Email is a wonderful tool.   Most of us couldn’t survive without it.

Unfortunately, many (and perhaps most) people who sell use email (and other forms of digital messaging) incorrectly when pursuing sales.  I’m not talking about Marketing here; I’m talking about Growing Sales.

Email makes salespeople vulnerable to all sorts of ambiguity and assumptions, two of the biggest killers of sales growth.  Used improperly, email will cut immensely into your profit.

Most salespeople…:

• Tend to be optimists.

• Do not like to ask challenging or difficult questions.

• Are not skilled listeners.

• Make way too many assumptions.

• Live in hope.

• Spend much more time talking than learning.

• Fear any form of rejection

• Would prefer to present, demonstrate, and propose instead of listening, probing, learning, and understanding.  In other words, most salespeople do not like to sell.

Consequently, many salespeople choose to communicate via computer or digital device versus speaking with a prospect.   Many sellers actually tell themselves that an email is a substitute for a conversation.  It absolutely isn’t.  

When hearing a buyer’s response that is not crystal clear, many sellers prefer NOT to challenge or gain clarity.   Email provides a buffer layer, forming a safety barrier to prevent us from hearing something we may not wish to hear, protect our egos from damage.  But effective salespeople understand that courage is a core competency, so they power through their fears. 

Some salespeople believe that sending emails saves time.   Maybe so, but it will also cost you sales.  Tons of them.  Here’s why…

If you don’t happen to be in the 0.5% of companies that either have an incredible price advantage, or a product or service that is spectacularly unique, you have serious competition.  We also know that most buyers do not trust salespeople, and that very few buyers are completely open and honest in sharing their needs, thoughts, fears, issues, preferences, budgets, and more.  Getting to the truth requires breaking down barriers, and rigorous discovery.

When operating in this type of competitive, ambiguous environment, your salespeople must be able to differentiate themselves.  The less they learn and the more assumptions they make, the quicker they will eliminate themselves from consideration.  A Most Valuable Salesperson needs to bond better and stand out with prospects, and they need to listen, probe, and understand more than their competitors.   Superior salespeople connect at a much deeper level and develop more trust with prospects, and they make the process of buying feel more enjoyable than the others.  This can never be accomplished via email or text.  It all requires live conversations, active listening and consultative interactions.  Using email in place of conversations actually prevents differentiation, tending to commoditize any salesperson who relies heavily upon it.

Written communication does not allow for listening, empathy, follow up questions, nuance, reading of body language/tonality, deep personal connection, bonding, rapport, or pain discovery.

Email can be an essential part of communication for selling, but only when used correctly.   Effective uses of email include confirming previous conversations to ensure clarity, confirming appointments, and sending essential documents.   All other sales activities should involve conversations.  

Most salespeople use email as a crutch.  Instead of using it effectively, weak salespeople use email as a replacement.   They email so they can avoid directly hearing “bad news” or rejection.  They use it so they can avoid difficult conversations, so they can hear selectively and believe the best, instead of learning the truth.  They use it to avoid having to ask tough or challenging questions.  They use it so they can make happy assumptions and live in hope.  They use it so they may interpret ambiguity in a way that it becomes “good news”.  They use it so they may remain optimistic.  They use email to feel less vulnerable.

In other words, they use it in place of growing sales.

If you or your salespeople have fallen victim to destructive email behavior, and you’re ready to break out and grow your sales, you can begin by setting a goal this month to send half as many emails and replace each with an effective, consultative conversation of trust and discovery. 

Hope this helps…

Joe 

Copyright © Joe Zente 2020.  All Rights Reserved.

Most business owners fall into two primary categories; those that enjoy selling and those that wished they would never need to think about selling.  After working with hundreds of entrepreneurs, I’ve discovered that both types of leaders possess somewhat different, but equally destructive, profit-killing blind spots when it comes to building consistent, visible, predictable, scalable sales organizations. 

Owners that “know how to sell” generally enjoy buyer interaction.  They feel fairly comfortable in sales scenarios, and often expect their reps to “just do what I do…”. Unfortunately, this approach lacks process, so is much easier said than done. Frustration follows when results fall short.

Conversely, “non-selling owners” are sometimes acutely aware of their sales-related shortcomings and struggles. Most are clear that they neither understand how to sell themselves, nor how to build an effective sales organization.  Many believe that some individuals are just “natural born salespeople”, and that they didn’t inherit the right gene. A good percentage of the non-sellers hope that Sales will magically and organically occur by simply creating a better mousetrap. But hope is always a bad strategy and Sales is the life blood of any company.  When their hope fails to produce desired results, many non-selling owners choose to delegate new business development to any brave soul willing to step up and take the baton.  Consequently, these benevolent (but often unskilled) volunteers forge ahead in pursuit of fleeting success with little or no structure, accountability, management, or training. A recipe for disaster.  The odds are stacked against them. Again, poor results follow.

