Don’t Show Them How

This is a Sandler Weekly Sales Tip from guest poster Shulman & Associates.

The STORY:

Katie had just finished her first week with her new firm and by digging right in, she had her first two orders.  As she looked at the form to fill out for ordering product, she wondered who could have possibly come up with the five-part maze.  The form was impossible to decipher.

Glancing up, she saw Greg, one of the other salespeople.

“Greg,” she asked, “could you give me a clue as to what goes on this customer order form?”

“Sure,” he replied, “but why bother?”

“Well, I have two orders, and I’d like to get them out.”

“Hey, congratulations.  I meant why should you do the forms?  Give them to Mary up front.  She’ll take care of them.”

“Aren’t we supposed to fill them in?”

“Well, that’s the theory, but Mary is the only one who knows where everything is supposed to go.  I don’t think a salesperson has filled out an order form for the past four years.”

“Oh,” responded Katie.  “What happens if Mary gets sick or when she goes on vacation?”

“We just leave them on her desk.  When she gets back, they get done.  She gets ticked-off at the pile, but if you try to do one yourself…well, Mary will give it back to you, telling you how screwed up it is.  And she gives it back to you a week after you put it in.”

“Why doesn’t she just show us how to do it correctly?”

“Have no idea.  It’s been like this since I was here, and you know the phrase, ‘Go along to get along.”‘

“Have orders been late?”

“Sure, but I’d rather deal with an irate customer instead of an angry Mary any day of the week.”

The RESULT:

No salesperson has any idea of what a “correct” order form looks like.  Additionally, the salespeople have learned not to ask.  And when orders are late, the salespeople would rather deal with an angry customer than a fellow employee.

DISCUSSION:

Is Mary a good employee?  She has taken over the task of filling out the order forms so that the forms are done correctly.  You can hear Mary saying, “What’s wrong with having such an important form filled out correctly?  If it’s not done right, the wrong product will be shipped and make customers angry.”

And then when Mary is sick or out on vacation, well, it’s just a day or two at most, a week.  “Besides,” continues Mary, “the form is complicated, and salespeople never get it right anyway.  The first thing I do when I get back in is make sure that the order forms are done.  You want it done right, don’t you?”

Mary isn’t wrong to want to make sure that the form is correctly filled in.  What is wrong is that she has not taught the salespeople how to do the task correctly.  The salespeople are wrong because they have not insisted on learning how to do the task themselves.

APPROACH:

Are there tasks you do which you refuse to teach anyone else?  Before you quickly nod “no,” answer this question.  If Katie asked Mary how to fill out the form, do you think Mary would refuse or instead just say, “Let me do it for you.”

You should pick a week, and during that week make a one-line note every half-hour of which tasks you are doing.  At the end of the week, go back over your notes and see what activities you did alone.

Once you know what the “solos” are, you then need to determine if someone else could have done them, if you showed him how.

Guard against talking yourself out of showing someone else how to do what you do.  Mary has a ready supply of answers for any objections.  So will you.  Fight the urge to give into them.

Decide on a solo task that you do and then find someone and show him how to do it.  As long as you don’t make it his solo task from then on, you will now have a co-worker who will be able to help the next time.  And in most instances, a co-worker who will be flattered to help.

THOUGHT:

Make the best use of your time by showing someone how to do something you do.  And then, if appropriate, let him do it.

About the author:

Shulman & Associates is a professional development firm specializing in sales and management training and sales force evaluation. Visit their website and sign up to receive the free sales tip of the week. Learn how to increase sales, improve margins, and accelerate new business development.

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/29/dont-show-them-how/

Haven’t Got Time To Explain It

This is a Sandler Weekly Sales Tip from guest poster Shulman & Associates.

The STORY:

Harold, in charge of shipping product, was known throughout the company as always complaining about how salespeople screwed up their orders.  According to him, as a result, clients got shipments later than expected.  This had been going on for close to a year.

The salespeople complained to the sales manager who complained to Harold’s boss.  Rumor had it that Harold’s boss agreed with Harold, so what started as a complaint ended up as a compliment.  So much for effective company communications.

But this didn’t solve the problem.  If anything, the lateness of the shipments was becoming the rule rather than the exception.  When Melinda found out her last order to Memorial General had been four days late, she was ready to hire a man with no neck to rearrange the shipping department.  Instead she got into her car and drove over to the shipping building.  Not sure what she was going to do, she headed in to look for Harold, whom she had never met.

Harold had a small office with literally hundreds of handwritten orders everywhere, scotch-taped to the walls, the windows, the door.  There, buried underneath the pile of orders on his desk was a computer keyboard and screen.

At that moment, with Melinda’s mouth hanging open in sheer shock at the chaos, in walked Harold.

“Ah,” he said, “you must be Melinda.  Won’t tell you who, but someone called from the office and warned me to be on the look-out.”

Melinda looked at him and then back to the small section of the computer sticking out from underneath the blizzard of paper.  “Do you know how to use this?” she asked, pointing to the keyboard.

“Nope,” he responded, “Every time I ask someone from the data processing department to show me the ropes, I’m told they haven’t got time to explain it to me.  So I’ve given up asking.”

The RESULT:

One hopes that Melinda and Harold find a way to get the computer working in shipping.  Perhaps now that the sales department adds its voice to shipping’s, data processing will find time to train him.

DISCUSSION:

In this particular case, “not having the time to explain it” was affecting the company in a negative way.  The morale of the salespeople was being affected; the morale in the shipping department was non-existent; and customers were becoming unhappy with service.

And the data processing department certainly had its own problems.  Unfortunately, what it saw as its own problems did not include the shipping of product.  That was Harold’s problem, not theirs.

Consider for a moment how things would have progressed if Melinda had not driven over to shipping.   Customers, if annoyed enough at late shipments, would go elsewhere for product, further enraging the salespeople.

Of course, Harold could become more insistent with data processing, but that would take him away from getting the product out the door.  If it was late being shipped now, his absence would only make it worse.

All because someone didn’t have enough time to explain the computer.

APPROACH:

While in the story the fault lies with data processing, in every company the phrase, “Haven’t got time to explain it,” is uttered at least once a day.

If there is one phrase that should be banned, this is it.

Rather one should hear, “I haven’t got time right this minute to explain how.  When, in the next 24 hours, can we spend the time for me to explain?”

If you are on the receiving end of the phrase, your response should be, “Appreciate that you don’t have the time right this minute.  I’m ready to clear time in the next 24 hours so that you can explain it.  What do you want to do now?”

You will find the response you get to be interesting.  Don’t let the person leave you with anything but a firm commitment to a time for an explanation.

THOUGHT:

Always make time to explain.  You never know just how important that one explanation might turn out to be.

About the author:

Shulman & Associates is a professional development firm specializing in sales and management training and sales force evaluation. Visit their website and sign up to receive the free sales tip of the week. Learn how to increase sales, improve margins, and accelerate new business development.

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/22/havent-got-time-to-explain-it/

Project Management Driving Increased Sales for Commence CRM

Integration of Project Data is the Key

Every business has projects and the need to manage them. There is no shortage of project management applications in the industry to do this; but unlike other front office business processes (such as contact management, sales, and marketing) which are traditionally fully integrated, project management has always been viewed as a stand-alone application. It’s been this way for more than a decade, but this is now changing. Businesses no longer want to manage projects in a vacuum.  They want project details integrated with CRM.  One company that has taken a leadership position in this area is Commence Corporation, manufacturers of Commence CRM.

Commence is an “All-in-One CRM solution” which simply means it offers a broad scope of functionality for managing contacts, sales, leads, marketing, customer service, and now projects.  Already recognized as a top 20 most popular solution by Capterra (an industry leading analyst firm) the integration of the project management module further differentiates Commence CRM from the myriad of other CRM solutions.

What people like best about Commence CRM is that the product provides the user with a complete 360 degree profile of customer information including things like what they purchased, when they purchased, what they paid, an organizational chart of all contacts with a reporting structure, all service history, and now all project details for completed projects or those still in process.  The information is available with a single click and on a single screen. Project templates can be created for repetitive tasks and a graphical Gantt chart provides a snapshot of every project, along with every task and their start and stop dates.  The product also offers the ability to track the hours worked on every task and create time slips for billing purposes.

