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Ask Doctor Sales
Posted by: In: Uncategorized 17 May 2007 0 comments

Dear Doctor Sales,
     I have a problem. I’m calling lots of prospects, doing lots of presentations, but can’t seem to keep everything organized. I spend half my day just going over my list to figure out what to do next. Can you help?
     Nancy P, Markham

Nancy: There are two parts to getting organized. The first is getting your organizational skills developed. The other is getting technology on your side. Let’s look at them separately:

Part One: Get a system set up. Categorize all your time and all your prospects. You should break the selling process in your specific organization into segments. For instance, you may have a category of “prospects who have been sent intro e-mail” and “prospects who I’m attempting to follow up with after intro e-mail” etc. In this way, you can clearly see what the required actions are for each category and it also allows you to filter out the “unlikely” time-wasting prospects more easily.

By the way, did you know that the average salesperson wastes 30 minutes per day simply looking for stuff on their own desk? That’s equal to three full work weeks a year! To help prevent this from happening to you, clear your desk and mark down in your agenda which category you are going to work on in a given block of time. This way, you won’t seem overwhelmed.

Part Two: Once you have a system set up, get a CRM product like Salesforce.com, ACT! or even Outlook and put every prospect and all actions taken in the system. Each time you “touch” a prospect by connecting with them by e-mail, phone or other means, ask yourself, “What’s the next step to take with this person?”. Once you’ve answered this, plug it into the date that you want to do it. This will cut down your future thinking time dramatically and give you a greater feeling of being in control. If you would like to learn more about managing your time, check out Northbound’s Goal Aligned Time™ program.

If you have a question for the Doctor, e-mail me at [email protected].

Questions are the answer
Posted by: In: Uncategorized 07 Apr 2007 0 comments
By Michael Caron   

Puzzle Pieces

In our business, we are often asked, “What is the biggest mistake salespeople make?” Of course, we tend to term them “opportunity areas” rather than “mistakes” but whatever you want to call them, the most common is the area of questioning. The second area that goes hand-in-hand with number one would be the seeming inability of typical sales professionals to quit talking and listen after they’ve asked great questions!

The average salesperson is high in the “D & I” of the DiSC personality assessment, which means that they are “dominant” and “influential.” They like to control their environment and generally, they love to talk (to learn more about the DiSC profile, send us an e-mail for a sample). While these are critical personality traits for a sales professional to possess, they can also be their Achilles heel. In a meeting with the prospect, they think that selling is best done by being the one who talks the most. Their best definition of communication is “taking turns talking!”

The shortest course on selling is “ask questions and shut up”. Good use of open ended, closed and probing questions allows you to accurately determine your prospect’s priorities, challenges and needs. How can you truly provide a solution, which is an overused word in sales these days, without knowing precisely what the problems are and where the opportunities are? You should never go into a sales presentation without a list of well thought out questions. At Northbound, we’re hesitant to even use the term “presentation” as it implies that the salesperson is “presenting” while the prospect carefully listens while it should be just the opposite.

Our partners in e-learning solutions, CRK Interactive, recommend in a Customer Focused Sales Interview, that the prospect should be talking over two-thirds of the time. Of course, there is much more to learn about performing this process properly.

Northbound Learning’s Customer-Centric Selling™ program includes a solid skills building segment in this area. For more information, click here. To experience a free e-learning demonstration in this area from our partners, click here.