Keith Rosen's Executive Sales Coaching Blog on Selling, Leadership, Management

Live Event Next Week – How To Succeed In Today’s New Marketplace

Dec 9, 2009 Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Live Events, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Sales Training, training for managers

Join me next week for my live interview on SalesBuzz Radio.

Date: Thursday, December 17th 2009,
Time: 3:30pm EST
Cost: Free!
No registration Required

I’ll be discussing the new rules for winning in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, focusing on what managers and salespeople need to do to win more sales today.

Some points I’ll be addressing will be:

*Eliminating the resistance to change in order to accelerate your growth

*How to become more accountable and self-motivated to generate immediate results

*Empowering yourself and others to solve problems, permanently

*The future of selling and sales management

To listen without registering, simply sign in to The SalesBuzz Online Community at 3:30PM Eastern and click the ‘Radio Show’ tab on this page.

To register, go to join us and complete the easy registration form here. (Joining is absolutely free).

To participate, call in or email the show—it’s your show, so don’t hesitate to contact us with your questions and comments. During the show, email thesalesbuzz@thebrooksgroup.com with your questions and comments and the opportunity to for me to answer your most pressing questions as it relates to sales and sales leadership. You can also email me today at info@profitbuilders.com to better ensure your question gets addressed.

To receive a free special bonus offer; tune in and watch for a follow-up email.

Tags: career coaching, coaching for managers, Executive Coaching, interview, live event, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, webinar

Smarter Selling: Tips for Today. Part Two of My Interview With Vince Thompson For Smart Planet

Sep 24, 2009 Interviews, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, sales tips

Managers: Get the new strategy that creates sales champions and wins more sales. Special event ending soon. Bonus materials you receive are still available! Find out here.
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Here’s part two of the interview I did with author and columnist Vince Thompson.

Read part two of the interview here.

Excerpt:
“Yesterday we debuted the first of this two part series on Smarter Selling with Keith Rosen. Rosen is a sales coach, author, speaker and has been recognized by Inc. magazine and Fast Company as one of the five most influential executive coaches. In part one of our interview Keith taught us about the power of questioning and going deep to close business. Today Keith takes us farther down the path of value creation while reminding us of the skills that really matter.

What are your tips for a tough economy?

I’ve decided (and many of my clients are on board with this as well) 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!

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.”

Read part two of the interview here.

Tags: Executive Coaching, Interviews, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, selling, training for salespeople

Fewer Customers? Sell Smarter. My Interview On Smart Planet With Vince Thompson

Sep 23, 2009 How To Sell and Sales Tips, Interviews, Sales Coaching, sales tips

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.

Tags: close more sales, interview, sales, Sales Coaching, Sales Training, selling

VIDEO: Deeper Interviewing Strategies to Identify Top Sales Champions and Avoid Mis-Hires

Sep 18, 2009 Executive Coaching, HR issues, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Sales Management, Videos

Watch the Video Here.

72 HOUR EVENT: To win wore sales today, you need to play by the new rules. Order Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions and Get hundreds of dollars worth of Bonus Gifts from The World’s Top Business Thought Leaders FREE! Book event ending soon! Learn more here.

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

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: career coaching, Executive Coaching, hiring and recruiting salespeople, hiring top salespeople, how to hire, how to interview, HR, human resource, interview, interviewing questions, recruiting salespeople

Sales Managers: Get Your Salespeople to Sell More: Listen to This Webinar Now!

May 1, 2009 Business Coaching, Career Advice, Executive Coaching, How to Manage Your Team, Interviews, Leadership Academy, Sales Management, coaching for managers, management tips, training for managers, webinar

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

If you missed last week’s blockbuster webinar, The Sales Leadership Imperative, you can now access the recording immediately and listen to this 45 minute discussion I had with Jonathan Farrington. We focused on the most pressing questions that sales managers and sales leaders are faced with today.

Here are the questions we responded to:

Most sales professionals, in practically every industry sector are struggling to meet sales quotas. The reality is, there are still plenty of opportunities to better retain existing clients and acquire new ones but the rules of engagement have changed.

