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The Most Valuable Skill in Sales

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Time for another “updating an old article” post.  This article holds up well, except that it’s too short – there’s definitely more to be said about generating new business.  This time I’m going to say it.  As always, updates in italics.

Selling involves many skills, but in terms of their value, one rises above the others.

I received a call the other day.  It was like many calls that I have received over the years.  The caller explained that he had a long background in selling, sales management, and training, and was interested to know if I was looking to add to my ‘team.’  Now, let me pull back the curtain a little bit.  My ‘team,’ such as it is, consists of myself and some trusted associates to whom I outsource administrative and marketing work.  This is not a conglomerate.

In the five and a half years since I wrote this piece, I’ve had a similar call about a dozen more times – and they’ve all progressed like this one.

Still, you never know, so I asked him what he was seeking to do.  He’d emphasized a long background and a large amount of contacts – was he wanting to bring me new business?  No, it turned out; he wanted to know if I was looking for a new trainer.  That’s the way this call almost always goes.  Everyone who approaches me wants to train the clients that I already have; nobody wants to bring me new clients.

That’s common in the world of selling, as well.  When I’m doing searches for my clients, the most common questions that applicants ask are, “Is there existing business?”; “How do I get my leads?”; “What does the company do for marketing?”; etc.  Only a small minority of candidates volunteer that they want to BUILD a territory – most want to RIDE a territory.

Unfortunately for them, the most valuable skill in sales – the skill that will get you employed time and again, and have you at the top of the sales boards time and again – is the ability to consistently bring on and develop new customers.  Period.

The good news is that this is a skill, not a trait.  Traits are who we are; they are not learned and usually not coachable to any strong degree.  Skills are learned, and coachable.  But you have to start with the willingness to learn.  If you’re not interested in learning how to prospect, you’re probably not going to be extremely successful in selling, and when you do have to enter the hiring market, you’re not going to be in demand.  My #1 piece of advice to build your career?  Learn how to successfully prospect for new business.  That’s the most valuable skill in sales.

So what does that successful prospecting look like?  It’s obviously different than it was in 2015.  What hasn’t changed is that salespeople should be self-contained business generation machines, and that machine has several components.  Today’s salesperson must be adept in:

1.  Data-driven telephone prospecting.  That means that today’s salesperson must know and understand how to use databases to find not only the right company but the right person; they must be able to capture the prospect’s attention quickly; and they must be able to work with the fact that contact ratios (the ratio of calls picked up to dials) is anywhere between 1/2 and 2/3 what it was five years ago.  That doesn’t mean that teleprospecting is a waste of time – it means that you have to be better and more efficient at it.

2.  Face to face networking.  Yes, that part of the world has been hit hard by the current year’s events, but that doesn’t mean that the skill of face to face networking for referral generation is going away or has gone away – it means that you have to be good at it and efficient at it.

3. Online social networking (particularly LinkedIn for most of my readers).  LinkedIn is potentially either the best or the worst social networking platform for salespeople to use for prospecting – if you understand that LinkedIn requires building and nurturing relationships, you’re going to do well and it’s the best.  If you hit everyone with a hard-sell message as soon as they connect with you, it will be the worst, no question.

4.  Using technology to connect.  Video and other messaging platforms are here to stay, gang.  That means that if you don’t know how to use Zoom, Skype, Marco Polo, and other communication apps in your prospecting and business generation strategies, you’re in trouble.

The best and highest-paid salespeople are still those who can reliably and consistently bring on and nurture new business.  That’s not going to change, and that will always be the most valuable skill in sales.  And I still don’t need another trainer.

Three Interview Questions You Must Ask Salespeople

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In my career, I have interviewed thousands of salespeople.  Some interviews were great, some were good, and let’s be honest, some were really bad.  When you do that much of anything, you tend to get pretty good at it.  That’s how I developed these three interview questions.

I discovered a long time ago that some of the most important traits for salespeople could be discovered with three quick questions that opened the interview, and that’s what this video is all about.

