Search

Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category

Reaching Year End Sales Goals – The Coaching Conversation Every Manager Needs to Have With Their Salespeople

Jan 18, 2010 Communication, Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, coaching for managers, training for managers


It’s the third week in January. Do you know where your goals are? At this point, a good number of managers have already set their 2010 sales goals for themselves and for their sales team. Whether these goals were sanctioned from the top, developed through a mutual collaboration between the salesperson and the sales manager, have been calculated by a formulaic process based on the salesperson, the marketplace and their territory or were developed and disseminated to their salespeople with a more reactive ambiguity, (“Just get out there and sell more this year!”) the majority of managers are thinking about making 2010 a better year than its predecessor.

While some level of goal setting activity has taken place or a declaration has been made by the manager how important it is to “do better this year,” it’s the deeper conversation that follows the goal decree which I often find missing within sales organizations that needs to be facilitated by management.

Sure, you may have set the sales goals with your sales team, and you may have even discussed strategy with them; that is, how they are going achieve their goals. You may have gone as far as having your salespeople submit a business plan to support this. While these are healthy practices for management and for their salespeople, these sparkles of management brilliance do not encapsulate the full composition needed to ensure success throughout the year.

For example, when discussing your sales goals with your salespeople, did you address the following topics?

Exactly how they are going to attain their goals; that is, the strategy that needs to be executed.

*Their level of buy in around their goal.

*Their level of confidence around attaining their goal.

*The potential roadblocks that can sabotage their efforts and prevent them from reaching their goals.

*The role they want you, as their manager, to play in supporting them.

*How they want to be managed around their goals.

*How they want to be held accountable around reaching their goals and how they want you to approach them if they drop the ball.

*The structure they need to put in place regarding how they will manage their daily activity that will move them towards attaining their goals.

What follows is a brief outline for any manger to use when conducting that coaching conversation with their salespeople around their yearly sales goals, while ensuring your salespeople are bought into being coached and supported by you. You will notice that these questions will address the gaps I mentioned that often go overlooked until it’s too late. At this point, managers now find themselves in the reactionary position of spending their time managing problems and fires rather than managing goals and coaching their salespeople on achieving them.

Please note that the following outline and questions have been developed with a few assumptions in mind. First, you are already coaching your salespeople. Second, your sales team is bought into being coached by you. Third, you are truly coaching them using a proven coaching framework (rather than relabeling how you managed them yesterday as coaching). Finally, their sales goals have already been established. (We’re not talking about their personal goals at this time.)

Keep in mind, this is just an outline. While it’s critical to appreciate the importance of having this conversation with each of your salespeople, you may want to fine tune it to best fit your situation.

Step One: Schedule at least a one hour meeting. (This is a conversation too important for anyone to rush through. After all, planning for the race always takes longer than the race itself.)

Step Two: Set the expectations of your meeting and what the objective of the meeting is with them. For example, “I want to use our time today to discuss your goals, how I can support you around achieving them and how together, we can develop the best strategy for you that’s going to drive the results you want.”

Step Three: Discuss the goals that have been set. Ask questions such as:

1.“So, how do you feel about your goals?”
2. “How did you come up with that goal?”
3. “How confident are you about achieving this goal?”
4. “Why?” “What’s making you feel that way?”
5. “What would it mean to you if you achieved these goals? (Personally/professionally)”
6. “What’s the cost you would incur if you don’t achieve them? What would it mean to you if you don’t achieve these goals? What would happen then?” (This isn’t old school motivation by fear or consequence. Rather, for those underperformers who need to understand that there may be a consequence incurred if they fail to reach their goals, this helps them articulate it in their words, instead of the manager standing on their pedestal preaching the consequences to them and sounding like the bad guy. Remember, people listen better and believe what they say more than what they’re told.)

Step Four: Enroll them in coaching (if need be). The timing to do so is perfect, as coaching is the means for them to achieve their goal and how management needs to support their people in doing so.

Step Five: Facilitate this conversation using the following questions:

