Tag: coaching

The Coercive Contactor Versus the Caring Connector

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

Sales people have been taught the importance of the numbers. The number of dials made each day, contacts made, and presentations scheduled, are all metrics sales professionals have had baked into their thinking. You want more sales, make more dials. You want more presentations, make more contacts. We grind it out every day focused on persuading, manipulating and influencing the prospect just enough to get them to see things our way and then…BAM…a sale is made. I refer to sales people that fit this description as coercive contactors…make the contact and then through sheer force of will, or fear-selling, make the sale.

But times are changing. The buyer today is far more educated than in the past thanks in large part to the internet. Most agree that a majority of the buying process is completed before a buyer ever meets with a sales person. How did this happen and what does it mean to you as a sales person?

Google has changed our world. In a couple clicks of a mouse we can find information on virtually any topic or question that we could dream of asking. Volumes upon volumes of data and content reside on the web, there for the taking. In the comfort of our homes and offices, cars or restaurants, we have 24/7 access to all the information we could possibly need to make informed decisions.

For the typical sales person this poses a huge threat. Most of us were trained in the art of persuasion, manipulation and influence, in order to bring the pain the buyer is feeling front and center. And while shining a light on the buyers pain isn’t wrong or inappropriate, it is a less effective selling tool if the sales person doesn’t know what to do with the buyers pain once they’ve identified it. You see, buyers have a much better sense today whether your solution will actually help them. They’re no longer completely reliant upon the sales persons power of persuasion and instead draw from their own research and education as to what may improve their circumstance.

Whether it’s an outsourcing solution to improve business performance or a new medication to improve your health, just about any information you’re looking for is available via the web. As such the dependency on the sales person has evolved from a pitch person to a “caring connector”. A caring connector is how an authentic sales professional presents themselves in what they say, how they say it, what they do, and how they act. Forget about the super slick, fast talking sales dude. Today the successful sales pros are ones who take the time to listen, ask thoughtful questions, and perhaps most of all, be honest enough to tell the prospect just how helpful their solution will be. They demonstrate genuine care in how they connect with the buyer. This is a huge mind shift in sales. In fact, many recent studies conducted by Harvard Business Review, as well as, in many books authored on sales including Jeff Thull’s recent Exceptional Selling, show proof that being willing to walk away from a sale because there’s simply not enough value there, actually enables you to sell more. The premise is that once someone trusts that you have their best interest at heart, and in mind, they’ll come back to you again and again. Additionally, once you’ve determined that there is little value to the prospect to move forward with your solution you stop forcing a sale and move onto the next opportunity, again freeing your time to engage with a buyer whose needs and circumstances better align with the value you provide.

So try it. Try shifting from that coercive contactor to the caring connector and watch your sales grow.

Your Doctor May Be Your Best Sales Coach

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

doctor

In my previous blog post I talked about a selling strategy that helps to eliminate lost sales.  Lost due to a disconnect between the prospect and the sales person.  A communication miss fire on either end is responsible for every sale not made.  If the sales person is communicating and observing the prospects response, or reaction, there should be no last-minute surprises of lost business.  In fact, if you were really honest about it, most of the time you knew deep down that sale was going nowhere.  But the sales gods have been clear for decades that you never give up, never walk away, always be closing, and never take no for an answer.  If you’re into self-deprecation that might be exactly the approach you’re looking for.  But for those of us who are interested in transcending the age-old image of a product pusher to one of a true sales professional, looking for the “no” is how you should approach each sales opportunity.

For years I have taught and coached sales teams across a variety of different industries to approach a prospect as a doctor approaches a patient.  Curious, thoughtful, prescriptive and honest.  Here’s how:

