A bullet cannot hit the target bull’s eye if the trainer has not aimed it properly. A student will not be able to fare well in his exams if he was not trained well. Though one may possess the talent to do a job perfectly all by themselves, a guiding force is always necessary to keep them on the right track. A coach or a trainer is that beacon who will steer the ship to the shore amidst all the unrest prevailing in the sea. A sports coach, a gym trainer, dance teacher, music instructor, teacher at the school etc. are the pillars who have been the support for aspiring learners to learn and perform.

A sales coach! Who is he?

Among the enthusiastic trainers, a sales coach is the one who trains interested candidates to become lead generators, how to handle target pressures, how to attract customers, how to retain them and most importantly how to take business forward by closing quick deals. These coaches have the capacity to become the master of change. There are some qualities that define a successful sales coach. Here are some of them:

Calmness

Are sales coaches hypersensitive? No they are not at all. One quality that defines a perfect sales coach is calmness. This gives them the ability to assess the market and take decisions favorable for their business and achieve their target with no tension around. Cool mind and clear thoughts assist them in taking the most perfect and profitable move or decision.

Presence of Mind

The second most important quality that defines a sales coach is presence of mind. Yes, he is one of the few most intelligent personalities who have the capacity to turn any situation in his favor without spending extra money or effort. Presence of mind and ability to give quick response help them to master all situations.

Build Credibility

When does a customer start to believe in a sales executive? Probably after a few meetings and calls, an unknown bond of creditableness and trust worthiness creeps within the customer which makes them believe what the sales expert there by materializing the deal. The sales coach who is an expert in building trust teaches techniques that are legit and easy to follow in this exercise.

Radiate positivity

Looking at sales & marketing coach, one always feels a spurt of positive energy radiating from all directions. This is also the reason why they have turned into coaches from just being sales executives. The positive energy that they translate into every student improves the confidence and enthusiasm in the aspiring sales executives to achieve something big in their life.

Efficient Networking

The last but the most important quality that marks the best Sales training coach is his ability to network with people belonging to every age group. They can easily strike a chord with anyone who can be a prospective lead for them and they capitalize their socializing skills to the fullest and can network with the opponents. The same technique they teach their students as well.

With these awesome qualities, sales coaches impress their audience with their flamboyant self and charismatic personality.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/9219524

Why does this keep happening? You put in effort, find pain and uncover reasons for them to do business with you, show them what you can do-and then the opportunity evaporates in an instant.

The problem here is one of sales process. If you find yourself disappointed again and again by prospects who are eager to hear what you can do for them, but at that critical moment announce they do not have the means to pay for it, let me suggest that your process steps are out of order. You’ve brought forward your solution too soon. You’ve invested too much energy on this prospect without first finding out their budget.

This common circumstance occurs typically because of two reasons. First, the sales person does not have a formal selling process, and therefore does not have steps or stages in any particular order. Having such a selling process would reduce stress on themselves and systematically increase the odds of a successful outcome. Second, the sales person has been taught (often early in life, perhaps by a parent) that bringing up the subject of money is impolite. While perhaps well-intentioned, this taught premise is a bad one for success in sales.

The budget question has to be raised with the prospect before demonstration of any possible solution. Uncovering the prospect’s budget is not impolite: it is a necessary and important component of the qualification process. Imagine someone walking into an automobile dealership and saying to the first sales person he sees, “I want to buy a car.” Are you already starting to see the problem here? The price of cars ranges considerably. A consultative sales professional can doctor for pain, find out underlying issues, prescribe a solution-and totally miss the prospect’s budget. “Yes, Mister Prospect, I have a lovely Lamborghini that will give you that feeling of youth, vitality and power that you’ve been craving!” “Amazing! That sounds fantastic!” “It’s only $455,000.” “…Uhh…gee. There’s no way I can afford that.”

Prior to working on solutions, bring up the budget question. If you’re nervous or uncomfortable about discussing money, do it like this: at the start of your conversation, say, “Misses Prospect, I have a minor problem I’m hoping you can help me with. You see, I always get a little uncomfortable when it comes time to talk about money. When we get to that point, will you help me? I want to make sure that, if it turns out that I do have a solution to offer you, we’re on the same page with what you can afford. I’d hate to talk with you about something inadequate or too much for your budget. When we get to that point, can you help me talk with you about that?” The prospect will almost always move to rescue you, and say of course. Naturally, if you’re comfortable with the subject of money, you don’t have to do this-just bring the topic up at the right time. And when is that time?

Let’s say you have been doctoring for pain, have some, and are thinking about possible ways you can help the prospect. You have a small, medium and large model for handling the prospect’s problem, with respective prices. Now, before investing the energy in demonstrating the potential solution(s), you can gently bring up the budget question. “Mister Prospect…I don’t suppose you’ve set aside any kind of budget for solving this issue, have you?”

Or: “Miss Prospect, I think I have something for you. However, we offer a range of potential solutions. I’m not sure which one is right for you…I have an idea, though. Would it be okay if I shared with you the investment range of each solution, and you can let me know which you’re most comfortable with?”

If you’re a more direct person, you could even say something like, “John, I have to be frank with you. These items aren’t cheap. Before I explain to you how they’ll solve your problem, could I go ahead and share the rate with you and you can let me know if that works for you?”

Remember, uncovering the budget is nothing more than another solid step in the qualification process. You want to know whether or not the prospect can afford your product or service. If they can’t, why would you want to waste your time?

Now, I’m not suggesting that you be a jerk and roughly steer those who cannot afford your help out the door. While consultative selling professionals do not give out free information as unpaid consulting, in many cases it can be a very good thing to educate people who don’t have it in their budget to retain your services. People tell other people -a few people, it’s true, but they do tell some-about positive experiences. This can directly and swiftly lead to qualified referrals. I’ve recently seen this happen in the field of wedding videography.

Prospect A discovers Superstar Videographer’s rates are way out of their league, but because he bothered to spend the time educating them nicely, they quickly referred other people to him-and those new prospects could afford his time. What’s important to keep in mind here, however, is that Superstar Videographer rapidly qualified Prospect A out, and while he did help them, he didn’t get himself all worked up about offering a beautiful and expensive potential solution, investing that time and energy, getting his hopes for a project up, and becoming extremely disappointed when it turned out (as it would have) at the last minute that they couldn’t afford his services.

The time to uncover the prospect’s budget and ability to pay you is after you’ve doctored for pain, and before you show them any kind of solution.

Author: Jason Kanigan is a consultative sales training professional originally from Vancouver, BC, Canada, and now based out of Wilmington, NC, USA. His background includes selling both tangible and intangible products & services, and work with clients across North America.

Reference: http://EzineArticles.com/6032926

Let’s talk about the intent of your sales process for a moment. Are you trying to push your prospects into buying from you, or pull them into buying from you?

In my opinion, both those approaches are wrong. Selling based on features and benefits results in trying to make the prospect buy from you. Whether you attempt to:

* Push them into buying from you, by forcing your values of the features and benefits of your product or service on them, or
* Pull them into buying from you, by trying to attract them with those same values, and hoping they will match up with their own values, and you will have an ineffective and inefficient sales process.

If you’ve read some of my articles on resume writing and the job hunting process, you’ll note a similarity here. The employer does not hire you (and the prospect does not buy from you) for your reasons. They buy for their reasons.

So if you can’t push and you can’t pull in the sales process…what can you do? This can be a very disturbing question for salespeople. I was in technical sales for several years, and worked with features and benefits selling because that’s all I knew there was. Here’s the kicker: I didn’t know why in some situations I’d get the order, and in others I wouldn’t.

Talk about a weird situation! Here I was, supposedly experienced, knowledgeable about the products and services offered by the companies I worked for…and I had no idea why things worked some times and didn’t others.

Here are some key indicators of sales confusion:

* No documented sales process
* No sales coaching
* Doing a great deal of quoting to prospects who then disappear
* Consistently getting squeezed on price.

Trying to push or pull my prospects into buying from me, based on features and benefits, resulted in this situation! Recognize any of these indicators in your own work?

Yes, there is a way to improve your sales efficiency and effectiveness and at the same time eliminate these sales confusion indicators. Remember from the last entry, customers buy from you for their own reasons, not yours! So how do you find out their reasons? Ask Them.

