Save The Date...May 1, 2019, Center Club Costa Mesa California!
Showing posts with label New Home Sales Training. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Home Sales Training. Show all posts
The ABCs Of Sales Leadership...Always Be Coaching
Sales leadership requires a unique set of skills! In fact, the ABCs of Sales Leadership, Always, Be, Coaching, requires sales leaders to understand the keys to sales success that
top salespeople posses and average salespeople need to learn. Then, they can coach, teach and manage them daily.
The key for any sales coach is how they instill, inspire and develop their salespeople's Emotional Sales Intelligence (ESI). ESI is the combination of a salesperson's mindsets, beliefs and intentions. ESI reveals a salesperson's self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. It's the driver of a salesperson's performance. It is the key to their continued development and actions. It's what separates mediocre salespeople from top performers.
The key for any sales coach is how they instill, inspire and develop their salespeople's Emotional Sales Intelligence (ESI). ESI is the combination of a salesperson's mindsets, beliefs and intentions. ESI reveals a salesperson's self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. It's the driver of a salesperson's performance. It is the key to their continued development and actions. It's what separates mediocre salespeople from top performers.
If you want each year to be your best year yet, Then get ready to think, act and be different? It's time to be odd (Optimistically, Determined to be Different), or accept the alternative, being average!
So let's look at the 7 most important things a Sales Leader needs to understand so they can spend their time coaching, teaching and managing them to instill a winning sales culture and produce extraordinary results.
People cannot behave outside their mindsets and intentions. Some they're aware of, others are deeply rooted in their psyche, subconscious or human nature but they must be aligned or overcome to become their best.
As you coach, teach and manage your salespeople always keep in mind, selling is the most difficult performing art in the world. Salespeople, like all performing artist, athletes or musicians, need a leader and leadership is personal, it's not professional! It requires a strong mind and a positive attitude to overcome the obstacles and adversity that comes with connecting, communicating and serving people everyday. In fact, I'd go so far as to say sales makes a great career but a lousy job. So, make sure your salespeople are all in, fully engaged and committed to a career in sales, and not just working at a job. Then, they'll be the difference in their buyer's ownership experience, make customers and enjoy the ups and downs of a sales career.
By Mike Moore
The most important thing you can do is become self-aware of your mindsets, beliefs and intentions and learn to control them to create the results you desire!
2. Human nature and what people seek...
Are you good enough? Your answer sets you up to grow or shuts you down to be less than your best. You see, it's not that you need to be better, you're probably good enough to be comfortable or you'd be working hard to improve, just like you did until you reached your comfort level.
Instill the desire in your salespeople to learn, grow and improve, instead of seeking comfort. Help them create a habits of doing the difficult uncomfortable things first to become their best.
3. The power of intentions...
What are your salespeople's intentions when they go to work, and every time they meet with a prospective buyer?
The intention to make a sale must be shifted to helping, serving and doing what's best for the buyer. This is the secret sauce of top salespeople, that allows them to make customers and produces the best sales results.
4. Remembering the positive, overcoming the negative...
When salespeople think of buyer's, which one's do they remember? The compliant easy going buyers or the difficult, challenging, non-compliant buyers? Which ones' do they talk about the most and use as their excuses to keep from doing what extraordinary salespeople do? Since we're all wired to remember the negative the non-compliant buyers manage most salespeople's attitudes about buyers by default.
Top salespeople overcome their nature to remember the negative and stay focused on the positives. You must help them manage their attitude towards buyers and not let the difficult buyer manage their attitudes.
5. Respect and trust the buyers ability to make good decisions...
Only the top 4% of salespeople said they respected and trusted the buyers ability to make good decisions. Most salespeople don't respect the buyer and struggle to earn the buyers respect in return.
Hold your salespeople accountable to trust and respect the buyer's ability to make good decisions and watch their sales soar! Help them switch their mindset to respect and trust people's ability to make good decisions. Keep them focused on explaining the consequences of the buyers decisions, both good and bad, rather than just sharing information with the buyer.
6. Focus on the buyers ownership experience, not the buying experience...
Most salespeople are focused on the buying experience. Top salespeople focus on the buyer's ownership experience and this mindset transforms the sales conversation and the buyer and salesperson's relationship.
It's your job to shift your salespeople's focus from the short term reward of transactions, to the long term benefit of the buyer's ownership experience. Help your salespeople overcome their nature to seek instant gratification and they'll improve, be at their best for the buyer and their sales will soar.
