In the world of sales, there’s a common misconception that customer problems are roadblocks to success. But seasoned sales professionals know the truth: customer problems are not obstacles, they are opportunities in disguise. Let’s delve …
Being a successful salesperson requires a combination of skills, knowledge, and a positive attitude. If you’re new to sales and looking to succeed in this field, here are some tips that can help you get …
The Real Reason Someone Will Buy From You Trust is a crucial component in any business relationship, especially when it comes to working with a prospective customer. Building trust with a prospective customer can be …
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Selling to large enterprise customers has unquestionably changed over the years. External forces from competition, both small and large compete with you not only for attention but to also re-establish priorities and capture a larger …
Likeability – People want to do business with people they like.
Benefit – The sales rep knows and understands their customer’s business well and can effectively communicate the benefits in the customer’s language.
Trust – The customer knows and trusts their sales rep/team. Would you ever buy something from someone you do not feel you can trust?
Fit – The product or service meets a desire from those empowered to buy.
Price – The product or service delivers good value for the required investment.
If you do not deliver on each of these five reasons, it is highly unlikely a sale will occur. Keep this list handy, and objectively double check these items against sales opportunities to both identify and sure up areas of weakness.
I really like this photo for several reasons: 1. Participants were provided a choice as to whether or not to participate. 2. Participants bought into the fun and modified their behavior 3. It’s a great example of the power of fun in action.
Now, I want you to take a minute and just imagine that this escalator were inside your place of business, and for whatever the reason, your company wanted employees to use the stairs. What approach would they take? Would someone in your company brainstorm creative ways to get buy-in, or would they simply send out a compulsory memo and shut-off the escalator? Both approaches will achieve the desired result, but which approach will make employees happier?
If you are thinking – so what? who cares? what a silly waste of time and resources, think again. According to one Economic Study, Happy People are 12% more productive than their unhappy counterparts. At the University of Rochester, Ryan O’Loughlin’s doctoral dissertation showed the linkage between happiness and creativity. Therefore, it follows that employee happiness directly shows up on the bottom line.
G = He x Pe x Pd x E x Cs
Take a look at the above formula, it’s my employee happiness growth formula hypothesis: Growth = Happy Employees x Positive Environment x Product or Svc. Differentiated x Empathy x Customer Satisfaction. As you can see from this formula, if you assign a low to high value of 0 (we don’t do it) to 5 (we excel at it) to any one of the values, then you can quickly identify target areas for improvement. As you can quickly see, assigning a 0 to any one of the values impacts the entire chain and growth is impacted, perhaps not immediately, but I would argue that it will eventually show up in time – it always does.
Dolly the sheep was born in 1996. As you may recall, Dolly was the world’s first successful y cloned mammal. At that time, the world was abuzz with the news, and researchers Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland took center stage. Ethicists were horrified that humans would be cloned next and laws were passed to prevent it. Shocking news indeed!
Also at this time, another movement was afoot within corporate America. For the first time, many businesses were introduced to Sales Force Automation. Sales Force Automation held the promise that sales information could now be easily captured and shared throughout the enterprise. Moreover, these new systems would enable businesses to “clone” the activities of the most successful reps to deliver consistency in the sales cycle. Many businesses seized upon this opportunity, investing millions, all with the goal of empowering their sales people to do their jobs more efficiently. Along the way, business leaders felt automating the sales force didn’t go far enough; however, and eventually Sales Force Automation was replaced with moniker Customer Relationship Management. This new and expanded frontier included all Marketing and Support functions and the concept of a 360-degree view of the customer was born.
Fast forward to 2011, and these many businesses who have spent enormous sums of money on software and services have yet to see a significant ROI on these investments. Furthermore and more regrettably, they have lost some of the very benefits they looked to achieve. Why? In a word – Management. Rather than looking at SFA/CRM as a process enabler, management heavily over-engineered these systems and overburdened users with required fields, thus limiting their access to useful functionality. As a result, these systems stopped being a tool to help salespeople work more efficiently, and instead they became time consuming, burdensome yokes on the sales reps who find them difficult to use.
In closing, cloning the activities of top performers is a great idea that deserves a second look. In my opinion, it’s time for businesses to re-examine their implementations and strip out required fields that hinder productivity, and embed workflow that advances the sales cycle. By doing so, you now have the power to unlock the ability to clone many activities of top performers, which is what these systems were originally designed to do. While it’s perhaps crazy to believe that everyone will achieve top performer results, it’s not so crazy to believe that it’s possible to systematically raise the performance of low-mid performing sales reps, if SFA/CRM systems are designed and implemented wisely – There’s no reason to be sheepish about that.
