All action that you take must be predicated on the necessity, not only to create an effective management relationship, but also to maintain it.

Thus, you need to consider alongside each other:

• The short-term – What will be the immediate impact of this? How will people respond? How will if affect the growing view people have of me as a manager? And will it do the job, get done whatever needs to be done and get it done effectively?
• The long-term – Does this set an unfortunate precedent? Is this an approach that makes sense long-term? Even if this causes upset now, will the logic of it be clear later or will it be promptly forgotten?

While matters of immediate urgency are, in a sense, a priority, always keep the long-term in mind.

Multiple Objectives

Your job is to get things done – to achieve your objectives. Doing this demands that you win, and keep, the goodwill and support of your team.

Therefore, get into the habit of considering:

• The effectiveness of your actions/decisions – will they achieve the job that needs to be done?
• The way your actions/decisions will be perceived – how will other people react?

Sometimes the response is positive. People approve the decision and applaud you for the line you have taken. In this case, you may want to maximize this effect. Sometimes you may feel that the response will be negative, in which case you may need to:

• Reconsider and select another way forward
• Take action, but explain why a particular approach is necessary
• Compensate for the negative reaction. Perhaps you need to do
  Something – you explain it but know it will still rankle, so you find an opportunity to balance it in some way, making it clear that it was exceptional

Nothing Is Forever

The environment in which you work is, no doubt, dynamic. Change is the order of the day. We may not know exactly what is coming but, during the course of your career as a manager, you can be sure that change will continue and that the pace of change will increase. Never forget this and help – and expect – your people to recognize it too.

As a manager you are effectively an agent for change. You must

• Constantly review everything (including procedures, systems and policies) to anticipate what needs changing
• Involve your team in this position, both in identifying areas for change and in promoting ideas about how change should be made
• Always be open-minded, and create a culture of open-mindedness amongst your team

Challenging the status quo – asking why? and actively prompting change, is a key part of your remit. Keep ahead – managing today while using yesterday’s methodology will never keep your team with you.

Maintaining Credibility

If you act like a good manager, then people will believe you are a good manager. Many things already mentioned have influence here. In addition, bear in mind that:

• You are judged not by the number of times you fail, but by the number of your successes – keep an eye on the ratio…
• You are more likely to succeed by sticking your neck out than by always playing it safe (through consideration and care are necessary)
• If you admit your mistakes, people will see that you are human and will help you avoid repeating them (and help themselves avoid making similar mistakes)
• You should never cut off your options until it is unavoidable – you may want the choice later
• You have to operate in a way that creates a persona that inspires respect and confidence – your success can rub off on others

Build On Success

The ongoing success of you and your operation involves a cycle of activity:

• Understanding the key things that can create success
• Fine-tuning and building in the experience of how things worked to improve what you do next
• Being conscious of how you do things as you do them
• Monitoring the results arising from what you do
• Planning and acting in accordance with that

Never rest on your laurels – even the best performance can be improved.

The post Why Sales Managers Should Focus on Today – Guest Post appeared first on Work.com blog.

Amy will be speaking at our upcoming webinar on coaching sales strength. Signup is HERE.

You know best what your strengths are and what energizes you.

Seems like a fundamental and obvious concept, right? The reality is, however, that this idea that we know ourselves best is constantly contradicted. In our culture of ubiquitous external feedback, we are raised by and function in a world that is forever telling us that IT knows best what we are really good at, what we like, and what we should be interested in. We are bombarded by this kind of feedback:

For students it is grades, progress reports, teacher conferences, and those crazy standardized tests. It soon becomes the number of friends, followers, views, likes and comments you are getting as well as your scores, badges, points and cred. In the workplace that feedback comes in performance reviews, areas of improvement, or the performance of your portfolio. The apps to which we are tethered daily tell us what our mood is, how well we are driving, even how much energy we are expending at any moment! And we won’t even get into pop culture and professional sports…

One effect of this “feedback culture” is that many people struggle to really explore and understand what their unique strengths are. Our culture’s deficit model, so focused on identifying and fixing our weaknesses, complicates this process even more. Instead of identifying and developing those areas in which we rock, we pinpoint and remediate our areas of weakness. This incredibly inefficient model wastes valuable time and energy on a process that, at the very least, makes us merely “less bad” at something.

