Do You Challenge Your Sales Team To Keep it Fresh?

January 16, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

The Sales Archaeologist Blog

Frank Belzer wrote an interesting challenge in one of his older posts that I stumbled back upon in my archive for sales management. After having been in the executive search field for more than 25 years, one of the things I’m very proud of is a constantly evolving understanding of hiring top talent and sharing that with our clients. We’ve never been stuck in the same approach the vast majority of recruiters use:

  • We have a better rolodex
  • We’re experts in this field
  • We have lots of candidates in our database

That was the mantra 25 years ago and it’s tired and worn out today. Most managers and executives get weary of hearing recruiters pitch the same old story over and over.

 

History provides us with many examples of change and of methods becoming outdated. When the Greek armies conquered the world in 300BC under Alexander the Macedonian Phalanx was cutting edge technology. Five hundred years later at the battle of Cynoscephalae – it was not. The new Roman formation was more mobile and was able to outflank and crush the Greek Army.

Last week I had an opportunity to do a lot of sales training, far more than normal and it was pretty clear to me that so many times as sales professionals we revert back to old methods that although comfortable, often allow the prospects to outflank us resulting in a lack of clarity or a lost deal.

Chances are if you have been using the same methods for too long a few things have happened.

prospects are wise to your strategy – they are in control
you are just going through the motions – no passion
the method you are using is a combination of softened styles that cater to your weaknesses

Part of staying sharp and successful as a sales person involves looking for new ways to say things, new methods to reach people, new questions to ask and just continuing to grow and develop. If the Macedonians had done that at Cynoscephalae then the formation and methods that the Roman army faced would have been quite different as perhaps would have been the outcome.

 

When you interview sales candidates or sales managers, do you probe for how they keep their stories, pitches, turnarounds, handling of objections, and presentations fresh and interesting? If you look at your own sales organization, how much do you challenge that group to be fresh, have latest information, and provide a “differentiated” set of data to your clients? Or are your sales candidates still pretending like it’s 1970 and what worked then will work now?

To read Frank Belzer’s full article, click the link below:

How Fresh is Your Sales Methodology?

Barry Deutsch

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LinkedIn Offers Powerful Tools for your Sales Team

January 12, 2012 by · 1 Comment

LinkedIn for Sales

Are you training your sales professionals in how to use the advanced features of LinkedIn for marketing, introductions, and relationship building? If not, are you potentially ignoring a tool that could dramatically leverage your time and effort? If you have not gone down this path yet, what’s holding you back?

Here’s a few ideas:

  • Does everyone in your company have a LinkedIn Account?
  • Has each person input their entire contact list to check who they know is already on LinkedIn?
  • Have your sales professionals used their own contact list and that of everyone in the company to identify potential buyers at target companies who already know someone in your company – through which a warm introduction could be obtained?
  • Do your sales people use the profile manager and tagging to sort, manage, email, and nurture potential contacts?
  • Do your sales professionals all have impressive profiles fully filled out and an extensive LinkedIn Company Page?
  • Are your sales professionals using the advanced features of LinkedIn, such as blogging, presentations, video, reading lists, and others to engage with potential clients?
  • Have you brought in or hired a LinkedIn Sales Trainer to teach and train your team?
  • Have you sent your sales people to online e-courses/webinars to learn how to adapt LinkedIn to their unique selling approach?

Do you have a precise plan of how to bring your entire sales team up to speed on using LinkedIn to improve sales?

Barry Deutsch

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Do Sales Managers Realize They Are Making These Mistakes?

August 8, 2011 by · 1 Comment

 

Why does Benjamin Franklin’s quote about the definition of insanity seem so appropriate for many managers – especially sales managers?

In an interesting article on the Sales Archaeologist Blog, Frank Belzer laid out his Top Ten Mistakes that he sees Sales Managers making over and over again. I’ve listed a few items from the Top Ten List below. As you look at this list – has the sales manager or executive in your organization making these same mistakes year after year?

In our executive search practice for sales leadership, we’ve noted that most replacement searches are not due to lack of competency, intellect, knowledge, or past experience. Frequently, it’s the inability to execute around basic and fundamental elements of best practices in sales management. There is no magic formula or pixie dust that separates top performing sales managers from weak sales managers.

