Author Archive
Fear
Posted 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
Posted 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
Posted 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
Posted 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:
Sales Training for CEOs and Business Owners
Posted by: | CommentsGuest Post by Dave Barnhart, Founder, Business Blogging Pros
This is my story of becoming an enthusiastic fan of Michael D Goodman and his methodologies for sales training.
In 2004 I was one of two partners running a small branch of a larger company charged with taking an in-house software application to market and turning it into a commercial product. As a cash-strapped enterprise, our business plan called for my partner and I to perform the role of salesman (as well as programmer, chief cook, and bottle-washer). Later – as we began to generate revenue – we would hire a sales guy.
A man’s gotta know his limitations. I knew mine:
- I was not a salesman
- I was terrified of cold-calling
- While I was adept at using the interview process to separate the good programmers from the BS artists, I knew I could not do that when interviewing people foe a sales position.
- I did not have the skills and knowledge to manage sales people (I knew this from doing it – and failing – in a previous life)
My partner was introduced to Michael D Goodman and she brought him in. Meeting Michael D Goodman was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me professionally.
I want to share with you my mindset: I was skeptical. Most of my previous experience with consultants was bad. The mentors I respected held a low opinion of consultants. And Sales? I once worked for a guy who as Sales Manager said, “A salesman won’t read anything that doesn’t have ‘Commission Plan’ printed on the cover”. The number of sales people I had known who could actually sell could be counted on the fingers of one hand and have a few fingers left over. So to say that I had low expectations was an understatement.
In a couple of dozen hours spread over a few weeks, Michael D Goodman changed how I approached the entire topic. We worked through a session of ‘What I Sell vs What they Buy’. Suddenly the lightbulb went on and since that day when faced with offering a new product or service I have used this exercise to help me talk about it in terms that resonate with the client.
He taught me how to effectively cold call – me! a guy who was terrified of it but bound and determined to overcome that fear. He knew what metrics to record and coached me through creating a script and taught me the true objecting of that initial cold call. With a few hours of patient coaching I got pretty good at it.
He introduced me to screening tools that can detect character traits in an applicant for a sales position that can tell you if the guy has problems that will keep him from performing. Suddenly I had a tool that would do a much better job that I of separating a good salesman from a BS artist.
The pièce de résistance was when he introduced me to something he called the Pain-Power-Fit Model, and his tool for judging if a sale was ready to close. And if the sale was not ready to close it told you what needed to be done. Have you ever managed a salesman that was an eternal optimist? A sales guy who was ready to spend the commission check after the first cold call? Now I had a tool that I could use to examine each of those sales with a critical eye. No more ‘fairy tale forecasts’.
Since then I’ve continued to spend time with Michael. I’ve watched him use his methodology repeatedly to teach people how to effectively build a mid-level pipeline in 90 days. More importantly, I’ve watched him teach CEOs and business owners how to hire and manage sales staff, and how to equip a sales guy with what he needs to be successful.
Enjoying the Ride Doesn’t Work
Posted by: | CommentsRecently Charles H Green wrote an article on Entrepreneur.com entitled “Stop Trying to Close and Enjoy the Ride”. He advocates simply being trustworthy and always trying to do what’s right for the customer. He claims that by doing to the sale will close itself. Maybe. Sometimes.
I remember the story Michael Goodman told me about selling an expensive software package to the CEO of a small company. The CEO was certainly capable of making the decision. The CEO was certainly empowered to write the check for a deposit.
The problem was that the lower-level employee back at the office who would be actually using the software said, “If you replace what I’m already using then I quit.” And letting her quit would bring the whole company to a grinding halt. So much for the sale.
One of the things we teach our students is to lay our proprietary grid over the sale. The grid’s purpose is to make sure all the bases are covered. For example, one of the cells in that grid asks “Does the prospect understand the ROI of your solution?” If he doesn’t see the ROI it really doesn’t matter how much he trusts you, does it?