It seems that we would want everyone on our organizational teams, in our families, and our communities to be able to share with us their true talents and bring those strengths to the game every day. To do that, each of us must take responsibility for sharing what it is that jazzes us, that puts us in the zone, and that we would like to volunteer to do more of.

You know best what your true talents are and what energizes you. So, the challenge is this: Resist the temptation to let the world tell you what you are doing well, and instead define, articulate, and volunteer your strengths wherever you can.

Originally posted HERE

The post You Know Best – Guest Post appeared first on Work.com blog.

In-Field training and coaching is an ideal opportunity for the Sales Director or Sales Manager to assess the ongoing training needs of their team.

The Logical In-Field Training Sequence

The logical approach to field accomplishment training is to break the call plan down into three sections:

• Before the call
• During the call
• After the call

Before The Call
Ensure that the salesperson is thinking in terms of their customer’s issues by asking:

“What are the customer’s needs/issues?”
“What is their potential?”
“What is their turnover?”
“What is the trend – is turnover increasing year on year?”
“Are they affected by competition (if any)?”
“What are their current commercial concerns?”
“What are their commercial objectives for this year?”

These questions ensure that the salesperson is aware that, whilst the overall aim is to sell the company’s product, the prime objective of the sales call is to sell answers to issues and satisfy needs.

Having established the prime objective, the manager now needs to confirm that the salesperson is properly equipped to achieve them.

Further questioning should establish
How will the call be opened?

Are they prepared for objections?

What questions are they going to ask to ascertain needs?

What benefits are they going to stress, and how?

What sales aids will they be using?

Are they prepared to ask for the order or gain a commitment?

Have they got all the necessary documentation?

During these questions, the manager should make a note of any variance in procedures or note points that have been omitted by the salesperson. The manager must now ensure that the salesperson fully understands and agrees the call plan. It may be necessary to rehearse or reinforce certain aspects of the call at this stage, if there is an indication of doubt or uncertainty on the part of the salesperson.

At this point, it is necessary for the manager to agree with the salesperson the part they intend to play during the call and how to best introduce them to the prospective client. They must also agree with the salesperson to what degree (if any) they are to be involved. To jump in, in order to save a sale, will put the manager in a very awkward situation – whether they succeed or fail, they cannot win. The golden rule is: Agree your role and stick to it.

During The Call
Never present a double-front to the customer. Stand or sit tactfully to one side away from the salesperson/client.

Watch and listen for any deviation from the agreed call-plan.

What were the reasons for the changes?

What effect did they have on the client, or salesperson?

Is the situation as envisaged?

What is being done badly?

What is being done well?

Is there a specific improvement since the last accompaniment?

After The Call
Human beings do not like to be told how bad they are – they need to be told how good they are and how they could be better. This is where the formula for effective field accompaniment is used to good effect.

Ask – Teach – Tell – Check – Thank

The use of this formula, embodied in a simple sequence, will enable the skilful manager to achieve:

Cheerful acceptance of correction

Full understanding of the fault

Elimination of the fault

Correct method followed in future

Maintenance of goodwill

Two principles to remember when applying the formula and sequence are:

• Curb yourself
• Stick to priorities

Curb yourself – This takes self-discipline and constant awareness that you are dealing with a human being with feelings of their own. If the sales call was unsuccessful, then it is an even bet the salesperson is fully aware of their shortcomings in terms of effect – i.e. they did not get the sale or a commitment to move to the next stage. The effect has already begun to hurt them most in terms of loss of earnings and achievement. Any reminders at this stage will only accelerate the demotivating forces of failure and create a barrier between the manager and the salesperson.

Stick to priorities – Ideally, aim at correcting one major weakness at a time. If the errors are numerous, it is far better to deal with them progressively during a series of meetings. Yet again, highlighting a list of errors in one session will only reinforce their feelings of failure.

