When time is money and those sales really matter, the first few words that come from an employee’s mouth can be the kiss of death if they aren’t properly trained.

Even a professional who has worked in the field for twenty years needs some help to constantly hone their skills and work on their craft. No one is ever done learning, and the way your employees handle the sales floor has a huge impact on the overall business.

What a Sales Coach Does

Sales coaching is primarily used to identify an employee’s personal strengths and weaknesses. Once those strengths and weaknesses are identified, the employee can then be trained to change the areas that need some work.

An employee’s mindset, attitude, and sales strategies can all be shaped and fine tuned with the proper coaching, allowing them to reach their full potential while at the same time increasing their sales success rate.

Additionally, a little encouragement goes a long way. Just like with any other goal in life, sales goals are reached more often when the employee has the right amount of support and guidance. Sales coaching helps give each employee the confidence necessary to achieve optimal success.

When your sales team has the proper tools to equip them to do their job, they not only have the chance to do their job the right way, but they also have the opportunity to learn how to avoid making repetitive mistakes in the future.

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You have a product – or a service – that you know will be of benefit to your prospects. You believe deep in your heart that the product or service you offer is the best available! You know that, if only you could break down the barriers, you can bring true happiness to your prospects and at a price they can afford, even in these hard times. The problem seems to be, however, that no matter what you do, no matter what strategy you pull out of your tried and true sales tricks bag, the sales just aren’t there…the prospects just don’t seem to be responding like they did last year or the year before! What’s going on? What are you doing wrong?

Look, those salesmanship routines of a couple of years ago are just geared toward a different world than we are in right now. The economy doesn’t seem to understand that the only way to get better is to get money flowing again. Your prospects are having a hard time making their sales goals. Budgets are being slashed. People are losing jobs. And your management seems only to care that you aren’t selling as well as you should be selling!

All things considered, when the sales arena changes due to pressures from every direction, salespeople need to change the way they handle their business. To put it bluntly, if what you are doing isn’t working, then you better stop doing it and find a better way to break down those barriers!

That is what Sales Training is all about! It is a very common misconception that Sales Training is just for the new kid on the block that hasn’t spent a lifetime developing a tried and true bag of sales tricks. Sales Training is about having professionals analyze what it is you are now doing and helping you learn how to do it in today’s economy – how to break down those barriers, how to get that initial contact door to open for you, how to start and develop the sales process with reluctant clients… How to do what you are doing in a better way and how to build that bottom line that your continued employment depends upon.

It is all about making money for your company. Making money for your company! So, what could Sales Training do for you? Contact us and ask us. We’ll be happy to discuss all the avenues in which Sales Training is going to impact your bottom line and increase your value as a provider of goods and services.

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There may be hope, a bright light at the end of the tunnel that is not that oncoming train you’re probably expecting right about now! But, in order to grab onto that ray of hope and make it work for you, you may have to take a hard and honest look at your team…each member of your team….even including yourself.

How well is your team performing? Are they meeting all the expectations? Are they exceeding their individual sales projections? Have they lost major sales…clients….prospects this past year? What percentage of their cold calls result in face-to-face meetings with prospects? And what percentage of those meetings result in sales? How many repeat clients have increased their orders this past year? Are they buying all their consumables from you or have your sales in that segment of your business dropped off? Where have you made cuts and how has that worked for you?

Tough questions? Yes, they are! And not all the answers to those questions will make you smile. But, the fact is, when the economy is in a slump, when sales are not meeting or exceeding sales projections and/or goals, then it is up to the sales teams to begin to exceed their performance expectations. And, most of the time, coming down on them, pointing out the errors of their ways, and telling them to shape up or ship out just doesn’t seem to help.