7. Conversations, not presentations...
Top salespeople are present, engaged and have real conversations with buyers. Most salespeople talking heads making sales presentation that buyers don't like, believe or trust.
Make sure your salespeople turn selling into an individual personal experience for each buyer. This will help them reach their peak performance! Teach them that selling isn't executing a sales process, it's being trusted enough that the buyer will invite them to be their guide in their buying process.
As you coach, teach and manage your salespeople always keep in mind, selling is the most difficult performing art in the world. Salespeople, like all performing artist, athletes or musicians, need a leader and leadership is personal, it's not professional! It requires a strong mind and a positive attitude to overcome the obstacles and adversity that comes with connecting, communicating and serving people everyday. In fact, I'd go so far as to say sales makes a great career but a lousy job. So, make sure your salespeople are all in, fully engaged and committed to a career in sales, and not just working at a job. Then, they'll be the difference in their buyer's ownership experience, make customers and enjoy the ups and downs of a sales career. By Mike Moore
Lead By Example
This doesn't always mean you'll be liked or popular with those you are responsible to lead. Most people don't like to prepare, learn or grow. Most people just want to be comfortable, it's part of all our human nature, and when leaders challenge, push and stretch people they usually put up some resistance.
It's a leaders responsibility to teach, motivate and inspire people to overcome their human nature, natural tendencies, and experience the best of themselves. When people don't overcome their human nature they become average , and average has to be unacceptable for a leader.
As a leader, your credibility and influence will come from being a person who does this themselves...Your influence will increase when you display the ability to discipline yourself to prepare, learn and grow...To overcome your human nature.
Leading by example isn't the willingness to do what you ask others to do, it's the willingness to do be you should be, while helping others become who they should be. It's about finding and fulfilling your purpose and helping others find and fulfill theirs.
By Mike Moore
Sales Leaders Coach To Create Peak Performers
This article is for all the salespeople, sales managers and executives who've been trying for years to improve without using the best tools available to achieve their best results. It's time to take advantage of all the tools available even if they make you uncomfortable.
SALESPEOPLE
Selling is a performing art...Like athletes, actors and musicians you need to use live video and audio to review the selling engagement with consumers. This is the best way to view how you're communicating with consumers. It's like athletes watching game video, not video of practice. Oh, and they do that too, so both are valid, but the best results come from watching and hearing real live selling engagements.
Viewing and listening to live selling engagements with consumers allows for self coaching by salespeople so they can improve more quickly. It’s the best way to create and reinforce the proper intentions, attitudes, actions and skills that will enable sales professionals to serve consumers, making customers and increase sales. So why don't you use it...Comfort, cost or fear...All poor reasons to not challenge yourself to be your best.
Salespeople, like athletes think they are doing one thing until they see it for themselves. Rapid behavioral changes takes place when we watch ourselves and bold, significant results are achieved. If a picture is worth a thousand words, live video and audio is worth million...literally!
We can continue to read, talk and listen about how to sell, we can video practice or we can add viewing our live performances and make the changes necessary to improve the profession of sales. When we are viewing and listening to live engagements, the lectures, reading, and studying we do becomes more valuable and magnifies it's impact to create the best results.
Live video and audio is greatly different than mystery shoppers or roll playing, even though both are needed exercises, they are insufficient to produce peak performance. Mystery shopping and roll playing misses the key ingredient in communication and human interaction, the intentions of the people communicating. Mystery shoppers and roll playing find out if salespeople know the right information about their products, services and company. This can be also be accomplished by written or verbal quizzes and tests.
When you view the interaction between people with the real intentions you experience in live selling situations, you'll see, hear and know how you are truly communicating, interacting and responding with them. Then you will know what you need to do to improve. Without the intentions of both people being real in a conversation, negotiation or a selling situation, it's just practice and it's insufficient to become your very best. Mystery shoppers and roll players have no intentions of buying and salespeople aren’t selling.
For many years, I've been teaching that salespeople practice their profession on consumers. Unfortunately, this is an obstacle to rapid self-improvement unless it can be reviewed and used to improve. If you don’t want to improve enough take responsibility, mature as a sales professional and use the best tools available, you are doomed to continue without ever achieving your best results.
