What is your most Challenging Closing Scenario?  How are you going to deal with it?

The economy is uncertain.  Business leaders tell us more and more that their targeted sales prospects are becoming increasingly resistant to part with their money.   This translates into longer sales cycles, lower revenues, shrinking margins and growing frustration.

The same stalls and objections come up over and over, and executives want to know how to overcome them.  Do these sound familiar?

“I can’t afford it.”

“We don’t have it budgeted.”

“Can you offer me a better price?”

“It’s on the radar, but it’s not a priority this month.”

“I need to check with my (committee, boss, board, partner, etc..).”

“We’re really busy this month, so I don’t have time right now."

“Can you call me back next Tuesday…?”

“Can you send me some references?”

                                                                     and everyone’s favorite…

“I need to think about it.”

Each of these objections are quoted directly out of The Traditional Buyer’s Handbook for Dealing with Untrustworthy Salespeople.

 Salespeople ask me all the time: “What can I say to overcome these objections?” Unfortunately, this is the wrong question.  Here are some better questions:

• Who is CREATING the objections in the first place?

• What is it that your buyers are objecting to?

• Why are they really objecting?

• Instead of overcoming objections, wouldn’t it be better to AVOID them?

Salespeople are looking for simple phrases or silver bullets.  But this mindset and thinking is exactly what creates the problem in the first place.  They want to know how to SELL the buyer, instead of simply listening, understanding, facilitating mutual discovery, and helping solve problems to make people feel better.

What salespeople really need is a completely new paradigm.  They need to THINK differently.  Prospects only act like traditional buyers by tossing out objections when salespeople try to convince them to buy.  In other words, if you don’t act like a Salesman, they won’t (can’t) act like a Buyer.   

Objections all begin with YOU.   You create objections by your thinking and behavior.  You can ELIMINATE them in the same way.  

If you give Buyers nothing to object to, how can they object?

Stay tuned. I’ll be blogging more on this in coming weeks…

Copyright ©  Joe Zente  2011.   All Rights Reserved.

Are you stuck?

While there may be debate about the state of the nation’s economic future, many CEOs tell us today that they are experiencing the perfect storm of longer sales cycles, shrinking margins and greater competition.  Some believe that this may be a perfect time to capture new market share in anticipation of a turnaround. 

You may be trying to deal with this storm without a surplus of available cash, or under conditions of tight credit.  Business owners are frustrated with the lack of new business and the fact that few, if any, of their people relish the role of obtaining it.  Most have people in a selling role, but the results are sub-par.  Many feel they are being held hostage by mediocre salespeople who may have valuable information or relationships.  The answer to these seemingly perplexing situations is you.  By virtue of a simple choice, you possess much more power than you might think to dramatically upgrade your Sales Team and grow now.  Upgrading to a true sales culture will not only affect your top line revenue, but can also improve your margins and net profit.  Don’t feel over-whelmed—it’s much simpler than you might think.  If you decide to go for it, here are simple steps to follow: 

1.   Acknowledge the Brutal Facts:  If you want to upgrade to a powerful Sales Culture and reap the rewards that a powerful culture will bring, it is vital to realize that the very people you would like to change have chosen to behave in the way are currently behaving.  They act the way they do for one reason–because they want to.  So despite your strongest desires, they probably will not choose to do what you would like them to do – Hunt and Close.

2.   Needle in a Haystack:  Hunters and Closers represent a microscopic portion of the “salesperson population”.  In fact, only a very small percentage of people are really suitable for taking on any part of a sales or business development role.  If you have a small sales team, it is highly likely that you have NO Hunters or Closers.

3.   Use Effective Tools and Processes:  You must be able to identify that small percentage of people who can hunt and close.  This isn’t hard to do if you use the right types of assessment tools and processes.

4.   Raise Your Expectations, Trumpet Your Intentions:  This is not the time to be ambiguous or vague.  You must clearly communicate your unbridled commitment to create a powerful, lasting Sales Culture, especially to those who must carry part of the Sales Culture load.   For example, let’s say you want the regional managers at your professional services firm to go out and find local business customers, the customer service call center to become proactive by making outgoing calls, or your professional service providers to bring new clients into your firm.  In all of these cases, a common mistake management makes is to neglect the clear communication of expectations to those very people they would like to change.