Praise Them

Some managers are afraid to give praise because they feel it lowers their status. It does not lower the manager’s status at all! It establishes the manager’s right to give praise and makes them a bigger person in the eyes of their salespeople.

During the call, the manager is not only recording the weak points of a sales presentation, they are also noting the good. Keep praise factual, specific, and above all, sincere.

Question to Reveal – Ask
At this stage, the manager needs to ask the salesperson:

“Where do you think we could have improved our presentation?”

Or

“Where did we fail to convince our customer?”

Or

“Where did we deviate from our agreed plan?”

(N.B. Note the use of the words “we” and “our”)

By using these words, the manager is involving themselves with the salesperson’s shortcomings and not launching a direct attack. A self-diagnosed failing is easier for the ‘ego’ to accept and there is more of a chance that it will be remembered in the future. The manager needs to bear in mind that the salesperson may genuinely not know where they have gone wrong.

Skilful questioning, coupled with tact, will usually reveal these points.

Correct – Teach and Tell

This is a selling job and offers an opportunity for the manager to use the experience gained by their own efforts, and those they have observed from other salespeople during field accompaniments. They need to sell an improvement by teaching and telling the salesperson:

• How they should do it
• Why they should do it
• What would happen if they did it

In order to check, the manager now needs to:

Question for Understanding

People learn at varying speeds and if the training given is to be used effectively, then it needs to be fully understood – i.e. “OK Bill, let us go through it again to ensure that we have fully understood it.” or “OK Bill, let us benefit from one more check before we try it out on our next customer”.

Check him on the “How”, the “Why” and the “What” would happen if …” principles of training.

Habits

Habits are formed by continuous practice. Successful field training consists of getting salespeople to form good habits and we must ensure that they practice these good habits repeatedly. Check any tendency to depart from good habits from the beginning, ensure that they do not start bad work habits such as being late for appointments, untidy equipment, dirty car, etc.

In Summary

The success or failure of field training depends absolutely on the ability of the field trainer. If a salesperson fails, it is through either bad selection or bad training.

Originally posted HERE

The post Why Coaching Reps in the Field is So Important – Guest Post appeared first on Work.com blog.

Good post here from HBR “Why Customers Don’t Buy“.  Some good points to remember here for anyone involved in selling to larger organizations.  Any of these “stresses” may come into play on a deal. In my experience, the best salespeople understand these well and know how use these stresses to their advantage.

“Stresses” your propsective customer may be facing:

• Budgetary Stress
• Corporate-Citizenship Stress
• Organizational Stress
• Vendor Selection Stress
• Informational Stress
• Evaluation Committee Stress

Orignal post is here.

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Sales Coaching Master Class with Tony Robbins – On-Demand Webinar, watch HERE.

To Increase CRM Adoption: Connect All The Dots

In previous articles in this series on CRM adoption, we have focused on ways to boost support and participation from sales reps because, arguably, they are the single most important constituency to bring on board in order to convert CRM from a sales accounting tool into a high-performing revenue engine. However, as important as it is to accomplish that mission, you must also connect a few more dots in order to fully realize the benefits that an outstanding CRM system can provide for your entire organization.

At CCI, we make sure that our clients also connect these very important dots:

1. Be sure to include non-sales facing functions. Finance, HR, Support, Operations and other functions all impact customer experience, and their functions should also be integrated into the full CRM roll out rather than being housed in other applications
    
2. It is absolutely essential to integrate sales and marketing work streams. Sales and Marketing are often at odds with each other. A properly configured CRM supporting a highly coordinated and unified strategy can eliminate cross-departmental competition and significantly enhance planning and execution of sales activities.
    
3. Deliver effective training that focuses on strategy as well as function. CRMs can be highly complex and intricate. Therefore, reps often end up using CRMs as nothing more than hugely expensive address books to manage their customer contacts and record their sales. With the right training, sales makers will be able to smoothly and confidently navigate through all the functions of the system and use those functions to support sales activities in all of their accounts. Once reps are empowered to use the CRM to effectively and consistently drive revenue, CRM adoption ceases to present a problem.
    