I should not that I’m not talking about things like lateness (don’t EVER interview a salesperson who shows up late), improper dress, bad manners, etc.  Those things really go without saying.  But, there are deeper characteristics that you need to discover, and with three interview questions, you can find some of the most important ones.

One final note here.  It’s been said that how someone behaves on an interview is a reflection of how they will behave on a sales call.  NOPE.  It’s a reflection of the BEST CASE SCENARIO of how they will behave on a sales call.  And that’s where these three interview questions come in.

Oh, and if you’re hiring, you might want to watch this video about onboarding, as well.

Five Outdated Sales Techniques That Have Only Gotten Worse With Age

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I’ve been going back lately and reviewing some of my past articles; as Jeff Foxworthy once said when listening to his old material, “There’s some good stuff in there!”  Some of these articles are pretty relevant today as-written; others will do with a little updating.  I’ll put updates, where necessary, in italics.  This one focuses on outdated sales techniques that should have been retired long ago.

Some outdated sales techniques are not like wine or cheese – they don’t get better with age.

I was listening in on some sales calls with a distributor of high performance auto parts, along with their Inside Sales Manager.  A customer had called in to ask about a particular engine wiring harness.  The salesperson explained that, yes, the harness would work on his engine just fine.  Right as the customer was about ready to buy, the salesperson said, “However, it’s not designed as a stock replacement harness; it won’t work on your original 2000 Camaro.”

The customer stopped and said that what he wanted was a stock replacement harness for his Camaro, and the salesperson explained that this harness was designed to swap the engine into an older car and wouldn’t support all the functions of the Camaro’s system.  The customer thanked the salesperson and hung up, and the Inside Sales Manager came unglued.  He referenced one of the worst outdated sales techniques you can use, and if you’re using them, you’ll want to STOP now.

  1. “Never answer the question the customer didn’t ask!” is what the Sales Manager yelled at the poor salesperson.  He said, “If you hadn’t volunteered that information, he’d have bought.”  The salesman was a rookie, so I stepped in.  “If he’d bought,” I said, “that harness would have come right back to you as a return, and the customer would have been upset.  What’s your win there?”  As the manager stammered, I said, “Or worse, he’d have tried to cut into and modify the harness to make it work, it still wouldn’t have worked, and then he couldn’t return it OR use it, and he’s out $1,000.  How does that help anyone?”  “Never answer the question the customer didn’t ask” is an old canard that’s built around “get the order at all costs, and to hell with what happens afterward” transactional sales.  It’s old and outdated.  Your role is to help the customer reach a succesful buying decision.  So here’s your new rule:  If it’s information the customer needs to know in order to have a successful result, give it to them, whether they asked or not.  I’m reminded about the old trope that salespeople shouldn’t be “Free consultants;” another old saw that I disagree with.  My thoughts on that are in this video.
  2. The “take away” close.  The way this one works is that, at closing time, you say something like, “You know, you really shouldn’t buy this (for whatever noble reason).”  The idea is that the customer now wants it so badly that he will then justify why he should buy (and deserves to own), and in so doing, sell himself on the product.  Here’s the problem.  If you’ve been selling correctly, you’ve built up a lot of trust and credibility with the customer.  Based on that, when you use the “take away,” one of two things will happen.  First, the customer will believe you because of the credibility and trust – which means that you lose the sale (or you end up having to re-close, which makes you a liar).  Second, the customer sees right through the tactic, realizes that you’re lying, and walks.  Neither is good.  Just play the close straight.  Only take it away if you’re really going to take it away; i.e. it’s not a good purchase for the customer. Or, I would add, bad business for you – I’ve taken offers away more than once if they wouldn’t result in good business for me.
  3. Never ask a question to which you don’t know the answer.  This is the old “lawyer’s technique,” and basically it means that the salesperson is scared to death of being surprised by the answer to a question.  There are two problems with this philosophy.  First of all, you must ask questions to which you don’t know the answer to properly discover and interpret needs – and be prepared for surprises and for the call to go in directions you hadn’t anticipated. Second, by the time the lawyer gets into the courtroom, the witness has already been questioned – numerous times – and the lawyer already knows what the witness is going to say.  That’s not the case in a sales call.  Not asking questions to which you don’t know the answer means that you’re fearful. Drop the fear and do good customer discoveries – that’s the best way to sell today. It always has been the best way to sell – and always will be.
  4. The salesperson should seek to control the customer and the sales process.  First of all, any salesperson who believes that he has “control” over the customer is fooling himself.  The customer can always remove themselves from the process.  Whatever control we have is more aptly referred to as “influence,” and is shown by the customer allowng or asking us to direct parts of the process.  Seek influence, rather than control, by respecting the customer’s intelligence, showing your expertise, and working side by side for a successful result.
  5. The Up Front Contract.  Essentially this is a technique where you open the sales call with a closing question designed to lock the customer in with “intent to buy if things are right.”  This can range from the car salesman’s “Are you here to buy a car today?” to “If you like what you see today, is there any reason we can’t move forward?”  The problem with this question is that it occurs at the start of the selling process, before you have built any trust or equity with your customer, and before you have earned the right to ask a closing question.  At this point your customer knows nothing of your offerings, your pricing, and many times their needs haven’t been defined and matched to a product or a service – and you’re asking a closing question?  Ridiculous.  And if the customer says “yes” to the question and later says “no” to moving forward, the only thing you can do is whine, anyway.  Don’t worry about the buyer’s intent until the buyer has a reason to have intent.  If they are seeing you, they are Motivated to enter a buying process – but that’s all.
  6. I’m going to add a sixth technique, which I call the “Good Time Charlie.”  Good Time Charlies hardly ever focus on customer needs and solutions; instead they focus on being the customer’s buddy, buying lunches, drinks, sports tickets, etc.  They seldom know much about their product, and beyond the personal level, they know little about their customers.  GTC’s were becoming obsolescent – but the events of 2020 have made them obsolete.  If you are one, or if you employ one, it’s time for that person to update their skills.  It’s never too late to do so.

