Sales Training: An Independent Perspective. Dave Stein's Blog.

If you’re in sales and haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in the political arena, you’re missing a rare opportunity (once every four years, anyway). And if you have been paying attention, but don’t understand the opponents’ strategies, tactics, mistakes, wins, positioning, messaging, attempts to control the narrative, political alliances, allegiances, and all the rest, you’ve got some work to do in two areas of advanced selling: leveraging influence and politics within your customers’ accounts and devising and executing competitive strategies and tactics.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that ESR pushes sales leaders (and sales training companies) on training and reinforcement around political and competitive selling.  In fact, I spoke about these aspects of sales training at ASTD earlier this week. That was an audience mostly of corporate learning and development professionals.

I’ve been a student of political and competitive selling for years, having been influenced by Jim Holden, LaVon Koerner, Rick Page, and the old Target Account Selling content (now The TAS Group).

Political wonk.

I became a political wonk back in 2000, consumed with the Bush/Gore election and, of course, the aftermath with hanging chads, etc.  Now I can’t get enough of it.  It really helps me understand ESR’s clients and once in a while, I’m in the position to assist in formulating the strategy behind large sales opportunities.  Now there’s some personal capital I bring to the table. (As you know I did that for a living for a number of years.)

I’ve been reading a lot about politics recently, getting myself tuned up again for the election season.  I’m now in the middle of the wonderful new book by Robert Caro, Passage of Power. It’s about Lyndon Johnson’s unexpected transition to the presidency in 1963.  Before that I read Peter Bergen’s Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad. Another amazing read, however more on strategy than politics. I’ve read a lot of other non-fiction books on politics as well.

Here’s my point:  Don’t miss this opportunity. If you can keep the emotion out of your analysis of what’s going on, you’ll learn a lot.

Should I put up a LinkedIn discussion group on this?

I’m thinking about putting up a LinkedIn discussion board on the political and competitive selling aspects of the 2012 presidential race.  No one has done that as of one minute ago.  Understand, it would not be a place to offer opinions on one candidate or another, but rather a place to discuss the political and competitive aspects of the battle for the White House.  It would take a fair amount of time on my part, but it could be fun.  Anyone interested?  Either send me an email or comment on this post confirming that you’ll contribute to the discussion at least three times if we go forward with this.

In the meantime, watch MSNBC and Fox.  Read the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal. Pay attention and you’ll never look at a tough, competitive, politically-charged sales campaign the same way again.

Photo source: Fotolia.com

Filed under: Competition, Sales Strategy | 5 Comments »

Monday I attended and presented at ASTD’s (American Society of Training and Development) 2012 International Conference and Exposition.  Thanks to Mike Galvin for inviting me to contribute to the Sales Enablement track.

Although I was only in Denver for a day, I did get the opportunity to chat with representatives and senior executives from some leading sales performance provider organizations including Richardson, Miller Heiman, Shapiro Negotiations, TACK USA, SEC Solutions (home of The Challenger Sale), Mandel Communications, Mercuri International, Celemi, and 3G Selling. I caught up with a number of ESR’s clients as well as Mike Murrell, president and publisher at Lakewood Media Group, LLC, where I’m a columnist and advisor at Sales and Marketing Management Magazine.  I also had the opportunity to speak, at length, with Ken Blanchard.  I was amazed to find out that his company has 325 employees. Another smart guy.

I learned a lot just from talking with smart sales training buyers and sellers during the course of the day.  There is no question that many corporate L&D (learning and development) professionals have a significant challenge when it comes to serving their sales organizations. I’ve been working with ASTD for the past number of years, doing my best to transfer some of ESR’s experience, insight, and knowledge to them. I know that’s helped numbers of companies figure things out and get themselves on the path to higher degrees of sales effectiveness. It was certainly fulfilling to hear success stories from those ESR has helped.

My presentation was well-attended and, based on feedback after the 75-minute session, appreciated as well.