5.  Appoint a Competent Culture Transformation Director:  Again, this is going to take steady commitment on your part.  But it will pay off.  Appoint someone who understands what needs to be accomplished as well as how to accomplish it.  Then hold them accountable for executing.

6.  Train and Coach:  Make sure that the chosen stakeholders are provided with the training they’ll need to succeed in this strange new world of selling and new business development.  The assessment tools can provide you with a development roadmap.

7.   Demonstrate a Crystal Clear Path to Success:  Don’t throw them out to sink or swim.  Even with the most talented of salespeople, it is up to you to clearly define what it is they should do and how often they should do it.

8.   Don’t Try to Push Water Up Hill:  You must get buy-in from the people that will participate in your culture transformation.

9.   No Surprises:  You must be clear as to how their success will be measured.

10.  Hold Them Accountable:  The Culture Transformation Director must hold the participants accountable to doing what they agreed to do.

A sluggish economy is the absolute best time to perform a Sales Culture Transformation.  With a simple choice, the right tools, and a simple checklist, you’ll be well on your way to higher revenues, increased profits and consistent performance.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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When I wrote my blog in September titled “Sales Training Doesn’t Work”, I had no idea that the emotional reaction from readers would rival the debate over Roe vs. Wade.  The article (http://zthree.com/blog/sales/sales-training-doesnt-work/) inspired vigorous debate among thousands of responders.

For some reason, the topic ignited a firestorm of responses ranging from “Joe–You are an idiot and have no idea what you are talking about”, to “I couldn’t agree more…”  Some respondents reacted only to the title and used their comments as an opportunity for self-promotion.  Some accused me of attempting to promote my own business.  Fortunately, most of you who took the time to read the article (versus reacting to the title) engaged in an extensive, on-going, interesting (and hopefully beneficial) commentary regarding:

* rational approaches that any business leader or sales executive can use to upgrade their sales.

* decision criteria to consider before investing in sales development.

* strategies and tactics to avoid wasting money in anticipation of ROI.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I am actually a huge proponent of sales training.  In fact, training is an essential component of any program designed to increase sales.  However, an investment in training will only reap dramatic, sustainable results if supplemented by a holistic program designed to take salespeople out of their comfort zones by transforming their thinking, resulting in productive, consistent behaviors.

I expect that this article will inspire additional ideas and suggestions.  So if you’ve been considering taking your sales to the next level, I would strongly encourage you to peruse the comments of the many professionals who have responded to both this blog and the original.  Doing so will likely save you lots of frustration and many thousands of dollars.

As always, thanks for sharing….

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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If you are considering investing in Sales Training in hopes of growing your Sales, please save your time and money.

Throughout my career as a salesperson, manager, corporate executive and entrepreneur, I have participated in dozens of well-known sales training programs.  I have run six businesses with great sales teams.  For the last 12 years, I have owned and directed a successful Sales Development company that has helped hundreds of excellent companies to build consistent, scalable, world-class sales teams.  I’ve created many training programs and have experienced sales training as a student, creator, teacher, and coach.  I have personally trained thousands of salespeople and sales managers.

I am writing to tell you that sales training programs rarely produce desired results. 

So whenever a business leader contacts me to ask if we can train their sales team, I ask them:

“What results are you expecting from training your salespeople and sales managers?”

Companies invest millions every year in sales training.  Some want to improve skills.  Some seek to educate.  Some feel an obligation to provide training.  Some leaders hope to improve morale.  Others just wish to feel good about making training available. 

Most provide sales training in hopes that it will improve top line results. 

These are all reasonable thoughts and objectives.  Unfortunately, training alone almost always inspires hope but typically produces very disappointing outcomes.   And with very good reason…

Most salespeople and managers, especially “experienced” ones, hate to leave their comfort zone. 

So the primary objective of training salespeople should be to change your salespeople.  This single issue will determine success or failure.  In order to produce real, quantifiable results, your salespeople must:

• Change their Beliefs & Attitudes
• Change their Strategies
• Change their Behaviors
• Change their Tactics

And unless they change, their beliefs, strategies, behaviors, tactics and results will not change.  Another waste of time and money…

Many large corporations believe they have internal resources such as trainers, sales managers, HR experts to provide training.  They may even remove their “best” salespeople from the field for this purpose.  They purchase train-the-trainer programs, have companies develop curriculums for them, and deploy their own personnel to attempt to train.  If they measure results by education, obligation, morale and feelings, these programs may achieve their goal.  However, if they expect to see results in the form of improvements in revenues, market share, new customers, or profit (all by-products of changing their salespeople’s behaviors and activities), they will fail.  These failures often come at enormous expense in time, money and lost opportunities.

To change a sales professional, a trainer must be able to do much more than recite a script, teach curriculums, demonstrate strategies & tactics and perform role plays.  Effective sales trainers must possess competencies far beyond selling skills and training.  There are common, recurrent, underlying reasons why salespeople behave as they do– why they only do what’s comfortable versus doing what their employer needs them to do.  In the absence of this understanding, all training will go for naught.  

These hidden insights can be uncovered quickly by using an effective sales force evaluation instrument.  But trainers must be able to go further than understanding the beliefs, self-talk and sales specific weaknesses that prevent salespeople from consistently doing what they should.  They must also be able to get salespeople to understand that their lack of success and inability to execute a plan and process has more to do with those hidden weaknesses than from not having the right strategy or tactic. 

An effective trainer must also understand how to help people systematically eradicate their weaknesses.  So a stand-alone training program, or even multiple programs offered over the course of a year, will almost always fail.  Salespeople must be changed via consistency in training and coaching, several times per month for at least six months.  Overcoming long-held weaknesses and head-trash requires as much attention as strategies and tactics.  Even then, if sales management has not been trained to provide effective coaching and hold salespeople accountable to these changes, it still won’t work!

So why does so much training not achieve the desired result? 

• The wrong people are delivering the training.
• The participant’s trainability, coachability and hidden weaknesses are not assessed in advance.
• There is not enough reinforcement.
• Salespeople sense a lack of true commitment or support on the part of management.  They sense that management will continue to tolerate their mediocrity. 
• The message hasn’t been delivered holistically, with enough frequency in the context of a congruent Sales and Sales Management development program.

  Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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Every week, I hear from business owners who are frustrated in the quality of the sales forecasts presented to them by their salespeople and sales managers.   In fact, the situation is getting worse and is exacerbated by the slowness of the economic recovery and the lackluster performance of mediocre salespeople.

I’m a big believer in the power of optimism and positive thinking, but there is absolutely no place for optimism when it comes to forecasting new sales.

If you are having difficulty believing in the quality (or quantity) of the sales projections you receive each month, it is likely that whoever is doing the forecasting is missing some very fundamental information.   Fortunately, there is a straightforward remedy to fixing this situation. 

For starters, a salesperson should never forecast a piece of business if he/she does not have a commitment to purchase from the Real Decision Maker (RDM) and crystal clear answers to the following questions (at a minimum):

• Does the RDM perceive a need?
• Is he/she willing to fix it?
• Do we really have a clear understanding of why the RDM must act now? (hint:  without urgency derived from personal pain, don’t hold your breath…)

• What is so great/special about us in the eyes of the RDM? (besides the fact that we think we’re the best)
• Does the RDM trust us more than our competition?
• Exactly how much money is available to spend and by when?

In addition, you will want to be sure that your salesperson has been identified to be the Most Valuable Player – a differentiated trusted advisor who truly rises above a field of smooth talkers and peddlers. 

Finally, never accept assumptions.  If any assumptions have been made, have your salesperson go back and verify them to be facts.   Checking assumptions is one of the most critical areas where real sales work resides.  If you have an existing salesperson that continues to accept stories for truths and refuses to verify that their assumptions are indeed facts, I would recommend that you find a replacement.

The steps above will go a long way to improving your forecasts.

To request a comprehensive checklist to eliminate all surprises from your sales projections, email GrowMySales@Zthree.com and write “Improve My Forecasts” in the Subject Line.

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2010.   All Rights Reserved.

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