Author: mike

3 Keys to Transforming Your Sales Culture

by mike

Introduction
At some point in a company’s development, it becomes a priority to focus on and to change the existing sales culture. This need to change can be driven by many factors including slumping or declining sales numbers, or a change in focus from a customer service oriented sales team taking inbound leads to a more direct selling model where outbound calling becomes a priority, or a change in direction like a focus on growing new accounts. Sometimes a total transformation is in order whereby a whole new sales methodology is required and selling systems, processes and other key sales drivers are developed and implemented.

Regardless of the change, and in spite of the work necessary, one common challenge remains consistent – getting buy in from your existing sales team to adopt and implement the skills, processes and procedures needed to make the change successful.

The Problem is With People, Not Processes
Changing processes and procedures is relatively straight forward; changing attitudes and actions of experienced sales reps isn’t. Those of you who have been involved in managing or directing a sales team know first-hand the resistance of reps to change the way they sell. Even when current sales skills are ineffective, sales reps are reluctant to try something different. Many sales reps resist a scripted or process oriented approach preferring to ad-lib their way through their sales presentation, arguing they would sound canned if they did otherwise.

In addition, many experienced sales reps have been through enough “sales culture changes” and know that if they just wait long enough for the new changes to blow over, that the current senior management team will eventually lose steam and give up, and things will go back to normal. Sales reps have an uncanny ability to survive and have outwitted and endured many other initiatives and have eventually been left alone to scrape out a living.

Getting your sales team to buy into your new sales initiatives, and developing key drivers for coaching, reinforcing, and measuring the implementation of these initiatives is what determines how successful your new sales culture becomes.

Re-engineering a New Sales Platform
Often after a proper assessment of current sales operations has been completed, it becomes clear that a complete redesign and re-engineering of the sales platform is necessary. This complete sales transformation has three primary stages. The first stage is to define the sales process (what we call the DSP), including identifying the benchmarks and best practices that facilitate the successful navigation through each step in your sales process. This best practice methodology becomes the blueprint that each of the following stages follow and reinforce.

The second stage is to turn your DSP into your company sales training program and to develop your sales playbook from it. What is important at this stage is to understand and take what your top performers are intuitively doing and saying to close sales, and turn these successful practices into your sales playbook. This playbook consists of proven scripts, qualifying guidelines, closing presentations and rebuttals that teach your reps, step by step, what it takes to successfully qualify and close deals in your environment.

The third stage of the new sales platform is to develop key drivers that allow you and your managers to coach, teach and measure adherence to your sales playbook. This includes teaching managers how to monitor live calls, critique and grade call recordings, and other methods of being more active during a sales rep’s call. Changing this focus to active management gets sales managers out from behind their desks and gets them involved in and more responsible for the sales rep’s success.

Developing a new set of sales metrics which measure activities that actually drive sales is crucial at this point. While most companies measure things like number of calls, time on the phone, closing percentage to goal etc, these are not ‘active’ metrics because they are “backward looking” and describe what happened after the sales attempt. Your new key metrics will measure activities that take place during the sales cycle like adherence to your best practice scripts, number of qualifiers asked and answered on the first call, commitments and action steps at the end of calls, etc.

During this process of re-engineering your sales platform, there are three key areas that play an important role in ultimately changing and getting the buy in of your sales team.

The 3 Keys to a Successful Culture Change
As we noted earlier, getting your existing sales team to buy in to your new sales platform is not only crucial to its success, but it’s also one of the biggest challenges to changing your sales operations. There are three keys to ensuring your team buys in to the change, but careful and thoughtful implementation of these strategies is what is needed to give you the best chance of achieving not only buy in but in sustaining the momentum and growth of early successes.

Key One: Have a Clear Strategy for rolling out your initiative.
Although it seems straight forward to suggest having a planned rollout strategy for such a big undertaking as re-engineering and implementing a new sales platform, you might be surprised by the lack of planning and cohesion with which many new programs are developed and introduced. This lack of a clear strategy not only sabotages many good intentioned and needed changes, but often introduces more problems than it attempts to solve. The first key then to giving your new sales initiative a fighting chance is to carefully plan out each step in its development and implementation.

The best place to start is in the beginning and, more specifically, to find ways of enlisting the support, feedback and ideas of the very sales people who will be asked to implement it. There is a very fine line to walk here and the key is to solicit input from your sales reps in terms of having them identify the sales situations they need help in most, but not being overwhelmed by nor allowing them to take over the project from the beginning. I’ll clarify this during the second key.

The point is that for sales reps to buy in to any change, they need to feel a part of its design, and, more importantly, see how they can benefit from it. Again, you’d be surprised by how many companies develop a sweeping new sales platform in the safety and comfort of the senior management think tank and then hand it down and mandate it to the reps. It’s no wonder reps think their best strategy is to hide out and outlast the new program. And they are right – without their buy in it will go away.

The next stage to consider is the development of the sales playbook. While scripting out best practices and word for word rebuttals, introductions, closes, etc., will undoubtedly be the fundamental key to the success of your new sales initiative, once again the careful timing of its introduction and the enlistment of your rep’s input and revisions is crucial to its acceptance and implementation. The key here is to resist the temptation of passing the new scripts out before they have been thoroughly tested.

