Are You Selling By the Numbers or Selling With a Blindfold On? Statistical Benchmarks for Success and Self Accountability That Most Organizations Are Still Missing

Yes, these questions I list below the video are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for. Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity.

Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team). “With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

In this video, discover why it’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

Professional selling and the ability to prospect effortlessly is a combined result of who you are, how you think, and the way you come across, not solely a function of what you do.

Imagine for a moment that each person looks at life and more specifically, cold calling, through a certain set of lenses or a set of beliefs that define our perspective about life, our career, and the events that we experience.

There is a saying I heard early on in my sales career, “Selling is a transference of feeling.” Although this is true, consider what happens if the feeling you are transferring to your prospects is the wrong feeling because your beliefs or thinking are coming from a negative, fear based, limiting, or self-serving place. If you are prospecting because you need to close more sales in order to save your job or to make enough money to pay your bills, you can bet that your prospects are going to pick up on your underlying intentions and run the other way.

Consider one of the objectives of a cold call or a sales presentation: to create a feeling within the prospect that stimulates interest and motivates them to take the next step and hear more about what you have to offer.

Therefore, it’s critical that you are transferring the right feeling and attitude to your prospects.

Here’s a video that supports this core philosophy – sales champions are created from the inside out.

Read the full interview here.

BOOK EVENT EXTENDED! Due to my book selling out and making #1 on Amazon, we’re extending this event! You can still get the book 34% off and the hundreds of dollars worth of bonus materials. More here.

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Here’s part one of the interview I did with author and columnist Vince Thompson.

Excerpt:

“Let’s face it. When the economy was rocking we had it pretty easy. They we’re buying. We were selling like crazy and so it went. Until it went. Now getting consumers to part with cash is like trying to pull the hood ornament off the new Dodge Challenger….while it’s driving!

Keith, tell us about your business?

Most of my time is spent working with sales and management teams or working one to one coaching, training and strategizing with sales leaders and executives. Whether that means helping managers develop the missing discipline of leadership and become better coaches through a management coach training program, or helping sales teams and salespeople reinvent and re-engineer their selling process and methodology. Most companies are leveraging me to support their two most important business initiatives today, which are acquiring and retaining customers.

To achieve this, organizations are recognizing the need to make their sales and management team more valuable than ever before. This is accomplished through better sales training and executive coaching. Businesses are finally realizing that in order for their people to sell more, it all starts with the way they’re managed. And the simple fact is, you cannot grow with what you already know.

How has selling changed?

Read the full interview here.

Last week on CanDoGo.com was Tony Alessandra week. While a little late on the draw this week, the good news is, you can still access all of Tony’s videos and tips on CanDoGo. This one in particular I felt was so relevant during a time where customer retention and acquisition is top of mind for all companies and salespeople. Below are some best practices when it comes to asking for referrals.

Asking for Referrals
By Dr. Tony Alessandra

Watch the Video

Ask for referrals anytime a customer offers positive feedback about you, your company, or your product. Often, the best time to do so is right after your customer has a problem resolved by you, and you’ve proven that you can and will follow through. Any time you ask for referrals, follow these guidelines:

Listen to the full podcast here.

Companies are running so fast in an attempt to catch up on their sales numbers that they aren’t aware of the blinders they’ve developed which are obstructing their view of the fuller picture when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity, especially the deeper level of questioning and discovery every salesperson needs to engage in today.

Sure, you can ask your prospects the more generic questions about the current products, services, solutions and venders they currently use. But what about the questions that facilitate a buying decision; the tougher questions that help you better understand if this prospect is, in fact, even qualified to buy from you now, in the near future or ever? Delivering a recent seminar to a senior team of sales professionals reinforced how most salespeople, regardless of how experienced or seasoned, are still stepping over the additional questions I’m suggesting we need to ask.

I’m referring to questions that uncover:

Here’s a tip from your coach: Low closing percentages = a misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.

If you don’t have the answers to these questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it.

So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

In this podcast, I detail several critical questions you need to answer that will enable you to uncover the gaps in your data pool that in turn, will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Stop. Just stop for the next several minutes that it’s going to take you to read this. Okay, now take a breath. Get off the treadmill for a moment and ask yourself these questions. Yes, these questions are that important. So important, in fact, that they could change your entire perspective around what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and how much you really need to be doing in order to generate the worthwhile results you’re looking for.

Because the truth is, you just may be running so fast in an attempt to catch up on your sales numbers, that you didn’t recognize the blinders you’ve developed which are obstructing your view of the fuller picture; the landscape you’re trying to farm and manage when it comes to selling and driving the right sales activity. Here are those questions you need to ask yourself (and your sales team).

“With all the effort I’m putting forth in an attempt to generate more prospects and selling opportunities, following up and retaining existing clients to ensure that I’m bringing in as much business as possible:”

• Am I acutely aware of the activities and benchmarked proven practices (both the activities and the dialogue/message I need to communicate) that I need to engage in daily that would secure my success?
• Am I measuring the numbers and the results of my efforts and allowing these statistical data points to be the driving force behind my sales activities?
• Do I know how much cold calling and prospecting activity is actually enough (emails, voice mails, live calls/connections, letters, and so on) and when to call it quits and move on when attempting to convert a contact into a qualified prospect?
• Do I know how many calls/contacts I need to make each day, each week and how often I need to follow up with a qualified prospect in order to earn their business or move them to the next stage of my sales process? (And have I even defined those specific steps in my sales process to begin with?)
• Am I holding myself accountable when it comes to engaging in the right activities in the most efficient way possible through the effective use of a daily routine?
• When calling on or meeting with prospects, do I have a clear set of outlined objectives that I need to accomplish on every call and during each meeting, especially when delivering a presentation?
• Have I identified the lifetime value of each client or account in order to classify customers according to their sales potential? (What’s the economic impact of the time you invest?)
• Do I have a detailed strategy for each of my clients to ensure that I’m maximizing every conceivable up selling and cross selling opportunity?
• Am I fully leveraging the power and potential of my CRM solution for prospect, client as well as territory management? Do you have a call report system?
• Do I have the right questions that provide me with the critical intel I need in order to qualify each person as a viable prospect so that I can most effectively determine where my limited and precious time is best invested?

And to clarify further when it comes to the type of questions you need to be asking each prospect, this isn’t limited to Selling 101 – Uncovering a Need. I’m also referring to understanding how they buy, how they make decisions, the internal workings of the company, the people and egos involved, the process they are going to go through when they hang up the phone with you or end the meeting and then attempt to solve the problem or find a new solution on their own using the resources or venders they currently have, the concerns or roadblocks that you could encounter down the road that would stall or destroy the potential for a sale, the timely and relevant issues that are going on internally, the overall mood of the company and its leaders, and so on. (Hint: Low closing percentages = misalignment in who you should be presenting to and following up with in the first place.)

If you don’t have the answers to these crucial questions, you’re robbing yourself of the opportunity to enjoy the certainty and peace of mind that comes from utilizing a formulaic approach to selling. After all, if you define it, you can then refine it. So, if you’re ever wondering why you or other salespeople fall into what’s known as a ‘sales slump,’ here’s the main cause of that. They aren’t honoring their sales process by the numbers and as such, those who continue to ‘wing it’ as their overall selling strategy are destined to experience the ups and downs in performance and in their stress level, as well as the waning sense of satisfaction and confidence that’s sure to follow in its wake when this amount of ambiguity and uncertainly is present.

I’ve decided (and many of my clients and readers are on board with this as well, so I hope you’ll join us) that it’s no longer as tough as it was out there. That’s right. Strip away what you hear in the media, and look objectively at what you can control; this one telltale sign that something in your selling formula needs to be developed, modified or redefined:

If there are people in your organization, even in your industry or profession who are currently performing like rock stars, that should provide you with one very critical insight. That is, it can be done because it is currently being done by someone else!

Of course it is going to remain “tough out there” if you don’t have your defined best practices, data points and numeric formula to help support your selling efforts. After all, it’s one thing to up your game and work on developing and refining your selling skills as well as your sales management skills. However, to complement this so that you have a comprehensive solution to better performance, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the numbers that will drive your activities in the first place as you exercise your newfound selling and leadership strategies and newly developed competencies. Use these questions I’ve posed to help uncover the gaps in your data pool that in turn, will help refine your overall approach to how you prospect and sell and the measurable effort that’s required for you to do so successfully.

Here’s a very clear insight into one example of some general statistical information about the selling profession that will help you begin the process of fine tuning and developing your own data driven solution to increasing your sales.

48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
12% of salespeople only make three contacts and stop.
Only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.

Now, get this:
2% of sales are made on the first contact.
3% of sales are made on the second contact.
5% of sales are made on the third contact.
10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
But 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

Now, these numbers may change depending upon your selling cycle, geographic location, the dollar amount of your deliverable, target audience as well as the service or product you’re selling but the essence of this message still remains in tact. That is, do you have your own set of data available which you have used as the cornerstone to constructing your prospecting and selling strategy? If not, it’s the same as getting into your car and saying to yourself before embarking on a trip, “Okay, I need to get to a specific destination, but I’m not exactly sure which direction to travel nor how long it’s going to take me to get there.”

It’s no longer about simply ‘doing more’ but about doing more of what’s right. In our new marketplace, going out in the field and just doing more of what you did yesterday would be the same as trying to sell VCR’s, pagers and CD’s today. (Even my youngest asked me the other day, “Dad, what’s a CD?”). Your product has changed over the years and while your selling and management strategy needs to evolve as well, this evolution must be guided by the numeric benchmarks in order to see the full, panoramic picture of the truth that surrounds your current situation. This will eliminate the costly oversights I’ve detailed earlier and ensure your future success.

We all need to be reminded of this universal law, “We resist what we need to learn the most.” And interestingly, while salespeople and sales managers are more inclined to take the reactionary, visceral attitude, “Lets just get out there and make it happen,” we need to pull back the reigns before engaging in blind sales activities and instead, start with doing what is often perceived as the more mundane, often boring task of benchmarking the right practices and then measuring their effectiveness by the numbers before embarking on these activities. Empirical data will provide the blueprint you need to succeed as well as the certainty, confidence and conviction necessary for a healthy sales mind and attitude.

After all, the greatest rainmakers realize the importance of checking the weather first so they know where the best locations are to make it rain, and have the tools to do so.

Note: If you’re looking for a great tool to help develop your prospecting formula and the measurable efforts needed to achieve your sales goals, check out my Prospecting Calculator here and enjoy the confidence and certainty you’ll experience when you prospect by the numbers.

Here’s the link to the Prospecting Calculator.

Here’s something new CanDoGo.com is doing, which sounds worthwhile to check out, especially if you’re a fan of certain thought leaders and gurus on selling, such as Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar.

This week, the week of May 11th-May 15th, they are honoring a living legend Zig Ziglar. CanDoGo.com will be featuring classic short video’s including some of Zig Ziglar’s most memorable messages on sales, leadership, hope, and encouragement.

Let’s show Zig how much we appreciate him and tap into some of his greatest archives. Just visit CanDoGo.com. Here is just a sample of a classic Zig Ziglar tip you can find here.

(You can also find my content on CanDoGo.com as well here.)

Next week’s tribute? CanDoGo’s tribute, honoring none other than, Tom Hopkins will begin May 25th.

What a wonderful email to wake up and read.

“I am delighted to confirm that your article, Don’t Sell Like You Buy published by Sales Gravy has been selected as one of the top ten sales articles for April.”

It seems that this article, (actually on of my personal favorites) Don’t Sell Like You Buy has been nominated for one of the best sales Articles of the Month on Top10SalesArticles.com.

You can read the full article here. Below is an except. This article is a result of an experience I had during a training event I was delivering. Another example of learning and sharing the experiences I gain from my clients and every training event I deliver.

“If you’ve never used a certain selling technique, prospecting approach or a particular set of targeted qualifying questions, then how do you know whether or not they will work or how they will be received by your prospects?”

I was building my case. I then turned to the audience and said, “Do not sell the way you buy.”

Now, you may feel at this point that I’m contradicting some universal selling principles. After all, conventional sales wisdom handed down through the ages suggests how important it is to empathize and sympathize with your prospects and clients.

However, there’s a very fine line between understanding and respecting someone’s decision making process; and assuming that everyone makes a purchasing decision in the same manner and using the same criteria that you do. Moreover, there is also the faulty assumption that your prospects respond in a similar fashion to the type of sales approach and the type of salesperson that you respond to and would buy from.

I then shared a personal example of the dangers of selling like you buy. “Folks, if I sold in the same manner in which I make a purchase and then in turn, transfer those values and beliefs on each prospect that I speak with, then I could tell you with great certainty that I would not be up here talking with you today.”

