 I moved from working in my business to working on my business!
Jim White, Founder Savor Dallas http://www.savordallas.com |
 I found a community of business leaders who make being in business a lot more fun and less lonely.
Jeannine Sandstrom, CEO CoachWorks International, Inc. http://www.coachworks.com |
 I now have a place to be open about my business success and future challenges.
Debbie Mrazek, CEO The Sales Company Author The Field Guide to Sales http://www.the-sales-company.com |
Archive for December, 2008
Written by Alan Rigg
Neither you or your employer can make money unless a prospect says “yes”. However, getting prospects to say “no” can be equally critical to your success.
How is this possible? I’ll answer that question by asking two more questions:
- How many of the prospects in your sales opportunity pipeline say things like, “Let me think about it” and “Call me back in a couple of weeks to check in”?
- Do you really think these are truly SERIOUS prospects?
If you do, you are only kidding yourself!
There are many reasons why prospects may be reluctant to tell you “no”. Here are just a few of them:
- Many prospects are nice people that don’t like to disappoint others. They know telling you “no” will disappoint you. So, they avoid disappointing you by stringing you along. Eventually they ease themselves out of the situation by no longer returning your calls.
- Prospects may think they have the clout required to sell your product or service within their organizations, only to find out they don’t. It would be embarrassing for them to admit this to you. So, they string you along to “save face.”
- Prospects may find they are unable to come up with the funding required to pay for your product or service. Yet, they know you have invested a lot of time, energy, and resources in an effort to help them fix specific business problems. They think you may get mad if they tell you the truth. So, they tell you “maybe” or “let me think about it.”
- Prospects are afraid that telling you “no” may cause a confrontation or encourage you to “hard sell” them in a last-ditch effort to salvage the sale. So, they string you along to avoid getting into an uncomfortable situation.
Top salespeople know that time is a salesperson’s only inventory. If a prospect can’t or won’t buy, a top salesperson wants to know as quickly as possible! They would much rather prospect for new, truly qualified prospects than waste time on opportunities that will never close. So, they are sure to ask for the “no”.
So, how do you “get to NO”?
The first step in getting to “no” is explaining to your prospects right up front that “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer! The conversation you have with a prospect might sound something like this:
“Bob, as we explore the possibility of working together, we may decide there isn’t a fit between what your company needs and what I offer. If that happens, to avoid wasting each other’s time, are you comfortable telling me “no”?
Once a prospect agrees they are willing to tell you “no”, you have a powerful weapon you can use to jump-start stalled opportunities and minimize wasted time. How does this weapon work? Well, if you ever feel an opportunity may be stalling, or if a prospect has not returned your calls or e-mails for week or two, put your cards on the table by saying (or writing in an e-mail) something like this:
“Bob, the last time I heard from you was on (date). Is (product or service name) still on your radar screen? Remember, “No” is a perfectly acceptable answer! I don’t want to waste your time or mine, and I don’t want to be a pest. Please let me know whether I should continue calling you. Thank you!”
My experience has been that, if a prospect is serious about acquiring your product or service, they will ALWAYS respond to this kind of communication. If they don’t respond, it is a strong indicator they are not serious. You have little to lose by scratching these non-responsive prospects off your call list and removing them from your sales opportunity pipeline.
Conclusion
If you want to be a top-performing salesperson, you need to view your time as your most precious resource. After all, time is a salesperson’s only inventory. If you fritter away your time on prospects that can’t or won’t buy, how will you ever achieve your goals?
To earn the greatest return on your time investments, go for the “no”. Tell each prospect right up front that “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer. Then, if you ever suspect an opportunity is stalling, or if a prospect stops returning your calls, remind them that “no” IS an acceptable answer. Giving prospects permission to say “no” gives YOU permission to stop wasting your time!
If you stop investing your time in prospects that can’t or won’t buy and instead use that time to find and work with truly qualified prospects, you will be rewarded with a significant increase in sales!
©2006-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Talking about price is an important step in the sales opportunity qualification process. After all, if a prospect can’t afford your price, are they really a valid prospect? Do you really want to invest your valuable time trying to sell to them?
That said, it often does more harm than good to discuss price before you and the prospect have determined whether your product or service can provide value to the prospect. Just about any price sounds high when it is quoted “in a vacuum”. Yet, that very same price can sound very reasonable, or even cheap, when it is compared to the quantified impact of a prospect’s business problems.
What is a quantified impact? This concept requires a little explanation…
Just about every product or service can solve specific problems for your prospects. Your mission as a salesperson (and it is definitely to your benefit to choose to accept it) is to ask questions to determine whether a prospect has any of the problems that your products or services can solve.
Once you determine that a prospect has one or more of the business problems your products or services can solve, the next step is to ask questions to uncover how each problem impacts the prospect’s business. Then you should ask questions that encourage the prospect to quantify (associate dollars or percentages and time frames) with their business problems.
Here are several examples of quantified business impacts:
- Our top-performing salespeople produce $200,000 more net profit per year than our average-performing salespeople.
- (Problem) generates an extra million dollars in operating costs in a six month period.
- (Problem) increases our administrative expense by 22% per month.
