There is an increasing pool of research-from respected organizations like Gallup and the Harvard Business Review, and also many newer research firms- demonstrating that the costs of a bad hire in B2B sales, more than any other functional group, are enormous.

Most B2B companies tend to grossly underestimate the negative consequences a bad sales hire can bring to their company.

Some of the costs to consider include:

B2B Sales Direct costs

• Lost revenue (lost and delayed business)
• Extra training and management required
• Costs of turnover (firing and replacing – from both time and direct hiring costs)

B2B Sales Indirect costs

• Long-term impact on market share and brand – lost customers and brand loyalty
• Impact on morale – leading to lower overall performance of other team members and higher turnover- and ultimately the loss of your best salespeople.

An Example of the Costs

Let’s look at an example for a company where the sales quota of the best salespeople is $1.5 million, and sub-par performers are delivering half of that ($750,000).

The annual impact of having a poor performer on the team can be estimated at $1,360,000 (including lost revenue, lost clients, and extra management costs). The costs of delaying action, to remove this individual, are $2.6 million over 2 years!

You must remember that B2B salespeople represent your company to your clients. Therefore, the impact of brand and market-share erosion over time, of a sub-par salesperson, can have grave consequences for your company.

Other Insights

CSO Insights, a sales research firm, puts out statistics it gathers every year from surveys it does with over 2500 companies.

They found that only 58.2% of B2B sales reps made quota in 2013 out of the 2500+ companies surveyed. That means that 42.8% of sales reps missed their quota.

That is a very alarming statistic.

A Typical Observation

CSO Insights had this conversation with a sales rep from one of their interview companies.

Sales rep: “Yeah, that program is great. Really powerful! In fact, the only time it doesn’t work is when I don’t use it”.

CSO Insights: “That’s quite an endorsement. How often would you say you use the principles you learned in the program?”

Sales rep: “Uh, maybe half the time.”

Now please think about that for a moment. If it works every time the rep uses it, why wouldn’t the rep use it all the time? Does he/she simply not need a win every time? Very unlikely!

It’s usually because the sales rep hasn’t had ongoing coaching to ingrain the sales training methodology into their daily routine.

Does Training & Coaching Pay Off?

Training gives a one-time boost in sales behaviour and results, but people quickly slip back into their old familiar behaviour without coaching reinforcement, and increases in sales are negligible.

However, with coaching after training, although there is a slight dip right after training, the sales people who received coaching keep getting better and better results.

Through all of my 40+ years of coaching, I have found that coaching costs very little compared to the increased results that have occurred. In many cases, coaching fees were less than 1% of the overall increase in revenues.

So, if you truly want to grow your business, you need to have your sales people trained and coached by professionals. And in most cases, this means hiring outside professional B2B sales coaches. You will see a very worthwhile ROI.

Conclusions

Competing at the top level is very exacting and can be very trying mentally. Anyone who has ever played golf knows that for sure.

But in order to succeed at any level, people need coaching. This is true for executives, business owners, and especially for sales and marketing people.

You use coaching for two main reasons.

1. To help you learn new skills, and to perfect or change old ones,

2. To give you feedback on how you are performing those skills, and to correct mistakes.

Feedback needs to be timely, accurate, consistent, relevant, and individualized. The other four factors are fairly self-explanatory, but let’s have a look at what is needed to be accurate, and why it is important to be accurate.

In order to be accurate, you need to have some kind of measurement system in place to give you metrics about how someone is performing all the way through the sales cycle.

You need to measure things like;

1. Is she following up on leads? (I hope you have a good lead generation system)

2. Is he using the sales and marketing methodology that you have implemented? ( I hope you have one)

3. Does she qualify prospects well, so she’s not chasing people that aren’t going to buy right now?

4. Is he demonstrating your system properly, or does he do it too early or too late in the sales cycle?

5. Does she follow a correct proposal writing script that your company has implemented?

6. Does he follow-up properly with all prospects?

7. And all the way through the sales cycle.

You need to measure everything right through the sales cycle, until you either lose or win the business.

As you can see, in order for your company to meet its revenue targets in any year, you need to be implementing coaching in your business.

This coaching should also include the executives of your company, so everyone is on the same page.

It becomes pretty obvious that training with coaching pays off.

Are your sales reps, marketers and executives getting the training and coaching they need to understand sales and marketing better, and to able to reach quotas?