The difference between the two groups in terms of results and outcomes is dramatic. The number one element that separates these two groups – top talent vs. weak performers – is in the execution of sales management best practices, which are nothing more than common-sense approaches to good management. As you may recall, measuring the ability to achieve flawless execution is one of the 5 Core Interview Questions in our Success Factor Methodology. Many companies make mistakes in hiring by not probing and validating at a deep level the ability to execute.

Here is the Top 3 on the Top Ten List published on the Sales Archaeologist Blog:

 

  1. Your sales people learn to be consultative with your clients by your example being consultative with them. Everyone wants their sales people to be consultative but so often managers operate through ultimatums, quick commands or terse comments – not consultative.
  2. Your sales people learn how to listen because you listen to them.
  3. Your sales people learn how to make your prospects feel comfortable with change because you demonstrate how it is done when changes need to be made on the team.

If you would like to see the rest of the list, click the link below. Are you up for measuring your sales manager against this list?

The Top Ten Mistakes Sales Managers Don’t Even Know They Are Making

Barry Deutsch

Filed Under: sales management · Tagged: , , , , ,

B2B Marketing Leads Converted into Sales Transactions

March 28, 2011 by · Leave a Comment

HubSpot Blog

One of my favorite blogs to follow is the Hubspot Inbound Marketing Blog – I get lots of ideas on how to drive sales leads and referrals from this blog.

Katherine Derum described her experience of going into a retail store as an example of B2C marketing/sales integration that could be applied at a B2B level. She makes the following points in her blog article:

All too often I hear of marketing teams and sales teams running in different directions.  A marketing team could do an excellent job of bringing in leads, however if the sales team is not prepared or educated on how to take a lead further down the sales cycle, there is no gain.  While a retailer doesn’t necessarily drive leads, they can be a perfect example of marketing and sales working well together.

Before you jump to the conclusion that lead quality is the problem, first find out what your sales team is doing with your leads.  How are they opening the conversation?  What suggestions might you offer that would open up the discussion?   You know your potential customer as well or better than sales.  You might find augmenting what’s happening AFTER the lead is generated can increase lead quality opposed to adjusting how it was generated.
My only frustration with the article was that I wish she had thrown in a few examples of B2B sales/marketing integration that tied back to the metaphor she was painting of a retailer’s marketing/sales function working together. She does raise some excellent points about what happens with leads and how they are acted upon in many companies.
What examples could offer of how well your lead generation/sales effort works in moving leads into close transactions? This becomes an even bigger issue as more companies start to drive sales leads by marketing through social media.
Barry Deutsch
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Can Social Media Improve Your Sales Lead Generation?

February 21, 2011 by · 2 Comments

Social Media B2B Blog

Umberto Milletti, in his post on the Social Media B2B Blog, describes the value that using social media tools in the sales process can bring to improving or enhancing lead generation activities for your sales team. He describes some of the key benefits as:

  • If they are not the decision maker, identify decision makers within the prospect’s company
  • Leverage your social connections to identify a common SENIOR connection between you and the decision makers
  • Tap into social intelligence to listen to what the decision makers care about or talk about
  • Learn enough about your prospect’s current business challenges and needs to convince the common senior connection to agree to an introduction
  • Discover which other executives might be involved in the decision making process

I wrote a comment back to Umberto’s post and below is a summary of my response to how he indicates/perceives that social media can improve the sales lead generation process. I have a few major concerns – especially among entrepreneurial-to-middle market companies:

It seems that many senior executive decision makers are NOT using social media. They are not on Faceback or Twitter. They are not actively using LinkedIn. Forget for a moment senior executive decision makers. Most senior sales professionals are not using social media tools in their own sales efforts. We’re still very much in the early adopter phase for most social media practical B2B uses – outside of very young professionals and those in the tech sector.

Has this been your experience? How much are you using social media in your sales function? Are all your sales professionals trained in the latest techniques of using Umberto’s ideas to improve lead generation?

To read the full article on improving B2B lead generation, please click the link below.

Can Social Media Be Used to Improve Lead Qualification

Barry Deutsch

P.S. Is it time to take our Social Media in Sales Self-Assessment to determine if your sales team is leveraging social media and networking to the fullest potential in your company?

Filed Under: sales management, social media · Tagged: , , , ,