New Book! A Goldmine of Sales Wisdom – Mastering The World Of Selling
Aug 24, 2010 Books, Books by Keith Rosen
I want to take a moment to let you in on something special. Something that could easily contribute to making this one of your best years in sales.
Eric Taylor and David Riklan, the creators of the “Mastering the World” book series, are releasing their newest masterpiece.
Mastering the Word of Selling.
I can tell you this, they have worked incredibly hard compiling the greatest sales strategies and tips from the top thought leaders out there to make this book is an invaluable resource for anyone working in sales.
The complete details are here.
One look and you’ll quickly see why it’s really “the best of the best.”
Whether it’s the classic wisdom of Napoleon Hill and Zig Ziglar … or up-to-the-minute advice on using the power of “Sales 2.0” technologies, you can take absolutely any nugget from within this book’s 385 pages, and immediately apply it to solving your most pressing real-life sales challenges.
This is truly one of the most powerful and relevant single-volume collection of sales strategies, persuasion tactics, and training advice you’ll find.
And they’ve also included a chapter with my sales and sales leadership strategies.
There are just too many topics, too many bonus materials offered and too many experts contributing to list here. Even on the webpage, they don’t list quite everything but you can take a look for yourself and see who and what is included here.
Finally, David and Eric are also celebrating the book’s release date with an incredible, exclusive give-away of $2,686.00 worth of hand-picked FREE Gifts. (You’ll have to visit their webpage here to get all the details, and see how you can qualify.)
See for yourself what all the fuss and all the excitement is about!
Here’s the main site: masteringtheworld.com
The Ten Best Books to Read in 2010
Dec 30, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, coaching for managers, training for managers
Selling Power magazine just released their list of The 10 Best Books to Read in 2010. You can find the full list of these top ten books on Selling Power’s blog here.
My book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions is listed #1. I’m deeply appreciative of this recognition. You can find the full review below. Most important, I hope this book continues to make the impact it has on managers world wide, regardless of industry or profession, providing the guidance and strategies that are desperately needed to succeed as a leader and as a coach in this new marketplace in order to end the timeless struggles that managers are faced with, get your people hyper-productive and ultimately have them perform like true champions today. (You can find more information about this book here.
Review below by Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and publisher of Selling Power Magazine:
The 10 Best Books to Read in 2010
Charles W. Eliot once said, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” The profession of selling is fortunate to have a multitude of counselors who are willing to share their insights with their peers. Below is Selling Power’s selection of the best books to read for sales managers and salespeople to boost sales productivity, to improve sales and to increase customer value. These ten books contain hundreds of valuable ideas that – if applied correctly – could easily increase your sales by 10% – 30% in 2010.
1. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions: A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives by Keith Rosen
How many salespeople on your team are not employing their full potential? 50%, or more? What stands in the way to greater performance isn’t something they don’t have, but something they don’t get: professional coaching. The sad truth is that most sales managers don’t have the skill set that it takes to make a positive difference in their salespeople’s performance.
Most managers act as “super closers” and at the same time they complain about their salespeople’s inability to improve. Their approach to coaching is “telling and yelling.” The good news is that Executive Sales Coaching shares a proven process where sales managers and salespeople can co-create new skills in a fail-safe environment. The outcome: salespeople will create their own solutions.
This book will show you how you can:
*Help salespeople use their hidden capacities to solve their own problems
*Create a culture of accountability where salespeople strive to live up to their commitments
*Establish a climate of constructive collaboration that allows people to grow
What do I think? There are only a handful of great sales coaches. Keith Rosen is one of the top three in my mind. His book shares all the essentials you need to achieve a positive transformation of your sales team in 2010.
The downside: Once you’ve opened your eyes to the amazing possibilities of coaching salespeople, you’ll become hyper-critical of other sales managers who are stuck in the old ways of managing by “telling and yelling.”
You can read the full review and find the other top ten books on Gerhard’s blog here.
Tags: books on management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, Sales Management, training for managers
72 Hr. Book Event EXTENDED: Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is #1 Best Selling Book on Amazon
Sep 22, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers
First, I want to thank all the partners who supported this book event. Your support is deeply appreciated.
