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May 18, 2010

International Sales Training – developing a cross cultural sales process

Filed under: International Training Courses — Tags: , , — admin @ 11:44 am

One of the keys to successful global selling is to adapt your sales approach to different regional and local business practices. You have to translate your selling for culture as well as for language. So is it possible to have one sales training approach for all your different sales teams around the world?

The sales objectives will always be similar in different countries:

  • to open new accounts, to retain existing customers and to maximise profitable sales revenue. There may be special local short term tactics (e.g. to smash competition by cutting prices) but you will always be aiming to create and maintain good customer relationships and to win new and repeat business.

If the objectives are the same does it mean you should use the same sales process everywhere?  Fundamentally yes - but you apply the component parts of that process differently, with different emphases, at different speeds and sometimes in a different order.

Every modern sales process must contain:

  • Building relationships and confidence
  • Identifying customer needs
  • Presenting your proposal to meet those needs
  • Concluding an agreement
  • Follow up and implementation.

Most international companies have their own ‘pet sales process’ (or they favour one of the generic sales processes available from consultancies) and aim to teach it worldwide. This is fine as long as you allow for local culture in the five main areas above.

Some clutural considerations:

Building relationships and confidence

  • How long does this take? How many meetings will a customer expect to have with you before you talk real business? How important are introductions, references and family connections? Are you using the best personality salespeople for the company culture? How formal/informal should you be? Should you use entertaining or hospitality?

 Identifying customer needs:

  • How direct can your questions be?
  • Is it acceptable to probe needs when the customer already believes he/she knows them all?
  • Can you discuss ‘problems’ or is this deemed to be rude?
  • How many different people are you able to meet?
  • Can you use a checklist of questions or is this seen as too impersonal?

Presenting your proposal:

  • Written, verbal or both? Short or long?
  • Is a quick solution expected or is it expected that you will take time to go away and consult with others at length?
  • How much detail do you have to give?
  • How blatant can you be in selling your special benefits?
  • Are you expected to include final costings and are they going to be negotiated?

Concluding an agreement:

  • Will customers expect to negotiate or do they see your first offer as your final offer?
  • How long will they take to make a decision?
  • What is the customer’s decision making process? How many people and who?
  • What sort of methods are acceptable to close and win commitment?
  • How soon do they expect you to follow up and try to close?

Follow up and implementation:

  • What is the customer’s contract process?
  • How quickly does it happen and is it acceptable to try and push it along faster?
  • Is it expected that the salesperson will remain in close contact once implementation happens?
  • Do customers expect/reject any form of corporate hospitality, entertainment, factory visits etc?
  • Do customers expect senior management contact?

So when you’re training your sales teams across the world it’s important that your common sales process is taught in each country by people who understand how business is done there. And most global companies use distributors, agents or licensees in some of their markets so you must ensure that their salespeople are similarly trained.

Your common message may only need to be adapted by 10%, but that 10% can make 100% difference to the value of your training !

If you’re responsible for the development of your people cross border or for global business development please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

March 18, 2010

Are you losing business through unqualified appointments?

Filed under: Appointment making training — Tags: — admin @ 9:11 am

If you can answer yes to any of the following questions there’s a good chance you aren’t making qualified appointments. But what does that really mean?

  • Do you feel under pressure to achieve your KPIs?
  • Does your manager insist you meet with everyone?
  • Do you feel deflated if someone says “no?”
  • Do you travel miles for a quick chat over a coffee, just to tick a box?
  • Could some of your business be won over the phone?

To make a qualified appointment takes true skill. But a few simple tips can ensure your conversion rate improves!

A qualified appointment is one that the prospect has agreed for you to visit and fits the criteria you require for them to be considered as a potential customer. More importantly a ‘qualified appointment’ is one made with the M.A.N – the person who has the Money, the Authority and the Need!

A good example of making unqualified sales is Phoebe Buffay’s stint at “Empire Office Supplies.”

But how do we get these qualified appointments?

  1. Always be assertive in what you say. Submissive people are easily brushed aside. Aggressive sales approaches may increase apparent appointment numbers, but this leads to poor quality leads and a higher number of cancellations.
  2. Confirm all appointments in writing, either by letter or e-mail. For appointments a long way ahead, phone a few days before to confirm. Customers may easily agree to appointments a long way ahead, but no-shows are higher on these than normal.
  3. If the person you are phoning is on a mobile, ask if it is okay to talk. They may be in a meeting or driving.
  4. Remember that most people you are phoning are used to receiving high volumes of poor quality telesales calls. Their natural initial reaction may be to say ‘no’ straight away, so persevere until you have got your message across. People do change their minds.
  5. People often say “If I want something, I will ask for it!” If this were always true, telesales people would be redundant. People have the single biggest influence on the likelihood of a prospect agreeing to an appointment.
  6. Nobody is able to be enthusiastic 100% of the time. There is no doubt however that enthusiastic people produce better results. If you’re not enthusiastic about what you’re selling, how do you expect them to be?
  7. Accept that some people will be hostile to you. Its part of the role and will rarely be aimed directly at you personally. If however you get aggressive responses daily, you should review your approach.
  8. Who does all the talking? Too many telesales people speak at the customer, instead of listening. Everybody likes to be listened to and it is useful in building rapport and identifying needs.
  9. BT did some research a few years ago when they analysed the words most frequently used in domestic telephone conversations. The word ‘I’ came out seven times more frequently than any other word. The job of a salesperson is to focus on ‘You’ (the customer), not ‘I’ (the salesperson).
  10. Persistence, enthusiasm, and optimism will always out-perform ability and pessimism.

If you’re responsible for making qualified appointments then take a look at our Appointment Making programme or get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

March 11, 2010

Sales management training in tough times

Filed under: Leadership & Management, Sales Training Courses — Tags: — admin @ 2:20 pm

Most markets today are buyers’ markets. So your sales team may be having a tough time. That’s where professional sales leadership really comes into its own.

Increase your communication rate
When times are tough your people need more contact from you. E-mails and circulars are fine; phone calls and meetings are better.

Lead from the front
Go out more with your team, not less. Salespeople do not respect managers who claim to know what it’s like out there in the market but never see customers. Maybe even run a few accounts yourself to show how it’s done.

Help your team to set priorities and manage their time
When business is quiet there is always a temptation for salespeople to fill their day with any sort of activity – even if unproductive and costly. Remind everyone of the basics of customer grading, opportunity management and task prioritisation based on (definite) cost versus (potential) value.

Publicise successes
But only those which arise from good practice and which contain a lesson or some motivation for the rest of the team. No one is inspired by learning about someone else’s “lucky break” if it really is pure luck!

Lead by example and practice what you preach
Having been told by his team how difficult it was to get good appointments one Chief Executive picked up the phone and made appointments for them. There were no further complaints!

Invest time in training and development
Combine the key sales management roles of ‘motivating’ and ‘coaching’. Some vital messages for your team are :

  • Keep on doing the right things – even if these appear to have no results;you will reap the rewards when the market recovers
  • Look for the customers who still do have money – they may be hard to find but they always still exist
  • Use your contacts and network endlessly – ask for referrals; use networking websites; keep selling actively to existing customers
  • Selling is a “numbers game” in most markets – sales results come from a combination of “Quality of Selling Effort” and “Quantity of Selling Effort”; selling in a recession requires more “quantity” however good your “quality”
  • Your competitors’ best customers are your best prospects – unless you have 100% market share (!) you can always get business by outselling your competition and taking market share from them; you need to “sell the difference” and a important part of that difference is you!
  • Customers’ priorities and motives may change in a recession – have you changed your sales approach to match?

Sales management is both a special skill and a specialist set of skills. Sales Managers are at their most valuable when their teams are selling in a recession.

TACK’s range of Sales Management courses give guidance on how to implement these sales management techniques effectively.

If you’re a sales leader responsible for delivering targets through your people take a look at our range of sales training courses within your organisation, we’d love to talk to you so please get in touch by email info@tack.co.uk or call 0845 072 0144.

November 5, 2009

October 26, 2009

Sales Training Courses – is eLearning really the best way to develop salespeople?