To complicate sales success a bit further, consider these interesting statistics…:

Only 17% of salespeople think they are pushy, but FIFTY percent of prospects think that people selling to them are pushy: Tell me, do you enjoy buying from pushy salespeople?

Convinc-aholicsä are among the least successful salespeople on the planet.  Imagine how many more sales your company can generate by eliminating pushiness.

Only 39% of people selling today ever intended to go into Sales:  Sales is a wacky profession.  You’d be hard pressed to find a student who majored in Selling in college, or even one who took a single selling class at any time before (or after) entering the workforce.  In fact, most people currently employed as sales representatives have never participated in any professional sales training program.  If you wanted to go scuba diving, would you ever jump into the water without knowing what to do or how to do it?

The sales “profession” is loaded with individuals with formal education in liberal arts, marketing, history, business, finance, biology, etc…  In other words, just about all “salespeople” chose to not pursue a sales career.  The vast majority entered the sales profession by DEFAULT. Consequently, the vast majority of people responsible for selling today lack the passion, commitment, skills, and training necessary to be successful.

Only 3% of surveyed buyers trust salespeople: Yikes.  The job of your salesperson is to learn where a buyer is, where they wish to be, what is missing, if they have enough pain, money, and decision power to make a purchase, and if/how your company might possibly help. In the absence of trust, do you think a salesperson will learn the truth about any of this?

Only 24.3% of salespeople exceeded their quota last year: Most salespeople fail, and fail big. 

We know that the majority of the “sales profession” is comprised of non-professionals.

So is it any surprise that more than three-quarters of sales reps fail?

5000 C-Level buyers were asked: “What is the single most important factor that causes you to select one vendor over another?”         

9% answered — “Price”

                                19% answered — “Company Reputation”

                                                19% answered — “Perception of Quality or Service”

and…

53% of C-Level buyers answered that their interaction with the company representative was the PRIMARY DECIDING FACTOR in their purchase decision. In other words, a buyer’s interaction with your salesperson likely has a greater influence on their purchase decision than Price, Reputation, Quality, and Service combined.

These facts and statistics may seem daunting, but they can all translate into massive profit growth for any owner wishing to take advantage of the huge opportunity they present.  The fact that the stats demonstrate tons of mediocrity can be great news for you. More precisely, the sales-proficiency bar is so low that just a small percentage of improvement can have a substantial impact on your company’s growth, value, and market share.  With this in mind, here are a few actions you can take to start the new decade off with a bang, and to begin to develop a world-class sales effort.

Adopt, develop, and nurture a true consultative sales process and philosophy. Pushy salespeople that are not trusted by prospects are donating tons of new business and profit growth to your competitors.  I’m not talking about lip-service here. Many owners and salespeople talk about the importance of consultative selling.  Few take the steps required to achieve it. Adoption requires a commitment, but the results are well worth the investment.

If you are seeking to grow and adopt an effective Locate, Land, & Launch^Ò process to ensure you are adding the right players on your sales team; hire slow and fire fast.  And get serious about your new-salesperson on-boarding program.  It is always much easier to win the game with superior athletes.

Adopt an effective, time-efficient Sales Management process.  Sales management can be extremely difficult in the absence of an effective sales process and recruitment process, but management becomes simple when these processes are in place.

The only difference between highly successful companies and those that continually struggle is how they decide to invest their very limited time, money and resources. Most companies invest tremendous volumes of time and money in pursuit of creating superior products, services, and company reputation.  But remember these statistics.  The creation of a consistent, scalable sales organization does require a commitment and some investment.  But an investment in sales effectiveness will far exceed just about any other you might choose for your company, in both the long and short term. An productive, consistent sales organization is the highly differentiated gift that keeps on giving, year after year.

Best wishes for 2020 and the decade to come…

Copyright © Joe Zente 2020.  All Rights Reserved.

During the last quarter each year, most business owners focus their attention on reeling in the year’s numbers, while also finalizing a plan to build a better, stronger company for the coming year and beyond.

It is no secret that failing to plan is planning to fail.  We also know that many private businesses that do construct a plan often fall short when it comes execution.  Despite these facts, and some relatively long odds against building a consistent, scalable, high-performance company, most private business owners plan poorly (or worse, not at all).  A large percentage of owners consistently choose to devote their attention to urgencies, busy-ness, and much less impactful activities, than to using a simple, time-tested formula for success.  They don’t fall short for lack of effort, they simply focus their attention upon low-value activities and projects, creating the need to work much harder than necessary.