Quantified impacts are an invaluable aid to closing sales
How? If the quantified impact of a business problem exceeds the investment required to fix the problem, a buying decision is easy to justify. The larger the difference between the quantified impact and the required investment, the easier it becomes to close the sale. If the quantified impact is a multiple of the required investment (for example, a quantified impact of millions of dollars versus a required investment of thousands of dollars), the buying decision becomes “a no-brainer”.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In order for a quantified impact to favorably impact the sales process, your prospect must be the source of the numbers. Why? In general, prospects don’t trust salespeople. Many have dealt with salespeople who were more interested in making sales than they were in providing value. Plus, prospects recognize that salespeople have a vested interest in building a convincing business case that can be used to support a buying decision. This causes prospects to discount any quantified impact information that salespeople provide. However, if the prospect is the source of the quantified impact information, they perceive it as unquestioned truth. This makes learning how to ask questions to quantify the impact of business problems a valuable skill indeed!
What do you do if a prospect asks for the price of your product or service before you have had a chance to uncover the quantified impacts of his or her business problems?
Depending upon where you are in the opportunity qualification process, you might respond in one of the following ways:
“(Prospect Name), I promise that I will provide complete pricing information before we finish our conversation today. However, at this point I don’t even know:
- Anything about your business. What does your company do?”
- Whether you have any of the kinds of problems we address. (Then ask a qualifying question that will help determine whether the prospect has one or more of the business problems that your products or services can solve.)”
- Whether it even makes sense for you to consider buying anything from us. (Then ask a question that will help the prospect quantify the impact of a specific business problem that has been identified.)”
In my experience, nine times out of ten the prospect will be willing to defer the pricing conversation. In the rare case where the prospect refuses to answer your question and continues to push for price, you might say something like:
“(Prospect Name), at this point we don’t have anything to compare the price with. My experience has been that a price quoted in a vacuum always sounds high. Would you agree?”
(Prospect responds.)
“If we can’t establish value, would any price convince you to buy?”
(Prospect responds.)
“Could we spend a little time trying to figure out whether (product or service name) will produce value for you?”
The prospect may not be willing to engage in a value discussion
This is especially likely if your product or service is seen as a commodity. If that is the case, you will need to decide whether you want to try to win the prospect’s business based upon price. However, remember that this situation is the exception. Nine times out of ten the prospect will be willing to defer the pricing conversation and answer your questions.
So remember, the key to successful price discussions with prospects is first determining whether your product or service can provide value to the prospect. This value creates a frame of reference against which price can be compared.
To determine value, ask questions to discover whether your prospects have any of the business problems your products or services can solve. Then, ask questions to identify how each business problem impacts the prospect’s business. Finally, ask more questions to quantify the impact of each business problem. The greater the quantified impact, the better your price will look in comparison, and the greater your chances will be of making a sale!
©2006-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
NOTE: You are welcome to reprint this article as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the “About the Author” information at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to alanrigg@8020sales.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Maximizing account penetration is one of the most critical functions in sales. Why? The depth of account penetration has an enormous impact on revenues and profitability.
Think about it – if every one of your company’s salespeople sold every product and service in their portfolio to every business unit, department, and division of every account, what kind of number would they produce? Something huge, right?
From a sales management perspective, few things are more frustrating than having a bunch of “one trick ponies” on a sales team. These are salespeople that have developed a comfort level with one product or service, and that product or service makes up 80% to 100% of their sales.
I used to work for a computer distributor that had numerous salespeople that fit this mold. They would congratulate themselves for selling servers to an account, completely oblivious to the fact that the very same account was also buying storage, networking equipment, software, and professional services. The distributor’s salespeople only scratched the surface of the total available opportunity in most accounts.
Here is a second huge frustration for sales managers and executives – salespeople that don’t produce “traction” with new products and services.
When your company introduces a new product or service, you make a pretty sizeable investment to train your salespeople to sell the new product or service, right? Doesn’t it drive you crazy when only a fraction of your salespeople actually sell the new product or service? The return on your sales training investment stinks, and your company never sees the revenue boost it expected to receive from the new product or service.
Why do I bring up lack of account penetration and lack of sales traction for new products and services in the same article? Because the same problem is often at the root of both issues! That problem is an excessive focus on technical details.
Many managers and salespeople believe that salespeople need to become experts in order to sell a product or service effectively. To develop this understanding, companies invest enormous amounts of time and money in exhaustive training to educate salespeople on product features and benefits, performance characteristics, industry information, pricing guidelines, promotional activities, available collateral material, etc.
Unfortunately, when salespeople leave these training sessions, they often have no idea how to find or qualify opportunities for the product or service they were just “trained” to sell! This leaves the salespeople frustrated, as they feel the time spent in training was wasted. Management is equally frustrated with their sales team’s inability to gain traction with new products and services, and their inability to learn to sell their company’s entire portfolio of products and services.
This mutual frustration results from a lack of recognition of one very important fact:
When a salesperson identifies a qualified opportunity, there is usually no shortage of knowledgeable resources that can assist the salesperson with converting the opportunity into a sale!
These resources may include technical or other specialists from the salesperson’s own company, or similar resources that are employed by suppliers or channel partners.
If salespeople have access to product/service experts, why should they spend time learning technical details? Instead, why don’t they laser-focus their learning on how to find and qualify opportunities?
Your company can facilitate this kind of focused learning by redesigning product and service training curriculums to address the following topics:
- Product/Solution/Service Overview: What does the product or service do (in plain English)?
- Differentiation: What are a few key differences between this product or service and competitive products or services?
- Business Problems: What business problems does the product or service solve?
- Qualifying Questions: What questions should salespeople ask to determine whether a prospect or customer has the business problems that the product or service can solve, and to quantify the impact of these business problems?
- Expert Resources: What expert resources are available to help salespeople manage technical details?
If your salespeople have access to product/service experts, you can turn them into prospecting and qualifying machines by focusing your company’s product/service training curriculums on how to find and qualify opportunities. This strategy will help your organization maximize account penetration and jump-start sales for new products and services.
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Here are seven additional factors to consider as you define the parameters that produce success in your company’s sales job. If you are a salesperson, you can also benefit from considering these questions, as they can help you identify target prospects and further refine your sales approach.
9. Administration
- Which sales job functions require attention to detail? (Examples include making accurate forecasts, providing timely updates to the corporate CRM system, analyzing customer records to determine sales strategies, and ensuring regulatory compliance.)
Some companies have support personnel that perform administrative tasks on their salespeople’s behalf. Other companies expect their salespeople to deal with a certain amount of administration. If a tolerance for process, detail and administration is necessary for success in your company’s sales job, some amount of Tolerance for Administration is desirable in your salespeople.
10. Communication
- How important are verbal and written communication skills to sales success in your company?
- Are your salespeople required to make presentations?
- Are they required to compose letters or proposals?
Sales roles that rely heavily on high quality verbal and written communications require salespeople that have healthy doses of the attributes Communication Skills and Reasoning Ability.
11. Pre-Sales Support
- What support resources are available to help your salespeople manage specific steps of the sales cycle?
- How effective must your salespeople be when managing these resources?
The availability of support resources has a significant impact on the attributes required for sales success. If your salespeople have access to quality internal (employed by your company) or external (employed by suppliers or partners) technical resources, they don’t need to invest a lot of time learning technical details. This frees them to focus more time and energy on prospecting and opportunity qualification. By the same token, if your company employs technical writers who can assist salespeople with large proposals and bid responses, there may be less need for your salespeople to have strong Communication Skills.
12. Post-Sales Support
- Are your salespeople expected to provide technical or operational support to customers, or do other personnel provide this support?
If your salespeople are required to deliver post-sales support, it would be desirable for them to have a lower Sales Drive, be less Competitive, and have a higher Service Drive.
13. Training
- What kinds of training does your company provide to salespeople?
- How much training does your company provide?
Companies that provide a lot of training may have the luxury of being able to hire inexperienced sales candidates and “train them up from scratch”. This is extremely valuable in markets where highly qualified sales candidates are scarce and/or prohibitively expensive. However, if your company is going to employ this approach, you should seek candidates with strong Learning Rates.
14. Sales Manager’s Style
- What are your sales managers’ styles? Do they lean in the direction of being Field Generals (who prefer selling to coaching) or Administrators (who excel at mentoring and administrative duties)?
The desired levels of the attributes Sales Drive, Service Drive, Assertiveness, Competitiveness, Independence and Tolerance for Administration will differ based upon each sales manager’s style.
15. Career Path
- What is the career path for your sales position?
- From small ticket item sales to big ticket item sales?
- From sales to management?
If your sales team is a source of candidates for other positions in your company, you may want to consider whether your salespeople and sales candidates have the attributes required to be successful in those other positions. Why? Because the attributes required to succeed in those other positions may not be the same as the attributes required for sales success!
Consider this example: Most small ticket item sales cycles are shorter than big ticket item sales cycles. Per Question #7, the desired amount of Sales Drive differs based upon the frequency of opportunities for presentation and persuasion. A successful salesperson in small ticket item sales is likely to have a strong Sales Drive. Will they become frustrated by the reduction in opportunities to present and persuade that could result from a “promotion” to big ticket item sales?
Similarly, the attributes required to be an effective manager are often quite different from the attributes required to be an effective salesperson. Success in management can require more attention to detail and the willingness to delegate and mentor. These requirements impact the target ranges for the attributes of Sales Drive, Service Drive, Assertiveness, Competitiveness, Independence and Tolerance for Administration.
If you keep the fifteen questions discussed in this two-part article in mind, you will be able to more accurately define the parameters that will lead to success in YOUR company’s sales job(s).
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
Wouldn’t you agree that every sales job is unique? Aren’t there significant differences in products and services sold, target markets, target geographies, company cultures, lead sources, sales cycle lengths, and more? Given these many differences, how can you accurately define the parameters that will produce success in your company’s sales job?
The questions asked in this article do not identify every possible factor you should consider as you analyze your company’s sales position(s). However, reviewing these questions should spark useful thoughts concerning desirable salesperson characteristics. At minimum, if you carefully consider each question, you will become more consciously aware of key requirements than you were previously.
If you are a salesperson, you can also benefit from considering these questions, as they can help you identify target prospects and further refine your sales approach.
1. Nature of the Customer
- What are your target markets?
- Are they horizontal or vertical?
- Do you sell to consumers, corporations, schools, state and local governments, etc.?
- What level(s) in the organization do you sell to? (Purchasing, Engineering, Business Unit Manager, C-Level Executive, etc.)
Target markets drive numerous sales parameters including the typical sales cycle length, prime selling seasons, and specific knowledge or experience that may be required to earn credibility with prospects and customers. Wouldn’t you agree that selling effectively to C-level executives (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc.) and other high-ranking officials requires different attributes and skills than selling to purchasing agents?
2. Nature of the Offering
- Are your offerings complex or relatively simple?
- Are they tangible or intangible?
- Do they consist of stand-alone products or services, or bundles of products and services?
- Does your company have a small portfolio of offerings or a large portfolio of offerings?
The nature of the offering(s) will determine the most effective Sales Style (see item #5), the importance of Learning Rate to sales success, and desired prospecting and opportunity qualification approaches.
3. Sales Environment
- What kind of environment do your salespeople work in?
- Are they office-based or home based?
- Is most of their selling done over the telephone or in person?
Salespeople that work from a home office usually perform best if they are independent self-starters, whereas office- based salespeople may have the option of receiving more frequent direction and support from their sales manager.
4. Geography
- How many sales locations does your company have?
- Where are they located?
Different sales approaches are usually required to sell successfully in different locales such as downtown Manhattan (NY), Baton Rouge (LA), and Los Angeles (CA).
5. Sales Style
- Which sales styles (Consultative, Relationship, Display, Hard Closer) are most effective in your target markets?
The nature of the customer and the complexity of the offering(s) should be considered when answering this question.
6. Relationship Preference
- Is your company more concerned about:
- Finding new customers?
- Increasing account penetration and/or managing long-term relationships?
- Both?
- If both, please estimate a percentage for each.
Salespeople usually prefer one type of sales role to the other. If you truly want to accomplish both new business and account penetration sales goals, you may want to consider staffing two different sales positions.
7. Sales Cycle Length
- How often do your salespeople have opportunities to close sales?
- Several per day?
- Several per month?
- Several per year?
If a salesperson receives gratification from closing sales, he or she won’t be happy in a role that offers just a handful of opportunities per year to exercise this skill. This kind of salesperson is often better suited to selling products or services that have shorter sales cycles and higher volumes of opportunities.
8. Prospecting
- Do prospects come to your salespeople, or must your salespeople seek them out?
- If the answer is “both”, estimate a percentage for each.
If your sales position requires a lot of outbound prospecting, your salespeople will need more energy, mental toughness, and a positive attitude.
Seven additional parameters are covered in Part 2 of this article.
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Alan Rigg
When I broke into sales in 1986, I read several books that talked about how important it was to set goals if you wanted to achieve success. I bought into the idea completely, and started writing down extensive lists of goals that I expected to achieve, along with due dates for each goal. Per the advice in the books, I made my goals nice and lofty. You know, make a six-figure income, buy lots of nice toys, go on fabulous vacations, that kind of stuff. And, every day, several times a day, I visualized what my life would be like after I had achieved my goals.
So, how much impact did those goal-setting and visualization exercises have on my performance?
None – nada – zero – zilch! During the next two years I didn’t come CLOSE to achieving ANY of my goals! In fact, I wasn’t even making enough money to pay my bills. I had to keep tapping credit cards to make ends meet, and I was going further and further into debt.
I finally became so disgusted that I threw away the books and tore up my pages of written goals. I decided that, from that point on, I would focus on my daily activities. In other words, I would work hard to do the right things at the right time, each and every day. If I accomplished that, I figured that I would at least be able to pay my bills and not go any further into debt.
I became a fanatic about prioritizing my activities. I would ask myself at least 20 times a day:
- Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing right now to make a sale?
- Can I push off what I’m doing right now to before or after selling hours, and use this time to do something that I can’t do before or after hours?"
Do you know what I discovered when I started asking myself those questions? I discovered that I was not prioritizing my daily activities very well. In fact, a lot of the time I was just responding to requests whenever they came up. For a salesperson, that’s suicide. After all, time is the only inventory we have!
Because of my new focus on doing the right activities at the right time, I started asking people when they needed the things they were asking me for, and why they needed them then. Frequently we came to the joint conclusion that the tasks were not as time-sensitive as the original request made them appear to be. I could push off many tasks to late in the day or early in the morning. That gave me more time for prospecting and qualifying opportunities during selling hours (9:00 to 4:00).
Yes, I worked a lot of ten to twelve hour days because of the amount of work that I pushed off to before and after selling hours. But, you know what? It was worth it!
After one year I had increased my income by approximately 45%. I could finally pay all of my bills each month, make more than the minimum payment against my credit cards, and still have some money left over for fun. The second year I DOUBLED the prior year’s income and achieved the six-figure income that I had NEVER approached when it was one of my written goals. I was able to pay off all of my credit cards, make a down payment on a new car, save some money, and begin to enjoy "the good life".
