One of the reality shows that I enjoy watching is Donald Trump’s Apprentice. One of the big kicks I get from the show is watching people and assessing their personalities without the benefit of a personnel assessment. Since one of the facets of my career is working with companies on better understanding people through the use of the personality assessment test the Predictive Index®. Watching the contestants complain about what others do is more meaningful as I understand how people are innately hardwired. The interesting fact is that the problems caused are because of the way people are hard wired and the solution is also because of the way people are hard wired.
The last season was the Celebrity Apprentice version which leads to my comments about persistence. This year’s winner – Bret Michaels from the rock band Poison – is a great example of 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.
At the beginning of the show he was pretty much discounted by all (including Trump) as an empty headed rocker. Although he was the Project Manager for the first task, his leadership abilities and staff motivation were questionable at best. However, his team did win their project. He made mistakes, took some chances that did not work out well, mishandled a few situations. But he kept on persevering. Despite his mistakes, he kept trying, he kept learning, he kept moving forward.
Whether or not someone believes that he should or should not have been the overall winner, the major point is that perseverance will deliver results! Learn for your mistakes, keep taking chances, don’t throw in the towel even when the odds are against you.
Every successful person has made mistakes, botched opportunities and even failed at things. But the common element of success is continuing to try and continuing to move forward. Anyone at any time can be successful! We have only ourselves that stand in the way!!!
What makes an effective Leader?
There are three components to leadership:
1) Followers
2) Inspiration
3) Strategic Vision that is simple and understandable
Effective leaders have all three components and use them in conjunction with one another to craft organizational alignment.
Followers:
Effective leaders have voluntary followers. People who of their own free will WANT to follow! Too often company leaders have involuntary followers – those that follow out of fear of losing their job or by fiat. That doesn't build employee engagement!
Inspiration:
Effective leaders are inspirational – they rally the troops. People want to hear them and get inspired by their message.
Strategic Visions:
Leaders have a simple, but clear message as part of their strategic planning approach. One that people can get behind, understand and is inspirational to attract more followers.
If you are a leader, can you answer an emphatic “yes” to the three statements above? If you cannot answer with the emphatic yes, contact Advisa – we specialize in transforming leaders into effective leaders!
The founders of the United States of America created the greatest strategic plan in the history of business. This plan created a clear vision (growth through individual responsibility) and the framework in which to operate (the bill of rights).
There has been some buzz recently on a new concept called Constitutional Sales Management. The purpose of this sales management strategy is to remind Sales Managers of how to manage their business development force during tougher economic times.
When times are good, sales managers tend to hold the reins on their business development sales force loosely. Yes, there are performance metrics and basic standards of compliance; however the sales managers allow their sales people a lot of freedom and independence in their roles. In good times, we tend to see improving sales performance. The independence yields engaged employees.
The interesting thing is what sales management does when times get tough. All of a sudden personal freedoms are restricted, more reporting is required, and commissions are cut. What happens? Sales continue to decline. Employee productivity and engagement is reduced.
The key is to strategically manage your sales force consistently – performance based with basic standards that are the same in good and bad times. When sales managers manage their force they same way in good and bad economic times sales are really strong in the good times, but sales do not slump as severely in bad times. Employee productivity is as good as it can be in both.
During a round table discussion as part of a professional group that I am a member, one of my associates relayed a very intriguing story that demonstrates the topic discussed above. His company was suffering through a sales slump and senior management brought in a “tough” new manager to straighten things out. She imposed unilateral rules stressing compliance over performance, increased reporting requirements and activity over results. What happened? Within the period of six months, three of their top ten performers quit. The same theme came about in all of the exit interviews – when times were good they let us have freedom and sell; when times are tough more and more cumbersome rules and regulations are added restricting freedoms.
“I’m a great sales person and can sell anything, so I’m going to a company that will let me perform without all of the restrictions.” One former sales person said during his exit interview. The basic personality of business development sales people is that they thrive best with less restictions and more rules and regulations are negative, not positive motivators.
The lesson to be learned is that sales people thrive with freedom, independence and being judged by performance. Keeping talent in tough times is essential for company success – don’t rule and regulate your best performers out the door!
This past week I met a client who has become a very good friend for a catch up lunch. During our lunch, I asked him about tools he has used to effectively coach his sales team for improving sales performance. He has been a sales manager for the past five years and his company just celebrated their best year in business in 2009.
He stated that the best motivational tool he has uncovered to provide effective sales training for his sales team was the Predictive Index® Personality Assessment. Since he was trained in the PI several years ago, the information the PI® provided to him was the most valuable source of information on how to effectively engage, motivate and coach his team.
