The Executive Sales Coach: Keith Rosen’s Sales Blog and Business Blog On Selling, Leadership, Managing Your Team, Business and Life » How To Sell and Sales Tips

Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions
A Tactical Playbook for Managers and Executives (Hardcover Edition)

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With all the talk about the economy heading towards a recession, I’m busier than ever. And so are my clients. So, what gives? How much of this is fact and how much hype? Either way, I’m certainly not disputing that it’s affecting how some business owners and companies are spending lately.

So, what tips do I offer to companies, salespeople and, more specifically retailers on how to weather the recession? The same coaching I deliver to my clients, which is keeping their recession blues at pay, enabling them to drive and close new sales, and most important keeping their mental edge.

‘Weathering a recession’ sounds like surviving a storm and waiting until it passes. The “wait and see” or “lets hope things get better soon” is putting retailers out of business every day. I see it in my community. Stores that were opened one week are closed the next. Sure, you can ‘batten down the hatches’ when the eye of the storm lands but keep in mind when you open them up, there won’t be any customers sitting there waiting around for you. Instead, here’s what you need to do.

1. First, get out of your own head.
Businesses are closing their doors not due to a lack of effort but because they are still attempting to sell, manage or run their business the way it was, not the way it is today. If your marketplace has changed, then you need to change with it. Friendly reminder, don’t get sucked up into what you’re hearing on the news every day. Turn it off if you have to! What is real for you in your business in your local economy? Get out of the type of mindset that keeps you stuck in obsessing on what you need to do to survive and focus on how you can thrive. Remember all those great business ideas you were going to implement; the training your wanted to take, the marketing you wanted to do, the team building you felt would surely to make a measurable impact on your growth and success but daily business responsibilities always seemed to take precedent? Now is the time to blow the dust of those ideas and start executing on them. This begins with a change of thinking, accompanied by a change of strategy and topped off with a strong dose of reality.

2. Get back to basics.
Do you remember when you first opened your doors and achieved some measurable success? Why were you successful in the first place? What did you do then that you may not be doing now or unwilling to do now? Get on the floor of your store, cold call, prospect, do some grunt work? You need to turn around your business, fast, so time is not a luxury. Therefore, if you think there are any activities which are beneath you, then you already have one leg of your business in the grave.

3. Actually learn how to sell.
No, selling for 30 years is not what I’m suggesting as a training platform. Experience is important but experiences doesn’t equate to engaging in the healthiest of sales techniques. I’d be willing to bet (and I’m not a gambling man) the majority of retailers out there have not been coached and trained to be a sales champion, do not have a defined sales process they consistently engage in and as such, don’t know how to truly sell. And by no means consider this an attack on the retail sector. However, given that the majority of daily purchases we make are at a retail level, this is what I’m experiencing both as an executive coach and as a consumer. The “I’ve been successful in spite of myself” theory would apply here.

4. Work your leads and earn a sale.
Just a short time ago, in many sales driven companies, your salesperson can have a pulse and still get a sale simply by your customers showing up and having the money to spend. We were fooled into thinking that, “Hey, since I’m bringing in the business, I must be a great salesperson.” In today’s business climate, the same people are now struggling to generate the results they were, realizing that the marketplace has duped them into thinking they were better then the really are when it comes to professional selling. It has been the economic climate that made many salespeople seemingly productive, rather than their skill set or the core competencies needed to truly become a high performance sales professional, regardless of economic or market conditions. With today’s ever evolving market, if you are selling, managing or running your business the same way you’ve been running it for the last several years, you’re overdue to reevaluate your philosophy.

If you sell consumer products or services that is a more substantial purchase than going to the supermarket (home electronics, furniture, bridal/wedding venders, travel, boutique stores, computers, home appliances, home furnishings, clothing/shoe stores, etc.) don’t let a potential customer walk out the door without collecting some data points and permission to check in. Learn to position yourself as your customer’s trusted adviser throughout their decision making process. Abandon toxic thinking and get beyond the fact that you can afford to let any potential customer walk away from a conversation, thinking they will actually call you back on their own accord. Earn the right to call each person who buys from you - a customer. It’s during times like these where you literally have to earn their business rather than simply be an order taker.

5. Get into action. Work with a coach.
Hire a coach. With a coach, it’s not about weathering the storm. You can do that on your own. A great business coach can assist you in developing the strategy and skills you need to not only sail through the storm but actually even profit during it.

In a recent interview, I was asked what companies can do to ‘boost their close ratios’ within the specialty retail market. Here were the questions as well as my responses.

Question: What exactly is a close ratio and why is it important for retailers and their employees to pay attention to their close ratios?

Response: While you may find that the definition of a “closing ratio” vary dependant upon the industry and selling cycle, broadly speaking, your closing ratio is the number of prospects you’ve met with/spoken with divided by the number of sales you made. So, if you speak with 10 prospects and make 5 sales, then your closing ratio is 50%.
Regarding the importance of paying attention to their closing ratios, retailers need to be able to answer the following questions:

• How many calls do I need to make to generate one prospect?
• How many prospects does it take to generate one sale?
• How long will each prospecting or cold calling effort take?
• How much time do I need to devote to new business development every day?
• And how many sales do I need each month to attain my year end financial goals?