1.What are the parts of your job that you’re exited about and motivate you?
2. What do you want to/need to achieve in the short term/long-term that will support your goals? (If you’ve already established this, i.e. in their business plan, you can skip this.)
3. What’s your action plan and strategy to achieve your goals? (If they don’t have one, make sure they have a top level view of what this could look like and make this one of their action steps that they need to complete for your next coaching session with them. You can start this process by asking them, “So if you were going to put together an action plan and a strategy to achieve your goals, what would that look like? What would some of the necessary components of your strategy be? Think about the last goals that you’ve achieved. What has made you successful before?”
4. How can I best manage and support you to achieve these goals?
5. How do you like to be rewarded/acknowledged for a job well done?
6. How will we measure your success and progress along the way? (30, 60 and 90 day milestones and mini-goals are critical to maintain your sales team’s focus and motivation throughout the entire year. A year end goal is a long way off. So, celebrate wins along the way and use these milestones as an opportunity to adjust or modify their strategy if necessary.)
7. What might sabotage your efforts to achieve these goals? What do we need to look out for that would get in the way of achieving your goals? What safeguards can we put into place to ensure that doesn’t happen?
8. What structure do you need to put into place in order to make sure you’re engaging in the right activities each day that support your goals while keeping the distractions at bay? (Hint: A structured routine!)
9. How can I hold you accountable around your goals in a way that will sound supportive rather than negative?
10. How do you want me to approach you if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make? What would be a good way to bring this up? How do you want me to handle it?

Step Six – Debrief:
1.So, how are you feeling about our conversation (and first coaching session)?
2. Do you have any concerns moving forward?
3. Great, and to reconfirm next steps, what are you going to be working on next? (What are the action steps you’ll be taking based on our conversation today?)
4. Lets go ahead and schedule our next meeting. What are you willing to commit to having completed by then?
5. I’m looking forward to working with you so that you can achieve your goals this year!

TIP:
Give your salespeople the space to answer these questions. Remember, some of these questions are not only questions you may have never asked your salespeople, but questions they, themselves have never been asked before. So, don’t rush them through this important process of self discovery and do make sure they answer your questions completely.

Additional Questions to Use:
• What do you want in your career that you don’t currently have?
• What do you want to be doing that you aren’t currently doing?
• What are you doing now that you don’t want to be doing?

Tags: , , , , , ,

Connecting on Common Ground: Questions That Gracefully Correct Someone and Foster Healthy Collaboration That Create Better Solutions

Dec 2, 2009 Communication, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Life Coaching and Career Coaching, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching


There may be times when someone holds certain perceptions or beliefs about your product, service, industry, performance or processes that may be inaccurate. Or, maybe you need to enroll people in an alternative solution, a new way of looking at a situation or a different way of thinking. When this occurs, and you’re running into resistance from the other side when trying to create buy in or you are hearing conflicting opinions which you do not agree with, you may react by telling the person they’re wrong. Or, you attempt to fill in the conversation with statistical data, evidence or proof that supports and defends your point of view in order to convince them to agree with you.

Lets face it, when someone is told they’re wrong or their belief is in conflict with the position you’ve taken, they either shut down and stop listening or come out fighting in an attempt to defend their stand. Once this happens, a confrontational atmosphere is created between you and the person you are speaking with. When you invalidate someone’s viewpoint, they become further entrenched in their case and are less willing to budge or move off of their platform.

Rather than react to their remark, demonstrate your interest in understanding what motivates their thinking and reasoning in the first place. Become interested in gaining a greater awareness around where they are coming from and seize this opportunity to validate and connect with some aspect of their feelings and thinking. Saying things like, “I appreciate how you feel” or “I understand your feelings/position on that” lets the other person know that you are sincerely trying to understand and respect their view and what they had said, rather than dismiss it. This demonstrates a willingness on your end to smooth out the playing field, continue the conversation and find a common ground and solution, without becoming argumentative and defensive.

To avoid confrontation, detach from your agenda and outcome for a moment and instead, respond to a person’s statements or comments with a question that directs the conversation toward creating a new opportunity, belief or solution. Questions allow you to correct someone gracefully or explore a new possibility without having an emotional reaction, dismissing their opinion and feelings or telling them they’re wrong.

To avoid the battles that happen in daily communication, focus on helping other people get what they want in every conversation. This is especially important if you’re running into situations like these with the people you work with. We often forget that, while we may all hold conflicting viewpoints, you are still ultimately working towards one collective goal, objective and vision within the organization. We need to continually be mindful of our shared goals and keep this in front of our line of vision. This approach enables you to do so, while acknowledging and respecting each other’s differences. You’ll also find out that you have more in common than you had originally thought.

Drive these types of conversations with well crafted, neutrally charged questions that are not loaded, manipulative, adversarial or have a hidden agenda attached to them. The byproduct will be healthier collaboration that ultimately gives you what you want with less effort. These questions will also help foster a deeper level of buy in and the mutual alignment of goals that you need in order to ensure that together, you generate worthwhile results over the long term. The following questions will enable you to create new opportunities that you would not have noticed before and uncover innovative ideas that are otherwise left unexplored.

1.What else do you feel might be possible? What else could be true?

2.Can you please share with me your thinking on that? What does that (solution, approach, problem, etc.) look like for you? What does that look like through your eyes?