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Ian_Dainty/59266

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8914931

When you struggle to close the sale you think closing is the problem. But when you struggle to close the sale closing is a symptom of the problem not the problem itself. When you try to fix a symptom as though it were the problem the problem remains because you’re trying to put a band-aid on a wound that isn’t ready to heal.

Here are 5 reasons you may be struggling to close the sale:

1. You lack confidence in yourself and/or your supporting products.
2. You fear rejection and avoid it by avoiding asking for the sale.
3. You didn’t help the buyer to uncover a motivating reason for buying and buying now.
4. You didn’t understand the clients most important wants and needs and went down the wrong path offering a solution for problems that aren’t all that important to the prospect.
5. You didn’t do a good job of connecting with and starting a relationship with the prospect so asking for the close feels awkward, and isn’t likely to result in a “yes” decision.

When you struggle with closing you think you just need a perfect pitch, or the right closing lines and the problem will go away; but that simply isn’t the case. You can have a “perfect” pitch and “perfect” closing statements, and still blow the sale. Why, because a pitch and closing statements treat the symptom not the underlying real problem.

Review the 5 reasons you can’t close and identify where your struggles may be stemming from. This list isn’t comprehensive there could be other problems too that are keeping you from getting sales, but it will give you a good start. The first step to making closing a natural event is identifying the cause of the problem.

The next step is developing a plan for removing or overcoming the problem. Don’t think of your plan in terms of concepts think in terms of actions. When you know what the problem is, the actions you’ll take to overcome the problem, the only thing preventing you from closing is implementation of your plan.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/969061

In common with training and management, coaching is unregulated, and therefore anyone can call himself/ herself a coach, and they do.

There are four distinct levels of coach and as you move from one level to the other, the need for skill and experience increases commensurate with the complexity of the coaching process.

LEVEL 1 (L1) – CAREER COACH AND LIFE SKILLS COACH

Level 1 coaching is typified by the coaching process being in the hands of the person being coached, which means that they drive the agenda rather than the coach. This is where most of the coaches in existence (up to 80% of the coaching population) operate. The focus of the coaching effort tends to be on life skills and career coaching. There is a significant gap in experience, knowledge and skills between coaches operating at this and the other levels.

LIFE SKILLS COACHES

Life Skills Coaches will have arrived in the coaching role from a variety of routes; some from training; some from a period of redundancy; in fact – just about anyone, from just about anywhere. They do not need any specialist knowledge, or experience. Some will have been trained; a few will hold a qualification; most will have picked up their coaching knowledge and skills from books or from attending a short course.

Some are very dangerous. They will be self-taught psychoanalysts and can often be found exploring people’s deep routed emotional problems without the ability or experience to know when to stop. They seek to advise people how to be healthy, wealthy, and happy. Most will certainly not be wealthy. Others might be healthy. Significant numbers are blissfully happy to have anyone to listen to them.

Some will have bought an expensive franchise offering untold wealth; most will be earning below average incomes. Some will be advertising themselves as Executive Coaches (Level 4); most will never actually engage in anything close to Executive Coaching.

They represent 90% of the coaching population at Level 1. You will encounter them at each and every networking event, in increasing numbers.

The coaching process is open-ended, meaning that providing the person being coached is able to pay the fees involved, it will go on indefinitely. There is rarely a definable, measurable goal.

CAREER COACHES

Career Coaches are usually to be found in-company; sometimes employed from external sources; often they are in the HR Department. In the same way as the Personnel Department became the HR Department, ‘Jack and Jill from personnel’ – became ‘Jack and Jill, the Career Coaches’.

Career Coaches will be probably be annoyed that I have placed them at Level 1, implying that they don’t need specialist knowledge or experience. Nevertheless, it is true. That said, many internal Career Coaches will have undergone various levels of formal training; some via the CIPD route; some will use career preference inventories to help them add a pseudo form of credibility to their efforts.

As with life skills coaching, career coaching is often disguised as executive coaching although it bears little resemblance to the executive coaching process described at Level 4 here. Career coaching offered to senior managers is usually a precursor to sending them on an expensive study programme in a European Business School which for many has no outcome other than an attendance certificate. No one fails. The only time career coaching is offered to lower levels of employees is when redundancy follows and the expense of providing career coaching is seen as an unavoidable cost in order to mitigate industrial disruption and employment appeals.

LEVEL 2 (L2) – SALES COACHING

Level 2 coaching is where Sales Coaches operate – in theory.

