Don’t Get too Comfortable

It’s easy to fall into the pattern of mediocre customer service with existing clients, especially when they’ve been around for so long and you are used to managing them in a certain way. But once you’ve landed new clients and the satisfaction of that success wears off, you are still left managing your existing clients. And guess what? Those existing customers are often the most important customers you need to focus on.

The Impact Your Current Clientele has on Your Business

A steady clientele not only sustains your business, but it also helps to establish a reputation for your company and what it is known for. When other potential customers hear about you through word of mouth, it makes a great impression when they know their friend or colleague has consistently done business with you for a lengthy period of time.

Utilize Customer Service Training to Retain Clients

So what can you do to provide consistent, quality customer service to your existing clients to keep them happy and keep them around? Make sure your employees are trained to provide the best customer service possible.

Your employees will not only learn how to provide better service all around, but they will learn how to enhance and step up their game to keep things fresh and professional as well. Customer service training shows you how to be more organized, how to solve problems more efficiently, and how to be a better listener so you can find solutions for your customers.

Avoid losing valuable, long-term clients and continue to offer superior customer service by providing your employees with high-quality sales training.

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By helping to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your team, a sales coach can help enhance those strengths and increase successful sales goals for your company. But should you let just anyone coach your team? Is it an easy task that anyone can tackle?

Your team needs a coach who can show them the techniques they need to be successful and someone who can help equip them with the right tools to implement those techniques on the sales floor. All of this is important, but that’s not all it takes.

One key characteristic of a great sales coach is the ability to offer a lot of encouragement. A great sales coach should have a positive persona and should be able to encourage your team to bank on their individual strengths. By helping put an emphasis on enhancing these strengths, your team will feel more motivated and more productive in turn.

The right sales coach will focus on many different aspects to help prepare your team for future challenges. The ideal coach should encourage, inspire, and direct your team by showing them how to nurture the right mindset, how to take advantage of personal strengths, and how to utilize sales skills to maximize the utmost potential.

When considering a sales coach for your sales team, keep these things in mind. Make sure the coach you hire has the best interest of your team at heart, and that they are committed to offering the best direction and as much positive reinforcement as possible.

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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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• Customer Service Sales Training Teaches Patience
The biggest complaint you often hear about customer service sales agents is that they can get pushy. You want to make sure that they are trained to be patient. Training will teach them different techniques to help them be more patient, and this will enable them to really listen to and help their customers. Patience is a virtue, and you can teach it with a great sales training program.

• Customer Service Sales Training Helps Customer Relations
When you train your customer service agents to understand what you expect from them as employees, they are going to be better leveled and will have the chance to be a well-rounded employee. A proper training program will show them how to effectively cultivate customer relations instead of risking them. In addition to formal training, be sure that you are working with them on the skills needed to retain their clients.

You need to choose a customer service sales training program for your agents for many reasons. You want to make sure that they are well trained and that you are providing them with the skills necessary to succeed. Also, you want to win clients, not lose them, right? Invest in a great sales training program that will help your agents do the jobs they are assigned and snag successful sales at the same time.

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Proper employee training can organically increase your sales. With training, your employees are informed about the product and about basic human behavior that leads to persuasion. Failure to provide this training can result in the following five common mistakes.

Lack of Emotional Connection

People are designed to connect. Without this connection, there is no desire. Without desire, there is no sale. While you may realize and understand this concept, your employees may not. Teaching your sales staff about the power of emotion and connection, and how to utilize it, creates sales. Without it, your customers can leave unsatisfied, disappointed, and empty handed.

Too Much Talk

While persuasion plays a big role in sales, listening is much more important. Before you can determine the right emotional approach, you have to determine what the customer is looking for. You need to know what it is they expect from your product. Learning this information comes with listening. Obviously, you cannot listen if you are doing all the talking.

Hem-Haw
Words that aren’t actually words are the killer of all sales. The “um, er, uh” dialogue breaks up the sales pitch. It creates an unnecessary pause, takes away from the sales pitch, and creates a sense that the sales employee has no idea what they are talking about. This problem can easily be reduced with proper sales training. One of the most effective methods is role play.

Distorting the Punch

The punch of your sales pitch is the gusto; the call to action. Raising your voice in the wrong place or adding words after the punch takes away the gusto. Remove the gusto, and you take away the message. This, too, can be resolved through proper training and role play.