Sales leaders, who have recognized these changes, are re-educating themselves and their sales teams by adopting a totally new approach to selling as well as leading their team and as such, are forming a new type of sales culture. To drive positive, measurable change and keep their competitive edge, managers must learn how to quickly and effectively coach, motivate and retain their top producers while turning around the underperformers.

So, if you’re a sales manager or even if you’re not a sales manager but need to get your team producing and selling more today, you can access this recording here.

Click here to listen to and view this webinar.

Tags: Executive Coaching, management coaching, sales leadership, sales management training, training for managers, webinar, webinars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewing Questions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

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

Tags: avoid mis-hires, avoid mishires, Executive Coaching, hiring, hiring salespeople, how to interview, interview process, interviewing, Interviews, management training, onboarding, recruiting, recruiting salespeople, screening candidates, topgrading

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

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

Listen to the podcast here

Got your mojo?

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

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

You can listen to the podcast here.

Tags: career coaching, Executive Coaching, life coaching, Sales Coaching, Sales Training

Winner of the 2009 Stevie Award for Sales Eduction Leader of the Year

Feb 16, 2009 Books, Business Tools, Executive Coaching, Interviews, Live Events, Sales Coaching, Sales Management, Sales Training, management articles, sales articles

The other day, results were announced in the 3rd annual Stevie® Awards for Sales and Customer Service, an international competition recognizing excellence in customer service and sales. Stevie Award winners were announced during a gala awards dinner at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

I’m excited and humbly appreciative of winning the 2009 Stevie Award and being recognized as the Sales Education Leader of the Year. To me, this is not only an honor but a responsibility I have to you. I look forward to continually earn the right to hold this title and further my commitment to support sales executives, managers and salespeople world wide through my writing, training and coaching. And today, distinguishing and positioning yourself as an invaluable part of your organization is more essential than ever. This can only be achieved by developing yourself into the sales leader you can be.

Below is the ‘official’ press release.

KEITH ROSEN WINS 2009 STEVIE AWARD FOR SALES EDUCATION LEADER OF THE YEAR

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – February 10, 2009 – Keith Rosen was presented with a Stevie® Award for Sales Education Leader of the Year in the third annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The awards are presented by the Stevie Awards, which organizes several of the world’s leading business awards shows including the prestigious American Business Awards.

Nicknamed the Stevies for the Greek word “crowned,” winners were announced during a gala banquet on Monday, February 9 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Nominated customer service and sales executives from the U.S.A. and several other countries attended.

More than 500 entries from companies of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted to this year’s competition. There are 27 categories for customer service professionals, including an Award for Innovation in Customer Service and Customer Service Department of the Year; as well as categories for sales professionals, ranging from Sales Education Leader of the Year, to Sales Training Program of the Year to Sales Department of the Year.

The Executive Sales Coach and sales strategist for many of the top sales and executive teams in the country, Keith Rosen has written several best selling books, including the award winning Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions. This book was recently named the 2008 Sales Leadership Book of the Year and received a gold medal at the Sales Books Awards just last month; a perfect complement to the award Keith has won here at the Stevie Awards.

Members of the Awards’ Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors and their staffs selected Stevie Award winners from among the Finalists. Finalists were chosen by business professionals worldwide during preliminary judging.

“This year’s honorees demonstrate that even in challenging economic times, it’s possible for organizations to continue to shine in sales and customer service, the two most important functions in business: acquiring and keeping customers,” said Michael Gallagher, president of the Stevie Awards.

Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service and the list of honorees in all categories are available at stevieawards.com/sales.

About The Stevie Awards
Stevie Awards are conferred in four programs: The American Business Awards, The International Business Awards, The Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about The Stevie Awards at stevieawards.com.

Interview Friday with Andrea Sittig-Rolf – Leading A Team During an Economic Downturn

Oct 13, 2008 All About Selling, Business Advice, Business Tools, Career Advice, Interviews, Live Events, Sales Management, coaching for managers, training for managers

Listen to My Interview With Author Andrea Sittig-Rolf on Friday, October 17, 2008 at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern as we discuss:

You can click here to tune in on that day and time.