All of these outdated sales techniques have one thing in common – they are designed to maneuver and manipulate customers into places that they don’t want to be.  If you’re using them, the ‘70s called and they want their sales techniques back. Even the customers of the ’70s didn’t like these techniques – they just didn’t have an alternative.

Today’s customers do have alternatives.  The ability to buy nearly anything over the Internet allows customers to eliminate salespeople from their buying process at will – and if you use any of these techniques, they will eliminate YOU.

How to Build a Sales Process That Works.

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This is actually an update of an article I wrote six years ago after missing a flight.  The article is still a very pertinent tutorial on how to build a sales process.  While there isn’t much that I’d change about what I’ve written, I’ll add a few notes in italics that reflect our current realities in 2020.

Skipping steps in your business processes can be disastrous.  Read why here.

I’m writing this article from the Baltimore-Washington Airport.  That wasn’t my intent.  My intent was to write it from the warmth of my living room (yes, I do write a lot of these articles at home).  Unfortunately, I can’t do that.  The reason I can’t do that is that I missed my connecting flight.  And the reason that I missed my connecting flight is that I skipped a step in one of my processes.

When I fly, no matter what I’m told, no matter what’s printed on the boarding pass, I do the same thing every time I get to the airport, whether it’s a connecting flight or an origination flight.  I pull out my boarding pass, and I carefully double- and triple-check the flight number, the gate, and the time.  However, after arriving in Baltimore from Providence, I didn’t do that. I looked at the board and saw my destination and time, and didn’t check the flight number.  You guessed it.  I was at the wrong gate, and I arrived at the correct gate two minutes after the doors closed.  The result was that I ended up cooling my heels for four extra hours in Baltimore, and getting home later than I should have.

You know, every time I fly now, even six years later, I remember this moment and I recall sitting in the airport after a long trip, pretty disgusted with myself.  I’ve had similar feelings over the years whenever I attempted to skip a step in my sales process and it came back and bit me.

And yes, there’s a sales lesson on how to build a sales process here, and here it is.