3.May I share my view on that? Are you open to hearing another point of view on that?

4.Is it possible that there may be another approach/solution here? Is there a different way we can look at this?

5.Is it possible that there may be more/other facts to consider?

6.How can I best assist you around achieving what you want most?

7.When did you decide that was true?

8.That’s interesting. Can you share with me why you feel/see it that way?

9.What else is true about that? Is that the truth or is it something else?

10.I’m not too sure what you mean. Can you say more about that?

11.How do you mean when you say (better results, well trained, not qualified, not professional, unmotivated, poor service, etc.)? What does (success, persistent, organized, responsive, more responsibility, a qualified selling opportunity, overwhelmed, etc.) mean to you/look like to you?

12.I hear that you’re saying this can’t be done this way but what if it could be done? What would that mean to you?

13.What would be possible if…..?

14.What result are you looking to achieve here?

15.What is most important to you?

16.What’s the common ground that we share? What’s the common objective that you see here? What do you feel we are in agreement around?

Tags: , , , , ,

To Tweet or Not To Tweet? If That’s The Question, The Answer is – Know Your Objectives

Nov 10, 2009 American Entitlement, Business Coaching, Business Tools, Communication, Marketing, sales tools


Follow me on Twitter here.

“Should I be tweeting, Keith?” This question comes up more and more when speaking with clients. Since there are several factors to consider when answering this, my response to this question are additional exploratory questions that guide a conversation to help individuals and companies determine whether it makes sense for them to become part of the Twitter universe or, twitterverse, which according to the urban dictionary is defined as, “The cyberspace area of twitter. This naturally extends beyond twitter.com to anywhere you can twitter, which includes cell phones.” (Yes, be prepared for more jargon and a new language.) Here are a handful of those questions:

1.“What do you already know about Twitter?”
2.“Is this something you’re setting up as a personal account or for your business?” (What are you using it for? Staying in touch, for fun, to achieve a certain goal or objective, to make money, etc.”)
3.“Tell me why you feel you want to/need to be tweeting?”
4.“What are your goals and expectations?”
5.“How much time do you have to devote to this?”
6.“If this is for your business, who will be doing the tweeting?”
7.“What message are you looking to deliver?” (Around your personal brand, corporate branding, certain theme or platform, marketing messages, notifications, events, special offers, attracting prospects, nothing specific, etc.)
8.“What results are you expecting?”
9.“How many followers do you want?”
10. “Who do you want to follow you?” (“How many people, what audience, why do you want them following you,” and so on.)
11. “How will this complement your current marketing campaign and align with your social media strategy and objectives?”

Once we siphon through the answers to these questions, we can then start mapping out whether or not it makes sense for them to invest their time tweeting and a strategy to go about doing so that would achieve their objectives.

I know it’s easy to get caught up in trying to get as many people as possible following you on Twitter, and social media is all the rage. (Just Google “social media” and you’ll get 203,000,000 results. Probably even more since this blog went live.) For some people, Twitter has become a downright obsession, an ego stroke, a validation, a need to be needed, a way to feel ‘connected.’ (I’ll have to address what ‘connected’ means in another blog.)

Sure, there are those people out there that have earned the bragging rights to say they have tens of thousands of people following them on twitter, but I can tell you this with great certainty, if you’re looking at it from the perspective of what the financial benefit or monetary impact could be and how much personal income has been generated, I wouldn’t run out to swap your W2 statement with most of them. That being said, there’s always the few exceptions.

Like any new strategy you’re considering adopting, if you’re looking at Twitter as part of your overall marketing campaign in order to leverage it as a social media communications tool, there needs to be a healthy balance between the quality of your efforts and the quantity of them. There’s no, “one solution.” What’s needed is a holistic and well balanced approach to utilizing a variety of marketing vehicles that would reinforce your brand, provide further exposure and put you in touch with your target audience which, collectively, would achieve your marketing objectives.

Just think of selling; if you look at selling as a numbers game rather than a science or strategic benchmarking process, you’re in big trouble. After all, you can have thousands of prospects in your pipeline but what are those prospects worth if they’re not a fit for your product or service? The costs are significant: time and money wasted on engaging with the wrong people multiplied exponentially by the time you are not spending targeting, calling on and following up with the right prospects.

Depending upon your goals and the responses to the questions I posed earlier in this blog, Twitter may certainly prove to be one very important spoke on your marketing wheel that’s worth leveraging (it’s been worthwhile for me), that complements the other marketing platforms you utilize.

To reinforce this point, here’s a short movie aligning the values of legendary Zig Ziglar and his son, Tom Ziglar with Twitter. In this movie, you’ll find some great, classic quotes from Zig Ziglar, as well as a handful of guidelines from Tom on how to leverage and maximize Twitter to your advantage.