The good news, Coaching Salespeople Into Champions sells out on Amazon & breaks a new sales record, becoming the #1 Best Selling Sales Management Book last week. The bad news, they sold out of stock. The good news, the book supply has since been replenished and as such, I wanted to extend this book event for another 72 Hours to those people who wanted to order the book but emailed me about this out of stock issue. You still have an opportunity to take advantage of this event for the next 72 hours and get all the bonus materials from dozens of thought leaders that you get with your purchase. Click here to find out more.
I’ve confirmed that Amazon shipping status has been revised from sold out status and the book will now ships within 1 week. Below are the details of this extended event.
Get Your Playbook For Winning More Sales-Today
BOOK SELLS OUT AND MAKES #1 SPOT ON AMAZON.COM. IN RESPONSE, WE’RE EXTENDING THIS 72 HOUR BOOK EVENT THROUGH THIS WEEK!
FACT: There has never been a more critical time for managers to impact performance in a way that brings in more sales and revenue & motivates teams to achieve greater success.
FACT: The majority of managers are simply not equipped with the right skills, tools and a tactical process they can follow to do so.
To win more sales today, you need to play by the new rules. Micromanagement and doing more of what you did yesterday doesn’t work. Learn what the world’s top sales organizations are doing to create sales champions by developing the new discipline of leadership.
“This is the best book ever written on sales coaching.” – Brian Tracy
Named Best Sales Leadership Book of the Year and one of the World’s Best Business Books of 2009, in Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions you’ll get a step by step, award winning process you can follow to coach your sales team to bring in more sales today.
You’ll discover how to:
- Blow your quota away and get your salespeople selling more today. (Most companies increase sales between 12-20%.)
- Turn underperformers into super-achievers in less than 30 days!
- Attract and retain top sales talent.
- Avoid the mistakes that lead to coaching failure.
- Coach your team to become accountable and self-motivated. Stop wasting your time continually pushing for results.
- Empower your people to solve their own problems and lessen their dependence on you.
- Eliminate time consuming distractions, fires and costly staffing problems that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
- Plus much more!
72 HOUR EVENT EXTENDED: Receive hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from the world’s top sales and business leaders. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.
Tags: book event, Books, coaching for sales managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, free bonus, sales management coaching
Mismanaging Expectations: Are You Preparing Your Sales Team for Change?
Sep 16, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Executive Coaching, Hiring and recruiting, How to Manage Your Team, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople
72 HOUR EVENT: To win more sales today, you need to play by the new rules. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.
Maria was a new sales manager hired by Media Pros, Inc., a sports management consulting firm. She was recently introduced to the coaching model at a seminar for senior managers in her company.
Maria went back to her team pumped up and ready to begin implementing some of the coaching methods. However, it seems that Maria missed the section of the seminar on how critical it is to prepare your team for coaching by managing their expectations.
Compound this with the fact that Maria has only been in her position for less than five weeks. It’s difficult enough for a sales team to adjust to a new boss, but further changes without proper preparation and communication will cause a rebellion.
Maria’s boss set up a meeting with her and an outside executive coach to discuss the resistance Maria was running up against when attempting to manage and coach her team. Maria told the executive coach that she felt she had assimilated herself into her team and prepared them for any changes she was making. Since Maria’s sales team worked remotely, she introduced herself to the team via a conference call and let them all know she was there to support them and help them become even more successful in their careers. Sounds pretty good so far, right? However, after further exploration, the executive coach uncovered the breakdown in Maria’s new manager orientation process.
The executive coach asked Maria the following questions to help discover why Maria failed to manage her team’s expectations as well as develop a strategy to communicate her objectives in a way her team would understand and embrace.
1.Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team?
2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable?
3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative?
4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see?
5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor.
6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents?
7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management?
8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them?
9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole?
10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company? Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?
With each question, it became more evident that Maria did not plan or prepare her staff for change. She did not prepare her team for a new boss or for her new approach to management.
