Accompaniments are a vital coaching tool

Having conducted hundreds of field-based accompaniments, I've become a huge fan of them because they can be an invaluable coaching tool. Finding the time to accompany sales people during their sales calls provides Sales Leaders with a powerful opportunity to directly influence performance and consequently results. There are a number of benefits that can be achieved from this:

  • Assessment of sales person ‘on the job’ can reinforce what they are doing well and identify areas they need to improve. This provides focus for the individual on development actions that will make the biggest difference to their performance.
  • The closer feedback is given to the sales person, the easier it is to incorporate and install at an unconscious level.
  • Strengthens the relationship between the Sales Leader and sales person that motivates and inspires good performance.
  • Provides tangible evidence for appraisal and review meetings.
  • Enables the Sales Leader to meet customers to get a better understanding of the ‘frontline’ relationship to assess customer satisfaction levels.
  • Provides opportunity to demonstrate a ‘model of excellence’ to show sales people areas of improvement they might not have considered previously.

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An audience with Charisma!

Or to put it another way, how interested are you in the art of developing presence and gravitas?

Watch this space or keep track of the interesting events held at The Globe Theatre because we are 'on the verge' of launching a powerful new two day event that installs and proves increased charismatic presence within 48 hours.

I know you shouldn't really use your blog to promote your stuff yet I know what we are about to do is cutting-edge and will absolutely create controversy and impact. AND I'm so excited about it!!!!!1

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The Sales Activator® meets Johari

The Johari Window model is a simple and useful tool for illustrating andimproving self-awareness, and mutual understanding between individuals within agroup. The Johari Window tool can also be used to assess and improve a group'srelationship with other groups. The Johari Window model was developed byAmerican psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in the 1950's, whileresearching group dynamics. Today the Johari Window model is especiallyrelevant due to modern emphasis on, and influence of, 'soft' skills, behaviour,empathy, cooperation, inter-group development and interpersonal development.

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Cold Calling - a powerful strategy for growth or simply a waste of time?

Typically the investment to win a new customer is 5 – 10 times higher for most organisations in comparison to generating additional business from existing customers. Therefore, it makes commercial sense to optimise sales from existing customers by taking action to minimise the risk of losing them and identifying additional sales opportunities. Yet, is it realistic to predict sustainable year-on-year growth by depending on existing customers?

 

 The organisations that rely on their existing customers for ongoing sales revenue are quickly overtaken by organisations that have a clearly defined strategy in place for the acquisition of new customers. This is a widely accepted viewpoint that leads to the question, what is the best approach for winning new customers?

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The key to making your salespeople 20 times more productive

Based on in-depth interviews with over 1000 corporatecustomers, The Chally Group uncovered a surprise finding. Salespeople who havea half -day one-to-one with their manager every week are 20 times moreproductive than other salespeople. This highlights the extraordinary fact thata sales manager cannot be fully effective if they manage a team of more thanfive people. This point is underpinned in a Directors’ Briefing for BusinessHotline Publications that recommends regular one-to-one meetings to discussobjectives, performance and problems. 

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The Creation of an Objection

“You attract to you the predominant thoughts that you’re holding in your awareness, whether those thoughts are conscious or unconscious.” Michael Bernard Beckwith

 

Before attempting to handle any type of objection, it’s important to begin by looking at the beliefs that sales people are holding in their minds. If they are focusing on what objections they believe they will encounter, they will unconsciously transmit these thoughts to their prospects.

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Changing Behaviours and Results

When I started developing The Sales Activator® I had a clear vision for how we would sell and market this product, internationally. As our experience and knowledge grew we made changes, some minor ones and also some major ones. Having re-launched our new sales strategy only recently, I was once again reminded of the mixed bag of emotions that change ignites in people. Sales Managers by the very nature of their job role are required to be flexible and adapt to new customers, new sales people, new sales strategies all arising from the desire to retain a competitive advantage. Just as we adapt to seasonal change, the better we are able to manage and handle change, creates a vital difference to our overall performance. This week I want to communicate practical insights that can help Sales Managers change behaviours of their team.