And yes, I do tweet as part of my overall social media strategy. So, feel free to follow me on Twitter here.

Enjoy the new Ziglar Twitter Movie. Click here to watch.

Tags: , , , , , ,

When Your Commitment To Others Sabotages Your Coaching Efforts

Oct 8, 2009 Communication, Executive Coaching, Sales Management, accountability, coaching salespeople, training for managers


Yes, you can actually want too much for your salespeople and your clients, more than they, in fact, may be ready for or even want for themselves. Jake learned this lesson quickly as a new coach.

To this day, Jake’s unwavering commitment to every one of the salespeople on his team is to help them make the long-term changes they want and need in their careers.

When Jake first started coaching his salespeople, he made a personal commitment that he would not just be a sales coach but an exceptional coach that every salesperson in his company would call on first. And in the spirit of becoming this person, he put action behind this commitment. He carefully prepared, researched, and practiced prior to every coaching session he had with a salesperson.

“Coaches deliver value while challenging their clients to achieve more through the utilization and development of their natural skills and talents so they can live up to their fullest potential” was Jake’s firm belief. He was insistent, practically obsessed with the notion that his salespeople must walk away with measurable value from every interaction and coaching session they had with him.

This manifested itself in a variety of ways. For example, if salespeople were coming to Jake ready to review their targeted objectives, he challenged them to reconsider their goals and make them even loftier, encouraging them to reach for even bigger, more rewarding results. Or, Jake might suggest that they identify a timeline in which they wanted to attain their goal or, better yet, shorten the timeline they initially developed for achieving this milestone.

If a salesperson was struggling to bring in an acceptable number of appointments each week through referrals and was considering putting together a cold calling campaign, Jake would be right there ready with the call template, opening statement, and process she needed to be effective at cold calling, including the number of dials she should start making today in order to achieve her sales goals.

You can want too much for your salespeople and your clients, more than they, in fact, may be ready for or even want for themselves.

Whatever objectives and goals his salespeople would have, Jake was ready to act as their primary source of support, encouragement, knowledge, structure, and insight needed to achieve what mattered most to them.

You name it, and Jake was ready for every conceivable question, goal, or challenge his salespeople threw at him. And, boy, did he push and push and then, when he was finished pushing, he pushed some more. Just think about what happens when you keep pushing without gauging the resistance level? You get pushback.

But why should a coach sense pushback from a salesperson, when the salesperson was the one who set the goals in the first place? What Jake wasn’t aware of was the flaw in his strategy. Look at the word client. Now, look at the word in the middle of the word. That’s right, you’ll notice the word lie. To be clear, Jake’s salespeople weren’t intentionally lying to him. It’s just that people often lie to themselves and believe the lies to be true.

These lies come in a variety of shapes and forms. For example, a lie could be an unwillingness to look at the truth, or a lack of awareness around the real issue. People can deceive themselves about the way they process information or may be unrealistic as to how fast they could move in order to reach a goal. In some cases, people don’t like the solution because it wasn’t what they expected or wanted, or they weren’t comfortable with it. This can cause pushback.

Sometimes, salespeople won’t admit that they lack the skills they know are necessary to achieve their goals. They aren’t sure they can put in the time and effort to master the skills. This new awareness may cause resistance. Rather than pushing through and forging ahead without knowing all the facts, coaches need to take the salesperson’s pulse to avoid causing further damage.

People often lie to themselves and believe the lies to be true.

To prevent forcing your agenda and expectations on those you coach, it’s critical that you find out what your salespeople’s expectations are from your coaching, the value they expect and how they want to be coached.

Take Their Pulse, Not Yours

Even though Jake’s salespeople were telling him they enjoyed and benefited from his coaching, he felt something was off. At the end of every coaching call, Jake felt like he’d just run a marathon. He was exhausted and deflated. His energy was all used up. Jake poured his heart and soul into every coaching call, believing this was what a coach was supposed to do. Not exactly.
As a new coach, Jake didn’t have enough experience to recognize that how he felt at the end of a coaching call was a telltale sign that something was indeed off. So, he did what every new, intelligent, insightful coach would do. He called his mentor coach.

