The way I see it there are 3 types of salespeople;
(A) Players who are in the top 10% of the profession,
(B) Players who get the job done and make their sales managers happy, and
(C) players who do enough to keep their jobs.
A sales manager’s job is to coach ‘B’ players so they become ‘A” players and to get ‘C’ players to be more effective. In this series of blogs I will discuss how sales managers can coach their salespeople to become better. Salespeople can use the ideas in this series to coach themselves to they improve their performance. The bottom line here is that I want you to sell more!
A while back, during a presentation with a group of a 140 sales managers and business owners, I asked, “In what part of the sales process do your salespeople get stuck most often and what is the financial impact?” The two top answers were getting appointments and closing the sale. The attendees also estimated the financial impact was 50% of a salesperson’s sales. If you could coach salespeople to overcome any weakness in their sales process they would increase their sales significantly. Salespeople would deliver a better ROI to their companies.
Having a strong sales process is the key to getting great sales results. With a solid sales process in place it is easy to see where a salesperson needs coaching. I want to introduce you to the 7.1 Keys to become a sales superstar process:
1. Target – Can you find the right target to go after, and a good reason to talk to them?
2. Cold Calling – Can you pick up the phone and make the calls and get people to engage in conversations?
3. Appointment – Can you get face-to-face appointments? Or Skype to Skype in order to get into sales conversations where you can present your product?
4. Presentation – Can you do a kick-ass presentation?
5. Handle Objections – Can you effortlessly overcome gauge objections?
6. Close – Most importantly can you close the deal?
7. Entrenching – Can you go deeper into the account and get referrals into new accounts?
At this point, you are probably wondering, I know the seven step in this process so what is the point one? Your mindset is the most important element in determining your level of success. Your mindset determines how well you execute the above seven step sales process. Do you do it fearlessly of with hesitation? In the following blog posts in this series we will take a deeper look at each step in the process so you can coach your team or yourself more effectively.
