Blog, Business, Sales
Have you ever wished you could get a glimpse inside the minds of your sales team?
- Do they feel supported?
- What is challenging them?
- What motivates them?
If yes, you’re in luck! We had the pleasure of bringing together a panel of 6 incredible emerging sales professionals from a variety of organizations and industries, who are thriving in their roles. They have been in sales anywhere from 7 years to 1 year but one thing they all have in common is that they’re all willing to share their insights and advice with Sales Leaders, to help pave the way for future sales talent!
Top 5 Tips from the Emerging Sales Talent:
1. If you’re looking to attract and retain new sales talent, be sure to evaluate your company culture!
Nearly all of our emerging sales talent panelists stated that a growth-oriented company with a unique or differentiated market position was important to them. Another valuable factor was a culture of support and team unity – knowing that they can ask questions, share ideas, and lean to one another throughout the highs and lows of their sales careers.
2. While there are expectations of new talent, they have expectations of their Sales Leaders.
Emerging sales talent crave leaders who trust them to do their jobs. They value autonomy, but still want to know that their leader is available to help and guide if needed. New sales talent also want a leader who will challenge them and push them out of their comfort zone! Leaders who are willing to give new talent the opportunity to execute their job in their own style, while setting them up for success with the necessary tools and strategies are incredibly valuable to those looking to enter the world of sales.
3. Good On-Boarding can make or break talent retention.
Our emerging sales talent shared that starting their career feeling low-pressure from the top down and being informed of their typical sales-cycle length was a major comfort factor. Another on-boarding must; introductions to the entire team. Salespeople understand that there is more to securing a sale than just a meeting between the rep and a buyer – they want to meet and understand the people and the roles that make the company and entire sales process run as a well-oiled machine.
The “sink-or-swim” on-boarding of the past is simply not an effective tool if you’re looking to attract, retain, and develop top talent.
4. Looking to attract new grads to your sales team? Money isn’t the only motivator.
Promoting an environment where your candidates know they can learn, try, fail, and still be supported by their leader is a must. Honesty and transparency in your job postings is also crucial for finding the perfect fit. Top talent want to see that there are mentorship opportunities for them, and other benefits such as professional development, commission, travel opportunities, a bonus structure, and vacation days. Another valuable perk to new grads; mental health benefits!
Sales can be tough and full of rejection, especially when you’re just starting out. Candidates expect more than just a salary to hold strong through the hard parts – they want support!
5. They need space to grow, or they may go!
A common piece of advice that our emerging sales talent panel offered to Sales Leaders; show your salespeople a potential pathway for career growth – along with potential for higher earnings – or risk being left behind. Staying stagnant in a role, year after year isn’t appealing to most & hardly fosters company pride and loyalty. Lay out (or better yet, collaborate on) a clear pathway with timelines and KPIs, that can help your salespeople envision a future with your organization that will move them to a role they aspire to hold.
Leading a sales team is no small task – and harder yet is understanding the expectations, motivations, and challenges of each individual on your team. While nothing can beat a conversation with your immediate team, the insights provided by the emerging sales talent panelists are sure to set you well on your way to attract, hire, and retain top sales talent.
*Contributed ideas by the Emerging Sales Talent Panelists: Adam Gores, Riley Melady, Samantha Jessome, Nick Mitchell, Spencer Smith, and Grayson Wesley.
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, Sales
Because of the preview options, buyers are quickly deleting messages without even reading them.
It’s time to do something different to get their attention.
Last week, during my prospecting blitz time, I made 18 telephone calls followed by customized email messages. Doing this alone increased my response rate to 50% and secured three meetings.
I call this the “Double Whammy Approach”.
During your 90-day Prospecting Blitz use the Double Whammy Approach with a voicemail message followed by an email to increase your prospecting response rate.
Here are 8 tips to customize your prospecting emails:
- A creative and catchy subject line is key to getting a click to open rather than a click to delete!
- The first line or two of the email has to be catchy, other than something like, “How are you?” Most people are reading their emails on their mobile device, so you want the first few words to catch their attention. If you want to test your email, send it to yourself or a colleague and read it on a mobile device. Ask yourself – would you open this email and read it?
- If you have a referral name, use it! A referral is one of the best ways to stand out because it instantly gives you credibility in the mind of the buyer and increases your chances. Put this in the first line of your email. John Smith suggested that I reach out to you…
- Keep your email short and concise. Three to five sentences or short paragraphs are plenty! If you’re sending to a driver personality, use bullets to get their attention.
- Let your buyer know you’ve done your research and put it to good use by using it to support your reason to meet. Tie your research back to how you want to help them. Remember – make it about them and not you!