At the end of the conversation, it was clear to Maria what she had to do. She would start with a team meeting to address many of the questions posed to her by the executive coach. Maria would use this meeting to explain the changes she wanted to make and the benefits each person on the sales team would realize. Maria also knew that she needed to address any gossip, rumors, or negativity that could poison the team. She would acknowledge that with any change in management there is an adjustment period. Maria wants her team to know that she is sensitive to what they are going through during this transition, as well as to each of their individual needs. She needs to reinforce her role and the fact that even though her style, personality, and approach may be different from what they are used to, she is there to help them thrive in their careers.
Once Maria finished facilitating this team meeting, she scheduled one-on-one calls with each salesperson on her team to discuss these questions. More specifically, the questions that relate to their specific needs and goals and how they want to be managed and coached. This experience was a huge lesson for Maria and would be for any manager. If you fail to inform your salespeople of your good intentions, they have no idea what they are, thus leaving it up to each salesperson to form his or her own opinion.
A situation where a salesperson had a less than favorable experience with the old manager can be made worse and repeated if the new manager does not take the steps to create a new experience between her and her salespeople.
If management does not break the cycle, they may encounter situations where their salespeople are not engaged at all, especially in the coaching process. New managers would then have to form their own conclusions, thinking that either the coaching doesn’t work or it just may be the salesperson who doesn’t work. In truth, what isn’t working is the exchange of communication and as such, a critical message goes undelivered perpetuating conflicts, communication breakdowns, distrust, and underperformance.
Ironically, you may be doing everything else right when managing your team. That is, your heart is in the right place, your intentions are pure and sound, and you truly want to be the best coach you can be for your team. But without defusing any faulty assumptions, gossip, or beliefs, resistance from your staff will be imminent and your coaching will be unsuccessful.
Whether you’re a new manager or a manager who’s a new coach, informing your team about any new initiatives or changes you plan on making and the enrollment process you will use to initiate buy in needs to happen prior to actually implementing the change.
To recap, first take that step back and assess your team’s needs as well as the unique needs of each individual on your team. Let them know how you plan on supporting them. Then manage these expectations with surgical precision. This will foster a strong, healthy relationship which you can build on right from the start, creating the nurturing and open environment that will enable you to earn your salespeople’s deeper respect, trust and commitment to their objectives, even in the face of change.
72 HOUR EVENT: Learn what the world’s top sales organizations are doing to create sales champions by developing the new discipline of leadership. Receive hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from the world’s top sales and business leaders. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.
Tags: coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management coach training, management training, Sales Coaching, Sales Management
Video: Coach the Process Not the Result
Sep 15, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, Videos, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers
Watch the video here.
72 HOUR EVENT: Get Your Playbook for Winning More Sales Today
Receive hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from the world’s top sales and business leaders. Click Here To Learn More About This Book and Special Event.
The result is the process. A timely paradox and critical mind shift that every salesperson and manager must make if they want to transcend the mediocre performance they may be experiencing today.
Even before you can engage in the type of sales benchmarking activities or even take the time to refine your selling skills, you will come head to head with resistance to selling by the numbers if this change in attitude around how we approach selling is not fully embraced beforehand.
I was reminded how important this was during a seminar I delivered last week in NYC. At the end of the seminar, one manager raised his hand and posed this question to me. He said, “Our sales cycle has changed dramatically. Our salespeople can no longer make a call and take an order. Our product offering has been modified and as a result, the average cost of our product has increased, which has all contributed to a longer sales cycle. However, my salespeople are still reluctant to change. They’re still stuck in that transactional way of selling. They’re getting more frustrated and discouraged because sales aren’t happening fast enough, all because they’re unsure how to manage this longer selling cycle. I’ve told them many times over, that our sales cycle is no longer the way it used to be, and we need to be more patient with the process and more consultative with our customers. I’ve explained to them over and over again, that we need to modify and re-engineer our selling process in response to these new challenges, the changes we’re up against and how our customers make a purchasing decision and buy from us. What else can I do?”
As this sales manager was explaining his challenge, I was thinking to myself how important it is today, more than ever, to become process driven. Without this change in our thinking, salespeople will be unable to honor the process needed to convert more conversations into sales, let alone build out a more robust process and selling strategy that will enable them to do so. As such, the eternal conflict between our tactical strategy and our thinking will continue to rage on.