Failing to Ask for the Sale

Failing to ask for the sale is the kiss of death on the sales floor. If you don’t ask for the sale, the customer will “think about it” or “talk” to their spouse. These phrases mean you have lost the sale, unless you know how to rebuttal appropriately. Of course, if you have failed to ask for the sale, a rebuttal won’t do you much good. Learning how to ask for the sale takes practice and time, but with proper training, employees will stop allowing the task to intimidate them.

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Your Business is Unique
Many companies rely on the previous experience of their employees. They assume that because an individual has a certain amount of sales experience, that they must be great at it. Then, the employee gets on the floor and struggles with their sales quota. While there are many reasons that this can occur, one of the most common is the difference between businesses.

While the end result of sales is the same from one business to the next, all businesses approach it differently. This is generally based on the product being sold. While some products need pressure tactics, others simply need to receive friendly descriptions and a Call to Action. Imagine purchasing a house with the same pressure that comes with purchasing an infomercial product. While there is really nothing wrong with either sales format, they are very different.

Your Business Deserves Quality

Previous sales experience does not mean quality sales experience. First, many businesses skip the training. This means that an employee’s sales experience could be based solely on self-taught methods. Additionally, some businesses use practices that are not ethical, or even friendly. Some even encourage employees to lie for the sake of a sale. These are some of the most common problems found when reputable businesses skip the sales training.

Your Employees Deserve Training

If you skip sales training for your employees, it is essential to keep in mind that the mistakes they make in handling your customers are really the fault of the company. By failing to give clear expectations and adequate training, you cannot realistically expect your employees to know how to approach the sales of your product or services.

While sales training will cost you money initially, it can greatly increase the sales of your business and can reduce employee turnover. It can also ensure that your business is consistent when it comes to customer service. If all of these things are important to you, be sure to invest in a quality sales training program for your employees.

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Let’s look at the cold, hard facts. As a salesperson, your assignment – your job – your ultimate livelihood is to talk to someone who may not be ready to spend money. And it isn’t always easy, is it? How long has it been since you had a client call you and say, “I have some money I’d like to throw your way and I want to do it now!”? I’d wager that it’s been awhile. In fact, I’d wager that you, in retrospect, will find that you have had to work harder – and smarter – to convince a client to spend money and that it is taking you more time, sweat, and tears than it ever has before!

And so, here I am, trying to convince you to spend some of your hard earned money to have me train you on how to improve upon what you are now doing to pry that money loose from a client. And what makes me the expert in the field? You are successful. You have clients galore who are ready, willing, and able to spend their money on what you are offering and you certainly don’t need any sales training. You’re the best there at what you do! If that’s the case, you’re wasting your time reading any further! You should contract with me to teach me what it is you are doing so well!

But, if you aren’t…well, all I can say is that there is a better way to handle your sales process and that I spend a good portion of every day making sure that I stay on top of my game – that I understand what it is that it takes on a daily basis to make a sale – that the methods I teach are as current and relevant to your sales process needs as is humanly possible. My livelihood depends on my staying ahead of the curve. My livelihood depends on my ability to bring you what you need to keep you ahead of the curve…and I either do that or I go out of business!

I’m still here! And I’m doing very well, thank you! How about you? Could you be doing better? If so, we should talk!

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You’ve been in the business for awhile. You have tried and true sales techniques that you have developed, probably through trial and error, over the years. You are considered a success in your field by many, and you have this feeling of having done very well in your career. Does that paint a pretty good picture of you at the moment? Does it really?

Technology has changed – and is continuing to change – the way all of us do business! The world around us is changing at light speed and it really is all we can do to keep up with it. And the problem gets even bigger when we discover that the clients we have been depending upon to put food on our tables have had to change the way they do business as well. Most of us now find that we are in a constant struggle to complete the sales process in the tried and true ways of yesteryear…perhaps even the tried and true methods of yesterday afternoon. It just is not as simple as making a cold call, setting up an appointment, giving your spiel, and walking out, check and order in hand.

Bottom line: Whatever your sales situation, it’s not the same as it was a year ago, probably not the same as it was a month ago…and, if you’re like the majority of folks that we deal with, you are in a constant battle to keep up. So, how often should you sign up for training? We’d like to say sign up now and, as soon as you are though with that class, start looking for another one.
But, there’s something else to consider: You need to make sure that the class into which you intend to enroll is one that can deal with the ever changing marketplace – that the class and the instructor is on top of and one step ahead of the everyday problems you are now facing and which are changing every day.

