Fear
By · CommentsOne of the biggest pieces of baggage we as sales pros carry around with us is fear.
Fear can take many forms:
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of not being liked
- Fear of the wolf at the door
- etc
It is important that we identify our own fears early in our careers and correct them. Failure to do so will severely limit our success. Fear of rejection will keep us from making cold calls. Fear of rejection will keep us from closing $50,000 sales. Fear of not being liked will keep us from pushing through to closing.
A little fear of the wolf at the door is a good thing though: it keeps us motivated to get up every morning.
Testimonials are Feedback on your Value Proposition
By · CommentsTestimonials are great but most people don’t leverage them to their fullest extent.
Sure, we put them on our websites, include them in our literature, and have a sheet full of them to pull out at the appropriate time.
In addition to all that, you should be looking at each testimonial as a window into your customer’s perception of your value proposition. Each testimonial is an articulation of the value you actually provided. Each one contains a reason why someone did business with you instead of your competitor.
Use this information to fine-tune your value proposition.
Sales Training For Life
By · CommentsSo you’ve decided to try your hand at Sales. The company you are talking to even offers sale training. A lot of entry-level sales people get sucked in.
Usually the training is product training, not sales training. After that it’s sink-or-swim – and they’ve tied a cement block to your leg. Some people will make it but most won’t. Companies know this and hire large numbers of people and live with a high churn rate.
True Sales Training teaches you how to sell irregardless of the product or service. For example, every good respectable sales training system teaches you the importance of qualifying prospects. Most internal company sales training will provide you with a canned opening pitch.
SolomonRk is different. Call it Sales Meta-Training. Instead of giving you a canned pitch, we teach you a methodology for determining an effective ‘pitch’ that works with any product. We teach you a methodology for determining the appropriate qualification criteria for your company and product. We teach you a process you can apply so that you can determine if a prospect is ready to close – and what to do if he’s not ready to close.
We teach you how to wake up in the morning knowing what you have to to that day.
We teach you how to have a mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any industry.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
Michael D Goodman on Trust Credibility, and Interest
By · CommentsThis is am amateur video taken several months ago of Michael D Goodman talking about the elements of Trust, Credibility, and Interest in the sales process:
Credibility
By · CommentsWithout trust and credibility you have nothing.
Does your prospect believe you can deliver on your claims? Prospects need to know you and your company will do exactly what you tell them you will do, when you said you will do it.
This credibility needs to be established early in the process. Don’t wait until closing to find out if you’ve got it.
Stop Running Around Like a Decapitated Chicken
By · CommentsI was talking to a women business owner a few days ago and listening to her as she expressed her feeling of being overwhelmed. She felt that she could not go on doing all the things she was doing but did not know which activities to give up.
That conversation illustrated the need to always tracking the leading indicators of sales.
- How many hands do I have to shake to her “That’s interesting, tell me more.”
- How many interested people do I have to talk to for every first appointment.
- How many first appointments do I get for every follow-up
- And so on.
Record these metrics for every activity you do, such as:
- networking
- cold calling
- twittering
- blog posts
- door hangers
- magazine ads
After you’ve done that for a while you’ll begin to get a quantifiable measure of the productivity of each activity. Factor in the hours you need to spend on each and it will be clear where you should be spending your time and which activities you should drop.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
Business Owners: How to Increase Your Revenue
By · CommentsYour Wife wants a new car. Your business desperately needs a new computer. Can you afford it? Or maybe the money is in the bank account but you’re afraid that sales may not stay at their current level.
The key to growing your revenue is to measure the leading indicators of every type of sales activity you engage in.
- How many hands do you have to shake at a networking mixer to get a follow-up meeting? How many of those turn into sales?
- How many interested prospects do you get from each speaking gig?How many of those turn into sales?
- How many inquires do you get per hundred newsletters sent out?How many of those turn into sales?
- etc
By measuring these activities and recording your measurements, you develop a picture of the effectiveness of each activity.