As you develop your sales playbook, you will undoubtedly be caught up in the belief that these improved scripts and sales procedures can have an immediate positive effect on sales right now! And they can. But handing out these scripts too early has undermined many a positive change and has negatively affected the buy in and adoption by the sales team. The key is to have your managers or top reps test, refine, and retest the scripts until they are ready to be used (read tested and refined even further) by the rest of the reps.

The last key to successful rollout of your new sales platform is to be clear what your goals and benchmarks are during the initial rollout – usually the first 90 to 120 days. The mistake many companies make is in expecting total buy in and adoption by the reps of the sales playbook. Instead it is more realistic and useful to measure and reward adherence to the gradual usage and adoption of parts of the playbook starting with the first call. Bringing reps along slowly, reinforcing each success as they come and rewarding initial adherence is the better way to go.

Key Two: Get Key Buy In and Champions Involved Early.
By developing the clear rollout strategy for each stage of the new sales platform, we are able to identify target areas that help us enlist our champions early on. The first group involved is obviously the front line managers and the formula we use to get their buy in is the same as the one we use for the reps – enlisting their feedback and input on the key areas of change we’ve already identified and are committed to changing (see the three stages mentioned earlier).

The key is that we involve our managers early and solicit their input throughout the entire process. This is especially true with the beginning stage of defining our sales process and they can be particularly helpful here if they were at some point a top producer in your company and are familiar with the best practices of your sales cycle. In addition, involving them in the development and practical use of your scripts is crucial for their continued investment in this process.

Enlisting your top producers and turning them into champions is also key as you might imagine. The easiest way to do this is to carefully listen to and incorporate their best practices into both the DSP development and the sales playbook. Your top producers are intimately familiar with the best practices of closing your particular sale and enlisting their participation and capturing the practices they intuitively use goes a long way in getting buy in from the rest of the team. It will also ensure that your top reps don’t turn on the process and undermine its implementation down the road.

In the same way, enlisting the rest of the sales team’s input is important as well. Sales reps all want to know one thing – “What’s in it for me?” If you can help them resolve the problem areas they run into – the objections they have trouble overcoming, the blow offs they can’t get past, etc. – you will more easily win them over. The way to do this is to have them submit the objections and stalls that regularly frustrate them and provide them with effective rebuttals in your sales playbook.

Other champions include support staff and others who will be involved in compiling and updating the new metrics and design of the sales dashboards and reports. By identifying these key people in advance and having target areas for their involvement, you can ensure the steady development and implementation of your new sales platform.

Key Three: During Implementation Focus on Progressive Success.
Nothing will alienate your sales team more than expecting total adoption and adherence to your new sales playbook and platform during the early stages of its introduction. While this seems obvious, management and ownership – after investing the time, energy and money – are often in a hurry to get the team to buy in. Don’t worry, they will, but it takes time and a plan.

The first key is to coach, measure and reward the adoption of each part of the new sales process one step at a time. Have your managers focus on the opening of your first call for the first week, and then move on to building rapport, qualifying and getting commitment. After your team is scoring high – using a script grading adherence form – on the first call, turn your attention to the closing call and build momentum, and buy in, one step at a time.

Next, focus on the reps that are bought in the most and emphasize their successes in team meetings. Record them using the scripts successfully; highlight their script grading adherence percentages, and reward them for their closed sales. Sales reps carefully watch what the others do and once they learn from their peers that the new playbook and techniques work, they will follow suit. Ultimately, the best way to get your more senior or stubborn reps onboard is give attention to and reward those other, often newer, reps who are doing it your new way and succeeding. Sooner rather than later, the other reps will want the same results and attention.

Measuring adherence to your new playbook, and reinforcing progressive success is what will get sustained and eventual buy in from your entire sales team.

Conclusion
Often times, the successful implementation of a new sales platform and the transformation of a sales culture depend on the senior management’s ability to carefully rollout new initiatives in alignment with a clear strategy and a controlled set of key drivers. Having and following a defined process allows a company to sometimes outwait and outwit the sales team’s natural resistance to change and provides the environment where the new platform truly can transform the culture.

How to Manage Your Sales Manager

by mike

If you’re a business owner, then I know you place a lot of responsibility on your inside sales manager. In many companies, managers are not only responsible for finding, hiring and developing successful reps, but they are also responsible for training these new reps and for the continued training of existing sales reps as well. Sales managers are also directly responsible for the achievement of reaching quota each month, quarter and YTD. In addition, managers are often responsible for reporting on daily, weekly and monthly progress, with motivating the sales team and with proper management of lead resources, sales pipelines, and many other reporting processes. When you add up all the duties and responsibilities of your sales manager, it can seem overwhelming and begs the question of you as the owner – how do you manage your manager?