Reason being, when I make a purchase of any substantial amount, I take the time to research my options and learn about the different products or services available. By the time I’m ready to actually make the purchase, whether it’s something for my home, a television a car or a computer, more often than not, I will know more about the product, the competition and the marketplace than the person who is attempting to sell it to me.

My point is, if I started selling the way in which I make a purchasing decision, I am now putting my values, thought process and beliefs on the customer, assuming they purchase the same or in a similar way that I do. The result? More objections, less sales.

Besides, what if I was talking with an impulsive or assertive prospect who was ready to buy? I would be talking myself right out of the sale!”

Lets defuse a costly myth. The old adage of putting yourself in their shoes is really a costly assumption that destroys many a selling opportunity. Why? Because when you “look through their eyes” or attempt to see things how you assume they see them, it is still really what you see, not what they see.

The result? You develop a sales process based on how you think they buy rather than how they actually make a decision. Why? Because how you think they buy is really how you buy. (Is your brain twisted enough yet?)

If you truly want to wear their shoes, then you need to know how they think and what is important to them. Therefore, the only way to uncover how the prospect likes to process information, make a purchasing decision and the criteria they use to do so is by asking better questions.

Now, lets take this same ineffective model of selling like you buy and turn it around for a moment. If this belief of selling like the way you buy is getting in the way of taking certain actions or asking certain questions when on a sales call, then what about other things that you are doing or saying which you think are safe to you but in fact, are not safe or comfortable for the person you are speaking with because you’re still operating off the same tool, costly assumptions!

The lesson; Don’t believe everything you sell, I mean, tell yourself.

Salespeople who sell in the same manner in which they buy are sure to have a lower number of satisfied clients. Take a look at some different scenarios where utilizing your own beliefs, assumptions and value system can have a detrimental effect on your performance and income.

There are salespeople out there who are even more indecisive than their prospects. Can you see it? “I’ll ask for the order now. No, I’ll wait a little longer. No, I might miss the opportunity to do so later, so I better do it now.” This can clearly put a damper on your performance as well as your mental health.

Sell in the manner in which you were trained to sell and stick with the proven selling sequence that works for you and within your industry or profession. You cannot expect prospects to purchase in the same manner as you do.

If you sell in the same manner as you buy, you are instilling your beliefs onto the other people. Since every person’s beliefs and buying habits are different, every prospect processes information differently. What is important to one person may not be important to another. Therefore, there will never be two presentations exactly the same.

While one prospect might weigh company stability and the quality or value of the product as the most important aspect in making their decision, another prospect might weigh price as the most important.

Learn to adapt your presentation around the values of each specific prospect. In the end, people make purchasing decisions based on their style of buying, not yours.

You can read the full article here.

Concerned about how to find new and profitable prospects to develop and maintain your customer base? Then stop stressing over how to do it and attend this live, 60-minute Audio Conference that I’m delivering in two weeks and learn how to cold call and prospect like a sales champion. Below are the details.

TITLE: Win More Prospects Today: Dramatically Increase Your Selling Opportunities to Boost Your Sales

DATE: Thursday, April 30, 2009

TIME: 1:00-2:00 p.m. EASTERN STANDARD TIME

LOCATION: Your Phone

PRESENTER: Keith Rosen

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

SUMMARY
Prospecting in this tough economy can leave salespeople banging their heads against their desks. However, finding new and profitable business has never been so important. You must find new prospects and develop great relationships today so you and your company will be thriving and well positioned in your industry when the economy turns around.

Join us for this 60-minute conference where you and your colleagues will get the tools to:

• Learn lead generating ideas to keep your pipeline filled all year
• How to get past the toughest gatekeepers and straight to the decision maker
• Follow up strategies that grab attention without the pestering
• Ways to handle “I’m not Interested” – Overcome any objection

PROGRAM BENEFITS
This practical 60-minute, audio conference will provide you and your colleagues with the skills needed to prospect effectively and efficiently over the telephone to increase sales and boost revenue.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
How to Make the Gatekeeper & Voice Mails Your Ally
• Learn what to say to get you in the door – and get your calls returned
• How to build instant rapport with gatekeepers – get them on your side
• Must know fatal cold calling mistakes every salesperson makes

Heat up Your Cold Call & Pump Up Your Prospecting
• How to find customers who ARE buying and avoid ones who aren’t
• Learn opening statements that will keep prospects from hanging up
• Successfully overcome your fear of cold calling. (It doesn’t have to be painful!)

Understand Your Most Valuable Proposition
• Increase sales opportunities with crafted prospecting templates
• How to ask the right questions- get the prospect to reveal their pain
• Be aware of words that work & words that destroy selling opportunities

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

Hosted by Progressive Business Publications, a leader in fast-read actionable advice on workplace issues, the audio conference gives you the opportunity to add immediate, impact to your prospecting efforts in a manner that is:

FAST - No wasted time here. Get right to the heart of the matter in a 1-hour block designed to easily fit into your busy schedule.

CONVENIENT - No airlines. No travel. No time out of the office. Listen from the comfort and convenience of your desk.

EASY - A telephone is all the equipment you need. Just dial in, punch in your access code, and you’re in. That’s it. Follow along with the audio conference handout that will be provided in advance.

ACTIONABLE - Our audio conferences provide money-saving tactics you can start using right when you hang up the phone.

IDEAL FOR MULTIPLE LISTENERS - Use a speakerphone and as many people as you want can listen in – at no extra cost to you. Many professionals use these sessions as a cost-efficient, time-efficient means of training supervisors, managers, and staff and reinforcing key issues in a fresh new manner that they will remember and act on.

AFFORDABLE - Priced at $199, it is a fraction of the cost of travel and attendance fees for other high-priced conferences or seminars.

Click here for more information or to register now for this exciting event or call 800-964-6033.

Refine Your New Business Development Strategy to Win New Business

Use this checklist here

Do you prospect effortlessly and have a steady flow of new business? We all need more selling opportunities. To find them, we need to connect with more qualified prospects.

Sometimes new isn’t always better. Here’s an incredible tool I created years ago when I came out with my cold calling book. I’ve used this countless times to help coach salespeople and companies to develop and fine tune their cold calling approach and strategy to schedule more appointments with the right decision makers that will accelerate your selling cycle and ultimately close more sales.

Managers love this checklist because they can leverage this as a tool to help coach their salespeople and uncover the more elusive gaps in their follow up, warm calling or cold calling approach. Remember, coach the process, not the result.

Use this appointment setting and new business development checklist to discover what it takes to cold call or prospect like a pro and see if you’re set up for success or failure. The Prospecting and Cold Calling Tune Up is a checklist that contains all of the components needed to develop a masterful prospecting and follow up system that’s been proven to bring in new business, fast.

If your prospecting system does not contain the listed components, then you can find everything you need to develop a masterful prospecting system by clicking here.

This prospecting and cold calling checklist will help you identify what you need to refine or develop in your approach to retrain more customers and get into bigger accounts, set up more qualified appointments with decision makers all the way up the C-Level chain to the CEO, get more voice mails returned, set up a step by step prospecting and cold calling strategy that works, close more sales and help your salespeople fill their sales funnel with more qualified prospects.

Make it rain more than ever before. Adopt to the new rules of engagement and win in today’s economy. Tune up your approach here.

Keith Rosen’s Free Seminar Series
-The Art of Enrollment – Turn More Conversations into Clients

Mark your Calendar! January 28. 2009
Participant dial in number and access code below. Attend this event as our guest for free.

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

If you’re a coach, trainer, consultant, or non-selling professional, this is one tele-workshop you can’t afford to miss on the evolution of selling.

How effective are you at converting conversations into clients? Do you find yourself struggling to find more clients? What do you do to be unique and make an impact in the very first conversation you have with a prospect? Masterful coaches and speakers leave not only a lasting impression – they also create one.

It’s no secret that most coaches, speakers and non-selling professionals don’t like to sell. The income of most coaches reflects that. As such, they unknowingly use ineffective selling strategies rather than develop healthy, winning relationships with clients. Relying on price as a competitive differentiator dilutes your true value offering.

Coaching and training is not something you “pitch and sell.” The next evolution in how you engage clients is through the Art of Enrollment. What has been initially perceived as an inherent ability in certain leaders, coaches and top achievers is now a documented, step by step process that allows anyone, especially non-selling professionals, to convert more prospects into clients. You can do so in a natural, conversational way that honors your personal strengths, talents, integrity, values and style of communicating.

In this program, I’ve taken my twenty years of coaching and million dollar enrollment process that enabled me to develop one of the most successful coaching practices in the country and I’m now sharing my system with you in this program, The Art of Enrollment; a proven process to build a highly profitable, rewarding and sustainable business.

Specifically designed for coaches, consultants and trainers to learn how to:

Date: January 28. 2009
Duration: 90 Minutes
Time: 12pm EST
Location: Your Phone
Cost: Free! Please attend as our guest.

Sponsored by: The International Coach Federation

Below is the access number and code to participate:

Approximately 5 minutes before the session begins, start to dial this U.S. based phone number: 212.457.9879
When prompted, enter their Participant Access Code: 124866#

For more information visit the course description page here. I look forward to ‘seeing’ your there!

Many of the strategies that we engage in today, whether in our thinking as well as in our actions, are often counterintuitive to what we may believe would be the solution to achieving our goals and objectives; especially as it relates to cold calling and prospecting for new business.

Here’s a sample of the top paradoxes of prospecting that make prospecting so challenging. However, once these paradoxes are woven into your thinking, you’ll notice how these contradictions will provide you with a competitive edge that no other marketing piece, feature or benefit of your product or service could even come close to.

Lets face it. You and I both know that the ultimate objective of your prospecting efforts is to sell more and boost your income. However, to achieve this goal, it’s just not where you are going to focus your energy and thoughts.

If you can understand and embrace these paradoxes, you now have the opportunity to respond to each prospect in a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable way.

I hope by know, we’re all painfully aware of the costly lesson this economy has taught us. The skills, the thinking and the strategies that got us here today will not take us where we want to be tomorrow. And these uncertain times have highlighted more than ever, how we have collapsed American Entitlement with the American Dream.

The simple truth is, in order to earn more we need to learn more, especially as it relates to selling, retaining your current customers and leveraging new selling opportunities.

Here’s what I’ve observed over the last six months, how the current marketplace has impacted the way we sell and connect with our prospects and clients. Granted, some of these trends have been going on for a while now. However, these last six months have put more and more companies at this crossroad, face to face with this critical decision: adapt, innovate and change or suffer from corporate inefficiency, rigidity and declining profits. Upgrade your sales and leadership strategy to respond to these times. Here’s how.

1. Yesterday, it was more of a transactional sale. You show up and take an order or worse, you wing your presentation.

Today, you need to redefine your selling strategy and become a consultative sales champion in order to survive and thrive.

• If you’ve only gotten into sales over the last few years, you’ve never sold in tough times. More than ever salespeople need the training and coaching to stay on top.
• Benchmark best practices. What are the stages of the sale you need to move your prospect through?
• Leverage technology to manage your pipeline.
• Focus on key targeted accounts through better qualification and discovery process. (More and better questions.) Research each customer and know their business.
• Order takers don’t always have the strongest relationships. More time must be spent fostering stronger relationships with key clients. This doesn’t mean calling to ‘check in’ but have a better set of timely questions that will help you understand how the current economic times have affected the way they do business and make purchasing decisions.
• Become keenly aware of the lifetime value of every customer using better defined metrics.
• Doubling sales productivity isn’t always the answer. Consider by doing so, you’re also cutting the time you have to invest in your key accounts, in half.

2. Yesterday, you can sell features and benefits.

Today, you must reinvent your M.V. P. (Most Valuable Proposition) and develop core compelling reasons which will then move your product or service from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have.’

• Less discretionary spending and tighter budgets means less allocation of funds for anything other than what is necessary. “Nice to have’s” Are being cut out of budget. You must position your product as a need to have.
• Saying you’re the best isn’t good enough. You do so by being clear with your value proposition and a faster R.O.I.
• You must focus on the cost of not making changes/ the pain of no change/keeping things the same vs. selling the warm and fuzzy benefits.
• Fewer selling opportunities + increased competition = customers demanding more value for less money.

3. Yesterday, managers were able to tolerate more mediocrity amongst their team.

Today, leaders must transform into coaches and be more fully accountable for their team.

• Get Out Of The Fear Based, Survival Driven Mentality and develop a coaching culture.
• Develop a 30 Day Tactical Turnaround Strategy for Underperformers
• Do Not Be Seduced By the potential you see in others.
• Relinquish Your Role as The Chief Problem Solver
• Stop coaching the uncoachable
• Become less tolerant of mediocrity and underperformers
• More diligent hiring and recruiting practices as companies cannot afford the cost of a mis-hire, especially with time of the essence.

4. Yesterday, you could get away with connecting with your key accounts on a less frequent basis.

Today, you must over-respond and over-communicate to the needs of your customers or risk losing them to your competition.

