Imagine someone who knows nothing about sales, coming up to you and asking what a manufacturing sales rep does on a daily basis – how would you answer?
When was the last time you went into a restaurant, and the server told you that you would be having the crab without even giving you the chance to look at the menu? It sounds absurd, but it is exactly what buyers experience when exploring solutions in manufacturing sales every day.
Sales in the manufacturing industry can feel like a page ripped straight from Dante’s Inferno – “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” That might be a bit overdramatic, but you don’t have to spend much time in the manufacturing space to understand that the struggle is real.
Sometimes the industrial manufacturing sales world can feel like a high-stakes game of whack-a-mole. Challenges and obstacles are constantly popping up, and more reps than ever are struggling to earn a seat at the table and drive results.
Have you ever heard the old saying that “the only constant is change?”
In real estate, the saying is “location, location, location.” In the world of technology manufacturing sales, location is replaced with the word “access.” Access is critical for any sales organization, but in the technology industry, it has become the single most important factor that determines sales success.
Your reps may be great at peeling back the layers of each organization to find the right decision-maker, but how do they overcome objections and a meeting? Chances are there is a gatekeeper that is ready to throw up one objection after another, all in an effort to filter out the riff-raff and not waste the decision-makers time.
If you were to take a snapshot of the professional services sales landscape, it would look drastically different than it did a decade ago. While technology has undoubtedly streamlined the sales process it has simultaneously created one layer of complexity after another for sales professionals. The result? A more competitive industry with ever-growing customer demands.
The rolodex has taken its place in the archives of history as an old-school way to collect and organize contact information.
The days of walking into a physician’s office, getting a meeting, and selling a product (as an easy wham-bam) are long gone. Due to regulatory shifts, the days of golf outings, wining and dining, and other sales nurturing efforts are also gone.
Life in the glowing box: it’s our new normal.
There are 5 things I have learned in 25 years of prospecting. (I know, that’s only one thing every five years), but hear me out…
Have you ever witnessed greatness? I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to personally watch some of the greatest athletes of all time. I’ve experienced the unrivaled performance of Michael Jordan, Nolan Ryan, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods, and even Trevor Brazile (every blog needs a rodeo reference). I can testify to some of the greatest one percenters in sports.
Think about your most difficult presentation, your toughest audience, or the time where you had little to no shot at changing the minds of the decision-making team. Despite the odds, you showed up anyway. Got it? You remember the day? I promise you it doesn’t come close to the audience Erin Gruwell faced in the early fall of 1994.
When I’m passionately trying to make a point, I’ve been known to overstate reality to boost my argument. I use words like “millions” or “never” or “always,” especially with my wife, to win the argument or sell an idea.
So, you had a productive call/meeting with a potential client when suddenly they show some hesitation. “I’m not really sure about …,” they say.
I have spent the last 25 years singularly focused on answering one question: How do you improve a sales rep’s performance?
Do you ever feel at a loss for why your customer decided to buy from the competition? You had the perfect pitch! Your data was clear, your argument was succinct, your logic was flawless, your recommendation was a perfect fit. So what happened?
It’s probably safe to say that we’ve all had a case of the pre-presentation jitters. The level of nervousness can range from slight anxiety to full blown panic.
The popular show, Shark Tank, provides a great platform for hopeful entrepreneurs to present their ideas to a panel of industry titans. The budding entrepreneurs are there to try to convince the sharks to invest in their product idea. Contestants are presenting to a receptive group of individuals, but without insight, preparation, and skill, it is unlikely that they will hold the sharks’ interest long enough to successfully convince them to make an investment.
The reality show, Shark Tank, provides a great platform for hopeful entrepreneurs to present their ideas to a panel of industry titans – ‘sharks’ who have made their own dreams a reality and turned their ideas into lucrative empires. The entrepreneurs are there to try to convince the sharks to invest in their product idea.
Mark Cuban once summarized his activity as a Shark Tank investor at the Wall Street Journal “WSJD Live” conference like this: “Of the 71 startups that I’ve invested in through Shark Tank, two have gone out of business, three are so stupid they don’t know they’re out of business, and then probably 50, give or take, are in growth.”
Since 2009, entrepreneurs have pitched their ideas and dreams to a panel of ‘sharks’ on the hit reality show Shark Tank. The sharks – titans of industry who have made their own dreams a reality and turned their ideas into lucrative empires, listen to pitches and decide whether or not to invest their money in other potential profit-making ventures.
In today's digital age, we're bombarded with information. We now consume the equivalent of 174 newspapers a day, more than four times the average in the late '80s, and receive anywhere from three thousand to ten thousand messages daily.