The answer to that question for most owners is they manage their manager and the sales department through a series of sales metrics sometimes called sales dashboards (there are many other names for this, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about). These dashboards have a variety of metrics and statistics on them including lead conversion percentages, closing percentages per rep and for the team, pipeline numbers and percentages, time on the phone, number of calls, etc. These metrics are important for predicting revenue and directing activity and lead distribution and for measuring the trend of sales for the month and quarter, but they don’t do what you have hired your manager to do – drive sales.

All the metrics listed above have one fatal flaw when it comes to driving sales – they are snap shot of what has happened in the past. They are a rearview mirror look at what your team has done up to this point, and as such, they are ineffective for driving or improving current sales. This is a hard point for many business owners to accept, because experience tells them that if the team just works harder, makes more calls and contacts, then deals and revenues increase. The problem with this is that increased activity (say 10% more calls) doesn’t result in 10% more business. Again, these metrics, while important, aren’t what drive sales.

And that brings us to the point of this article. What drives sales isn’t the activity around the sales (the metrics listed above), but rather it’s the activity that takes place during the sale that determines results. It’s what your reps are saying during the prospecting call, during the call backs, and how they handle the objections and stalls that occur during the close. It’s what your reps say and how they handle the smokescreens and put offs on the third and fourth calls that determine how much business they write. And when it comes to measuring these crucial activities, most sales managers and business owners don’t have a system or a process to do this, and so they don’t have the means of truly impacting and consistently improving their sales results.

The good news is there are a series of steps and processes you can use to do this, and it’s the way that successful business owners effectively manage their sales managers. To start with, your sales manager must get more involved on the sales floor and more involved in listening in during the prospecting and closing calls. Your manager must be able to step in and affect the sale while it’s in progress. There are a variety of ways for them to do but these exceed the limited scope of this article. I will list a resource you can turn to for more information on this later. The important tool for you as the owner, though, is a script grading adherence form.

If you’re not already using a script grading adherence form, then this should be your first priority to develop. In a nutshell, a script grading adherence form breaks down each part of your sales approach or script, and assigns a numerical grade to each section. For example, your reps are graded on how effectively they get past the gatekeeper, greet and build rapport with the decision maker, handle initial objections, qualify prospects, create commitments at the end of calls, etc. The total grade will be 100, and it’s your manager’s job to grade live calls or recorded calls to see how well each rep is adhering to your best practices and solid inside selling skills and techniques. This is the only metric that truly measures what matters most: how skilled your reps are at navigating their way through your sale.

Think about your Top 20% closers for a moment. Wouldn’t you agree that they almost intuitively know how to qualify and close prospects more effectively? Aren’t their leads almost always more qualified, their close rates higher and their closing cycles shorter? Don’t they seem to handle brush offs and objections more effectively? Aren’t they more confident and empowered? Now compare them to the rest of your team. Isn’t it true that the other 80% struggle in all of the areas above? Again, the metrics that make up most company’s dashboards don’t affect your rep’s ability to get better in these crucial areas. They simply measure past results. Only measuring and grading what your reps do during the sale has the ability to drive sales.

The best way for you as a business owner to manage your sales manager is to make sure they monitor, grade and coach their reps through the sales cycle and offer specific, effective sales skills and techniques for their reps to improve. And the best way for you to manage this is to add a section to your dashboard called “script grading adherence percentages.” Remember, until you know how your sales team is performing during the sale, you won’t be able to effectively change the other metrics that measure their performance after the sale.

If you’d like more information on exactly how to do this, and would like a complete guide to teach your managers how to manage and coach your reps more effectively through the sale, then visit this link and scroll down to option number two: https://mrinsidesales.com/ManagementTraining/details.htm

If you invest the time and energy in this, then you’ll like how the metrics on your dashboard look soon!

Why Most Inside Sales Reps Fail – and What to Do About It

by mike

If you’re in charge of hiring, training and developing inside sales reps, then what you’re about to read may shock you a little bit, but it will also resonate with you and explain why many of the reps you hire ultimately fail.

In their book, “How to Hire and Develop Your Next Top Performer” by Herb Greenberg, Harold Weinstein and Patrick Sweeney, they compared results from hundreds of thousands of assessments that were conducted over several decades with actual sales performance measurements and concluded:

#1) 55 percent of the people earning their living in sales should be doing something else, and

#2) Another 20 to 25 percent (of salespeople) have what it takes to sell, but they should be selling something else.

Before you dismiss these results as far-fetched, think about your own inside sales team. If you’re like most companies, you probably have the 80/20 rule where 80% of your sales and revenue are made by your top 20% producers. What that means is that the other 80% of your reps struggle to make quota (or rarely do), and I’ll bet that over the course of a year or two, half of these reps have either quit, been fired, or you wish they would move on.

I’ve worked with hundreds of companies that have inside sales teams, and I can attest to the accuracy of the stats above. Every time I begin working with a new company, I assess the skill level, aptitude, desire and ability of each member of the team. What I find is that up to half of the reps employed shouldn’t have been hired to begin with (or shouldn’t still be working at the company), and most important thing we can do is to replace them with better qualified candidates.

