Sales Blog | Sales Training Blog, Sales Skills, Sales Tips, Selling Skills

Are You A Persuasive Listener?

January 3rd, 2008

One of the most fundamental, yet critical skills in selling is your ability to listen and understand what your customer or prospect is really saying. How persuasive listener are you?

The majority of sales professionals brag about being great communicators. They are proud of their ability to deliver a persuasive message.

But the majority of sales reps are also doing all the talking. How much time in a sales call do you spend talking vs. listening? The average experienced and successful sales professional still spends over 90% of a sales call talking. How much time in your sales calls are you talking vs. listening?

Consider this example. Your customer asks “Why are you so expensive compared to your competition?” That was a three second question. How many minutes does it take you to provide an answer? Your calls are interactive. The customer is asking you questions and you are providing answers, and hopefully solutions. The problem is you are still doing the majority of the talking.

There are two ways to find out if this is a problem for you. The first is to audio tape some of your phone conversations. You don’t even need to tape both sides of the conversation. After your call play the tape back and time out how many minutes, and what percentage, of the call were you talking.

The other alternative is to ask one of your peers (or your manager) to go with you on a sales call and to time how many minutes of your call you actually talked. You will first need to get a stop watch that doesn’t make any noise when you turn it on or off. Notice what time your call begins and then ask the person helping you to time the call turning the watch on any time the customer is talking.

Most sales reps spend 90% of more of a sales call talking. What percent of your calls are you talking vs. listening? In today’s hyper-competitive environments your most significant advantage over your competition might come from you learning more about your customer and their unique needs and challenges than anyone else. How can you achieve this enhanced level of awareness if you are the one doing all the talking?

Consider asking open ended questions to provide your customer with more time to talk. Also ask additional probing questions such as “How much are those types of problems costing you per day?” or “How important is it to get this type of problem immediately corrected?”

Also be sure you are an active listener. An active listener is one who participates by providing encouragement and positive feedback to the person talking. Nodding your head in agreement and maintaining strong eye contact are two integral components of active listening. Also provide brief statements or questions to encourage the talker to keep sharing. Brief statements such as “They did?” “How many were there?” or “How did they react?” are all active listening motivating statements.

What can you do to increase your active listening skills?

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Managing Your Sales Team…Are You A Leader Or Are You A Fixer?

January 3rd, 2008

How are your sales people maximizing the selling opportunities that exist within your selling area? How are you, as their sales manager, contributing to their selling success and profitability? What “management style” are you utilizing when you deal with your sales people?

Are You A “Doing” Manager?
The majority of sales managers only function as “Doing” managers. A “Doing” sales manager is a manager who has multiple responsibilities other than managing the sales force. There are several categories of “Doing” sales managers:

- Sales Person/Sales Manager - Also called a “Selling Manager.” You split your time between functioning as a sales person and acting as a sales manager to other sales people. You spend part of your time selling to your own customers and the rest supporting your company’s sales people. A “Sales Person/Sales Manager” normally handles the largest (or most important) accounts and is the busiest member of the sales team.

- Owner/Sales Manager - As the owner of your company (or as General Manager of a location), you have all departments reporting to you. Your time with your sales people is only a minor part of your total responsibility.

- Worker/Sales Manager - This position is normally only present in small companies where everyone handles a variety of jobs and responsibilities. Though very rare, there are sales managers who split their time between managing your sales people and working at some other task such as running a piece of equipment.

Which type of “Doing” Manager best describes you? Though each management approach has a different set of problems, they all share the significant challenge of shifting their focus between successfully managing a sales team and handling another significant, and radically different, responsibility. How successful are you at balancing such divergent responsibilities?

The “Firefighter” Approach To “Doing” Management
How much of your management time do you spend being “Proactive” v.s. “Reactive?” A “Reactive” manager approaches his/her work life with a “If it isn’t broke, then don’t waste time trying to fix it” mentality. The majority of managers are so overworked they can never accomplish all they would like. How many mornings have you started with your personal “Critical To Do” list, and then, distracted by a variety of crises, found your untouched “To Do” list had doubled in size? A “Reactive” management style works best at maintaining the performance of a department, but this style will not allow you to significantly grow or improve your department’s success. If this “never able to do all that is necessary” style of management describes you, then you most likely also approach your sales management team in that same “Reactive” style.