• Many salespeople are hiding under their desk in fear. A perfect opportunity for you to seize more market share.
• Insulate your key accounts/current customers. Less spending = less sales volume = increased competition.
• Become more than a salesperson, become a valuable resource and a trusted advisor.
• This presents a huge opportunity to mine for additional upselling and cross selling opportunities.
• Help them reach their objectives, save money and increase revenue. Their top goals!
• Retention is the new growth strategy? Doubling sales activity? You need a fine balance between being a great hunter as well as a great farmer. More strategic selling.

5. Yesterday, you could be more lax with your daily activity and do enough just to get buy.

Today, you must refine your daily habits and become a master of your day.

• Many entrepreneurs are willing to do the things they want rather than the things they need to do to drive the growth of their business.
• What are the non-negotiable revenue generating activities they need to engage in every day?
• How are they being held accountable for doing so? That’s were a defined daily routine comes into play.

• Time is your most valuable non negotiable commodity. Invest it in the right activities done the right way.
• You can’t hide anymore.

6. Yesterday, companies had a larger budget to invest in marketing to drive more leads and prospects to the sales team.

Today, more and more companies are shifting to cold calling to generate new prospects and new leads. These were also many of the same companies who used to be resistant to this concept! This is another learned skill set and strategy that needs to be developed and embraced by your sales team.

7. Yesterday, salespeople had larger travel and expense accounts to meet with and romance their prospects and clients.

Today, more sales are happening virtually, online and over the phone. This requires learning and adapting to a new way of selling via new communication channels.

Find out more here.

There were two books I read very early on during my college years that had a huge impact on me and on my career path. One of them was written by Tom Hopkins.

Today, Tom is offering something so valuable that I needed to share it with you. He’s holding a special event next month on November 15 and again on November 20 in Southern California for:

Hopkins says, “We’ve listened to what our students are telling us. In the current marketplace, they can’t take a full day out of the field to attend seminars. So, we’ve condensed these programs to offer just the top strategies that are working now. And the Saturday program is aimed at people who are in sales part-time like many of our clients in the network marketing industry.”

While many programs of this caliber run anywhere from $300 to $1,000 per attendee, Tom Hopkins International is being sensitive to the pocketbooks of today’s Southern California sales forces. These two programs are being offered for only $99.00 per ticket. Both the offer and seating for these events are limited.

Get all the information you need here, as I’m sure this will sell out fast.

Here’s what you can expect to walk away with:

Get all the information you need or register here.

When presenting to a client or prospect, regardless of any steps you’ve outlined in your presentation, there’s a big difference between convincing or ‘selling’ someone and enrolling someone, especially when you’re at the point in your discussions where you’ve identified some specific problems within the organization or with them. Now, you may be at the point where you’re going to share the solution and enroll them in the solution and more so, taking action and making a change.

Convincing/Selling: Changing someone’s stand on something through the use of force or argument. This often takes the form of a complaint, or reiteration of the problem. If there are people who in involved in your discussions who may have taken a part in creating the problem in the first place, this can be construed as a “Make wrong” and they may then feel compelled to defend their stance. This creates an adversarial posture between you and the other person. Once this happens, people have tendency to further defend their position, which often results in them shutting down their listening for the remainder of the conversation.

Enrolling: Stating the current situation without making anyone wrong while sharing a new opportunity for greater results or what may be possible. Stating the benefits of what a change may bring. For example, the beginning of an enrollment conversation may begin with, “Imagine if…......What if we can create an organization where…..”

Enrolling can also take on the form of asking questions. Besides, what do people believe more, what you say, or what they say? As such, if they voice the problem or a possible solution, then they would be more willing to act on it. Resistance is lowered, and they feel ownership of the solutions and would be more apt to act on it. Here are some questions to use.

Here are a few questions to use when you’re in a situation where you need to acknowledge and respect the other person’s viewpoint, even though you may not agree. Or, maybe you simply need more clarification about their position on something. Instead of making them wrong or creating any confrontational posture between you, add another truth to the situation. Here’s how.

Uncover the specific benefits they want to realize, as well as the cost of not changing. Now, you can be in a position of enrolling them in the idea of actually taking actions to implement change to achieve these new results, without putting anyone on the defensive.

No one likes to be sold. Everyone wants to be enrolled. BTW, look for my new book, The Art of Enrollment, coming to you in 2009.

With all this talk about qualifying and how to qualify a prospect, it’s critical to ensure that, especially those of you who are attempting to cold call for the first time or prospect in a more unique or innovative way than you’ve done before, you understand the difference between qualifying and judging a prospect.

To permanently eliminate any confusion, lets draw a distinction between what it means to pre-qualify and pre-judge someone, such as a prospect. If you read my cold calling book, you know that I’m a strong advocate of pre-qualifying anyone before you invest your very limited and precious time in meeting with or speaking with them. Conversely, pre-judging someone is something you do that shows up in the filter or barrier you have in your listening, which was created out of the assumptions you’ve already made about that prospect.

Here’s another way to distinguish between the two. When you are pre-qualifying someone, you are arriving at a conclusion that determines whether or not there’s a fit worth pursuing based on a defined set of criteria you uncover through the use of well crafted questions. You are solely focusing on the prospect, not yourself and what you have to gain or lose, to determine how you can add value or if there’s a match between the two of you.

Pre-judging said simply, is all about you. Here, you are relying on your faulty and costly assumptions, thoughts and beliefs to determine their needs and whether or not this prospect will potentially buy from you.

When you pre-judge someone, you’re making assumptions about them before you ask any questions or uncover many facts. Maybe you’ve judged them by their appearance, where they live, their type of business or industry, how they sound over the phone or a comment they made. In essence, you’re “already” listening and forming conclusions based on your defined set of criteria rather than the facts.

When you pre-qualify someone, you’re asking questions to uncover their specific needs and objectives, without making any assumptions. You are learning about the prospect based on the responses you hear from the questions you ask. You are being fully engaged and present in the conversation with that person, rather than in your own head forming conclusions or operating off your agenda. This way, you’re making a decision to pursue this prospect based on reliable intelligence instead of your overactive imagination. (Here’s another distinction: authentic fit vs. a pipedream. )

September is Customer Appreciation Month is for Hoover’s. In support of this, Hoover’s has identified a theme for each of the four weeks of the month which I’ll be blogging about. Here’s the schedule.

Wk 1: Prospecting (9/8-9/12)
Wk 2: Qualifying (9/15-9/19)
Wk 3: Presentation Skills and Closing the Sale (9-22-9/26)
Wk 4: Overcoming Objectives (9/29-10/3)

Now that we’re in week two, below are some qualifying questions you can use during the next conversation you have with a prospect. Remember, it’s not just any question but defined, well crafted questions that are going to act as the conduit to more qualified prospects and more sales.

While many salespeople would use questions that qualify their prospects to determine whether or not they are a viable candidate for their product or service, uncovering a true fit between you and your prospects goes much deeper.

There are actually two distinct types of questions: First, there are fact finding questions. These questions relate specifically to your industry and product or service. These fundamental questions provide you with the information you need to uncover whether this prospect is even someone who would purchase what you sell. These questions would uncover the following information. Do they currently have a similar solution you offer. Is your solution a complement or replacement to what they are currently doing? Is the company the right size, offers the right product or service, is the right industry, has the right type and number of employees?

Second, there are those decision oriented questions that move the sales process forward and motivate your prospect to make a decision or want to buy from you. These discovery questions will enable you to uncover how they go about making a purchasing decision, the cost of not making any changes as well as create the urgency for the prospect to make a decision.

Keep in mind when executed correctly, these questions will facilitate a natural conversation, rather than a “pitch.” As you read the questions that follow, remember, it’s a give and take. You’re not interrogating them, but having a conversation to learn how you can best assist them based on their goals and objectives, uncover the process they honor when making a decision and whether or not there’s even a fit.

Finally, look at these questions like a big buffet. Take what you like and what works for you and leave what you don’t.

Decision Oriented Questions

Earlier this summer, I was interviewed by Inc. magazine on the how to keep salespeople motivated, especially when they miss their numbers. Business owners and sales managers need to focus on specific parts of their sales process rather than just hammering on the overall sales goals.

In this Inc. story, entitled, Fighting the Sales Force Blues, read about two of my clients (Joe and Michele) who have taken a proactive stance to adjust to the current market conditions, rather than playing the victim or taking the ‘wait and see’ attitude.

Read about what they have done in response to the changes in their marketplace which has resulted in keeping them on top of their game and on top of their sales. Here’s what CEO’s, managers and business owners need do to stay on track and, most importantly, keep salespeople motivated in an uncertain economy.

Here’s the link to the full article on Inc.

Do you have a sales team of fearless prospectors? There’s not a company out there who can afford to have their top prospectors, hunters and rainmakers become a little gun-shy when looking to attract and develop new business.

So, are you aware of the limiting thinking you may be harboring towards cold calling and your prospects? When salespeople resist cold calling, a typical response from many sales managers is to provide additional training, role-playing, a revised presentation, or more qualified prospects to call on as the solution to improving cold calling results and productivity.

Granted, salespeople do report an increased level of confidence and a decrease in call reluctance when they have been provided with the right tools, processes, and systems. Unfortunately, these tactics don’t always eliminate the anxiety or level of resistance that salespeople experience when cold calling.

Perhaps the real issue is not tapping into the source of cold calling reluctance. Fixing the symptom without understanding the true source of the problem only results in a temporary solution.

Instead of focusing on strategies that only address the symptom, explore the source of your anxiety to permanently overcome the fear and resistance to cold calling; your beliefs surrounding cold calling.

Cold Calling Isn’t a Dirty Word

When I ask salespeople about their feelings or attitude towards cold calling, I hear the following responses. Compare your list to the following common responses:

Conversely, when I ask salespeople what they love about cold calling, what I get is complete silence.

Whatever you assume or believe about cold calling, your prospects, yourself, selling, and your career is exactly what you’ll manifest in your life.

I know this may challenge traditional wisdom and your current beliefs as well as stretch your perception and point of view. However, if you’re looking for extreme results, then it calls for extreme thinking and not just a change in what you do and how you do it. With the business community continually evolving, change is critical.

Salespeople have tendency to exploit all of the reasons why they don’t like cold calling or why they won’t succeed at cold calling. However, have you ever taken the time to develop the reasons why you will succeed?

To make this real for you, if you believe that cold calling is, “Forcing someone to accept something they don’t want, intrusive, annoying, manipulative, a waste of time, intimidating, scary, something I hate being subjected to myself, and so on,” that’s exactly what you’ll continue to experience every time you cold call.

If you believe that all prospects are a certain way (uninterested, shoppers, rude, are only concerned with price) then how do you think you are going to approach cold calling and deliver your presentation, whether you realize it or not?

Think about the type of prospect that you are going to be attracting and the kind of objections you’ll be hearing? Based on your current assumptions surrounding cold calling, prospects and selling, every new experience will now become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Joy of Cold Calling

To combat this, consider challenging these assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones that would better serve you. For example, I love (or like) to cold call because:

When working with different sales teams, I always find it interesting that some salespeople attract the difficult customers. They then find themselves in a position where they have to negotiate price, have more cancellations or returns, or have to deal with prospects that want to review three separate proposals before making a purchasing decision.

Conversely, there are other salespeople who seem to effortlessly generate the best leads and get the desirable, loyal customers and repeat business.

This is not a coincidence. At some point, you need to ask yourself, “What role is my attitude playing in this? How is my thinking affecting my performance?” Once you can identify your current limiting beliefs surrounding cold calling, I’m sure you will see the answers to these questions staring you in the face.

Don’t Strain Yourself

When talking with salespeople who have prospected for a while, it seems that they remember how challenging it was to take that first prospecting step. This is still a common theme amongst salespeople who have to learn how to prospect to build their business. They tell me that taking the first step and making that first cold call is exactly where they freeze or get stuck.

Many salespeople define the first step as the first cold call they make. That is, the first time they are picking up the phone and attempting to connect with a prospect. However, the first step isn’t what you may think.

If you’ve ever honored a workout regimen, getting on the treadmill or hitting the weights probably isn’t the first thing you do. Instead, you ease into your workout by first stretching and warming up your body. Why? To avoid injury. Warming up lets your tight muscles know that they are about to be torn down, exercised, and challenged. Stretching and warming up your muscles makes you more limber and your body more responsive and open to what you’re about to put it through. It’s a great way to ensure you’ll get a good workout and most important, avoid an injury that can lay you up in bed for weeks.

The same holds true for prospecting and cold calling. Imagine that your pre-call planning phase is when you take the time to warm yourself up before the big game. View pre-call planning as your warm up for cold calling or other prospecting activities. The only difference is, the primary muscle that you are stretching and preparing for prospecting is your brain; that is, your mindset and the activities that require your focus and attention.