We train business owners what what the leading indicators of sales are, how to effectively measure them, and how to evaluate the results. We teach you how to use these and other tools to build a scalable system for revenue generation. When you’re done, you’ll know what revenue is going to be in 90 day, 120 days, etc. And you’ll know exactly what to do in order to increase revenue, and you;ll know how much more of that activity you need to do.
Kind of cool, isn’t it?
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
Motivational Seminars are not Sales Training
By · CommentsHere’s a tip: When you are evaluating sales training see if the provider also offers ‘Motivational Seminars’. If so, dig a little deeper before plunking down your money. Often the sales training and the motivational seminar are the same thing just branded differently.
While motivational seminars are fun, they don’t teach you what you need to be successful in sales. They don’t teach you how to determine your product’s value proposition. They don’t teach you how to qualify prospects ( Our sales training goes much deeper and teaches you how to determine the qualification criteria for your product or service).
Good sales training teaches you skills.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
Hiring Your First Salesman
By · CommentsYou started out as a one person company. Up to this point you’ve been the CEO, sales person, even the janitor.
The company is growing. You are the CEO and the company’s best salesman, but you’re to the point where you can’t do both. You’ve decided to hire your first salesman.
The first thing to do after making that decision is to start codifying your selling environment.
- What’s your sales cycle?
- What’s the cost of your product?
- What is the typical expense to the buyer.
- Who is that buyer?
- Is your sales cycle six months or one day?
- Are you selling with about 52 different presentations or a one-call close?
- Do you need your sales guy to be a farmer or a hunter?
Next, describe these characteristics in your job posting. Scan the incoming resumes, discarding any that don’t match your selling environment. If you hire a guy who sold $1,000 products and you put him to work selling a $15,000 products he’s going to fail.
Finally, have multiple people interview each candidate.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
Your company has a real dilemma on its hands. Your company is depending you for revenue but they are losing this revenue now that they are moving you into management.
They are betting on you. They are betting that you can translate some of your skills to the salespeople you now will be managing. Often times, I’ve found that people in your position are very good at what they do but are unable to articulate how they do it.
So the first thing is really to understand what the role of a sales manager is. And there are four major areas of responsibility for a sales manager.
Click Here to read Part 1, Recruiting
Click Here to read Part 2, Training
Click Here to read Part 3, Coaching
4. Accountability
The last item on the list is accountability. Accountability is how do I motivate my sales people to engage in the right activities? How do I prod the salesperson – if necessary – to move forward? And how do to get the leading indicators to line up so that as the sales cycle comes to the end there will naturally be money in the pipeline.
Accountability required you to look at your pipeline, look at your revenue goals, and you get the salespeople to be in line with the work that they need to do.
Odds are that in your previous role as the sales guy you naturally did the work to fill up your pipeline and as aresult you were in the top 20 percent producing 80 percent of the revenue. But now as a sales manager, you are going feel some frustration because you’re probably going to find that no one has the work ethic you’ve displayed.
And your biggest source of frustration is going to be how do you coach and mentor and hold these guys accountable to get where they are not naturally inclined to be. That’s a big deal. Your biggest challenge will be building drive into your sales team and getting them motivated even when they don’t feel like it.
What if you can’t get them motivated? The old saw in sales is, “If you can’t get them fired up with enthusiasm, then fire them with enthusiasm.”
That’s the bottom line. You’ve got to have people who will do the work. There are very few people who are unsuccessful at sales because they don’t have the aptitude, but there are a ton of people who are unsuccessful because they don’t have the drive to be the number one guy on a sales team.
Michael D Goodman is the founder and CEO of Revenue Kinetics and the author of SolomonRK, a unique system for training sales professionals, business owners, and CEOs. SolomonRk is a whole company solution to revenue and teaches you how to create a revenue-producing mid-level pipeline in 90 days in any selling environment. SolomonRk is currently available as sales training in Phoenix Arizona.