I firmly believe we haven’t seen the best of the profession of selling but can if we are willing to add these tools to the lectures, reading and training we've used in the past.
SALES MANAGERS
The idea that we have tools to improve at our disposal and haven’t utilized them, is a shame. That said, let’s not look back but begin now to use live video and audio to coach and improve the relationship between consumers and salespeople.
I know many sales managers who have resisted using these tools and can only wonder what they are afraid of. Nothing we do out of fear will ever be a best practice. In coming years, sales managers will use live video and audio to stay informed and coach their salespeople as a standard business practice.
Live video and audio is not intended to be a punitive tool but does create accountability. It is a coaching and self-improvement tool. Coaches have to be informed and pay attention to be effective. Live video with audio is the best way to pay attention. You can’t coach what you’re unaware of. As an accountability tool, salespeople in all selling environments, will be less likely to give less than their best effort to consumers when they know they are performing live all the time. A salesperson giving consumers their best effort is part of the maturation and growing process of the profession of sales.
EXECUTIVES
It is time to start making customers, not sales, and live video and audio is the best tool to make sure this new intention is implemented.
Too many years of talk and not enough action, has left the consumer believing businesses don’t care about them.
Executives have made too many decisions about how to operate their business and make profits without considering how it would affect their salespeople's communication with consumers and ultimately how this would effect their business, revenue and profits.
Most executives believe that people are the driving force to improve their business and live video, audio and new intentions will also energize salespeople. Live video and audio can implement the intention to make customers, not just sales and result in increased sales, lower costs, increased profits and sustainable growth.
You wouldn’t run a business that depended on athletes peak performance without video for coaching and improvement. Don’t invest and risk your company’s money without using the best tools to insure peak performance from your salespeople.
PEAK PERFORMANCE
Keeping the focus on the self-improvement is the most important element in producing significant results.
Live audio and video coaching should never be punitive or feel as though big brother is watching. Starting with salespeople allows them to quickly learn how valuable seeing and hearing themselves in real situations can be. They even begin to use the information learned to build relationships in their follow-up with consumers.
After the salespeople become comfortable, learn to self coach and experience rapid improvements, then sales management can begin using the audio and video as a teaching and coaching tool. Seeing, hearing and knowing what is happen between their salespeople and consumers is the best information to develop the company's sales strategy and how to inspire, motivate and manage each salesperson.
Executives are the last to view and listen. This allows them to know how their salespeople are doing, see the improvements, build their confidence and understand why sales are increasing. This allows executives to have a better understanding of their customers and how best to market to them as well. Constant improvement and peak performance has many leadership benefits to the company.
Without live audio and video, a commitment by everyone to be their best by using the every tool available, we will continue to manage sales in the dark and suffer the consequences of poor sales communication and interaction with consumers.
It is time to use the best tools and begin to experience the best of the profession of sales!
By Mike Moore
Winners Don't Watch The Scoreboard
To win in business and life, stop watching the scoreboard and start coaching or playing the game to the best of your ability! You'll be able to deal with the final score if you always give your best effort, but you won't give your best effort while watching the scoreboard.
We're living and working in a rapidly shifting world and economy so you can't just wait for a recovery or things to go back to normal. You can't produce new success by going back to good old basics. In fact, anything with 'back' in it is the wrong strategy this time around.
Selfish, short-term intentions have created poor behavior that has led us to a crisis in personal and business relationships alike. These selfish intentions cause people and businesses to look at what's in it for them, work to get more while providing less and damages the relationships that can make us rich both personally and professionally.
These selfish intentions have caused people to look only at today's scoreboard and not at the final score. We've been so busy winning the first quarter we're losing the game. Life and business are both best when built on a sustainable 'people first' culture.
Championship coaches don't spend their time focused on the scoreboard or asking the players what the score is during the game. If they did, they'd lose more often than they'd win. This behavior is what executives and sales managers have been doing for years and it's no wonder businesses are struggling because this behavior sabotages the score. In business, this behavior creates a focus on new sales, new subscribers and today's numbers instead of customers which generates diminishing, unsustainable results. Making customers makes a business healthy, profitable and sustainable.
Poor intentions are sneaky, they slip in unintended and damage the result we want. Take for example when the boss asks, “How are you doing?”, what do they mean? They are most often checking up on sales and a discussion of the company’s sales statistics ensues. Typically, right after this conversation, calls are made down the chain of command to each level until a sales manager calls a salesperson or store manager with the same conversation. This, “How are you doing?”, when we mean, “How are sales?” needs to stop. This is the coach asking the players the score during the game.
We need new conversations that will only occur from new intentions and generate a new sales engagement with consumers. We need a 'people first focus' to build relationships and generate positive results by serving people rather than trying to please them.
Watching the score and waiting for it to get better won't get it done this time. There's no recovery coming, just opportunities to begin again. This time, our best opportunity is to play the game with new thinking and intentions that can drive the attitudes, skills and actions that will produce healthy relationships with consumers and generate success!
It's so easy to slide back into the instant gratification of making new sales rather than customers. It's the comfortable old path that sabotages the possibility for your new success.
It will take 'people first leadership' to create a 'customer first company' and solid sales management to keep salespeople on track to win and generate a healthy new economy.
By Mike Moore
The Transition To A 'New Economy'
The signs are clear that the economy has been and is in transition with the failure of Borders, collapse of Blockbuster, bankruptcy at Kodak, big changes at JC Penny, rumors of Best Buy's demise, the worst year in US Home Sales ever, a threat of a worldwide recession and not enough room to list the failed banks! There are countless other businesses trying to survive until a recovery comes but they are on a course to fail.
There are too many leaders suffering from 'normalcy bias', waiting for a recovery that isn't coming. This is producing strained and stressed sales managers, needy, desperate salespeople and sales trainers teaching the same sales skills with the intention to make a sale. All of them working harder and putting more pressure on consumers to buy that's helped create today's dysfunctional buyer and seller relationship. Add to that, consumers don't trust or believe salespeople, changing demographics, maturing use of technology, the explosion of social networks and it's the perfect storm for a transition to a new era in business. This is no less dramatic than the shift from the agricultural age to the industrial age...New intentions, thinking, attitudes, skills and actions are required to make the transition to a 'people first age' in business!
Success in this 'new economy' will require new business and sales intentions to generate a new engagement, connection and conversation with consumers for a healthy relationship. Nothing else will produce immediate results and sustainable growth better or faster!
It's not back to basics unless you want to just slow your failure... It's forward with new intentions for a successful new 'people first age of business'!
Winning Leaders Manage The Air
Raised by a father who coached for 35 years, the first lesson he taught me was to walk into a locker room and take in or feel the atmosphere and the energy. He was teaching me what winning coaches did to be successful and I've learned how they can be applied by business leaders to create a successful business. He explained that you could "feel" this winning atmosphere if you were paying attention. He also said coaches and leaders manage this atmosphere and it's in the air all the time. He said it was more important than any of the x's and o's of coaching.
Growing up listening to coaches’ share their views, thoughts and leadership styles was a huge advantage later in my business career. Listening to pregame, halftime and postgame speeches taught me how to manage and maintain this atmosphere and I share this as often as I can with other leaders.
I was always amazed to watch a game or practice with my father or other coaches as they constantly paid attention to how things felt. I realized later that the average ones were focused on their process and not their players. This is similar to business, as we too often get lost in our process and forget about the people involved.
Next time you walk into a sales office, store or business, see how it feels. Leaders manage the air. They do this by managing the attitudes, feelings and beliefs of the people in their business, organization or life. This is why a business that wants to make customers must manage its people's attitudes, feelings and beliefs first. Consumers won’t believe your company is different if your people aren’t and your people won't act different if their attitude isn't different. 'People first leaders' manage the air or atmosphere generated by people's attitudes.
'People first leadership', isn’t a fluffy fad or esoteric idea, but the first step in increasing sales and growth in business in the 'new economy'. Its 'people first' focus means a leader has to have strong enough conviction to stick to a game plan or strategy when others around them are growing weary or wanting to overreact to unwanted results.
'People first leaders' develop people in their business who are mentally tough enough to execute the strategy when others would falter or take the path of least resistance.
By managing the attitudes, feelings and beliefs of your people, you are leading from where results are born. From the attitudes that lead to actions, the results will be seen in your increase revenue, profits and growth. You are leading from an advanced position and not waiting to react to unwanted results that were generated from behavior that was caused by attitudes that were ignored.
Leadership at its essence, generates results by getting people to perform at their highest level of competence. When leaders do this they are also growing the level of people’s competence and insuring growth and higher performance in the future.
Use the attitudes, skills and actions of great coaches who have led their teams to championships by instilling a winning attitude, mental toughness and the ability to overcome the excuses their competitors accept to be average. Coaches like John Wooden, Vince Lombardi, Pat Riley, Don Shula, Pat Summit, Phil Jackson, Bill Walsh, Bill Parcells, Bill Belichick and many others, win and have won because they 'manage the air' or attitudes that produce winners. Ultimately, they are 'people first leaders' who challenge others to be better than they would be without their influence. They move people to do the things they don't want to do that produce the results they want.
Business in the 'new economy' requires an attitude to make customers, not just sales. Instill this in the hearts of people so that it permeates the air in your business and it will generate improved results and growth.
Stop, listen and feel the attitudes in your business. Can you sense the 'winning air'? If not, get busy and make it a priority, then manage it daily for the best results.
By Mike Moore
2012...The Great Transition
In real estate, retailing and business, as well as life, people are moving from a desire to be enchanted, to a desire to be enriched. People don't want to be wow'd anymore they are moving to and buying that which they believe will enrich their lives.
The 'new economic model' won't look or act like the old one and the rules that business played by in the past aren't working in 'the transitional economy' nor will they apply to the 'new economy'.
Just 4 years ago the majority of American's surveyed were willing to move outside the US to retire to a tropical location. Now many will do so to live and continue to work. Then there are the Gen X, Y and Millennial's, many of whom want to live in an Urban Village within walking distance to all their services.
These won't all be in traditional Urban Environments. Many of these Urban Villages will be developed in cost effective and desirable locations. Think Las Vegas as a starting point of a modern Urban Village, then remove gaming and replace it with different lifestyles and the services that support them...and it's in the middle of the desert. Urban Villages can be developed anywhere, and will be.
People are transitioning from the pursuit of a living to the pursuit of a life...This is a significant change...It's not about 40 years of commitment to a company and retiring...It's not about a career...It's about living their vacations or retirement and adding making the money needed to live to that lifestyle. That's why even in this time of high unemployment people are quitting long time jobs, starting small businesses and network marketing is booming. Information, content and community are king!
Stay with it my friends...If you can see and feel this happening you are on a right path. There will be many roads to take to succeed in the 'new economy' that will come from 'the great transition' and you can make the life you want to live if you are aware it's happening and prepared to adapt.
Five Power Leadership
LEADERS SEEK RESPECT BEFORE APPROVAL OR FRIENDSHIP!
FIRST POWER...TRUST
Be accountable...Take responsibility
Create an open, positive, risk taking environment
Focus on solutions, not fault finding and assigning blame
See unwanted results as an opportunity to improve individuals and the organization
Don't be defensive...
You don't have to have all the answers...Just help people find them
SECOND POWER...HIGH STANDARDS
Raise the bar...The lowest form of behavior you allow is who you are as a leader
Blur the lines between job assignments...The mission is everyone's job
Don't allow average behavior
Assign and monitor all work to teach and coach using specifics
Hold people accountable
THIRD POWER...CARE
Manage people's attitudes before they become actions and poor results
Don't allow people to accept average behavior
Care enough to challenge people to get them to do what they don't want to do
Don't overreact...Make people more important than results and the results will improve
Teach, coach and mentor to help people grow
FOUTH POWER...VALIDATE PEOPLE
Make taking time for people a priority
Be respectful...Pay attention and listen
Ask people's opinions...Pay attention and listen
Reward extra effort...Pay attention
Make people feel important...Pay attention
Did I mention...Pay attention
FIFTH POWER...CHANGE
Be a change advocate...Lead the change
Encourage change...Ask people how they and the organization can improve
Question everything...Never except or settle for the status quo
Help people change to improve...When they don't, change your people
Be mindful that people will treat each other and your customers the way you treat them!
A Sales Attraction Portion
What if you became aware that there was a ‘sales attraction potion’ you could take to prepare yourself to meet people when you’re selling. This ‘potion’, when taken, allowed people to relax, connect and communicate. Real dialogue happened and people could be helped and served. This connection allowed the engagement and dialogue that sales managers, salespeople and sales trainers have been trying to make happen for years. This ‘potion’ is real and the connection it allows, is necessary if consumers are to get what they want, increase sales and enable a business is to grow.What if I told you this ‘potion’ has been around for years and really works? You’d be first in line. “Sign me up”, and “Where do I get more?” are the most common responses. The cynical salesperson wants to know how much it costs. What if I told you it’s free and the supply is unlimited? Well, guess what, it’s real, you can take it all the time and it will not only increase your sales, it will change your life.