If you’re with me so far, then let me make a couple of caveats before you start thinking about replacing half your sales team…

First, in order to give each member of your existing team the full chance to succeed, you have to make sure that you have invested the proper time and energy in identifying and defining your sales process (I call it a DSP – Defined Sales Process). Next you need to design a sales training program – complete with specific scripts – that teach the best practices of your sales process and then properly train your existing team on them. And finally, you need to teach your managers how to coach and train your reps to adhere to those scripts and best practices. Assuming you take the time to do this first (I usually get companies through this process in anywhere from 45 to 90 days), then you are ready to begin recruiting and hiring more qualified candidates.

So, how do you begin to look for and eventually identify the other 45 percent of people who are actually cut out for the career of sales? Here are 3 important guidelines to follow:

1) Slow hiring, fast firing. If I were to ask you what activity college football coaches spend up to 70% of their time, what would you say? Watching game film? Coaching their players? Preparing game plans? The answer is none of those. College coaches spend up to 70% of their time recruiting talent to play on their team. Does that surprise you? If you hire sales reps like most companies do, then it probably did.

Most companies hire sales reps the wrong way. They hire reps quickly, and they hold on to underperforming reps far too long. The first guideline you want to follow is to do just the opposite. The best thing you can do is always be recruiting and have a constant flow of talent to evaluate and hire. Your goal should be to hire slowly – after a structured and careful evaluation process – and then to be ready to let reps go who have not shown the improvement or performance that you’ve identified in advance is necessary (you’ll refer back to your DSP to arrive at this).

The key here is that if you have a steady flow of talent and candidates to choose from (and in this market, there are many people available), then you’ll be much less likely to make quick and ill advised hiring decisions. Plus, you’ll be less likely to hold on to underperformers who are likely to never make it in your selling environment.

2) Be more willing to consider and to hire candidates who either don’t have your particular sales experience, or don’t have any sales experience at all. If we go back to the results earlier in this article – that 55 percent of people in sales should be doing something else, and another 20 to 25 percent should be selling something else – then it means that the common practice of hiring experienced sales candidates will produce an unsatisfactory result as much as 80 percent of the time!

A much more effective way of hiring successful sales reps is to start with raw and motivated candidates and then train them properly right from the beginning. Teaching new candidates the right skills and techniques is a lot easier than first getting an experienced sales rep to unlearn all their bad habits first. Of course, you must have a solid sales training program that teaches effective sales skills and the best practices of your particular sale (these best practices will also come after you’ve defined your sales process – DSP).

You can still interview and even hire experience sales reps, but just bare this in mind: The biggest predictor of future success in sales is what the rep has done in the past. What a rep is used to producing and earning defines their comfort zone and in fact defines every aspect of their financial life. In life – and in sales especially – we all tend to live up to or down to what we are used to. If you want to know what an experienced sales rep might produce at your company, then just find out how much they earned at their previous company. Divide this number by their commission, and you’ll have a very accurate idea of what you can expect they’ll produce.

Then ask yourself if that’s enough. If it isn’t, then take a chance on someone new to the profession of sales and instill in them a new comfort zone based on success at your company.

3) Regardless of whether you hire an experience sales rep or someone new to the profession, what you absolutely must do is make sure your managers are measuring the right indicators of sales success and progress. You would be surprised by how many companies measure and rely on metrics that don’t drive sales. I’m talking about things like number of calls, time on the phone, etc. Now don’t get me wrong – these are important metrics and they definitely play a role in the success or failure of your inside sales team. But they don’t drive sales. Let me explain the difference.

While it’s obviously important that your reps are making the most amount of calls and contacts with decision makers as possible, this alone will not drive sales. You see, if your reps are not qualifying prospects properly, or if they are not handling objections or brush offs well enough to win sales, then if they simply make more calls, this won’t result in a lot more sales. In fact, it will just waste more of their time, more of your resources and result in more frustration in your sales department.

The only thing that drives more sales is effective conversations that move the sale forward with qualified prospects. Each contact with a qualified prospect must have benchmarks that are achieved and agreements must be made at every point of the sales cycle for that prospect to ultimately result in a sale. Coaching and measuring the successful navigation of these benchmarks is what drives sales. This is the crucial difference begin measuring quantity (make more calls) versus qualify (measuring what happens during those calls).

Once you understand and can apply that difference in your sales environment, and once you can teach this to your reps, then and only then will you begin building a more successful sales team and company. Until then, you are likely to keep repeating the kind of performance you’ve had over the last few years – regardless of how many new reps you hire.

To recap these successful hiring guidelines, start with the philosophy of slow hiring and fast firing. Always be on the lookout for new candidates, and turn each employee into a mini recruiting machine. Offer hiring bonuses, referral bonuses, and other incentives to get your whole company looking for qualified and talented candidates that you can add to your sales team.

Next, expand your search of talent. Don’t just run ads in the sales section of the paper or online source, but expand to college recruiting boards, acting blogs (actors often make great inside sales reps!) and other websites. Be open to bring on someone fresh to the profession of sales and teach them the right skills from the beginning.

And finally, make sure you measure (and reward) the actions that drive sales. Remember, it’s how your sales reps handle the brush offs and smokescreens and stalls that determine how successful (and empowered) they are more than how much time they spend on the phone. It’s always “who” is in the pipeline that is more important than “how many.”