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Sales Leadership - rising to the challenge

In 2004, I conducted a large piece of research  with 2663 organisations that highlighted a major barrier to sales success was the failure to choose and develop a Sales Leadership Team that nurtures and develops their sales people’s potential. The majority of Sales Leaders, new and experienced alike, say they do not have sufficient time or the resources to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results, and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results, that they overlook their greatest potential source of power -the power to increase sales performance by developing their people. Every Sales Leader who places an increasing emphasis on performance management will create more productive sales teams. As Colin Mattey, Director, BT Commercial & Brands summarises so eloquently “Performance Management has come to the fore recently in BT Commercial & Brands, and that’s a great thing, but you have to create frameworks where people can actually deal with performance management.” 

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The Iceberg Model

Results are the outcome we achieve and you can't do a result. Results are a consequence of other causes. The quickest way to increase sales results is by improving the performance of sales people. There are a number of elements that create performance:

    Iceberg Model
  • The quality and quantity of sales activities will have an impact on overall performance. For example the number of calls made to new prospects, what actions the salesperson takes to accelerate their prospects through the pipeline etc
  • The level of skill and knowledge the salesperson possesses when in front of the prospect/customer. For example their ability to build rapport, how they answer questions to discover the prospect's requirements etc
  • Beliefs that each salesperson holds in their mind can help or hinder their performance. For example if salespeople believe that being able to offer cheaper prices would win them more business then they will unconsciously create more price objections. Beliefs and mindset are often an area that many organisations find the hardest area to address.
  • Finally a person's values will have an impact on their performance because values are what is fundamentally important to us and are the fuel that drive our behaviour. For example if we aren't motivated to want to achieve our targets or lack the motivation to want to develop then this will negatively impact on our overall sales performance

The ideal performance improvement system should always seek to address all these areas detailed on The Iceberg Model.

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Wrapping up Rapport

It's funny really, because with all my NLP training I still manage to manifest resistance from the odd person or two. Of course the recognition that I am in control of the way I interact with others is always with me, yet sometimes I become lazy and at some unconscious level decide that I don't want to connect with an individual. Not surprisingly those 'relating' moments are fraught with frustration and irritation until I sheepishly give up and start getting into the other person's model of the world. Whether I like a person or not, it is so much easier to communicate when the rapport levels are high.
That's why I have always believed that rapport is the greatest skill that a salesperson can possess and have been known to devote two entire days of training course just to this one technique. 

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Instant Development with Feedback

At the weekend I had an unusual lunch guest who turned out to be the Junior Olympic Gymnast Coach. For my daughter Rose, this was simply awesome as she has just learned to do flips (a somersault) on her trampoline. Marie, my guest gave her feedback after every flip, and I could see Rose improving almost instantly. Within just 10 minutes I saw physical evidence of the impact that feedback can have on performance. I guess the key point to make here, is if the feedback is given well. 
So I'd like to bounce off some of my learnings and insights about feedback and would love to hear about any feedback techniques that have worked really well for you.

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Reality or Illusion?

Yesterday, I had a group of friends round for Sunday Lunch who I'd met whilst doing my Firewalking Instructor course. It's not often I feel in awe of people and yesterday's lunch was a honeypot of dazzling talent, that has stimulated this week's article!

Before looking outwards at other people, we need to look at ourselves, because each of us is a unique human being with our own desires, dreams, problems and thoughts. To understand how we can communicate more effectively with other people we need to understand the human communication process.

Every moment our unconscious mind absorbs over 2 million bits of information through our senses. We are bombarded moment by moment with sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches. Yet according to Professor George Miller from Harvard University we can only process around 7 chunks of information consciously at any given moment. Think about it, that’s an awful lot of information that our conscious mind chooses to ignore or to be more accurate, delete! This means that every individual will process information based on what they a focussing on at that time. Take a moment and focus your attention on your feet, is it your left or your right foot that is starting to tingle? Many of you may have noticed a tingling sensation that you weren’t consciously aware of before you began to think about it.