  1. Curious.  The first thing a doctor does when he/she enters an exam room is begins asking questions.  What’s going on?  When did it start?  Is it like this, or like that?  Do the symptoms increase in intensity during certain times or are they constant and unchanging?  The doctor is beginning to diagnose your problem.  Asking questions, no matter how uncomfortable they may be, is the first step to a proper diagnosis.
  2. Thoughtful.  In my experience (and to be completely honest I believe I have the world’s greatest doctor) great doctors never provide knee jerk responses.  They go through their diagnosis phase and take a moment to process the information they’ve just gathered.  Sure this process step may take seconds, but in most cases pay attention the next time you go to the doctor and watch for that “medical processing pause”.  This refers to the time it takes for the doctor to thoughtfully provide their assessment and prescribe next steps.
  3. Prescriptive.  Depending on the assessment of what’s wrong with the patient the doctor may have one to many different prescriptions to offer the patient.  The prescription may not be solely medicine related.  A doctor may prescribe physical therapy, or eliminating a specific food from your diet.  He/she may also prescribe a mobility aid such as crutches or a walker, or even a sling or splint depending on the injury.  The point is that in many cases there are a variety of paths forward and the doctor presents these options in the form of prescriptions.
  4. Honesty.  This element of the doctor-patient relationship is the most important.  No matter how good the doctor is, if there is no trust that exists between him/her and the patient the above 3 ingredients are useless.  By the time the doctor gets to the prescription phase of the patient examine, he/she is presenting options along with their personal choice.  How many times have you heard a doctor say, “if you were my son”, or “when my mom went through this we decided to do…” The trust and honesty that exists between a doctor and patient – their ability to communicate transparently with one another – is the ingredient that results in the patient’s ability to improve their condition.

The relationship between a doctor and patient exists for one of two reasons:  to fix something currently broken, or to avoid something breaking in the future.  Isn’t that the relationship between you and your prospect?  The prospect has either agreed to meet with you because something in their business is currently broken or because something may be changing that may cause something to break that they’re trying to avoid happening.  Regardless of whether it is a current problem or future, follow the 4 steps above and you’ll find a more engaging, trusting, and action-oriented relationship develop between you and your prospect, soon-to-be customer.

Are You Losing Sales? It’s Probably The Last 3 Feet.

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

table

Successful outcomes are the result of many different elements including preparation, practice, and skill.  With every action comes a reaction and the intensity of that reaction can be linked to the effectiveness of the originating action.  If you walk at a slow pace for exercise it will take longer to work up a sweat as opposed to a brisk walk or even a jog where you will sweat much quicker.  Action versus reaction.

How often have you left a sales call wondering where things went wrong?  You didn’t get the business.  The prospect seemed on board but decided to go in a different direction.  That reaction, whether we’d like to admit it or not is the direct result of an action we took at some point during the sales process.  In fact, the primary action that results in lost sales is communication.  Clarity of communication, followed by the ability to process that communication, is where many sales people fall flat.

In his book Exceptional Selling, Jeff Thull talks about “the last three feet” as being the distance that separates a prospect from a sales person sitting across a table from one another.   How often have you felt you’ve done everything right and in your final meeting – in that last three feet – with the prospect, you learn they decided against doing business with you?  It’s happened to us all at least once.  If you have been selling for years it’s most likely happened hundreds of times.  But why?

The main reason for this disconnect centers around a miss fire in communication.  You either said something to the prospect that turned them off, or you said the right thing that disqualified them as a prospect but you were too stubborn to see it.  We’ve all been taught to never walk away from a sales opportunity.  Further we  have been told for years that everyone is a prospect.  These ideas are just flat-out false.  Not everyone is a prospect and the quicker you find out who presents a real opportunity the better you’ll become at selling.  Remember your time, money, and energy are only of value to you so protect them.  The faster you can sort the real opportunities from the imaginary the better.

Watch for my next blog when I’ll present a sales strategy I have used with great success that eliminates the risk of the last three feet.

 

The Most Important Sales Question You Need To Ask

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

important

Selling is a combination of both art and science.  It requires intelligence, curiosity, study, and practice.  Unfortunately too many books have been written by self-proclaimed gurus who are running around promoting persuasion, influence and manipulation.  As a life-long sales professional I cringe when I hear these tactics being promoted as the Holy Grail of selling.  Learn how to persuade a buyer and you’ll be golden.  Wrong.  Persuasion is only temporary if it’s not grounded in something more significant or substantive to the buyer.  While beating the buyer into submission is one way to approach sales I’d suggest a much different path.  Something that requires a fair amount of mental horsepower, patience and agility.  This approach can be summed up in one question…So What?

Sales people have been trained…brainwashed…into force feeding a prospect through a rigid selling process.  The problem is that most sales processes are inward focused and aligned to what their organization does and is capable of delivering.  They rarely take the customers viewpoint into consideration.  This results in the sales person trying to find a way to wiggle into the prospective buyers wallet, often times not knowing or caring whether there is a real or tangible need for their product.

So how can you avoid falling into the stereotypical sales rep persona?  Ask this one questions before and after your customer interactions – So what?  This product has  a 98% satisfaction rating!  So what?  My company has been around for 100 years.  So what?  We pay the highest commission rates in the industry.  So what?  I’ve helped many business owners like you improve their profits.  So what?

I’m sure many of those statements sound familiar.  You may have even used one or two of them before.  But so what?  What does your satisfaction rating mean to me the buyer?  Why should I care?  Too many times sales reps lob a one-liner out there and let it hang.  They believe that it’s such a powerful statement that the buyer must believe it too, yet we know this isn’t the case.

Once you begin to challenge yourself with the “So What?” question you’ll find yourself having different conversations with your customer and asking different questions.  You’ll begin to interact with your customer on a different level.  Your genuine new-found interest in what’s important to your customer will be seen and felt.  And while this may not guarantee a sale it will guarantee that you’ll be better prepared to separate the true prospects versus those who simply clog our pipelines who are not fits, matches, or beneficiaries of the value we provide.  Having this power will help you close more business that is a true fit while quickly sorting through the business that isn’t, saving you time, money, and energy that you can then direct toward those prospects who can truly benefit from the value you offer.

Happy selling!

Tunnel Vision – A Salespersons Secret Weapon

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

TunnelVision

As the internet-of-everything continues to grow, and social media becomes more robust with each passing day, professionals in every industry are forced to embrace the art of multitasking. In fact, so much so that our society places the skill of multitasking on a pedestal – a Holy Grail if you will of those who are super-efficient. Look at a handful of resumes today and you’ll find candidates advertising their ability to perform a dozen tasks with accuracy and proficiency. But can they really? Can any of us be really good at anything when we’re focused on everything?

Successful salespeople do many things well but one common area of frustration that plagues many is the never ending struggle to focus. To have a singular focus – perhaps tunnel vision – on only one or two things at a time. Tunnel vision leads to a laser focus on what really matters. Would a golfer think of his/her next drive while still on the green putting for birdie? Would a heart surgeon be thinking of office payroll with a patient on the table and chest open? Let’s hope not. Tunnel vision, laser focus, or concentration can all be attributed to those who excel in their particular craft.

Try these 3 Tunnel Vision ideas to improve your performance:

  1. Shut off email while making prospecting calls. Email is one of the biggest distractions a salesperson deals with. What if my customer needs me? What about my referral sources calling me with a prospect? The human mind often tends to work in extremes. A “this or that” mentality. The reality is that things are rarely this or that. Start out by shutting off your email for an hour while making calls and then check it after an hour to see what items require your immediate attention or response.  You’re ability to stay focused on your calls in the absence of the “You-Got-Mail ding” will yield better results.
  2. The early bird does get the worm. Start your day early setting aside 20 – 30 minutes to read. Glance at the news, read some blogs, or finish a chapter or two of a sales focused book. Starting the day early allows you to tunnel your vision on tasks that will enhance your conversations and activities throughout the day.  If your calls begin at 8 am, start your work day at 7:30 am.  Notice I didn’t say start your day at 7:30 am as my assumption is that your day is starting somewhere around the 6 am hour if not earlier anyway.
  3. Prepare your call list the night before. Being able to start your day focused on making calls rather than preparing for them is another way to focus your attention on action-based tactics. Preparing a call list requires a different energy than making the calls themselves. Be sure when you’re making calls you’re focused on nothing but the calls themselves. Multitasking will be heard and felt by the receiver of the call and will most likely lead to poor outcomes.

Be confident in knowing that acting with tunnel vision will produce better results while multitasking only produces diluted results.  The power of focus will help you prioritize your tasks for the day by applying the most amount of energy and skill possible during those activities.