Commence has been providing high quality CRM software solutions to growing businesses for more than two decades and has a stellar track record not only for the quality of their products, but for the world class service they provide.

Visit commence.com/project-management/ to learn more about Commence CRM.

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/18/project-management-driving-increased-sales-for-commence-crm/

What’s the good news? Where is the silver lining?

This is a Sales Question and Answer article from guest poster Dave Kahle author and leading sales educator. Follow Dave’s latest Tweets at @davekahle.

Q: What’s the good news? Where is the silver lining?

A.  Great question.  So many of us have been concentrating on the clouds recently, that we haven’t noticed the silver lining around the clouds.  Certainly the economy is just limping along with no signs of a dramatic improvement on the horizon.  It is easy to become depressed and discouraged.

However, at the same time, there are unique and powerful opportunities for those sales people who choose to pursue them.

It really is the difficult times that distinguish the true professional from those who are merely in the right place at the right time.  One of the characteristics that contribute to success in difficult times is the ability to see the opportunities in almost any situation.  That ability is particularly valuable today.

As examples of how negative situations always contain the seeds of positive opportunities, here are three issues that you may confront as a result of the slow economy, but which really provide you unique opportunities.  Here are three clouds with silver linings.

1.  Your customers may have reduced staff.

We have all seen this.  What looks like a negative, however, holds the potential for a great opportunity.  Fewer staff generally means that some people are doing jobs that they have never done before and that fewer people are doing more jobs.  These are both opportunities for the creative sales person.

If someone is newly responsible for some category of product you sell, you have a great opportunity to educate that person on your product, on the reasons why the company has chosen to work with you in the past, and on the benefits that you have brought to this company.  Do this, and it will position you as a valuable resource to that customer.  Capture that opportunity by leveraging your position into opportunities to present more of what you sell.

If some of your key contacts are now responsible for doing jobs that they have not done before, they can use help.  It may be that by expanding the services or products that you sell to them, you can simplify their jobs and reduce some of the stress on them.  For example, a purchasing agent may suddenly become responsible for buying two or three new categories of product that were previously someone else’s responsibility.  Now is the time to make a presentation of why that account should buy more from you.  Stress that doing so will reduce the number of sales people that purchasing agent needs to deal with and will reduce the number of purchase orders, invoices, and all the ensuing time-consuming details. That’s a powerful attraction in these circumstances.

One of the most potent opportunities for a sales person is the customer who becomes overwhelmed with the details and complexity of his/her job.  If you can help simplify your customer’s job, if you can take over some of what that customer formerly did themselves, then you’ll have a powerful opportunity to establish a growing importance in that account.

Be particularly sensitive, over the near future, to the fact that your customers may have more to do.  Open up conversations about how you can make a positive impact on their time and stress levels by reducing the number of vendors with which they deal.  Find creative ways your company can do things for the customer that the customer was previously doing for themselves.

If you can more closely ingrain your company with your customer in these difficult times, you’ll become more important to that customer, and you’ll enjoy a growing portion of their business when the economy turns around.  It is a rare opportunity.

2.  Your competitors may have cut back.

Those companies that have reduced their costs to survive can represent a serious opportunity for you to prosper in the long run.  For example, if your competitors are cutting back on the number of sales people they employ, then relationships with their customers will suffer, and that is an opportunity for you.  Your competitors’ customers won’t see the competitive sales people as often, or maybe not at all.  That lack of attention is an open door for you.

As you call on your customers over the next few months, pay particular attention to anything you can learn about possible competitor’s cut backs.  Try to ascertain which of your customers or prospects may be impacted by that.  Give those people special attention.

If you can make an inroad into an account that was formerly committed to a competitor, that relationship you establish will work well for you even after the market turns around.

It may be, however, that your competitor has not reduced the number of sales people, but has cut back on service or production.  If that’s the case, then it is possible that some of your competitor’s accounts are having trouble with delivery, service, quality, etc.  Now is the time to get into those accounts and sniff around to find problems they may be experiencing.  Any such problem is an opportunity for you.

3.  Your customers close down, or move their facility to Mexico or China.

This one is a real challenge.  What possible good can come of a customer going out of business in your territory?  If you do your job well and are blessed with a little bit of luck, this could turn into two or three good customers down the road.