Conclusion
If setting goals has worked for you, by all means, keep doing it! However, if you have been less successful that you want to be in achieving your goals, try the alternative approach that is described in this article. Focus on your daily activities. Ask yourself 20 times a day, "Am I doing the most important thing that I could be doing right now to make a sale? Can I push off what I am doing right now to before or after selling hours, and use this time to do something that I can’t do before or after hours?"
Be honest with yourself when you answer these questions, and hold yourself accountable. Become a master at prioritization. Switching your mental focus from goals to activities could be your path to success, just like it was for me!
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His 80/20 Selling System™ helps business owners, executives, and managers end the frustration of 80/20 sales team performance, where 20% of salespeople produce 80% of sales. For more information and more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020salesperformance.com.
Written by Mark Ferguson COO Rapid Success Partners
I can no longer sit in the shadows and bear the pain that I feel from business owners across the world. I feel your need for clarity, direction, and positive change. I have tried in so many ways to make a difference and help where no one else has. Please know that together we conquer, divided we fall. I have offered to help business owners who we love and believe can make such a big difference in the world with some quick strategy tips over the last month. Despite my call to help from a place that is beyond my own comprehension only two organizations asked for help including the World Bank. Only two out of thousand upon thousands of readers.
I know that I should just give up and take care of myself and not care about everyone around me. At least that is what most people see business as, SURVIVAL OF THE FITEST. For some reason though I am not able to get the feeling out of me, that I am wasting my gifts and not doing more of what GOD or what you would call it has sent me here to do. So, here I am again to help and offer yet again parts of my spirit and expertise to help on a first come first serve basis with Marketing Strategy Questions or Life Questions. I am also here to say I know where you are and you are not alone. My whole life I have been overcoming obstacles and you can to:
- From an early age I overcame multiple marriages, abuse of my mother, and a father who wanted more out of life that didn’t include me
- I had multiple medical issues as a child and was in and out of the doctor
- As a young adult I had 2 near death experiences that changed my perspective on life, the world, and people for ever
- Was disconnected in highschool and left at 9th grade, later tested out and went to college
- People said I would never get into college without transcripts, and SAT
- Was accepted into North Lake Junior College on probation, made honor roll, and was allowed to stay.
- Was told could not get into 4 year college for same reasons, later was accepted to Dallas Baptist University where I graduate with honors. All with No Highschool, SAT, or recommendations
- Told I would most likely not have children because of an operation I had when I was 11. I now wake up everyday and celebrate the joy of my 7 year old son.
Why would I tell you personal things instead of all my business success? Simply put we all have challenges in our life and can make it through. You can make it through. Some of us just have business challenges, some of us have personal ones, and even more have both.
Your friend the Kind Hearted Executive
Mark Ferguson
COO
Rapid Success Partners
mark (at) rapidsuccesspartners.com
Written by Alan Rigg
Another key reason why companies suffer from 80/20 performance is their processes for hiring, training and managing salespeople rely almost entirely upon SUBJECTIVE information. Think about it:
- What are resumes? They are an individual’s subjective portrayal of their capabilities and experiences.
- What occurs during an interview? Interviewees attempt to package their responses to questions in a manner that will make the best impression. Meanwhile, interviewers are forming personal opinions about candidates’ qualifications for the position.
I’m not suggesting that subjective information is useless. Subjective information is a valid and valuable component of any "people decision". However, if decisions based solely upon subjective information produce an undesirable result 80 percent of the time, doesn’t it make sense to consider making a change?
One way to introduce OBJECTIVE information into sales recruiting and management is through specialized sales assessment tests. I’m not referring to personality or behavioral tests like Myers-Briggs or DISC. Those types of tools are useful for learning how to communicate more effectively with someone. However, I have not found them to be useful for predicting whether someone will succeed in sales.
The specialized sales assessment tests that I’m referring to identify an individual’s strengths or weaknesses in the following areas:
- How rapidly does the individual learn new information? This talent is of particular importance if your company has a broad portfolio of products and services and you want your salespeople to sell the entire portfolio.
- How precisely and effectively does the individual communicate, both verbally and in writing? If your salespeople author a lot of proposals and/or e-mails, the quality of their writing will definitely impact their sales performance!
- How strong is the individual’s talent for asking insightful questions, picking out important pieces of information from the answers, and using this information to construct additional questions? This talent is critical for effective sales opportunity qualification.
- How strong is the individual’s talent for learning how to manage effective return on investment (ROI) conversations with prospects and customers? This talent is critical for increasing close rates by creating a context for price discussions.
- How energetic is the individual? How easy will it be for them to consistently maintain the level of productive activity required to achieve their sales targets?
- How effective is the individual at convincing prospects and customers to "get off the dime" and take action?
- How sociable is the individual? Do they enjoy interacting with others? Do they build rapport with strangers quickly?
- Can the individual successfully direct his or her own activities, or does the individual require frequent input and direction from a sales manager to stay on track?
- How will the individual respond when things don’t go their way? Will they start to whine and complain, or will they be able to "shake it off" and maintain a consistent level of productivity?
- How strong is the individual’s desire to be liked? Will they be able to maintain a "win-win" focus, or will they give away the store?
- How competitive is the individual? How confident are they in their ability to compete successfully?
- How emotionally tough is the individual? How do they respond to rejection?