Most salespeople are infected with a ‘sales
repellent virus’ that their companies, sales managers and sales trainers
have handed out this ‘virus’ unknowingly, for free, for years. Even more
importantly, when a salesperson is left alone they catch this
‘sales repellent virus’ and even help spread it. What if I told
you when economic conditions get tougher the strength of the ‘sales repellent
virus’ increases and more is handed out? Most people in the profession of sales
think…’Not me, I’m couldn’t be infected with this virus’…but this virus has
been growing for several decades and if it isn’t treated with
the ‘sales attraction potion’ it’s will eventually make salespeople
extinct.
The result of the majority of
salespeople having the ‘sales repellent virus’ for many years now is that
selling has become more difficult and the relationship between salespeople and
consumers has become damaged. In fact this relationship is so dysfunctional
people don’t want to talk to salespeople and salespeople think ‘buyers are
liars’. With most salespeople infected with the ‘sales repellent virus’
consumers have become conditioned to avoid salespeople whenever possible and
only engage when they have to. The most common responses to becoming
aware of this ‘virus’ is, “What are you talking about?”, and “How can I make
sure I don’t have it or spread it?”
We’ll get to, how to avoid the ‘sales
repellent virus’ and how to get healed if you have it but it’s more important to
understand that there’s an antidote, ‘sales attraction potion’, that can
be used, and when used, will increase your sales, make customers and build your
business.
Remember, the supply of ‘sales
attraction potion’ is unlimited and free!
However, even when you know what it is
and how to use it, you’ll have to take it every day and you’ll have to keep
taking it every time you engage someone in a sales conversation. In short, the
‘sales attraction potion’ is simple to use but wear off easily because other
people will be trying to give you the ‘sales repellent virus’.
This usually happens unknowingly and if
you aren’t careful it’s easy to catch the ‘sales repellant virus’!
Let’s investigate the ingredients in the
potion and the virus that are the same. They include skills, attitudes and
actions that are necessary in the profession of sales but insufficient
without taking the ‘sales attraction potion’. These three ingredients are the
ones companies, sales managers and sales trainers have been teaching and
salespeople have been using for years while infected with the ‘sales repellent
virus’. Next, there is the active ingredient that attracts or repels
people. The ‘repellent virus’ makes people avoid and even lie to
salespeople while the ‘attraction potion’ connects and starts healing the
consumer and salesperson relationship.
By now, I know you’re ready for the
active ingredient…The ingredient that causes the ‘potion’ to attract and the
‘virus’ to repel, is a salespersons’ intention when engaging
consumers. Before a salesperson speaks and as they try to sell someone, their
intentions are felt intuitively by consumers and either attracts or repels them.
The consumer then decides unknowingly, preconscious, to connect or avoid the
salesperson. The salesperson’s intentions create their demeanor, presence and
attitudes and cannot be faked. What the consumer feels or reads is the genuine
intention from the salesperson.
The effects of the active ingredient in
the ‘virus’ the salesperson has is evident when consumers avoid talking to or
opening up even when salespeople ask good questions and genuinely cares about
the people they are trying to sell but is infected with the ‘virus’.
‘Trying to sell’ is the active ingredient in the ‘sales repellent virus’. The ‘virus’
even sabotages skilled salespeople who believe in their product and company,
care about the consumer, but unknowingly are infected! Even they will repel
people more often than they attract them. You can’t hide the virus from
people…it is always showing!
The best example of the effects of the
‘sales repellent virus’ or intention to sell, can be witnessed in a new home
sales office when watching the interaction between consumers and salespeople.
If there is a salesperson and a temp in the sales office and a consumer comes
in, they will most often engage the temp and avoid speaking to the salesperson.
I’ve personally witnessed this and over the years had many new home salespeople
confirm this behavior by consumers. It’s amazingly interesting that the
consumer is attracted by the ‘sales attraction potion’ the temp has taken or
repelled by the ‘virus’ salesperson is infected with. The consumer will engage
the person that is not infected with the ‘virus’ that contains the intention
‘to sell them something’.