- Consider providing information or links to places your product has been featured – great product reviews, awards, or customer testimonials for instance. Buyers like to do research too, and this makes it easier for them to learn more about your company and product. If sending the email to a Driver Personality, keep it short. Provide more information if you’re sending to an Analyzer Personality Type.
- Don’t be selling too soon in your email – the purpose of your email and voicemail is to get their attention, intrigue them with a customized message and secure a meeting, not sell them!
- End your email with a strong call to action and provide at least two to three specific date options for your meeting/call, to make it easy for them to say yes to a date option.
In our “Cracking the Code Buyers webinar”, buyers shared that if you write a compelling and customized message, it can only take one attempt to get their attention. For others, it may take a few more times.
We can help increase your sales results. Join us for two days and we’ll teach you a proven sales system that is guaranteed to get you better sales results.
Two dates to choose from: May 7-8: http://bit.ly/2U5vRo5 or October 8-9: http://bit.ly/2HH7ne5
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, Sales
We have three major changes at Teneo to better serve our customers and the sales community, and there is one thing that will always remain consistent at Teneo. Keep reading to find out what they are.
Teneo has an Accredited Partnership with CPSA
After more than 10 years of working with the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA) as a Strategic Training Partner, we are thrilled to now be an Accredited Training Partnership with CPSA. Our accredited training programs prepare salespeople to meet the CPSA’s Professional Sales Designation pathway. This pathway is attracting more people, including college and university graduates, to the sales industry and will strengthen the sales community.
Our Rigorous Training Programs
As a result of the new standards and sales competencies set by CPSA, we have increased the rigorous nature of our training program, with Teneo’s style of interactive training and coaching, kicked up a notch to help sales teams raise their A game to meet today’s demanding buyers.
Our Purposeful Sales Strategies program that will prepare salespeople to successfully complete their Certified Sales Associate Professional Sales Designation (CSA). The feedback from our past participants has been phenomenal with a rating of 9.5 out of 10!
Our Purposeful Business Strategies Program prepares salespeople to successfully complete the Certified Sales Professional Designation (CSP), which is a gold standard program for achieving sales excellence in the industry today.
In addition, our advanced prospecting program Purposeful Prospecting helps sales professionals to identify ideal clients, and secure and close meetings with key decision makers with a 90-day prospecting blitz.
Each of our programs consist of Teneo’s integrated training and coaching model along with interactive microlearning videos and a practicum component, which differentiates our training from the rest.
Teneo New Brand & Website
We have gone through the intensive process of rebranding our company and website to match our company values and sales training structure.
We chose the ring icon. The inside ring symbolizes that we start with coaching sales leaders, as they are at the core of an organization and are pivotal to the success of sales teams. The second ring represents sales teams and how Teneo helps to transform them from good to great. The third ring represents Teneo working with customer service teams, as they are a valuable extension of the sales team. The final ring symbolizes the entire organization. Teneo works to align the sales culture across all departments to create an exceptional customer experience that delivers results.
Teneo Commitment Remains Consistent
The one thing that has not changed is our dedicated team and how we remain extremely committed to our clients.
Thank you to our many clients and suppliers who provided us with feedback, insights and support throughout these changes – we are very grateful.
Our Teneo team, consisting of Shannon, Angela, Jennifer, Jasmine and Chris, have all pitched in to ensure the changes within our business strengthen the client experience, our team and company culture.
If you need help with your sales goals, let’s talk. Email me at lisa@teneoresults.com
Teneo Challenge: What will you do to embrace change and be strategic, proactive and brave in the coming years?
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, Sales
When we train with the Consultative Conversation eight-step framework, people often share how much they love it. Why? Because it provides them with a structure in asking their customers valuable questions, learn more about their customers’ businesses, and uncover additional sales opportunities.
Yet, no one can easily remember and recite all eight steps (except right after writing their CSP Designation!).
At Teneo, we did some creative brainstorming and came up with an acronym, PURPOSE, to easily remember the consultative framework when meeting with customers.
The PURPOSE acronym is easy to remember so you can focus on the customer conversation, not remembering the next step!
When you follow the PURPOSE formula, you’ll have a more productive and purposeful sales conversation each and every time.
By following P.U.R.P.O.S.E. you will:
- Plan more and plan better (P-Prepare)
- Make fewer assumptions about your customers’ current state (U-Understand)
- Build trusting relationships by communicating with individuals in their preferred manner (R-Rapport)
- Identify the compelling reason you are meeting and state that reason at the start of the meeting (P-Purpose of the meeting)
- Ask more questions, and better ones that get to the heart of the business reasons to buy (O-Open-ended Questions)
- Summarize, prioritize and collaborate on possible solutions (S-Summarize & Solutions)
- Ensure you have clear next steps with date and time (E-Execute)
PURPOSE Sales Conversation
The chart below outlines the simple “purpose” for each step in the consultative conversation.
|
The PURPOSE of each step |
Questions to ask |
| P – Prepare For Your Meeting |
Take 7-10 minutes to prep for your meeting by using the back-side of the PURPOSE template. It helps you be more strategic, proactive and brave! |
What are my objectives for this meeting?
