause-related marketing activities. Interface with outside communities tends to grow your stakeholder base.

Don’t just view photography as something that everyone does. Establish company ground rules for the usage of pictures. Tie activities to customer outcomes (the tenet of Customer Focused Management).

Nourish Communications Skills

It is important to generate ideas and suggestions via writing memos, E-mail messages and internal documents. Their succinctness and regularity of issue have a direct relationship to your compensation and the company’s bottom line.

Before presenting ideas to a customer or prospect, consider organizing your approach:

  • Predict reasons why someone might oppose your suggestions.
  • Seek out supporters, early-on.
  • Determine goals. Is the objective to get the idea accepted or get credit for it?
  • Understand your audience. Understand differing personality types of your audiences.
  • Think of yourselves as leaders, who are good communicators.
  • Listen as others amplify upon the idea, which shows their buy-in potential.
  • Determine as much accuracy in others’ perceptions to your ideas. Don’t fool yourself or be blind-sighted to opposition.
  • Throw out decoy ideas for others to shoot down, so they don’t attack your core message.
  • Use language that is easily understood by all. Avoid technical terms, unless you include brief definitions.
  • Don’t over-exaggerate in promises and predictions.

Other pointers in effectively communicating include:

  • Speak with authority.
  • Make the most of face-to-face meetings, rather than through artificial barriers.
  • Remember that voice inflection, eye contact and body language are more important than the words you use.
  • Charts, graphs and illustrative materials make more impact for your points.
  • Don’t assume anything. If in doubt about their understanding, ask qualifying questions. Become a better listener.
  • Sound the best on the phone that you can.
  • Use humor successfully.
  • Get feedback. Validate that audiences have heard your intended messages.
  • Attitude is everything in effective communications.

About the Author

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flameis now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.