Investing in the right sales training provider is a strategic move that can elevate your organization's sales performance and drive significant revenue growth. However, finding the perfect fit isn't always straightforward.
Possessing strong leadership skills and executive presence can be a game-changer for your career. Executive presence is a powerful combination of confidence, communication abilities, and charisma that commands respect and inspires others.
In the high-octane world of sales, success hinges on one crucial factor: people.
Building a high-performing sales team isn't just about enriching individual skills; it's about creating a culture of excellence led by visionary leaders. In the dynamic B2B landscape, where customer expectations evolve at lightning speed, the role of the sales manager and leadership becomes more critical than ever.
There are always ebbs and flows in the world of sales.
Successful sales relationships are built on trust, acceptance, and understanding.
The effectiveness of sales training is determined far before it begins, and continues long after everyone has exited the conference room or logged off the video call.
Sales leaders are MVPs. They’re on the frontlines, equipping sales reps in the field.
Sales managers play an important role. They manage the plan and productivity. They support sales reps in their efforts to hit numbers. It can be a hard role to do well, and requires an advanced set of skills.
The marketplace is changing. Due to the glut of information, customers are less dependent on reps when evaluating solutions. And most sales reps are still struggling to sell virtually.
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.
My transition to sales manager was fairly typical. I was promoted from a role I had excelled in (selling), to a role where I was completely incompetent (leading). In those early years of managing a team, I was more of an interactive kiosk than a leader: “If you have questions, I have answers. Be safe out there.”
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.
Starting a new training initiative for your sales organization can be daunting. How will you know if it was successful? Should you look at revenue? Team morale? ROI? Something else?
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.
I have spent the last 25 years singularly focused on answering one question: How do you improve a sales rep’s performance?
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.
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.”
Chuck Noll was the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1969-1991, leading them to four Super Bowl wins (more than any other coach) and nine AFC championships during that time. Noll was the youngest NFL head coach in history when he took over in 1969, but he showed great talent for choosing to draft players of exceptional quality, including the league’s first African-American starting quarterback Joe Gilliam and first Super Bowl MVP winner Franco Harris.
Tom Landry was the first-ever coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He coached from 1960 to 1988, leading the Cowboys to five Super Bowl appearances and a record-setting 20 consecutive winning seasons. Landry pioneered several new techniques including the 4-3 defense and the shotgun formation on offense.
As Superbowl LVI approaches, along with many folks across the country, we’ve got football on the mind. And especially where it relates to us most in the world of sales… that’s right, coaching.
The role of a sales leader is complex and nuanced. Sales leadership is really about having the ability to motivate your people to accomplish set goals by empowering each individual. It requires you to focus on their professional growth, as well as their personal growth. Being an effective leader is about seeing the big picture, without overlooking important details. Great leaders drive results by motivating their team to want to do their job.
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.
Sales training programs are just one of many ways to spend company resources to grow sales. A finite number of dollars is available for a seemingly infinite number of priorities, including product improvement and development, marketing, hiring quality employees, and more. When companies choose to invest in sales training programs, they should have clear and definite ways of measuring the return on their investment (ROI).
Every so often, we like to highlight stories from frontline sellers and sales leaders to discuss the applications of sales philosophy and methodology not just in theory, but in practice. I sat down with Charles Forsgard, VP of Global Sales at Honeywell, to discuss his own experience on the frontlines of sales leadership.
Building a new capability or skill can be a challenge – whether you’re a sales rep, sales manager, sales leader, or someone just getting back into the gym (quarantine workouts were nonexistent, at least for me). There has been a great deal of research done on what it takes to form a new habit or new skill. It’s a hot topic for many people, both personally and professionally.
Your company leadership has decided that business results could be better, and they’ve identified top-line (sales and service) as where the improvement needs to come from. After careful scrutiny, it is observed that sales force execution has either stagnated or has never met expectations in the first place. Somewhere, there’s a sales execution gap that needs to be addressed.
In the midst of basketball season, this take on coaching seemed particularly fun and relevant. I realize that not all of our readers are basketball fans, so I opted not to title this piece “Sales Coaching Lessons from Phil Jackson” – for fear that those of you who don’t know that Phil Jackson coached both the NBA championship Chicago Bulls with star Michael Jordan and the NBA championship Los Angeles Lakers with star Kobe Bryant, might not be motivated to read the article.
I think I found the secret to building a teachable team.
