Sales Training - Sales Coaching

Last week I attended a 100 anniversary celebration of one of our customer's being in business. A great accomplishment in and of itself. A number of dignitaries including Harvey McKay well known sales speaker and author were present. It dawned on me the theme, integrity in business was not a subject that is aired frequently. It gets lost in all the strategies and tactics that clutter the literature and discussions in the sales world. Often i...

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I was watching the Waste Management Open golf tournament and marveled at Kyle Stanley who had just lost an event after leading by 7 strokes the week before. He persisted and closed the deal and won in Scottsdale AZ.This remarkable turnaround made me think about many sales people that do all the necessary work, but fail to close the deal. At a recent sales meeting one of the sales people commented he was having difficulty closing enough deals. ...

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Sales tenacity or sensitivity that is the question? Today a potential vendor called me for the third time on a follow up of a previous conversation regarding engaging him for services we needed. He politely suggested he didn't want to bother me, but on the other hand he wanted to be responsive.  Here in a nutshell is the sales dilemma of the ages. When to push and when to back off. In retrospect I thought the sales person ha...

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During a training event at a call center a new sales person asked when do I start the sales process? I explained the sales process starts the moment you pick up the phone with your greeting. And within in the first 15 seconds you don't have to do anything accept allow the caller to tell you what they are interested in, if you give them a chance. Thus a well placed question such as, "how can I help you today?" generally sets the stage for the ...

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What is the score? Is a sales manager a score keeper or coach? Back in the day George Carlin an off beat comedian did bit where he was a radio announcer and gave baseball scores; 3 to 2, 5 to 1, 2 to 0 etc. That was it no names for the respective teams or any details! Many sales meetings are basically the same thing just focusing on the results at the end of a sales period vs. examining the details, thus missing the  opportunity ...

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It is an axiom of sales to find the decision maker and the person who signs the checks and you will increase your probability of success. The counterpart to that axiom is you must develop a relationship with the decision maker as well. During one of our coaching sessions at a sales meeting, a sales person said he ran into the new CEO of one of his accounts at a local restaurant. They had a brief conversation. Apparently the CEO was looking to bu...

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Sales coaching may very well be the answer you are looking for when it comes to slumping sales, but even companies that aren't having trouble with sales can benefit greatly from it. In fact, companies that build regular sales coaching into their programs find greater success over the long term and less of a downfall when the economy takes a turn for the worse. Here are four ways sales coaching will kick start your business and keep you on trac...

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The internet has made us more connected than ever before, and online sales training is a great way to grow your business without having to pay for expensive company trips or send employees across the country where they can't work at all while they are gone. Sales people who participate in online sales training experience less time lost between the training sessions and work because they can go into work the next day and apply what they learned w...

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Recently, we had a client in Phoenix, AZ who wanted us to provide negotiating skills training for his sales team. The expressed purpose was the sales team had difficulty articulating a value proposition, thus had no fallback position and caved in consistently on price and margins suffered. Much to the chagrin of the client and gurus who sell books/seminars on 1001 ways to close deals; there is no scientific data that indicates any...

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Many of today’s sales professionals are so enamored with technology, social media, emails, voice mails, texting etc.; they often underplay the power of face to face communications. In a recent consultative engagement we reviewed the amount of time and resources were spent in person to person vs. use of technology.  Before I share the results and some observations, I would like to clarify that in no way am I suggesting sales professi...

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