Your sales rep is in a groove. They have a hot prospect, actively interested in your solution, asking questions that scream “SALE”. They pick up the phone or walk into their office and WHAM, the prospect has questions that can only be planted by the competition. Their competitor, another sales rep touting the superiority of their solution, is busily trying to undermine the efforts of your rep. The instinctive reaction, and one that all too many of us engage in, is to start bashing the competition. This manner of handling the competition tends to wage a competitive struggle that slows down the sales process as the prospect tries to decide which is the lesser of two evils.
If your team works the sales process properly, and from the beginning expects competition to enter the arena before they close the deal, it is easy to avoid these situations. As coaches, it is our job to prepare our team for any situation they may face, while simultaneously giving them the tools to close sales quickly and efficiently. If your rep is prepared, they have:
1. The ability to talk about the unique offerings or variables associated with your solution.
2. Can demonstrate how vital these unique features or benefits are vital to the prospect’s needs.
3. Can take the high road by not pointing to the flaws in the competition.
By doing so, the competitors that try and attack your product look like politicians slinging mud.
So how do we get there? We have to gather data, and back it up with customers. Here are the things that can help you win most competitive situations:
1. As many unique characteristics of your product, service, company, people, that can address different value or pain points. If you are the best priced product, it does not speak to having the fastest or strongest solution. If you are the strongest, it does not help in a budgetary situation. Make sure you can tailor each data point to your prospects particular needs. Go to engineering, R&D, product marketing, and anyone else who is busily trying to make your solution better. Learn from them why they work for your company, what they take pride in. These are usually the value points that make them proud of what they do. These things should be what help sell your product.
2. Get customers to speak to these particular variables. If you are in a competitive battle, nothing helps more that having a current customer back you up. If you have won a competitive deal, or even better, have converted a customer form a particular competitor; get them in front of your prospect. Yes, you should take the high road, but there is nothing wrong with one of your clients talking about their problems with a competitive solution.
3. Train your team to start presenting the uniqueness of your product from the beginning. If you plant the right seeds early, and get the prospect attached to offerings only your company can offer, you will already have a leg up on the competition. Usually, when a particular need is met in the right way, anyone who cannot address this need is dismissed.
4. Keep in touch with all of your competitors advancements. There are always going to be improvements and advances in your competition’s solutions, and if you are winning deals in competitive situations, be prepared for them to catch up. Knowing what the other product does can help you strategize on how to counter.
When we start with the end in mind, and build value that cannot be denied, we win sales. Ensuring that our team members can overcome anything competition throws at them is a vital part of any sales plan.
Collaborators are easy to spot; they get the fancy titles that really just mean sales person. Director of Business Development, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, all of these great names aid them in getting in front of high level executives.
They dress in suits, are always carrying their laptop cases/briefcases, and are glued to their blackberries. They have little time for traffic safety, let alone meetings that will not turn into more opportunities for their high dollar, low volume, and long sales cycle deals. While many of us in the coaching and leadership roles have worked to this level before crossing over, some of us have never had that opportunity. If you are not a collaborator, or have never been one, you CANNOT COACH ONE. This does not mean you cannot have them on your team. It does not mean you cannot manage their work, pipeline, work habits, and mental state. It means that if you want them to grow as individuals, and blossom into consistent closers, you must have outside help. It can be other executives in your company, your CEO or another sales head with the experience. The key is, the person has walked the road of brokering with the top tier. Personally, I prefer to bring in trainers for this group, even if I can do the job myself. Why? Collaborators have worked hard to get where they are; they consider themselves experts, and need the voice of other experts to get them to stop and listen.
This may sound contradictory to what I mentioned earlier about good coaches training their teams, but when you get to higher level sales members, it is important to treat them as leaders. Know your limits as an educator. This does not mean you can skip the training. You should learn the curriculum ahead of time, and try and be an active participant in the studies. Train by their side, and meet with them over lunch a few weeks after your sessions. Share ideas and experiences based on what you have learned. This will strengthen the message, and if executed well, continue to foster a level of trust between you.
Finally, a critical element to training Collaborators is energy. Your training and trainer (you?) must be dynamic and engaging. Look at it like a cold call; you have about 10 seconds to grab ‘em, 10 more to get them interested, and 10 more to get their buy in to continue listening. Do not bring them into training just for the sake of training. If that first 30 seconds does not get them to open their ears, you may as well send them out on their next appointment. Frankly, if they are not going to get anything out of the training, they have better things to do.
Communicators are into big money. They have honed their craft and the skills they have picked up have shown them success. The group usually is split into two camps:
1. Really successful but resistant to training. Even though they have utilized traits taught by others, all the credit is theirs.
2. Open books that will soak up as much knowledge as possible to become better reps.
While the latter makes a good coach salivate, I have to admit most of my best reps come from category one. As long as my ego can stay in check, it is rewarding to hear people put into practice the lessons I have made them endure. I get joy out of their experience, even if it lacks a pat on the back.