The information that enters our unconscious mind goes through 3 steps as it filters through to our conscious mind. We delete most of it, because there is no way that our conscious mind could cope with what is held in the unconscious mind. We distort the information based on our current situation.  For example, a child may interpret ordinary the sounds of a central heating system very differently if they are left alone in the house. This is why, sometimes people can completely misinterpret what we are saying to them, they are distorting the information because they are focusing on a different meaning to the one we wanted to convey. We also generalise information. For example; once we have learned what a chair looks like we can instantly identify other ‘chairs’ even though we haven’t seen every type of chair. We can generalise the way most doors are opened, how most cars are driven and even how to identify when a person is either male or female.

After the information has been filtered into our conscious mind, there are only 4 things we can do with it inside our heads…we make pictures, sounds, we talk to ourselves or we have feelings. The combination of these things creates an emotion that has an effect on our physiology. For example; if we feel embarrassed we might blush, if we feel angry we may tighten up our muscles. Every thought we have effects our body and the way we move our body effects our thinking. Our mind and body are totally interconnected. If you look at a person suffering from depression, often they are round shouldered, they look down a lot and many of them will be using a lot of negative self talk “why does this always happen to me?” “I’m useless, what’s the point?” Contrast this to a person who feels really confident, they stand upright, their shoulders are back and they use eye contact. Because every thought we have effects our body this means that our emotional state effects also effects our behaviour which consequently effects and influences the results we get.Therefore if we want to change aspects of our lives, including the way other people react to us, first, we have to change our own thinking.

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Are You Creating Your Own Weather Conditions?

I was so excited at the prospect of a week's holiday in Portugal, not knowing that I was about to learn a powerful lesson about Goal Setting. Most people who know me will probably say that I'm pretty switched on when it comes to setting and achieving goals, yet in this instance I learned that it's one thing to know it and another thing to do it, habitually everyday. You see, rather than focus on the sunny weather in Portugal, I was absorbed by the miserable rainy weather in England and because 'Thoughts Become Things' i managed to create torrential rain in Portugal every single day!! Therefore, I decided to devout this week's article to Goal Setting. Interestingly, it's been a bright sunny day so far!

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The New Generation of Lead Generation

The birth of a customer is the end result of a lead that has been cultivated, supported and encouraged to flourish. As a lead begins to evolve it can sometimes fall by the wayside, empty of possibility or emerge through a cycle bearing the fruits of labour, ripened and ready for picking.

As a salesperson, your role is to generate a sufficient number of leads that can be qualified into a smaller number of prospects who ultimately, through your own efforts become new customers.

Equally, there are always demands and constraints on your time which means that you’ll want to avoid playing ‘the numbers game’ as you begin to devise a strategic approach to your own lead generation that optimises your efforts in the time you have available.

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When Life is Hard

This week, I'm almost certainly going to ruffle a few feathers, particularly in the NLP Community and with those incredibly positive people because I'm going to have a bit of a rant about life sometimes being hard......

In today’s rapidly changing world, nothing changes quite so rapidly as people. We all have desires, dreams, fears and emotional needs that drive us in our quest to create more of the life we want, trying to attain our own vision of success and that ellusive, tantalising taste of permanent happiness and personal fulfilment.

The history books are littered with individuals who have achieved ‘mind blowing’ feats in the face of adversity and when you dig beneath the surface you’ll discover that they all found a way of living their vision that worked for them. You see, there are countless ways of you getting what you want and the real secret lies with your ability to find your own way, the way that works best for you.


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Clarity Follows Confusion!

Early on Monday morning after making myself a strong hot cup of coffee I sat down at my desk to start my week's work. As my emails flew in I noticed one from MUDMONSTERS and recognising the name, read a highly entertaining email from a guy called Wayne Kennedy, whom I met 2 years ago, during a sales event that I was running. Sometimes, people really speak from their hearts and Wayne's email made me smile,then, laugh out loud. He is an awesome writer! 
As I'm planning on running some 'out there' high energy programmes shortly, I definately intend to get Wayne along to write up the event from his own hilarious perspective.
Read his email to me and I DEFY you not TO SMILE........have a fun and exciting week!