The fact is, companies will fail to invest the time in order to eliminate process oriented and measurable oversights and embed these necessary changes into their process if the sales culture is too focused on getting to the result by forging ahead in an attempt to close more sales. Managers can continually push their people to become more mindful of these numbers, however, it’s the process driven questions managers need to be more sensitive to rather than the result driven questions that managers obsess over that continue to perpetuate this toxic way of thinking. Those questions sound like, “Are you hitting your numbers? How many follow-up calls did you make today? How much good volume did you book this month? How many leads did you run this week?” While important, these questions only focus on half of the equation. What is missing is the “How,” that is, the questions that focus on the process the salesperson needs to engage in to achieve the desired end result.
Managers need to stop coaching to the result and start coaching to the process, instead.
Become more mindful of the process that will drive the results you seek. Without the change in your result driven attitude that’s keeping you stuck in the first place, all efforts to better manage your selling strategy by a numeric formula are certain to be short lived.
For salespeople and sales leaders, the fundamental shift in our attitude that needs to occur is this; move away from being so result driven and instead, become more process driven.
We must honor this paradox and break free of the limiting thinking that confines us to the current level of performance we’re experiencing. If we truly want to excel today, realize the result is truly the process.
Watch the video here.
Tags: book, coach training, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, executive coach, management training
The Seduction of Potential
Sep 15, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, training for managers
72 HOUR BOOK EVENT! Click here for more information and start winning more sales today.
There are three areas in which managers constantly struggle. The first is deciding who to hire and where to find good talent. The second is deciding who to coach, how to coach and who to support when performance has dipped and the third is determining who to let go and when to do it.
When it comes to making these decisions, the questions I hear most often, sound like this:
How do you turn an underperformer into a top producer or at least into an average, acceptable producer?”
“When does it make sense to invest your time, money, and resources into someone who you feel you can turn around or who hasn’t lived up to their full potential?”
“How can I determine (with great certainty), based on a defined set of criteria, benchmarks, and measurable steps, when enough support, training and coaching is enough and let someone go?”
During a coaching workshop, a manager asked me how to handle an underperformer. While the manager shared in great detail the challenges she was having with a salesperson she hired several months ago, I noticed the reaction from the audience. Their heads were nodding up and down in agreement, as if she was sharing not just her story but everyone’s story.
She told an all too familiar tale of a new, promising hire with incredible potential who wasn’t working out. A candidate with a wonderful resume, great background, stellar references, and a seemingly positive attitude, whose experience seemed to be a perfect complement to the new position.
The manager explained how this promising young superstar became one of her biggest disappointments, frustrations and expense. And it wasn’t as if she just called it quits after a few weeks and fired this person. Like most managers, she invested precious time trying to turn the person around. The more time she invested in supporting and training this person, the more her expectations were shattered.
This manager was stuck. She didn’t know what to do. The new hire was costing her money, time, selling opportunities and resources. She ended her story with what sounded like a desperate cry for help, “Keith, what should I do?”
The room was silent. All the managers and business owners were gripping the edges of their seats, waiting, anticipating a magnificent piece of brilliance, a solution to this common and painfully eternal dilemma.
My response was, “Do not be seduced by the ether of potential.”
Yes, we are often seduced by the potential we believe we see in others. We see potential in the people and opportunities, all around us. We see potential in our new hires and untapped potential in our veterans.
We believe that, if we give them just a little more time, resources, training, attention, they’ll finally live up to their potential. We believe our employees when they tell us, “Just give me a few more weeks. I’m about to close in on two big sales. Yes, I know my performance has slipped, but as I told you, those problems that have been distracting me are no longer there.”
We think, “Okay, if they really could turn it around that would make my life so much easier. After all, it sure beats the painful and time-consuming process of having to recruit someone new, let alone having to figure out how to cover a territory with no salesperson!”
Ironically, it costs more in time, money, resources, internal conflict and lost sales to keep someone like this on your team. And, you’ll have less time to focus on growing your business and on the people who are performing.
That’s when it happens. The seduction begins. You begin making decisions based on your emotions, feelings, hopes and unrealistic scenarios, rather than on the facts and what is best for you, the company and the person in question.
The seduction of potential clouds your better judgment. If you’re looking for evidence of this, just glance over at the people on your team today. When dealing with an underperformer, how many times have you thought, “Just one more week. He’ll turn it around. I know he can do it. If he just follows the program. Just let him get through this next project. I hope he brings in some new business soon.”