Here’s what Jake came to understand. Sometimes we want so much for our clients and staff to be happy, satisfied, and successful that we have a tendency to instill our own agenda into the coaching process. If it sounds similar to having an attachment, you’re correct. However, the attachment in this situation is about wanting more for your clients or employees than they want for themselves or are ready for.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

THE ART OF ENROLLMENT – The New Language of Leadership That Creates Buy In Without Resistance

Oct 5, 2009 Career Advice, Communication, Sales Management, accountability, career coaching, coaching for managers, coaching salespeople


Leadership is, in fact a language. It is a dialogue and a way of relating to people that makes the difference between a mediocre leader and a powerful one. The greatest leaders possess an ability to connect with each person they manage and it all starts with how they communicate. The Art of Enrollment is a powerful and compelling communication strategy that is utilized by the greatest leaders of our time. Let’s begin with a comprehensive definition of the word enrollment.

Enrollment: An authentic, powerful way of communicating that grabs people’s attention, stimulates interest, and empowers others to embrace, support, and believe in your position, idea, or philosophy. This motivates people to want to become part of your cause (a cause that may be bigger than you and them), take ownership of it, and then act in their best interest to create the possibility that you have introduced to them and/or have taken a stand for. (For example: Creating a certain corporate culture, selling or making a purchasing decision, trying something new that hasn’t been done before, or advocating for a positive, yet difficult change, etc.)

What do you do to be different, to be unique, to be eternal in the mind of a salesperson? True sales coaches leave not only a lasting impression but they also create one.

Like traditional management, traditional selling is dead. Unfortunately, many salespeople today are still using antiquated selling strategies. They no longer offer a competitive edge that separates them from every other company and promotes a healthy, winning relationship with their customers. Rather than change their approach, salespeople work harder and longer as they continually react to the changes in the marketplace, only to produce the same results as before.

Motivating employees is often exhausting and time-consuming work. Trying to get people to change or do things differently is even more of a challenge. Managers struggle to get their staff to become internally driven, self-motivated, and perform at their potential. Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage, or run their businesses the old way, not the way it needs to be done today.

The next evolution in communication and in the way we coach our salespeople is using the art and discipline of enrollment. Think about some of the great leaders of our time. Think of the leaders who you respect, admire and who have made a difference or an impact in our lives today and yesterday. What do these leaders have in common? Each had a cause that ignited them to act from a global perspective. It was their innate ability that enabled them to enroll millions of people to follow, not them, but what was bigger than them—their cause. They used the art of enrollment to achieve historical, unprecedented results. They inspired people to want to be a part of their cause because they made it very clear what was in it for them.

What has been initially perceived as an inherent, genetic ability is now a documented process that allows each of us to tap into this hidden power we all possess. The dormant desire to want to express more of who we are, what we want, how we feel, and what could be possible can now be achieved through enrollment. Each of us can do so in a natural, conversational way that honors our personal strengths, talents, goals, values, passion, and style of communicating while remaining open to co-creating greater possibilities.

Enrollment is a way to unleash each person’s purest form of open, honest, and authentic communication, using thought-provoking, curiosity-based questions that generate worthwhile results in any setting. When you uncover what you are passionate about, what you believe in, and then take a strong, unwavering stand for whatever it may be, while respecting the mutual differences of one another, only then can you start to communicate and achieve more through the enrollment process: the highest form of communicating and self-expression.

Enrollment Is a Universal Phenomenon

When top salespeople want to be better at their jobs while maintaining their focus and desire to deliver rich value and serve their clients’ best interests, they stop selling and start enrolling. When an accountant, a coach, a doctor, contractor, financial planner, attorney, mortgage broker, or salesperson wants to build their practice or their sales, they enroll. When universities want to attract more students, they enroll. When parents want their kids to change or do something, they enroll them. When managers hire someone, they enroll that person in the position.

To make this more relevant, think about it in terms of your position. When handling internal conflicts or sharing a policy change that affects every salesperson’s commission, managers must enroll people toward a positive, mutual mindshare. If you need your team to make radical changes in their behavior or in their thinking, you enroll them in that change. Here are some situations that would warrant an opportunity to use the art of enrollment.

1.Needing to get salespeople to relocate.
2. Developing an incentive program.
3. Defusing hostility and finding a common ground.
4. Making changes in company policy or procedure, such as a price increase, a change in commission or compensation, or a change in a person’s job function.
5. Changing how salespeople will be developed and trained, such as taking part in a coaching program.
6. Recruiting and hiring a new salesperson.
7. Firing a team member and reducing collateral damage as well as toxic gossip.
8. Requesting a change in people’s behavior or activity.
9. Getting people to own a certain problem which they have been avoiding.
10. Holding people more accountable around their performance goals as well as any administrative responsibilities.
11. Requesting someone to take on a task or do something they may normally be reluctant to do.

In practically any scenario where it requires opening up someone’s thinking, modifying behavior, or taking action around something, the art of enrollment will become your primary communication strategy to bring about the changes you want without pushback, prodding, or resistance.

