TRAIN YOUR LINE STAFF TO BE SUCCESSFUL: If your sales people are relying on “low price” to close the deal …..Here are the 10-steps you need to get started – quickly

One of the first things that sales and company executives ask us when we meet them is; “We need to grow our sales, what can you do for us?” To that we always respond, “If you’d share with us some of the processes that you have in place now for the sales team to follow – we can then take a look at them and see if there might be a way that we can help.”

What we’ve found is that most of the time the issue is always the same: There simply isn’t a process in place for us to look at – period. The salespeople almost always seem to be autonomous from the rest of the company. There are well thought out processes in place for finance, personnel and administration – but not for sales. When we ask the question of why the building of a business development process for the salespeople seemed to be pushed to the wayside, we almost always got the same response:

“It’s a huge undertaking and I know I should (Don’t you just love that word should?) be doing something – but where would I start?”

When you look at the big picture of building a process for the sales team – they’re absolutely right – where would one start? It seems pretty scary. Training and motivating salespeople and account managers to effectively represent and sell services or products is probably one of the biggest challenges facing businesses today.

Whether you hire “experienced” business development professionals or novices, the need for a well thought out, structured and easy to follow business development process is not a luxury – but an absolute necessity. Far too often, the “process” of training for the business development staff is nothing more than riding with and/or looking over someone’s (usually the best salesperson’s) shoulder for a week. This as we all know is simply never enough to pick up everything necessary to represent a company either on the phone or in the field.

Let’s look at the scenario another way. What’s the cost of not training your business development professionals properly?

Be honest – how much money is left on the table every single month because your sales team can’t talk about another reason to buy from your company besides price and that wonderful “great service” line? You and I both know that nobody wins when the decision to buy from you is based only on price.

Anyway, enough about what can go wrong – here’s what you can do to get an effective business development training program off the ground…

No time to build a training

program for your salespeople?

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.  The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one. ~Mark Twain

Starting Out

As with any enterprise, you need to have a plan – how does that saying go? When you fail to plan you plan to fail? Truer words were never spoken. In order to begin, you have to determine what skills and knowledge are needed to produce an effective business development professional (a model) and then you can establish criteria to include in the training program.

Step 1: Scope of Training

We’ve found that the most important factor in creating an effective business development training program is making sure that we’re training on all of the elements necessary – not just some. You’d be surprised how many businesses overlook some of the basic criteria a good business development professional needs to know to be effective. Below, we’ve compiled a short list of training categories that we’ve seen many growth oriented companies have use to continually build increasing revenue through their salespeople:

• Proposals
• Marketing Materials
• Terms/Conditions
• Sales Process Equipment
• Reporting – and the use of company software
• Company, Department and Individual Sales Goals
• Networking
• Prospecting
• Social Media Skills
• Compensation

Step 2 – Assign Responsibility

Take each category of the above and determine who would be the best person to provide training on each subject.

Step 3 – Assemble the Team

Have a meeting with the training team and present the overall goal for training. Schedule a private one-on-one meeting with each person within three to five days to go over his or her specific training program criteria. Detail what you expect them to do and give them guidance as to what form of training is to be used (PowerPoint slides, use of a on-line webinar, purchased program, one to be developed internally by the training team or some combination of these).

Step 4 – Get the Business Development Team Involved

It’s very important to get the business development people who will be trained involved in the process of building the training.

Step 5 – Check It Out

On the scheduled meeting dates, review their training programs and fine-tune them as necessary with the other training team members present so they can offer their own input.

Step 6 – Assess Personnel

After each component of the training program is complete, meet with your managers and review all of the business development personnel to determine who will require what training module.

Step 7 – Share it with Everyone

After existing personnel have gone through the necessary training, coordinate with human resources to develop a compressed version of the training program. This condensed version can be a great refresher course.

Step 8 – Monitor the Process

Monitor the process to ensure that all members of the training team are doing their job effectively.

Step 9 – Measure the Results

Are your business development professionals generating better results after the training? If so – you’re on the right track.

Business owners and sales executives often lament that they are at a disadvantage because they don’t have the capital and/or resources to train the sales staff the “right” way. To that we disagree. What we mean is that the successful executives always found a way to make things happen and the unsuccessful ones always found a reason why it couldn’t be done. Whether you leave these things to happen by chance or actually implementing them is – as always – up to you.

For example: How To Get Your Foot in The Door is a critical business development skill.  Here’s the way we developed a system that helped our business development team successfully penetrate new accounts.

1. Inevitably, you will be met by the gatekeeper. With a well thought out, polite greeting you can set yourself apart from the pack and that might be that little extra help you need to get the gate open. Remember a friendly tone and impeccable manners are never out of style.
2. Receptionists are called gatekeepers for a reason; they hold the key to your prospect. They talk to people day in and day out that talk to them like “receptionists.” TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT. Ask their names and USE THEM! Make sure that they know you view them as a person. Make a note of their name, be sure to use it when thanking them warmly and use their name on future calls.
3. When you do get through, start building a rapport immediately. Ask open-ended questions and really LISTEN to the answers. Use words like “may,” “might,” and “could.” i.e. “an opportunity you might find interesting” or “a plan that could cultivate new customers.” Before you ever start talking about your products, establish yourself as trust worthy, caring and knowledgeable person. This way your prospect will be more likely to listen closer and buy quicker.
4. Rather then bore your prospect with a soup to nuts description of everything your product does – tell them what they can expect to get by purchasing your product/service. Nobody cares that your company is the fastest growing in the US – they really don’t. Here’s another great one: “My company would love to have you as a client”.
5. Do yourself a favor and forget the “shooting from the hip” presentation. Most prospects are extremely pressed for time and will pick up in 2 seconds if you’re not prepared. Based on my experience, the only thing that works is a well thought out presentation that speaks directly to the prospects needs. Notice I said the prospects needs – and not the industry’s needs? My own closing percentages went way up when I researched and knew exactly where the prospect was having challenges
6. Most people either fall in the emotional category or the logical category. It won’t really be possible to know which category your prospect falls into until you meet them, so you will need to use a little bit of both aspects to land the appointment. Once there, feel out where your prospect stands and sell to it. The logical decision make will want concise, rational arguments that emphasize measurable results. The emotional decision maker will be won over with image building language and emphasize how the benefits will make your prospect feel (“Won’t it be nice not to worry about production delays anymore?”)
7. It is important to establish credibility. Offer all the facts and figures necessary to support your claims. Use examples of other companies, by doing this you will be able to name drop and also show results. Have testimonials with contact information available for your prospect to be able to talk to someone you have already done business with.
8. One of the most overlooked sources of information that I have used to my advantage is an industry trade magazine.  Not your industry but the prospect’s industry. Recently, I started a conversation with a marketing director by explaining that I was reading CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) Magazine and wanted to know her thoughts about the new trend of holding marketing executives accountable for sales numbers. She and I spoke for quite a while and she invited me in to talk more about what we do at Street Smart.
9. Make sure you have ALL the information a prospect would need to make a decision. Emphasize that you want them to make an educated and informed decision and then offer them EVERYTHING they need to do so.
10. When you do get an appointment, confirm the appointment. Send a hand written note with the date, time and place. Add value with an article or something else they might find of interest. Don’t forget to include your business card and call the day before the meeting to reconfirm.

Attitude and Sense of Responsibility

For those of you who know me – know that I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. Here’s a quote from a magazine that I recently read

“Like many men, Scott Hopkins never knew he was getting fat.”  Now really… WHO… WHO?? doesn’t notice the second those first 5 pounds climb on? The phrase might be “ignorance is bliss,” but when it comes right down to it… ignorance is just, that IGNORANT. So take a lesson away from Scott, the anomaly that never noticed he was 84 pounds over weight, snap out of it. Look at your lives, shake off the excuses and really assess yourselves. Whether it’s your health, your sales style or your personal life… IDENTIFY WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE, AND START TO MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION!