Probing for Results - A vision without a plan is an illusion

You're Fired!

According to Forrester Research, 1 million business to business salespeople will lose their jobs by 2020. This fact represents a 20% reduction in the B2B sales force.

Sales positions are defined as four units, designating where the most significant sales job changes will happen:

1. Order takers: With artificial intelligence, the internet, and other technologies, order takers will become obsolete. Buying through new technology like that of many fast food providers will continue. Sellers in this category will see significant job loss. Today there is an application for your phone to circumvent the salesperson in many businesses. Just arrive at the pickup window.
2. Explainers: With the vast amount of information out there—videos, reviews, online publications — buyers are much further along in the buying process when they interact with sellers. They already have a good sense of the capability set of the company. Explainers will experience moderate job loss.
3. Navigators: These sellers shepherd the buyer through the buying process. However, buyers are more educated than ever, and they do not need a guide to help them buy. Expect to see some job loss here.
4. Consultants: This is the one sales position where growth will happen. The consultative seller enlightens buyers, shares ideas and insights, and provides value above and beyond the products and services they offer.

SalesProEndorsements.mp4

For many years I have stood in front of sales training classes where the blank stare of sales professionals looks back at me, and I wondered from where these folks came. Most are not in the class because they desire to spend two days or any fraction thereof to make themselves more proficient in the science helping the prospect find the compelling event that is driving the desire to use and enjoy the supplier's product, service or offering. 

No, they are here because they were told to be here. Looking for the magic pill, their leaders have sent them to be the best they can be. 

When they get home, the leaders will groom them to even higher levels! Yah right! Not a chance. In most cases, the leaders bail out and do not attend the class fearful of being embarrassed in front of their sales teams not having a clue on how to use the selling skills presented let alone to coach others on their use.

While training a sales team is essential, it is too easy for sales reps to get distracted or not apply what they learned from training. To see a significant performance impact teams need sales coaching that regularly pushes each of sales representative through practice drills and workouts. Reaching the top takes dedication and hard work.

Let's look at why this happens. In many cases, sales managers become the leaders that they are because they were very skilled salespeople. Their leaders faced the desire to expand the capabilities of the overall sales force many of which were and continue to be weaker sales performers. The ambitious goal is for the sales leader now promoted sales manager to become the coach and to bring the sales team along. While this is a noble plan, it usually fails to a large extent because the skills to be an exceptional sales leader are not the same as being an outstanding sales trainer or coach. The sad result in many cases is that the time the sales manager now places in grooming "wet behind the ears" mediocre sales performers takes away for the production of the best salesperson in the organization.

You see top management expects that the sales leader now manager and coach will still produce at the highest levels as an example of the overall sales force. These results do not happen.

A disciplined coaching component must support an exceptional sales training experience. Today companies spend billions of dollars a year in sales training with the sole objective of increasing the competency of their sales representatives. The problem with sales training is retention; what’s learned in the classroom is quickly forgotten in the field if there is no reinforcement. Within a matter of months, the company is effectively back to where they started. 

Occulus is an artificial intelligence-based coaching platform that ensures lesson in sales training is put into practice in the field on a long-term basis resulting in higher performing sales representatives. Learn more by going to our website www.ProfessionalSellingSkills.com and then select the tab for OCCULUS.

https://youtu.be/KHnzBzuRWzM

Everyone talks about wanting a measurable ROI from a training initiative...but how do you, personally, measure your ROI?

How to Measure Training Results: A Practical Guide to Tracking the Six Key Indicators by Jack Phillips and Ron Stone ISBN-10: 0071387927 or ISBN-13: 978-0071387927 is the book that you want for this subject. For me the guarantee that I give my customer is that they are the sole judge and jury on the results of the training.

I will place a student that does not measure up back into our training class without charge if they do not improve in the skill that I am teaching. I give the client up to one year to determine this. I also tell the client that if the student "washes out" for whatever reason - I will retrain the new employee for up to one year providing the student returns with all of the material from the previous student. If they do not have the material I collect for a new set of material.

Any graduate is free to re-attend a program for refresher as long as the same version of the class is being taught without charge.

As for managers that want to measure ROI my impression is that the accounting community has the whole concept backwards. Why the heck is it that you can purchase a new computer or a major piece of equipment and it considered an investment yet you train a person that will provide the company multiples of financial return and the cost is considered and expense?

None the less, the "bean counter" that you are generally working with has not got a clue on the valid methods of calculating an ROI and when they do it will take them more time than it is worth to figure it out. I refer the accountant type to the above book or I refer then to George Murphy at www.ejustifyit.com for real tool! Even then I have the ROI requesters head spinning when they realize they do not have a clue on how to do Value Justification. The real answer for me is - Have your bottom line profits improved? Did you implement and effective follow up program and some pig headed discipline to put the training into place? Knowledge is a great thing - The real issue is however are your people implementing the ideas? Did top management participate in the training with their people so that a real discussion of systemic issues related to the training can be addressed? In most cases the managers have less than one hour per month to guide the actions of the new graduates of any training and that is in the 3% of the companies where the manager even gives one hour of face time per month to their people. 97% do not give as much as the hour. These are the statistics according to Harris Interactive study done for the Franklin Covey organization.

