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The Star Worthy awards all started with a simple “star sticker” we would give out in our training. One of our trainers started this and I thought it was a bit hokey and even a bit representative of primary school.
I was so wrong!
I quickly learned that sales reps are eager to step it up and demonstrate thought-provoking sales insights, connect the dots from the consultative methodology training to their own customer scenarios and are very proud to be recognized for doing more than the ordinary. Every training session we conduct, we have participants proud and vying to earn a star and build their sales confidence. Many of them receive accolades at home when their children are impressed that mommy or daddy received a star at work. Some leaders ask for extra star stickers so they can continue to reward star worthy moments.
At Teneo, we wanted to kick up the star worthy stickers and moments to the Star Worthy Awards at our annual Evolve Sales Leader Think Tank Event. This will be the third year we are offering the Star Worthy Awards.
Some of you might be thinking, “I don’t need an award to know that I’m doing a good job – the proof is in the sales numbers”. I personally learned the powerful impact and importance of sales awards.
With many changes in the re-building of our business this last year, I started to write these weekly blogs, host a buyer’s webinar and create a few videos to help increase the importance of high performing sales teams and expectations by buyers. The Marketing Manager on our team suggested submitting some of our work to the Top Sales World Awards. I didn’t think it was a priority on our very long to-do list. But she insisted and went ahead. I was very surprised when we were short-listed in three categories for best blog, video, and webinar. On Dec 20th, we learned we won Silver Award for the Webinar on “Cracking the Buyer’s Code”. It was an incredible honour to earn this among the tough competition of top-notch sales leaders. It was more than just a great way to end the year, it really did help me to build confidence that we were recognized for doing a webinar incredibly well and different than others.
Sales is tougher than ever before, and we need salespeople to be confident in their sales calls and doing more than just ordinary sales.
According to OMG Sales Assessments, only 6% of salespeople are elite sales performers and the sad reality is 50% of salespeople are weak.
Who do you know that exemplifies Star Worthy achievements, based on their sales performance in 2018? Is it a sales professional who increased their sales skills, capabilities and blew it out of the park? A sales team who created stronger sales culture and strengthened their sales process to earn a new caliber of trust with their customers? Or is it your sales manager or leader who did an exemplary job of leading and coaching your team and earning a new level of respect by the organization?
There are six categories of Star Worthy Awards and you can submit multiple nominations. We’ve kept the nomination process simple with only five to seven questions taking you less than ten minutes to complete.
Six Star Worthy Sales Awards categories are:
• Star Worthy Customer Experience
• Star Worthy Sales Professional
• Star Worthy Sales Team
• Star Worthy Sales Leader
• Star Worthy Best Practices
• Star Worthy Overall Culture and Customer Focused Organization
Each of the awards is given to an individual, team, or organization for their outstanding sales excellence. Nominations for the 2018 Star Worthy Sales Awards are open for submissions until Friday, March 8th.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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As we progress into the sales year, are YOU getting in your own way of achieving your sales goal success this year?
In two recent goals webinar, we polled the sales rep community to hear what they were predicting for their sales goals for the year ahead. We were fascinated and even a little surprised by the results.
Check out question five for the most surprising poll result and what truly impacts sales performance and sales goal achievement…and it’s not your competitors or your organization!
Here’s a quick summary of the combined results *. How do your responses compare to this polled sales community?
Q1 – Did you achieve your sales goal for the past year?
The research found that 26% of salespeople slam dunked and exceeded their sales goals by meeting their quota, yet 58% did not achieve their sales goals, and in the sales world, that’s reality – yet very disappointing. We truly need sales professionals to make more sales and achieve company sales goals as it’s vital to a strong economy.
Q2 – What is your sales goal increase for this year?
Over 21% are expecting a 20%+ growth for this year – very optimistic!
Less than 10% are expecting small sales targets of 1-5% growth this year. The majority (28-55%) are expecting a double-digit growth of 10-19% growth. This is fascinating to see how optimistic sales professionals are in future sales growth opportunity to increase sales, yet it contradicts their actual goal achievement.
Q3 – What is your long-term sales goal for 2022 – three years from now?
A) No idea – don’t plan that far ahead = 21%
B) My company sets those goals = 19%
C) Steady growth – approximately 20-30% growth in three years = 42%
D) Double my sales in the next three years = 18%
This shows confidence in sales with strong future growth for the next three years, despite rumblings of a more challenging economy ahead. Great to see sales professionals continue to be optimistic for a strong future.