We often hire people based more on their potential than their achievements and then try to develop the potential we see in them. After all, the goal of management is to make your people more valuable. The key here is investing your time in making the right people more valuable. Otherwise, it’s a time-consuming and exhausting exercise in futility.
Potential is based on something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence to support. Potential resides in the future. You can’t build a business on potential. If you are making hiring decisions based on people’s potential, and the candidates haven’t been living their potential by the time you meet them, what makes you think they are going to start living it once you hire them?
Either people strive to live their potential each day or they don’t. It’s management’s responsibility to ensure each person on their team has the systems, tools, resources, training and coaching that allows them to do so.
Hey, I’m all for continued improvement. The difference between working off potential and lifelong improvement is this. With potential, you’re looking for something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence for. With lifelong improvement, you’re working with a known quantity and have the empirical evidence (possibly from past experiences) that supports your belief that turning this person around is truly possible. You have the verification, commitment and evidence that the situation can be made better.
The real problem is, managers wind up collapsing potential with possibility. So, what truly seduces you is the potential of possibility.
What’s missing for managers is certainty. It’s the uncertainty, the unknown, the fear that paralyzes managers who have to decide whether to terminate someone or invest time into turning them around. Managers rely more on their fear based gut reactions than on the facts.
Having certainty and confidence in their people supported by evidence of their capabilities is a healthier, more productive model when creating new possibilities. This is what I refer to as authentic human potential. The certainty comes from having a defined coaching program. Once you have a structured coaching program that sets expectations and holds people accountable on a daily and weekly basis, you no longer have to decide to retain or terminate them. Underperformers will make that decision for you, based on the defined set of criteria, goals and measurable action steps they need to take to demonstrate their commitment to their position and to dramatically improve their performance.
If you are responsible for hiring, developing, and managing a team, what process do you have in place to leverage their strengths from the time of hire through their first 30, 60, 90, even 120 days? Would having a Thirty-Day New Hire Orientation Program for every hire that details the measurable steps to take and the objectives they need to reach during this timeline help you and your team? Wouldn’t this simplify your life dramatically? Now that you have a proven process documented, either the new hire is sticking by the program and achieving the expected results, or not. There’s no room for you to be seduced by the potential of possibility. There’s no probation or need to wait for the year-end performance appraisals.
You can now run your business or manage your team with greater efficiency. Once these processes are in place, you’ll be able to get back to doing what every manager is destined to do in the first place: make your people even more valuable.
72 HOUR BOOK EVENT!
Get Your Playbook for Winning More Sales Today. Develop the new discipline of leadership that creates sales champions. Order your copy of Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions today and you will receive immediate access to hundreds of dollars worth of bonus gifts from many of the world’s top sales and business thought leaders. Start Winning More Sales Today! Click here for more information.
Tags: book event, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople, Executive Coaching, management training, Sales Coaching
Through the Eyes of a Salesperson: Is Cold Calling Really Dead? Develop a Permission Based Prospecting Strategy to Set More Appointments with Qualified Prospects
May 28, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, cold calling, sales tips, sales tools, tele-sales, telesales
Lately, I’ve been getting a high volume of calls from sales managers and their salespeople struggling to meet their sales goals. So, let me paint you a visual of the typical scenario being played out through the eyes of a salesperson; one that you may be intimately familiar with.
You’re on your way to work and during your commute, you’re thinking about what you hope to accomplish that day.
You get to your office, sit down at your desk and open up your calendar. A concerned look sweeps over your face. “Only one appointment this week.”
You look at your pipeline and get that squirmy feeling inside your gut, as you realize your pipeline is not as full as it used to be. You’re wondering where you’re going to find your next prospect.
The uncertainty begins to sweep over you. The stress starts creeping into your body, for you realize you can’t keep procrastinating making the cold calls you need to in order to book more appointments with key decision makers.
You remember what your boss told you. “Your funnel is drying up,” he says. “You’ve got to get on the phone and make more calls to your existing clients and to new prospects if you want to meet your goals.”
“Okay I can do this,” you tell yourself.
You find some people to call.