He then said something that really stuck with me. “Jay, the key for me has not been coaching to sales success, but coaching to personal improvement and happiness. I view my job as having a positive impact on the person to improve them as a person! This may involve help in personal issues, career situations as well as more effectively dealing with prospects and customers.” He then added: “If your mission is to make a positive impact on people that will result in them improving personally, they then view you as a true coach and mentor as opposed to just the sales manager. With this approach, my team actually works harder, generates better results and enjoys their job and life at a much higher level.”
What great advice for all of us!
Here's a quick acronym about the psychology of selling that could help you improve sales performance... If you remember it!
S - Something needed or wanted by the other party
A - Ask questions to satisfy the customer or prospect's needs
L - Lead with questions to uncover the customer's or prospect's objectives in the sales process
E - Evolve from a sales person to a valued resource for the customer or prospect
S - Secure that the customer got what they wanted; assure that any issues or problems are corrected in a timely manner; making the sale beneficial to all parties involved!
Simple, but it might improve your sales skills if you can remember it!
Sales closing is not an event!
Sales closing is a process!
Most sales people look at closing as an event that occurs in the sales call. Changing ones mindset to looking at the closing process as part of the overall sales cycle will take the fear away from closing and yield improving sales performance.
Tips for effective sales closing:
1) Use the psychology of selling to remember that customers and prospects want what they want, not what you think they should buy.
2) Set the sales call agenda at the beginning of the meeting with a blank sheet of paper. This tells the customer or prospect that you do not have a preset sales call agenda, but are open to hearing what are their ideas, concerns and needs.
3) Place no more than three agenda items on the paper. Too many items will cloud the call with far to much to accomplish. Three items will keep the sales call focused and allow for ample investigation, presentation and questioning.
4) Keep in mind that sales closing starts from the minute you greet the customer or prospect.
5) While you may not close the sales during the meeting, the sales call objectives should be to close for next steps. This continues the sales process and allows for the closing process to be gradual in creating agreement with the customer or prospect on giving them the solution they seek.
Keep in mind the critical point behind sales closing -- sales closing begins as soon as you greet the customer or prospect, continues throughout the call and ends with agreement to move to next steps. Remembering that in every call will continue improving sales performance from your efforts.
The sales closing process is simply the agreement by the other party to continue down the sales path with the sales person's product or service.
Most sales people have a pre-arranged idea of their sales call objectives. Because of this mindset, most sales calls are not as effective as they could or should be.
When planning a sales call, keep one item in mind: Your sales call objectives should be all about determining what the prospect or customer wants. The psychology of selling is that people buy most often when they feel the sales person is more interested in their needs than their own!
Unfortunately, most sales people are more interested in their agenda than the prospect's or customer's agenda. This attitude results in frustration for both parties. With pre-determined sales call objectives the sales person may ask many questions, but miss the real need or intent of the customer or prospect.
Entering a sales call with the agenda of "What does the customer or prospect really need?" opens every call with a blank page. This blank page needs to be filled with items the customer or prospect wants and is interested in accomplishing. Entering a sales call with this in mind will greatly improve questioning of what is driving the prospect or customer to your product or service and that will lead to improving sales performance!
Many sales people do not really understand what they are supposed to do. They think their sales call objectives are pitching sales to prospects to get deals. Well, that is partially true and mostly false.
The real job of a professional sales person is to be a diagnostic master. Effective diagnosis of a prospect's needs is the most important part of improving sales performance.
The analogy:
You walk into your doctor's office for your appointment. The nurse puts you into an examination room to wait for the doctor.
The doctor walks in and immediately begins to talk.
"Man, you really look sick! Since I'm a doctor, I have all sorts of different medications I could prescribe for you so here is the list -- blah, blah, blah. Why don't you look at all those books in my book case, tell me what you have and then I'll give you some medicine for that and maybe even other things that are ailing you."
If that happened, I would hope that you would leave the office as that doctor was anything but professional. He just talked, threw out some ideas and left all of the investigation to you.
The above is exactly what happens on most sales calls by sales people. They walk in, tell the prospect how sick they are, prescribe the solution they are selling and leave.
The professional sales person realizes that before they can recommend, they need to ask questions ans diagnose the problem before they can make a recommendation. That is what you would expect from your doctor, right? The doctor asks questions to effectively diagnose the problem, the matches the medication with the need and then requests a follow up appointment to be sure the medication is working and you are feeling better.
This is the approach the professional sales person takes. Their approach is to be the sales doctor - asking questions, diagnosing the problems, doing a sales assessment and providing solutions to address the need and following up to ensure the solution is working!
The first person a prospect encounters is many times your best sales person as they create the first impression of the organization. We only have one opportunity to create a first impression! These words are paramount for every business.