Q4 – What is your strategy to achieve your sales goals?
21% of sales reps and sales leaders said with existing customers, 56% said hunting or prospecting to find at least five new customers this year, and only 6% said referrals. At Teneo this year, we found the referral strategy the most effective way to grow our business. There is still a surprisingly small percentage of sales team members who admit that “winging it” is still their strategy to achieve their goals.
Q5 – What is getting in the way of achieving your goals? The most surprising poll result!
24% said there’s just not enough time in the day, a few said their boss, but 43% said it was them! They were the biggest factor that was going to get in the way of achieving sales growth this year! In our second webinar, 58% of the attendees admitted that they get in the way of achieving their goals.
If YOU are the reason for not achieving your sales goals, then I suggest making a list of all the obstacles that YOU allow to get in the way. Then, in a second column on this list, identify a strategy to overcome these challenges.
I’m a learning junkie and was attending my first session of Strategic Coach, a great program for entrepreneurs, and they had us do a similar exercise to set sales goals and stretch goals. I found it very empowering and encouraging to do this exercise, as it improves your own self-talk, builds confidence, along with setting realistic actionable strategies that will help you to realize there is a way to overcome the obstacles and achieve your goals.
*note – Since we are combining two poll results, the percentages will not add up to a 100%.
Catch the On Demand version of the webinar I’ve been referencing, 7 Factors that Get in the Way of Achieving Your Sales Goals, .
In addition, download our 3 Year Goal Planning Table to set your objectives and achieve your 90 days, one year and three year goals.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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As sales professionals, we are always looking for a YES. To help you become more strategic, proactive and brave, you need to identify what you will say NO to, in order to reduce the distractions or even the high maintenance customers in your sales pipeline.
The challenge for sales professionals is that no two days are the same and we must be ready to serve our customers. This often puts us in a more reactive rather than proactive mode.
Let’s look at how we can improve sales productivity to create the ideal sales performance week – an efficient and effective way to maximize your sales performance, without working more hours!
Here are three sales strategies to help sales reps become high performing sales teams.
1. Create Your Ideal Productive & High-Performance Week
Many of you are working evenings and even weekends to stay caught up. Your boss and company want you to increase sales. Most high performing sales teams are looking for double digit growth anywhere from 10 – 20+% growth. Are you willing to work 10-20+% more this year to achieve your goals? Probably not! Something has to change in order to meet your sales target.
The “Ideal Time Blocking Chart” is a great sales tool to help you identify a more efficient and effective sales week. What would your ideal sales productive and performance week look like? What are some of the sales activities and sales process that you are doing on the weekends and evenings that you could block time during the Monday to Friday week?
This sales tool will take you less than 20 minutes to complete. I recently did it myself. As I penciled my ideal week I was amazed how it immediately reduced my stress and anxiety levels and actually increased my energy. It’s that simple and helps you to determine where there is room for improvement in your sales day. Block time for the high performing tasks that will enable you to be proactive with your customers and work when you have higher energy levels to achieve your goals. You can download the Ideal Profitable Week template here.
Time is our most valuable resource, and the problem is, it never stops! There is no way to hit “pause” on your day, so you have to be able to manage distractions that waste time in order to make time for the important things.
Until scientists figure out how to stop time, here are a few statistics to show how much time is wasted in the workday, and a few tips on how to better manage your time.
- 20% of the average workday is spent on “crucial” and “important” things, while 80% of the average workday is spent on things that have “little value” or “no value”. Source: DONALD WETMORE – PRODUCTIVITY INSTITUTE
- 1 hour of planning each week will save you 10 hours of doing. SOURCE: WEEKDONE.COM
- It takes an average of 25 minutes to resume a task after being interrupted. SOURCE: WWW.INC.COM
- Multi-tasking can reduce productivity by as much as 40%. SOURCE: WWW.FORBES.COM
- The average worker spends 13 hours a week on emails alone, which means 28% of the work week is taken up by email.
2. ROTI – Return On Time Invested
Return On Time Invested (R.O.T.I.) is a concept that helps salespeople make their time with prospects and customers more profitable. ROTI calculations can help salespeople manage their time more effectively and efficiently, based on the revenue/gross profit that a customer is worth each year.