Most companies, sales managers and sales
trainers want salespeople to say the right things to create a better
conversation with consumers. They want and teach salespeople to ask
better questions and be better listeners. The problem is, when salespeople try
to do this, while infected with the ‘sales repellent virus’, consumers won’t
engage them and the engagement or conversation stalls. As long as a
salesperson is infected with the ‘virus’, sales will continue to be difficult
and the relationship between consumers and salespeople will grow more
dysfunctional. In short, people will keep avoiding salespeople until they
become extinct.
The active ingredient in the ‘sales
attraction potion’ is the intention to help, serve and do what’s best
for the consumer. The intention to make customers, not sales,
is the missing ingredient and cannot co-exist with the intention to sell. In
fact, I’m convinced the intention to sell is the spoiled version of the
intention to make a customer. The ‘virus’ wasn’t and never has been anyone
intention to spread. It just mutated over the years from paying to much
attention to the desired results companies, sales managers, salespeople and
sales trainers wanted to create, instead of paying attention to what would
create the results. There is too much concern over what we want and not enough
concern over what customers want. It’s also obvious that in a difficult economy
we spend more time worrying and obsessing over the numbers and less time
concerned about the customers concerns so the effects of the ‘virus’ worsen and
spread.
When the ‘sales attraction potion’ is
taken, the missing link in the sales conversation happens…a connection between
the salesperson and the consumer. This connection causes or allows a
conversation or real dialogue to take place so a healthy relationship can
begin. This is the power of the ‘sales attraction potion’; it makes the
consumer/salesperson connection happen and allows the other ingredients in the
‘sales potion’ to be used to best serve the consumer.
The steps of a sale process, which have
been taught for many years in various forms, only happen when this connection
is made. Consumers only engage salespeople who have taken the ‘sales attraction
potion’. When the connection is made, people are served, customers are
made and sales increase while business grows.
Salespeople who regularly take the
‘sales attraction potion' are more energized because they enjoy their
profession more, adding to their success!
Sales Leadership Lessons
I have
been participating in a discussion on LinkedIn, with sales leaders about selling,
sales training and sales management. I'm very concerned and have been for years
that business and sales leaders have been sabotaging the relationship between
consumers and salespeople.
If you’re in a position of sales leadership, ask yourself, "What attitudes and actions do my messages create in my salespeople? Is your sales culture sabotaging your sales?
If you’re in a position of sales leadership, ask yourself, "What attitudes and actions do my messages create in my salespeople? Is your sales culture sabotaging your sales?
Just a few of the phrases being used in the discussion have been a 'hunter who can find 'em, stalk 'em, kill 'em and eat 'em" or "you have to know what you're hunting so you’ll now how to kill them".
These phrases create attitudes
and actions that turn people off. It's also left the consumer and salesperson, or buyer and seller, with a
dysfunctional relationship that's creating a whole ‘new economy’.
My
concern is that the majority of salespeople hear 'hunter' and "find 'em,
stalk 'em, kill 'em and eat 'em" and it creates attitudes and actions that
chase more buyers away than it creates sales.
The
salespeople that can improve a business are not the elite salespeople,
it's the majority, from low producers to average producers, and these attitudes
have sabotaged their ability to improve. It's also created a sales engagement
that has damaged the buyer and seller relationship to the point of sabotaging sales results.
No one
started out to create the dysfunction that exists today between buyers and
sellers but the message too may sales trainers, executives and sales managers
deliver is translated into the intention to sell and not serve and doesn't produce the best results.
The
intention to make a sale is what buyers and consumers 'feel' that chases them
away. Knowing how to put the customer first is an act of long term selfishness. It will produce the best results, highest sales and
customers that will grow your business.
The attitude
that new business is what matters most, is what's brought the economy down and it's still damaging salespeople's ability to succeed today.
Customers
create sales growth. Businesses and the economy are suffering from the business
focus of getting new subscribers, new sales, instead of making customers.
Years of
traditional sales engagements, demographics, multi-cultural issues, the access
to information on the internet, unprecedented economic pressures and social networks
have changed buying cycles along with buyers and consumers attitudes.
New sales
increase fastest when people are engage with the focus on making them a
customer, not a sale.
Start sending a message of service and help. Implement a culture of caring about customers more than sales. Beginning teaching and coaching salespeople to be 'servants on a mission’. When you do, sales will increase, your business will grow and everybody will win.
Look for "Traits of a Servant on a Mission" in my next blog.
By Mike Moore
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