Pre-call planning encompasses the activities you engage in before you begin prospecting that involve action and intellect in order to achieve the maximum return on your prospecting efforts.

Pre-call planning is an essential step in your prospecting system that will enable you to plan effectively, get into the prospecting mindset, eliminate any fear or reluctance, boost your confidence, learn about your prospects, tap into your drive and motivation, and target who you are calling. Finally, pre-call planning will enable you to become limber and hyper focused on your objective. All of these activities are the preliminary steps you take to avoid injury or challenges during your cold calling, I mean, warm calling efforts.

The Five Degrees of Pre-Call Planning

Ken, a client of mine, called me the other day and told me that during the one-hour timeline he allocated each day for cold calling over the phone, he was only able to make a few calls. When I asked him to break down exactly what he attempted to accomplish in that hour, he shared with me the following tasks:

Without realizing it, Ken identified the five degrees of pre-call planning. Ken then shared with me that during the one hour he put aside for prospecting, it was taking him forty-five minutes just to prepare his targeted list of prospects to call, not leaving him much time for actual prospecting.

In other words, Ken was collapsing several other activities into one and calling that “cold calling.” In actuality, he listed five distinct activities that need to be managed independently.

The jewel here is be sure that each task or activity you engage in is broken down into its most simplistic and measurable form. In other words, if prospecting is one of the activities you engage in, it is not enough to simply list “prospecting” as an activity. As we’ve discussed, prospecting involves a variety of distinct activities. Therefore, prospecting, as defined by Ken, needs to be broken down even further.

Mapping your prospecting strategy, getting into the prospecting mindset, compiling your call list, returning or taking phone calls, and cold calling for new customers are five distinct and measurable activities that need to be managed separately when creating your schedule. If you find that you need to handle some of these activities at the same time, then make sure you have allocated enough time for each activity.

Additionally, each one of these activities calls for a different mindset. You’ll know if the activity you are engaging in needs to be broken down into other activities if it requires a different level of thought, skill, and focus.
You’ll know if the task is broken down into the absolute smallest denominator when asking yourself, the following questions. “How am I going to achieve that?” “What steps do I need to take to finish that task?” “What specific outcome will be produced?” If the answers to these questions open up another task, process, or strategy that would generate a unique end result then you’ll need to narrow down that activity even further. For example, compiling your target-prospecting list not only produces a different outcome than when you pick up the phone and make cold calls but it requires a different thought process, strategy, and skill set.

Another symptom that will let you know whether or not you can narrow down the task into a smaller denominator is this: If you block out a certain amount of time for an activity and you find that you are not completing it, there’s a chance that you have collapsed more than one activity into that block of time. Identifying each distinct activity that you engage in will enable you to be more realistic with the time lines that you allocate for each activity, making your prospecting efforts highly effective and more easily manageable.
In addition, this exercise will strengthen your ability to think in terms of detailed, measurable activities and tasks, rather than in vague, broad strokes. So, if you’ve ever been in a position where you have underestimated how much time a certain task or project would take, this process will also assist you in establishing more realistic timelines around your daily activities so that you can “get it all done” rather than constantly leaving tasks incomplete or overbooking and overcommitting yourself.

Just got back from my interview with Becky Surran at News 12 in Connecticut. (What an amazing, state of the art studio.) Below is a summary of what we discussed. And here’s the news clip for your viewing pleasure.

Watch the video here.

For many companies it’s a battlefield out there and the battlefield isn’t limited to the marketplace but the workplace. And again, all roads lead back to the manager or the business owner because the manager is the one who has the power to affect the environment and culture within any organization and as such, the one directly responsible for it.

Many managers don’t realize they have this power and the power to turn their people’s performance around. And it all starts with the realization that what got you here today won’t be the same skills and strategies that are going to get you where you want to be tomorrow. One strategy to stay away from is to simply wait it out and weather the storm. Not a good move. I see many companies today waiting themselves right out of business.

With all the layoffs and decrease in customer and corporate spending that many businesses are experiencing now, one of the top questions I’m hearing is, “How do I get and keep my people motivated and productive?” Here are several strategies that any business owner or manager can do today to better motivate their people and make that fundamental shift from surviving to thriving again.

1. Overcommunicate. Many business owners and managers are hiding under their desks in fear, avoiding their clients and employees. Instead, take a proactive stance and overcommunicate with them. For your employees, let know they are going through this together and not alone. Spend more time each week speaking with them to uncover what their fears and worries are. After all, if your employees fear a possible acquisition, company sale or the loss of their job, what do you think they’re spending their time doing each day? Everything except working to improve their current condition! This holds true for your customers as well.

2. Become a Hunter and a Farmer: Whether through natural attrition or your competition’s efforts to grab more market share, organizations are losing their customers. As such, many companies are telling me they are shifting their efforts from growth to maintenance. I say need a healthy balance of both of these activities. Over service your existing client base while focusing on new opportunities to attract more customers. and while your overdelivering on value, you’ll be able to create new selling opportunities with your existing clients as well as potential referrals.

3. Reinvent Your MVP. Your MVP is your most valuable proposition. It’s what makes you unique rather than the same. Many companies still rely on antiquated and often uncomfortable selling strategies. They no longer offer a competitive edge that separates them from everyone else and promotes a healthy, winning relationship with their customers. As a result, they find themselves in the costly and undesirable position of relying on price as a competitive differentiator; thus diluting their true value offering. If you find yourself selling on price you’re already in trouble. Rather than change their approach, they work harder and longer, only to produce the same results as before. What makes you unique? What makes you a client’s first choice? What additional value can you deliver that would make you stand out from the rest? More boutique and hands on customer service or even a better guarantee are just a couple of things you can do to reinforce value in your customer’s mind. And why they should keep buying from you.

4. Change The Fuel That Drives You: The rising cost of the fuel we’re all experiencing isn’t limited to what you may think. This also includes the fuel you’re using to motivate and drive your team. Change the fuel that’s driving you and your people. Make the shift away from being driven by fear, scarcity and consequence to a healthier energy source. And that would be using abundance and pleasure to motivate your people. Focus on their dreams and goals. Motivate using people rather than using consequence. Informing people that they won’t have a job unless they turn their performance around is a toxic strategy that doesn’t reinforce the changes you want them to make. Instead, focus on what they are doing well and what you want them to do better. Reinforce positive behaviors and take a stand for them, rather than tearing down their confidence.

Sales 2.0; the conversion of technology and sales and the symbiotic relationship between the two; how they can be integrated together and co-exist in harmony. Yet, with all the technology that is going to change how salespeople sell and manage themselves, we need to be keenly sensitive about removing the human side of interaction and communication from our daily lives and processes; the deeper level of connection we foster between each other, especially with our customers.

Sure, technology will automate and streamline many of the functions and tasks salespeople and management are currently responsible for. More specifically, how they manage their sales pipeline and the stages of their selling cycle, how they qualify and mine for new prospects, how they network with other business professionals, how they maintain their contact database as well as how they communicate with their prospects and customers. And the trend for companies to transition from what was once a face to face sale to a virtual, off site sale will continue to dominate more sales cultures.

Yet, with any change, certain imminent challenges are sure to follow in its wake. Sales 2.0 and Web 2.0 have certainly had an impact on how we communicate. I have already seen the negative impact that some of these great advancements are having on sales teams across the globe as it relates to how salespeople are interacting with their prospects, customers, even their managers. Sure, these technological breakthroughs allow us to communicate and connect on many different platforms, yet it’s diluting our ability to connect powerfully on a deeper level, the level that long term relationships are fostered. Many managers have reported spending far too much time reviewing a thread of email conversations between their salespeople and prospects when attempting to uncover where a communication breakdown occurred or when trying to identify how a great selling opportunity was lost. Misinterpreted and poorly worded emails between management and their staff are the cause of more costly problems and upsets which deteriorate relations than any additional time-savings they supposedly create. As such rather than connect – we’re getting more disconnected with every communication breakdown that ensues.

Moreover, there’s the ever-widening communication gap that some of these new technologies promote between the younger generations and that of their boss, especially as more and more sales teams are built on a virtual platform where there’s little, if any face to face weekly interaction with their manager. Rather than develop their core leadership and coaching competencies and skills, managers are relying far too heavily on these solutions to solve many of the managerial challenges they are up against when building and managing their sales team.

Salespeople are expecting their webinars, proposals, websites, online marketing campaigns and collateral materials to do the selling and prospecting for them. And what’s worse, there are those salespeople who attempt to close a prospect or overcome objections via email rather than simply picking up the phone to facilitate a direct, one to one conversation that would appease the person’s concerns. Here’s just one example of a perfectly good opportunity and a valid reason to reach out to a prospect over the phone that salespeople need to take full advantage of, yet fail to do so.

The introduction of these new technologies into our sales culture will continue to proliferate, for change is truly the only constant. After all, there will always be a need to make the selling process easier and more efficient for the salesperson, for your company and for your customers.

While more applications such as the ones I’ve mentioned are infused throughout each stage of the sale, the technology of maximizing human potential is far from tapped. And as more technology emerges to simplify the selling process, there will be an even greater demand for the elite salesperson who can manage and leverage technology as well as effectively communicate their message to their targeted audience.

The technology of interpersonal, result oriented communication; the language and true art of selling will still reign supreme in the selling profession. Sure, these new tools we have at our disposal will improve efficiency, cut down on travel as well as timely administrative tasks, and reduce prospecting time and the time it takes to convert prospects into customers, now that there is less of a need to meet face to face with prospects in order to sell your product or service to them. However, it will be the sales leader who is the rainmaker, the fearless and persistent prospector, the conduit to building and maintaining strong relationships and the master of communication, who will continue to dominate this era of technological change.

Sales? Leadership? Coaching? Strategy? HR? There’s a new AllBusiness.com expert feature that was just launched. I’m excited about this new platform to connect with readers and interact with you! More specifically, this is an Ask The Expert, Q and A Forum for you to get your toughest questions answered, and your greatest personnel and sales related or management challenges resolved ,so that you can sleep well at night knowing you are achieving your goals.

We’re hoping you will enjoy the connection and the opportunity to interact. Here’s how it works. You will be able to e-mail me direct, on the bottom right corner of my blog page here, as well as leave a voicemail on my exclusive toll free hotline describing your specific issue, challenge or question! We’ll review the voicemail questions and select the ones to use in the recorded “Ask the Expert” interviews where I will provide short answers to your e-mailed and phoned in questions. Call in now using the number below. I look forward to hearing from you.

“Ask the Expert” Hotline!
The number is: 1-877-49-EXPERT (1877-493-9737)
Option #1

Or, send me your question on This page here.

Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions
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Since the success or failure of any organization leads back to the actions and behavior of one person; the leader, it’s critical for every manger to upgrade their leadership style and approach. You’ll discover how to facilitate a coaching conversation that fits your management style, as well as the strategies of the world’s greatest coaches through dozens of case studies spanning over 15 different industries and professions, a 30-Day Turnaround Strategy, coaching and communication templates, a library of masterful coaching questions and an easy-to-follow coaching process to leverage each person’s fullest potential and develop a team of winners.

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Purchase Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions by April 17 and enjoy access to hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials from Dr. Tony Alessandra, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins, Jim Cathcart, Jill Konrath, Dave Lakhani, Bob Kantin, Dr. Rick Kirschner, CanDoGo.com, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com and more. You can spend hundreds of dollars separately or you can invest about $20.00, order one copy of the book today and spend not one penny more. Look at the resources you get here.

Plenty of books espouse new management and leadership theories for managers, but few show you how to actually coach your people on a daily basis in a way that creates measurable change. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions provides a proven methodology and tactical strategy for coaching that bridges the gap between theory and execution so that you can achieve unprecedented results -today.

Remember, this time sensitive event ends April 17 at midnight.

Get the book 37% off and hundreds of dollars worth of additional materials here.

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.

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

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.

I’m writing to introduce you to a remarkable new book that will teach you exactly how the top pros are selling more—right now! Every day!

I was honored to be chosen to contribute to TOP DOG SALES SECRETS because this new book is packed with real-life examples, successful scripts, and powerful, proven advice to show you how to rapidly increase your sales. Major corporations have happily paid THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS for this information but you can get it all for just $24.95.

You’ll learn how to:—Double your income by changing a few words—Grab your prospect’s interest in 15 seconds or less—Sure-fire ways to beat the price objection—Leave voicemail messages that have prospects calling you—Read your prospect in 60 seconds or less—Be the big winner at the negotiating table

If you’re serious about advancing your sales career act now and order here.

You have absolutely zero risk. I have a long relationship with the publisher who guarantees your “extreme satisfaction.” Take a few moments right now to learn more here.

P.S. The deal gets sweeter. When you send for your copy today, you’ll also receive three powerful bonus sales tools compliments of the publisher:

Don’t get left behind. Get your copy today—plus these three valuable bonuses by ordering here.