Each week here at ASLAN, we put out content to help sales reps adjust to this new world of virtual selling. I asked myself, what’s the best way to help reps achieve their sales goals? Who is their “best friend” as they navigate this age of selling? It’s really their sales manager. It’s their coach, the person that helps them set goals and achieve them, growing as a seller along the way.
This may sound familiar… You’re attempting to vet a few sales training programs, and as you navigate the process, you realize that choosing the right training partner is far from easy.
In this article, we are going to explore why much of the coaching provided in the workplace today is less effective than it could be, even now with the added pressure of most sales professionals needing to work remotely.
This is not the time for a big story. We have big problems. It cannot continue and something needs to change.
Take a stab at answering these 3 questions:
If you run an inbound sales organization, or if you make a living selling on the phone, you know the biggest obstacle to up-selling happens in the first 15 seconds of the call. Although all “genres” of sales share common themes and techniques across the board, there are some key differences to selling in an inbound, call center environment that we’ll address here today.
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.
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.
He never had a losing season as a head coach in the NFL, despite taking over some very poorly performing teams, first the Green Bay Packers and then the Washington Redskins. In his honor, the Super Bowl trophy is called the Lombardi Trophy. Such was his legacy as a football coach.
Reps are struggling.
Last month, Bobbi Kahler published an article, How We Sabotage Change by the Way We Coach. One of the saboteurs that she talked about is “Diverting Focus to Soon.”
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.
Over my eleven year career with ASLAN®, I’ve coached hundreds of managers, and I’ve learned a couple of things.
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:
Why is every rep struggling with sales prospecting? Here’s why. Most everything we’ve learned about selling sabotages our chances of converting the disinterested.
In our last post, Is What You Learned About Sales Coaching and Performance Assessment Wrong?, we asked a tough question: Are you developing the wrong people with your sales training? With this post, we’re going to explore another big mistake in sales coaching and performance assessment: Measuring behaviors instead of results.
For much of the sales world, the notion that sales coaching is an essential ingredient in improving sales organizations is not up for debate.
The last few blogs have focused on the #1 characteristic of high-performers: desire, including how to create it, how to measure it, and how it affects coaching. Now I want to attack a myth about evaluating performance.
With the last blog in our sales strategy series, we explored a topic that’s even more important than coaching: igniting the desire to be coached.
In my last blog, the message was simple: Developing your leaders has more impact on sales performance than any other strategy, productivity tool, or sales methodology. Here my goal is to shift focus from awareness to application.
I’ve recently attended two conferences for sales management and sales enablement leaders. They were different events, but they both had the same focus: Even though the economy is growing, sales performance is not.
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.
This week on sALES with ASLAN®, VP of Marketing Scott Cassidy chats with ASLAN Regional Vice President of Sales John Cerqueira on what you can learn from 80 floors up on 9/11 (but of course, it starts with a nice beer on a Friday afternoon).
You’ve already identified step 1 of how to assess the sales strategy of a large organization, so know it’s time to close the gap and bring the sales management of your large organization full circle. Here’s what you need to focus on next:
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.
It’s March Madness. For some, that phrase is just a reminder of the time of year when the rising pollen count pushes you to the brink of insanity. For basketball fans, it’s your favorite time of year, when 68 teams compete for the title of the best basketball team in college. And once again, the University of Kentucky is in the mix.
They ain't a'gettin' nowhere
And they're losin' their share
Boy, they must've gone crazy out there
Son, they all must be crazy out there
Jerry Jeff Walker - Night Rider's Lament
The last chorus of Jerry Jeff Walker’s 1975 song Night Rider’s Lament may be the perfect summation of both the world and the selling ecosystem we operate in today. I’ve seen enough on the news and in the selling world to know we are making a pretty strong case for the compelling argument that “They must’ve gone crazy out there.”
Is it possible that the songwriter, Michael Burton, had a crystal ball that held the stark reality of the future of the world, and the world of sales, some 40 years later? Probably not, but the song does make a good case for taking the time to reflect on what is taking place and how to keep us calibrated on what is most important and ultimately most fulfilling in life and selling.
You wouldn’t know it, but I’m a part of the less-than-one-percent-club that combines being a music junkie, a believer in cowboy heritage, and a strong proponent for creating unique value for clients. How’s that for a smooth combination? Personal experience has proven that the three intersect more frequently than you might think.