- How dogged and determined is the individual in pursuing opportunities and overcoming roadblocks that arise during the sales process?
- Will the individual follow through on their commitments?
- How success oriented and outcome focused is the individual? Are they able to stay focused on the desired end result, or do they let themselves get bogged down in details along the way?
- Does the individual actually enjoy the activities involved in selling? If they don’t, chances are they won’t perform very well for very long.
Specialized sales assessment tests can also help existing salespeople that are struggling
How? First, they can be used to determine whether these individuals should be in sales. If an individual doesn’t have the talents required for success in your company’s sales job, there may be other roles in your organization where their talents and interests can be applied to mutual benefit. If there aren’t any such positions available, the kindest thing you can do is let them go. Why? Because it is NO fun to struggle in a job that is a poor fit!
Second, specialized sales assessment tests can help identify each salesperson’s unique training needs. Here is an example:
Two salespeople, Beth and Bill, work for the same company. Beth is weak in Sales Drive, which makes her reluctant to ask for orders. Bill is weak in Emotional Toughness, which makes him sensitive to rejection and limits his prospecting effectiveness. If Beth and Bill go through the same sales skills training course, how much improvement in sales performance should their company expect to see?
The answer is little or none. Why? Because Beth and Bill have completely different training needs that will NOT be addressed by basic sales skills training.
Beth would benefit the most from attending an assertiveness training class. She also needs coaching to help her recognize that failing to ask for orders denies her customers valuable solutions to costly business problems.
Bill needs to learn to not take rejection personally. He could also benefit from training that teaches positive thinking and other motivational techniques.
Unfortunately, unless each salesperson’s unique training needs are identified, and targeted training is supplied to address those specific needs, there isn’t much reason to expect the individual’s sales performance to improve.
Conclusion
Many "80/20" performance disparities result from an over-reliance on subjective information when making salesperson hiring and management decisions. The proposed solution is to add objective information (gathered via specialized sales assessment tests) to "people decision" processes. This one change can help companies increase the proportion of top performers on their sales teams and improve the performance of existing sales team members.
©2005-2008 Alan Rigg
About the Author
Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Sales Team Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building and Managing Top-Performing Sales Teams, and the companion book, How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: A Step-By-Step Guide to Achieving Top Sales Performance. His company, MySalesTest.com, provides specialized sales assessment tests that help business owners, executives, and managers avoid hiring mistakes and consistently hire more top sales performers. For more information and a FREE special report that will increase the effectiveness of your sales recruiting efforts, visit http://www.mysalestest.com.
Let’s say you want to blow up a lab. What do you do?
You take two explosive chemicals and mix them together, right?
But what if you took Na + Cl and mixed them together somehow.
What would you get? You’d get salt. What’s worse is that the lab would not be ‘blown up.’
And you’d be a ‘failure’. The more labs you tried to blow with Na + Cl, the more you’d fail. And the more you fail, the more you’re going to fail.
And this slides us right into why most of us struggle to write.
You see we don’t struggle to write an email. We don’t write, re-write, re-think and then write something boring.
Our emails are crisp. They have flow. And ebb. They often have a storyline. Drama creeps in inevitably.
And it keeps the attention of the reader.
So if we examine the issue closer, it’s not that you can’t write.
It’s that when put in the spot to write something like an article or a sales letter. That’s when you freeze. The words get clumsy. And droopy. And inevitably, the fear of ‘past failures’ kicks in. Heck, even I find it hard to write under those conditions.
Because writing is mostly a factor of enthusiasm.
Or pathos.
Or fear.
Or anger.
It’s driven by emotion.
Yes, you can sit down and write clinically, but the words become kinda yucky. But when you’re having a conversation like this—one on one—then you’re no longer writing.
I’m not writing. You’re not reading. We’re ‘talking’ to each other.
The words flow. And ebb.
They grab hold of a storyline.
The drama sits precociously waiting its turn.
And it keeps your attention as a reader.
So then what causes great writing?
Ooh, I hate to boil down ability to any three things, but here goes anyway:
1) Failure freezes the brain
You can’t write with failure in mind. If you sit down to write with past experiences of ‘writing failure,’ you will inevitably fail time and time again.
Your brain works on pattern recognition, and it sure as heck knows when to give up.
So when you sit down and write, past instances of failure pound your brain. Then you freeze. Then you go and find yourself some chocolate to soothe your frazzled neurons.
But will you ever learn to write that way? Of course not, because the failure stems from a lack of direction; a lack of structure.
2) Structure forces the brain into pattern recognition
Structure? Yes structure.
Without structure, it’s impossible to identify elements. You see writers don’t just write. Their brain cells scurry around pulling instances of writing structure.
It seems like the person is simply writing, but in fact their brains are operating pretty much like a computer. It’s using data that’s been written to your brain over the years. And it’s pulling out that data and memories at high speed and turning it into structure.
Structure may sound boring.
It’s not. The most creative things in the world would not be around if it weren’t for structure.
The Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, a snowflake, Windows Vista—they’re all built on structure (okay, so Windows Vista has flaky structure, but that just underlines the point of this article).
The basis is structure. The rest is embellishment.
Which takes us to the third part: A mentor.
