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3 Sales Success Ingredients

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Sales Coaching, Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Sales Training, Salespeople, Training, Uncategorized 22 Nov 2022 0 comments Tags: consultative selling, growing selling skills, increased sales, positive thinking, sales leadership, sales management, sales productivity, sales training, sell more in less time, selling skills

There are some common ingredients among top sellers.

Sugar and spice and everything nice is what the nursery rhyme says little girls are made of but what are the ingredients for sales success? There are three as well, but you can’t simply buy them at the grocery store like you can sugar and spice.

The three key components that you need to have in good measure are 1) Activities 2) Skills and 3) Attitude. Strikingly different from each other, they are rarely found together in the right proportion. Each one deserves some specifics.

Activities – Activities are like the sugar. The more you have, the sweeter the reward! A great salesperson needs to understand what the key activities are that lead to sales success and then do lots of them. Are you taking the proper actions that move buyers through the pipeline? For most salespeople in traditional sales, these would include things such as leads generated, referrals received, outbound touches such as calls & emails, meetings set and proposals delivered. For social selling, the activities could be posts, new connections made or conversations scheduled.

Skills – Skills are like adding spice to the selling process. Without it, your activities will be bland. (OK – I’m stretching a bit to make the metaphor work.) You need to possess the skills to make your prospecting activities effective and turn them into meetings. You need to know how to manage your time, set & manage goals, adjust your selling style to the customer, do a great discovery meeting, present solutions, handle objections, move the buyer towards commitment and so on.

Attitude – This is the equivalent of “everything nice” because recent research clearly shows that having a positive attitude brings, on average, 34% greater sales. See my recent post “Happiness Can Lead to More Sales” for more detail. Without a positive attitude, you will be stopped in your tracks when you hit the inevitable challenges that selling involves. A positive attitude ensures that the other two ingredients, activities and skills, are sustainable.

Do you really need to have all three of these to excel in sales? Yes and no. I’ve worked with many salespeople who make a decent living with 2 out of the 3. For instance, I remember one very personable individual who I’ll call Marty who was part of my first client’s sales team. Marty had a positive attitude. He always had a smile and a high level of confidence. He was also pretty skilled. Even before training, he could clearly make effective prospecting calls and did a decent job in meetings too. He made a good six figure income. So what’s the problem? Maybe nothing except that he could have done so much better if he had the third ingredient: activities. To be blunt, he was lazy. He would go for 2 hour lunches at least a few times a week. At 5 o’clock, you’d better not be standing near the door for fear of Marty running you over on his way out. I did an analysis of Marty’s funnel and conversion rates and found that for him to earn $15,000 more that year, which was his goal, he only had to spend 45 more minutes prospecting per week. You might ask, who wouldn’t put 9 more minutes in per day to make 15 grand more? Maybe you would but not Marty. It didn’t happen because Marty was in the “comfort zone” and refused to do any additional activities.

On the other hand, I’ve seen some who have have an incredible work ethic, doing massive amounts of activities with wonderfully positive attitudes but have only moderate skills. Fortunately, these people have the best chance of improving their income from a sales development program because skills are easier to change than the other two ingredients.

Each of these 3 ingredients can be developed to varying degrees. Your takeaway action is to set a goal for the next 12 months how you’re going to grow each of them. After that, make a list of things that you can do in the next 30 days to get you started. The last step is to schedule an action that you will take tomorrow.

By focussing on the fine balance of these key ingredients, you will experience everything nice that a great career in sales can bring!

Should You Leave a Voicemail When Prospecting?

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Sales Coaching, Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Sales Training, Salespeople, Uncategorized 12 Oct 2022 0 comments Tags: cold calling, consultative selling, growing selling skills, increased sales, prospecting, sales productivity, sales training, selling skills, voicemail messages

Why you need to leave a voicemail every time.

I’m frequently asked this question and my typical response is, “Why wouldn’t you?” The answers I get back range from “They’ll never call me back so why bother” to “If I leave a message, they’ll know why I’m calling the next time and won’t pick up.” Both are bad answers. With the current work-from-home movement, it’s even more rare for someone to be at their office desk. And we all know that mobile phone numbers are often hard to come by. Here’s why some objections from salespeople to leaving voicemails don’t hold up.

“They’ll never call me back.” – WRONG!

This just isn’t true. Our own statistics plus statistics from our clients who we’ve trained to leave voicemails all point to the same thing. Some prospects will call you back. While many won’t, some will and some is much better than the “none” who will call you back when you don’t leave a voicemail.

Naturally, the more clear, concise and compelling your message is, the greater the chance of a callback. Our research has shown that callbacks can increase dramatically with the right technique and skill.

But there’s an equally powerful reason to leave a voicemail. Even in the cases where it doesn’t lead to a callback, you are able to get your message through to the buyer. You are able to convey the reasons why it makes sense for them to have conversation with you. When you are able to convincingly speak of how you’ve helped others solve problems that they might have, it can cause them to sit up and take notice. Just as in advertising, you’re making a “impression” on the buyer and for people to take action, they often need multiple impressions.

“If I leave a message, they’ll know why I’m calling the next time and won’t pick up.” – WRONG!

The notion that catching a prospect off guard will somehow help you engage with them seems very flawed to me. Question: Would you be more likely to have a conversation with someone if you a) knew what they were calling about and b) think that they might be able to help you resolve a challenge? Of course you would. And your prospects are no different.

When you catch someone completely off guard, their automatic internal knee-jerk response will likely be something like, “It’s a salesperson. I’ve got to get them off the phone.” They will be far less likely to think about what value you might bring to them. If, however, you’ve already touched them with your value proposition several times like you can with your voicemails, there will be a higher likelihood of agreeing to a brief conversation.

If you haven’t been leaving voicemails when prospecting, start today. As with all your selling skills, you’ll want to practice again, again and again until you sound smooth and natural. You will instantly see both the number of connections increase as well as the quality of your conversations.

Northbound’s “Connecting to the Big Cheese” workshop will teach you and your team how to be master this critical selling skill. For pricing or more info, contact Craig Brandys, Vice President of Sales at [email protected].

To Sell More, Ask Questions and Listen!

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Sales Coaching, Sales Training, Salespeople 12 Oct 2022 0 comments Tags: sales questions, sales results, sales training

No talking

A good fellow sales training friend of mine, Jack Daly, always says that the shortest course on selling is “Ask questions and listen.” Having trained thousands of salespeople, although most of us know intuitively that this simple strategy makes sense, it’s not done in the real world often enough. Like any habit, the pattern of “Let me tell ya. Let me tell ya” is tough to break.

I love feedback, good and bad, from participants of Northbound’s “Goal Aligned™ Selling” programs. I just received an email from a sales manager that was forwarded to him by one of his team. Knowing how much we can help salespeople build their careers and, in this case, help them personally, is what drives me more than anything at Northbound. Our sales training works!

“I have applied some of the strategies learned in class on recent site visits and have had a positive experiences. Asking proper and relevant questions, using Northbound’s 0-10 competitor’s rating system. Listening without interrupting, understanding customer’s needs and problems. Even when this customer rated our competitor 9 out of 10 I uncovered that the customer was interested in a direct one person contact, thus allowing me the opportunity to look after his jobs directly and having his staff calling me as the one person. In the last two weeks, we have 3 orders placed and prior to that have not done any business since 2019. We learned one of the key points in training was to probe and uncover problems, and leverage any competitor deficiencies.

All in all it’s a new way for me to look at and approach day to day interactions.”

To look into a complimentary live workshop for you or your sales team, reach me at 416.456.1440 or [email protected]. Check out northboundsales.com/training/

Objection Handling: 3 Steps to dealing with “I’m happy”

It’s one of the most common objections you’ll get … and one of the most difficult to deal with.

You’ve Heard It Before:

Objections come in different sizes and shapes which makes objection handling a difficult skill to master. You will get different objections when prospecting than you will when presenting solutions and you need to be able to handle the common ones in a smooth and skillful manner. A tough objection when attempting to set meetings is the dreaded, “We’re happy with our current vendor” which might also come in the form of “We’re good right now” or even “We don’t have any need.” In this article, I’m going to provide you a 3 step process for handling these.

Goal Aligned Selling

Let’s be clear. There may actually NOT be any need. They might actually have a solution in place that is superior to anything else out there. While these situations MAY exist, they are rare. The sad fact is that in many cases, your solution IS better but you never got the chance to find out for sure. Objection handling is often a case of additional communication of the facts.

It’s a problem that is often precipitated by poor sales techniques. Why does this happen? In a nutshell it’s caused by the prospect not believing they have any problems with their current solution vendor that warrants attention. Logically, if they knowingly had a problem with their current vendor, they’d probably be calling you instead of you calling them!

In a recent workshop, I asked this question: “Who believes that there are potential customers out there who have problems that you can solve but that the customer doesn’t even know they have?” As you might expect, every person in the room threw their hand up. They are 100% right.

Find Problems:

The overall strategy here is to find some problems. If there is no problem, there is no opportunity. Sometimes I get pushback from people on the use of the word “problem” noting that their product or service provides an “opportunity” for the customer to do better than they are right now rather than there being a “problem” necessarily. While I don’t disagree, we’re really just looking at the same coin from a different side.

Northbound’s sales development program is named “Goal Aligned Selling™” because our entire methodology revolves around helping the customer achieve their goals. When a customer perceives a gap between where they are and where they’d like to be, “tension for change” is created. Only when this tension for change exists, will the customer be motivated to explore a possible change to the status quo. The diagram above illustrates the concept.

Naturally, a very direct way of course is to just ask the buyer what problems they have. You could come right out and say something to the effect of this.

You: “So, what problems do you have with your existing vendor?”

It’s not likely, however, that the customer is going to a) know all the problems they have or b) serve them up to you on a silver platter. Instead you’ll hear something like this:

Customer: I really don’t have any. Thanks for your call.

A better way to approach this is to use this 3 step strategy:

1. Establish what the customer is trying to accomplish in the key result areas.

2. Probe for areas where there might not be 100% satisfaction.

3. Help them see that they might be able to do better in the key result areas than they are right now.

Executing this strategy can be quite challenging and requires more detail than I have for this post. I will follow this up shortly with some specific ways of implementing this strategy with your prospect.

Happy Selling

Michael

Partnership Opportunity

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Partership, Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Sales Training, Salespeople, Training 30 Apr 2018 0 comments Tags: business opportunity, growing selling skills, partnership, sales management, sales training, selling skills

Partnership Opportunity with Northbound Sales Training

Some of the benefits of this unique opportunity are:

Earn equity in a thriving business
No corporate BS
Earn a well above average income
Unlimited upside to growth potential
Close collaboration with the Founder
Your opinions will be listened to and integrated into potential solutions
Management opportunities in various roles as best suited to you as we grow

Northbound Sales has been providing cutting edge sales building programs to sales teams across North America for 10 years. Past and current clients include Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Choice Hotels, Rogers Publishing and Aeroplan. Our typical clients are Vice-Presidents of Sales, Sales Directors and Sales Managers of mid-to-large sized companies with direct B2B sales forces.

Our training programs have been developed, refined and proven. We have metrics to prove it! Selling tools and techniques have been built and tested. Now I’m looking for a very special individual to become my partner and help dramatically scale the business to be a major player in the billion dollar North American B2B sales training market.

Some requirements you should have are:

Minimum 3 years in B2B sales management or 3 years in sales training
Interest in investing in a business for equity participation
Existing relationships with prospective sales organizations who could use our services
Experience selling to sales organizations with advanced sales techniques

If you like the idea of working in a fun, flexible, entrepreneurial environment – if you absolutely love sales & have no call reluctance – if you want to get in at the ground level of a growing business, then this role might be the right one for you.

If you know of someone who would be a great fit, pass along their name and if they end up as the partner we’re looking for, we will pass along a $500 referral fee to you.

If you’d like to explore this opportunity further, please contact Michael Caron at [email protected] or 416.456.1440.

Interruptions Are Killing Your Sales More Than You Think!

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Salespeople, Training, Uncategorized 21 Sep 2017 0 comments Tags: sales productivity, time management

I’ve read several studies over the years about interruptions in the workplace and how they affect our productivity. I, like many sales professionals, enjoyed the fast pace that interruptions created without knowing how much it was hurting my ability to get my key tasks done. All the studies point to the same thing — that the time it takes to handle the interruption isn’t the big time sucker — it’s the time it takes you to get back to the same level of focus and concentration. The estimates run from a low of 6 minutes to a high of 23 minutes as noted in a Fast Company article.

If you are needing to focus on a task, let’s say, making prospecting calls, if you get interrupted even 1 time per hour, you are losing over 12 hours per week or over the course of a year, over 12 weeks of productivity! Crazy but true.

Our workshop, “Goal Aligned Time,” provides many strategies to overcome this massive time sucker but a simple one to implement immediately is to do your emails in batches. Stack them up and plow through several at once rather than jumping on each one as it comes in.

Stop kidding yourself that “busy” means “productive”. Once you understand the vast difference between these terms, you’ll be able to watch your sales grow!

Michael

To learn more about our “Goal Aligned Time” workshop or arrange a complimentary one for your sales team (in the Greater Toronto Area), contact Michael at [email protected] or 416.456.1440.

The Power of Handwritten Notes

Posted by: Michael Caron In: Sales Coaching, Sales Executives, Sales Managers, Sales Training, Salespeople, Uncategorized 14 Sep 2017 0 comments Tags: cold calling, consultative selling, growing selling skills, increased sales, prospecting, sales training

In school, we used to pass handwritten notes. Even today, it makes you stand out from the rest

I’m a big advocate of using handwritten notes in your selling process for 2 main reasons

#1 Reason: They work

#2 Reason: They are a kind gesture which makes me feel good!

Why do they work?

In today’s world of digital communication, we are bombarded with literally hundreds of messages from others on a weekly basis. People just don’t get nearly as much stuff by snail mail any longer and the stuff we DO get it usually junk mail (sounds a lot like our email in box too doesn’t it?). Receiving something in the mail from a real live person is rare. Handwritten notes such as a thank you card is even more rare.

A handwritten note helps you stand out. Let me ask you this. The last time you received a hand written card, what did you do with it right after reading it? I bet you didn’t toss it in the trash. I bet you put it on your desk, your fridge, or even showed it to other people. What did you do with the last email “thank you” you got? See the difference?

Why do they make me feel good?

Taking the time to hand write and drop something in the mail connotes a deeper level of thanks and appreciation. As the famous Canadian futurist Marshal McLuhan famously quipped, “The medium is the message.” Giving thanks to a customer for their time, or for anything in fact, is a big win-win. It makes the receiver feel good but it helps me by building my gratitude. And a recent study published in the Harvard Business Journal confirms what you probably know intuitively – that having gratitude increases happiness and increased happiness leads to higher productivity and sales. What a fantastic ROI on your time!

There is one rule with sending handwritten notes including “thank you” cards. They need to be 100% sincere. If you ever try to pass around insincere thanks, it’s the same as passing around counterfeit money. You will eventually be found out and your credibility will be in the toilet from that moment forward.

I’d recommend that you order some simple customized cards from any of the online print shops and start each day with a heartfelt thank you. It’ll make someone else’s day and yours too!

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