If you have done your job well over the past few years, you will have created positive relationships with several key people.  You know them personally as well as professionally.  You may have met their spouses or children.  You’ve gained their respect and trust.  Many of them are not going to move to Mexico, China, or anywhere else.  They are going to stay right where they are, which means that they will be looking for a job similar to what they are doing now.

Get their home addresses and phone numbers and copies of their resumes.  When you hear of a position opening up somewhere, let them know about it.  Try to help them find jobs in your area.  Whether or not they find employment because of you, they will recognize that you tried to help.  Keep in contact with them.  It is possible that they will surface in a position of responsibility for some other company in your area of responsibility.  What a great opportunity to leverage your relationship into a new account by calling on that individual.

With some luck, a couple of these displaced key contacts can open doors for you with their new employers.

One of the beautiful aspects of these three clouds with their silver linings is that it is unlikely that your competitors are even thinking this way. They are too busy feeling sorry for themselves and bemoaning the change from the way things used to be. Use these clouds as opportunities to expand the business or to find one or two more accounts, and you’ll be the envy of all the nay sayers around you. More importantly, take on the attitude of looking for the silver lining among the clouds in every difficult situation. It’s the mark of a truly successful professional.

About the Author:

Dave Kahle is one of the world’s leading sales authorities. He’s written ten books, presented in 47 states and ten countries, and has helped enrich tens of thousands of sales people and transform hundreds of sales organizations. Sign up for his free weekly Ezine. Check out our Sales Resource Center for 455 sales training programs for every sales person at every level. You may contact Dave at The DaCo Corporation, PO Box 523, Comstock Park, MI 49321, or dave@davekahle.com

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/14/whats-the-good-news-where-is-the-silver-lining/

Make the Plan, Skip Some Steps

This is a Sandler Weekly Sales Tip from guest poster Shulman & Associates.

The STORY:

Glenn is a salesperson who drives Sales Managers and upper management crazy.  For months at a time, he can close just about every sale without so much as breaking a sweat.  Right up there at the top of the chart, far outdistancing anyone else in dollar amount closed.  Then, for just as long a period, it is as if he has totally lost his ability.  Months go by with his name on the very bottom of the chart.

“What goes wrong?” asks everyone.

When Glenn’s hot, he’s on the phone getting the appointments.  One right after another.  Doesn’t waste any time getting through the screen right to the person in charge.  In person, he digs right in with the prospect, finds out what the needs are and sets up the prospect to come to only one conclusion, buy from Glenn.

And then with each new account, he goes back within a day or two after the product is delivered and comes up with at least three or four referrals to others.

“Then,” says George, his Sales Manager, “it’s like there is a weird alignment of planets, and suddenly Glenn can’t do anything right.  Oh sure, he continues to make sales, but not like the previous months.  At first I thought he had a substance abuse problem or a psychological problem, but that’s not it.”

One of the other salespeople adds, “It’s like he loses his road map of what to do.  You should see him, though, when he’s on top, never writes anything down and never forgets anything.  His favorite phrase during those times is, “Hey, I’m too good to worry about why I’m good.”

“I’ve never sold as much as Glenn in one of his good months,” adds a third salesperson, “but I have to tell you, his low months make my low months look like sales award time.  And his comments about me using my written sales plan as a crutch are beginning to really bug me.”

The RESULT:

Glenn will, as he has in the past, get out of his sales slump.  He, and everyone else, will attribute it to some change in the weather, the phase of the moon, the price of gold, Glenn’s new tie, anything but what really happens.  Ascribing the change to something mystical or magical is more compelling than ascribing it to following a plan.  And Glenn does follow a sales plan when he’s doing well; he just has never written it down.  Which is a shame because it is a real winner.

DISCUSSION:

Glenn doesn’t have a written plan.  And since he doesn’t have a written plan, when things start going wrong and the sales start sliding downward, he has no objective way to figure out why.  And neither does anyone else.

However, the most likely reason Glenn goes into a periodic slump is that he starts skipping steps in his unwritten sales plan.  He unconsciously skips the steps to save time since at the moment, everything he touches turns into a sale.  So he wants to do it faster.  Faster means skipping something.