A great example of the "first person is your best sales person" happened personally to me about five years ago.
I walked into the reception area of a prospective client and had something occur that will stay with me forever. The receptionist was on the telephone, but as I approached her desk, she stood up (yes stood up) and then said to the telephone caller "Would you please hold for a moment?" She then looked at me and enthusiastically said: "Welcome to our company! Please let me finish with this call and I'll be right with you!"
What an experience! I have been in hundreds of reception areas and that has never happened. Most of time the when the receptionist is on the telephone, they continue their conversation and then may (or may not) even attempt to acknowledge your presence. Has this happened to you? Does this occur in your organization?
After the receptionist finished her call, she walked over to me to take my coat, offer me a refreshment and escort me to the conference room for my meeting. Upon arrival at the conference room she looked at me and said: "I do hope your first impression of our company was positive!"
IT SURE WAS! I asked if she had a few minutes to answer a couple of questions. She said she only had a minute or so as she needed to get back to her desk, but would answer what she could.
My first question: "Who instructed you to greet customers by standing up?"
She responded: "No one. I just decided that I would give all people walking through my company's door an experience they would not forget. This is personal to me as I just hate it when I'm in a store and a clerk is on the telephone and ignoring me. I had to get dressed, put my make up on, get into the car and drive to the store -- but the person on the telephone still sitting at home with no effort to go to the location got first priority. I always thought that was a bit strange and vowed that if I was ever in the reverse position that the live person would get my full attention."
How simple. How direct. How wonderful my experience. Standing up, greeting them with enthusiasm, making me feel important to her and her company.
It worked. The memory of that experience will live with me always.
When I met with the CEO, I asked him specifically about his receptionist and if there was anything about their applicant screening process or personnel selection that found someone so unique. He told me that the first time he met her, she was a receptionist at one of his customers. Her approach to greeting people left an impression on him. When he was in search of a receptionist, he went to his customer to ask if he could interview her. His customer was in the process of selling his business and said sure.
The CEO then went on to tell me that she was the highest paid receptionist in his industry and was worth every penny. "She's my best sales person as she creates the first impression of my business that stays in the minds of people," he explained. "I have gotten more new business because of her and her first impression approach and I compensate her for that!"
What is the first impression your customers receive when they enter your company?
If it is not this memorable, then you are hurting your sales process!
Improving sales performance should be at top of mind for all senior executives.
Why?
NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMETHING IS SOLD!
These words need to be repeated by senior executives every day.
Unfortunately, many employees in an organization do not understand that sales is everything for every business.
Several years ago I was doing some consulting work for an automobile dealership evaluating their recruiting metrics and employee recruiting practices for their sales team. One of the administrative personnel came to me and said: "Why are we wasting all of this time and money on you? Our dealership would be in much better shape if we didn't even have sales people! They only cause me and my staff headaches."
"Wow," I replied in an almost a state of shock. "Why do you think this way?"
She stated: "Our best sales person sells a ton of cars, but we are always having problems with his paperwork, which creates more work for me and the admin staff. If we didn't have a sales staff we would still make a lot of money through parts and service without all of the headaches a sales team creates."
"Interesting point!" was my response. Then I asked: "Have you ever considered what would happen if management took your suggestion and eliminated the sales team? Let's paint that picture. Sure, service and parts sales would remain decent for a period of time without new car sales, but eventually their business would drop as selling new cars generates that service and associated parts need. The used car portion of the business would decline as no one would be bringing in their older cars for trade. Eventually, most of the revenue from service and parts would decline to a level that the dealership could not maintain its current level of employees. Less sales, less revenue, less profit, less jobs."
"I never thought of it that way" was her embarrassed reply to me.
Does this happen in your organization?
Do all of your personnel understand the importance of sales? Is every activity of your company geared toward improving sales performance? Is every employee engaged in the sales process knowing that the survival of the company is dependent upon sales?
If you answered "no" to any of the above, take time to re-evaluate your overall strategy.
Remember:
NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMETHING IS SOLD!
Most companies have some kind of Strategic Planning framework.
In many organizations, the senior management team will sequester themselves into a room for two to three days at a strategic planning retreat that will lead the organization forward into the next one, two or three years. While this event does create a road map for the company to move forward, it oftentimes stops at the end of the third day.
Senior management is proud of their accomplishments and has a nifty looking leather binder complete with all sorts of good buzz words, sales projections, marketing ideas, product enhancements, new markets to attack, and - sometimes - even contingencies if the economic data on which this is based upon changes.