You take a deep breath and start dialing their number. “C’mon just answer the phone,” you say to yourself.
“Voice mail.” You don’t leave a message because you never get your calls returned anyway.
You dial the second number on you call list. Someone answers the phone and you hear, “Mrs. Johnson’s office, how can I help you?”
“Great, another gatekeeper,” you mutter to yourself. You’re actually caught off guard that a live person answered your call. Thirty seconds later, after your valiant, yet ineffective attempt to connect with your prospect, you hear a pleasant but well trained, “No thank you. We’re not interested.” You’re off the phone with the gatekeeper in less than one minute, as she’s been conditioned not to take unsolicited calls, especially cold calls.
You dial the third and fourth number. No luck. “More gatekeepers,” you say. “Why can’t I get past them?” you ask yourself. You start questioning if luck is actually what you really need or if there is more to cold calling than you originally thought.
“Okay one more shot.” You push yourself to dial the fifth number on your call list.
Someone picks up. Shockingly, it’s the prospect! Maybe you’ll get ‘lucky.’ And knowing that you need to open up this call with something gripping and compelling to grab this prospect’s attention to the point where they stop what they’re doing and want to engage in a conversation with you, you say, “Um, Hi. Mr. Smith? Uh, this is Chris from ABC logistics. How are you today?”
“Busy!” he says. And with that, he hangs up the phone.
Now, you’re depleted, frustrated and annoyed. You don’t understand why you’re unable to set the appointments with the prospects who you know you can help and therefore need to meet with. In a discouraging tone, you ask yourself, “Why won’t they talk to me? I know I can help them. If only they’d give me some time on the phone.”
You feel you’ve just wasted three hours of your day that you’ll never get back. In desperation, you cry out, “This cold calling thing doesn’t work for me! What else can I do to schedule meetings with more qualified prospects who can buy from me?”
And that’s when you ask yourself this toxic question which is often followed with a ‘yes’ that feeds the justification of your performance. “Is cold calling really dead?”
No, I did not have a hidden webcam secretly installed in your office, in case you’re wondering how I’ve been able to paint such a vivid picture that so closely resembles what you may be experiencing yourself. If anything, take some comfort in knowing that you are not alone and you can do something about it.
So, what is the answer? Is cold calling really dead? The answer is a resound, “Not even close.” Therefore, do not abandon cold calling! Cold calling is far from dead and I see evidence of this every day. After all, a majority of all Fortune 500 companies utilize some form of telephone prospecting every day.
Sure, I realize for many people cold calling and prospecting ranks right up there with getting their teeth pulled without the gas.
However, as an executive sales coach who has coached and trained thousands of salespeople over the years, here’s what I’ve learned very early on. It’s not that cold calling doesn’t work. Cold calling works fabulously well. It’s the way you’re cold calling that doesn’t work. In other words, consider that it’s more about your approach and cold calling strategy; what you say and how you say it – that is ineffective and what your prospects are unresponsive to.
So be careful. Most people who feel cold calling doesn’t work in actuality, have learned the wrong lesson.
For example, if I asked you to go outside and dig a ten foot deep hole with a spoon, do you learn the lesson, “Well, I guess I can’t dig holes very well” or is the real lesson; “If I had the right tools I would have been able to accomplish this goal faster, with less effort.” You see, it’s all about the tools you’re using when cold calling. Even if you handed Tiger Woods, one of the greatest golfers of all time, a pair of lefty clubs, while he still may outperform most golfers he would not be able to operate at his best, at the pinnacle of his potential, simply because he’s using the wrong tools. The same philosophy applies to your career and to cold calling.
Most salespeople sound exactly the same as every other person when calling on the same prospect, rather than develop their unique and compelling message that grabs someone’s ear to the point where they are interested in what you have to say. Why should a prospect want to hear the same approach time and time again? How can that possibly distinguish you?
So if you’re not getting the results you need, instead of abandoning a proven selling strategy, it’s time to upgrade your cold calling and follow up system. With a strong prospecting and cold calling model that is mapped out step by step; which also includes the compelling opening statement you need, the reasons why someone should listen to you in the first place (rather than opening up a call by asking for an appointment, demo, proposal, etc.), well crafted questions to determine if there’s even a fit between you and your prospect, as well as a strong voice mail and follow up strategy, you will see what a competitive edge “cold calling” can give you.