Typically, we evaluate our customers based on the amount of sales revenue or profit we earn from each customer. However, we should also be evaluating how much time we are spending with each customer.
- You have to meet with a client that is a four-hour drive away. You schedule two more appointments in the same area as this client, plus another meeting on the way back to maximize your day.
- You schedule a weekly call with one of your key customers to pro-actively manage their account, rather than many emails and calls throughout the week. You provide an updated agenda for the meeting each week to make the call even more productive.
- You meet with a client to conduct a monthly review of their business and plan for their upcoming orders and better manage their inventory.
In managing their customers and meetings, many salespeople will plan the same amount of time for each customer meeting, irrespective of the revenue/gross profit for each customer. Rather, salespeople should be prioritizing and allocating more time to those customers that bring in a higher revenue.
3. Say No To Those Activities That Distract You From Your Goals – Even If They’re Good
As a productive top performing sales professional, what are some of the high performing sales activities to say yes to?
- Prospecting – opening doors, securing meetings and following up on proposals
- Planning your next week
- Updating your CRM – moving the needle on the CRM dashboard
- 1:1 Coaching with your manager/mentor
- Blocking days to meet with customers – get out of the office more!
- Being proactive to manage customers
- Scheduling time for key accounts
- Maximizing social media
What are some activities that will impede you from reaching your sales goals?
- Unproductive meetings
- Chasing accounts receivables and customer payments
- Inventory management and back-orders
- Operational issues
- Drive time
- Social media that takes you down a rabbit hole
- High Maintenance customers who don’t produce a high ROTI
During the next week, evaluate and closely observe your activities to determine what produces different hours of power and energy for you.
There are some activities we don’t always enjoy doing like planning or prospecting – yet we know it will yield a higher increase in sales and productivity.
This year in sales, what will you do to produce more and work less? You decide what you will say “Yes” and “No” to, to be a top performing sales team.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
Blog
Are you suffering from the latest sales process epidemic “Selling too soon?”
While working with a few sales teams recently, I realized a huge sales challenge that even the most seasoned sales reps are facing. It’s “Selling Too Soon” Syndrome and this epidemic started with buyers who have little time for salespeople. Salespeople have wasted buyers’ time, thus buyers have reduced the amount of time to about 10-15 minutes with a sales professional, forcing salespeople to quickly provide their product solutions and get down and dirty with price.
You can’t sell or even hint to one of your solutions until you have used the 3x3x3 Questioning Technique. In the PURPOSE Consultative Framework – you don’t sell until you get to the S in PURPOSE – which is the sixth step in the sales process.
The PURPOSE Framework is a simple 7-step consultative framework to help salespeople have a more purposeful conversation.
P- Prepare, U – Understand your Customer, R – Rapport with Customer, P- Purpose of Meeting, O – Ask Open ended questions(more questions about their business, not your products), S- Summarize & Solutions, E – Execute next steps
Download the PURPOSE template to help you NOT sell too soon!
A salesperson will ask a few questions and then too quickly jump to selling the solution.
To help salespeople not sell too soon, try the 3x3x3 Questioning Technique. A simple repeatable sales methodology that enables you to be more customer centric. This is a critical step in the sales process to build stronger customer relationships and earn more time with potential customers.
To begin this effective sales process, you quickly build rapport with your buyer, state the purpose of your meeting and then let them know you want to ask them a few questions about their situation and their business. You don’t you have to tell them you’re going to ask them over nine questions, each question will build on the other and you’ll be surprised at how much information they will share when you ask these questions.
In the first group of questions – ask about their needs and pain points. Too often sales professionals will ask a few relevant questions, then quickly jump to selling their product or service, but I encourage you to go deep and find out why they need this product/solution now. What is really causing their pain or challenge? Peel the onion to get to the core of the need. Be curious and inquisitive about their challenge.
Needs Based Questions: (Choose at least 3 of the questions below)
• What is your current situation?
• What is your current solution?
• What caused you to reach out to us?
• What are your biggest challenges with…?
• When do you need this?
• How much do you need?
• Why is it not working?
• How important is it to prioritize and/or fix this problem?
Now, that you understand their true challenge, you can’t sell yet – even though you think you have the right solution to fix it. Hold your recommendations and ask three more questions about the future and ideal outcome for their business. This will get them sharing more information about their business goals and KPIs. This is critical to getting closer to a yes and to the right solution.
Goals/Ideal Outcome Questions: (Choose at least 3 more questions)
• What are your goals/ideal outcome?
• What KPIs (key performance indicators) does your organization measure?
• What is the one thing that you want to avoid?
• What would make you look good?
• What would make the team/organization look good?
• What is your boss/CEO’s vision?
• Who else would you need to get involved/collaborate to…?
Now, you’re getting so excited because you know your solution will make them look good and will help achieve their business goals, but wait – don’t sell yet. Ask three more killer questions that will help you secure the sale, without even selling. With each question they answer they are giving you the ammunition you need to build an awesome ROI case, so you do not have to reduce your price!
Business Impact/ROI – Return on Investment Questions: (Choose your next 3 killer questions!)
• What is the impact on your …? (operations, efficiency, inventory, etc.)
• How will this improve your KPIs?
• How will this impact your business long-term?
• What are the consequences if you choose to do nothing?
• How will this impact the profitability of your organization?
• How could this impact your company bonus?
• How much could this make more money/profits in the next three years?
• How can you turn this expense into a long-term investment to make more money for your organization and your dealer channel?
Voila – you now have all the information you need and have probably found that they shared so much more than you had anticipated. Great job! But, don’t sell yet!
Now, summarize their key needs, outcome and business impact. This will demonstrate you were listening, builds credibility and ensures you are both on the same page. This simple step and statement is a game changer in earning trust with your buyer. Don’t skip this step in your sales process, as it only takes 30 seconds and will get you closer to close deals and repeat business.
Now – position your solution as three-options in a working proposal to continue to collaborate with them. This is the next conversation, the solutions conversation in your sales process.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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It’s the beginning of your new fiscal sales year, and you probably worked extremely hard to hit last year’s sales goals.You might be feeling exhausted, with nothing left in your tank. You may feel as though you’ve done everything you can with your current customer base, and have realized that you must start your sales and prospecting efforts all over again, with even more dedication to exceed the new sales increase you’ve been given.
For many sales professionals, it’s a double-digit sales increase for this next sales year! As you reflect back, the sales cycle was more like a sales roller coaster, and if you’re like me – you like moving fast, but you don’t like the steep ups and downs of the emotional sales roller coaster.
How would you like to have a more sustainable sales and prospecting plan that will work for the entire fiscal sales year?
Here’s the reality, for sales reps to achieve their sales goal, sales teams can’t rely only on their existing customers.The biggest sales cycle challenge for sales teams is finding potential new customers. You need a sales process to do this.
Most sales reps don’t like cold calling and neither do I! Most sales reps have prospecting procrastination when it comes to making these calls and procrastination never leads to positive sales results.
I’m going to share with you a consistent sales process with a prospecting plan that will help you secure 10 new potential customers this year, by simply making 10 proactive prospecting calls or emails each week to avoid sales prospecting procrastination!
Here are seven strategies you can use to build your Sales and Prospecting Pipeline at a purposeful pace!
Let’s build your prospecting plan in reverse:
7. How many new prospects do you want to turn into new customers this year? How about 10 new customers this quarter or this sales year? That is less than one per month and very do-able! 10 new customers at $10,000 each is $100,000 in new business. How many of those new customers could be $100,000 customers? This would build a great sales pipeline to help you achieve your sales goals for the next three years!
6. How many prospect meetings throughout the sales year do you need to secure 10 new customers? The average sales closing ratio is 1:4 so to gain 10 new customers means you’ll need 40 prospect meetings. That would be on average at least one prospect meeting per week allowing you time to take summer holidays, attend sales conferences and enjoy at least two weeks off during the December holiday season because you will have slam dunked your sales and new customer goal, one year from now.
5. Before we begin creating your hot prospect list, let’s review your current existing sales clients to determine who are the ideal profitable type customers to attract. We all have a few high maintenance customers and we don’t want to attract more of them! Let’s make this easy and do a quick analysis of your top 10 existing customers.
What are their sales, who is the key decision maker and what is their role? What is their personality style? What are important criteria that make them successful to work with? What type of organization and what products or services do you sell that are profitable to sell? You want to look for any patterns and trends to help you determine who your ideal type of customers are. To keep this simple, I would suggest narrowing down and focusing only on three to four verticals at the most, which is one per quarter.