How can he know what he has skipped if he has no objective awareness of what steps he takes to begin with?  He can’t.  So the slump happens and eventually, after a few months wandering in the basement, he “rediscovers” what he did in the past and does it again.

Most salespeople don’t have a written sales plan, other than a vaguely worded list of goals and some specific monetary levels set by the Sales Manager.

APPROACH:

Having a plan, regardless of what the plan is for, is the first step.

The second step is following the plan step-by-step.  That’s the hard part for many.  Why bother with steps three and four, since I can skip them?  Here’s the question you need to answer at that point.  Why did you have a step three and four to begin with?  To have written them down meant they were important.  If you have forgotten why they were important, you have forgotten the plan you made.

If you forget the plan, then you are flying blind, making it up as you go.  Sometimes you can get away with this.  Most of the time you can’t.

So, when you want to skip steps, ask yourself why they were important.  Can’t remember?  Take a deep breath.  Accept the fact you are now off-track.  Somewhere you got derailed.  You need to go back to step one and start again.

This is not exciting stuff, but is being in a sales slump exciting?

THOUGHT:

Follow the plan and consistently make money.

About the author:

Shulman & Associates is a professional development firm specializing in sales and management training and sales force evaluation. Visit their website and sign up to receive the free sales tip of the week. Learn how to increase sales, improve margins, and accelerate new business development.

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/08/make-the-plan-skip-some-steps/

Prepare better questions for every important sales call

Best Practice #34: Prepares better sales questions for every important sales call.

By Dave Kahle

The single most powerful tool that a sales person has is a well-phrased, appropriately asked question. Nothing else compares to the impact a good question can have on the customer and the sales process.

That’s because a good question directs and influences the customer’s thinking. When you ask a question, they think of the answer. That simple statement neatly packages the latent power of a good question.

Yet, few sales people understand that, and fewer still implement it. A number of years ago, a study was done on this very issue. Here are the results:

“Out of 300 sales people studied, 87 percent realize the importance of asking questions. However, only 27 percent displayed the ability to ask a well thought out, stimulating series of questions.”

In other words, thirteen percent of the sales people in the world don’t even recognize the power of asking a good question. And only about one out of four could actually do it. That means that three out of every four sales people, or 75 percent, don’t ask good questions.

There are two issues here: First, realizing the importance of using good questions effectively, and second, actually doing so.

This is such a big issue that my most recent book, Question Your Way to Sales Success, is devoted entirely to this issue.

Everyone can ask a question. I have a three year old grandson. He can do it. This issue isn’t asking questions; the issue is asking better sales questions. While I can’t condense the book to a few hundred words here, I can point out a couple of things that the best do with this most powerful tool.

1. They prepare their major questions before the sales call. This gives them the time to select the best language and sequence.

2. They are mindful, at every stage of the sales process, of using better sales questions. They understand that there are questions, there are good questions, and there are better sales questions. So, they constantly focus on creating and using better sales questions. Whether it’s a cold call on a prospect, or following up after the sale, at every stage of the sales process, a more effective use of questions will produce dramatically better results. And they know that.

3. They collect good questions over time, and use them over and over again.

A master sales person is a master at the use of better sales questions. That’s why it is a best practice of the best.

To learn more about this skill, consider my book, Question Your Way to Sales Success or bring a one-hour training program into your company. Review Stand Alone Lessons – Pods #4 and #5: Mastering Your Most Powerful Sales Tool.”

If you are already a subscriber to The Sales Resource Center, consider Cluster #CL-14, “Asking Better Sales Questions.”

About the Author:

Dave Kahle is one of the world’s leading sales authorities. He’s written ten books, presented in 47 states and ten countries, and has helped enrich tens of thousands of sales people and transform hundreds of sales organizations. Sign up for his free weekly Ezine. Check out our Sales Resource Center for 455 sales training programs for every sales person at every level. You may contact Dave at The DaCo Corporation, PO Box 523, Comstock Park, MI 49321, or dave@davekahle.com

source http://www.commence.com/blog/2017/08/04/prepare-better-questions-for-every-important-sales-call/