4. Every step of the way, continue to remind sales makers of exactly how the CRM will drive revenue and benefit them. This critical final “dot” can’t be overemphasized. If the CRM doesn’t drive more revenue for the rep, the team and the company, it is truly a colossal waste of time and money. Because communication from upper management is often incomplete and training is generally insufficient or irrelevant, sales team members never get the vision or the skills to leverage the CRM for its ultimate purpose: driving more sales and improving productivity! Once sales reps discover the power at their fingertips and learn how to use it, sales numbers will begin to climb, enthusiasm for the process builds, adoption increases, and the CRM finally becomes the valuable tool it was always intended to be.

The post To Increase CRM Adoption: Connect All The Dots – Guest Post appeared first on Work.com blog.

A few things happened recently that, together, gave me cause to think about trust, the role it plays in our lives, and (for this post) in business.  Studies just published show that our trust levels are at an all-time low.  Main Street doesn’t trust Wall Street.  Joe Citizen is skeptical (if not paranoid) about what the government is doing, and Jane Employee doesn’t trust her company’s leadership.

Trust is one of the fundamental tenets on which today’s society exists. If, when lost in a city you don’t know, you ask someone for directions to the business meeting you’re attending, you generally follow the directions you’re given.  When driving down the street you trust that the cars coming against you will stay on their own side of the road. When you pay for parking with your credit card you assume that the fee you’re  charged will be the fee posted on the price schedule beside the pay machine. You expect that the contributions your employer committed to make to your pension or 401k are being made, and when you ask your friend for advice, you believe that the advice they give is – in their opinion at least – in your best interest.

Trust is at the heart of our everyday interactions, and central to the machine that fuels business.  In business relationships, such as the relationship between an employer and his or her employer, trust breeds productivity.  For employers, the more they trust their employees, the more the employee feels empowered and more inclined to naturally act in the interest of the business. Too much oversight or granular micromanagement can (sometimes unfairly) be seen as a lack of trust and is at worst serious demotivation.  On the other hand, not enough involvement can be perceived as being uncaring.  That’s a tough balance to strike.

According to Roderick Kramer of Stanford: “Gatekeeping measures may actually have contributed to declines in public trust in business.  These studies have found that ‘innocent employees’ who are subjected to additional compulsory oversight measures often become less committed to internal standards of honesty and integrity in the workplace.”

The thing about trust is; you can’t fake it.  You really need to care. And this is where actions speak louder that words. In fact, action is really the only language of trust. According to Charles Green, the author of The Trusted Advisor, trust can be measured, and combines Credibility, Reliability and Intimacy – all over the denominator of Self Orientation.

Self Orientation relates to how self or others focused you are. Green suggests that people will judge this based on whether:

• You achieve your goals through helping others achieve theirs.
• You interact with others through fear or blaming.
• You interact with others from a perspective of curiosity.
• In dealing with others, you are anchored to a particular outcome.
• You are seen as focusing on the longer term relationship rather than the immediate transaction.

In these difficult times (which unfortunately will be with us for quite a while yet), progression in business demands uncommon levels of trust. My recent observations would suggest that buyers are more nervous than ever before.  The emotions they experience throughout the sales cycle that I outlined in my post‘Understanding the buyer’s emotions’ are today disproportionately weighted to mitigate risk. Reward for trying something new is rare, and career progression is seen as being linked more to not screwing up than innovating.  For the wheels of commerce to keep turning, this has to change, and in the first instance each one of us has a role to play.

Many consultants and business advisors (The TAS Group included) extol the virtues of becoming a ‘trusted advisor’ to your customer.   The value of the Trusted Advisor has itself become questioned.  What happens if your trusted advisor is called Bernie Madoff?  You end up asking yourself “How did that happen?”  “What other trusted relationships do I have that I should question?” A recent article by Danielle Crittenden in the Huffington Post about the Sanford affair (Mark Sanford Governor S.C.) started with . . . “I always feel sorry for husbands on the morning after these political sex scandals break. How many thousands of dark looks are being exchanged across breakfast tables?” That’s the issue with trust.  It’s a complex interwoven fabric that’s not entirely self-controlled – but that doesn’t give us a license to abrogate our responsibility.