If you don’t know the answers to these essential questions, that’s perfectly fine. Realize that if you do not have the answer to some of these questions, it may require doing some conscious tracking of your cold calling efforts before you are able to accurately answer them. There are many tools available today to help track these numbers. Once you do, imagine how much easier your life would be if you were able to identify the specific and measurable actions you need to take on a daily basis in order to reach your yearly income goal. Now, you’ve created your success formula. You will then be able to determine how much prospecting or marketing/advertising is needed and and the number of appointments/presentations needed each month, even each day to attain your goals, as well as the time commitment it will take to do so.

If you can measure it you can then manage it. Let the numbers in your success formula determine the amount of activity you need to put into your daily routine that will ensure your selling success. It sure beats scratching your head at the end of every month, wondering why you didn’t meet your sales goals. Now, you will have a defined, formula to follow so that you can generate the results you want. You can’t refine what you don’t define.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #8. Do you use excuses to mask your failures?

Sure, we are real good at coming up with a million reasons why the customer didn’t purchase from us. But all we really need is to come up with just one reason why they will buy the next time. Excuses aren’t helping you the next time you run into a similar challenge. Look at a failed sales attempt as an opportunity to begin again more intelligently. What can you do the next time you run into that similar problem? By anticipating and preparing your presentation around certain objections, you have the ability to shift from overcoming objections to actually preventing them from arising.

The Top 10 Most Common Mistakes in Selling:

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #6. Do you prefer to hear “I want to think it over” rather than a “No”?

Determine why they really didn’t buy. The key is to get someone to speak to you openly. This can be difficult, since many clients feel the need to disguise the truth not to “hurt your feelings.” Instead, they use generic reasoning, such as “High price” or “Bad timing.” Get to the real reason by asking questions about their goals this year, problems they are facing, etc. This often leads to a conversation about the potential purchase of your product/service that you would never have gotten otherwise. Remember that there is usually one main reason why a customer will not buy. If you hear “I want to think about it,” chances are the customer hasn’t been given all the information that they need in order to make a purchasing decision. It is up to you to go back, uncover and fill in the areas that are missing. What is it they really want to think about?

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #4. Are you reacting to your clients as opposed to responding?

When a customer says something like, “Your price is too high,” salespeople often switch into a defensive mode, thinking about a past experience with a similar customer, and react accordingly. Remember that
re-action is any action you have taken before. So if you are continually reacting from the “same place,” you are going to continue to generate the same result. You might react by defending your quality or value, or with some type of reduction in price. If customers can get a discount by merely making a statement, think about the atmosphere you are creating. The customer will feel that they shouldn’t buy before trying something else to get an even better price; like by checking out your competitor. “Your price is too high” is not a question you need to defend. Instead of answering it, respond with a question such as, “Before you ask me why my price is high, why do you feel the other price you got is lower?”

Do you wish that your selling strategy and efforts to earn more customers were more rewarding for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #2. Do you talk too much?
To stimulate interest and to increase the odds of earning the business of a new client, many sales professionals spend too much of their time attempting to educate their clients about their product, service, and industry. In many cases, this is the same strategy that compromises their opportunity to create a relationship with that client. Consider for a moment that providing too much knowledge and information is one of the main reasons a client will not purchase from you. Many salespeople find it difficult to determine when enough information is actually enough. Once the client hears something they aren’t interested in or if they feel you are providing information that simply doesn’t apply to them, their interest is lost and they stop listening. A sales call is not the place to demonstrate your vast amount of knowledge about your industry. This technique results in no order, canceled order or “I’ll think it over.” The truth is, if you are talking more than 20 – 30% of the time during an appointment with a potential customer, then you are talking far too much! Instead, asking the right questions will determine the specific reason you are meeting with a potential customer and what their specific needs are so you can move that person from prospect to the level of customer.

Do you wish that your efforts to earn more customers were more profitable for you? It will be if you avoid falling into these top 10 common pitfalls in the New Year.

Mistake #1. Do you want to sell or do you find yourself needing to sell instead?

Salespeople often find themselves hoping and preying and sometimes even begging, (“PLEASE just take a look…..”) for the opportunity to “Just show what I can do for you” and maybe make a sale. The salesperson may be thinking, “I really need this sale so I hope I get this! After all, I have bills to pay.” Do you think your client is going to be able to pick up on this? Of course they are. Salespeople often present themselves as if they need to make the sale. Instead, its much more effective to have the mindset of wanting to make the sale simply because it is going to benefit the customer’s life and business. This means not making selling about YOU and about how much you can benefit but how much you can assist the customer in benefiting from what you have to offer. The fact is, hungry salespeople scare away the meal. If you can shift to becoming truly sincere and caring as opposed to hungry and desperate, you will attract even more customers towards you. Create a reserve (having more of something than you actually need in order to survive, such as money, space, time, satisfaction, etc.) so that you will have the ability to go into a sales call “Coming from” a different place with a different attitude. Now, you actually want to sell because of the benefits the customer will derive, as opposed to needing to sell to serve your own desires. Otherwise, your customers will get turned of and will go elsewhere.

Well, the votes are in from Top10SalesArticles.com regarding an article I had written which they were interested in republishing on their site entitled, Why Should I Talk to You? and it looks like your humble blogger’s article was named the 2007 Sales Sales Article Of The Year!

From the three hundred and sixty articles which received nominations during 2007, my article Why Should I Talk to You? was the winner.

I’d like to first congratulate all of the finalists for producing such excellent work, thanks to the Top Sales Experts adjudication panel for their dedication and commitment to this project and thank you all for your support in making this article #1.

Well, it’s back to writing more content for 2008. The first set of nominated articles will appear on top10salesarticles.com on Sunday January 6th, so be sure to come back and join them as they kick-start the 2008 competition.

I wish you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

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