The last few weeks have been pretty unique – I know I have never experienced anything like what is happening right now in my entire career. Sure, there were the downturns in 2000, 2008, 2011, but those were nothing like what 2020 is bringing us right now. That said, one thing is certain – just like previous downturns, this will end and we will recover.
The world has changed drastically over the past few weeks in many ways. While things are moving slower than usual, it’s a great time to reconnect with customers (virtually, of course), educate yourself, and sharpen the skills you’ll be able to use when the freeze starts to thaw.
“Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” - Sheryl Sandberg
The ability to deliver the above is one, if not the, distinguishing characteristic of a great leader. Upon reading it, I began to think of what Sandberg’s definition of leadership meant for sales leaders.
During sales management training, I often tell sales managers they need to approach sales pipeline reviews with their sales reps like prosecutors in the courtroom. What exactly do I mean? To start, I’m not advocating that you look to “convict” your sales reps. Instead, I’m suggesting sales managers take an evidence-based approach to sales pipeline inspection. Doing so will remove the biases from conversations with sales reps, and make sales pipelines more accurate and data driven.
So, where do you find this evidence?
Sales Gauge, a leader in the sales training industry, today announced it has launched a new application for sales executives using Salesforce.com (SFDC). The app, which provides real-time insight into high value deals, is available at no charge on the SFDC AppExchange. In addition to full transparency into their sales pipelines, the new Sales Gauge High Value Trade Table app provides salespeople and managers a common language to discuss sales pipelines and forecasts.
The overwhelming chaos that is our new normal in sales is paralyzing many salespeople from doing the business development they need to do. In these times, we have to go back to basics and think about how we can use our time management skills with our storytelling to get our message out there. The filters we all have in our minds about how we approach customers in the “old world” are obsolete - we need to think about the “new world” we are in right now.
Do you understand how your solution fits your customer’s product lifecycle? Salespeople must recognize that the landscape is truly shifting under our feet. Neil Rackham from Spin Selling discusses the polarizing landscape that will take the low-end transactional business and move it downstream to inexperienced sales reps or through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to process these orders.
Does this mean that sales professionals will no longer be needed? The answer depends on whether you can transform yourself to meet the needs of the current buying process and build strong relationships with your customers. According to Rackham, we must become consultative with our prospects and customers; while most of us seem to understand this, many still struggle with how to actually make it happen.
The traditional sales model from which we have recognized up to 80% of our business is moving to the transactional sale and the higher end business is going to demand a consultative sales approach. This approach is going to shed light on the skills – or lack thereof – of today’s sales professionals. So it’s time to ask yourself: Do you have the skills to connect with executives in order to gain access to their team?
The title of this post leads you to believe that we are going to talk about time to close a deal or to make a deal. In this case I want you to think about time as a precious commodity that is fleeting and beats us every year: your finite amount of time to make quota. As the year begins with kickoff and planning, Q1 is over before we know it and Q2 is upon us. We quickly need to make up for the Q1 shortfall, which means we must double down on prospecting and get appointments that lead to follow-on investment by the customer.
Recently, we were meeting with a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) to discuss training for their team in the science and art of prospecting. To kick things off, I asked the CRO about the current prospecting process and the plan to hold the sales people accountable. His answer?
“They aggressively sit at their desks waiting for the phone to ring.”
While we found the answer amusing, his response underlined the reality that their sales people had become order takers and not sales professionals.
In a previous blog post we discussed the book The Customer Service Revolution by John R. DiJulius and how companies and individuals have a tendency to approach clients with preconceived notions. We have this negative belief that our customers are always trying to put one over on us. It’s the 2% of customers trying to pull a fast one who prompt us to put up our defenses and drive us to believe every customer wants to screw us. But the reality is that most customers want us to be successful and profitable, in turn passing on fair pricing on our products and services. In this way, everyone benefits.
Gravitocity Announces Strategic Partnership with Sales Gauge
Sales technology and sales training companies join forces to create complete sales prospecting solution
Burlingame, CA. – July xx, 2016: Gravitocity, Inc., a pioneer in sales outreach and prospecting technology, today announced a strategic partnership with Sales Gauge, a leading sales training and sales elearning company. Together, the two will enable salespeople to improve sales velocity by identifying and reaching new sources of senior-level prospects and closing business with them faster.