3) Mentor: Speeding up the process
A mentor is not critical. I can indeed give you a recipe. And you could follow the steps. And with a little bit of luck, you’d not only cook a great ‘chook’ curry (that’s chicken curry) but also experience immense success.
And if you got praise for that ‘chook’ curry, you’d do it again. And again. Thereby building up a success mechanism in your brain.
And yes, you may still be absolutely hopeless at baking muffins, your chicken curry is a sheer delight. Of course, if you have a mentor you’ll be making chicken curries with far fewer mistakes.
A mentor helps.
A mentor sees mistakes you’ve missed. A mentor is a catalyst—but hey, catalysts are just meant to speed up the process. The process, when properly explained will work regardless of the presence of the mentor. But if you’re in a hurry (and most of us are) then someone looking over our shoulders is kinda nice. And should we get stuck, it prevents us from going scurrying back to Pt 1: Failure.
Which takes us back to our struggle.
The struggle starts in your brain.
You have no fear when writing an email.
You know the structure of how to put together a few hundred words. You’ve probably even had a mentor in the form of a book, a course, or a school teacher that taught you how to write.
And so you write. Without fear or failure.
It’s this structure that drives consistent results time after time.
And that’s the core of writing.
To be able to get consistent results on demand.
Kaboom!
©2001-2008 Psychotactics Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Wouldn’t you love to stumble upon a secret library of small business ideas?Find simple, yet electrifying ideas, on copywriting, public speaking, marketing strategies, sales conversion, psychological tactics and branding. Head down to http://www.psychotactics.com today and judge for yourself.
Few business leaders would deny the importance of organizational loyalty; perhaps fewer still believe they can achieve it the way they once did. After all, the lifetime contract expired long ago, and your people—especially your best people—are more likely to display loyalty to their careers than to you, their employer.
The very nature of the relationship between employers and employees has undergone a fundamental shift: Today, workers not only don’t expect to work for decades on end for the same company, but they don’t want to. They are largely disillusioned with the very idea of loyalty to organizations. But, at the same time, they don’t really want to shift employers every two to three years for their entire careers. Similarly, companies would grind to a halt if they had to replace large portions of the workforce on a similar schedule.
So where does this leave us? Is there a way for both employers and employees to strike a brand-new balance when it comes to loyalty—one that gives organizations the focus and expertise they need to compete and employees the career development opportunities they demand?
According to the experts interviewed by Update, the answer is yes, but only if companies are willing to rethink how they define loyalty and how they manage their people.
Reevaluating loyalty
Loyalty should not be viewed as an either/or proposition. It’s true, the experts say, that to produce their best work, employees must be loyal to the company and what it stands for. But "employees can give their employers 100 percent and provide great performance while furthering their own careers," says Joyce Gioia of The Herman Group, a consultancy based in Greensboro, North Carolina "The two aren’t mutually exclusive," especially when the skills that a person masters to further her own career are also what the company needs.
And when firms help workers acquire new skills that support their professional advancement, they often win those workers’ commitment—and attract loyal new employees. This gives rise to another important point: Employers can promote company loyalty by helping people grow out of their jobs—ideally, into new ones within the company.
But even when you can’t retain talent, it doesn’t mean departing employees weren’t loyal. Indeed, another mistaken assumption is that loyalty has to mean "forever." "One of my students expressed it well," says Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill. "He said, ‘It’s like dating: You can be faithful to the person you’re seeing now while you’re involved with him or her, but that doesn’t mean you won’t move on to dating someone else later.’" Nor should companies strive to keep all employees forever. "You don’t want blind loyalty," says Scott Brooks, an executive consultant at Minneapolis-based Gantz Wiley Research. "The best kind is when both parties are benefiting." Leigh Grantham, VP of marketing and administration at DeFuniak Springs, Florida-based electricity provider CHELCO, agrees: "I’d rather have a star performer for three years than a dud for life."
Balancing career and company loyalty
If an employee’s loyalties to his career and to an employer aren’t mutually exclusive, how can leaders ensure that the employee-employer relationship pays off for both parties? The most effective executives and managers are applying these strategies:
1. Align career growth with company goals. When a company helps its employees develop expertise that furthers their professional development and enables the company to address its thorniest challenges, both types of loyalty align powerfully. How to achieve this alignment? "Encourage managers to discuss their direct reports’ career goals with them as often as possible," advises business coach Gayle Lantz. "Managers need to help their people identify links between their own professional goals and the company’s goals. When people understand the larger business context in which the company is operating, they can more easily define ways to advance their own careers."
Of course, frank and frequent dialogue about careers can sometimes lead employees to part ways with their employer when they discover that they won’t be able to achieve their career goals. But if the process is handled skillfully, all parties profit in the long run.
The best kind of loyalty is when both parties are benefiting.
— Scott Brooks, Gantz Wiley Research
Grantham says that her company uses assessment tools and career coaches to identify employees’ strengths and decide how to best leverage those talents for the company’s good. The company also encourages employees to initiate conversations about how their strengths and talents might be best used in the organization. "When our employees are using their strengths," she says, "they find their work more satisfying and feel that they’re supporting their own career paths. Everyone benefits; it’s the best way to do business." At CHELCO, employees are encouraged to initiate meetings with their supervisors, their bosses’ boss, and career coaches to discuss career-path possibilities at the company. "These meetings are separate from performance reviews," says Grantham.