Sometimes planning fails due to a lack of honesty and transparency, and/or a surplus of hope and optimism.  Optimism is great, but the planning process is a time to get very real. 

Finally, private companies tend to take on the behaviors, mindset, strengths, and weaknesses of their owner.  It is therefore not surprising at all to discover that most organizations will reproduce the same successes (and failures) year after year. In other words, change always starts at the top, and most people love to live inside their comfort zone. So, if you don’t choose to change and adopt new, more productive habits, please don’t hold your breath waiting for your employees to change. 

Planning and execution take work, focus, and a bit of time. If we’re going to invest all this energy in creating an effective, executable plan, it seems to make a hell of a lot of sense to do it right, doesn’t it?  There are a number of good planning process protocols available to help your organization develop clear goals, strategies, action plans, KPIs, and more.  Independent of which process you select, you could gain huge additional benefit by asking yourself just a few brutally honest, highly impactful questions.  These questions form the foundation of the difference between planning as an exercise and Planning for Success. Answer them before you begin the planning process, then again near the end of it (if you do, you’ll likely find that your answers will change).

Honestly completing these steps will double the effectiveness of your planning process, significantly increase your ability to execute your plans, and help turn your goals into reality…:  

• What am I committed to do in 2020 to stop being busy and start being productive? 
• What percentage of my time do I currently spend working below my pay scale (aka:  Which tasks and responsibilities will I personally commit to delegate, starting today?) 
• What projects and activities will I stop doing in 2020 to make room for the new initiatives I intend to start doing? 
• How is groupthink effecting our objectivity, judgment, and planning, and what proactive actions or processes will we implement to eliminate it?
• What is the most difficult part of achieving our 2020 strategic plan?  Do we really have the people and processes in place to address it, or are we just living in hope? 
• Should we focus upon becoming a bigger fish, or identifying a smaller pond? 
• How effective is my Sales Manager at executing my strategies to build a world-class sales machine? 
• Are we really different and better, or do we just keep telling ourselves that we are? 
• Am I personally walking my talk? 
• What processes and people are in place to inject accountability and alignment into my team?  Are they effective, or do they need to be improved? 
• What commitments will I make to ensure that I remain personally accountable? 
• Can I benefit from additional coaching? 
• Can I benefit from more peer learning? 
• What can make our beautiful plan blow up, and does it make sense to discuss contingencies for this possibility right now? 
• What commitments will I make today to become a better leader? 
• Are there any questions I’ve been avoiding asking myself, for fear that I don’t want to face the answer?
• What is the one thing I can commit to completing this quarter, that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?

Note: After you complete this personal assessment, you may wish to get together with your team and substitute “we” for “I” in most of these questions, but please understand that all of the people in your company are currently behaving the way they do because that is how they choose to behave, and that they are paying close attention to the example you set. Remember, if you expect your employees to change and grow, the change must begin in your office.

The questions listed above have been extracted and compiled by observing the planning processes of hundreds of highly successful business owners.  If you have additional hard-hitting questions you’ve found to make traditional planning processes more effective, I would appreciate if you would share them. 

Thanks and Best Wishes for an Amazing 2020!

Copyright © Joe Zente 2019.  All Rights Reserved.

A recent survey at MIT Sloan of more than 400 CEOs revealed that the ability to execute strategy was their number one challenge, ahead of innovation, geopolitical instability, and top-line growth.   These results closely mirror my own empirical experience working withhundreds of private business owners.   Overwhelming data from many studies prove that the vast majority of organizations are decent at developing strategies, but suck at execution.

A solid business plan is certainly important, but I have often witnessed companies with first-rate strategies, deep pockets, or a better mouse trap get stomped by competitors with a lesser strategy and better execution.    Simply stated, companies that execute win.

How would you rate your own organization’s ability to consistently execute?

Do you have a specific plan to close your execution gap?

How is it working for you?

Like all issues facing your company today, the problem (and solution) resides in the CEO’s office.   When it comes to execution, the entrepreneurial bell-curve consists of three main categories of owners:

 1.  Winners:   Those owners that execute consistently and thrive.

 2.  The Majority:  Those that constantly struggle to survive.

 3.  Wheel-Spinners:   Those that fail consistently.

Wheel-Spinners spend the vast majority of their time and resources putting out fires, working inside their business, addressing tactical urgencies, and allowing distractions or shiny objects to govern their behaviors and activities.  The Majority also exhibits similar behaviors, except they do so to a slightly lesser extent.

Winners choose to think, act, and behave differently.  Skillfully.  Here are just a few of the distinct characteristics of Winners…:

·         Winners think, and therefore speak, differently than most owners to themselves and others.

·         Winners understand that there is no more powerful force than focused energy.   They choose to use their limited time, money, energy, and resources wisely.  (This sounds trite, but most owners make other choices!)

·         Winners understand that they can do anything, but that they cannot do everything.   They consequently make sure to commit sufficient, personal time each and every month to work on, versus in, their business.  And they make sure they keep this commitment.  No matter what.  Winners unconditionally commit. 

·         Winners understand the difference between hard work and smart work.  They choose to focus upon smart work.  They do not care about keeping busy.  They know (and tons of research shows) that most busy work is wasted energy (aka:   wheel-spinning).   Winners only care about keeping productive.  They care about results.

·         Winners understand that there is nothing they can do in their business that will have a greater impact on achieving their personal and business vision and goals.

·         You will rarely (if ever) hear a Winner say they “don’t have time”, or “they don’t have money” or they are “really busy”.  Winners know that everyone has 24 hours in a day, and that everyone spends their limited time and money on something.  

·         Winners understand that success and excellence require personal humility, self-awareness, and discipline.  They also understand that consistent execution requires the ability to learn faster than their competitors, and they know they cannot succeed alone.  

·         Consequently, Winners embrace assessments, criticism, and feedback and make sure to proactively seek out the assistance of other owners, coaches, accountability partners, and peer support groups.

If you believe you have an Execution Gap, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.   In fact, why would you even try, when you already have the formula?

You can close your gap by simply modeling the behavior of Winners.

I hope you will start today and will share your experience and significant results.

Copyright © Joe Zente  2019.  All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve been seeking ways to increase the selling effectiveness of yourself or your sales team, you have probably noticed that buying behavior has changed over the last decade, and that it might be a good idea to adapt your selling approach to accommodate these changes.

You may have also learned about some new sales processes, strategies, models, skills, and techniques designed to improve win rates in today’s digital, information-rich environment.

I agree that each of these attributes contribute greatly to effective selling.  In fact, we have helped hundreds of organizations to embed powerful sales strategies and processes, and have trained thousands of salespeople to develop the skills to deploy them.  However, even the best processes and training programs will have diminished impact in the absence of the most important selling attribute, an empowering belief system.

We all possess beliefs.  When it comes to selling, some of these beliefs empower effective selling, while others detract.  Some popular beliefs actually torpedo any prospect of generating a sale. 

A person’s beliefs drive every aspect of their selling behavior.   Let me say this again.  A salesperson’s beliefs drive every aspect of their behavior.

Quite simply, beliefs determine selling success.

Some beliefs support effective selling, other beliefs limit selling effectiveness.   Interestingly, extensive research shows that most salespeople think they have an empowering set of beliefs.  In reality, the opposite is true.

A seller’s beliefs have a dramatic effect on the words they choose.  Beliefs also control a salesperson’s tonality, their body language, their questions, how they listen, what they hear, what they miss, how much they talk, their intent, how much time they spend selling (versus wheel-spinning), how often they leave their comfort zone, and much, much more. 

Most importantly, these behaviors have a huge impact on how a salesperson is perceived by a buyer.  And in the vast majority of cases, buyer perception will determine who gets the sale.  Period.

The belief system of a salesperson lies squarely at the core of selling success.  Your beliefs do not only have significant correlation to your results, they have the greatest correlation.  Even if a person has learned a great sales process and even if they have developed some selling skills, they will never break out of mediocrity unless they develop an empowering set of beliefs. 

So, if you want to sell more (a lot more), start by changing your beliefs:

1.  Understand the difference between beliefs that empower effective selling, and those that limit effectiveness.

2.  Commit to replacing all your limiting beliefs with empowering ones.

3.  Share empowering beliefs with others on your sales team to accelerate the speed of your learning and support each other through reinforcement.

You’ve developed your current set of beliefs over the course of your entire lifetime, so developing a new set will not occur overnight.  Doing so will require a commitment, a practice and a bit of time.  However, you will begin to see positive effects quickly and I can promise the rewards will be well worth the investment.

And your new, empowering belief system will be the gift that keeps on giving.

Enjoy the journey.  If you’d like to share your results, or if you need any help, I’d love to hear from you…

Copyright © Joe Zente  2019.  All Rights Reserved.