The coaching process at Level 2 is focussed on business outcomes and is driven by the coach. This is why a significant number of coaching initiatives in companies have failed, and continue to fail. The reason being that the people involved in being a Level 2 Coach are either only being trained at Level 1 – which is not a lot; or not trained at all.

A lot of companies who they say their managers have been trained as coaches, have invested at best two days, and at worst half a day in training their managers as coaches. In addition, the coaching models being used begin with the employee’s agenda, not the manager’s, and not the organisation. A classic example would be the use of the GROW model, which begins with either

– What is the Goal?

– What are you trying to achieve?

– What is your Goal?

– What are we trying to do?

The last type of question is meant to show inclusivity – i.e. we are all in this together.

Beginning with the salesperson’s agenda is an abdication of the Sales Coach’s role in ensuring that the organisation’s aims are placed firmly at the front of the queue.

Sales Coaches should have some experience of sales. Not from the perspective of specific knowledge of the product and/ or service being sold, but of the emotional pressures associated with being in a sales role. Salespeople are very sceptical of coaches who do not have sales experience. Whether this is right or wrong is immaterial. The reality is that you will tend to get on better with the target audience if you understand about selling from experience. And getting on with the salesperson is important. Sales coaching in this form works because the coaching relationship is built on trust. Trust from the salesperson of the coach; that performance short-falls and experimentation to improve will not be criticised, even though any lack of effort might. Trust from the coach of the salesperson that the latter is trying to improve and not just pretending.

The Sales Coach does not need a significant amount of knowledge about the product and/ or service the salesperson is selling, but it could reduce the amount of time needed to help the salesperson focus on improvement solutions. On the other hand, often, prior in-depth knowledge of the product and significant experience of the actual sales role can often be a barrier to effective sales coaching. Quite often, the less you know, the better the coaching questions are.

In sales coaching there has to be a clearly defined sales process – the Game Plan. Without a clearly defined game plan, the Coach will be working at Level 1. A game plan focuses both the Sales Coach and the salesperson on what has to be done, and how it to be done, in order to elicit an outcome – the performance. If performance is low, then either the game plan doesn’t work and needs to be changed or the salesperson is not following the game plan – and might have to be changed. Once you have a game plan, it can be enhanced in order to enhance performance but not in one day and not all at once. This brings me to the last point in Level 2 Sales Coaching – timescale.

Many people, when asked the question, is sales coaching short-term or long-term, will opt for long-term. The correct answer is short-term. By this I mean that the focus of each coaching session is on a short-term activity. In football, you often hear the cliché – ‘we take it one game at a time’; and so it is with sales coaching. The football coach may have a long-term goal to win the league, but slavish focus on winning the league is fraught with failure, without the focussed activity of working out what it will take to win the next game. In this way Sales Coaches work on one thing at a time. Taking one piece out of the total sales process and working with it until it is improved. It is called whole-part-whole. By taking a small part of the whole process and improving it, the knock-on effect is to improve the whole.

The Sales Coach should be the line manager.

LEVEL 3 (L3) – METACOACH

The MetaCoach is the Coach of the Coach. In a sales or a business environment this should be the line manager but it can also work by using either internal trainers as the MetaCoach or external MetaCoaches provided there is a significant level of interaction between the MetaCoach and senior management. If the MetaCoach is not the line manager, then the MetaCoach needs to have direct and regular access to the senior line manager, and preferably to the manager above them.

The agenda is driven by the organisation. The MetaCoach should have management experience. As with the Sales Coach, there should be clearly defined sales management process, but there rarely is. One of the main reasons why MetaCoaching fails to materialise in most companies is the lack of a detailed management process. Just as it’s vital to have a game plan for the sales process the same should apply to the management process. We already know that the greatest influence on sales success is management. In the same way, the greatest influence on the success of sales managers is the senior manager they report to.

The MetaCoach does not need either product knowledge of the products and services being sold, or specific experience of the sales or sales management role, and the lack of these is often an advantage. Some management experience however is desirable in order to have empathy with the difficulties of line and senior management.

The timescales involved in MetaCoaching is medium to long-term improvement in management performance and behaviour.

MetaCoaching should be provided by senior management, but rarely is, and therefore external coaches are often used, when the budget allows, to provide coaching to line sales managers. The difficulty is that external coaches have little or no authority and surprisingly (given the cost) minimal interaction with senior management. MetaCoaching by external coaches tends only to work effectively if it is combined with Executive Coaching for the senior manager.

LEVEL 4 (L4) – EXECUTIVE COACHING

Executive Coaching is almost exclusively provided by external coaches to senior management as either a development tool, a career advancement process, or sometimes simply as a way of spending an allocated budget without any particular end game in mind. It should lead to the provision of an opportunity to engender some blue-sky thinking on the part of the senior manager being coached and in some environments it does work. It depends on how experienced the Executive Coach is, why they were engaged in the first place, and where the outcomes of the coaching sessions are reported.

Executive Coaches should have some senior management experience and should be able to use this experience to be upfront in declaring whether the coaching provided is having any effect or not. True Executive Coaches should be charging enough not to be concerned about telling the truth when it is needed, whether palatable or not. Unfortunately there are a number of people who call themselves Executive Coaches who should really be working at Level 1, not Level 4.

Executive Coaches work with senior managers helping them develop leadership skills and behaviours. The instance of executive coaching being provided by internal coaches is rare. In any event, the best coaches are often frustrated by the manner in which coaching is viewed by the organisation and the constant introduction of the latest training fad; and they leave to set up their own coaching consultancies.

THE DILEMMA

The most effective type of coaching in business is sales coaching. However, the budget for developing line sales managers as true Sales Coaches has to be agreed by senior managers, and senior managers have to become involved in regularly supporting their Sales Coaches by the provision of MetaCoaching. Unfortunately because of the proliferation of Life Skills Coaches operating at Level 1, many budget holders believe that coaching exists at only two ends of the spectrum – Level 1 which is generally ineffective as a business tool, and Level 4 which is expensive and reserved for senior management. Regrettably that belief means that many sales organisations miss out on the significant positive impact that sales coaching can have on revenue improvement.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Frank_Salisbury/4756

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Given the choice between buying activity management systems and implementing a true performance coaching system to bring out the best in salespeople, my unfortunate experience is that many senior sales management teams will inevitably choose activity management. The reason? It’s easy. Granted it works in the short term, and there’s even a place for it during field induction and as a mechanism for performers to appraise themselves, but as a sales coaching tool it is a non-starter.

You teach salespeople about activity, not force it on them. The danger with the latter is that you will have your salespeople deliver the activity without a corresponding increase in business. I have seen numerous examples of salespeople forging activity levels simply to keep the manager happy. In the meantime, the manager sinks into a quicksand of statistics trying to work out where it is going wrong.

I recently visited an area sales manager who was having problems with a non-performing salesperson. The manager showed me the charts he had put together showing the pattern of calls and results. It must have taken him quite some time. The problem was that the salesperson had falsified 80% of their activity. It wasn’t his fault. He was responsible, but it wasn’t entirely his fault.

You may produce a ratio which show that from a particular level of activity that a particular financial outcome is being achieved within the sales force. You may choose to ignore the fact that top salespeople see fewer customers than their lower performing colleagues. But you need to ask yourself the question – what is it you want from the salesperson? Activity or results? Forget the relationship between activity and performance – what is you want – activity or results? If it’s results then forget activity. If it’s activity, then perhaps you have lost the plot.

You teach people about working hard by going out on calls with them. It is the only way to find out what’s going on – with them and with customers. There isn’t a professional coach alive that doesn’t sit on the touchline; stand in the wings; sit in the auditorium; watch the actual performance as part of their coaching responsibilities.

You should accompany new salespeople for five days after foundation training. You will come up with all sorts of excuses why this can’t happen but these excuses will compromise the successful outcome of both training and coaching. Unless you meet people on day one in the field; unless you test that they have acquired the levels of knowledge, skills, and attitudes required; unless you accompany them immediately on live sales calls; unless you stay with them for their first five days in the field; you’ll have to rely on luck as to whether new salespeople make it or not. It’s during these first five days in the field that you teach new starters the activity game. Ideally you will have already arranged a number of sales appointments to go on in the first week.

In the first five days you will learn more about the new starter and they will learn more about you and your company then any other mechanism I know. You must know within those first five days whether the new starter will make it or not. If after five days you still don’t know, then chances are they won’t make it – and you need to think long and hard about your recruitment and selection processes. Or perhaps set them an activity target – that will sort it!

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Frank_Salisbury/4756

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When would be a better time to visit a doctor: after you are sick or before you get sick? Though many choose to see their doctor only after symptoms create enough of a demand for them to seek help, a more logical approach is to see your doctor for preventive care to ward off illness.

The same is true for your career. Why wait until your career is in jeopardy, your income falling and your stress level climbing before hiring a tenured, skilled and professional sales coach?