There are not too many sales people out there who could not benefit from some retraining and, perhaps, even some personal coaching to help them fully utilize their existing skills and to develop and gainfully employ some new skills. Training and Coaching is – across the board – proven to increase sales, client base, and revenue. Now is the best time to slide your eyes over to the budget side of your desk and see where you can allocate some training funds. Now is the time to proactively take charge of your current situation and take the opportunity to grow your prospective situation. Now is the time to build and improve your sales skills and strategies and be comfortable that you and your team will enjoy a prosperous New Year!

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Sales is a game of inches, there are these moments in sales calls, when the salesperson is faced with a decision to let it go or make a move. These decisions are critical and can add up to defining success or failure in the sales profession.

An example I heard recently from a client selling specialized printers to a niche vertical market. The conversation went like this: Prospect: “I will be needing those printers, what does your pricing look like” Salesperson: “You will be getting the pricing on your computer screen within a couple minutes” Prospect: “I see it, they look good, so have a nice weekend and I will be calling you over the next several weeks to order”

This was the defining moment for this sales transaction. The salesperson easily could have said “sounds great( as his mind trailed off into his own weekend plans) instead he made the choice to make a move on the prospect, he said “Well we have a bunch in inventory that we bought at that price and when their gone the price could change, would you like me to put your name on some” The prospect replied “sure, put me down for 5” and with that this salesman opened a new account and closed an order for $12000. The slight edge here was the choice to make the retort instead of giving up.

The salesperson was a good performer the thinking process is different for the better sales performers. The average or worse performer thinks “well, he will buy it anyway I am sure, so why press now”. The top performers think no reason for this guy to wait, too many things can happen to screw this order up; I am going for it now. The order I get now beats any future possibility. I don’t know if this is greater intensity or focus on goals, which it must be related to. This article’s focus is on the one small moment when you have the choice to make a response that could change the whole dynamic of the sale and give you a slight edge! That slight edge, when properly applied, is the one that will put you over the peak as a top sales performer. Your sales will increase and, with them, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have not only increased your volume, you have helped a prospect become a satisfied customer who will keep coming back! Now isn’t that a nice way to end the day?

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Lao Tzu wrote, “He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.”  What that means for us in the sales world is, if you need to sell more, increase your value. To increase your value, develop your strengths.

On the face of it, that’s a pretty easy concept to grasp.  It’s almost axiomatic.  But, when you’re working the territory or managing a team who is out there daily looking to increase sales, actually applying that principle becomes a difficult task.  As a Manager, what does that mean to you?  What does a Sales Staff Assessment mean to you?  Do you know what the strengths and weaknesses of your sales team are, both as a team and as individuals?  Can you assess their core competencies and, from that assessment, identify areas from which you can draw on strengths as well as areas in which you – and they – can learn to turn weaknesses into a growing positive force?

You might want to consider, as well, the staff assessment at the individual level.  More often than not, your team members are pretty much out there on their own, expected to meet and exceed the goals you have set for them.  How does their individual skill sets work in meeting those individual goals, in supporting the team goals, in meeting your own goals?

Hiring a professional and unbiased consultant will walk you through the steps of accomplishing a full sales staff assessment.  Remember that this assessment is not an indicator of less than adequate performance nor should it be thought of as a negative reflection on your sales team!  In almost every case we have encountered, the assessment has proven that this process will be to your sales staff and organization an opportunity to take a close look at what you are and have been doing, putting the focus on the strengths your organization brings to the table, and helping to build those strengths to a more successful level.  This entire process is meant to fine tune your staff and help them find the best way to leverage their skills to increase individual efficiency for the betterment of the entire team.

What a wonderful concept!

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To show you what I mean, here are 7 cold calling ideas that even the sales gurus don’t know.

1. Change Your Mental Objective Before You Make the Call

If you’re like most people who make cold calls, you’re hoping to make a sale — or at least an appointment — before you even pick up the phone.

The problem is, the people you call somehow always pick up on your mindset immediately. They sense that you’re focused on your goals and interests, rather than on finding out what they might need or want. This short-circuits the whole process of communication and trust-building. Here’s the benefit of changing your mental objective before you make the call: it takes away the frenzy of working yourself up mentally to pick up the phone.

