Updates

Many companies think that the reason for poor sales is poor closing skills. I’ve reviewed hundreds of sales teams over the years and analyzed what they were doing right and wrong. Seldom did I discover it was closing. In some cases I believe that if they closed any harder they risked getting arrested!

The problems almost always rest earlier in the sales process. In most cases, there was no sales process. As a result, expensive leads were turned into excuses with blame pointed in virtually every direction.

Without an effective, company-wide sales plan, you are left listening to each representative explain why the deal never happened. With a plan, you can compare activities against the proven process to find the gaps. From there, improvement is simply a matter of adjusting behavior.

Build a sales process that is customized to your company, product, competition, market and the client’s buying process. A plan that covers all the bases will result in more and larger sales with happier clients.

Let us know if we can help.

On a planning call with the CEO and his team I asked them what they were hoping I could do for them in the one hour talk I was hired to give at their annual sales meeting. The next 20 minutes was occupied with a laundry list of issues that needed to be improved. When they finished, I asked, “Do you think we can get that all done in one hour?”. The reply was both honest and reveling. “No”, he said. “We’ve tried this year after year and it has never worked yet.”

Improvements take time and require process changes. Those who invest in the work reap the rewards.

The problem may not be the people you are hiring.

Salespeople aren’t magicians and few of them are geniuses. Most are not even true experts at sales. What many successful salespeople are is diligent, driven, confident, smart people who can execute a successful plan if given one. Did you give them one?

If you want more consistent results from the salespeople you hire, make sure they know how to execute a proven sales process that brings results for your company. A plan that is tailored to your product, market and company culture will improve your sales results across your entire sales team.

In all my years of consulting and building companies, I have never seen a top performing company that lacked a clear, executable and well supported sales process.

Now is the time to make sure your plan is ready for the changes ahead.

Learning skills is fine and that’s what most sales training does for you. Unfortunately, if your people are applying those skills without an effective sales process, it’s like chopping down a tree with a sledgehammer.

A sales process is a proven set of steps that start with the first conversation with a prospect and move to the close of the sale. It ensures you are saying and asking the right things to the right people in the right order. Sales strategies are not cookie cutter plans and they are not designed by sales trainers. Have you ever wondered why the top salesperson you stole from another company failed miserably at yours? It is probably because the sales process they use was not right for your product and marketplace.

If you are not sure if you have an effective sales process, contact me. I’m happy to listen to yours and give you my thoughts for free.

Covid has changed many things this year and some of them are not so obvious. It’s a good time to look at your contact list, especially for critical accounts and prospects, because you will probably find some changes. In difficult financial times, companies often change the approval process and authorization levels. This means that some of the people you were talking with a few months ago are not the people you need to be talking with tomorrow. Worst of all, many of them won’t volunteer the fact that they no longer have the approval power that they had in the past. Sales teams that do their homework and move up a level will often find success ahead of those who pursue the old track.
As a manager, this is a difficult issue because your salespeople, like most of us, like to take the route of least resistance. They won’t want to risk ruffling the feathers of the old contact to get to the new one. I try to help my clients find an approach that makes it a win for everyone and still gets you up the ladder. The bottom line is that living with the status quo can sink your sales results.

Make 2021 a great year with a contact update today. I’m happy to talk with you if you need help finding an approach that works.

Now is the time to plan for dramatic increases in your business. With a vaccine on the horizon, we will soon see companies thriving in the “new normal”. Some will wait to see what that “new normal” looks like only to discover they are not prepared to compete with those who started months ahead of them.

I know what it takes to thrive in changing times and would be happy to share it with you. Let’s talk and see if my approach might give you an edge in accelerating your sales.

Time is running out!

To say that all sales people are alike is to miss a critical point. Not only are they different but those differences affect everything from their ideal sales job to the best way to motivate them. For years we have separated sales people into ‘hunters’ vs. ‘farmers’ and left it at that. While those are valid groupings, they are not sufficient.

One difference can be seen in their prospecting techniques. Some people dive into cold calling and can crank out the calls all day. Others find that to be so distasteful that they would quit sales if they had to make another call. In our research, we have discovered that fitting the prospecting style to the personality style can be one of the best ways to increase sales. Networkers should network and cold callers should cold call! It’s about that simple.

We recommend the Predictive Index assessments to look at individual sales people to determine their styles. We also help managers use that same information to motivate and manage their people more effectively.

Interested in trying Predictive Index?  Contact me at steve@waterhousegroup.com and I’ll arrange a free demonstration.

 

There is an ad out today on the radio that claims that most sales people have not read even one book on sales. What a shame. One of my sales managers used to say that in sales, “it’s not what you know that counts, it’s what you can remember when you need it”. So true. To be great at sales, you need to fill your tool box with a wide variety of skills.

Here is a list of the current top selling sales books on Amazon.com. If you have not read these, pick one and dive in. Most are available on Kindle for just a few dollars.

 

New Sales. Simplified.: The Essential Handbook for Prospecting and New Business Development

Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal

Selling 101: What Every Successful Sales Professional Needs to Know

How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling

Secrets of a Master Closer: A Simpler, Easier, And Faster Way To Sell Anything To Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere