March 28th, 2016

Sales Recruiting: How To Hire & Retain “A Players” To Drive Revenue For Your Sales Team!

Businesses can’t function without employees, and if part of your company is about sales, you have to ensure you get “A Players” to help drive revenue for the team. Learning sales recruiting best practices allows you to hire “A Players”. It also teaches you how to retain your best sales people, which can be even more important. Once you get the best, you need to learn how to keep the best.

Ongoing

The recruitment strategy should be ongoing. You may not currently need any sales people, but you should have some options available for when you do need them. If you wait until you need them, you’ll rush through the interview process and may not get the best people on your new team.

Instead, focus on creating a system that attracts talent to you. Your marketing team can create pages for your website that will promote your values, rewards and culture. People looking for work will see that and want to be part of it.

You may also get the current employees involved in recruitment. Providing incentives in regards to recruiting rewards can boost your pool of potentials. A Players likely know others who are good at sales, which can help drive revenue.

Profiling

It is important to understand that not everyone can sell. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you have a group of non-selling salespeople on your team, you won’t make it. Creating a sales-assessment profiler can help you. It is a particular test that is used to measure sales behaviors and potential. You’ll get the best options for the team and can keep the ones who didn’t qualify for other areas, such as reception or management positions.

Training

Even if you have the best of the best, there is always room for improvement. You should continuously identify where progress could be made through sales training and testing. The salespeople may grumble, but they’ll be happy to find out their weaknesses and learn how to overcome them. While motivating your team to do better, you can also drive revenue.

Posting and Monitoring

Job boards could be your new best friend. Posting new jobs on these boards can spread the word and get you potentials. Job boards are a ready source of people who are eager to work. Many of them are already sales professionals, so you may get lucky and find one or two difference makers.

Learn more about sales recruiting here: https://salescoach.us/executive-sales-recruiting/

March 24th, 2016

Disruptive Sales Strategies for Success

The nature of the word disruptive seems negative at first glance. However, you are certainly aware that sometimes you have to shake things up a bit to be more effective. One of the biggest challenges a sales team faces is finding a way to stand out in the crowd. Many advertisers have discovered that the best way to shake things up a bit is to rattle a few cages. Disruptive strategies are helping to do just that.

Rattling Cages

Let’s take a look at disruptive advertisements to best help you visualize what disruptive means. Most people have always viewed commercials on television as interruptive. They interfere and break away from their entertainment. Disruptive advertising tries to continue the entertainment to avoid interrupting and instead disrupting to create interest as opposed to resentment. This has lead advertisements for products/brands like Skittles, Old Spice and Geico commercials to be downright odd, but amusing. A myriad of choices seem counterintuitive to branding consistency but creating branding consistency by being inconsistent consistently is the new norm. A creative and amusing advertisement captures the interest of the audience while also getting your initial message across.

It’s a mouthful but it does make sense.

Going Rogue
Disruptive sales takes on the same premise in that you need to find a way to be less interruptive and more disruptive to stand out from the crowd. It’s going rogue, not like a crazed pirate, but like a Super Hero. You are going against the grain of crime fighting within the law by going outside the law while fighting to improve the lives of your fellow citizens.

Four Basic Disruptive Steps

There are four things needed for successful disruptive sales strategies:

  1. Step away from the preconceived sales tactics.
  2. Step away from small-scale efforts and set larger goals and with a more focused target.
  3. Step away from your own industry and look for inspiration from more exciting industries to find ideas.
  4. Step away from the seasonal drivers and carve out a niche time of year to rally your sales team and campaigns when no one else is out there.

Disruptive sales strategies go against the grain in order to draw attention. They draw people away from the noise of the competition. You have to fight the urge to take the path more travelled in order to get their faster. Disruptive sales may not be a short cut because it takes more effort, but in the end it will prove to be one of many paths to success.

March 24th, 2016

3 Steps to Help Prospects Commit!

Try Using Predetermined and Practiced Steps To Help Prospects Commit. Having a System in Place When It Comes Time To Get a Prospect To Commit Will Increase Your Chance of Closing The Deal!

Provide Simple Ideas That Solve Problems

People and prospects love ideas that are simple, to the point and solve the problem. Provide your solution to your prospects problem in the simplest and most obvious way possible. Sit down strategize and brainstorm on how you can provide your new prospect with a simple and easy view of your product or service that solves their problem.

Communicate Clearly

Once you provide a simple solution to a prospect’s problem, you need to communicate this to them in a simple manner. All questions must be prepared for and ready to be answered. If you do not know the answer to a question, let them know you will make it a point to get the answer and that you will get back to them as soon as possible.

Related Article: Effective Communication Skills for Sales Professionals

Build Trust Through Credibility

A great way to build trust and credibility is to go the extra distance and Do Your Research. You will also develop a better sense of confidence while speaking to your prospect if you know what you are talking about. This will in turn help you build trust and credibility with your new prospect. Make sure you take detailed notes during your initial meetings and remember key points and goals to have accomplished while coming back to your next meeting.

Figure out what steps help your prospects commit the most and use these vigorously to close more sales!

February 29th, 2016

5 Things to Consider Before Investing in A Sales Team!

No matter how long your company has been in business, in order to maintain status quo or grow, you should consider investing in a sales team. Every industry is increasingly competitive and your sales force is an important aspect of keeping a competitive advantage. These are a few things to keep in mind when hiring and retaining a sales group for your company.

Job Description
Before you engage in any hiring, take the time to make a list of all the qualities you are looking for in a salesperson. What kind of background information should they have? How long have they been in sales? What are the types of responsibilities they will have and what are your expectations in how they fulfill them? Fleshing out all of the details will help guide the type of salespeople that you want to apply for the job. Furthermore, it will help flush out the sales people that you do not want on your sales force.

Be Selective
There might be a slew of people who appear qualified on paper, but will not fit in with your company’s culture. They could have a personality that does not mesh well with their co-workers. Conducting phone interviews before having them come in for a face to face will narrow down the field. A good salesperson should have a professional phone demeanor. When you have them come in, introduce them to the rest of the sales team to see how they interact.

Incentivize
Once you have created your sales force, it is never a good lose them to a competitor. Promote a welcoming atmosphere, one that lets them know they are a valuable member of the company. Let them know they have the ability to advance within the business. Create attainable goals for them to achieve. If they feel the environment is overbearing and has no direction, they will jump ship very quickly.

Motivate
Not only do the salespeople want to feel needed, they want to know they have been doing a good job along the way. Reward the small actions that lead up to the sale. Closing the sale is not always the end game. If they have improved in some aspect of their prospecting, recognize the advancements, too. You must be prepared to motivate your sales team with rewards, further education through seminars or workshops and constant positive thinking. If you are not prepared to provide motivation, do not expect as much from your sales force. Consider unique ways to motivate your team like hiring a motivational speaker or providing motivational materials to them on a regular basis.

Training
Every company has a different method to fostering referrals and converting leads into a sale. Even though they might have been a fantastic salesperson at their previous positions, their technique might not work in your environment. Keeping the sales team up to date on the latest methods and evaluating their usefulness will ensure a successful working climate. A sales coach or sales trainer can do wonders for your sales force.
It is scary to essentially put your company into someone else’s hands to increase business. Having a good backbone in place for hiring, retaining, motivating and training a sales team will make customer acquisition a smoother process and allow you to reap the benefits. Investing in a sales team should be an educated and thorough process that ensures you are hiring and retaining the correct force for YOUR organization.

February 23rd, 2016
the-power-of-communication

Effective Communication Skills for Sales Professionals

the-power-of-communication

When it comes to sales, knowing how to say something that grabs the prospect’s attention and adds credibility to your reputation is often more important than knowing exactly what to say.  In this article, we discuss mastering effective communication skills for sales professionals and why it is extremely important for any salesperson. There are a few key elements to good communication that will help ensure your message is received, your relationships are strengthened.

Here are some effective communication skills that sales professionals should always be aware of while engaging a prospect. These techniques should be practiced until they are mastered. If you are able to communicate effectively, you will spend much less time worrying about what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

Be enthusiastic. Enthusiastic sales reps will make a sale more often than an apathetic or disconnected salesperson. Your confidence shows your customer that you believe in your product or service. If you believe in your product or service, then that makes your customer more likely to also believe in your product or service.

Keeping your customers completely engaged is another good communication technique to master. Imagine Ben Stein giving your sales pitch, and remember that your customer can’t handle monotone, dry salespeople either.

Make good eye contact. Eye contact means that you care about the person and value them and their time. This lets your customer know that they are appreciated for their business. Eye contact is also a sign of trust and those who do not make eye contact can make the other party feel weary and unimportant.

Refrain from speaking too quickly. In your effort to be enthusiastic and confident you might find that your customer is having a hard time keeping up with your fast pace. Conversely, a slow pace can cause a customer to lose interest. Mastering the art of setting and keeping an appropriate conversation pace will set the base for effective communication between you and your client or prospect.

While the above techniques are very important, understanding your products or services is also crucial. You do not want to be that salesperson that is asked many questions about your product or service and your response is always, “I will get back to you”.

Keep your depth of knowledge up to date. Keep your mind sharp so that you can answer any questions that the customer may have. If for some reason you can’t answer their questions, make sure your responses are clear, appropriate, and demonstrate a commitment to finding the answer. You should be able to answer any question the prospect asks with confidence.

Learning Proper Telephone Selling Techniques is One of the Best Ways You Can Build Effective Communication Skills as a Sales Professional.

Learn More About Telephone Selling Techniques and Build Effective Communication Skills Today!

Developing Effective Telephone Selling Techniques and Strategies_Cover

Related Article: Stop Pitching & Start Solving Client Problems

Effective communication skills for sales professionals can be sharpened by working with a one-on-one sales coach or engaging in sales training.