I’m so thrilled to announce the launch of this new company, CanDoGo. As one of its founding content providers, it’s a privilege to be a part of this organization in terms of the sheer value this will deliver to individuals and companies worldwide, as well as the impressive caliber of people who are involved in this company.

The company offers a web-based subscription service that enables organizations and their people to receive exclusive advice from a panel of experts, covering a wide variety of relevant work-related, business or professional topics such as sales coaching, power proposals, leadership skills, motivation and much more. This expert advice is delivered on-line and on-demand, making it easy for the modern workforce to get the answers they seek and apply this knowledge on the spot to solve today’s business problems; redefining the way people work and access relevant and time sensitive content solutions.

Below is their official press release that went out today.

CanDoGo™ Unveils On-Demand Coaching & Mentoring Solutions
New Company Provides a Fresh Approach to Employee Development and Training to Deliver Immediate Results

CHICAGO – October 15, 2007 – CanDoGo, a provider of professional development services for organizations and their employees, today announced broad availability of its on-demand coaching and training solutions. The company offers a web-based subscription service that enables organizations and their people to receive advice from a panel of experts, covering a wide variety of relevant work-related, business or professional topics such as sales coaching, power proposals, leadership skills, motivation and much more.

CanDoGo has secured exclusive rights to deliver this advice and coaching from more than 120 authors, speakers and professional trainers in a whole new way. The company converts traditional long-form material into short, meaningful advice, known as ‘CanDoGo InsightsTM’. This expert advice is delivered on-line and on-demand, making it easy for the modern workforce to get the answers they seek and apply this knowledge on the spot to solve today’s business problems.

“Offering my distributed sales force the immediate guidance, training and mentoring they need is a challenge I face on a daily basis,” said Bob Neeser, vice president sales with Sage Software in Scottsdale, Arizona. “CanDoGoTM offers relevant training content to help my sales teams shorten their sales cycles, create better proposals and improve their conversion rates. My colleagues and I have noticed a tangible, positive impact on Sage’s business from using CanDoGo’s resources.”

“It is second nature for us to obtain advice in our personal lives every day,” said Dave Batt, CEO of CanDoGo and former executive at Microsoft and Sage Software. “However, timely guidance in the business world is harder to come by. CanDoGo delivers expert advice in a way that appeals to all levels of the workforce.”

CanDoGo’s customers purchase subscriptions to access advice and coaching from the experts from anywhere they work. CanDoGo Insights are delivered in a ubiquitous manner as text, audio and video and presented within a multitude of delivery options, designed to appeal and be accessible to people wherever they work.

Subscribers can seek advice from Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Additionally, subscribers can access CanDoGo Insights from their corporate Web portals, from third-party applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, from their PDA/Mobile devices or from the CanDoGo Web subscription portal directly.

“Our research indicates a need for ‘in context’ information as a top requirement for businesses,” said Sheryl Kingstone, analyst with Yankee Group. “Solutions that can help address this need and provide information appropriate to an employee’s current task, make this more practical and appealing to the modern workforce.”

See a full demonstration of CanDoGo’s solution at the Selling Power Conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago on October 15, 2007, or visit www.candogo.com.

For a free 7 day trial, go to: candogo.com

About CanDoGo™:
Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado, CanDoGo™ provides organizations and individuals on-demand coaching and mentoring. CanDoGo™ works with the best and brightest authors, motivational speakers and leaders to capture the educational guidance and information needed to inspire people, whenever and however an organization needs it. More information is available at http://www.candogo.com.

#

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Paulette Trimmer
Communiqué PR
206.282.4923 ext. 115
paulette@communiquepr.com

Ashley Halseth
Communiqué PR
206.282.4923 ext. 121
Ashley@communiquepr.com

You can check out some of the first videos available on KeithRosenTV on Youtube. They are also available for free right here on ProfitBuilders.com.

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Here is one of the new videos discussing cold calling fear and reluctance and the best solutions to overcome them. You can check out more new video coaching content here on our site.

From this video: Here’s part of the transcript.
When coaching salespeople, the one activity that typically takes a back seat to everything else is cold calling.

Why is that why is there such a reluctance or aversion to picking up the phone and making that cold call?

Unfortunately, traditionally managers would offer a new template or a new script or maybe a new resource or collateral material in hopes that would make the salesperson more comfortable.

While this might help to a degree, it still doesn’t get the root of the issue, which is the salespersons fear of picking up the phone and making a call. Now here’s the interesting thing, if you think about the two people involved in the sales process, there’s the salesperson and the prospect. When I ask salespeople who the sales process should be about, they say “It should be about the prospect.”

If ask them who they are you making it about , and reluctantly if their being honest they say “I’m making it about me Keith”. Full transcript here.

I will be delivering a special free webinar that you can register for today. The date is approaching fast and details are below.

Date: August 1, 2007
Time: 10:00am PDT,

More Information or To Register Click Here

Permission Based Prospecting
Attract More Qualified Prospects – Close More Sales

Does this sound familiar? “If I could get in front of the prospect, the rest of the selling process becomes easier. It’s just getting in front of them that’s the challenge.” The fact is most cold calling efforts are doomed from the start. Salespeople lose sales not due to a lack of effort but because they lack a prospecting system they are comfortable with and can trust to generate greater, consistent results.

If you are prospecting the same way you have been for the last several years (including the, “calling to check in, touch base or follow-up” approach) or haven’t been prospecting at all, you’re simply making it easier for your competition to take away the new business you are working so hard to earn. So, if you love to sell but hate (or don’t like) to prospect, this program is your opportunity to maximize your cold calling potential and boost your income by learning how to get in front of the right prospects in less time and create greater selling opportunities without the fear, pressure or anxiety associated with cold calling.

In this session, Razi Imam CEO of Landslide Technologies will host this special event as I show you how to:

Strengthen your telephone communication skills.

Date: August 1, 2007
Time: 10:00am PDT,

As you may know, my latest book on closing the sale was released earlier this month. So, why haven’t I made much fuss over it until now? I was waiting for a reason. Here’s the reason.

I’ve put together a very special Three Day Launch Event (Expires this Friday) and wanted to make sure you took advantage of it. You can find out more about my new book and this special launch event below. In the meantime, feel free to visit my new site where you can read the entire intro and Chapter One here. I’m confident that this book will forever change your thinking and behavior when it comes to closing the sale. And you’ll like the results you see.

Now, back to this event:

Special 3 Day Book Launch Event Ends Friday

Get my book 32% Off and hundreds of dollars worth of Bonus Items

Bottom line: Some of the leading industry experts and authors are coming together to give away for free some of their best resources which will only be available for 72 hours during this event. During this 3 day event, anyone who purchases just one copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing The Sale will receive all of these additional resources for free.

This book gives you the edge over your competition by showing you, step by step, how to get to “Yes” more often by aligning your selling approach with the prospect’s preferred buying process and communication style without any pressure, manipulation or confrontation. You’ll also get exactly what to say in any selling situation as well as the dialogue that the world’s greatest salespeople use to defuse objections, ask for the sale and close the deal. Plus, over 100 case studies, templates and scripts you can use with my powerful process driven selling approach.

Traditional and gimmicky closing techniques are dead. Never be scared or reluctant to ask for the sale again and enjoy the confidence and peace of mind in knowing you have a process that works. The greatest salespeople are not great closers; they are skilled openers of new selling opportunities. Whether you’re a seasoned sales pro or just starting out, tap into my unique, permission based approach to having a selling conversation with your prospects that fits your style of selling rather than having to ‘pitch and close;’ the same system that I coach thousands of salespeople, business owners and managers on each year.

Get my book 32% Off and hundreds of dollars worth of Bonus Items

**72 HOUR BONUS: Once you purchase my new book, you will be given access to additional bonus materials valued at over $1,000 from industry experts, associations and companies like Paul DiModica, Jill Konrath, Steven Gaffney, Kim George, Vince Thompson, Jacques Werth, Lori Richardson, AllBusiness.com, SalesDog.com, The National Association of Sales Professionals and other incredible authors and experts. To get these resources, you can spend hundreds of dollars separately or you can invest just $10.00 (just ten bucks), order one copy of my book today and spend not one penny more. But order right now, as this unique and time sensitive offer will expire on March 2nd at midnight.

Get my book 32% Off and More

Download the first Professional Development Toolbar Now, Free!
Click Here for more info.

Here’s a totally unique toolbar that integrates seamlessly into your web browser which offers you and your team online coaching and training videos, Podcasts, communication tools, self assessments and templates that will help in developing the skills you need to achieve the results you want today.

NOTE: To satisfy those concerned (including myself!) with spyware, adware and other malicious features this toolbar has no spyware or viruses, does not open pop-ups or hijack your searches, and no personal information is required. The more I researched doing this project, the more I found that to be the #1 issue and reluctance of people to use these toolbars. That’s why I found a company who makes it very clear in both their privacy policy and their download page that they have made certain this was addressed, that it is their primary concern as well and as such, hopefully gives people like yourself the peace of mind to try what can prove to be a truly great tool.

Here’s the scene. You’re at your desk, feeling a bit overloaded, disorganized, behind the ball. Maybe you have some leads and sales that you should be closing faster. Maybe you need to get on the phone to bring in some more qualified prospects. Maybe you could use an added push, listen to a voice of inspiration or even a new cold calling template. Maybe you need to start meeting with your team on a more consistent basis so you can be the coach and manager you need to be for them. Maybe you need to stop procrastinating, admit you just don’t know everything and get some killer ideas to grow your business. Maybe all you need is my new toolbar, my New Year’s gift to you to ensure you stay true to your goals and efforts.

Tip: Do your sales team a huge favor and get this to them ASAP. You’ll be a hero. And if you want, I would be happy to create a customized toolbar specifically for you and your company.

Welcome to A New Way To Access The Resources You Need To Achieve More In Your Career

Here are just some of the highlights this toolbar offers you and the functionality you definitely don’t want to miss.

See Keith Coach! Online Coaching and Training. Stop stressing, click on the video or audio icon in the toolbar and get the “Just in Time” answers, coaching or strategies you need that will make ever day count and make you a winner. That’s what I said. F_ree video coaching and training as your fingerclicks.

Coach Connect: You’re two clicks away from asking me a question or dropping by to just say hello in my live forum. I love visitors, so come in stop by and introduce yourself! Chances are, it’s going to just be me and a few fellow coaches, salespeople, managers or business owners sharing ideas and collaborating.

K-Mail: Forget email and clogging up your inbox. This gives us a chance for us to communicate directly from my desktop and into your toolbar. You will also receive Special Offers, Contests and Exclusive Tools Only Available To Members through K-Mail.

K-Tools: I know, I should be charging for this. So for now, take advantage of the hundreds of articles, self assessments and templates that will help in developing the skills you need to achieve the results you want. Lets get tactical.

Additional Functionality Also Included In Your Toolbar:

<li>Customized Radio
</li><li>News Ticker
</li><li>Email Alert

<li>Easy Toolbar Customization. You can also remove the toolbar temporarily from your browser or easily uninstall permanently. (Not that you'd want to.) </li>
<li>Additional downloads exclusively for members

Plus it also includes a pop up blocker, cookie cleaner, a history cleaner, and a cache cleaner in addition to a notification feature you can use when you receive new e-mails to your POP3, Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts.

Whether you’re a salesperson, manager or business owner, you’ll always be connected to the latest resources, articles, technology available delivered to you in real time from real experts.

Click for More Info and to Get Your Professional Development Toolbar Now

I’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions so feel free to K-Mail me anytime!

This is great news. You can actually pre-order my book on amazon.com. Simply click on the link below and it will take you directly to that page.

Pre-order this newly released title now on Amazon.com
Keith Rosen’s latest book being released February 6, 2007:

Guide To Closing The Sale

You can also read more about the topics and range of subjects you will learn more about here in the detailed look at this latest title!

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

When you are listening to a prospect, what exactly are you listening for? For one, you certainly want to listen for what is missing or the gap. After all, this is what you are ultimately presenting to them, that is, your solution which in turn, fills their void, gap or problem. So sell the gap! It is your solution, product or service that becomes the bridge which takes the prospect from where they are today (present state) to where they want to be (desired state).

Keep in mind, this can be different from what they want or need. This is something that the client themselves may not even be aware of. If you can identify this gap, you can then bridge it with the right solution.

For example, a client of mine hired me to train their sales team. As I explored deeper, I discovered that they were experiencing a large amount of turnover. There were many inconsistencies and breakdowns during their recruiting and hiring process. There was nothing documented as it relates to a process that people can follow consistently to attract the best talent. Especially when it came to screening candidates and a strong retention plan to retain their new hires.

I found that they were experiencing a 35% attrition rate. I proposed not only providing them with a sales training program, but also a more in depth solution to developing and strengthening  their recruiting and retention strategy to reduce the amount of attrition which would complement the training.