Creating the Possibility for Change

Coaching is the art of creating new possibilities. Enrollment allows you to communicate those possibilities in a way that people will be receptive to and motivates them to change. At its core, enrollment is all about facilitating positive, long-term change.

Whether you’re selling a product, service, idea, or philosophy, no one likes to be sold. Everyone loves to feel as if they are making the decision themselves. If your salespeople perceive you as someone who is focused solely on helping them make their own decisions, they are going to want to be enrolled by you and will enjoy the process.

Take any situation or conversation in which there is a group of people who have conflicting interests, a conflict that needs resolution, an idea that needs to be communicated and embraced, a change initiative that needs to be launched, or a mutual goal that needs to be attained. Whether each person possesses a separate agenda or information that needs to be communicated, has a misunderstanding of each other’s goals or has no business talking to each other in the first place, mastering the Art of Enrollment will unlock the door to full self-expression for all. It will enable you to communicate more powerfully, more authentically, and more confidently with everyone.

People don’t want to be sold. They want to be enrolled.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do Your People Want To Be Managed By You? It’s All About Connection – Are You Managing People or Managing Status Quo?

Oct 1, 2009 Communication, Life Coaching and Career Coaching, accountability, articles on leadership, coaching for managers


I was sitting in a hotel restaurant having breakfast and preparing myself for a day of back to back meetings. While I was working on my iPhone, a waitress came over and introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Maya and I will be your server this morning. May I get you something to drink?” she inquired. We’ve all heard this question a thousand times when dining at a restaurant. But for some reason, the way she asked me was different. “Let’s start out with some coffee and orange juice,” I said. “Great!” she replied enthusiastically. “I’ll get that for you right away and will be back to take your order.”

“That’s what it was!” I thought to myself. She was smiling. “Big deal, a smiling waitress,” you may be thinking. “Waitresses are supposed to smile. This doesn’t sound like something that’s so incredibly noteworthy.”

Normally it wouldn’t be, but this smile was different. You see, it wasn’t like one of those smiles you’re forced to put on when talking with customers, but a truly authentic smile. I could tell because it was coming from the inside. This woman was genuinely happy. “Okay, duly noted and dismissed.” I acknowledged the observation, yet felt compelled to get back to my e-mails as quickly as possible, before the coffee and food came.

Maya returned a few minutes later with my beverages and took my order. “Another one out and 20 more to go,” I thought. I had just hit the Send button on the fourth e-mail I managed to respond to before someone else came over to my table and began talking to me. “Good morning!” a friendly voice said. This time, it wasn’t the waitress, but someone else who worked at the restaurant. A middle-aged woman had intentionally stopped at my table rather than continuing to walk by. I returned her smile and wished her a hearty good morning as well. I wanted to get back to my e-mails. Apparently, this was not part of her agenda. She didn’t let me.

“I love your glasses,” she said.

“Thank you,” I answered quickly, doing my best to be polite while trying to let her know I was a bit busy, knee-deep in my daily dose of morning e-mails. “Couldn’t she see I was working?” I thought to myself. I sensed myself getting a little annoyed that my daily regimen was being disrupted, then challenged that feeling for a moment. In a world where we need to question people’s motives, was this person being truly sincere? I gave her the benefit of the doubt and began to further engage her in conversation. She had made herself more comfortable, leaning next to the booth beside me, obviously eager for a conversation with me.

“So, are you here on business?”

“Yes,” still convinced I could cut this conversation short, until she formally introduced herself and proceeded to talk about her children. When that happens, I can’t help but be interested.

“By the way, I’m Tracy. I manage this restaurant. Where are you from?”

I put my iPhone down, surrendering to Tracy’s persistence in wanting to have a dialogue. “New York.”

“Oh, what a fun place to visit. I have two girls. It’s my youngest one who goes to college out east. She’s in her second year at Cornell. We had a chance to go into Manhattan when we were visiting her at school.”

“My oldest daughter is about to graduate from UCLA and has already started the job interview process.” Tracy continued, but with a different tone in her voice. “It is so tough out there to find a job that you not only love to do but can make a good living doing it.” I could not only hear concern in her voice but I could see it in her eyes: the concern and protective instincts only a mother could project when worrying about her children.

At this point, my iPhone was back in my coat pocket, and I was practically ready for my second cup of coffee as Tracy continued telling me about her kids. Tracy had enrolled me in a conversation with her, but it was more than just a friendly exchange of words and pleasantries. Tracy and I were connecting.

“I just don’t get it,” Tracy shared, allowing her frustrations to surface. “These companies want to hire someone with a great education and experience. But other than holding some entry-level positions or finding a great internship, where are you going to get the experience if you can’t get an opportunity to learn on the job and prove what you’re capable of doing? They all say she has what it takes, except the experience.”

