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

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

Get my book 37% off and additional valuable materials here.

If you’re responsible for coaching or managing anyone, especially salespeople, my new book will help you make the transition from manager to coach by developing the missing discipline of leadership - executive sales coaching. Most managers have never been trained to manage, let alone coach effectively. I deliver to you a tactical coaching system for managers, business owners, coaches and executives - anyone who wants a proven and powerful method to coach and develop true champions.

Endorsed by thought leaders such as Dr. Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy, Dr. Tony Alessandra, Anthony Parinello and more, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions fills the void between what great managers need to know and do as a great coach in order to:

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.

** 72 HOUR BOOK EVENT ENDS THURSDAY**

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.

72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 - 17

Barrier Three: Surrender Your Agenda When Coaching

What if your boss walked up to you today and said, “Your career, your bonus, your position in this company, and your salary will depend on how well your team performs. That said, I want you to start coaching all the people on your team, one on one. Hold them accountable and be unconditionally supportive, while surrendering your agenda and maintaining objectivity.” Could you do it?

My clients consist of a myriad of companies and professions, all shapes and sizes, selling products and services in practically every industry and profession. Yet, the one truth I share with them is this: “When you work with me as your coach, this will be the only relationship you have where it will always be 100 percent about you.”

If you’re an internal coach, this may be a stretch to fully surrender any agenda or attachment to your sales team’s performance, especially since their performance directly reflects on you. In such cases, there’s an inherent challenge for you, as the business owner or manager, to separate your agenda from theirs and have no personal expectation from the relationship other than your unconditional commitment to their continued growth and success. It’s going to take some adjustment on your part to develop an unconditional and authentic relationship with your salespeople.

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Overcome these internal obstacles using the strategies outlined in Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions.

** 72 Hour Special Book Event April 15 - 17

Purchase my new book, Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions on these specific days only, April 15, 16 and 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. Look at the resources you get here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: What techniques have you seen work in terms of boosting close ratios within the retail market? Are there any action steps that retail owners need to take to boost their close ratios?

Response: After tracking your sales numbers and closing ratio, you’ll find that you may fit into one of the following scenarios in terms of how much prospecting, marketing and selling you will have to do in order to reach your income goal.

1. You are right on track to reach your sales and income goal.
2. You’re slightly off but can easily adjust your daily routine to compensate.
3. You’ll need to put aside a considerable amount of more time to devote to prospecting. This may require some delegation of responsibilities or taking some other activities, tasks, or projects off your plate that may not serve you best or support your goals.
4. You feel like you just got hit with a two by four because the amount of marketing and selling you need to do in order to reach your income goal is off the charts and unrealistic; even to high to count.

If you fall within the fourth category, do not despair! If you find that you need to spend more hours selling than there are in a day in order to reach your income goal, consider some other alternatives that will decrease your required prospecting time, marketing dollars and time on the floor selling.

1. Improve your selling skills to boost closing percentages. You may want to consider revamping your marketing and selling approach as well as doing an analysis of your own sales acumen and selling skills. After all, if you’re fishing in a lake and everyone else at the lake is catching fish but you aren’t, do you go to a different lake or do you change the bait you’re using! If you are still selling or marketing the way you’ve been doing it or have never been shown the right way to market and sell effortlessly, then you are making it easy for your competition to take your business. Consider it’s time to reach out and get an overhaul or tune up.
2. Increase your profitability/commissions or income per sale.
3. Increase the size of your average sale.
4. Decrease the amount of prospecting or marketing needed to identify one new prospect.
5. Decrease the average time it takes for you to identify a qualified prospect. (Remove all distractions.)
6. Change your income/sales goal.
7. Find a new career path. This alternative is only for those people who have thoroughly explored all options (including working with a sales coach) and, most important, have taken the time to develop their selling skills and implement a comprehensive selling system they have followed for a considerable length of time.

Fine-tuning the first six of the seven measurables I just mentioned will ensure that you are maximizing your time, your talents and your potential as well as each prospecting and selling opportunity.

For more information or to register, click here.

I’m delivering my last public tele-seminar on Prospecting and Cold Calling this Thursday, entitled, Permission Based Prospecting. I say it’s my ‘last’ one on this subject for 2008, as my new book for managers, executives and business owners on how to transition from managing to coaching salespeople will be my focus for the rest of this year. Here’s the course description as well as the agenda for this 1 hour and 30 minute seminar:

Permission Based Prospecting™

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. With more business conducted virtually and more sales being closed over the telephone, strengthening your telephone communication skills becomes essential to leveraging your competitive edge - or be left behind.

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, then learn from best selling author and renowned executive sales coach Keith Rosen how 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.