Follow these guidelines and you’ll be on your way to building a highly successful inside sales team.

The Road to Success is Simplicity

by mike

I want to share a simple concept with you that can help you grow your business, close more sales, make more money and be more successful in just about everything you do. The good news with what I’m about to share is that it isn’t complicated or hard, in fact, it’s just the opposite – it’s simplicity itself.

The following excerpt comes from an article in “The Economist” by the author Schumpeter. I think it speaks for itself:

The Economist

“Keep things simple, said Schumpeter. That is the key to a successful business, according to Bain & Co. consultants Chris Zook and James Allen. In their new book, Repeatability, they lay out how the world’s most successful companies “make a cult of simplicity” and relentlessly apply stripped-down business models to new opportunities. You can see this winning formula of “simplify and repeat” in Ikea’s flat-packed furniture, McDonald’s hamburgers, and Berkshire Hathaway’s buy, improve, and hold approach to investing.

“Lego learned the lesson the hard way. In the mid-1990s, the Danish toy company expanded feverishly into theme parks, television, and clothing lines; that led to years of dismal results. Only when it went back “to its roots”—those little plastic bricks—did big profits return. Businesses have a natural tendency “to grow more complex as they mature,” and that complexity can be a “silent killer.” For all the worries companies have about being “crushed by the next big thing,” the best way to survive dramatic change is to “keep hammering away at the simplicity mantra.”

The great thing about this article is that it reminds us all to focus on the fundamentals of what makes us successful, and I can tell you from my own experience that is right on the money. Here are a couple of examples:

1) When I was a struggling sales rep prospecting and closing business, I was always on the look-out for the latest technique (you know, the one that happened to work on the last close) or the best leads (there had to be a better lead source than the one that I was calling), or I was looking for some other easier way of finding deals.

I spent a lot of time changing my approach, searching leads, etc, but in the end what I learned was that I was the most successful when I just called a lot of leads and used the proven scripts I had developed months before. In fact, I closed a lot more deals when I concentrated on following the proven scripts and techniques that always worked. When I concentrated on the simple fundamentals of properly qualifying leads and following up with proven buyers, my business took off.

What I ultimately learned was that there was no easier, softer way to write business – I simply had to do the things that were proven to work. And once I accepted and concentrated on being the best qualifier and closer in the office, and once I combined that with making more calls than anyone else in office, that’s when I became the top closer out of five branch offices.

It was as simple as that.

2) Fast forward to my current business as a sales consultant. I have spent a lot of time and money chasing the next (complicated) best thing. In my line of work there is a new distraction (supposed to be an easier way of getting clients) being promoted seemingly every day. There are new leads generation programs, new social media groups to join, new ways of delivering my content – heck, the list really is endless!

Now I’ve chased a lot of these new (complicated) programs and without fail, they all cost me a lot of time, energy and money. Did they bring me a lot of new business? No. What I learned is that when I just focus on my core competency of teaching business owners how to grow highly successful inside sales teams, my business took off. It’s as simple as that.

Could I improve my CRM system? Sure. Could I start yet another group on LinkedIn? Sure. Could I start a membership site for residual income? Sure. Would all those complicated and expensive measures earn me more money than simply concentrating on what I do best? No.

My simple business truth – just like the little Lego’s – is that I make the most amount of money and help the most amount of people when I focus on my fundamental core skills – helping business owners grow their inside sales teams. And that’s what I’ve focused on over the past two years. And, coincidentally, I’ve had the best two years of my business!

Now it’s time for you to think about your core competencies. What do you and your company do best? If you’re a sales rep, when was the last time you concentrated on the fundamentals of selling? If you’re a business owner, when was the last time you focused on how you help people the most? By going back to basics and perfecting those fundamentals, you will likely grow market share and be more successful.

It really is as simple as that.

What the NFL Can Teach You about Your Inside Sales Team

by mike

Every so often, a person comes along who changes their field of study in a major way. Louis Pasteur changed the world of medicine with his introduction of the germ theory. Thomas Edison changed our world through the use of electricity. Albert Einstein changed modern physics. Steve Jobs changed the world of computing. And Paul Brown changed NFL football and turned it into the game it is today.

Before Paul Brown, the game of football resembled more of a rugby match with a tangle of big men grappling around a line of scrimmage. As the game evolved, especially with the introduction of the forward pass, the game began to get not only more interesting, but also bewilderingly complex as well. It would take a gifted visionary, with extraordinary drive and talent, to develop and exploit the possibilities of this evolving and exciting sport.

If some of you are thinking, “But what does this have to do with inside sales, Mike?” then I’ll tell you. I’ve been using the same techniques to build Multi-Million Dollar Inside Sales Teams as Paul Brown used to build championship football teams, and they work. What I’m going to do now is use some quotes from the book, “The Best Game Ever” by Mark Bowden. Mark explains some of Paul’s techniques, and, after each, I’ll show you how they apply to building your inside team as well.