4. Build your hot prospect list based on your ideal and profitable type of customer. To create this hot prospect list, there are many sources for you to research such as LinkedIn, Industry Directories, and Industry Associations.
3. In looking at your verticals, identify when their industry tradeshows and conferences take place, as this is a great place to find and meet key decision makers. Put these tradeshows and conferences into your calendar and plan to be there.
2. Once you’ve gathered your list, commit to making 10 prospecting calls every week to achieve your sales goals using your Hot Prospect List.
1. Choose the best time to make those prospecting calls every week and schedule that time in your calendar. We highly recommend either early in the morning or you might try at the end of the day. At Teneo, we are committed to making those prospecting calls or sending emails every Thursday morning between 7:30am to 8:55am, as it has proven to be a great time to reach the right decision maker.
This prospecting strategy is simple and it works.
Avoid Prospecting procrastination this year and simply put your sales goal plan in pace by pro-actively making 10 calls or emails each week to secure 10 new customers this year.
Follow us weekly as we continue to provide you with Purposeful Prospecting tips, strategies and templates you can use every week to help you stay focused on your sales and prospecting goals for this year.
I’m a Goals Junkie – please comment below and share with me your sales and prospecting goals to stay accountable and we’ll continue to help you throughout the year to slam dunk your goals!
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
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I’ve observed that sales confidence is one of the biggest challenges that sales professionals and sales leaders are facing with their sales calls, sales presentations and especially sales prospecting. It’s not just new sales professionals, it’s more of the tenured sales professionals who have 10 and 20+ years of sales experience. Why?
Three factors that sabotage sales confidence:
1. Buyers, customers, prospects just don’t see the value of a salesperson’s role, knowledge and ability to demonstrate value. They are quick to blow off meeting requests! They are not returning emails or voice mail messages and it takes many more touch points and different and stronger messaging to get their attention. When they do respond, they ask for the best price, and then involve more people in the decision-making process – lengthening a more challenging buyer cycle than ever before.
This can happen with existing and even favourite clients and can leave a sales professional feeling less confident, which certainly erodes sales confidence on the ability to reach out to secure business.
2. Sales professionals are more reactive and have little time for pro-active planning and strategies. When we are in reactive mode, we are fixing problems and following-up on customer orders. Sales Confidence is eroded when we are in fire-fighting mode. Sales professionals need to follow a proven sales process enabling them to be more proactive, than reactive. Sales professionals are not allocating the necessary time to be pro-active to find new customers. Sales preparation builds sales confidence.
3. Competition is fierce. Customers are more demanding, knowledgeable and do their research before they talk with a sales professional. Many sales professionals and sales leaders have not stepped up their A-Sales Game to be able to quickly and confidently articulate their company’s value proposition against their current competitor, how their products/services will provide better solutions to their prospects and customers and how to handle all types of objections from securing a meeting to securing a sale.
Three solutions to build sales confidence and create more confident sales professionals:
1. Practice, practice and more practice will build confidence. Sales leaders, like sports coaches, need to have their sales team practicing their introductions to secure a meeting, creating a value proposition that raises eyebrows and intrigues prospects to learn more, plus providing a purposeful consultative conversation framework that builds sales success. Rather than boring weekly and monthly team meetings, this is a great opportunity for sales teams of all levels of experience to get better at what they do to build confidence. There is also a great video coaching tool that will record your sales professionals’ sales calls and provide you with video reporting to quickly assess and get better.
2. Plan, plan and more planning will further build sales confidence. Start with three-year sales goals and asking yourself and your team – what are their sales goals in the next three years? This gets them to start thinking outside of their one year and 5-10% sales increases. Most sales professionals will share much bigger goals in the next three years, than sales leaders anticipate. Then, map out a plan to achieve these sales goals and be a stronger and more confident sales professional. For example, doubling your sales in the next three years, is a 26% sales increase each year for the next three years. It’s easier to achieve than you think.
3. Demanding buyers and organizations are looking for confident sales professionals who can problem-solve and bring valuable solutions that help improve their business and achieve their KPIs. They don’t want to have product and price conversations, they want purposeful business conversations by stronger sales professionals who will confidently help them grow their business.
Want to increase your sales confidence to grow your business and your customer’s business?Check out our new accredited sales training programs offered in 2019 here.
Give me a call at 519-863-3975 if you’re interested in understanding more about our accredited programs.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.