There are thousands of movies, books, blogs, podcasts and other resources for sellers that address the final phase of a sales cycle: the close. In many of these it’s often wrongly assumed or purported that closing a deal requires control, manipulation, or some creative strategy to “beat the customer” and win the sale. This is a misconception.
The biggest challenge facing sellers today is that most customers in the marketplace are unreceptive. They are resistant, not to a solution to their problems, but to salespeople and their attempts to engage.
Many people think of selling as relationship management or demand fulfillment. But it’s much more than that. Selling is about serving, it’s about changing beliefs, and it’s about influence – all with your customer’s best interest at heart.
An underrated but important topic for sales reps to consider is how exploring and fulfilling your customers’ unstated emotional needs may help you find more success in your selling practice.
The reality of our world today is that people are overwhelmed and distracted by the amount of information coming at them every single day. This poses a problem, in particular for sellers, because it has become increasingly harder to break through that noise and deliver a message. People, especially customers, are unreceptive.
Sellers, what would you say is the biggest challenge you face today in sales?
A few years ago, one of the largest sales organizations in the world communicated the desire to purchase one of our training programs. The scope was to train tens of thousands of sales professionals annually. That got my attention. If we won, it would be our company’s largest and most profitable contract in our history.
We began the discussion in our last blog about what customers actually mean when they say “no” to a sales rep’s attempt to engage.
Check out this excerpt from CEO Tom Stanfill’s new book, UnReceptive: A Better Way to Sell, Lead, and Influence. Available anywhere you get your books.
I have a celebrity crush. It started in 8th grade, and has stayed with me ever since. I love Bill Murray. It’s a long-distance relationship and probably (okay, definitely) a bit one-sided, but I am committed.
In 1999, one of our most beloved Americans, JFK Jr., tragically died in an airplane crash. What was most disturbing to me was how easily it could have been avoided. He had what pilots refer to as vertigo. Due to thick cloud cover, pilots can get disoriented, believing up is down and down is up. While trying to gain altitude, he flew his plane into the ocean 7.5 miles west of Martha’s Vineyard.
As sales professionals, our time is our most valuable resource. How we invest that time will ultimately determine our success in sales.
As sales professionals, we have limited time; a finite number of hours to hit our sales goals. How we invest that time will ultimately determine our level of success.
Sales reps have less access and limited time with decision makers since the growth of virtual selling. It’s more critical than ever for sellers to spend their time and resources on the right sales opportunities. But how do we know which sales opportunities are the right ones?
As sellers, our most valuable resource is our time. If we had more time, we could close more business. But, since the onset of virtual selling, it’s been a lot more difficult for sales reps to qualify and win opportunities because we have less access and limited time with decision makers. And while we are working one deal, we are losing another. So, we better make sure that we are working the right deals – and those aren’t just the biggest ones. How do we know which are the best opportunities to spend our time on?
Are you emotional or logical? Left brained or right brained? Task or relational? The answer for most of us is, of course, both.
One of the greatest challenges that all salespeople today face is that our audience’s level of receptivity is rapidly decreasing. Said another way, our customers are becoming less receptive to us and to our messages.
I recently sat down with Stefanie Boyer, a professor at Bryant University, to discuss the academic side of selling, the importance of women in sales leadership roles, and how practice makes perfect in a selling career.
One of the most critical aspects of a sales rep’s role is being able to effectively guide conversation and uncover information through good questioning techniques. There are many ways to unpack this topic, but I thought it would be interesting to look at questioning, or interrogation, from another perspective.
When asked the question, “What do you sell?” most sellers think about a product or a service with some sort of tangible benefit or ROI. They think about a “thing” they offer as a solution and the business or financial benefit attached to it. But that’s not what reps are actually selling – what you are really selling is an emotion.
Whether you’re prospecting, cold calling, or trying to grow business within existing accounts, political structure plays a huge part in winning sales opportunities. We all know there are several roles in the decision making process: the coach, gatekeeper, influencer, evaluator, or ultimate decision maker. I sat down with Tom Stanfill, CEO and Co-Founder of ASLAN, to discuss why we need to identify the actual structure, how to do it, and a tool to make it easy for sales reps.
There are many similarities between selling and sports – many overlaps and common lessons shared, particularly between baseball and sales. As anyone familiar with ASLAN knows, we are big fans of sports analogies and references.
We recently put out a blog titled The #1 Sales Lesson from Kramer, for all of our Seinfeld fans. We highlighted Kramer’s questioning technique in the episode “The Keys,” where he attempts to persuade George to move to California with him.
Every so often, we like to highlight stories from front-line sellers and sales trainers to discuss the practical applications of ASLAN’s philosophy and methodology. I recently sat down with Chris White, speaker, sales expert, Founder of Tech Sales Advisors, and bestselling author of The Six Habits of Highly Effective Sales Engineers, to unpack his own experience on the frontlines of selling.
One of the toughest parts of the sales cycle is simply getting in the door. It’s often a challenge for salespeople to get a meeting. And once you do have the meeting, how can you use the time you have to connect your solution to your customer’s problem. Fortunately, our CEO Tom Stanfill has a unique perspective on how salespeople can effectively book meetings and close opportunities, by leveraging their position, not their product.
As we continue to conduct our sales training workshops virtually, we’re meeting and engaging with sales reps from all over the country and the world. Everyone seems to be in agreement that virtual selling will be in place, in some shape, form, or fashion, for the foreseeable future. Many reps are still on complete lockdown, while others are beginning to return to the field, meeting with customers for the first time in well over a year.
As a continuation of our blog about the lasting impact of virtual selling on market dynamics, the sales process, and team selling, I wanted to unpack the effects (and the importance of) on one-to-one sales interactions.
As the world begins to recalibrate after more than a year of shutdown, many of us are left with questions about the future state of selling. What will be the lasting impact of 2020 and the rise of virtual selling?
Many sellers run into the challenge of defending the value of their solution to customers, particularly with more complex or expensive offerings, or with something that is perceived as a commodity. Many customers jump to the conclusion that there are cheaper options out there, which may be true. As a sales rep, your job then becomes to defend the price of your offering.
I think we need to hit the pause button on prospecting. It’s not working.
The customer may know what they want, but not always what they need.
Implementing a long-term sales coaching program is a key component of any successful sales organization. In fact, the 2019 CSO Insights Report on sales enablement states that organizations that effectively incorporate a sales coaching program are nearly three times more successful in meeting their sales goals and almost twice as likely to have engaged sales professionals.
Those of you who remember that old 90s show, Seinfeld, will appreciate this story. In one early episode, “The Keys,” Kramer tries to convince George to move to California (check out the clip on Youtube). Kramer has the “acting bug” and wants George to join him as he pursues his new passion. But when Kramer floats the idea by George, he vehemently resists. In George’s mind, he is living his life to the fullest and has no reason to leave New York. This is where the selling begins for Kramer.
What is a sales process and why do we need one? Why is the topic of “sales processes” worth discussing? Why does it matter? Why am I much more likely to succeed if I use one?
There are new challenges for salespeople selling virtually, whether it’s getting a response from prospects, setting a meeting, or dealing with Zoom fatigue. Selling has changed, and sales reps need to adjust. In our blogs each week, we try to offer helpful tips and suggestions to address the shift that sellers are facing.
Staying organized and up to date with sales reporting and CRM software can be a chore for many B2B sales reps. Sales leaders appreciate the value of this kind of data, but it can be difficult to help sales reps see the value of spending their valuable time inputting this information.
Tis the season! Or rather the end of the basketball season… and we’re excited to facilitate a collision of worlds with a discussion about two of our favorite things: selling and basketball.
We spend a lot of time sharing our thoughts about what it means to be truly Other-Centered® in the world of sales. But it’s always good to hear it from another source. I sat down with my former colleague and true disciple of the Other-Centered philosophy, Matt Caldwell. Matt was exposed to ASLAN early in his career and has carried the foundations through a selling journey that has included transactional, complex and even executive relationship sales.
Using success stories to illustrate the benefits of your product or solution, in any conversation or presentation, is something that we teach every sales rep and sales manager we work with. Those stories help your audience emotionally experience the payoff and connect to your message.
The topic of team selling is a great one, and very relevant for most of our audience. Within our own business here at ASLAN, we frequently sell across teams. But there are certainly challenges for sales reps, sales leaders, system engineers, and account managers. What are those challenges and how can salespeople overcome them to close more sales and serve their customers well?
What is it that makes some salespeople outperform others? What is it that sets them apart? Whether you’re in B2B or B2C sales, account management, inside sales or field sales, there are governing principles that guide a meaningful sales process. How can we take selling philosophy and turn it into tangible sales success and increased revenue from closing deals?
Over the years, so many of us have used ROI, Return On Investment, as a sales strategy. But we rarely go back and get that endorphin rush of proving that ROI to our clients. It’s a strategic decision we make, at some point during the selling cycle, to measure and go after.
I still wonder if the lady at the tanning salon really understood the meaning of the title embossed on her name tag in bold letters: Tanning Consultant.
Prospecting and pipelines are a common challenge for B2B sales reps, with a host of strategies, techniques and best practices on how to do it well.