What do I hope to accomplish?
Is there any more information
that I need to be fully prepared? |
| U – Understanding Your Customer |
Think like your customer – what’s most important to them in their role, personality style, generation, and decision-making process to make them and their business prosper. |
Do I know my customer or prospect as well as I should?
What are their goals?
What’s most important for them to accomplish in this meeting and their business? |
| R – Rapport With Personality Style |
Identify their personality style and quickly adapt.
Begin to build trust and connect with them. |
Personal or business question to establish a common bond.
Nice building, how long have you been here?
How’s business? |
| P – Purpose of Meeting |
State the actual purpose of the meeting and agree on the agenda items.
Confirm the amount of time for the meeting, even if you scheduled a 30 minute meeting. |
To make this meeting most effective, I would like to discuss…
Is there anything else you would like to get done to make this meeting worthwhile for you?
Do you still have 30 minutes? |
| O – Open EndedQuestions |
Ask open, clarifying and expanding questions to find out their current situation, challenges, goals, and their decision-making process.
When you ask intelligent questions in a coach-like and consultative approach, your customer/prospect will realize it’s worth spending time with you. |
I would like to begin with asking you a few questions about your business to better understand your situation.
What are your challenges with…?
What are your goals for the coming year? What would you like to accomplish?
What is your criteria for selecting …?
How would you measure success? |
| S – Summarize Their Needs, Goals and Collaborate on Solutions |
Demonstrate you are listening to further develop trust.
Collaborate and co-create possible solutions based on their needs and business goals.
Typically, you may suggest a few solutions and schedule a second meeting to present your proposal with three options. |
To recap, what I’m hearing you say is that…
Your priorities are…
I understand that you are ideally looking for…
To achieve your goals, have you considered…?
To give you the maximum ROI, could we…
What (time, productivity, increase in sales, output, save money) would this accomplish in your business? |
| E – Execute Next Steps |
Set the next meeting or call with a specific date and time to present the proposal. |
Shall we go ahead then?
Where do we go from here?
When will you be making a decision?
Let’s get together again on (day) and (time) to review the proposal and discuss next steps. |
If you would like the PURPOSE template to help you prepare before, during and after your customer meeting, please email jasmine@teneoresults.com for your copy today.
Teneo Challenge: Request your own copy of the PURPOSE Conversation Framework template (email jasmine@teneoresults.com) and use it during your next customer meeting. Share your results by commenting on this blog, or by reaching out to us on LinkedIn @TeneoResults or @LisaLeitch.
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, Sales
50% of today’s sales professionals are weak and only 6% are elite.
If that doesn’t scare you, these scary selling competencies will.
That’s right, we are going to delve into the underbelly of performance gaps in salespeople and look at the scary statistics that surround these competencies that can’t be covered up.
We have connected with our strategic partners at Objective Management Group(OMG) for these unnerving insights on the following five selling competencies and the frightening statistics and poor performance in each area.
| Selling Competencies |
% of Salespeople Who are Competent |
- Closure – A salesperson’s ability to get business closed on a timely basis.
|
1% |
- Consultative Seller – A salesperson’s ability to take a consultative approach to a sales opportunity and uncover the compelling reason to buy.
|
3% |
- Qualifier – A salesperson’s ability to properly qualify an opportunity.
|
7% |
- Mastery of Social Selling – A salesperson’s effective and consistent use of LinkedIn, Twitter and blogging.
|
10% |
- Selling Value – A salesperson’s ability to quantify the opportunity and focus on the value rather than sell on price.
|
10% |
Statistics provided by Objective Management Group. https://www.objectivemanagement.com/
OMG states “Selling Competencies play a huge part in the difficulties that salespeople have when attempting to sell value or use a consultative approach. This is the combination of strengths that support skills and when the strengths are actually weaknesses, salespeople are uncomfortable and unable to execute the process, strategies, tactics and achieve milestones.”
Where would your team score?
Trial the 21 Core Competency Sales Assessment with your current team members and find out!
This assessment will give you insight into your team’s will to sell, how comfortable they are talking about money, and confirm if they are consultative in their approach with customers – plus more!
Teneo Challenge: Take the 21 Core Competency Sales Assessment with your current team members to understand their level of skills and strengths.
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.