A “Proactive” management style is just as overworked, but he/she has somehow added an additional future focus or planning component to their daily managerial efforts. How many steps do you utilize when resolving a crisis? Almost all managers approach a problem with the two steps of:

- 1st, Identify the full scope of the problem and then
- 2nd, Identify and direct the implementation of the necessary solutions to fix or eliminate the original problem

A “Proactive” Manager will add an additional third step by spending some time discussing or identifying how this problem can be prevented from occurring again in this or any other account. So many managers keep functioning as successful firefighters, they never devote any time to working on preventative issues to eliminate the potential for new fires.

The Most Significant Uniqueness Of Managing A Sales Force
Managing a sales team requires a major shift in your managerial style. With other departments, you can still be successful managing your areas with a predominately “reactive” style. You can be a “firefighter,” only fixing problems as they arise before quickly moving onto other challenges. Though you do occasionally invest time helping your people understand what can be done to prevent these problems from occurring in the future, this type of proactive planning and coaching is definitely in the minority of your time allocation.

Managing a sales force requires a major shift in focus. A sales team needs to be led, not just fixed. In my sales training programs, I identify how most sales people function as “Hellarewe” birds. The “Hellarewe” bird is a three foot bird, living in four foot grass, and spending their entire life asking anyone they can find “Where the hell are we?” Sound like any of the members of your sales team?

You cannot build a successful sales force by just fixing problems as they occur. The goal of sales management is to significantly grow a sales force, not just maintain your current performance level. How much effort have you invested in profoundly improving your sales team compared to just maintaining? The most critical error the majority of “Doing” managers make is trying to manage (and grow) their sales levels by only managing with a Reactive” maintaining style of management.

Your sales team is the single most important area to grow your companies revenues and profitability. Everything else will only maintain (or erode) the performance volumes established by your sales team. Since your sales force is the leading edge of your company’s growth, then you need to manage this “leading edge” with a different style than the rest of your areas of responsibility.

How To Shift From A “Reactive” To A “Proactive” Sales Management Style
Successfully shifting from a “Reactive” to a “Proactive” style of sales management is based on how you handle your coaching efforts. Being able to devote additional time to coaching and guiding your sales people could also improve results, but may not be an acceptable alternative based on your other responsibilities and commitments.

The first consideration to shifting your managerial style is to review where you focus your attention when talking with your sales people. When working with their team, most sales managers divide their conversations spending approximately 50% of their time on “History” and 50% on “Today” focused issues. “History” focused issues deal with understanding how things progressed to where they are now allowing you to identify the necessary background information. “Today” focused conversations allow you to identify what immediate actions need to be taken to resolve the identified problem. Both conversations, though positive and critical to any problem resolution, are still only functioning in the “Reactive” management style.

A “Proactive” manager, before ending the discussion, will pull the sales person into a third conversation focusing on the “Future” issues of what extra efforts can be accomplished to either prevent this problem from occurring in other accounts or to turn this situation from a negative problem into a positive selling opportunity.

The majority of problems facing your experienced sales people do not focus on productivity or functional implementation issues. An experienced sales rep usually has these skills under control. Growing the sales volumes and profitability of an experienced sales person requires you, as their sales manager, to help change their focus, approach, messaging or persuasive style. These kinds of changes involve more than just “fixing” problems but instead require your coaching and guidance to help your rep redirect and refocus their efforts.

Simply put, successfully managing your sales team requires you to focus on coaching the “big” stuff at the same time you deal with the more normal day to day “small” stuff. The “Hellarewe” bias of most sales people means they only tend to bring you smaller, more detailed problems. As their sales manager, your job is to lift them above their mental four foot grass to show them the solution to their detailed problems may involve doing something significantly different.

So many times you, as a sales manager, find one of our sales people mentally banging their head against the wall, when you ask them what they are doing, they respond “I’m trying to find the door to leave this room.” They are working and trying hard, they just lack direction and focus. As their sales manager, your job is not to do their job for them, but to gently grab their shoulders, move them over about two feet and then watch as they move forward, head first and go right out the doorway instead of pounding into the wall again. How are you redirecting and refocusing each of your sales people?

Strategically Redirecting And Refocusing Each member of Your Sales Team
As you go about your normal job as a sales manager, consider maintaining a “Future” focus with your sales coaching efforts. As you work with your people solving problems, consider ending each problem resolution discussion with questions like:

- “So what can you do to make sure this never happens again with this customer?”

- “If this happened with this account, then lets talk about how many of your other customers are most likely headed
toward this same problem?

- Now that you’ve solved this crisis with your customer, what can you do as an extra effort to rebuild, improve or
strengthen your relationship with your client?”

- “What have you learned from this problem and how can you now change the way you sell to improve your overall
success?”

Becoming more “Proactive” as a sales manager is more based on the focus of your comments and coaching efforts than it is the additional time you can devote to working with your sales people. The job of a sales manager is to help each individual achieve more than they would have without your involvement. How are you helping each of your people “see over the four foot grass” so they work on the really big stuff as they improve the way they sell and build their profitability? This is the goal of becoming more ‘Proactive” in your efforts as a successful sales manager.

May you enjoy the process.

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The “You Can Always Sell More” Coaching Newsletter Has Arrived

November 14th, 2007

The first issue of “You Can Always Sell More” Coaching E-Newsletter has arrived with the November issue! We want to help you make more money! This monthly e-newsletter is aimed at helping you, the experienced sales pro, to strengthen your selling “best practices” and to increase your competitive edge. There is also an article each issue for the leader/manager of your sales team.

Join us each month as we feature brief, yet condensed articles by Jim Pancero highlighting an immediately-implementable sales idea or suggestion to help you increase your selling skills, competitive advantage and selling success…or to help you lead your sales team. You will also be provided with additional ideas from other experts as well as links to great free stuff that can help you make more money in selling.

SUBSCRIBE NOW by filling out the form on our homepage at www.pancero.com.

Read the current issue or listen to the sales and sales management articles in MP3 format by clicking here.

We also want to hear from you! What are your suggestions? Your challenges? Ideas that can make this e-newsletter even more valuable to your daily selling efforts? You can e-mail us at editor@pancero.com.

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The New Science of Selling and Persuasion

August 10th, 2007

Sales has changed dramatically in the last few decades, yet many organizations and many salespeople continue to employ simplistic practices that no longer work. The New Science of Selling and Persuasion brings sales into the twenty-first century with carefully researched tactics and strategies that work in the real world of modern sales.

Backed by facts and figures, author William T. Brooks offers hard science that dispels such time-honored myths of selling as:

Myth #1: Closing is the key to selling.
Truth: Research clearly shows that how you open a sale is more important to customers than how you close it.

Myth #4: Persistence is the key to sales success.
Truth: Badgering bad prospects doesn’t work: concentrating on the right prospects from the beginning does.

Myth #7: Experienced salespeople don’t need to prospect.
Truth: Prospecting is an art and a science that inevitably leads to more sales.

Myth #12: Cold calling works.
Truth: Cold calling is the least effective way to find new prospects.

Rather than repeat selling’s time-worn myths, Brooks highlights the underlying principles, consistent patterns, statistical realities, and proven standards that yield predictable sales improvement. There’s now way to guarantee that a customer will buy anything, but the cutting-edge strategies you’ll find here are proven to lead to better prospects and more repeat business.

More than just a guide for salespeople, this one-of-a-kind book helps business leaders diagnose and correct organizational problems that inhibit sales growth. Based on his long experience as a salesperson and sales consultant, Brooks offers cures for organizational ills in sale management, culture, and hiring, among other areas. Looking at both organizations and the individuals who comprise them, he gives both sales managers and salespeople the tools they need to take a critical look at their own sales strategies and at their organization’s structure.

The old tricks and tactics of the last century no longer work with today’s savvy, cynical customer. Combining step-by-step strategies with organizational guidelines, personal sales tips, and even career guidance for sales pros, The New Science of Selling and Persuasion presents a practical, relevant, and revolutionary approach to sales that works wonders for organizations and individuals alike. Buy your copy today! The New Science of Selling and Persuasion

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Attain Sales Management Mastery

July 31st, 2007

The role of sales manager varies from company to company. Demands on you change with the changing times. But some things always stay the same.