All the feelings of rejection and fear come from us getting wrapped up in our expectations and hoping for an outcome when it’s premature to even be thinking about an outcome.

So try this. Practice shifting your mental focus to thinking, “When I make this call, I’m going to build a conversation so that a level of trust can emerge allowing us to exchange information back and forth so we can both determine if there’s a fit or not.”

2. Understand the Mindset of the Person You’re Calling

Let’s say you’re at your office and you’re working away. Your phone rings and someone says, “Hello, my name’s Mark. I’m with Financial Solutions International. We offer a broad array of financial solutions. Do you have a few minutes?” What would go through your mind? Probably something like this: “Uh-oh, another salesperson.
I’m about to be sold something. How fast can I get this person off the phone?” In other words, it’s basically over at “Hello,”
and you end up rejected.

The moment you use the old cold calling approach — the traditional pitch about who you are and what you have to offer, which all the sales gurus have been teaching for years — you trigger the negative “salesperson” stereotype in the mind of the person you’ve called, and that means immediate rejection.

I call it “The Wall.”

The problem is with how you’re selling, not what you’re selling.
This is an area that’s been ignored in the world of selling. We’ve all been trained to try to push prospects into a “yes” response on the first call. But that creates sales pressure.

But, if you learn to really understand and put yourself in the mindset of the person you call, you’ll find it easier to avoid triggering The Wall. It’s that fear of rejection that makes cold calling so frightening. Instead, start thinking about language that will engage people and not language that will

trigger rejection.

3. Identify a Core Problem That You Can Solve

We’ve all learned that when we begin a conversation with a prospect, we should talk about ourselves, our product, and our solution. Then we sort of hope that the person connects with what we’ve just told them. Right?

But when you offer your pitch or your solution without first involving your prospect by talking about a core problem that they might be having, you’re talking about yourself, not them. And that’s a problem. Prospects connect when they feel that you understand their issues before you start to talk about your solutions. When people feel understood, they don’t put up The Wall. They remain open to talking with you.

4. Start With a Dialogue, Not a Presentation

Let’s return to the goal of a cold call, which is to create a two-way dialogue engaging prospects in a conversation. We’re not trying to set the person up for a yes or no. That’s the old way of cold calling.

This new cold calling approach is designed to engage people in a natural conversation. The kind you might have with a friend. This lets you both of you decide whether it’s worth your time to pursue the conversation further.

The key here is never to assume beforehand that your prospect should buy what you have to offer, even if they’re a 100 percent fit with the profile of the “perfect customer.” If you go into the call with that assumption, prospects will pick up on it and The Wall will go up, no matter how sincere you are. Avoid assuming anything about making a sale before you make a call.

For one thing, you have no idea whether prospects can buy what you have because you know nothing about their priorities, their decisionmaking process, their budget, etc. If you assume that you’re going to sell them something on that first call, you’re setting yourself up for failure. That’s the core problem with traditional old-style cold calling.

Stay focused on opening a dialogue and determining if it makes sense to continue the conversation.

5. Start With Your Core Problem Question

Once you know what problems you solve, you also know exactly what to say when you make a call. It’s simple. You begin with, “Hi, my name is Ari. Maybe you can help me out for a moment.”

How would you respond if someone said that to you?

Probably, “Sure, how can I help you?” or “Sure, what do you need?” That’s how most people would respond to a relaxed opening phrase like that. It’s a natural reaction.

The thing is, when you ask for help, you’re also telling the truth because you don’t have any idea whether you can help them or not.
That’s why this new approach is based on honesty and truthfulness.
That’s why you’re in a very good place to begin with.

When they reply, “Sure, how can I help you?,” you don’t respond by launching into a pitch about what you have to offer. Instead, you go right into talking about the core problem to find out whether it’s a problem for the prospect.

So you say, “I’m just giving you a call to see if you folks are grappling (and the key word here is ‘grappling’) with any issues around your sales team chasing prospects who turn out to never have any intention of buying?”

No pitch, no introduction, nothing about me. I just step directly into their world. The purpose of my question is to open the conversation and develop enough trust so they’ll feel comfortable having a conversation.

The old way of cold calling advises asking lots of questions to learn about the prospect’s business and to “connect.” The problem is that people see right through that. They know that you have an ulterior motive, and then you’re right back up against The Wall.

These ideas may be hard for you to apply to your own situation at first because trying to leverage calls based on what we know about our solution is so engrained in our thinking.

If you stay with it, though, you can learn to step out of your own solution and convert it into a problem that you can articulate using your prospects’ language. And that’s the secret of building trust on calls. It’s the missing link in the whole process of cold calling.

6. Recognize and Diffuse Hidden Pressures

Hidden sales pressures that makes The Wall go up can take a lot of forms.

For example, “enthusiasm” can send the message that you’re assuming that what you have is the right fit for the prospect. That can send pressure over the phone to your prospect. You must be able to engage people in a natural conversation. Think of it as calling a friend. Let your voice be natural, calm, relaxed…easy-going. If you show enthusiasm on your initial call, you’ll probably trigger the hidden sales pressure that triggers your prospect to reject you.

Another element of hidden pressure is trying to control the call and move it to a “next step”. The moment you begin trying to direct your prospect into your “sales process”, there is a very high likelihood that you can “turn off” your prospect’s willingness to share with you the details of their situation.

It’s important to allow the conversation to evolve naturally and to have milestones or checkpoints throughout your call so you can assess if there is a fit between you and the person you are speaking with.

7. Determine a Fit

Now, suppose that you’re on a call and it’s going well, with good dialogue going back and forth. You’re reaching a natural conclusion…and what happens?

In the old way of cold calling, we panic. We feel we’re going to lose the opportunity, so we try to close the sale or at least to book an appointment. But this puts pressure on the prospect, and you run the risk of The Wall going up again. Here’s a step that most people miss when they cold call. As soon as they realize that prospects have a need for their solution, they start thinking, “Great, that means they’re interested.”

What they don’t ask is, “Is this need a top priority for you or your organization to solve, or is it something that’s on the back burner for a while?”

In other words, even if you both determine that there ia a problem you can solve, you have to ask whether solving it is a priority. Sometimes there’s no budget, or it isn’t the right time. It’s important that you find this out, because months later you’ll regret not knowing this earlier.

Putting the Pieces Together

Have you ever wondered where the “numbers game” concept came from?

It came from someone making a call, getting rejected, and the boss saying, “Call someone else.”

But with the new way of cold calling, it’s not about how many people you call. It’s about what you say and how you come across. Do you remember the definition of insanity—continuing to do the same thing but expecting different results?

If you go on using the same old cold calling methods, you’ll go on experiencing the ever-increasing pain of selling.

But if you adopt a new approach and learn how to remove pressure from your initial cold calls, you’ll experience so much success and satisfaction that it’ll really change the way you do business, bring you sales success beyond your imagination—and eliminate “rejection” from your vocabulary for good.

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One of the attendees from a recent workshop I was conducting asked how she could change the compensation for her highly paid, salaried producers, in order to provide the incentive to sell more.
If that’s all it takes, getting salespeople to sell more would be easy!  One of the many areas we analyze when we evaluate sales organizations is to what degree the salespeople are motivated to earn more money.  In a sales force like hers, we would likely find that the salespeople are not very motivated to earn more money and would likely rebel if the compensation were changed to pay less in salary and more in commissions.

There are two important points to understand:
1. If a higher risk – higher reward plan would excite them, they wouldn’t be working for this company in the first place.
2. There is an enormous difference between wanting more money (“pay me more”) and being motivated to go out and earn more (what must I do to earn another $50,000 this year?”)

It all goes back to hiring the right people in the first place.  Salespeople who are looking for security will never be your top producers.

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