First of all, Paul’s techniques were highly successful. His high school record of coaching was 80-8-2, with 7 of those losses coming in the early years. After serving in WWII, he was hired to coach Ohio State and won a national title. He then coached the Cleveland Browns of the AAFC (American Athletic Football Conference) a new pro league. The league was in existence for four years and Browns won the championship all four times!

The Cleveland Browns were so good, they out drew the Cleveland Rams of the NFL, who fled to Los Angeles. The Browns then joined the NFL, and everyone said they were from a minor league but then the Browns won the NFL title in The First Year!! They then played in the Championship Game (Super Bowl) the next 5 straight years, winning two more times.

So here’s how Paul Brown did it according to “The Best Game Ever”:

“Brown did it not just with masterful strategy, but with a ruthlessly efficient system of assessing and acquiring talent, and a level of organization and discipline entirely new to the game. He stunned his players by regimenting every aspect of their lives. They were given playbooks with descriptions and diagrams of every play, and after studying them in classrooms, were forced to spend hours at night copying them out by hand in their own notebooks, which were collected and graded.

“Some players learned by hearing it,” explained Charley Winner, who worked as a scout for Cleveland during those years and later helped implement Brown’s system in Baltimore. “Other players learn by watching you draw it up on a blackboard. Other players learn by seeing it, so we show them the film. Others learn by walking through it on the practice field. Others learn by drawing it out themselves by hand. We covered all the learning methods, so when we were through, by God, they knew it.”

And here’s how we translate this system into building an inside sales team: We start by identifying and scripting out a “Defined Sales Process” for your company. This includes in depth descriptions and diagrams of every selling situation your reps encounter in your sale.

Then we script out the best practice responses to these selling situations so your reps are completely prepared to succeed in them every time they are on the phone with a prospect or client. Next, we train your reps on these best practices by classroom training, recording calls, role playing and even recording the scripts on an MP3 Player and providing them to your reps to listen to over and over so we cover all the learning methods. And, by God, they will all know what to do.

Next comes the coaching, developing and evaluation of your talent. Here is what Weeb Ewbank brought over to the Baltimore Colts. Who’s Weeb? Weeb was one of Brown’s assistants who was hired away by the Baltimore Colts. Weed was a faithful disciple of the Paul Brown / Cleveland system, which he had helped run for five years. Oh, and some of you might know him as the head coach of the New York Jets – yes, the Namath, Super Bowl Champion Jets.

More from, “The Best Game Ever”:

“Weeb arrived in Baltimore with a bang. He boldly promised an NFL championship in just five seasons. Putting the Cleveland grading system in place, he began assessing players on a scale numbered zero through five. Zero meant a missed assignment. If you knew what to do and didn’t do it, that was a one. If you got a lot of ones, that meant you knew what to do, you just weren’t good enough to do it.

If you got a two, it meant you knew what to do and you did an average job. Three meant you knew what to do and did it well. Once in a while a player would do something truly remarkable and earn a four. Fives were exceedingly rare. Players would earn a five maybe once or twice in a season. Those who scored zeroes and ones were soon pursuing other lines of work, and in time Weeb weeded out players who scored a lot of twos.”

Don’t you just love that grading system?? The way we apply this to building your inside sales team is that we build a “Script Grading Adherence Form,” that your managers use to measure and grade how well your reps are doing what it takes to be successful. This is one of the most important parts of the entire process, and it’s often completely lacking with most companies. By being able to access talent and find out who has what it takes – and who should be pursuing different lines of work – you are able to very quickly build a highly successful inside sales team.

How successful? Many of the teams I work with see improvements of over 34% in just 90 days… What would that kind improvement mean to you and your company in just the next ninety days?

If you’d like to know more about how you can get these kinds of result, then Click Here to read more about my inside sales management training program. If you’d like to read more about “The Best Game Ever,” then visit amazon.com and get the book. It’s a great read, and I’m sure you’ll find a lot more similarities to your company and your sales team. Enjoy!

I Hope You Don't Open Your Calls This Way

by mike

Because you only have a few precious seconds to make a connection and establish interest, you’d better have a good opening prepared in advance. Besides being very busy, your prospects probably get a lot of sales calls every week, and many of them from your direct competition. So why would they want to talk to you? What can you do to separate yourself from all the other calls they get?

The answer is that you have to establish a real connection with your prospect and stop sounding like all the other sales reps who call them. Here is what your competition usually sounds like (I hope you’re not doing this!):

“Oh hi Mr. __________, this is _______ _______ with the MLT Group. __________, we are an industry supply manufacturer and we help companies streamline their production process. We work with many companies in your field and save them between 10 to 15% on the cost of their storage and delivery process. What I’d like to do is ask you some questions to see how our process may save you that kind of money as well. Where are you currently getting your…”

Do you see how this opening makes no connection with the prospect? Do you see how it just starts pitching at the prospect and doesn’t acknowledge that the prospect might be busy, or not interested? Do you see how there is no rapport built here and how it’s a one sided conversation?

How do you feel when someone barges in on your day and starts in with a pitch like this? You’re probably thinking what most prospects are thinking: “How do I get this sales rep off the phone?!”