5 Things Every Salesperson Should Focus On

On By Joe DeRosaIn SalesLeave a comment

focus

Sales people are an interesting breed.  They’re high-strung, often funny, and witty, sensitive and many times high maintenance.  I know this because I am one.  I’ve sold, managed, led, and built sales teams for the better part of the past 2o years.  I’ve had months when I hit my numbers and months when I’ve missed.  I’ve had sales teams that have blown the number out of the water and those who have drowned while trying to hit the number.  Yet over the years I have heard one question that continues to be asked over and over again…”what is the secret to success in sales?”.  Here’s the answer…there is no secret.

The difference between successful sales people and those who fail in this profession is simple.  Over the years I have identified 5 traits that separate those who succeed from those who fail.

  1. Clarity of goals – knowing exactly what you want to achieve and when.
  2. Discipline – being committed to perfecting your skills.  Starting your day before others and ending it after they’ve long given up.  Putting in that extra time when others are out having fun.
  3. Curiosity/Inquisitiveness – an insatiable thirst for knowledge.  Betterment.  Desire to outsmart, or out-understand others.  Constantly absorbing, learning, refining.
  4. Time Management – successful people know that time is their biggest asset.  They don’t waste it.  In Sales this means selling when people are available to be sold to.  Don’t do paperwork at 10 am.  That’s a waste of time.  Sell at 10 am and do your paperwork at 10 pm.
  5. Self-Reflect – 15 minutes a day to reflect on what you did, what results you generated, what you learned, what you’ll do different tomorrow.

Make these 5 things part of your life and success will find its way to your doorstep, not because it simply wandered over but because you attracted it through these strong and powerful habits.

 

Can Really Anyone Succeed?

On By Joe DeRosaIn LeadershipLeave a comment

Doubt

It all begins with setting clear goals.  Knowing what you want along with a rough idea of the time frame in which you want to accomplish those wants is where success begins.  No one stumbles into success.  Without clearly defined goals even winning the lottery will lead to failure as the bankruptcy rates for lottery winners seem to indicate.  We’ve managed to create a society in the United States where success is demonized and those who acquire it are viewed as the bad guys.  Lines continue to form for hand-outs and entitlement programs.  We’ve more than doubled the ranks on government assistance in the past 8 years, and the news is littered with stories on just how little the rich and successful do for those less fortunate.

Those who don’t succeed often whine about the who, the how, and the what.  Who prevented them from succeeding how they were derailed from success, and what’s missing from the system that if there would enable them to succeed.  These folks just don’t seem to get it.  They must have slept through history class…not just ours but civilizations across the globe.  Remember the caveman wasn’t born with fire or a wheel.  It took thought, vision, hard work and persistence.  Our country was founded on the basic principle that anyone willing to work hard while applying their God-given talents could succeed.  We never guaranteed success…only a chance at it.

People who complain about success will never attain it.  I’d propose that the biggest reason they will not achieve success is that they haven’t taken the time to identify what success is.  They simply look at the material things that they associate with success.  They have no idea what is required to obtain those things, they see only the after-results.  Whether it’s a heart surgeon, a mutual fund manager, a business owner, or a school teacher, those who are successful have a clear idea of what success means to them and for most it’s never about the money or stuff.  It is however always about the personal accomplishment, achievement and having the ability to say “I did it.”  That alone defines success.  You know, Frank Sinatra got it right in his song My Way, more people should listen to it.

So if you’re feeling low and not sure where you’re headed remember it’s up to you.  You have to think about what you want.  You have to answer the question how hard you’re willing to work to get it..  You have to be willing to put the time in.  You have to take complete responsibility and accountability for your successes and failures.  Once you do that success will find its way into your life.

 

Where Chemistry and Leadership Intersect

On By Joe DeRosaIn Leadership1 Comment

Chemistry

Chemistry focuses on the relationship between atoms and other phenomenon. Cause and effect. How does an atom change when external factors are introduced. Had I only known then – 30 years ago when I took Chemistry in school – what I know today, I would have paid more attention.