According to Grantham, one staff accountant at CHELCO recently benefited from this process. When the accountant expressed interest in a management position, her coach reminded her that her assessment indicated strengths in areas other than management. The accountant then acknowledged that her interest in management stemmed primarily from managerial positions’ earning potential. "She saw no other way to earn more," says Grantham. Based on her interest and commitment to furthering her career, as well as on her educational background and strengths—including attention to detail, adherence to rules, and persistence—the company offered her the position of revenue analyst. In this role, she provided more value to the organization and took on new challenges. She also increased her earning potential because the new position rated several grades higher than her former position in CHELCO’s job-factoring system.
It’s difficult for some managers to see the value in supporting a prized employee’s development, says Gratham. "They want to keep their stars. But if we get some resistance, we have managers talk with business coaches to better understand the long-term payoff of supporting employees’ development." Grantham also notes that it’s in managers’ best interest to encourage development, since another manager’s star employee most likely wants to transfer into their departments.
2. Design work with variety and autonomy. Jobs that provide variety and the freedom to make decisions and mistakes engender extensive loyalty, the experts note. Allowing people to take ownership of projects gives them the opportunity to develop new skills and, just as important, the chance to show what they can do.
A commitment to variety and freedom takes some organizational discipline—at the very least, firms must let employees know they can exercise choice. "When new account opportunities come along, we describe them at our Wednesday-morning staff meeting and ask, ‘Who has the interest and time to tackle this?’" says Garry Curtis, executive vice president at Washington, D.C.-based public relations firm Hager Sharp. In his earlier years at the firm, Curtis seized opportunities to master new skills such as creating television ads and public-service announcements by joining teams formed to serve new accounts.
3. Focus on relationships. For many employees, loyalty is born or cemented through relationships with supervisors and colleagues.
"The number one reason people leave an organization isn’t inadequate pay or benefits," says business writer John Putzier. "It’s the day-to-day relationship with their immediate superior." Leaders seeking to secure employees’ loyalty must work to create a positive bond.
How? "Be fair in distributing rewards and punishment," advises Donald P. Rogers, professor of international business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. John Chappelear, a professional coach and trainer, says, "Clarify your expectations, and make sure people have the resources and skills they need to fulfill those expectations."
Fostering supportive relationships among employees can further enhance their loyalty to your organization. "Enable people to work through conflicts constructively," says Kenneth Sole, president of Durham, New Hampshire-based consultancy Sole & Associates. "Many managers find this concept counterintuitive. But positive conflict resolution gives people the sense that ‘We’re in this together; we’re a team.’"
To leverage this principle, Sole advises managers to model effective conflict resolution as well as educate their teams about this powerful skill. "Read books on various conflict-resolution techniques," he suggests, "and regularly practice at least one technique that fits your style. As your comfort with conflict resolution grows, at least some of your direct reports will begin emulating you."
The lifetime employment contract was never the only way to build employee loyalty.
— Donald P. Rogers, Rollins College
4. Highlight the link between employees’ values and your company’s mission. "The lifetime employment contract was never the only way to build employee loyalty," says Rogers. "Emphasizing a company’s purpose—why we create wealth—also engenders loyalty," especially when employees see the connection between their values and the company’s mission.
At Medtronic, a medical-device developer in Minneapolis, the most important meeting every year isn’t the shareholders’ annual gathering. It’s the holiday program, broadcast to Medtronic’s 30,000 employees worldwide, featuring the stories of patients who have benefited from the company’s products. "Our people end up feeling personally involved in our company’s mission to restore people to full life," says Paul Erdahl, vice president of executive leadership and development. "They can see the end result of their work. Many of them are profoundly moved by the patients’ stories."
By putting a human face on its mission, Medtronic has achieved employee-retention rates above the industry average, says Erdahl. And it gets a whopping 95 percent favorable response rate to the employee-survey item "I have a clear understanding of Medtronic’s mission" and a 93 percent favorable response to "The work I do supports the Medtronic mission." Erdahl agrees that a company’s mission is especially compelling when patients’ lives are at stake. But organizations in any industry, he says, can find ways to help employees see how their daily work affects customers. 
Loyalty’s Bottom-Line Value
by Lauren Keller Johnson
Given what they know about the mobility of workers today, it can be difficult for companies to gauge just how much effort they should put into promoting loyalty. Consider the issue at the most practical level.
A loyal workforce saves money in the form of lower recruiting costs, fewer stranded clients, and less downtime. It also encourages knowledge acquisition and sharing. "The longer employees stay with a company," explains Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, "the more opportunity they have to develop the tacit knowledge needed to fulfill their responsibilities and the more they exchange it with others."
And how should employees value loyalty? From a point of pragmatism as well, perhaps. "The more unique and organizationally relevant a person’s expertise, the greater the likelihood that he or she will be able to wield power," Hill says.
About the author
Lauren Keller Johnson is a Massachusetts-based business writer. She can be reached at MUOpinion@hbsp.hrvard.edu.