Sales Training Course Schedule

Sales Master Class Sample - May 12th - London

Selling in a Downturn - May 20th and 21st - Reading

Selling through Partners - May 26th and 27th - Reading

Vanishing Freewill

In the moment, time for thought is gone. Reaction and instinct are all. Free will depends on forethought, planning, and preparation.

Pause only for moment

Keep on learning to keep on earning. Whatever set us apart yesterday is common knowledge today and will be in common use tomorrow. 

 

Micro Articles

Less than 30 seconds is the target read time for micro articles that communicate meaningful messages in less than 120 words.

Raising productivity demands more of communication as well as . . .

Each wave of a new generation evolves and adopts new tools. Email, yesterday’s killer application, lies abandoned as the young favour instant messaging and twitter.

Say more with fewer words to keep up. Respect another’s attention span as you would their voicemail.

In response to a question on finding serious commission only sales people

The best recruiters are extraordinary networkers. I imagine that you are already leveraging this avenue. If not, networking is not an instant solution. It used to take half a lifetime to develop a powerful network of professional contacts willing to help. These days it can be done in a couple of years by intelligently utilising email and online professional networking tools such as LinkedIn and Plaxo.

The next best way is to use job boards and web sites to capture those searching for the kind of opportunities you offer. Explaining how to do this would take more time than I have and in any case, there others who know it better than I. My advice would be to dedicate some Google time to finding subject experts. If what they know works, it will be worth paying for.

Double your money

In my last post, I made an unscientific observation about cold calling results, concluding that one hit in twenty dials was some sort of universal constant. Suppose it were two hits in twenty. Would you double your money?

It seems likely. It may depend on what you define as a hit. It might be an appointment, or discovering an opportunity, or closing an order, or something else. It depends on what you are selling.

Since claiming that one hit in twenty was a common average, I have achieved two hits in twenty, twice! I don't mean to brag. Being inquisitive, I compared those I called to achieve a 1:20 result with those I called to achieve a 2:20 result. There was a difference. The better result came from better selection of the people I called.

Sell by Telephone

Cold Calling Constant

Having recently renewed my own prospecting activity, I have come to notice a common cold calling ratio. My experience seems to be consistent with the ratio's achieved by clients.

I divide call results into seven categories. They are a hit (objective achieved), a call returned (during the session), new information, email or post follow up, fobbed off (when I get through but have to call back), and declined (a definite no). each dial can only be recorded in one category.

In a typical, 20-dial session, my results are similar to those of client telephone sales people. About half the dials result in no contact, five will involve gathering new information, two or three will be worth a written follow up, one will be a hit, and the remaining one or two will be split randomly between an outright 'no' (declined), a call back during the session, and being fended off with an excuse.

Why so few refusals? The main reason is that I only call prospects that are well matched with our target group and I help clients to do the same.

The critical observation here is that I'd better not screw up the one hit.

Sell by Telephone

So many answers in a simple facial expression

Excerpt

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, Bantam, 2006, 18-19.

"One way moods differ from the grosser feelings of emotions, psychologists tell us, has to do with the ineffability of their causes: while we typically know what has caused an outright emotion, we often find ourselves in one or another mood without knowing its source. [Experiments] suggest, though, that our world may be filled with mood triggers that we fail to notice--everything from the saccharine Muzak in an elevator to the sour tone in someone's voice.

"For instance, take the expressions we see on other people's faces. As Swedish researchers found, merely seeing a picture of a happy face elicits fleeting activity in the muscles that pull the mouth into a smile. Indeed, whenever we gaze at a photograph of someone whose face displays a strong emotion, like sadness, disgust, or joy, our facial muscles automatically start to mirror the other's facial expression. ...

"We mimic the happiness of a smiling face, pulling our own muscles into a subtle grin, even though we may be unaware that we have seen the smile. That mimicked slight smile might not be obvious to the naked eye, but scientists monitoring facial muscles track such emotional mirroring clearly. It's as though our face were being preset, getting ready to display the full emotion. This mimicry has a bit of a biological consequence, since our facial expressions trigger within us the feelings we display. We can stir any emotion by intentionally setting our facial muscles for that feeling: just clench a pencil in your teeth, and you will force your face into a smile, which subtly evokes a positive feeling.

"Edgar Allan Poe had an intuitive grasp of this principle. He wrote: 'When I wish to find out how good or how wicked anyone is, or what his thoughts are at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' "

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, Bantam, 2006, 18-19.

Sales Training - Have your team teach themselves

Disaster recipes and schemes to do myself out of business are not what I have in mind. Just consider the idea and how it could be made to work.

If your sales people could be motivated to teach themselves and each other; if they could be persuaded to take such a task seriously, sales meetings could be a lot more fun.

If a sales manager were to simply assign a topic to one sales person each month, and insist he or she prepares a 30-minute session including exercises and presentation, for delivery in the sales meeting, the sales person concerned would have to do some preparation or risk ridicule from colleagues.

I have used a similar idea using audio tapes as the subject matter. It certainly worked for me, the sales people in the team that I was responsible for managing, and the organisation.

Here is a way to ensure it works for you. Have a sales coach spend an hour helping each sales person prepare for his or her sales meeting slot. This would provide focus for their preparation and ensure that they have some good material. The sales person delivering the session is highly likely to learn from the experience and there is a good chance that other in the team will too.

The sessions might even include some friendly rivalry to see who delivers the best session. The competition would be an excuse for some fun and serious prizes at the annual bash!