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History provides us with many examples of change and of methods becoming outdated.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

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

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

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

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: , , , , ,

Is Your Sales Team Learning and Growing?

March 2, 2011 by · 1 Comment

Do your sales managers and sales professionals continually and proactively learn and expand their knowledge/skills as sales experts?

I’m sorting through the thousands of blogs I follow on a weekly basis and I come across this blog posting in the sales arena for the top 50 sales blogs based on Hubspot’s Grading Tool. Sean Black at the SalesCrunch Blog pulled this list together and here’s a short summary:

Here at SalesCrunch we follow well over 200 of the best sales blogs each day! This is obviously far too many for any normal human to filter and process. So when we saw Hubspot post their Top 100 Marketing Blogs using the new groups feature in Blog Grader last week we were super excited. We immediately decided to feed our list of 200+ blogs into the tool to generate  the SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs. The list is generated according to the “Grade” in Blog Grader and is updated daily so the list is always accurate and up to date.

It started me thinking about your sales leadership and sales staff.

What is your sales team reading, researching, and studying to become more adept at selling, sales management, negotiation, prospecting, leveraging social media to generate leads and referrals? If your sales management and sales team is a lot like the thousands of sales professionals I’ve interviewed over the years, then they are probably doing NOTHING on their own unless you force-feed it to them.

One of the differences between average/mediocre sales management-sales professionals and top talent is that top talent never stops learning. They are like sponges. They cannot get enough new information to become better at their craft. The best part is that they don’t wait for you to teach them or provide learning opportunities. They seek it out on their own.

Do you agree with this statement – top talent never stops learning?

What type of people do you have in your sales organization – average/mediocre staff waiting for you to give them learning opportunities OR are they top talent sales professionals reaching and grabbing for every ounce of information they can find that will help them become more effective?

In our Sales Recruiting Division of our Executive Search Practice, we’ve started to require our recruiters to ask questions about continuous learning to separate out the top talent.

Some of these questions might include:

  • What are 3-5 books you’ve read recently on a sales related topic?
  • What are your favorite sales learning/education blogs that you follow regularly?
  • What sales learning/education forums-groups do you belong to on LinkedIn or other platforms?
  • Where have you found recently a great idea or tip on sales that has improved your capability or skill?
  • Walk me through the learning you’ve proactively sought out over the last year or two to become better in sales – learning that your company didn’t provide or give to you.

These are just a few of the questions we probe to try and validate is this sales candidate a top talent individual and are they a continuous life-long learner. Are they growing and expanding their capability at a rapid pace?

Is it time to look at your sales team and score them along a learning/personal growth matrix? How about changing your sales interviews?

I’d love to hear your feedback from your next sales interview when you pose these questions to a potential candidate. Would you be comfortable asking these questions? Do you believe they start to get at important traits of success for top talent sales professionals and sales managers?

To read the full blog post by Sean Black, click the link below:

SalesCrunch Top 50 Sales Blogs 2011

 

Barry Deutsch

P.S. We have launched our new 30-day e-course for personal service providers and sales professionals on how to leverage social media to attract customers and clients. You can read more about this exciting e-course offering in the blog sidebar or by clicking the menu item at the top of the blog.

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