Now let’s look at the right way to open your call. Your goal in the first few seconds is to make a connection and get them to interact. You have to acknowledge that they may be busy or that you respect their time and you need to establish some rapport and separate yourself from all the other sales reps calling them.

Try this:

“Hi ________ this is _______ _______ with (your company), how’s your Tuesday going? Great. Listen, _______, I know you probably get a ton of calls so I’ll make this brief.

Let me ask you, if I could show you a better way of tracking and shipping (or) and save you money doing it, would it be worth spending five minutes with me next week to show you how?”

Or,

“IfWhat is the one thing you could change that would have a dramatic impact on your productivity and that would save your company money?”

Or,

“If you had a magic wand and could change one thing about how you currently do (their business), what would it be?”

Can you see how this quick questioning approach is more effective than what you may currently be using now? Eighty percent of your competition still barge in on their prospects and open their calls up with a long explanation about what they do and what they offer, and pitch their products and services without checking in with their prospects or establishing any kind of connection. No wonder most people brush them off the phone!

You can separate yourself from this group instantly, starting today, by using the opening technique above. Once again, adapt it to fit your product or service, and then practice it until it’s natural and easy for you to use. As you do, you’ll begin to notice yourself struggling less, making more connections with interested and qualified buyers, and you’ll have more confidence and feel better about yourself. Just like the top 20% do!

The Real Secret to Qualifying Leads

by mike

OK, now I want you to pay very careful attention….

I’m going to give you, right now, the Real Secret to what it takes to really qualify a lead. Before I do, though, let me back up just a minute.

Here’s how all this came about. Right now I’m involved with a company whereby I’m listening to and critiquing cold calls. These are qualifying calls. We’ve written the scripts for these reps, put in all the qualifying questions, and now I’m listening and seeing how good a job they are doing. Here’s what I’m finding (and by the way, this is the same thing that I find with ALL of my other clients as well – i.e., that means I’d find it with you, too!).

#1: The first thing these reps are doing is defaulting back to how they’ve been doing it for the last several months (or years). In other words, they haven’t yet begun using the new scripts and new proven techniques word for word yet. And that’s OK. It’s a process.

The good news is that once they do, they will immediately begin qualifying better, understanding true buying motives, and they’ll begin understanding who isn’t likely to be a buyer. That will save them A LOT of time.

#2: But here’s the real secret: After they begin getting comfortable with the scripts and begin asking the key qualifying questions, what will come next are the REAL SECRETS to qualifying the leads. And here’s what it is:

While I’m listening to these calls, what I’m dying for the reps to ask are the things that I would be asking that would tell me if I’m dealing with a prospect who might actually buy in the future, or if I’m dealing with someone who is likely not to buy on the follow up calls. And here are the things they (and YOU) should be asking of all of your prospects (Not in any particular order):

“How often do you check (prices, rates, suppliers, services, etc.) with other companies like mine?”

“Have you found that you can get better (service, pricing, rates, etc.) from another company?”

If so: “Did you go with that other company (or – “Did you give them a try?”)?”

And if not: “Oh, why was that?”

“What would you need to see from our (company, information, service, etc.) that would motivate you to actually try someone different?”

“What part of the decision process are you involved in?”

“What happens next after I give you a (competitive quote, price, service analysis, etc.)?”
“If you like what you see, what would be our next step?”

And then my favorite – a trail close! You absolutely MUST say this at the end of ALL Qualified calls!

“_________, let me ask you, if you like what (we can offer you, pricing, service, availability, whatever is appropriate for your product or service), can you see anything that might stand in the way of us doing business together?” (Note: You can use many different trial closes here – just pick one that matches your product or service the best).

These are the Real Secrets to qualifying a lead. Yes you need to ask the other important qualifying questions that I list in my blog, books and CDs but after you do, you need to find out if you’re really dealing with a buyer, and asking these types of Real Questions is the way to do just that.

Compare these questions (and the kinds of answers you’ll get from them) with the kinds of questions you or your team is currently asking. If you’re far off from them (in other words, you don’t ask them at all), then you need to incorporate them TODAY. Not tomorrow or next week, but TODAY.

I guarantee that when you do, and when you begin getting the Real Answers to these Real Qualifying Questions, and your sales career will begin to dramatically change (and so will your company). This is how you move from the bottom 80% into the Top 20%.

But like everything I give you, don’t take my word for it. Try it and see for yourself. If it works, all you have to gain is hundreds to thousands of extra dollars a month. How good will that feel?

How to Identify the Decision Maker – Fast!

by mike

If you have to make cold calls and you don’t know the decision maker’s name – you’re going to love this proven technique (and you can still use it even if you do!).

First of all, you have to use this exactly as you read it here – Do Not deviate from the order of works – and make sure to pause where I tell you to. Ok, here you go:

Again, use this Word for Word. When the gatekeeper answers, you say:

“Hi, this is (your name) with (your company name) and I need a little bit of help.”

Now make sure and pause here! Pause and let the gatekeeper respond. After she says, “I’ll see what I can do…” or however they respond, you simply say:

“Great. I need to speak to the person who handles your (your kind of contact person), who would that be, please?”