And that process, the systematic and effective questioning of prospects, is the real key to sales success. It’s something different in sales, and hardly anybody does it well or at all. I’ll bet 95% of salespeople have no idea, just like I used to think, that there is another way than features and benefits selling. It takes time and practice to learn. So this is the powerful alternative to trying to push or pull your prospect over the “passion fence” to buy from you: help them find out their very own reasons. Consultative Selling is what it’s called, and it will completely change how you go about the sales process.

Another take-away thought: If they say it, it’s true.

Author: Jason Kanigan is a consultative sales training professional originally from Vancouver, BC, Canada, and now based out of Wilmington, NC, USA. His background includes selling both tangible and intangible products & services, and work with clients across North America.

Reference: http://EzineArticles.com/5875932

You can really make more money through sales coaching. How? These coaching programs can help your sales people improve their selling skills. When this happen, they’ll be empowered to easily convince your prospects to make a purchase. As you know, this can lead to more sales and more revenue.

To make your sales coaching more effective, I recommend that you focus your sessions on these aspects:

1. Active listening. You will need to teach your sales force to listen actively to your prospects not only to make these people feel valued but also for your sales personnel to get a deeper understanding about their needs and demands. Teach your team not to do all the talking during the sales process as this can easily frustrate potential buyers.

2. Probing questions. Teach your sales force to be more inquisitive when talking to your prospects especially if these people are not giving them clear picture of their problems. Tell them that the probing questions they use must be open-ended, succinct, simple, and easy to understand.

3. Sell value. It’s important that you make your sales personnel realize the importance of selling value as this can affect the buying decisions of your prospects. Teach them how to properly communicate the benefits, selling points, and competitive advantage of the products and services they offer to make them extremely valuable and useful to the eyes of your potential buyers.

4. Close the sale. Your sales people must know the best ways to close the sale. Coach them how to create a sense of urgency to easily get their prospects to swipe their credit cards.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2458294

When I accompany sales people on their appointments in my capacity as a sales coach, I very rarely see the follow up used as a sales tool. However, I have witnessed two extremes of sales follow up technique that left me cold.

The first was immediately after the sales person had finished the presentation of the price and received a polite, “We’ll have to think about that, it is more than we anticipated paying.” The negotiation was based on discount which still was not bringing the price down to the customer’s expected price level.

The sales person then packed his things and stated that he had to call his manager to tell him how the appointment had finished. You can see it coming … the manager then wanted to talk to the customer and, blow me down with a feather, more discount was offered to close the sale. This technique actually turned the customer off so much that I could see the anger in their face. Something the sales person missed!

What a shame that the only selling skills available was based on discount rather than understanding the customer’s perceived idea of value for this particular product.

The other extreme of follow up was used by a sales person selling kitchens and, at the end of the fruitless presentation, told the customer that he would call in a few days having given them time for thought about the purchase.

What made it worse was the statement, “I have to follow up every call or my manager has a go at me and after a certain period the system takes the lead back and I get nothing.” I don’t know if this was the “sympathy sale” close technique!

The follow up call was made a few days later with this, less than effective, telephone call. “Hello, this is … from … (names withdraw). Have you thought about the price any further, or what other thoughts have you had.” I’m not sure I need to comment on the quality and substance of this follow up call because it is so similar to many I have witnessed in the past.

Here are some tips on how to make sales follow up calls more effective.

• Make an appointment with the customer for the follow up; what day, morning or afternoon, what phone number.
• Agree what the subject of the call will be about; not just asking about if the customer has thought more about the purchase.
• Have another reason for the customer to buy; but ensure this reason has a customer based benefit, not just the offer of another discount.
• Have a progression plan for what happens after the follow up call; many sales people just continually use follow up calls as their method of keeping a sales prospect “live”.

During my Follow Up Workshops the delegates discover different ideas on how to make their calls more effective. Many find that creating a rough script helps to put some structure to the calls. Delegates also coach each other in how the call sounds from a customer’s point of view. Many have reported an up-lift in conversion ratios after implementing a properly thought through sales follow up process. 

Telephone communication for follow up and sales prospecting is a science and I am amazed at how many call centre and sales operations get it so badly wrong. Many subtle messages can be delivered through a well planned, non-visual conversation but this needs to be set up well in advance – even at the point of first contact with the prospective customer.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/675666