 

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Top 10 Sales Articles

The volume of sales information that is ‘out there’ on the web could compete with the Atlantic Ocean for its overwhelming scale. Yet, we all recognize that knowledge is power and we can learn a great deal from what others have successfully achieved.

As a sales professional I recently calculated that if I add up the time I’ve invested in reading sales books, listening to audio tapes and attending sales seminars and courses, this ‘time investment’ equates to nearly 2 years!!!! This could be perceived as impressive except that only a couple of weeks of this time produced an impact strong enough to make a huge difference to my sales results.

That’s why when I was asked if The Sales Activator® would like to sponsor Top 10 Sales Articles, I jumped at the opportunity to cascade the best sales suggestions and insights to sales professionals everywhere.

 


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Burning Desire

One week seems such a long time ago because I've just returned from Portugal where I was initiated in the art of Firewalking. It took just 4 days for me to discover that there is no logic, no trick to this impossible feat; simply trust and faith in yourself and the fire. 
What started out as a qualification to add 'Firewalking' to my expanding repertoire, evolved into a moving spiritual experience that has totally transformed my life. 

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The Sales Activator Secret

The changing room's stark walls created a chill in my heart as I listened to the thunderous fans screaming for the first sightings of their team. Years of sacrifice, punishing training routines and now victory, was just a step away. The enormity of the side we were about to play overwhelmed the expressions on our faces and we silently went through the pre-match ritual of preparing to play the game of our life.

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Beyond Conventional Selling

Having just returned from Copenhagen where I've been working with my favourite client; I realised that between us we have created an oil company version of 'The Tipping Point'. Essentially, you could describe this as an insatiable learning epidemic that is beginning to invade the entire global organisation and the reason for this success is so obvious, so simple that anyone could do this.

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Flying High or simply caught up on a wave of success?

During August 2000 I invested nearly one month of my time in Orange County attaining my Trainer accreditation for NLP and Timeline Therapy. There, I was lucky enough to meet a number of hugely talented individuals whom became part of a team called 'Flying High' I'm sure that many of you have experienced the highs, lows and moments of 'wow' if you've attended an NLP course, so you can begin to imagine the incredible bond that was forged between the Flying High team members.

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Sell-entines Day - Can LOVE pull?

Having spent at least 45 minutes this week in Clinton Cards searching through their vast selection for Valentine's Day, I noticed that this LOVE day has now been extended to daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and even pets! The Brits are well known for their conservative style so I did feel the twinges of curiousity to discover if LOVE can help the retail trade then can LOVE help any field-based salesperson to sell more? I decided to put this notion to the test with my own business, which has a product that is directly tailored to help field-based salespeople increase their sales.......the results may surprise you!

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Encouraging Courage!

As the Blog community rapidly expands and grows, I find myself enjoying the thrill of bite-sized learning that inspires my working week. There are so many talented sales professionals out there who are happy to share their insights that for those of us in sales, there is absolutely no excuse not to be totally magnificent! My article this week is inspired by Jonathan Farrington's recent Blog on Leadership, so thank you J.

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Sales Master? - I don't think so!

For someone like myself, who's a technical phobic, I've surprised myself with launching a Blog! (Actually, it was the idea of Ben Ferns, my extremely dynamic webmarketing specialist, who reckoned I needed to get dragged into the 21st century). So suddenly I find myself having this weird and wonderful forum for expressing my views on anything I want and hopefully even getting some strong views back - who knows I could even be taking a spring break in 'Blognor' at this rate.

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Is Sales Training passing its Sell-By date?

As a company who specialises in sales training and development, I've found myself growing increasingly more sceptical towards the real impact of traditional sales training methods. According to Professor George Miller, Harvard University, our conscious minds can only process around 7 chunks of information at any given moment. If this is then related to applying new techniques learned during a training course, then how can salespeople feasibly put into practice loads of new techniques instantly?

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Salesual Frustration

I recently met a dynamic Regional Sales Manager who currently works for a large International Organisation. He manages a large field-based sales team and has worked in sales for nearly 30 years. Having won several awards and built a well respected reputation for consistent over-achievement of target, he is evangelical about selling yet can get extremely frustrated with some aspects of his job role.

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    Monday 12th May 2008