And then the pretty strategic planning workshop book with all of the great ideas sits on the shelf and collects dust -- only to be looked at one year later. "Where did we go wrong?" "What happened?" are the comments if the strategic planning workshop goals are not met.
The key to effective Strategic Planning that creates true benefits is to move it from an event into a process. The strategic vision of the organization must be a "living document" that drives all of the organization's actions. It needs to be real, referenced daily or weekly, with decisions validated against how they fit with the vision.
For an effective strategic plan, the organization must:
1) Make sure every employee knows and understands their part in achieving the companies goals;
2) Initiatives should be clearly stated with only a few major targets per quarter. In other words, initiatives need to take on 90 day lives. People get involved with performing their job functions and the "hot item of the day" becomes the stale old bread from last week.
3) Strategic planning and evaluation should be done on a quarterly basis. This allows organization to adjust as market conditions change and reevaluate their goal numbers. Utilizing the quarterly message moves Strategic Planning from an event to a Process that becomes a natural part of the business activities of the company.
Moving to a Strategic Planning process will allow for implementation of sales forecasting, effective sales training and development when it is needed, promoting employees at the right time when their skill sets are in greatest need and hiring the right people at the right time.
Most sales training programs are not individually focused, but generic in their nature. The courses are designed as a "one size fits all." Improving sales performance occurs when you can identify the type of sales person you have, where their strengths and areas of improvement are in the sales process and if any after class coaching programs exists to make the improvements in an individual's sales results permanent.
Many of us have attended sales training courses, left feeling empowered by new information and techniques, but eventually sliding back into old habits due to the lack of any type of long term enforcement.
Key #1: What type of sales person do you have?
Two basic types of sales people exist - sales hunters and sales farmers. Sales hunters enjoy looking for new business and developing new leads. Sales farmers do best when given a warm account (the lead has been established) and will earn additional business by the good customer service they deliver. Sales hunters can farm, but thrive better when hunting. Asking sales farmers to hunt is oftentimes very painful for them. A personality assessment like the Predictive Index® can assist in determining if the sales person is a hunter or a farmer.
Key #2: Targeted sales training
Sales assessments like the Sales Skills Assessment Tool™ can help to identify where a sales person's selling strengths and areas of improvement occur. Providing generic training that does not address an individual's needs doesn't really provide the training and eventual results one desires from the training dollars invested.
Key #3: After training coaching
Coaching to reinforce the areas of improvement after the training course has ended will create more value for the sales training, provide real long term results and provide an ongoing assessment of the sales person's progress. Practice makes permanent!
As with any goal, the sales process training program needs to have a strategic plan with the type of results desired, a game plan for improving sales performance and constant reinforcement through motivational coaching techniques.
Several years ago a CEO of an international company was very skeptical of any type of personality assessment. He was convinced that any applicant screening test was basically just a bunch of psycho babble.
He was willing to do a strategic test of the Predictive Index® to determine if personality assessments could improve HR best practices in hiring employees and improving a new hire's productivity and long term retention.
We decided to look at six different positions. We developed the job profile for each position and candidates were submitted to me for the PI® evaluation. All candidates submitted to complete the PI® assessment had the appropriate back ground and skill set desired by the organization.
Over the period of the next month, all six position were filled. Here is where it becomes interesting.
Three of the candidates had the resume experience and a good PI® profile match to the job.
Three of the candidates had the resume experience, but not a good PI® profile match for the job.
The three new employees whose PI® profile matched the job position performed very well over the next six months!
The three employees whose PI® profile was not a good match for the job position struggled with their job and were all let go during that six month time period.
Coincidence? Not really. This CEO is now an ardent fan of the PI® and proved the value of this personality tool to himself. More importantly, he improved the quality of hire, their subsequent performance and the productivity of his organization.
In tougher economic times, most companies are not thinking about hiring people or hiring selection, but reducing workforce.
A personality assessment during times of staff reduction or reorganization can help your company operate more efficiently. We have all heard about the Peter Principle – promoting someone to their highest level of incompetence.
Why reorganize your work force and have the same thing happen – taking a good employee in a role and moving them into a role where they are less effective? The use of a personality assessment – Predictive Index® – will assist in realigning employees to perform at a higher level improving the effectiveness of the organization.
The Predictive Index® allows us to create an assessment of the needs of the job and then match the person to those needs. Arbitrarily assigning people to new job functions when reorganizing creates arbitrary results for the organization. All companies should consider a strategic selection policy when reorganizing due to economic downturns. The PI® can be used not only for selection, but can be a powerful employee development program, sales coaching instrument and supervisor training workshop.
In harder times, employee satisfaction directly correlates to higher work productivity, less employee conflicts, less need for management and supervisor interaction and better motivated staff!
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