Agenda

Objections are a part of selling. Every salesperson can readily admit they’ve come face to face with objections throughout their sales career. Interestingly, salespeople define the word, ‘objection’ a variety of different ways.

In a seminar I delivered last week, I asked the audience what the word, ‘objection’ meant to them. Here’s what I heard in response:

1. It means “No.”
2. It’s an excuse.
3. It’s a smokescreen.
4. It’s a concern.
5. It’s a sign of interest.
6. It means “Get out. I’m not interested.”

While I’m a firm believer of the fourth and fifth definition above, salespeople still continually fall into the trap of creating objections themselves; the very obstacles they are looking to avoid in the first place. After all, if the prospect is not saying flat out “No” (and they’re being honest and upfront), then there’s a concern that you have not addressed and defused in a way that provides them with the confidence and peace of mind to move ahead and buy from you.

Salesopedia just published one or my articles on this very subject entitled, “Stop Creating The Objections that Kill Your Sales.”

You can read the article here.

So, in the end, developing a greater sensitivity around the obstacles and objections that you create during your selling process will assist you in eliminating certain roadblocks that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

However, what about the valid concerns that you hear from your customers and prospects? You know, the objections that sound like, “Your price is too high,” “I need to shop around,” “Let me think about it,” “Now’s not the right time,” “It’s not in the budget,” “We’re happy with our current vender, service provider, etc.” and so on. How adept are you in responding and actually defusing these common obstacles to the sale?

Here’s an exercise I would encourage you to do. List all of the objections you typically hear. Then, write down how you respond to each of them. If you find that your rebuttals are not effective enough to defuse these objections and create new possibilities for a sale, then it’s time to give them an overhaul. Take the time to create a more effective response for each objection you hear.

Remember, salespeople don’t overcome objections, your customers and prospects do. (After all, when was the last time you actually ‘convinced’ someone to do something that they really didn’t want to do?) So, your response to each objection will contain questions to better understand exactly where the prospect stands, rather than a defensive statement that simply creates an adversarial posture between you and the prospect.

Once you’ve developed the appropriate language to handle each objection, take them out for a test drive and gauge your results. Remember, if you don’t define it, you can’t refine it. How else can you determine what works and what doesn’t? Put your shotgun away. Shooting from the hip is a dead strategy. Developing a conscious process for handling each objection gives you the power to continually reinforce best practices that have been proven to work which will ultimately lead to more sales.

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 #10. What is Your Most Valuable Proposition (M.V.P.)?

Having great products, service, and prices is no longer enough in today’s competitive marketplace. Although important, this information often falls upon deaf ears, since most salespeople are saying the same thing. The trend of companies today is to become more specialized by creating their own unique “niche.” A unique selling proposition is what you offer your clients that not only clearly separates you from your competitors, but allows for long term partnership that keeps your clients coming back. What is unique about your company, product or service that either no one else or only very few other companies can claim or offer?

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 #9. Do you fail to get the prospect to reveal their budget up front?

How can the salesperson propose a solution without knowing what monetary resources the client has available? Knowing whether money has been allocated for a project can help distinguish someone who is ready to solve a problem from someone whom is merely “shopping around.” The amount of money the prospect is willing to invest to solve a problem will help determine whether a solution is feasible, and if so, which approach will be best.

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 #7. Do you have a systematic approach to selling?

The shotgun approach to selling does not provide you with the ability to become consistent in your performance. If you are constantly trying something different every time you’re in front of a customer, you are never allowing yourself the opportunity to become skilled in using a certain system. What needs to happen is you must systemize your approach. Think about the steps you take when engaging in an activity. It could be a sport or a hobby. How do you know what to expect as an end result? Because you consistently performed the same way over and over again.

The same goes for perfecting the art of selling. Salespeople who follow a system are not only successful in generating business, but exert a lot less effort because they know what results to expect every time they run an appointment. Salespeople who are disorganized in their presentation often leave a sales call confused and unsure of where they stand. This happens because they don’t know “where they have been” and what the next step should be or where they need to go. Following a specific sequence, and controlling the steps through the selling process, is vital to an organized, professional sales effort. A system is what takes you from point A to point B with the least amount of risk or error. A system spells out what you need to accomplish from the time you are first face to face with that customer until the time you leave the appointment. It is your strategy, which gives you the freedom in knowing what the outcome will be. When you have a system in place, there is no room for second-guessing.

There is a saying, “Begin with the end in mind.” Think about it. If you begin a sales presentation knowing where you want to wind up as an end result, and can even envision all the steps that it will take to get you there, you will have much more control over the outcome. It is like running a race. You know where you start and you know where you need to finish.