Side note: Over the last year, my cold calling book has been gaining more popularity as competition increases and the need to find more qualified prospects to fill your pipeline intensifies. So, if you’re ready to develop a permission based prospecting system that will enable you:
Here’s the link to Amazon to read all the five star reviews or you can go to my website here to learn more about this book.
Tags: appointment setting, cold call, cold calling, phone tips, prospecting, Sales Coaching, sales tips, telesales
Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions Named one of The World’s Best Business Books of 2009
Mar 3, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Career Advice, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers
Special offer below to celebrate this achievement. Get the book 37% off and my coaching playbooks for free here. )
The other day, results were announced that my latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions received the Axiom Business Book Award and was honored with the silver medal for being recognized as one of the World’s Best Business Books of 2009. I’m humbly appreciative of this award and look forward to continuing my quest to deliver rich content and value through my writing and coaching.
Below is the press release that was sent out by the Axiom Book Awards.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Axiom Business Book Award Winners Offer Knowledge and Hope in Troubled Times
(Traverse City, MI, Feb. 25, 2009) Difficult problems require knowledgeable solutions. The current global financial meltdown may be the most difficult economic challenge we’ll ever face, requiring the best educational tools available. As the stock market tumbles and job markets tighten, where can one turn to get an edge, to survive and thrive? Read books—cutting-edge, award-winning books.
Jenkins Group and IndependentPublisher.com are proud to announce the results of the second annual Axiom Business Book Awards, honoring the best business books published during the past year. The list of Axiom Award-winning titles will assure the reading public that help is near, in a wide array of business topics, from Leadership and Entrepreneurship to hard-to-find categories like Business Ethics, Philanthropy and Business Fable.
Whether to investigate a new career or to decipher their 401-Ks, these trying times make people realize the need to further educate themselves. Finding a qualified reading list that covers a breadth of subject matter and business topics saves us time and money.
The Axiom Business Book Awards are designed to create such a list, bringing this group of exemplary business books to the attention of those eager to learn, see, and work differently to improve their careers and businesses. The awards offer a platform for today’s leading business
voices to help restore confidence among readers that all is not lost.
“We’re very excited to bring awareness to this important genre of books,” says company founder Jerrold Jenkins. “This year’s winners represent the world’s best business minds and their wisdom and knowledge is needed now more than ever. Congratulations and thanks to all Axiom Award medalists for their efforts.”
Nearly 350 entries were received in this year’s contest. See a complete listing of results at their website.
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Tags: book awards, Executive Coaching, management training, Sales Coaching, Sales Management
Get Your Free Copy of Leadership Mojo and Get Your Sales Team Selling More
Feb 18, 2009 Books by Keith Rosen, Business Coaching, Career Advice, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, articles on leadership, coaching for managers, management articles, management tips, training for managers
I have something timely and special I want to share with you. It’s a new guide I’ve developed entitled, Leadership Mojo. And today, I’m giving it away for free because in this economic climate, every great leader and manager needs their mojo to get their sales team selling more than ever before.
Learn what you can do to coach your team to sell more during new and more challenging times. As a complement to my award winning book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, I’ve put together Leadership Mojo; a compilation of thoughts, ideas and strategies on the new discipline of leadership and what it takes to coach your sales team into high performing sales champions.
You may be wondering why I’m giving this away for free. Well, since every competitive edge counts today, I want to do to my part in supporting you during more challenging times.
Tap into over one hundred pages filled with dozens of timely and practical tips to:
And more!
Value: $30.00
Special Offer: Download this for FREE!
Get Your free copy of Leadership Mojo
DIRECTIONS: To receive your free copy, simply send an email to mojo@profitbuilders.com with the words “Leadership Mojo” in the subject line and within minutes, you’ll receive your special download!
IMPORTANT NOTE: To ensure you receive the instructions and link to download your free copy, please make sure you have the email address mojo@profitbuilders.com in your safe sender/recipient list to avoid our email being deleted or flagged as spam. If you don’t receive our email within 24 hours, then please send a second email to the same address with the words “Second Request” in the subject line so that we can assist you.