Don’t skip steps in your sales processes.  Salespeople tend to get really excited when we get positive signals from a customer – so excited, in fact, that we want to speed things along and get the deal done.  Sometimes that causes us to skip important steps – like a complete discovery, a full proposal, etc.  And invariably, it comes back to bite us.  Usually, the results cost more than a few hours in an airport.

One of the issues, I think, is that too few salespeople and sales managers really understand “sales process.”  So, I’ll lay it out here in very simple terms, and you can expand on it as you need to.  The definition of a “Business Process” is this:

A Business Process is a set of steps, tasks, or operations that must be performed EVERY TIME to generate a successful result.  Notice that I said “must be performed.” One common mistake I see in businesses that want to build their processes is that they include steps that are good, and perhaps advantageous, but don’t have to be done every time to get the desired result. Here’s how to build a sales process:

  1. Find someone to sell to.  Whether this happens through prospecting, inbound marketing, or a current customer relationship, the sale begins with the identification of the person to sell to.
  2. Discover needs.  When a purchase is being considered, needs must be discovered and identified in order to move forward.
  3. Identify Product/Service Recommendations.  The needs are then correlated to a product or service that should be purchased.
  4. Price and Terms.  Most of the time we consider this the Proposal phase; the customer must be made aware of the necessary price and terms for the purchase.
  5. Decision.  The customer decides to purchase.

These steps happen on EVERY sale and purchase.  Right now you’re saying, “But wait, Troy, what happens when the customer buys and doesn’t even talk to a salesperson?”  Guess what – the customer still goes through those steps.  The difference is that the customer executes those steps HIMSELF OR HERSELF.  The customer still identifies his or her own needs, identifies a product or service to satisfy those needs, finds the price and terms, and makes a decision.

That’s not all parts of how to build a sales process, of course.  Your sales process may include other steps.  For instance, for a technical product, your customer may have to go through a technical demonstration, and this may be a mandatory step so that the customer fully understands your product.  That’s fine, but don’t fall into the trap of introducing steps into the process that don’t HAVE to happen.  The prime example of this comes from a regional manager at a company that I used to work for.

He discovered that closing ratios were much higher if the customer took a plant tour prior to buying, so he mandated that all prospects had to take plant tours before they could be offered a proposal.  The result?  Sales dropped dramatically.  The reason was simple – most customers didn’t want to take plant tours and wouldn’t. Yes, closing ratios were higher IF the customer took a tour – but the tour wasn’t a mandatory part of the process.  And if you’re wondering, sales at my branch were fine.  I ignored the directive.  The point was that my regional manager attempted to add an extra step that was nice IF we could get it, but shouldn’t have been mandatory – hence not part of our process.

Where salespeople really get into trouble is when they try to skip or shortcut steps.  For instance, salespeople – in a hurry to get to the close – will cut the Needs Discovery short because they think they have all the needs, when in fact they don’t.  Missing needs means that the customer probably won’t buy.

I’m sitting in an airport writing this when I should be home eating a nice dinner, and the reason is that I shortcut one of my key processes.  Processes exist for a reason.  If you shortcut yours, it might cost you more than time.

Here is what I would add.  In addition to thinking through the steps in your process, you should also think through HOW they will be accomplished, and leave flexibility.  For instance, will these steps be accomplished by phone, video, or live and in-person?  Can you build in options?  Let’s say that you need to add a step to demonstrate a piece of equipment, and the ideal way to do it is live and in-person.  If that live demo is impossible, how much of that live experience can you simulate via a remote demonstration or a Zoom call?  Today’s salesperson must be competent in both process and the means of delivering the process – which requires more of us.  That’s okay; we need to always be developing our skills.

You might also benefit from my video Six Tips For Better Video Selling.

How To Compete With Online Vendors

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I paid $22.99 for a magazine yesterday.  Not a magazine subscription; a single issue of a magazine.  The magazine is called Magneto, and it is (big surprise for those who know me) a car magazine.  But it’s not just any car magazine.  It’s perhaps the finest magazine focusing on rare and exotic vintage cars, and the racing thereof, that I’ve ever seen.  And in the fact that I paid nearly 23 bucks for it is a sales lesson that’s very timely and very applicable in how to compete with online vendors.

You see, I’m passionate about car magazines.  I love them.  I love reading them, and I spent over ten years writing for them as a freelancer.  In fact, I wrote over 300 articles for them, and one of my stories was nominated for a National Motorsports Press Association award.  I was good at it and I loved it, although it was never more than a side gig.  I quit writing for them in about 2008, when two things happened – first, my business as The Sales Navigator started occupying all my professional time.  And second, the magazine business itself was in a decline.  Magazines got thinner in both page count and paper quality, the amount of space allotted to editorial content went down, and there was less of a demand for the in-depth analytical articles I liked to write.  And, full disclosure, the magazines were paying less.  It felt like a race to the bottom.  That was one race I had no interest in.

Fast forward to 2020.  Most of the magazines I used to write for (Circle Track, Stock Car Racing, Street Rodder, Rod & Custom, Racing Milestones, and many others) are gone.  History.  In fact, the largest publisher of car magazines shut down 19 titles last year.  The few that they have left are a shadow of what they once were.  Even Hot Rod, the magazine that arguably started the car magazine industry, is a shadow of what it was just fifteen years ago.  The reason is simple – the level of content and photography that those magazines used to provide is now widely available on dozens of websites, for free or very inexpensively.  Those titles attempted to continually cheapen their product to try to make the numbers work in the face of Internet competition – and they lost.  (Is any of this starting to ring a bell yet in your business?)

So, you’d expect that when I go into my local Barnes & Noble, the magazine rack would be barren, right?  Nope.  The space once taken by thin, low-quality magazines is now occupied by high-end magazines.  Magazines like Magneto, Rodder’s Journal, and many, many other titles that, on a per-copy basis, go for double or triple the price of the magazines they replaced.  And yet, people buy them.  Why?

Because those magazines are incredibly high-quality in all phases. The editorial content is the best, period.  The cars covered are unusual and important, and the stories told are complete and interesting, and not just a list of specifications and dates.  The photography is high-end, done either in studio or on location by the best photographers, in the best lighting, with the best equipment and the best editing software.  Advertisements are present but don’t dominate the magazines.  And these magazines are BIG.  My new issue of Magneto is 178 pages of automotive goodness, and it’s produced on very heavy paper and cover stock, most resembling a paperbound book.  In fact, some people refer to these as “bookazines” or “coffee table magazines.”  Are they successful?  Many of these magazines are all out of back issues for purchase, so I’d say that, yes, they are.

These magazines are successful because they don’t attempt to compete with cheap online vendors.  They have picked out a niche, they are doing that niche better than anyone else, and they have created an economic structure (the amounts they pay for writing and photography) that the Internet simply can’t match.  Do they sell as many copies as, say, Motor Trend?  Probably not – but they make the economics work very well for them, and have figured out how to compete with online vendors.

Take a look at your business.  At least once per week, someone asks me, “Troy, how can I possibly compete with cheaper online vendors like Amazon?”  My answer is, “You probably can’t – especially if you’re trying to do it the same way.”  Cheap online vendors aren’t a fad – they are here to stay.  But there is still a high demand for a higher-service, higher-contact, higher-quality business model.  Here are five quick ideas to help you compete, and win, against pure online vendors:

  1. Establish two-tiered pricing. Some of you CAN compete with Amazon on pricing – IF you do business the Amazon way.  With Amazon, everything is automated and there is no personal customer service involvement whatsoever.  If you’re selling a more commoditized product (for instance, reams of copier paper) and can make money at that pricing level as long as no personal service is involved, consider allowing your customers to buy at that price point IF and only if they are willing to buy with the same no-personal-service model.  But when they need personal service – even if it’s a phone call – they get a different and higher price point.
  2. Do it better. Let’s be honest – Amazon doesn’t thrive off high-end products.  Their biggest niche is in the low-end, cheapest possible, products.  Look at the Magneto solution; sell products that are so good they nearly require the buyer to have a more personalized experience (and the higher price point to go with it).
  3. Know your customer. One big edge you should have is this:  Your salespeople SHOULD know your customers better than any online vendor ever could.  That SHOULD be because they consistently question and update their knowledge.  It’s an unfortunate truth that too many salespeople don’t ask questions and don’t know much about the customer (good sales training should focus on questioning as a primary skill) – and those salespeople then wonder why they lose business.  Not only should you be asking lots of business-related questions early on, you should be updating your knowledge of those issues every six months or so.  Your business changes, and so does your customer.
  4. Focus on helping your customer run his/her business better. This is related to the previous point – what do you do to truly help your customers run their businesses better that isn’t tied to a check?  For instance, do you refer business to your customers?  Even better, do you put customers together who could do business together?
  5. Create an experience. I often pick on the car business, and for good reason – I sold cars at the start of my career.  As part of my education, I read a book called Customers For Life, by Carl Sewell, the owner of Sewell Cadillac in Dallas. He talked about making a visit to Sewell an experience.  When salespeople greeted customers, they didn’t race each other to get to the door and they didn’t immediately ask them about buying a car.  Instead, they welcomed them and opened by offering them a cup of (good) coffee, a glass of wine, or a soda (I visited the dealership several years ago, and they really do this). They created an experience out of a visit to Sewell – and they sold an awful lot of Caddys.

There are, of course, numerous other ways to compete with the Internet vendors, but this is a start.  The key is to not try to be Amazon.  One of my favorite sayings (and as far as I know, it’s my own) is:  “You can’t beat your competition if you’re trying to be your competition.”  Magneto and their counterparts have figured that out, and that’s why they’re successful.  You can be, too.

Successful Coaching: How to Be a Better Manager

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I’ll say it right up front.  I love coaching.  I’m very passionate about it, and the reason is that when coaching is done successfully, the coach can see the results as they happen.  My first real experience as a true coach came in my first sales management job, and in that experience, I realized that successful coaching is a partnership between the coach and the coachee.  My most recent coaching experience reminds me of that, and in this article, I’ll outline how to make coaching work.

First, I’d like to point out one critical aspect of coaching.  Coaching is an individual process and a collaborative process.  That means that coaching is not training (which typically is a group experience with a defined curriculum), nor is it discipline and dictation (which is a “do this or else” process).  Successful coaching requires investment of energy from both parties, and if either party drops the ball, their efforts will not be successful.

With that said, here is the basic coaching process:

  1. Seeing the coachee in action: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t coach from your desk.  The only way to coach sales behavior is to observe them live and in person.  That means doing ride-alongs, listening in on phone calls, or watching them on video calls (whichever is their main venue).  Only seeing them in action gives you the real-world perspective you need to be able to coach accurately and fairly.
  2. Identify a behavior (or behaviors) that, if changed, will increase the coachee’s success. Everyone has behaviors that can be improved upon.  Your job, as a coach, is to identify those behaviors and come up with a plan for improving them.  One word of caution here.  The rule of three applies – never ask your coachee to change more than three behaviors at a time; if you do, they will likely just shut down.
  3. Sell the new behavior to them. The best coaches are also salespeople; they understand that the best route to change is through selling the benefits, not dictating.  Explain how it benefits the coachee (not you) to change the behavior, how they will be more successful, have more fun on the job, etc.
  4. Gain the coachee’s buy in. Now, ask the coachee how they feel about the new behavior, and if they agree that it could help.  Failing that, ask if they at least buy in enough to give it a full-throated try.  If you’ve done a good job of selling the behavior to them, gaining commitment to give it a whirl shouldn’t be difficult.
  5. Role play the new behavior. Now, role-play the new behavior with them to see if they grasp the basics.
  6. Put them in a situation to implement the new behavior as soon as possible. Now it’s time to get real; they should be placed in a real-world situation ASAP to use that new behavior.  It’s even better if you are present to again use this as a coaching opportunity.
  7. Follow up periodically. Make sure that the new behavior is now part of their professional repertoire; also, make sure that the change is generating the results desired.
  8. Re-coach. A coach’s work is never done.  Now it’s time to continue the coaching process by finding new opportunities.  Remember, even your very best team members can improve.

If your coachee is open to change and improvement, trait-fit for the job (this is critical), and is willing to put in the hard work and effort, great things can be accomplished.  A client of mine recently had this experience.  We had identified two sales managers whose performance was marginal, and frankly, they were potential turnover candidates.  We made the decision to invest time in coaching them.  My client did a great job of coaching them up, and now, a year later, those same two sales managers are being groomed to be given more responsibility in a promotion to Regional Manager.  Those are the moments that make any coach proud.

People are not disposable.  Yes, sometimes we have to terminate substandard employees – but it’s usually worth the time investment to attempt to coach them up first.  I don’t have patience for employees who won’t do the hard work that the job requires, but I do have patience with employees who simply haven’t been given the skills to succeed yet.  Successful coaching is the most critical skill that any manager has, and the most gratifying.  Make sure you take the time to be the best coach you can be.  I do, and I love it.

How to Make Classroom Training Effective

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A few days ago, I saw a post on LinkedIn asking, “Is classroom sales training effective?” Unfortunately, like most of these threads, it quickly devolved into post after post of sales trainers saying, “Well, no, most isn’t – but MINE is!” I honestly hate that, because some people are looking for real information about this topic. So, I’ll answer as best I can and I won’t mention my training; if you want to learn about it, you’re more than welcome to, but that’s not what this article is.

The truth is that classroom training gets a bad rap. If classroom learning didn’t work, why would we spend all those years going to school? And don’t give me that “but adults learn differently” stuff. They might – a little – but classroom training still can be very effective. But making it effective requires work – on the part of the trainer, on the part of the trainees, and on the part of management. I’ve been doing classroom training for 20 years, and here are the key elements I’ve discovered.

BEFORE THE TRAINING:

• The trainer should learn about your company, what you do, and what specific functions your people perform, and how that will impact the training.
• The trainer should prepare enough to be at least conversant with the language of the trainees. He/she doesn’t need to know as much about the specific work environment as the trainees – that is unrealistic – but at least the basic terminology; the trainer should incorporate this into the training materials.
• The manager should be open to conversation with the trainer. Sometimes, managers will want to hold back on their true impressions of their staff a bit to have the trainer ‘evaluate’ their people during the training. This is the wrong approach. The trainer’s job is to educate, not evaluate; if you want a second opinion on your staff, this should be a separate project. Sure, all trainers – myself included – will gain impressions and will probably share them, but this shouldn’t be their prime mission. If you want the best training experience, help your trainer help each person get the most from the experience.
• The manager should set expectations with his or her staff. Those expectations should include sharing the trainer’s bio, their agenda (the trainer should provide you with these items), and what the expectations for both learning and conduct will be. For instance, staff should know beforehand that phones should be silenced, side conversations kept to a minimum, etc.

DURING THE TRAINING:

• The training should be as interactive as possible; nobody wants to listen to a talking head all day. The trainer should break up the lectures with exercises, role plays, and other ways to get staff involved.
• The manager should be in the training session. I can’t emphasize this enough. Talk to any trainer – myself included – and they will tell you that the worst and least productive training sessions they have ever done have been those where the key manager is absent. This means that the manager doesn’t know what’s being taught and doesn’t know how to follow up later, and it means that the conduct of the staff can be unproductive.
• Which leads me to this. The staff’s conduct should be professional and they should participate. It’s okay to have fun – good training should be fun – but the primary mission is to learn. On a (fortunately very) few occasions, I’ve had training programs that felt like Romper Room. The trainees just basically played around, talked among themselves, etc. “But it’s the trainer’s responsibility to control the room!” Not really, to be honest. I’m there (and other trainers are there) to help staff learn important techniques to help them succeed. I’m not there to babysit, and frankly, if your staff needs much “controlling,” you have deeper problems than a training program.