I looked Tracy in the eye and said, “Tracy, I completely understand how you feel. However, I want you to know, your daughters will do just fine. They’re not only going to make it, they are going to thrive. I know it.”

My comment must have reinforced or reminded Tracy about the peace of mind and confidence she always had about her kids. “Thank you, Keith, but how do you know they’ll be just fine? How can you say that with such certainty?”

I smiled at Tracy and asked her a question I already knew the answer to. “Tracy, are your children anything like you?”

She thought for a moment and smiled, “Why, yes, they are very much like me. My husband says they get their drive and bubbly enthusiasm from my side of the family.”

“Tracy, your daughters are very lucky to have a mom like you. And if they sell themselves, that is, come across the way you do and share who they are naturally, people will notice the gifts, value, and talents they can bring to any position they apply for.”

“Oh, you are so sweet for saying that. Thank you.” Tracy’s response was heartfelt. I could tell that she really listened to what I said and took it in rather than hearing my observation on a superficial level and dismissing it.

Tracy and I continued our discussion for another few minutes until she got called away by the hostess to handle an issue with another customer. I turned back to finish my breakfast. It had cooled off since the waitress came by and served it during the time I was talking with Tracy. But it was worth it. Yes, I made a difference that morning in someone’s life.

As Tracy walked away, I glanced around the restaurant. Now that I was out of my head, or should I say, out of my iPhone, I started noticing more of what was happening around me than I had when I first walked into the restaurant that morning. I took a visual inventory of each person working in that restaurant. It was not just Tracy and Maya who were smiling. Everyone who worked there was smiling. The two hostesses at the front entrance were smiling, even if there were no guests for them to greet at the moment. Every busboy, waiter, and waitress was smiling, whether they were taking an order, serving a meal, or walking back to the kitchen where nobody could see them (unless you were like me and were purposely looking).

Everything is relevant and every conversation you have is of vital importance. Even though some may seem trivial to you, each is deeply influential when compounded over time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Seven Types of Prospectors – Get Your Copy of This ebook For Free Today

Jun 18, 2009 Cold Calling Tips, Communication, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, cold calling, tele-sales, telesales


Download this ebook for free here.

Our new marketplace requires new strategies and a new way of thinking in order to achieve more and thrive. Here, you can access these new resources I developed specifically for salespeople and sales managers to attract more prospects, boost your sales faster and coach your sales team into sales champions so they can close more sales today.

Here’s the second in a series of new resources and ebooks I’m giving away.

The Seven Types of Prospectors

What kind of prospector are you? Although developing a unique, personalized approach to prospecting is encouraged, there are some pitfalls to be aware of and some communication styles to abandon that you may not even be aware of which will sabotage your prospecting efforts. Use this guide to uncover which of the seven types of prospectors you most closely resemble and what you can do to adjust your prospecting approach and communication style for maximum impact.

  • Identify the type of prospector you are.

  • Enable managers to best coach, train and develop their salespeople into highly effective cold callers and prospectors.

  • Develop a prospecting style that best fits you and your prospects.

  • Avoid the common pitfalls in communication in order to have a conversation with prospects rather than deliver a pitch.

  • Eliminate toxic habits that cost you prospects and selling opportunities.

  • Personalize your prospecting approach to become more comfortable and confident when prospecting.

    • Download this ebook for free here.

    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

    How to Interview and Identify Top Sales Champions and Avoid the Costly Mis-Hires

    Apr 28, 2009 Business Advice, Business Tools, Career Advice, Communication, Executive Coaching, HR issues, Hiring and recruiting, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Sales Management, accountability, career coaching, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers


    “I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.

    And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.

    Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.

    Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.

    Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.

    Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”

    While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.

    The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.

    When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.

    Interviewing Questions:

    Work History:
    1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
    2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
    3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
    4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
    5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
    6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
    7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
    8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
    9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
    10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
    11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?

    Next Position:
    1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
    2. Describe your ideal position?
    3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?

    Excellence and Development:
    1. How to you better your best?
    2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
    3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
    4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
    5. How do you assure that happens?
    6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?

    Accountability:
    1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
    2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
    3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
    4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?

    Decision Making and Problem Solving:
    1. How do you solve problems?
    2. How do you go about making decisions?
    3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
    4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
    5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
    6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?


    Creativity and Solution Development:
    1. How creative are you?
    2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
    3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?

    Integrity:
    1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
    2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?

    Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
    1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
    2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
    3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
    4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
    5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?


    Self Management/State/Stress:
    1. What stresses you out?
    2. What do you when that happens?
    3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?


    Openness and Self Awareness:
    1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?

    Resourcefulness:
    1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
    2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
    3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?

    Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
    You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:

    1.What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)
    2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?
    3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?
    4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?
    5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)
    6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)
    7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)
    8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)
    9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
    need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)
    10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)
    11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?
    12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)
    13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)
    14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)
    15. What was the average size of the company you called on?
    16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)
    17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)
    18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)
    19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)
    20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?

    Simulations and Role Plays:
    1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
    2. What would that cold call sound like?
    3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
    4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
    5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
    6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
    7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
    8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?

    Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

    • Persuasion
    • Communication
    • Presentation
    • Assertiveness
    • Team player
    • Conflict management
    • Motivation and passion
    • Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
    • Education

    Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    Not Sure How To Innovate? Forget Brainstorming, SmartStorming Shows You How

    Mar 23, 2009 Business Advice, Communication, Experiences in Marketing, Leadership Academy, Marketing, management tips


    Did you know that the concept of brainstorming as we know it today was invented nearly 70 years ago? This was right around the time when Roosevelt was President and gas cost 10-cents a gallon. Interestingly, while technology has advanced dramatically, the brainstorming process hasn’t changed much since then.

    Invite most 21st-century professionals to participate in a brainstorming session, and they’re likely to run for the door. And it’s no wonder. The typical brainstorm is long, tedious, poorly facilitated, often intimidating and even contentious. And the results are often disappointing, as well. Even when a few decent ideas are generated, they rarely end up seeing the light of day.

    Two marketing communications professionals from New York City are changing all that, with a totally new approach to brainstorming they call SmartStorming: Advanced Training in Innovative Thinking. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with the creators of SmartStorming and talk to them about this cutting edge technology in how we think and create new ideas. They’ve reinvented the concept of brainstorming so that it can be done in a more of a systematic, organized process that yields are measurable R.O.I.

    “We all know innovative thinking is critical for success, today more than ever. We call it the ‘Innovation Imperative,’” says Mitchell Rigie, co-creator of SmartStorming. “The difference between surviving and thriving, today and in the foreseeable future, is going to depend on how fresh and unique a company’s thinking will be.”

    Traditional brainstorming is still one of the most widely-used tools for generating ideas. Every day tens of thousands of brainstorms are held around the world.

    It seems that the technology behind brainstorming has now evolved into something more powerful. “Brainstorming is a fundamentally flawed process,” says Keith Harmeyer, Rigie’s partner and co-creator of SmartStorming. “For years we sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of unproductive brainstorms. And finally we asked ourselves, ‘How can we do this better?’“

    Based on their own experience and extensive research, Rigie and Harmeyer developed a turnkey system that addresses each of the key weaknesses of traditional brainstorming. The result is a thorough six-step process that takes users from pre-planning, through the idea-generation phase to follow-through and next steps.

    “Consider the cost to an organization of a typical brainstorm session. Six or eight or even more people, sitting in a room for an hour or more. Then multiply that by the number of sessions held over the course of a year. And with what return? It’s staggering. Plus the negative impact on employee morale is enormous. SmartStorming delivers tangible benefits to the organization, managers and participants,” said Harmeyer.

    At the core of SmartStorming is 3-D Ideationsm, a proprietary technique that breaks idea-generation into three parts, resulting in a significantly great yield of fresh, innovative ideas.

    “3-D Ideation makes it possible for groups to think beyond their limiting assumptions about a challenge; what most people refer to as ‘thinking outside the box.’ They then view the challenge from a number of different viewpoints, to gain a broader perspective. And finally, they free associate, using a variety of ideation techniques we provide,” said Rigie.

    Several leading creative services and consumer products companies have already benefitted from SmartStorming and many more are jumping on the bandwagon. To learn more about SmartStorming training, visit SmartStorming.com.

    Podcast: Develop Your Sales Mojo for a Unique and Winning Edge

    Mar 19, 2009 American Entitlement, Business Coaching, Career Advice, Communication, Interviews, Prospecting, Cold Calling and Networking, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, accountability, career coaching, podcast, webinar


    Sales Mojo Podcast with Keith RosenListen to the podcast here

    Got your mojo?

    Are you born with it or can you develop it? Here’s a recent podcast I did with Salesopedia that explains what makes up your sales mojo, which defines who you are and how you come across to others.

    Listen in as I describe in detail how your confidence, attitude, mindset, relationship with fear, and your ability to be engaged in the moment, all combine to determine how powerful your sales mojo can be. During these times, you need every advantage to be successful in your career, especially in sales. So make sure you tune in to get your sales mojo and develop your unique, winning edge.

    You can listen to the podcast here.

    Tags: , , , ,