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Discover The Amazing Key to Rapid Pipeline Growth with Chris Bennett

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This episode is all about building rapid pipeline growth, a challenge facing many salespeople today. My guest, Chris Bennett shared his strategies for building the sales pipeline that delivers sales results.

We talked about:

Why so many salespeople struggle to build the proper sized sales pipeline/ funnel.

The one type of question that is designed to fuel the funnel with the right kinds of sales opportunities.

The characteristics of a good challenge question that you need to be asking.

Chris shares examples of what a good challenge question sounds like.

Through his examples, Chris reveals that it is relatively easy to ask the right kind of question and yet, he talked about why more reps don’t do it.

You’ll learn what happens when salespeople are trained to use these questions properly. And Chris shared examples of actual sales results.

Finally, we discussed what sales managers can do to support their salespeople in this process.

Enjoy the interview!

About Chris:

Chris Bennett heads up Chris Bennett Sales Training. Chris has been helping businesses increase pipeline and crush quota for 24 years. He always measures for hard financial results.  He has worked with companies like Dimension Data, CDW, SHI, Bell Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, TELUS, Cisco, AT&T, and others. The core of his teachings are built upon the foundation of; understanding, helpfulness and creating real measurable business impact.  He believes in relentless follow up. He is happily married and loves recreation such as; fishing, skiing, golf, tennis, squash and mixed martial arts.  He is an avid Chicago Bears fan and listens to classic rock turned up loud.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

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GOING PRIMAL with Curt Redden and Courtney Walsh

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Curt Redden and Courtney Walsh are the co-authors of GOING PRIMAL, A Layered Approach to Creating the Life You Desire.

In this episode, we talked about A PRIMAL Approach to Accelerate your Sales Career! 

I started by having Curt and Courtney tell me what this Primal thing is all about.

They talk about the idea behind the book and why they decided to work together on the project.

Based on Curt’s years of great work in the area of learning and development for salespeople, Curt shares his advice about what salespeople need to do to improve their sales results.

Learn why attitude and perseverance is necessary now more than ever if you want to be the best in sales and in life.

We closed by talking about the best piece of business advice that Curt and Courtney want you to know about.

Order Curt and Courtney’s book HERE.

Enjoy the interview!

Bios:

Curt Redden is a speaker, talent-development and sales training expert, and author of 3 books on sales and leadership excellence.  His most recent work, Going PRIMAL, is co-authored with colleague Courtney Walsh. Curt has spent more than twenty-five years working to support and encourage employees as they strive for success. He currently is the head of global talent development for UPS Capital. He is also certified by the Association for Talent Development as a master trainer and performance-improvement consultant.

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Courtney Walsh uses her position as a communication and talent-development professional to help others achieve a healthy work-life balance. Originally from Daytona Beach, Florida, she now works for a Fortune 50 company in Atlanta, Georgia. When she isn’t working, Walsh enjoys spending time outdoors and testing out new culinary creations. She received a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and has earned numerous professional certifications in learning and development.

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For more information on Curt Redden or Courtney Walsh, please visit: www.primalsuccess.com

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Closing the Sales Productivity Gap with Robin Saitz, Brainshark CMO

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In my recent Razor’s Edge podcast, I talked with Robin Saitz, CMO at Brainshark. The focus of our conversation was sales productivity and specifically, we talked about what is behind the sales productivity gap and what companies can do about it. Robin Saitz Brainshark CMO

Though we’ve heard through the years from CSO Insights that roughly 52% of salespeople do not achieve quota each year (and that’s in a good economy!), Robin told me that the TAS Group reported that the number is as much as 67%. If that doesn’t keep a sales leader up at night, I don’t know what does!

As with all my guests, I learned a lot in talking with Robin.

Sales Productivity Defined

She defined sales productivity as the yield per sales rep. In other words, hitting quota in the most efficient way possible. As I came to learn and as the TAS Group numbers suggest, productivity in sales is way off the mark.