For more information on this new eguide, click here and get your mojo.
Tags: career coaching, Executive Coaching, managent tips, Sales Coaching, save your job
Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions Wins 2008 Sales Leadership Book of The Year
Dec 30, 2008 All About Selling, Books, Books by Keith Rosen, Career Advice, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Sales Management, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers
(Special offer below to celebrate this achievement. Get the book 37% off, my coaching playbooks for free and hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials here. )
I just found out that my latest book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions has won the prestigious Book of the Year gold medal for the best Sales Leadership book of 2008. Thirty-five judges reviewed these books over a sixty-day period, utilizing a common scoring process to make their decisions. I’m humbly appreciative of this award and look forward to continuing my quest to deliver rich content and value through my writing and coaching.
The rules of success in the new economy certainly apply to how you manage and develop your team of fearless prospectors and rainmakers. There’s a new technology of leadership needed to build a team of sales champions today. To drive positive, measurable change and keep your competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top performers.
I was recently asked by author Lee Salz, what managers need to do to most effectively impact their team. Here was my response:
“To have a profound impact on the success of your team, the leader must change first. After all, avalanches roll downhill. It’s a new economy and the rules of business have changed overnight, The areas most impacted – sales and leadership. Now more than ever our society is consumed with fear. We are living in a period of intense fear and leadership in many organizations is fear based. Managers need to shift away from fear based management and develop more of a collaborative coaching culture. You cannot inspire others when you are afraid and you can’t be inspired when you’re full of fear and worry. Conduct more frequent one-to-one meetings, build greater accountability by relinquishing your role as Chief Problem Solver and have less tolerance for mediocrity.”
“How do you lead your team differently today compared to the way you did just six months ago? Have you benchmarked the most effective sales and leadership practices? Are you coaching the right people or are you still being seduced by potential and attempting to coach the uncoachable? Ultimately, management needs to adapt, innovate and evolve or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits.”
Back in May of this year, this book made Amazon’s Best Seller list and was the #1 Best Selling management book. Still holding strong in the top 10 I’m grateful for all of my partners, bloggers and readers who helped contribute to this book’s success as well as those thought leaders who supported this project, such as Dr. Denis Waitley, author of The Seeds of Greatness and The Psychology of Winning and Anthony Parinello, author of Selling to VITO.
Brian Tracy had this to say about my book. “There is no other single activity to boost sales that works better than sales coaching and this book is the best ever written on how to do it well.”
Tom Hopkins wrote, “Few management books are specific to salespeople. Keith Rosen’s book is a great one to study and apply or pick up here and there when you have a special need. His coaching ideas are clearly explained and easily executed.”
And Dr. Tony Alessandra said, “Coaching Salespeople Into Sales Champions is a well written, easily readable, practical book for anyone who manages salespeople. Excellent content is combined with real case studies, coaching templates and action steps that make this book a must read and a desktop reference for every sales manager, executive or business owner.”
You can read more about the incredible consortium of thought leaders who have endorsed my book on this page. In addition, they have generously contributed hundreds of dollars of their own content which you can access for free when you purchase just one copy of this book.
Which brings me to something you’ll be interested in. In addition to all of these resources you’ll get, I’m also giving away my suite of Coaching Playbooks absolutely free when you place an order for Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions. (John Wiley & Sons, Hardcover) Learn More Here.
The book by itself is a great value, even if you can get it for 34% off. Additionally you can get hundreds of dollars worth of valuable materials from some of the greatest business minds around such as Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Jonathan Farrington, Michael Nick, Lee J. Colan, Ph.D., Lee Salz, CanDoGo.com, SalesDog.com, Landslide, Salesopedia.com, Salesconx, SalesGravy.com and more.
Look at the resources you get here.
Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions provides you with a proven, systematic process that creates world class teams and gets your people selling more than ever before. Don’t wait any longer for a miraculous turnaround. Doing more of what you did yesterday is going to keep you stuck where you’ve already been. Develop the missing discipline you need to coach your salespeople into sales champions. Learn More at the official site for Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.
You can also order the book here.
Start the New Year off strong. Wishing you a prosperous, spectacular and healthy 2009!
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