Team building is all about chemistry. After all, the human body is made up of atoms and when two bodies are interacting it represents millions of atoms interacting with one another.  Interaction reactions are just as varied between atoms as they are humans.  Sometimes you just don’t know what will happen.

From our early childhood, to adult life, chemistry is at work in the choices we make and the outcomes they render. Remember those days on the school ground picking teams? Who did you pick, or at what point in the team-picking process were you picked? When you got your first management position how did you feel about your team? Were you able to make changes or new selections? If so, how did you go about doing that?  If not, how did you assimilate to your team?

I’d submit that chemistry is one of the single most important factors in establishing a successful team. The team’s ability to interact with one another given internal and external influences is a necessary requirement for a high performing teams. And like explosions that can occur when atoms are rammed together with great force, so too can human interaction experience similar explosions if not careful.

Here are 3 points to be aware of when navigating team chemistry:

  1. Have a clear vision.  Make sure that you’ve created the “destination postcard” for the team.  This represents where you are headed, why, how you’ll get there, and by when.
  2. Have clear rules of engagement.  Demanding honesty and input must be balanced with diplomacy and humility…even if it must be forced.  The team must understand what is expected, as well as, how they are expected to accomplish the “what”.
  3. Have clear values.  Stating your values and then demonstrating those values on a daily basis…walking the talk…is critical for your team to see.  You can’t state that you despise cussing and yet at every meeting use language to the contrary.  Your actions and values must be aligned at all times.

Be careful to not confuse good chemistry with the belief that you can only hire those that “think” like you.  That’s not the case.  Instead focus on attracting people to your team that “feel” as you do, hold similar values, work ethic, and attitudes.  Specific skills sets MUST be varied across a team but common values must be woven into the team’s fabric to succeed.  And that’s chemistry.

 

Profoundness Found in the Simplest of Places

On By Joe DeRosaIn Leadership1 Comment

NewCastleSeattle

 

I spent this last week in the great city of Seattle…Bellevue to be specific.  Seattle has always been one of my favorite cities to travel to from my first visit in 2001.  From downtown to the Harbor Steps, Seattle is a down-to-earth city with great people, wonderful food, and some of the best sites in the world.

I was dining one evening this week in downtown Bellevue with our President, and Chief Operating Officer of our company.  No doubt a busy week with many meetings, big initiatives, and key decisions to be made.  Pretty much a normal week.  It had rained on-and-off most of the week with brief reprieves resulting in glimpses of sunlight and blue sky.  Our President selected an Italian restaurant for dinner.  We left the office and walked to a wonderful place called Andiamo.  We were seated immediately with each of us picking up our menus to peruse the entrees.  As we chit-chatted a bit while taking in the selection of delightful dishes, she looked up, and that’s when it happened…profoundness in the simplest of statements.

The rain had passed, the sky had opened, and the combination of the sun with the bluest of backgrounds in the sky was breathtaking.  She sat back, placed the menu on her lap and said, “I just love these breaks of beautiful.”  What an amazing statement.  How simple.  How profound.  How beautiful.

Over the past few months I’ve experienced the death of a good friend and colleague, and a close member of the family.  I’ve gotten calls about family members struck by illness and hospitalized.  My phone has rung with a couple close friends who have lost their jobs looking for guidance and assistance.  Clearly part of life, these situations and others like them tend to change our view of our circumstances.  We focus on them and we begin to move ever closer to skepticism, pessimism, and any other adjective that describes our saddened state of mind.

Our President, most likely without knowing, had just made a comment that struck me like a blow to the chest.  It got me thinking about focusing on all of life’s “breaks of beautiful”.  While she clearly made this comment in the context of the visual beauty she saw in Seattle’s sky, breaks of beauty are all around us.  Since this moment I have found breaks of beauty in the sound of my wife’s voice, the unexpected call from my daughter to say hello, a late night chat with my dad, an email one of my sales reps sent me excited about a great accomplishment, the start of a new friendship, and a corny but funny joke my son texted to me while I was sitting in a meeting.

The point is to stop and take notice of all the breaks of beautiful in your life.  They’re there.  You really don’t have to look hard.  You just have to look a little.