That’s it! This works like magic if you follow these rules:

1) Say all this with a smile in your voice.
2) You pause long enough for the gatekeeper to respond – completely!
3) You use the “Please” at the end – again, with a smile in your voice :–)
4) Use this word for word. The more you vary the wording, the less effective this will be.

Again, if you need to find the name of your contact or decision maker, you’ll love using this technique. Try it this week and see for yourself how much easier your job becomes!

3 Secrets to Setting Qualified Appointments

by mike

If you have to set appointments over the phone then you know that delicate balance between building rapport, creating interest, qualifying and asking for and getting an appointment. It can be difficult knowing exactly when and how to ask for the appointment without sounding like you are closing them, and, of course, there is always the awkwardness of handling the no’s if you’re turned down.

 The good news is that if you follow these 3 proven secrets of top producers, then you’ll not only begin setting more appointments, but you’ll set more qualified ones as well.  Here they are: 

Secret #1: Always use a script.  I know, this may sound basic enough, but you’ll be amazed by how many professional sales people still insist on winging it through their initial call.  Your script must help you deal with things like: 

  • How to deal with and get past the Gatekeeper
  • How to handle your prospect’s initial objections
  • How to establish quick, relevant rapport
  • How to qualify to see if your prospect is even the right candidate 

This article is too short to script all these things out for you but don’t worry I’m not going to leave you in the dark.  I’ve covered all these topics before in previous articles, and I’ve even written word for word scripts for you to use.  You can find them all on my website by searching the Inside Sales Training Blog. 

Bottom line: Prepare and use an effective script! 

Secret #2: Know when to ask for the appointment.  Many sales reps just don’t know when the best time to ask for the appointment is.  Because of this they either ask too soon and then begin fielding objections, or they pitch for too long and the prospect has then heard enough to say no.  Either way, obviously, you lose. 

Here’s the rule: After you’ve made a connection with your prospect (built rapport), gained the right to ask a few questions to see if there might be a fit between what their needs are and what you’re offering (how you can help), and after you verify a few crucial qualifiers – like if they are the decision makers, what their interest level and time frame is, and what their budget is – then it’s time to suggest a possible meeting to explore if your solution might benefit them. 

The key here is to ask enough questions to identify what their buying motives are (their needs) and then to give them just enough information to suggest a fit.  Then it’s time to suggest an appointment.  

Secret #3: Know how to ask for the appointment.

Please, whatever you do don’t use the age old sales technique of the “either or” close.  You know, the “Well I can either stop by tomorrow at noon or would the next day at 4pm be better for you?”  As soon as you utter those words, your credibility goes down.  Everybody recognizes that as a sales pressure line and they react accordingly. 

Here’s the better way to do it: 

“_________, from what I’m hearing from you it sounds like it makes sense for us to explore this a little further.  Here’s what I’d be willing to do: Let’s make an appointment to briefly get together so we can get to know one another and I can learn a little more about your situation.  If we find that there is a fit, and you think I can help you, then I’ll give you some information that you can go over, and then I’ll put together some options for you.

And if we don’t see a fit at this time, at least you’ll have another resource you can use at a later date – is that fair?” 

And then you set the appointment.  The strength of this close is that it’s a none-pressure situation that gives your prospect a way out if they’re not interested.  Plus, it lets them know you’re not coming over to try to close them.  This script lets them know this visit is all about them, which is what it should be.  

I guarantee that if you begin using the three secrets above for setting appointments, your appointment rate will not only go up, but you and your prospect will feel better during the whole process.  And how great will that be? 

I urge you to take some time to search my blog for great openings and qualifying questions, and to then incorporate the script above into a comprehensive opening script for yourself.  You will be so much more successful if you do.  And don’t forget that if you need other scripts, you will benefit greatly from my new book of over 220 other proven scripts by getting a copy of “The Ultimate Book of Phone Scripts.” You can find a copy on my website or on Amazon. 

I hope this helps and, if it does, please pass this article on to others can benefit from it!

The Most Important Word In Sales

by mike

I was talking to a real estate agent the other day about the importance of disqualifying leads, and he told me an interesting story about their office’s top producer. He was talking to her one day and asking her what she did that made her so successful. She said her secret could be summed up with one word. When he asked what it was she said:

NEXT.

The moment I heard him tell me that I was in total agreement. I told him that was what I was trying to teach him with my disqualifying method. The majority of people you speak with, I told him, are never going to be a deal. The problem 80% of sales reps make is they spend time with them anyway, sending information, making multiple appointments, and begging and chasing the deal.

The Top 20%? Their attitude is — NEXT. And that’s when he said something interesting. He said he was afraid to let go because he didn’t want to chance losing a sale.

“If you don’t know after qualifying and listening to your prospect what it’s going to take to get the sale, and who isn’t a real buyer, then you’ve got problems — big problems.” I told him.

“I guess I kind of know but you can never be sure,” he said.

I’m here to tell you that it’s that attitude that separates the bottom 80% of sales reps from the Top 20%! The Top 20% know when to say, and aren’t afraid of saying, NEXT.