As a sales manager, you need to be comfortable with being evaluated solely on the efforts of others. You have to assume the roles of both strategist and coach, devising a game plan for customer support. And you must keep your salespeople consistenly and actively motivated.

If the constraints and restrictions of your sales management job are causing you to delay or ignore your important goals and objectives — you are not alone. But you need not fall short of any of these goals. Let sales management pro Jim Pancero teach you how to get back on the fast track to success.

Based on extensive research, “Leading Your Sales Team: How to Manage A Winning Sales Team” is an enthusiastic, yet always sensible, advanced training course in keeping and increasing the competitive advantage of your sales team.

Packed with pertinent, practical advice, this no-nonsense look at what it takes to conquer the challenges of your sales management job includes:
- Three areas that help define your personal management style.
- Ways to help salespeople enhance their skill and to keep them growing and competitive in your changing sales market.
- Using a four-step hiring process to build a winning sales team.
- Ideas for creating a long-term positive environment for your sales staff.
- Steps for solving any customer/account crisis.
- Commission and compensation strategies for increasing your sales teams’ success.

“Leading Your Sales Team: How to Manage A Winning Sales Team” is the full coverage guide you need to master all aspects fo your complicated job as a sales manager.

Whether it is creating employee performance plans, understanding the three documents critical to sales management success, using the four strategic points of motivation - or any question you might have about your job - Jim Pancero is the expert ready with the answer. Your success as a sales manager depends on the success of other people. Now you can depend on Jim Pancero to tell you how to get the most out of it. Buy a copy today at “Leading Your Sales Team: How to Manage A Winning Sales Team”

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10 Strategic Accelerators to Increase Your Competitive Advantage

July 31st, 2007

#1 - Use your coach to help plan and strategize.

#2 - Always design and follow a multi-stepped plan.

#3 - Initiate instead of respond.

#4 - Make sure your entire team delivers a single, consistent message of uniqueness.

#5 - Stay “customer solution focused” by talking about their challenges, their opportunities, and your ability to help.

#6 - Ask more questions, do more homework, conduct more research.

#7 - Use your entire team to sell.

#8 - Work to get higher, wider and deeper within their organization.

#9 - Strengthen your “brand” by improving your (and your company’s) service, quality and response predictability.

#10 - Remember you are not in a price-driven market. You will get a higher price only when you first prove a
higher value.

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The New Rules of Selling

May 31st, 2007

Selling has profoundly changed. Customers are less loyal, more demanding and are more price sensitive. Your competitors are effective selling professionals with a solid set of existing customers, offering proven services at a very competitive price. Your ability to competitively win in this intensive market will be based on your capability to consistently strengthen all areas of your selling expertise. In the two audio CD set, Jim will share with you the latest strategies and techniques being utilized to gain a selling advantage in today’s even tougher, and more competitive markets. Just being good as a salesperson is no longer enough. The most critical issue today is “Are you good enough to get better?” Find out by ordering the latest best selling CD program “The New Rules of Selling - Are You Good Enough to Get Better?” The next best thing to Jim’s live presentations! Double audio CD - 95 minutes.

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Thawing Out Freeze-Dried Customers

March 29th, 2007

Some salespeople behave as if their customers freeze the minute they leave their office, and they don’t thaw out until 10 minutes before their next visit. Keeping them frozen assumes that, in the interim, nothing has changed, and no one else has talked to them. We’re back to the world of two.

From a strategic point of view, it’s a good idea to find out whether anything has changed in the weeks prior to your sales call. Don’t ask “What’s new?” or you’ll hear “nothing much.” Be specific. Ask: “Who else have you talked to? What else have you heard? How has the business environment changed since my last visit?”

Having a strategic plan in place can help you keep track of what you’ve said in previous meetings and what you want to say next. Then you can open with, “Today we were supposed to talk about this. Is it appropriate to continue?” Doing so gives your customer a chance to speak, and gives you room to change strategies, if new developments make that necessary.

Learn more about strategic selling in the audio CD series “Selling At The Top - Volume 1″ by Jim Pancero.

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Your Arsenal: Operational, Tactical, and Strategic Selling Skills

January 30th, 2007

Do you have the skills required to successfully sell large accounts in today’s accelerated, hypercompetitive selling environment? Do your sell-skills need to change for you to enhance your competitive advantage in your marketplace?

A sales professional needs to develop, maintain, and balance three very different kinds of skills: operational, tactical, and strategic.

Operational skills are your traditional face-to-face selling skills, your product or industry knowledge, and your ability to take advantage of e-mail and customer-tracking software.

Tactical skills involve the structures and processes of selling. When you have a good grasp of tactical skills, you know how to proactively control a sale that may take ten calls. You know what to do on call one, call six, and call eight.”

Strategic selling skills concern your philosophy or approach to your markets. Strategic skills include determining why your company is unique and why, based on all the competitive alternatives available to a buyer, a buyer should buy from you. These strategic answers can help you gain a competitive advantage in your market.

While the majority of your work efforts will always be operational, you need to devote time to tactical and strategic activities in order to grow your business and succeed in large-account selling. Too many sales people spend 90% of their time on operational skills, less than 10% of their time on tactical selling, and virtually no time at all on strategic selling. It’s no wonder that these sales people, like the three-foot “hellarewe” bird that spends its whole life in four-foot grass saying, “where the hell are we?”

Don’t get stuck only focusing on your operational environment. You need to approach your territory proactively, not reactively. Instead of just responding to phone calls, you need to initiate calls to the customer and suggest what needs to be done. Instead of selling your products and services, you need to sell solutions to customer problems.

For too many sales people, long-range planning is standing against the open trunk of their car in the customer’s parking lot and deciding what brochures they’re going to take in. Thinking tactically means thinking several calls ahead rather than only focusing on your next sales call. Plenty of salespeople can tell you what they want to accomplish on their next call to an important account. But when asked what they want to accomplish on their second call, they tend to reply, “Whatever I didn’t get done on the first call.” Their plans for their third call are to accomplish whatever they didn’t get done in the first two calls!

Thinking more moves ahead than your competitors and customers will automatically increase your competitive advantage. How many moves ahead do you think?

Take a moment to reflect on a recent large-account selling process you were involved in. List the major steps you went through from the time you identified the prospect until you closed the sale. How many of these did you proactively initiate to control your selling process? How many were reactive and controlled by the buyer?

Do you what to learn more about large account selling? We recommend the six-audio-CD series
“Selling At The Top - Volume 3″ by Jim Pancero for sale in the GreatSalesSkills.com store.

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How To Use GreatSalesSkills.com To Enhance Your Sales Team

January 18th, 2007

GreatSalesSkills.com is a website specifically developed, and dedicated to helping increase the skills, and success of the experienced advanced “business to business” sales professional and their sales leadership team. One of the main highlights of GreatSalesSkills.com is your ability to receive personal coaching feedback by completing a comprehensive twenty question personal evaluation of either your advanced selling or sales leadership skills.

Your personal responses to either of the twenty question evaluations will immediately generate a free five page (for sales) or ten page (for sales leadership) customized report offering suggestions to strengthen your skills and increase your effectiveness. You can complete either twenty question evaluation receiving a free report as many times as you like. A more comprehensive thirty page “Skill Builder Evaluation And Action Plan” is also available for a separate fee (explained on the website).

How A Sales Person Can Receive The Most Value From GreatSalesSkills.com

Step #1 - Complete your twenty question sales evaluation available at
GreatSalesSkills.com and receive your free five page action guide

On the first screen fill in your full name and e-mail address. Also enter your manager’s e-mail address in the space titled “E-mail your report to a friend.” This will allow a copy of your report to be sent directly to your manager.

You are safe entering your e-mail address. Your address will not be used for any other purpose than to receive your completed thirty page action guide and to complete a simple survey a week later asking you for your feedback on the evaluation and your personal action guide. It will most likely take you 15 to 30 minutes to complete your twenty question evaluation. Your report will then be immediately available for review online and as a “PDF” file attached to an e-mail sent to your, and your sales manager’s e-mail address.

This twenty question sales evaluation has been specifically researched and developed for the experienced “business to business” sales professional. This is a subjective evaluation of your selling skills. There are no “right or wrong” answers. You will select a numbered response of 1 to 5 for each question (1 means you are unaware of this skill and 5 means you are performing this skill at a “Best Practices” level). Answering all twenty questions with a true and honest assessment of where your selling skills are today will provide you with the most accurate final report evaluation and suggested actions. Your 5 page report will include a listing of the twenty question evaluation along with the scores you selected.

Step #2 – Ask Your Manager To Fill Out A Sales Evaluation Identifying Where They See
Your Selling Skills Are Today

Ask your manager to enter their e-mail address and your name on the line asking who you are evaluating. Make sure they also enter your e-mail address so you can also receive a copy of their completed evaluation. Ask you manager to complete this evaluation describing how they see your selling skills today.

Step #3 - Meet With Your Manager To Discuss Your Answers To Each Of The Twenty
Sales Evaluation Questions

This is an excellent opportunity for you to understand exactly where your manager feels your selling skills really are. Suggested discussion questions for each of the evaluation questions:

#1 - “Where do you see my skills are for question # X?”

#2 - (If your responses are different) - “Give me some examples to help me understand why you see me performing at such a different skill level. This is why I gave myself this evaluation…”

#3 - “Based on our discussion of my current selling skills, which areas do you feel I could work on that would generate the most positive improvement?”

#4 - “Develop an action plan of what you want to do to help enhance these identified growth
opportunity areas.”

Step #4 – Work To Improve Your Advanced Selling Skills

Decide this is a great time to strengthen the selling skill areas you and your manager have identified. We know you are good, now are you good enough to get better?

How A Sales Manager/Leader Can Receive The Most Value From GreatSalesSkills.com

#1 – Complete a twenty question sales evaluation on your own selling skills to see where you are, and how you can improve your selling skills. Your ability to lead a sales team will be directly tied to your ability to understand, and help others learn more about the “best practices” of selling.

#2 - Use this twenty question sales evaluation to help you and your sales rep better understand where each of you see this person’s selling skills really are. This can be a very positive meeting for you and your sales rep. You can also help your sales rep identify, and develop a learning plan to strengthen any sales areas identified in your discussions and comparing of evaluation responses.

#3 – Print out the twenty question evaluation and use it in a job interview to generate discussion questions with a potential sales candidate. Consider the twenty questions of the sales evaluation a set of “selling best practices.” Ask a candidate to describe how they have successfully demonstrated each of the sales evaluation questions in their past selling efforts.

These twenty questions can give you a lot of questions to ask that you might have otherwise overlooked. As a sales candidate talks you will quickly identify if they either have competence in this skill or really have no idea of what they are taking about.

#4 – Complete a twenty question sales leadership evaluation on your own leadership skills to see where you are, and how you can improve your ability to lead a sales team. Your ability to lead a sales team will be directly tied to your ability to understand, and implement the “best practices” of sales leadership.

#5 – Get feedback how others see your leadership strengths…and growth opportunities. Do you really understand how others see your leadership skills and abilities? Ask you manager to complete a sales leadership evaluation on you (following the steps outlined above for you completing an evaluation on your sales people). Then meet with your manager to share and discuss how they see your various leadership strengths and opportunities for growth.

#6 – Ask each member of your sales team to also complete a sales leadership evaluation identifying how they feel you are leading them. Then meet with them as a team (or individually) to discuss where they see you are and what you could do to help them become stronger, and more successful sales people.

The Best Coaching Sessions Are Balanced Conversations

Please remember that any meeting to share how you and someone else see their (or your) skills needs to be a positive coaching and communications opportunity. Make sure your comments and ideas are a blend of both what you see them doing right as well as what they could work on to improve. The more balanced your communications are to your rep the more likely they will be to want to work to improve. Also be sure to allow for different views or opinions. The goals of these coaching sessions are to help increase everyone’s awareness and understanding as well as to help develop solid growth opportunities.

Problems or Questions?

Contact Paul Pyle in our office if you need help completing your evaluations and receiving your complementary five page report. You can reach Paul at 800-526-0074 or at paul@pancero.com.

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