I’ve always taken a (perhaps naive) approach to trusting someone, both in my personal and business interactions. I believe that people are inherently honest, and until you betray my trust once, I will assume the best about you.  Through more than 30 years of business this has served me well. On occasion, it has cost me – but overall I would say it has enabled me to build relationships more quickly, and in business it has accelerated the pace at which I’ve developed partnerships that really work.

That’s why I was – at first – a little concerned as I began to read Roderick Kramer’s article in the June 2009 edition of Harvard Business Review. His opening take is that “Despite [the] deceit, greed and incompetence on a previously unimaginable scale, people are still trusting too much.” As I continued to read the article my disquiet abated; his proposition is less about trusting less, but more about not trusting blindly.  Healthy skepticism is just that – healthy, but too much skepticism can be a retardant to progress.

When I wrote that Early Failure is Better than Late Failure, I was addressing early qualification of opportunities in a sales cycle.  The principles therein though – and expounded in the title itself, could just as easily have referred to the development of trusting relationships.  By adopting an open and trusting approach to a new relationship or business partnership, it lays before you an avenue of trust that allows you to say …“Ok, let’s first be clear as to what we are both trying to achieve from this relationship.  Let’s figure out why this might fail, and together in an open and honest way, let’s make sure that if the partnership is going to fail, then it fails early.” Kramer suggests that our readiness to trust makes it likely that we will make mistakes, but I’d suggest that his proposition is only true when we don’t take a measured approach to trust. In fact Kramer sets out some guidelines for safer (my qualifier) trust. (The content in parentheses is mine.)

1. Know yourself (understand how you interpret cues you receive)
2. Start small (build in checkpoints early to trust where there’s manageable risk)
3. Write an escape clause (be clear about how, when, and under what circumstances, you should disengage)
4. Send strong signals (confront instances of trust abuse, quickly and clearly)
5. Recognize the other person’s dilemma (consider the other person’s perspective)
6. Look at roles as well as people (the role an individual plays – e.g. procurement officer – will inform their objectives and approach)
7. Remain vigilant and always question (trust assessment is not a one time event)

At a corporate level, organizations that fail to be transparent will suffer in two ways.  Firstly, through the increased regulation that is now deemed necessary on foot of the incredible breach of trust we’ve witnessed, organizations will have transparency forced upon them, but then it’s too late – the incredible benefits of a trusting culture will have been missed.  Secondly, customers and employees alike will focus more on self-preservation in their interactions with the organizations, and that will impact the bottom line in no uncertain terms.

In that same issue of Harvard Business Review, an accompanying article is called What’s Needed Next: A Culture of Candor. For me that’s the place to focus, and it gives guidelines to each of us (though its positioned to the leadership of companies – which for me let’s everyone else off the hook).  There should be no surprises here – but these are good practices to embrace or revisit. (Once again, the content in parentheses is mine.)

1. Tell the truth (Well, yes!)
2. Encourage people to speak the truth to power (Ignore hierarchy when it comes to truth and trust)
3. Reward contrarians (Allow all assumptions to be challenged)
4. Practice having unpleasant conversations (Sometimes being honest is unpleasant – but it’s always necessary)
5. Admit your mistakes (Then everyone else can)
6. Build organization support for transparency (Through actions, not just words)
7. Set information free. (Trust your employees to do the right thing)

My experience would suggest that trust is a potent weapon in sales, as in all of business. But someone has to show leadership and someone has to take the first step – which involves exposing themselves to some risk. But it’s worth it. Clarity results and relationships develop. Quickly you can discover whether the particular relationship (sale, contract, partnership) is worth pursuing and whether there is true alignment between the parties. When the parameters of mutual benefit is understood, and the parameters, borders, or guardrails are clearly established, the fog lifts, objectives are shared, and business velocity ensues.

If you fail to establish trust you will fail. Put yourself on the line. Remember, action is the only language of trust. Deliver more than you expect to receive.  You might be surprised at the return.

Orignally posted HERE

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