Day One or Day 1,000

While some coaches, eager to build their business will suggest that everyone in sales should hire them on the first day of their career, it may make more sense to delay even beginning to select a coach.

Why wait?

Actually, there are a couple of reasons why a rookie sales professional should consider waiting a while before hiring a coach. The first is the fact that many are in a sales position only because they are unable to find a job in a career or industry that really interests them. Sales has been called the “default occupation” for this very reason.

Hiring a sales coach on day 1 of your sales career may be money ill spent. A good coach will be focused on helping your increase your sales and may not be driven to help you decide if sales is really right for you.

Another reason to hold off hiring a professional coach is that your company will (should) have plenty of sales training for you to go through and master. Adding sales models and techniques on top of the training you are already receiving may be overwhelming. Beyond being potentially overwhelmed, you may not devote the time and attention to fully learning the training your company is giving you which probably wouldn’t impress your sales manager.

When the Student is Ready…

There’s an old expression that says when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. As long as your search for a coach begins before “crisis mode,” the time you begin searching for a coach is the right time for you.

Very few sales professionals who hire a sales coach would say that they were 100% certain of their decision to hire a coach. In fact, if you wait until you are absolutely certain that hiring a sales coach is the perfect way to advance your career, you’ll probably not hire a coach until it’s either too late or when your sales are so bad that you feel you have to do something.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8338995

In a recent article, Annika Wihlborg interviewed sales consultant Björn Strid about his book: Let Your Heart Beat Your Sales Record (Låt ditt hjärta slå ditt säljrekord).

According to Mr. Strid, the Swedish way of selling is highly respected by clients worldwide. Several factors contribute to the excellent reputation that many Swedes have earned in international business.

Based on his many years of selling a range of products (from ice cream to complex logistical solutions), Mr. Strid concludes that the typical Swedish way of selling has five guiding principles: creating trust, showing empathy, being well-prepared, taking action and knowing the relevant profit-loss figures for a company.

These principles can be seen to have grown out of the Swedish business environment. In Sweden, flat organizations are common and this enables people to take initiative and maintain a high level of sales-driven activity.

Also, successful Swedish sales people have an exceptionally high level of competence in the services and products they sell. They keep up with the latest developments in their field, and often have a strong professional background in their area of expertise. Swedes value competence and the ability to explain a product or service, as well as its full value to a buyer.

Empathy – A Very Valuable Sales Tool

But Mr. Strid believes that the most important success factor is the Swedish capacity for empathy. He says, “We Swedes also see and encourage colleagues of the person we are meeting with. That makes us different from many other international sales people who for the most part, focus only on the person with the highest formal title.”

Keep Track of the Numbers!

Another very strong success factor is, according to Mr. Strid, the tendency that Swedes have to keep track of their own sales numbers. This makes them especially good at asking relevant questions of their prospects in international sales meetings.

Taking Action to Make Sales Happen

The consistently high level of activity that many Swedish sales people are known for is another success factor. This is largely due to the relatively flat and non-prestigious organizational structures typical of Swedish companies.

The traits that Swedes bring to the negotiating table are highly appreciated by company leaders throughout the world. Swedish sales people are good at asking questions, leading meetings and – not least of all – taking the time to really see and encourage others.

They have learned that empathy is a very valuable characteristic when it comes to sales, no matter which product or service you are selling. “Swedish sales people have demonstrated consistently that our capacity for empathy, combined with our knowledge of English and our way of taking action, is a very dependable recipe for success,” according to Mr. Strid.

Mr. Strid’s five tips for sales people who want to improve their capacity for empathizing with others:

1/ Meet with people on all levels of an organization – from decision-makers and others who may be influential in the company, down to the user-level.

2/ Don’t be so eager to talk about and share what you think. Focus on asking questions instead.

3/ Follow up with the contacts you have already made. Take the time to do this instead of always looking to find more business contacts.

4/ Get in touch with your clients, even when you are not planning to sell anything. Just let them know that you care about them and that they are important. This will often lead to more business, even if that was not the original intention.

5/ Practice building empathy by asking questions about people’s personal lives as well as their business. Allow the other person to finish what they start to tell you. Avoid jumping into the discussion and talking about yourself. It’s better to ask more questions, than to move the focus onto your own experiences.

Mr. Strid is a sales coach and popular speaker who helps companies develop their sales and marketing initiatives. He is the owner of Strid & Co in Stockholm, Sweden.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Janet_Runeson/1267986

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