What Causes the Gap

In particular, I was struck with Robin’s point of view regarding why we have such a problem with sales productivity at all. She told me that it comes down to several things, like:

Lack of an onboarding process and specifically, a lack of focus on training selling skills. Some 38% of companies lack any kind of formal process or program for preparing new reps.

Salespeople cannot find the content/information they need when they need it. Up to 40% of their time is spent searching or trying to create the content that they need. Breaking it down that equates to 2 out of 5 sales days each week.

Sales conversations are not effective enough and there is a lack of visibility – on management’s part – in terms of understanding the behavior and knowledge of their salespeople.

What Companies Can Do

During the interview, Robin shared her suggestions for what companies need to do to close the productivity gap, who needs to be involved in addressing the issues and what to measure to ensure that you are closing the gap.

With C-Suite and corporate Board members extremely concerned about sales productivity, this interview is certainly worth 35 minutes of your time.

Learn more about how Brainshark can help your organization close the sales productivity gap.

Follow Robin on Twitter.

Is Attracting Prospects Online a Myth?

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Kent came across this blog post whose author suggests that finding and engaging with prospects online doesn’t work. As you might imagine, that got my back up a little, so I decided to look deeper. The blog post referenced a Gallop poll of 17,000 people.  With a few clicks (gotta love the Internet), I found the original post from Gallup about social media and the 3 big myths they say that they uncovered.

Here is what needs to be clarified straight out of the gate.

The Gallup poll is consumer oriented and focused on the impact of social media “marketing” in driving the acquisition of new customers and the retention of their current ones.

I don’t disagree with the conclusions of the study, but the blanket statement by Charles Blakeman in his blog post that you can’t engage prospects online is very misleading. Marketers may be faced with a difficult challenge when it comes to trying to engage customers in ways that lead to the conclusion of a sale, but their research doesn’t apply to B2B or how social media fits and benefits the sales process.

Using social media in the selling process is NOT the same as social media “marketing”. You can read an earlier post that I wrote on this topic. Marketing and Sales need to work in tandem and they will both leverage social media in different ways. The distinction is an important one!

How Social Media Fits Your Sales Process

  1. Networking – are you calling three people every day in your network in order to stay connected? Do this daily and make sure that the purpose of your call isn’t to sell something. It is a chance for you to learn more about them so that you can offer to be a resource for them.
  2. Referral Building – are you spending the time needed to cultivate a referral network? You should. Referrals from an outside, credible source secures that meeting 44% of the time. Have someone (credible and trusted) inside your target company sponsor you andexpect to secure that meeting 84% of the time. Think of three people each day who can help you and you them.
  3. Prospecting – using techniques like creating a saved lead list in LinkedIn, you find your targeted buyer quickly, so that you can then plan your engagement strategy and approach.
  4. Lead qualification – when receiving those inbound leads, you can use social media to learn more about the company and individual before having that first phone call. Information that you’ve gathered will aid in your qualification process.
  5. Pre-sales call research – because so many salespeople fail to do this work, they come off sounding amateurish. Questions like what keeps you up at night or what are your top initiatives in 2012 just have no value and only waste time. With tools like InsideView, you can gather public information about companies and their leaders, as well as be able to leverage the real-time buzz and conversation via social media.

By now, most people conceptually understand that the power of sales meets social media happens in these five areas on the front end of the sales cycle. It is in the HOW to do these things well, which is followed by then doing them consistently is where things start to break down.

We have seen so many great examples of how our clients are using social media to build pipeline and revenue. It does work. But if you or your salespeople are not seeing great results, we’d love to talk to you. We are launching a new social sales coaching program September 14 that will help you do these things and more. Training people on WHAT to do and HOW to do it is the fastest way to start seeing sales results.

Success stories from our customers who know that social selling works!

Prospect – “After a meeting with the prospect, we learned their parent company had an initiative to consolidate all their wireless lines (thousands). I was given the title of the person making the decision but that was it. I then found a C-Level contact at the parent company on LinkedIn who was connected to him. I was one degree separated from her and we shared three similar connections. I reached out to a common connection of ours to make a referral and then asked her who was responsible for the wireless consolidation task. I had a meeting with him one day later.”

Prospect – “A cold call to the President/IT director resulted in the prospect telling us to call back in a year. One of my reps went on LinkedIn and found a Director of Safety. We called her with a fleet tracking safety solution and secured a meeting. Now we are working on a solution for 50-75 devices.”

Former Customer – “Ported out over 10 lines five years ago. They would not take our call for years on several win-back attempts. By using InMail on LinkedIn, we got a response and a meeting with the owner. We now have three opportunities in the funnel and have already had follow up meetings.”

This is HOW its done folks! This particular client’s salespeople were seeing results in just a few days or so. By leveraging the information and changing their engagement approach, you can see from their comments that the results speak for themselves!

Check out our Sales Meets Social Media Program

 

Why Sales Training Falls Flat and What You Can Do About It

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In a forum on Focus, the question was asked, “Why don’t more sales organizations invest in sales training courses?”  It is the million dollar question and one that I’m sure has been asked countless times before.

In a nutshell, my thoughts are…

Whatever is going south in your sales organization today will not be resolved with a short-term emphasis on training.

Revenue in steep decline won’t be back on track with a day’s worth of training. Mediocre sales reps will not magically become superstars.

If you want to change your sales situation, you need to start with taking a hard look at what’s really going wrong in your business. Do you have the right people with the right skills (uh, that includes management)? Do you have the right processes in place? Is your messaging clear? Having you been evolving with today’s Internet savvy executive or do you keep hoping that what used to work will work once again?

Until companies are really willing to ask the tough questions, throwing money at training really makes no sense at all.

While I certainly don’t have all the answers, I do have 6 thoughts on what can be done to better leverage the investment made in a training program:

  1. View sales development programs as a process NOT an event. At a prior company, we were given lots of great training, but the programs were all different. That meant that none of the methodology was carried forward over the long haul. I’ve been through Solution Selling, SPIN Selling, Precision Questioning, Situational Leadership, Covey’s 7 Habits, ropes courses, coaching programs – you name it. They were great, but they’ve weren’t tied together and they were not aligned with our sales goals and strategies.

  2. Stop forcing your salespeople to drink from a fire hose. Yes, it is important to minimize the time that a sales person is out of the field, but stop trying to cram what amounts to a week’s worth of information into a half-day or full-day program. In today’s wired world, there are infinitely more ways to deliver training programs and not all of them need to be face-to-face.

  3. Build accountability into the learning process. The physical training event is only the first step. People are creatures of habit. Without reinforcement on an ongoing basis, people will revert to their old habits. People need to put what they’ve learning action; otherwise, there is no point. Accountability can be in the form of webinars, coaching or creating accountability buddies and teams. Bottom line, if you don’t plan to reinforce the learning, it will disappear in a few short weeks and you’ll be back to where you started.

  4. Make sure that the content is current and fits your specific needs. Though the guts of the sales training methodology may be the same for consistency sake, whoever you’ve chosen to deliver your training program should darn well learn enough about your business to truly apply the principles to your unique situation. If they aren’t willing to do that…seek out someone else.

  5. Make sure the content is sexy and the delivery appeals to different learning styles. Content must be relevant first and foremost, but what about integrating new technology into the mix. If it’s just PowerPoint…boring. I recently read a great article about a company that created sales management training that utilized the iPad during the course. The fact that an iPad was on each table when these managers walked in was enough to start the positive buzz. During the course, managers completed exercises and sent them to the instructor real-time during the program.

  6. Make sure the trainer has cred and has great facilitation skills. Yes, we can learn something from everyone. On the other hand, sales people are finicky. If you have never lived life by a quota, how can you possibly tell me what to do to increase my sales? Fair or not, if you’ve never carried a bag and the audience knows it, it undermines credibility. And whatever you do, vet the facilitation skills of the person you hire. Talk to their references, ask to monitor one of their upcoming programs or request a video clip demonstrating their work. It will mean the difference between audience engagement or not.

Contrary to popular belief, I believe training programs DO work when you take a long-term view and make the financial investment to support your vision. Quick fixes do not exist. They never have and they never will!

Tic Toc: Social Sales Train Has Left the Station

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At this point in the evolution of social media, small and mid-sized companies are recognizing the value and potential that social tools like LinkedIn, Twitter,Gist, Hootsuite, Facebook, YouTube and others bring to the table. Yet, when I ask business owners about their social sales and marketing strategy, they sheepishly admit that they really don’t have one. They know they need one, but…

Tic Toc

If you are not integrating social media into your sales and marketing plans, you are setting yourself up for decreasing sales and increased competitive pressure. Think of social media as the proverbial train that’s left the station. While you can’t hop on the train that’s already chugging on down the track, you can grab the next one coming along and catch up. The point is that the clock is ticking and you need to get moving!

I Don’t Have Time

Let’s face it, “I don’t have time.” is a pretty common excuse, because people can relate to it, right? Who can’t empathize with jam-packed schedules, lengthy to-do list’s and a cell phone that never stops ringing? “Tight schedule already and you want me to create a social sales and marketing plan, Barb?” Yes. I do. You need it. “Even if I have it, who has time for blog posting, tweets, status updates, answering questions in groups, Barb?” The answer is that you make the time. Or, you delegate the activity. We can talk about options in a future blog post.

What’s really behind the excuse?

1) These are smart business people and they know that they need to use social tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to drive their marketing and sales activities, but they don’t know where to start. It’s easier to avoid what feels a little overwhelming to tackle.

Hint: You begin with a strategy and tactical plan. This requires slowing down long enough to think through what you need and how you’ll use the technology. Hire help! Jumping on Twitter without having a clear idea how micro-blogging fits into your sales and marketing strategy will no doubt cause frustration. As Covey said, success begins with the end in mind. If you don’t know where you are going, I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be tough to get there.

2) Taking time to answer questions on LinkedIn, post a tweet, contribute to a blog post or respond to Facebook fan comments is seen as an “add-on” to an already jammed packed calendar.

Hint: Some of the activities you and your people spend time on today will never net you sales. That’s the truth and you know it. An honest appraisal of your calendar will no doubt reveal time wasters – people, places, events – that can be eliminated. Once those wasters are eliminated you can put that “found” time toward social sales activities instead.

3) Won’t my employees just waste time all day yakking with their friends on Facebook?

Hint: You need to establish social media usage communication policies and invest in training your people from the beginning. Most businesses already have a communication policy, so you can augment what you currently have to address social media usage. Invest in training your people to use the technology correctly and make sure that they understand the rules of netiquette in the online space. Your investment in training will minimize wasted time and pay dividends down the road.

All aboard!

Sales Spam – Yum!

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It is no wonder that sales often gets a bad rap. Desperation, lack of training, perhaps pressure from sales management…whatever the reason, it isn’t difficult to find examples of shoddy sales techniques being used on unsuspecting buyers every day. At a minimum, I receive one sales spam email like the one below that I’m showcasing today. It’s more common to receive two or three more just like it.

Take a minute to read it through. You tell me. Would you buy from this individual? Does this sales representative even know if I’m the right type of customer for him? Does he know anything about my business?

“Barbara – I was checking on this This ends at 5 PM PST today. Let me know if you would be interested Regards XYZ Representative

Barbara

2010 BlowOut Sale on Training and HR Executives Email List

We have new contacts (VPs ,Dir and Managers ) within the Training and HR Departments in corporations within the US.  We are offering these contacts, which you will own and can use as often as possible.These are all new contacts and have nt been sold before.

We are offering a 60% promotional discount on this list (valid thro Friday 09/24/10).It is being offered as given below.

  • 5000 New Training Contacts for $350(Regular Price- $1100)
  • 10,000 New Training Contacts for $600(Regular Price-$1800)
  • 20,000 New Training Contacts for $1100(Regular Price-$3500)
  • 40,000 New Training Contacts for $2000(Regular Price-$5000)
  • 5,000 New HR Contacts for $350(Regular Price- $1100)
  • 10,000 New HR Contacts for $600(Regular Price-$1800)
  • 20,000 New HR Contacts for $1100(Regular Price-$3500)
  • 40,000 New HR Contacts for $2000(Regular Price-$5000)

We will also provide a 120 day guarantee on the contacts and will replace each contact you find is inaccurate with an updated one.  Just to make sure that the new contact is valid and accurate we’ll guarantee it for 120 days as well.

With each record you receive:

Complete data: Name, Title, Direct E-Mail Address, Physical address, Phone Number, Company Name etc

Unlimited license: Most companies only rent you the data for one time use, we allow you to use this database as many times as you want, however you want.

If you need a more specific list – let us put together a custom contact list for you using geography, industry, revenue or titles.

If you are interested in the type of companies and titles we have I will send you a list with everything else removed so you can get an idea.”

To the sender…

Spam as a sales tactic is not an effective strategy. Yes, you might get some takers, but on the whole, you are far more likely to offend. I’ll remember you, of course. But, I won’t be buying from you. I only buy from people that I know, like and trust. I don’t buy from people who spam my inbox. Oh, and thanks for the competitive pricing information. You never know, it might come in handy someday. I probably should give you a break for making such a dumb sales mistake, but given the product you sell, maybe I understand why you feel sending email spam is a sound business practice.

Social Selling Isn’t An Add-On

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timekeeper resized 600In the rush, rush, rush that defines most businesses today, we are trained to cram every possible activity we can onto our calendars. The fine art of saying “no” is a masterful technique in and of itself, IF, you can pull it off that is. Often, we are at the mercy of others who have requests that demand our time, which we cannot ignore. Still, with all of this so-called multi-tasking going on, I wonder, are we really any more effective?

For years, we have been seduced into thinking that multi-tasking is a good thing. Sales people are given atta-boys for their ability to juggle multiple priorities at once. Sales managers praise their people for being able to take customer calls, do email and text all while taking a potty break. Nothing is more disconcerting than listening to someone take a business call from the bathroom stall next to you by the way. The reinforcement of this multi-tasking mania has now led to people texting and answering email on their iPhones and Blackberry’s while driving! Absolute madness.

Quite an industry has sprung up around this notion of “managing time”. The myth is that multi-tasking isn’t managing time, it is only wasting it. An August 2009 research report from Stanford University shows that so-called high achieving multi-taskers are only frying their brain. Guru’s far more experienced than me will tell you that time management has always been a myth. All of us have the same 24 hours in the day. The #1 key to social selling success comes from a single minded focus on the “right” priorities. Your objective is to focus on the one thing – the big rock – that you complete before moving on to the next. This is especially important as you integrate social media into your sales process. The idea is to save time not waste it!

As I talk to groups about social media and how to integrate it into their sales/networking approach, I always ask, “What are your top two or three concerns about using social media?” Predictably, someone always says, “I don’t have the time.” That attitude springs from the belief that you are “adding on” to what you already do now. In reality, you need to let something else go. Everyone has time wasters disguised as results driven activities hidden somewhere on their calendar. Many are hidden in plain sight.

Try this exercise. Write down how many face-to-face networking events you attended in the past month. Even if it’s 1 per week, you probably spent at least 3 hours when you include drive time plus the event time itself. That’s 12 hours – more than a full business day each month. Now consider your hourly billable rate and ask yourself if you secured enough clients from those activities to make it worth it. The answer – based on experience and the answers I receive from every group that I poll – will likely be a resounding no! Not even close. That’s why the effective use of social networking tools like LinkedIn is such a beautiful thing. Done right, you spend “less time” actually getting better results.

How we view time is in direct proportion to our attitude about time. Your peers, your competitors and your friends don’t have any more hours in the day than you do. It is all about how you use them. If you ever want to invest in finding out how you prioritize, I encourage you to check out our Time Mastery assessment. For as little as $31 and the investment of a 10-15 minutes, you will discover just how well you work with your daily 24 hour allotment.

Time management is a myth. How you choose to spend your time moment to moment is what counts!

The Why of Social Media

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The explosion of social media into mainstream consciousness has seemingly come from nowhere. Though it may be new to you, the social media groundswell has been building for some time, and it’s fair to say that the buzz right now is deafening.

While there is a growing familiarity with tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube, here are 5 questions being asked in companies large and small about the business reasons for using social media:

1. Why should we care?
2. Where do we start?
3. What technology should we be using?
4. How do we manage the information?
5. How will we measure effectiveness?

As with any new business undertaking, questions like these (and more) definitely need to be answered. Here are the reasons that I believe it is important to pay attention.

Why You Should Care

These days your prospects are surfing the net, reading blogs, participating in forums and group discussions, asking for product and services referrals from their social networks and joining on-line communities.

Even if you wanted to “opt out”, choosing instead to use outdated approaches to sales and marketing, your potential customers – and your savvy competitors – are most definitely going to be online.

Your prospects are tuned in to what they want, what’s available, where to purchase and how much to spend. The bigger the sale, the more educated they will be.

With 66% of the 38 million LinkedIn users deemed “key decision maker”,175+ million people on Facebook (31% over the age of 35), and millions more conversing over Twitter, you can’t ignore the opportunity. The name of the game then is visibility. If you aren’t participating online, you are missing huge opportunities to reach an audience you would otherwise not be able to connect with in an easy and cost effective way.

How to Get Started

If you are just getting your feet wet with regard to social media, you are most likely approaching it backwards, as most do. Companies are typically approaching the social computing world by looking first at the nifty, whiz bang technologies available. Could be a tweet here, a blog there, a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook fan page or a few YouTube video’s thrown up on the website- to achieve their sales and marketing goal. That is a mistake! People, purpose and plan first – technology last -should be the mantra of every business interested in succeeding with social media.

Technology

As with any hot trend, people are clamoring to get on board the social media gravy train. Yet as many have already discovered, having an online profile doesn’t mean you are using social media effectively to market your business or increase your sales. People are floundering in the online space for many of the same reasons they probably flounder around with their current sales and networking approach. They don’t have a plan!

Your plan starts with “narrowing” and “clearly defining” your target audience. Here’s a hint…your audience is NOT everyone with a pulse. Though it seems counterintuitive to some, the more you narrow your market, the faster you gain traction, which then leads to more sales of your products and services.

The key with choosing the right technology is making sure you know EXACTLY what results you want to achieve. You certainly need to understand what tools are available, but that’s the last thing you really need to focus your attention on. Once you know who your audience is, where they live online and what you want to happen once you get in front of them, you are then well positioned to use an online tool best suited for your purpose.

Managing the Flow

I’m known for saying that it is up to “you” to manage technology, not the other way around. Dashboard tools like Digsby help you watch your email, Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile and more without having to web surf the individual sites. TweetDeck gives you the ability to keep on top of all that is happening in your Twitter world. And tools like Ping and HelloText let you create a post once that updates multiple sites of your choosing all at the same time. The point is that you shouldn’t let the “fear” of too much information stop you from getting on board. There are lots of great tools to help with the information management flow.

Measuring the ROI

Like anything else in business, you need to be sure that you are measuring effectiveness and results to ensure that you get the greatest return on your effort. In the March 23rd edition of Information Week, TransUnion reported as estimated $2.5 million in savings in less than five months. Did I mention that you first need a plan? In TransUnion’s case, their cost savings showed up in a reduction of software services purchases. Using an internal social networking platform, employees were able to brainstorm ways to more effectively utilize what they already had, thus reducing the need to buy more.

Companies of all sizes will benefit from having clearly defined objectives that you can then track your progress against. If one of your goals is to increase product sales on your website, you will want to track HOW people find you. Was it the blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, a Facebook ad, or that amazing sales article your sales manager just wrote? You can use tools like Google Analytics to help you track how many visitors visit your website, as well as give you clues as to what they focused on they got there.

Summary

Remember that social media and the world of social networking are here to stay. See it as a threat or an opportunity. It’s your choice!

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