The result was a comprehensive recruitment and retention strategy which ultimately reduced turnover within their company dramatically. That was the gap that I was able to fill. Simply by listening deeper, I was able to uncover what their true needs were, were the breakdown was beginning, what their core challenges were. The same challenges that they did not articulate on the surface. It was what they weren’t saying that I listened for. Their needs and greatest point of pain.

There’s a symbiotic relationship between the way we listen, and the questions we ask. For example, if you’re already listening from a certain place or through a filter, then chances are you are not going to ask certain questions that can create new selling opportunities.

After all, if you keep listening from the past and reacting based on a past experience or a future expectation, you will continue to create the same results as before.

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

“It’s ironic,” I began. Denise and I were half way through our weekly coaching call when the topic of controlling the sales process came up.

“Salespeople echo all the time how they create solutions for their clients. Yet what they really are attempting to do is control the sales process through the end, thinking this would move the sale forward.

“Said another way, we try to control as many things as possible to reduce risk. And by definition, risk is synonymous with “danger, hazard or threat.” What is fear; a sense of apprehension or panic. So by default, if we reduce risk, we reduce our fear.

“As such, we believe that the more we attempt to control our risks in any situation, whether is the risk of losing a sale or the risk of having our children grow up without the right guidance, ethics or values, we would be able to then keep that which we fear happening most at bay.

“Consider the paradox of control. The myth is, the more we attempt to control things, the more we can eliminate our greatest fears from coming to fruition.

“Unfortunately, this paradigm and philosophy comes at a cost. You see, if you are trying to control, for example, a sales call and the outcome you desire, there is one thing that you cannot be doing. And that is, you cannot be creating. And the ability to be creative is one of the most important attributes of a sales professional. After all, it is your job to create new and better solutions for your prospects!

“Said another way, control and creation are polar opposites. Here’s why:

• Control is an attempt to generate predictable, expected results. Creation is open to new possibilities and generating unpredictable results.
• Control is rigid. Creation is fluid and evolving.
• Control is based on achieving a certain outcome in the future. Creation can only happen in the present moment.
• Control is focusing on a known outcome. Creation has no agenda to the final outcome.

As you can see, if you are attempting to control the outcome or the sales call, then you cannot be creating new possibilities in the moment. As such, if you are focused on what you want to control, then you will miss out on uncovering or recognizing a new and better opportunity to turn a prospect into a client. Conversely, if you are in a constant state of creation, then you are going to allow new possibilities and solutions to surface naturally.
Tip From Your Executive Sales Coach:
Selling is the art of creating new possibilities and solutions. Salespeople are responsible for the creation rather than the controlling of solutions for their prospects. As such if you are a highly creative salesperson, then there is no need for you to attempt to control the outcome.
“But Keith,” Denise responded, “If I’m in a constant state of creativity, don’t I need some structure to support it? I mean, should I toss out my entire sales process, routine and goals?”

“Not at all,” I stated. “However, I can see where the confusion is. Remember, just like any belief or process, the proverbial pendulum can swing to either side as an extreme, rather than a balance. You certainly want to honor your daily routine, your sales process as well as your goals. However, you are not going to do so to the point where they have your gripped and are controlling you. Said a different way, when things change (whether it’s the market, your career, your prospects, your product or service and so on), that’s when you want to be flexible and adaptable to this change so that you can adjust your processes and strategies accordingly.

“After all, if you were working for a company that sold pagers, and you had a great presentation that allowed you to continually attain your sales goals, would you still be using the same approach when selling mobile phones? In essence, your marketplace has changed along with the needs of your clients.”

At this point, Denise was evolving at light speed. I could here her getting it.

“Well this has certainly been a productive and enlightening call!” She exclaimed. “Thanks a million, coach! I feel better already.”

“Wonderful!” I declared. “I’m looking forward to our call next week and the success that follow from today. Good bye Denise.”
 

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

Denise and I were getting ready to wrap up our weekly coaching call. She’s been a salesperson for about 18 years and recently took a new position in media sales. I sensed there was something going on with Denise that was getting in her way; some limiting or dangerous thinking that was sabotaging her selling efforts without her even knowing it. We continued our conversation. Here’s how it went.

“It’s addicting if that’s what you mean. You can bet that I’ll continue to keep pushing to get more sales. I’ll just have to do a better job at controlling the process and each sales call I go out on.”

“That’s interesting. Do you believe that a sales call or your sales process is something you feel you can actually control?”

“Well, I’ll certainly try harder to do so!”

“Really?” I paused for a moment, reflecting back to the beginning of our conversation. “You said earlier that confidence equates to control. May I ask, what’s the relationship you have with control?”

“If you mean I’m a control freak, then the answer is a resound yes and proud of it.”

“Are you familiar with the paradox of control?”

“No, please share.”

“To give you some background, the word paradox is Latin for ‘beyond opinion.’ A paradox is a seemingly contradictory statement that may be true. They are a way to test and challenge reality or the limiting or general assumptions we have made that stall our evolution.

‘The more we try to maintain control in our lives, the less freedom we create for ourselves,’ illustrates one of the many paradoxes in life. While we may strive to maintain control over our lives, our careers, even over other people in order to produce certain outcomes, this desire to control creates rigidity or resistance to change. We feel if we control certain things it limits risk and error.

This lack of flexibility creates friction in our lives, especially in the face of adversity.

The result? As we continue to put our energy into preventing change, or staying within what we know what is safe and comfortable, control becomes the very thing that limits the progression, inhibiting the ability to create
or recognize even better opportunities. As we let go of the need to control, greater possibilities unfold naturally.

You can determine if you are attempting to control something that you can’t by asking yourself the following questions.

1. Are my efforts and actions enhancing my life
or consuming my life?
2. Do I want to continue doing things the way I am doing them now for the next thirty years?
3. Is this my agenda or someone else’s agenda?
Do I have an attachment to the outcome?
4. What am I afraid of? (What’s the fear?) What am I trying to avoid?
5. What am I trying to do or create perfectly? What result am I hooked on achieving?

Paradoxes such as this illustrate how the very actions we take to generate desired results, often slow us down and diminish the quality of the outcome we want to achieve. (Another paradox!)

In other words, consider what would be possible if you responded to the events in your life, both in action and opinion, in the exact opposite manner in which you would normally respond to them? (If you’re a Seinfeld fan, you may remember the episode where George made better, successful decisions by doing the exact opposite thing he would normally do.)

Once explored, these contradictions open up new possibilities by challenging certain beliefs that we may have initially thought of as true.

This exploration into contradiction is evolutionary, since it immediately creates alternative opportunities and paths to travel upon.

The Only Three Things You Can Ever Control

In life there are many things we try to control. Ironically, there are only three things that we truly have the ability to control and have any real control over. They are:

1. Your actions
2. Your responses to situations and your experiences
3. Your thoughts, beliefs or attitude.

That’s it. Everything else that we think we can control, the things we complain and worry about; is an elusion. The irony is, most of us spend our time trying to control the things we can’t rather than focusing on mastering the things we can; these three areas that we truly do have control over.”

“That is so true,” Denise declared. “Hmm. I can’t help but think of the countless hours, days even years I’ve wasted trying to control the things I can’t! Well, today is certainly the start of a new day for me and a new approach to selling. Any other jewels you want to share today?”

“Is that one not enough?” I said, jokingly.

“Oh, absolutely It is! Talk to you next week, coach!”
 

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

Paul, one of my clients was involved in a terrible car accident that almost left him paralyzed. Being an eternal optimist and a student of possibility, Paul persevered. He didn’t listen to the nay-sayers and to the doctors when they told him he may never be able to walk. He tapped into his internal strength and refused to surrender.

After several lengthy surgeries, the addition of a titanium rod in his leg, countless months in rehab, and a relentless drive to overcome the odds against him, Paul regained his ability to walk; something that his doctors told him may never happen again.

Paul turned what could have been a tragedy into a new career for himself, becoming a well-known motivational speaker.

Now, for those of you who are wondering how one goes about becoming a motivational speaker, it’s pretty much the same as developing any other business. You need to develop your product and brand, presentation, sales strategy, business plan and marketing campaign.

It was about the fourth month we were working together that Paul was ready to start marketing his services. He had his first presentation or seminar developed. We worked together on finalizing his sales and marketing strategy. Paul was ready to hit the streets and start bringing in new clients.

At least I thought he was. Wait, that’s not accurate. He was ready, I knew he was ready and Paul verbally admitted he was ready from an organizational standpoint. However, there was a disconnect between the things Paul developed that were ready for launching his business and him actually feeling ready to go out and close his first sale.

Here were some of the red flags that indicated there was something else going on in Paul’s mind that prevented him from putting himself out there in the marketplace.

“Keith, I’m almost ready. I’m just not ready yet. You see, I still have to get my business cards done.”

One week later here’s what I heard from Paul. “Keith I’m still not ready yet. I also need to complete my website. And then, there’s my presentation that I need to tweak a little bit. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready. Oh, I mean after I finish the PowerPoint presentation. And I still have to get that professional photo taken and…”

Just when I thought Paul exhausted all the possible excuses that were preventing him from taking action, he came up with one last one. (Actually, it was the last one I allowed him to come up with, before calling him out on all of these diversionary tactics he created for himself that justified his avoidance of taking action and selling.)

It was during coaching call when Paul would typically inform me about his achievements throughout the prior week.
Paul was telling me about how much progress he’s made with identifying his initial round of companies to target who would be a perfect fit for his services.

“That’s wonderful,” I exclaimed, happy to hear that he had identified the companies to begin calling on. “So, what day this week do you want to commit to calling on these companies?” I asked.

“Well,” Paul began reluctantly, “Here’s the thing. I need to do a little more research on these companies before I start calling on them.

Paul was clearly wearing his perfectionism on his sleeve. I inquired, “Okay Paul, so tell me, exactly when will you be ready?”

“Well” Paul began. I sensed he was about to come up with a laundry list. Yup, I was right. I stopped him before he got on a roll.

“Paul, lets look at this through a different set of lenses for a second, okay? What if you were ready, right now, today? After all, you shared with me that you have essentially everything you need to launch your company and start selling and most important you have your heart, your passion and your drive to share your story and inspire others.”

“Yes, but well, it’s still not completely finished.”

“So, when you say, completely finished, is it possible that what you really mean is completely perfect?”

Silence. A few minutes later, Paul reluctantly agreed with me.

Paul suffered from a clear case of perfectionism. And while this is a very elusive diversion we use to often keep us from taking action, Paul felt that in order for him to be ready, he had to have everything perfect, including himself.

Believing that you are “almost ready” is the same as saying “I almost made that sale.” Neither pay the bills.

So, when researching the companies he wanted to call on, it only made sense that Paul became a knowledge junkie, believing that if he could get everything perfect and learn everything he needs to know about public speaking and about his prospects (which of course, could never actually be achieved), he would then be ready to go out and sell. (Thankfully, we caught this early enough before he even tackled the thought of developing the “perfect close.”)

After discussing the consequences of his actions (or lack there of) Paul soon realized that it is who he is and his experience he could share that is the greatest gift he could give to his audience.

Besides, if you strive for perfectionism, and there’s truly no such thing as being perfect, then what kind of disconnect do you think you would create between you and every prospect you speak with? (You being perfect and everyone else being well, a mere mortal?)

Here are five questions to see if there’s any perfectionism in you we can expose.

1. Is there a fairly long list of people who have disappointed you throughout your life or career? How well do people line up to meeting your expectations you have of them? (And what’s that about?)
2. After completing an assignment or project, such as a proposal, writing an article or a newsletter, how much additional time do you take to make sure it’s, how do you say; “Ready.”
3. Are you satisfied in each area of your life?
4. When completing a project, task or goal, or when you make a substantial sale, is that sense of achievement fleeting or long lasting? (When is enough, actually enough?) Realize you don’t have to choose between feeling fulfilled and satisfied and wanting to achieve bigger goals. You can actually have both; fulfillment in your life and in your career today while enjoying the pursuit of lifelong learning, continued development and meaningful, value-driven goals.
5. Do you find yourself often building evidence to support your case, make yourself right or prove your point? Are you rarely, “wrong?”

Paul welcomed himself back to the human race and soon found out that it was the vulnerability he experienced from the accident which people connected with and made him human. Paul continues to inspire people around the world to this day.

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

Your sales mojo is the energy or presence you show up with during every meeting with a prospect. It’s that allure, charisma, or vibe you radiate that every one of your prospect’s feel from you.

Your sales mojo encapsulates the inner game of selling, which is who you are and how you come across when speaking with others. Developing your sales mojo goes beyond the basics of learning a presentation, selling strategy or pitch, which is what superficial sales training is only capable of teaching you.

While an experienced, certified sales coach can assist you in uncovering and developing your authentic sales mojo, the consequences of not doing so can be severe. Just take a look at some of these limiting beliefs that prevent the natural flow of your mojo.

• “You can’t close someone in our business. They have to be ready to buy. And when they’re ready, they’ll call me.”
• “I’m not good at closing. I hate putting pressure on people.”
•  “I’ve tried some closing tools before and they didn’t work for me.”
•  “I had a horrible experience when I attempted to get the prospect to make a decision.”
 “I hate when people try to close me.”

Whatever the reason, whatever the story, every salesperson, manager and business owner has their own opinion on what it means to close a sale and why they can or cannot do so successfully.

A little personal history about your author. It was shortly after I decided to become a coach. Now, at this point, I’ve been coaching for about 16 years now. Yup, I was one of the first sales and business coaches to hang my shingle, a true pioneer in the coaching profession, if you will and one of the first Master Certified Coaches to get credentialized. (Okay, enough shameless plugs; for now.)

As you can imagine, I was certainly ahead of the curve. Being an innovator and a leader in this now rapidly growing profession of life and business coaching, I had to create my own road to achieve success, as there was no other proven path to follow. Being a leader in such a young industry certainly had its advantages. However, it also came with some tall challenges that needed to be eliminated.

At this point, I had sold my business (of course, with the unwavering support of my wife, as nervous as she may have been.) So, here I was, with no income stream coming in as I launched full steam into an unproven and unknown profession with only my experience in managing and owning several other businesses to help guide me.

One thing was for certain. I had a very strong sales and marketing background. After all, when I owned my other businesses, I was the one responsible for the recruiting, hiring, training, managing and coaching of all our employees.

In an attempt to apply my wisdom, I came up with some best practices and developed what was to be my first of several attempts to put my new selling strategy together.

I started doing what I knew how to do, that was to pick up the phone and start making cold calls. And to my surprise, I was very successful at getting through the door and into an appointment with the decision maker. Without minimizing my efforts and results, what I had encountered when meeting with these prospects was that most of the time they wanted to meet with me out of sheer curiosity. After all, at this point, no one had ever heard of coaching outside athletic or sport coaching. So, I had the advantage of positioning business and life coaching as something new and unique.

A month later, I wasn’t even making enough money to stay broke. Pitch after pitch, presentation after presentation, I kept hearing the same thing. “It sounds really interesting Keith but I just can’t see how we can apply this to what we’re doing right now. Lets stay in touch and maybe some time in the future we can look at this again. But hey, it sounds real cool what you’re doing now. Good luck!”

Give Value

With all of the prospects that I had generated over the last month and the results I’ve experienced from my lackluster selling efforts, it was time to re-evaluate. So, I did what any new, intelligent, humble and highly evolved coach would do. I called my coach for help.

And after I shared with her what I’ve gone through, do you know what she told me in all of her years of wisdom? “Keith, you have to stop presenting and just give value.”

“What the heck does that mean?” I thought. I had no clue what she was talking about. Give value? Well, I took her coaching and put forth my best effort in deciphering what I thought she meant. I started thinking about how I could, as my omnipotent coach said, “give value.”

A funny thing happened. I stopped talking and started listening more. I stopped pitching and presenting and started asking better questions. Since my coach didn’t share with me a strategy to give value, by default, I had to figure out and uncover what value meant to each prospect I spoke with. And the only way to uncover each prospect’s perception and definition of value, I needed to ask more questions.

Talk about one of those “Aha!” moments! My coach knew exactly what she was doing. Rather than deliver the same presentation or a revised presentation to every prospect, she opened up a new possibility for me to find out what value looked like from the eyes of every prospect rather than from my own. What evolved was a process of inquiry and a defined set of questions I used when meeting with each prospect.
 
You see, the gem I discovered very quickly when it came to selling my training and coaching services was totally counterintuitive. That is, you can’t sell coaching. Or at least not in the traditional sense of selling. Talk about your paradoxes.

Let me say this another way. Because coaching is about the investment in yourself and your own personal or professional development, the client has to be ready and willing to be coached.

Either you are ready to generate substantial unprecedented results both in your life and your career and are willing to be accountable, honest and do what is necessary (in your integrity of course) to achieve your goals or you are not.

Luckily, none of my early closing techniques worked on any of the prospects I saw thus far. Because if they did, then you can bet I would not only be working with less clients but clients that I would probably be much better off without. (If I didn’t ask questions, then how would I know if there’s a good fit?) Discovering this inspired me to develop an entirely different model that went against traditional selling.

I stopped trying to close and I started opening. The point I want to drive home is this; I’ve never had to close another sale again.
 

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

A client I had worked with about a year ago recently emailed me, requesting some time to talk. When we finally got on the phone together, it was apparent why.

Miki was a seasoned executive recruiter. She hired me initially because her sales were down and thought a coach might be able to give her the extra guidance and motivation she needed to get out of this slump. (She was right.)

After three months of coaching, Miki was back on top, the top fifth recruiter out of about 200.

Well, recently it seems as if Miki’s numbers were sliding again and instead of waiting, she immediately reached out for help.

“Keith, I don’t know what’s going on. I mean, I know we haven’t worked together in about a year and for a while I was doing great! But for some reason, I’m feeling stuck again.”

“I’m glad you reached out as soon as you noticed that something was off. Lets do a quick diagnostic and see how things are running.”

“Sure.”

“So, if you were standing on a 100 foot balcony looking down onto your entire sales process, where do you feel the breakdown is occurring; when attempting to get the appointment, when presenting, closing, or following up?”

“Well, I’m using your template for cold calling and that continually works great so the leads are pretty consistent. And the presentation seems to go just fine. So, I guess closing the sale is where I’m stumbling. If I were to look at what’s taking up my time now, I have a handful of proposals out there waiting to be closed. And the prospects I’m meeting with are just not closing; for whatever reason or excuse they give me. The proposal stage and their decision making process seems to drag on indefinitely.”

“So, you’re getting in front of the right people, you feel that your presentation flows well and that you are doing a good job establishing a rapport and relationship with your prospects. However, you feel that these prospects should be able to make their decision faster as it relates to buying from you or not, is that what I’m hearing?”

“Yes, Keith, that’s right.”

“Miki, in the spirit of exploring every possibility and not to step over anything, are you still using the sales process that we put together?”

“Oh yes, of course!”

“You are. Good. Then lets take a quick look at a few things you’re currently doing. Miki, do you remember when we developed your pre-closing and reconfirmation approach to include at the end of your presentation?”

“Um, yes.”

“Are you still asking those five pre-qualifying questions before you discuss your pricing? You know, those questions that ensure you’ve addressed every concern they have, while confirming that your service is something they can clearly benefit from?

Silence. Then, Miki responded quietly with, “Hmm. No, I forgot about those.”

“Well that’s good news! At least we’ve uncovered one critical step in your process that you’re not currently doing which has proven to be very effective. Once you start asking these questions again, you will notice a big difference in your performance. In addition, you won’t be wasting your time drafting proposals and following up with unqualified prospects who you shouldn’t be following up with in the first place.

And what about the questions we developed to defuse the objections you hear? I know that you were running into the “send me a proposal” and the “I have to talk this over with my board” and the infamous “that’s a lot of money” objection. The rebuttals we developed were squashing and preventing these objections consistently, remember?”

“Yes, I most certainly do remember, Keith. I especially remember that when I used them, these objections weren’t getting in my way! The problem is I totally forget about those rebuttals as well! How weird is that?”

We ended our call a few minutes later after I coached Miki and her memory on what she needed to reconnect with in her selling approach. Not surprisingly, she emailed me a week later about a few sales she was able to close as a result of doing what she needed to do again; the basics. Miki got back to the basics of what made her successful.

Interestingly, while I identified certain things that Miki clearly needed to change for the better, it was nothing she hasn’t tried, created or done successfully before. Her real enemies were success, complacency and time.

Whether we’re in a slump or selling like a pro, when something is always going on we become blind to it. That includes becoming complacent or often blind to the good things in our life as well as the bad. Of course, this does not exclude the productive behavior and actions we take in addition to the unproductive ones. We sometimes forget what has worked for us, what has specifically contributed to our success; the things that have become habitual. And when something becomes a habit, it’s now working in the background of our lives, being done without conscious attention. We no longer have to think about doing them. Therein lies the danger.

Tip from The Executive Sales Coach:
Here’s an elusive diversionary tactic to consider.
If you continually forget everything you’ve learned, then you can always claim that you have adopted and utilized what you’ve learned. And if you continually feel that you’re using everything you’ve read, heard or seen and nothing is working, what a wonderful opportunity to look outside yourself and blame your poor performance on everything except you. After all, you’ve tried and done everything, right? In your mind you have the validation to support such a claim, which is really an excuse in disguise. So, if you forget about it, then you are always right (and never accountable). Get it?
When coaching someone out of a slump who has all of the right components to succeed, most of the time it’s the basics which have been ignored or forgotten that contributed to the breakdown. The basic questions we ask, the presentation we deliver, the process we’ve developed that has successfully worked time and time again. Some how, some way, we get sidetracked, distracted or seduced by something we perceive to be better (or worse), like a new selling strategy or approach, status quo, even our attitude. Consequently, we mistakenly change what was clearly identified as an approach or mindset that was working well.

The next time you experience a selling slump or you feel that sales aren’t coming to you as easily has they once did, go back to the basics. Instead of doubting yourself and your abilities, see what you need to be reminded to do consistently again in your selling approach. Look at the engine that drives your sales. You may notice that the only thing needed may be a quick tune up to enhance your performance. It’s all in your control.

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

To become a great salesperson you need to foster and build strong relationships with you prospects and clients. The stronger the relationships that you build with your customers, the easier it will be to sell them, serve them and support them. While this is certainly true, essential and indisputable in some cases and professions (doctors, coaches, therapists, certain transactions with long selling cycles, to name a few) it is not an absolute principal that I would endorse in every situation and can actually hurt your selling efforts.

Here’s why. Some people are just not interested in a relationship. Some people want to get in, make a purchase and get out, keeping it purely transactional. After all, when was the last time you went out to lunch with the person who fills your gas tank, your pharmacist, your local cable provider or the rep who you speak with when calling your phone company?

There’s a big difference between developing a relationship and being pleasant, friendly and service driven. One requires no extra time on your part, one can potentially become all time consuming. (Research, reports, diligence, follow up and so on.)

Just to be clear, I’m separating sales and marketing (networking) activities as well because when you’re truly looking to build a relationship, then you have a few of your personal needs and agenda wrapped up in the sale. No good.

Look at this from a different angle for a moment. Lets say you sell insurance. Before you sold insurance, did you ever go out to lunch or meet on a social level with your insurance agent? How about the person who sold you your home, copier, or car?

So what is ultimately my point? Rather than you assuming that your prospects want a relationship, ask them.

Ask a question to uncover what their expectations are regarding the type of relationship they want with the salesperson such as, “What are your expectations of the person you are going to buy from?” “If you were in my shoes, what would I want to know about you that would help earn your business?”

These questions assist you in crafting the perfect presentation or relationship, every time.
 

Here’s a story I’m certain you’ll find entertaining as it relates to learning the wrong lessons about what it takes to close a sale.

I had just completed a keynote presentation in Manhattan on the topics of prospecting and the art of delivering powerful presentations. Being someone who embraces learning as a lifestyle, I’m always interested in receiving feedback from my audience. And, like I typically do at the end of every seminar I deliver, I graciously requested that each person take a moment to complete the evaluation form on the last page of the handbook I created for them. As they were completing their evaluations, I began packing up my bag to head home. A group of people approached me after my seminar with some questions.

By the time I finished coaching them around their biggest sales challenges, the majority of the audience had made their way out of the auditorium. I began walking through the auditorium, collecting the remaining evaluation forms that people left on their chairs. A young woman approached me and asked if I had a moment to talk. “Of course,” I responded genuinely.

Her name was Lucy. She was a recent college graduate and had just changed jobs, taking a sales position with a jewelry design company in Manhattan. 

“First, I have to thank you so much for your seminar. It was absolutely fantastic and exactly what I needed to hear.”

“Well, thank you so much for your kind words, Lucy. It sounds as if we both got what we needed to hear today,” I responded smiling.

“No Keith, you don’t understand,” Lucy said. “Do you want to know how I was trained in my first sales job right out of college? You wouldn’t believe it.”

Lucy continued, “It was my fist job as a salesperson. I’ve never sold anything before. I got a job working for a well known and well respected jewelry designer in California. During the interviewing process, the owner of the company told me they would provide sales training, which was something I clearly expressed that I definitely needed.

Well, it’s the first day on the job. As part of my training, I was scheduled to meet with my sales manager and spend the day with him. What an experience. We spent about half the day together, going from one appointment to the next. This provided me with the opportunity to learn more about the company and silently observe his style of selling to see how a sales call should be conducted.

When we got back to the office, I thought we would take some time to review what had occurred throughout the day. You know, go over each sales call and discuss what happened so that I could learn from them. Afterwards, I figured we would do more one to one training. Well, that wasn’t exactly what happened.

Instead, he takes a DVD out from his desk drawer. It was the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross.” (I must say, it’s a fabulous movie with an all star cast including Alec “Second prize, steak knives!” Baldwin, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey.) “Here, take this movie. Watch and study this movie and the salespeople in it a few times when you go home tonight,” he ordered. “This movie will teach you everything you will ever need to know about selling and how to sell.” Oy.

(If you want to see some examples of what not to do when selling and closing, there are several classic and entertaining movies that tell different stories about salespeople and their struggles to close the big deal. Aside from Glengarry Glen Ross, some other movies are Tin Men, Boiler Room, Cadillac Man, Death of a Salesman, The Big Kahuna.)

While this sales manager’s “training program” may be more of an exception than the norm, the unfortunate truth is, the norm isn’t that far removed from how this sales manager trains his salespeople.

Here’s a very safe bet. Whether you’re a manager or a salesperson; don’t rely on the company to provide you with the tools, training, support and coaching you need to succeed in your position and in your career. Just ask any top producer and they will tell you they did not rely solely on the annual Sales Conference or weekly meeting for developing the skills and strategies needed to become a sales champion.

Ultimately, it’s your responsibility to find the resources, guidance and the support you need to achieve your career goals. And if you are fortunate enough to work for a company who offers some type of training, continue to challenge what you learn, as well as your own conventional wisdom and beliefs, to ensure you don’t continually learn the wrong lessons.
 

New Book Project!

The Executive Sales Coach

(Working title. Sort of evolved out of two other projects I was working on, One being The Art of Enrollment and the other, The Seduction of Potential.)
Excerpt from: The Executive Sales Coach

(Due out when I’m given my deadline by my publisher. Probably next year.)

But there’s some interesting stuff on this site at www.theexecutivesalescoach.com.

Potential Is the Holy Grail

Are you tripping over your own potential? Or worse, are you relying on other people’s potential to ensure your success?
 

The Seduction of Potential
April 14, 2006
 

After traveling for speaking engagements practically once a week since the beginning of the New Year, I’m happy to report this to be the first of several weeks with no business travel. Having a moment to sit, decompress and process some of the highlights of my travels, I thought I’d share a profound and valuable story that any business owner, manager or sales management team would want to hear about, especially as it relates to hiring, training and building a first class, high performance team.
 

Two areas where managers consistently struggle are in the hiring and firing of their employees. Deciding who to hire, who to let go and when to do it is the daunting task that managers complain about most. When it comes to making the right decision about their employees, the questions I’m asked most are:
 

 ”I’m not getting the production I need from my team, even when I continually push them. 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? How can I determine, based on a defined set of criteria, benchmarks and measurable steps, when to (with great certainty) cut the proverbial bait and let someone go?”
 

These are the most common questions, challenges and headaches amongst management and business owners that seem to keep them up at night. 
 

Now, back to the event. It happened a few weeks ago, during one of the best weeks I’ve had all year. This week happened to be the perfect balance of positive indulgence; extreme success in every area. I delivered some of the most well received keynotes/workshops in my career (I was even asked back to deliver an encore performance.)
 

The subject matter of my seminars was cold calling, prospecting and leadership. (That is; how to shift from being a manager to a coach so that you can turn an underperformer into a superstar in under 90 days.) Following this four day event in Orlando, Florida, I enjoyed taking my oldest daughter and wife to Disneyworld; a special Birthday present for my 6 year old.
 

It was during the management workshop I was delivering on the first day of this week long conference. Someone asked a question regarding how to handle an underperformer. As this manager was sharing in great detail the challenge she was having with a salesperson she hired several months ago, I noticed an interesting reaction from the audience. I glanced out at a sea of people, their heads nodding up and down in agreement; as if she was sharing not just her story, but everyone’s story.
 

She talked of an experience that practically every manager and business owner in the room was able to relate to; an all too common tale of a new, promising hire with incredible potential. 
 

The story continued about the candidate with a wonderful resume, great background, stellar references and a seemingly positive attitude and disposition. A candidate who was given the opportunity to work with her. A candidate who she felt had the potential to live up to her expectations. A candidate whose experience seemed to be a perfect complement to this new position she was looking to fill.
 

I listened intently to her as she described this experience. Her once positive level of exuberance; her hopes and dreams evaporated, as she painfully explained how this promising young superstar became one of her biggest disappointments, frustrations and overhead. And it wasn’t like she just called it quits after a few weeks and fired this person. She invested her precious time trying to turn them around. The more she invested her time in supporting and training this person, the more her expectations were shattered.
 

This manager was stuck. She didn’t know what to do. At this point, this new hire was now costing her money, time, selling opportunities and resources every day this person stayed on her team. She completed her story, sounding as drained as if she and the rest of the audience were reliving their personal staffing nightmares all over again; touching what seemed to be an eternal wound that simply would not heal. What sounded more like a desperate cry for help, she concluded, “Keith, what should I do?”
 

The room was silent. Every manager and business owner in that room were gripping the edge of their seats, waiting, looking for and anticipating a magnificent solution to this common and painful dilemma. What was this magic formula that Keith Rosen was going to impart which would forever change the landscape of business by ending this ongoing problem and enable every manager to maximize the performance of their team and each player?
 

My response: “Do not be seduced by the ether of potential.”
 
Blank stares.
 
I knew I was on to something. I heard each person in the audience thinking.
 
Yes, we are often seduced by the potential that we believe we see in others. We see potential in the people, as well as in the opportunities all around us. We see the untapped potential in the people we have a vested interest in. Our children, spouse, co-worker, partner, supervisor and of course in our staff. We see potential in new hires as well as the untapped potential in the veterans on your team.
 
We believe that sometimes, if we wait, if we’re patient, if we give them just a little more time, a few more resources, better training, they can finally live up to their potential. We believe our employee 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 personal problems that have been distracting me are no longer there.”
 We get hung up on potential experiences and past defining moments.
 

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!”
 

This belief is counterintuitive. Ironically, it costs you more to keep someone like this on your team. More time, more lost sales, more lost opportunities, more internal problems and less time for you to focus on growing your business and on the people who are performing. The people who make you look great, who are coachable and who want to truly live their potential.
 

And that’s when it happens. The seduction begins. The ether of potential seeps into your veins. We start believing this can truly happen. Its seductive forces blind you to the facts. Now, you begin making decisions based on your emotions and unrealistic scenarios, rather than on the facts and what’s best for you, the company as well as the person in question.
 

The seduction of potential clouds your best judgment. If you’re looking for evidence, then just glance over at the people on your team today. Think about the people who you have hired in the past who did not work out. How many people can you think of who you hired, that, in your heart, you knew there was something telling you that they weren’t the right fit? Call it your gut reaction or intuition.
 

The Hard Cost of Complacency
 
How many times have you been in a situation with an underperforming employee where every week that goes by you tell yourself, “Just one more week. They’ll turn it around. I know they can do it. If they just follow the program. Just let them get through this next project. I hope they bring in some new business soon.” (A.K.A. Mother Teresa Syndrome. “I can save them. And I will sacrifice everything in order to do so!”)
 

“Wait and see” is not a contingency plan. Hope is not a strategy.
 

We often hire people based on their potential rather than on what they have truly and measurably achieved. As such, we try to pull out, exploit and develop the potential we see in them. After all, the goal of management is to make your people more valuable. The key here is making sure you are investing your time in making the right people more valuable. Otherwise, it’s a time consuming and exhausting exercise in futility.
 

I too, fell victim to this philosophy in my younger years as a manager and business owner, thinking we can turn people around and actually ‘change’ people (without their consent.) As I mentioned, there’s a big difference between being a manager and being Mother Teresa.
 

Your internal dialogue then continues as you struggle to come up with the right decision, “If they stay, maybe they will turn it around! If I fire them, then what do I do? I have to start the recruiting and training process all over again. What if I fire them, they go to work for the competition and they become a superstar? Lets just wait and see what happens tomorrow.”
 

When it comes to creating extreme scenarios, relying on costly assumptions and making decisions that are being fueled by fear and consequence, the pendulum swings both ways. Unfortunately, you’re still in the dark either way.
 

 You Can’t Build a Business On Potential
 

Let me bottom line this. There is no potential in the terms of how we define it or embrace it in our lives. The way we use potential is more of a smokescreen, a diversionary tactic, a justification for our behavior, for doing something we want to do or an excuse not to take certain actions.
 

You don’t hire someone based on their potential. Here’s a more vivid and beneficial definition of potential. Potential is based on something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence to support. Potential resides in the future, a possibility. Besides, if you are attempting to make a hiring decision based on someone’s potential, and the candidate hasn’t been living their potential by the time you have met them, then what makes you think they are going to start living it when you hire them?
 

Either people strive to live their potential each day or they’re not. It’s that simple. (You may also want to check on the tools, resources, training and coaching that you have provided them.)
 

Besides, if you don’t know whether or not you have made the right hiring decision within 30-60 days of hiring them, then you are in deep trouble. Thinking that if you give them one more change, more time more training is the answer, it is not. This is a lie that you’re telling yourself, a justification. What will happen is this; eventually the pain of keeping that person around will become so evident that they either quit or get fired. Now, the manager has surrendered all of their power to act by choice and instead, is in a state of reaction and need.
 

If you or your staff are not currently using what you have every day each day, then you are not living your potential. It’s not that you cannot improve. The difference between lifelong improvement and building a high performance collaborative team of self motivated people and working off potential is this. With potential, you’re seeing something that you have not seen yet nor have evidence for. With lifelong improvement, you’re working with something you see with evidence that it can be made better.
 

We wind up collapsing potential with possibility. So what truly seduces us is the potential of possibility.
 

What’s missing for managers is certainty. It’s the uncertainty, the unknown, the fear that paralyzes every manager when having to make a decision whether or not to terminate someone or invest the time in turning them around. Managers rely more on their gut than on the facts.
 

Having the certainty and confidence in their people supported by evidence is a healthier more productive model when creating new possibilities based on authentic, human potential. The certainty comes from having an executive sales coaching program (Like the one I mentioned that we will be reviewing in this book). Once you have a structured, coaching program that holds someone accountable on a daily and weekly basis, you no longer have to make the decision to keep them or terminate them. Now, your underperformer in question will make that decision for you, based on the defined set of criteria and measurable actions steps they need to take to demonstrate their commitment to their position and to dramatically improving their performance.
 

If you are responsible for hiring, developing and managing a team, what process do you have from the time you hire someone through their first 30, 60, 90 even 120 days in their new position? What would having a 90 Day program for every new hire based on measurable productivity steps do for you and for 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, or they are not. Now, there’s no room for you to be seduced by the potential of possibility. There’s no ‘probation’ or waiting for the year end performance appraisals.
 

No more guesswork. No more ‘what if’s”. No more stressing over what you perceive you can’t control or being frustrated because your process doesn’t work. Remove the doubt and replace it with certainty, peace of mind and the confidence in knowing that the process will produce super-achievers.
 

Now you can run your business or your team with greater efficiency. Once in place, you’ll be able to get back to doing what you were meant to do in the first place; make your people more valuable.
 

If you need some assistance in developing some the programs I’ve described above or would like me to share with you some proven step by step programs I have created that have worked for other companies like yours, feel free to contact me anytime. info(at)profitbuilders.com or 1-888-262- 2450. I’d be happy to discuss how I can act as your Interim Coach and develop an effective internal coaching program for your company.

While the web site for my next book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing The Sale has already been launched www.guidetoclosingthesale.com), I also want to bring to your attention that the site for my cold calling book has just been launched.

You can find some more great excerpts and tips on cold calling, prospecting and selling here at www.guidetocoldcalling.com.

Enjoy!  

Excerpt from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Closing the Sale by Keith Rosen. Reprinted with permission by Alpha Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Release Date, January, 2007. Visit www.guidetoclosingthesale.com.

When asking a prospect questions, be sure that your questions succeed in achieving the following objectives.

1. Be direct and candid with your questioning and communication. Do not be vague or tiptoe around the subject or question. Make the question clear, focused, direct and concise.

2. Make sure that your questions open up new possibilities, ideas and opportunities in the mind of the prospect that they never considered. Do they enable the prospect to see a new and better solution and envision more measurable worthwhile results, based on the information that you have provided?

3. Have the prospect draw from previous purchasing experiences to determine their buying habits, wants, priorities, and needs.

4. Learn to question what is said and what is not said. Never prejudge a prospect until you have the evidence to support your assumptions. Utilize questions until you are satisfied with the response.

5. Use questions to achieve mindshare and agreement as well as to gracefully uncover and correct the inaccuracies and misperceptions which they my have about your product or service.