AFTER THE TRAINING:

• Most training fails to affect behavior because the training ends when the trainer walks out of the room. To make sure that the training bears fruit, the manager (who was in the training, remember) should reinforce what is taught with follow-up exercises, role plays, and on-the-job observation. Most of the time, less than 20% of what is taught makes it into the actual workplace. Good follow up can radically raise this number.
• The trainer should give some tips or guidance on how to follow up with staff. This can be written or verbal, and it can be as simple as showing the manager how to use the workbook to create future training and dialogue. If the trainer has an advanced program, milestones can be set up to trigger when that program is appropriate.

As a trainer, the most gratifying aspect of my work is when a trainee tells me that they have used my training to make money. The worst aspect of my work is finding out that the training died in the training room. In either case, proper preparation, in-training conduct, and follow up makes all the difference in the world. You’re investing the time and money in training. Invest just a little bit more and make it stick in the workplace.

Five Tips for Maximizing Video Selling

Sale Success, Sales Blog, The Navigator News, ,

Last time out, I discussed the top trends in selling coming out of Covid-19.  If you haven’t read that one, you should read it now.  But, the #1 trend that I have identified, and that I think will be evergreen (meaning it will outlast Covid-19 and the aftermath) is the increasing use of video in selling.

With everyone working from home, more and more people have gotten comfortable with video conferencing, whether it’s a Zoom call or a different platform.  And many of those people have found it to be a time-efficient way to have meetings.  Those people may want to continue to use video conferencing when you are selling to them – so you might as well make it good.  Here are five ways you can maximize video as a sales tool.

  1. Ask for the upgrade. I said before that video selling lies between two-dimensional (phone) and three-dimensional (in person) activity.  So, when your contact wants to set a phone appointment up (you are making appointments for your phone calls, right?), ask for an upgrade.  “I’d be happy to have a call with you at that time – but would you rather have a Zoom call?”  Remember, more people are familiar with this technology than ever before. On video you can get more cues to and from your buyer – so the more calls you can upgrade from phone to video, the better off you’ll be.
  2. Respect the request. On the other hand, if your customer requests that you meet through video instead of in person, respect that.  Right now, many people are still leery of face-to-face meetings, and if your customer is one of them, you could put them off by pushing for a face to face meeting.  Accept the video call.
  3. Make sure your video is right. The great thing about video is that you have control over the visuals.  Think through your equipment and your backdrop.  Today’s laptops and phones have very high quality HD cameras on them, so that’s not a problem – but the camera lens should be at eye level (so you are making quality eye contact with your customer) and you should be looking AT THE LENS instead of at the screen.  That one’s difficult.    The backdrop should be interesting but free of anything off-color or distracting.  The lighting should be at your front and not your back.  You may want to get a good quality external microphone (mine is a Blue Yeti).  The best way to ascertain all of this is to set up as you would for a call, and then shoot some video of you talking.  Practice and get comfortable.
  4. Learn the technology. Right now, there are many different technologies out there.  They all have their pluses and minuses.  My best advice to you is to pick a technology that you like, get really comfortable with it, and then when you do schedule a video call, you be the person who does the inviting, rather than expect the customer to do so.  I will freely admit that I myself have been a bit tardy on this one.  That said – if your customer already has a preferred tech, go with it – which means you need to be conversant with many platforms and not just your own.
  5. Show up ten minutes early. The same rules apply for this as for a face to face call.  If you’re going to participate in a video call, you should log on ten minutes early, whether it’s your tech and platform or theirs.  If you’re on early, that means that when they log on they don’t have to wait for you; if it’s theirs, that means that if there are any technological hoops you didn’t know about (such as an app to download), you have time to do it before it’s meeting time.

Video calling is something we are going to be working with forever now, at least until someone invents a hologram so we can project ourselves into the customer’s office.  Do these things and you’ll be very effective at it, and you’ll beat salespeople who aren’t.

How to Make Rules For Your Sales Team

Sales Blog, The Navigator News,

How to Make Rules For Your Sales Team

This is another short clip from a Las Vegas speech a few years back.  What I said is still true – there is a three-part criteria for determining the value of any rule you have, or make, for your salespeople (or any other department), and you need to pay attention to it.  If you don’t, you’ll have lower sales performance than necessary, higher turnover, and all the negative effects of those two things.