Filed under: Sales Training Courses, eLearning — Tags: , — admin @ 4:49 pm

Creating a balanced diet

Learning professionals are adopting a marketing approach to the delivery tools at their disposal. Communicate with me as I like to be communicated with. So teach me as I like to be taught or, more effectively, as I like to learn. No longer is the decision for blended learning as simple as Instructor Led Training, online courses or eLearning. And no longer is blended learning a bit of all of these methods! At last blended learning may really have something to offer to sales professionals.

Salespeople don’t do eLearning or do they?

Conventional wisdom tells us that salespeople are Pragmatic Activists who learn by doing and experiencing. So how can eLearning possibly deliver this? How can any technology-based tool be a shortcut for good old interaction and practice through role-plays and discussion with fellow learners?

Generation Y manages to build vast and remote social networks using the plethora of networking technology that exists. Generation Y is confident and hugely competent when it comes to adopting new technology and is also happy to share their challenges, thoughts and feelings publicly and without the need for face to face contact. Generation Y makes up a large number of our sales profession today.

So how could the perfect diet look for sales development?

Let’s take one ingredient from the blend – eLearning – and look at practical ways it can be used specifically to help the sales professional.

We’ve already touched on the Pragmatic Activist learning style of many salespeople and the traits of Generation Y. Many of these need to be borne in mind for the best blend of learning for sales professionals. Whilst the tools and support services need to help the sales professional ‘help themselves’, there also needs to be a degree of ‘push’ to ensure the transfer of learning and change in behaviours takes place. So the sales manager also plays a crucial part in the mix.

For the salesperson…

To suit the salesperson, blended learning has to be motivational, timely and relevant. Imagine you’ve just come out of a sales call. You had high hopes of a successful call but it did not go the way you planned. What went wrong? If you could dip straight into a sales learning tool and go to the precise part of the sales process you want, refresh yourself on the best practice and try out the scenarios, you could then discover what you could have done better. There’s no better learning when it follows hot on the heels of an immediate need like this.

Likewise, if the salesperson needs to look for help before going into a sales call, remote access to an eLearning tool whilst they’re waiting in the customer car park could be just the answer.

For the sales manager …

There are two ways that eLearning can support sales managers.

1. Coaching

Well structured sales eLearning should provide a helpful framework for the manager to coach the salesperson. It can be used for one on one coaching and working through modules together with the salesperson explaining the reasons for their choices in interactive scenarios.

2. Effective management and a lower cost of sale

As well as developing and sharing best practice, the sales manager wants their team to use their time and effort in the most effective manner. A sales model and eLearning that has this built-in can be integral to building a more effective sales team. The benefits of better performance and a lower cost of sale are clear – the salespeople maximize the return on their time, the sales manager expends less energy to manage the team who follow the same sales process and reporting.

If you’re responsible for sourcing eLearning within your organisation, we’d love to talk to you so please get intouch by email info@tack.co.uk or call 0845 072 0144.

September 28, 2009

Sales Training Courses – what to look for and what to avoid

Filed under: Sourcing Training Courses — Tags: — admin @ 12:07 pm

So, you’ve made the decision to work with an external provider either because you don’t have the resources within to deliver your sales training programme or because you want to bring in some ideas from outside.

Full of enthusiasm you Google the words ‘Sales Training Courses’ and your enthusiasm rapidly drains away as you’re presented with some 130 million pages of information through which to navigate! 

Feel like you’re drowning!? Where on earth do you start?

This is the first of a series of blogs which we hope will make the task of buying sales training a little less daunting.

The 6 key stages in selecting a sales training course provider include:

1. What to prepare before you dive in?
2. Public course versus In-Company programmes
3. Course selection – matching delegate’s needs
4. Training provider selection – “the beauty parade”
5. Assessment of quality, measurement of Return on Investment and the all important support – before, during and after your training event.

1. What do you need prepare before you dive in?

In this first blog of the series we focus on stage 1, preparation.

Success comes from selecting a sales training course for the right delegate to attend the right course at the right time in their development.

A little introspection is called for before you look outside and start speaking to providers:

1. Research the details of the people you wish to have trained e.g. age, experience, past training attended both at your organisation and prior to them joining you

2. What prompted this training need? How was it identified? Does the delegate acknowledge the need for the training?

3. What do you and your delegate wish to happen as a result of the sales course?

4. What does success look like? How would you measure the success of the course?

5. How will it be followed up by the delegate’s line manager?

If you’re responsible for selecting sales training courses and training providers, log back on over the coming weeks for further blogs in this series.  We’d also love to talk to you about your individual plans so please get in touch by email info@tack.co.uk or call us on 0845 072 0144.

September 23, 2009

Supervisory Skills Training – how to communicate with your team – why what you say is often not what is heard!

Filed under: Motivational Leadership, Supervisory Management & Team Leadership — Tags: — admin @ 8:48 am

“Nothing is so simple that it cannot be misunderstood”

One of the key skills needed for supervisors is effective communication. Whether written or verbal, most activities rely on efficient and accurate transfer and acceptance of thoughts.

All too often this is not achieved because barriers to this communication process exist. The main barriers can be placed into three broad categories:

1. Physical barriers - stem from distance, lack of time, noise and the breakdown of mechanical communications equipment.

2. Psychological barriers - arise from personal differences in ideas between the people communicating. Emotions, social values and differences in positions in the organisation can all contribute to this type of barrier.

3. Semantic barriers - arise because words and symbols seldom have a single meaning. Many words have relative meanings and are open to interpretation by the listener. Thus high levels of production to a supervisor may mean unrealistic levels to the subordinates.

Communication problems can only have a negative, a point highlighted perfectly by Uncle Albert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Mf58Yndjsw

While it may not be possible to totally eliminate all misinterpretation, there are a number of guidelines to follow that ensure interaction is as effective as possible. Remembering to adhere to them will avoid a lot of wasted effort:

• Clarify your ideas before communication
• Examine the true purpose of each communication
• Consider the total physical and human setting whenever you communicate
• Be aware of the overtone as well as the basic content of your message
• Follow up your communication
• Be sure your actions support your communication
• Seek not only to be understood, but also to understand.

For more information on communication and supervisory skills, please take a look at our Effective Supervisory Management course.

August 18, 2009

Negotiation Skills Training – 8 ways customers will help themselves to your profits if you let them

Filed under: Negotiation Training — Tags: , — admin @ 8:34 pm

Buyers with budgets (or even without budgets) feel in a strong negotiating position in many markets right now. In this Blog we explore some of the negotiation strategies and tactics they are trained to use.

1. The budget bluff
“That is all I have in my budget and so that is all I can afford to pay.”

2. The squeeze
“Your competitor(s) are much less than you.”

3. The reverse auction (online)
“OK suppliers – here is a list of all your prices on screen. Would you like to submit a better offer?”

4. The gentle touch
“You are a really nice company and I would like to give you the business so I will be absolutely honest with you. Here is what you need to beat…”

5. The trawl
“There is a ton of business to be done. Give me a really good initial deal and you will be in line for all the rest of it.”

6. The slow boat
“There are lots of things to be discussed with you and I have to consult many of my colleagues about them all. Let’s line up some more meetings over the next few weeks. There’s no hurry is there?”

7. Buy now bargain later
“Let’s get started straight away. We can always sort out the contract and the details later.”

8. Good guy/bad guy
“My colleague isn’t really as unreasonable as he sounds – he just always demands a good deal and speaks his mind forcefully! Let’s you and me sort out a good deal and I will try and sell it to him.”

So how many of these do you recognise?

Expert buyers are trained to do them to you without you even noticing! So first learn to identify the negotiating tactics and strategies that are being used on you and then learn your own negotiating tactics and strategies for responding to them and achieving a win/win negotiated result.

If you or a member of your team would like to develop your negotiation strategies and tactics and learn how to protect your profits take a look at our Profitable Negotiation course.

August 13, 2009

Sales Negotiation Strategy – the 7 most common mistakes to avoid

Filed under: Negotiation Training — Tags: , — admin @ 10:56 am

In this Blog we take a look at sales negotiation strategy in the business environment. Negotiation is a unique activity which is made up of three elements – part science, part art and part technique. Life can be a series of negotiations with customers, suppliers, managers, partners, parents, friends, builders and bank managers. Therefore negotiation is not only a skill needed for professional success, it’s a life skill.

In TACK’s experience the 7 most common mistakes to avoid when devising your sales negotiation strategy are:

1. Not preparing - thorough preparation for meetings and discussions is the absolute key to success! It’s important to conduct your research before attending meetings or discussions. It is vital that you do this so that you feel confident and in a good position to negotiate your request.

2. Having no structure - apply a clear structure, know the ‘stages of negotiation’ and when to move on to the next phase. It’s useful to understand this so that you are clear on how the discussion is progressing and when to ‘change gears’ in a meeting to obtain the result you want.

3. Not planning your ‘negotiation sequence’ -  if take the right initial stance you can retain control throughout. It’s vital that you enter and begin the meeting in the right frame of mind. Starting too defensively or too enthusiastically could hinder your position and the control you wish to have in the discussion.

4. Not asking the right questions - by listening to your colleagues or customers you can obtain and use information to best effect. Combining this with good listening skills will enable you to make informed decisions and continue to move the discussion in a positive direction.

5. Not recognising the strategies and tactics used by professional buyers and/or salespeople - apply psychological and logical countermeasures to their response. Watch and observe colleagues, especially salespeople in their meetings and discussions. This will enable you to see how others use their skills to win negotiation situations.

6. Not assessing the impact of concessions - will the end result still be commercially and financially viable for your company? As part of your preparation for the discussion, explore the impact of conceding some of your requests with your manager. It’s important to understand the impact this will make on the goals you are trying to reach.

7. Not understanding your ‘strength of position’ or recognising sources of power - no matter what your level within the organisation, everyone has power. For example, if a sales team is unhappy with set targets, together they can negotiate new terms. Without the sales team in operation, the management team’s power is limited.

Research, learning and training can help you build the qualities required to be a successful negotiator and develop a winning sales negotiation strategy. Regular practice and feedback will help you build your experience and confidence to negotiate in different situations at home or work.

For more on this please take a look at our sales negotiation strategy course Profitable Negotiation

July 27, 2009

Motivational Leadership Training Courses – how to motivate your sales team in challenging times

Filed under: Motivational Leadership, Motivational Sales Training — admin @ 10:40 am

This Blog aims to show you how you can get maximum Return on Investment by motivating your sales team. The good news is that no financial investment is required – just your enthusiasm, your commitment and a high degree of smart thinking and creativity.

The impact of a Sales Manager on their team’s performance has always been significant – in challenging times it becomes critical to success or even survival.

So why not stand back and take a look at how you currently motivate your people? Consider the seven factors on how to motivate your sales team and ask yourself the question “how can I be the Sales Manger the business and the team need in 2009 and beyond?”

Motivate through communication

1) Talk with your people, face to face or on the phone - every conversation is an opportunity to motivate them. Consider the most appropriate method of saying ‘well done’ – think before you text …… gr8t news, yur a star! Instead pick up the phone or why not compose a hand written note? They’re so unusual now their impact is amazing!

2) Listen to your people. Give them quality time on the phone - listen to their voice, sense their levels of motivation, enthusiasm or concern – particularly with remote teams who spend so much time working alone.

3) Stay close your people - how they think, work and what motivates them. Know what’s going on in their lives – what’s important to them.

Know the essence of their game

4) Understand the key projects on which they are working – talk through their approach, make suggestions, show support.

5) Be realistic about a challenging market – be knowledgeable about trends, the good news in the market, activities of the competition etc.

Create team spirit

6) Recognise the power of the team working together, helping and motivating each other. Account development, particularly at key account level, must focus on a team approach to optimise business.

7) Recognise the potential in your team - identify their Performance Category (see our article on Managing for Peak Performance for more information) and motivate, coach and develop appropriately.

If you would like to know more about Motivational Leadership and Sales Management training courses from TACK , please contact us to find out more information.