So how do you train the communicator?
Let’s begin by thinking about character more than tools. It is good to get them reading, and reading alot. Books on effectiveness, by successful athletes, people who have overcome grat obstacles, all make for great training manuals. Good sales people also enjoy books on what makes people think, knowing that understanding what is “between the lines” is as important as the words spoken.
Communicators should be taught the inner workings of the product and the competition. Even the weariest of souls will apreciate a competitive sales training when they are in a heavy objection handling battle spurned by a competing sales rep.
This group should have intensive multi-day sessions at least once a year. Try and focus on new ideas for each stage of the sale. They should be coached on a weekly basis to stay sharp on their listening and qualifying skills. Spend a healthy amount of one on one time working on lost sales, studying what could have changed. Agreed, hindsight is 20/20, but it can also give you some fantastic insight into a similar challenge.
One important challenge to help each communicator succeed is staying on top of every objection. For as quick as you need them to be, you should have the answer that much sooner. If you do not know, find out, and then teach the team. Communicators do not respect managers that could not slide into their chair and manage an account for them. This leads into the final point to train them on. Teach your communicators to use their management and executive team to help close deals. When “C” level people get into the fold, nothing helps the sale progress more than the CEO or President of your company taking the time to get involved. It shows a value that little else can offer. Good executives know and cherish these opportunities. We all should!
Plan to spend a good 15 days a year training your communicators and you will see the reutrn on investment month after month.
Wow; I must offer up my sincerest apologies to those of you who have been faithful readers. I have had a three month hiatus from posts, and can only say that it was because I am in full force with building and training a world class sales team. The challenge of daily application of my beliefs has left me spent from writing. My family has seen less of me, but the tumbleweeds flowing through this blog are signs of my greatest neglect. Well, GOOD NEWS, I have swept through Main Street and I am reopening the town store. Posts should be back on a regular basis, and since I have been gone for so long, my only penance will be to put up a post a day until the New Year.
Well, let’s get back to it!
Gatherer’s, a talented and usually underappreciated bunch. They build the solutions, save the unhappy customers, and truly make the frontline sales team look like stars. The skills they need have to couple an inherent knack for listening to people and truly hearing what they have to say. The best of the best give the prospect or customer the right nudge here and there to let them make their own decisions, without said prospect or customer ever feeling the press of their hand.
If you have to choose a profession to harvest gatherers from, I would say that psychologists would make a great group of gatherers. Only they spend as much time patiently listening to problems and guiding their clients to the right solutions.
So how do you train to such a challenging position? You cannot teach people to listen, if they are not natural adept in the art. So, the easy solution is to avoid your type A, run the red light to get it done, mentality. However, these people are still on you sales team and have to have the hunger. What is necessary to make great gatherers is a continual refresher on what it means to be a great listener.
This team should constantly be sharing experiences, role playing, and developing their listening skills. Give them challenging scenarios, and only use vocal training. It is fun to give them word challenged and other brain teasers, and you want them to stay sharp. If they are engineers, throw complex environments at them and leave details out. The goal is to get them to ask the right questions to build the best possible solution.
This group should be listened to or watched by their management team on a constant basis. Make it an expectation from day one, and stick to pointing out the positive. Use the negative to build role playing exercises and communication trainings. I can assure you that this team is the most sensitive of your bunch, and if they are good, the most sought after. Keeping them on their toes is crucial, but so is keeping them happy to come to work. We will review some fun exercises in the training series on gatherers, but for now slate a weekly team training for building new strengths.
This next few posts are dedicated to training your different team members. Since there will be an entire series on training, and each group will be covered in detail, I did not want anyone to mistake this for that.
What your plan needs is dedicated time for achieving particular goals. The training goals require looking at particular roles and slicing up the plan.
For hunters, it is important to train to five areas:
1. Organization and time management
2. Segmenting activity
3. Pipeline development
4. Qualifying and objection handling
5. Pitch and cold call communication
Hunters tend to have a short retention span. A good coach does not get flustered at having to repeat training for hunters. If you teach to five points a rep may get one. When the rep gets a couple more the first may be gone. This is what makes for good hunters, the attention span leaves them forgetting the “No’s”.
Plan to have mini individual trainings in your one on one each week. These will focus on activity and time management. Give them tips on how to maximize their efforts and repeat them weekly.
Have monthly trainings dedicated to calls and qualifying. Work on objection handling in every weekly meeting. Let the successful teach their part and work your plan around those who “Get it”. Cycle through your trainings and repeat. It is wise to have a years worth of training and to spruce them up as you bring them around again.
Also, get you hunters reading. There are many books on sales, but what hunters need is books on personal development. The tricks of life will keep them focused, and if you can get them into some leadership reads, they will thrive.
I will give a recommended read list next year, but for now at least get them training. The more they hear, the more they will absorb. The more they absorb, the more they will sell.