Here’s a disruptive truth for you: the receptivity of your audience has more impact on your success than the power of your message.
You must remember that ad from a few years ago. Well, I recently upgraded to a new cell phone. It took two trips to the store and two different sales people. When the first salesperson attempted to close with, “Is that the one you think you’d like?” I wasn’t sure. So I said:
If you’ve been following me on this step-by-step approach to filling your pipeline, you already know how to capture the prospect’s attention and the best answer to the question: “Why meet?” Next, we need to move this total stranger from “this looks interesting” to giving up their most precious resource: time.
If you understand and implement the principles offered in Step One, you will get the prospect’s attention. As the suit guy says, “I guarantee it.” Like unexpectedly jumping out from behind a door, there are some predictable things you can do to control eyeballs when facing obstacles to prospecting. The next step is a bit more challenging:
Managing a sales team has its own unique set of challenges when it comes to selling and building customer relationships — especially when prospecting over the phone. Even the most well-meaning sales reps might be unsuccessful when encountering certain obstacles in the prospecting process.
For the past 25 years, we’ve been studying what I (and most sellers) believe is the most difficult aspect of selling: prospecting.
We’ve recently discussed the biggest pitfalls of sales training objectives, from believing sales program effectiveness relies solely on the front-line to trying to tackle too many deficiencies at once. For this last post, we’re honing in on the last, and maybe the most important, pitfall: The assumption that generic sales training strategy will work for your sales team.
In our previous post, What’s More Important in Top Sales Training Courses: Measuring Behaviors or Outcomes? we discussed the importance of measuring the effectiveness of sales training courses by behaviors rather than outcomes. In this blog post, we’re highlighting another leading problem with sales training programs: focusing the initiative exclusively on front-line employees rather than involving mid-level and top-level leaders, too.
In our last post, 2 Ways Sales Training Courses Can Develop Your Sales Management & Reps in 2019, we talked about a serious problem in top sales training courses: Investing more in what happens in the workshop than after. In this post, we’re focusing on another leading problem with sales training courses: measuring behaviors instead of outcomes.
In our last post, 4 Things You Should Consider Before Committing to A Sales Training Program, we recognized a severe pitfall of training initiatives: Focusing on the WHAT vs. the WHY. In this post, we’re uncovering the next pitfall of sales training: what happens after sales training courses.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: Most sales training initiatives fail to deliver.
Over the past two decades, I’ve learned that there is a critical concept in understanding how to close more deals. And it’s perfectly illustrated by what’s on my calendar today: Two calls that couldn’t be more different.
Here’s an idea: What would happen if we learned about our client BEFORE we pitched our solution to them? And we don’t mean what you can find out from their website, but things that you can only learn after a conversation with them. For example, what challenges are currently on their whiteboard.
Another year, another failed sales quota. This year marks the fifth year in a row that the percentage of reps hitting their quota have declined — and they don’t look to be changing for the better anytime soon. So, what do reps need to know to meet the new demands in successful prospecting and see positive change?
Working as a marketing executive for the last ten years, I have literally seen thousands of attempts from sales reps to get my attention. Salespeople have tried the “hey, I see you are a Villanova grad, GO CATS!” They’ve also tried: “I noticed that you worked at Kodak, so did my dad!” Occasionally, I also get: “How ‘bout those Patriots,” when they recognize that I live in New England.
There’s a distinct difference between sales tools and sales training, but because they often overlap, it can be difficult to know which one is best for your organization.
Every rep at one time or another has struggled with obstacles in sales, and when it comes to sales motivation and sales strategy, there’s a lot of white noise out there trying to solve the problem with a series of tips.
Ready to improve your sales strategy and start successfully prospecting? But not exactly sure where to start? Pop open a cold one and join Scott Cassidy as he talks with Tom Stanfill and Marc Lamson on how to “read your sign.” Listen here:
It’s one of the oldest questions in the book: How do you make people care about what you have to say? It’s not just about your sales tactics; it’s more about how you’re delivering your prop.
There are 5 things I have learned in 25 years of prospecting. Wait, I know, that’s only one thing every five years. Hear me out.
When you’re ready to assess the sales strategy of a large organization, here’s the first step: Simplify and quantify what you want to measure. An easy way to start? Think about how you would assess a golfer.
When you’re trying to assess the sales strategy effectiveness of a large organization, your first goal should be this: to understand the needs of the sales organization and build the perfect training program.
My wife is a fan of the TV show Biggest Loser – and according to the ratings numbers, she is not alone! Seems millions of Americans tune in weekly to watch fitness experts Jillian Michaels and Bob Harper tone up and thin down teams of overweight contestants.