And that’s the long and the short of it. Getting on top is a matter of luck, hard work, and perseverance. Staying there consists of learning how to apply those factors to the market in which you find yourself. We’re here to help!

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Generally speaking, the more direct job related the activity is the more that “on-site” has its advantages of associating the learning with the work place. For development activity in preparation for a future role then off-site may prove more beneficial.

The majority of training programs are now run in-house due to the increased pressure on companies to cut costs, especially as related to travel time and associated costs. Let’s face it, all of us are expected to be more productive in less time! Even sending ten employees to off-site training that requires even a short commute takes money away from the bottom line!

Looking at the other side of that coin, however, is the advantage that off-site training can bring regarding the availability of a dedicated and furnished site in which larger classes may be held without adversely dedicating corporate space over longer periods of time.

So, let’s take a look at some advantages of specialized training held on-site:

-No travel costs
-No venue costs
-No lost time
-Access to resources from the office/ factory/ normal work environment
-Easier to co-ordinate
Some advantages of training held off-site
-Reduced interruptions (people walking in)
-Reduced potential for trainees to be walking in late due to previous meeting running late, phone calls, etc.
-Impossible for people to duck back to their cubby for a few minutes
-Able better to focus on the “need”

When you are ready to schedule training, you need to keep in mind that effective training must be accomplished in a steady, uninterrupted flow. If trainees are likely to be called out of training to answer phone calls or answer questions from clients or management, their training decreases in value in direct proportion to the missed information. Whether they are in the room or not, the information flow of the training must continue.

The key factor in making the decision to stay on-site or go off-site must be based on one factor and one factor alone… What are your goals or objectives? What type of environment will provide the best opportunity for the topic and audience concerned?

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I remember moving my family to Argentina as Vice President of Sales for Latin America. I was in charge of managing five regional offices, Argentina of course being one of them.

In the company’s ten year history of selling into Latin America it had never exceeded $14 million (M) in annual sales. The Argentina office itself had never produced more than $400 thousand (K) in sales. My task was to increase the sales locally in Argentina, but more importantly throughout Latin America.

I remember sitting in my office one day, looking out the window and wondering, “How the heck am I going to grow this business with problems in Mexico, Brazil, Puerto Rico and other hot spots? “How can I grow this business beyond $14M when no one in the past has been able to do so?” Forget the movie Sleepless in Seattle, I was “Sleepless in Argentina,” trying to map out a strategy. How would I make “sales” happen?

A confession to you the reader: I was scared! Please don’t tell anyone!

One day while on the phone with a customer, I heard loud noises from across my office building. After getting off the phone, I opened the window and looked at the shorter building next door. On the rooftop, I saw several men using a scrapping machine to rip apart the flat roof the size of two tennis courts. This noise went on for days.

Then one day I noticed the silence. I looked outside and discovered that the men had finishing stripping the rooftop and were now laying small ceramic tiles. Given the size of the roof I remember thinking, “That’s going to take them a very long time.”

A few days later to my surprise and amazement I looked outside and saw that they were three-quarters of the way complete. “Amazing! How were they able to lay so many small tiles so quickly?”

Satori,… a moment of enlightenment.

At that very moment, a new mindset was born for building sales. Instead of focusing in on the enormous task of increasing sales for the entire region (the whole roof), I would focus on building the company’s sales slowly (one ceramic tile or sales office at a time).

It was this paradigm shift, this Latin American version of eating an elephant one-bite-at-a-time that helped me maintain the patience and sanity needed to grow the business. I considered each country in Latin America a “tile.” I set out to make sure that each tile I laid was positioned correctly in the marketplace. The result? First year, we hit $14.3M. Second year $45M. By the end of the third year, the region’s annual sales had grown to $98M. The Argentina office itself went from $400K in sales to $5M.

Success, in sales and in life, starts when you break things up into smaller pieces; you begin to feel a sense of control. And as I began to take action, I began to feel a sense of momentum. Control and momentum became my engine for success. And every time I felt overwhelmed or anxious, I thought to myself, “Victor, let’s just lay one tile at a time.”

Confucius said, “It is not a matter of how fast or slow, but simply a matter of you moving.” I learned that progress or success never happens overnight, but over time…one tile at time. I learned how to become a sales ‘carpintero’ (carpenter who builds things).

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