If business is so bad, why aren’t you doing something about it?

I am sharing an excerpt of a BLOG that Melody Burns wrote on her Linked-In page and my reply.

By melodyburns

At least once a day someone will say how terrible business is, no one is calling them, stopping in, or ordering anything. I wait until they are done crying and ask, “What are you doing to bring business to you?” More often than not, I am told, “nothing.” Nothing? Really, no wonder your business is not growing. Now is the time to get out there, do something different, find a new market, become involved, And DO SOMETHING!! If you sit back and wait for business to come to you, you might as well shut your doors. It is not going to come. How about looking through all the business cards you collected last year and send out a few emails. Invite some “friends” out to coffee and find out what they have been doing. Ask them how you can help them. You would be surprised what may come back to you. If you invite five people out for coffee, discover what is going on with those five people, chances are those five people will want to know what is gong on with your business. After coffee, they’ll leave and think about your business and tell a few more people about you and then you quickly become the hot topic for the day. A few years ago everyone was using the term, “creating a buzz”. That’s what you want. You want all those bees that had coffee with you to go out and spread the honey about your business. Chances are they’ll learn something new about your business! How hard is it to look at the collection of cards you have in a box and pull out five every other week and ask them to coffee. Maybe coffee doesn’t work, so you do a phone conference just to catch up. If you spent the time networking to capture those cards - you should spend the time reaching out to follow though. How about contacting a local not-for-profit and letting them know you want to help. Maybe you can donate an item or your time. You would be surprised how quickly the word gets out that you did something. Granted, you may get a few more requests but you can always tell people that you only make one donation a quarter and will keep their contact information on file. Ask them to put your name on their newsletter list so you can stay informed about all the great work they do. You never know where your next customer/client may come from! If you run a retail store, why not find another owner in your neighborhood and ask if they will split the cost of advertising with you. Maybe you can host an event - it doesn’t have to be huge, just an opportunity to have a few people in to remind them what you have. Go to your local chamber and ask them if you can have a membership directory to find someone who you could partner with. If you are not a chamber member, join a chamber- you can always ask about payment plans for membership - you don’t know if you don’t ask! Look online for other groups, activities and community events in your neighborhood. Get involved. You can’t sit back and wait for business to come to you - you have to go to business. I call it “active marketing”. Need more suggestions, email me and I’ll see what I can generate for you. melody@melodyburns.com
This entry was posted on February 20, 2009 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “If business is so bad, why aren’t you doing something about it?”
Jim Ullery Says: March 23, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Melody you have triggered my thinking. As soon as you and I share ideas like this with associates they might walk away thinking well that may work for her or him BUT my customers are different. Folks the difference may well be you. I have had the realization that there is no way as a salesperson or as a trainer can not change anyone! That is a personal choice. Each person needs to look deep inside them to modify their own behaviors. We have the choice to be whatever or whoever we desire to be. Laugh if you wish at the ideas of visualization - I will share that they work and they have for decades. I see some very sad cases today of businesses and people falling that lost sight of their vision and the importance of having contingencies in the event of this kind of challenge. Just have faith in people. We will be back. Focus, listen and care it will make all of the difference. When you connect be real and do not just gather names. Look into the hearts and minds of the people you collect names and contacts of. I stopped going to a lot of networking events when I met so many people that were looking beyond me. You know in the middle of a meaningful dialogue they are looking over your shoulder at who else just came into the room that they should go collect. Be connected to those people that Melody suggests having coffee with.

Building a High-Performance Sales Team

It is easy to energize sales people who want to be motivated, but how do you crack the tough cases, the people who never seem to do what is best for the organization or for them - yet take up all of your time? The challenge is that a fundamental rule of management is that you can not change people's character or behavior; you can not even control their actions most of the time. Change comes from within or not at all. Heaven knows I have enough problems changing myself let alone making me responsible as a coach or trainer to change others.

I propose a method that I have seen work in my external and internal coaching of sales clients. This is a simple shift of the responsibility from the subject to the object, from the sales manager to the sales person. A critical part of this shift is also involved in a twist in perspective as well - The sales manager needs to look at the sales person not as a problem to be solved but as a person to be understood. Instead of pushing opportunities and resolutions on sales people with the force of your argument, pull solutions out of the sales person. In other words use the skills that you use with your indifferent customers to explore circumstances, where you are able to identify opportunities in which you can examine the effects of the sales person when the sales person fails to deliver as required and volia' you have identified a NEED now close the sale by virtue of the corresponding feature and benefit of being gainfully employed. Harsh yes! Our job is to tell it like it is and to establish an ultimatum for improvement with a timetable. Then our obligation to the shareholders of our company is to monitor and follow up on the sales person.