I covered what we at ESR consider an important issue: advanced selling capabilities.  I spoke about leveraging politics within customer organizations, the importance of financial and business acumen, and the deployment of competitive strategies and tactics.  I briefly touched on other advanced B2B selling capabilities as well, such as channel management and strategic account management.  I also provided the audience with a one-slide diagnostic tool that offers some help in figuring out whether they should consider any of these advanced capabilities.

I’ve put the slide deck up on ESR’s website.  Feel free to download it.  We’re just asking for your name and business email address in exchange for this valuable content.  We’ll include you on ESR’s private mailing list, from which you can unsubscribe at any time.  I can assure you though, with what we have planned in 2012, you’ll want to keep up to date on events, research, and other high-value content and activities around the subject of sales performance improvement, so you’ll want to stay on our email list.

Filed under: Buyers, On the Road, Presentations, Sales Enablement, Sales Training Companies | 4 Comments »

For today’s sales leaders it’s almost impossible not be analytically driven. Every aspect of our sales lives are driven by key performance indicators, dashboards, and pipeline metrics. Making the number is what it is all about.

ES Research Group is a strong believer in management by numbers—after all, if it can’t be measured, it can be managed. One area where we think it’s all right to think outside the analytical box is connecting with customers through storytelling. I’ve written about that before here and here.

Being able to relate to your prospects is often the very first thing you must do in a sales call—in person or on the phone. We don’t mean old fashioned techniques like noticing photos in a prospect’s office or trying to create rapport by talking about the weather. Today you have a wealth of information available to build an inventory of stories that help you personally or professionally connect to your prospects. It may be an example of how you helped an existing customer or it may be how you’d held a similar position in a previous role and understand the pressures the prospects are facing. Either way, by having a process in mind that provides quick access to your stories will make it easier for you to convince your prospects you understand and have been down this road before.

ES Research has found that:

• Some people process information better in story form
• Stories are powerful and have been with us since the beginning of time—it is something we understand at a level deeper than we can often realize
• The format of a good story is easy to follow, which enables you to set the direction for a conversation with your customer.

In addition to our findings and intuitive understanding, those who study brain science have found proof that “story structure” is an information delivery system powerhouse, evolutionarily hardwired into human brains.

Connection is the watchword in today’s selling environment. Whether it’s through direct face-to-face sales or by using the latest in social media, we are trying to get our prospects to connect with us on a deeper level. We want richer relationships so we move up the value chain to trusted advisor, challenger, or whatever role works best with the individuals with whom we are working in our customer organizations. We don’t want to be sellers, we want to be business partners. Storytelling in a meaningful way will help you do that.

If you haven’t looked into storytelling as it applies to B2B selling, you can start here.  It’s a podcast interview I did with Mike Bosworth. If you haven’t listed to this, it’s more than worth your investment of time. Mike explains all of this in a clear, concise, and very compelling way.

Image source: LuxQ.com

Filed under: Relationships | 6 Comments »

I’m In Ireland again for my yearly visit. I’m an Adjunct Professor of Sales and Sales Management at the Dublin Institute of Technology. DIT delivers an eight module program in international selling for Enterprise Ireland, the government organization responsible for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets.

Among the subjects I cover in my module is hiring. All of the 75 sales executives and 50 CEOs that participate at one point or another during my eight days of workshops will be hiring sales people, managers and directors during the course of the next year or two.  If an Irish company hires their first employee in the U.S. (as one of many export alternatives) and gets it wrong, they have a major problem. In the past it has happened far too often.  Read more »

Filed under: Hiring | 1 Comment »

Thanks to my editors at Sales and Marketing Management magazine for running this cover story on a very important topic.

A few key points from the article:

• To get sales training right, you have to select the right sales training partner. Note: If you’re part of a corporate Learning and Development organization and don’t outsource at least some of your process, methodology, and content development, we should really have a chat.
• An objective assessment of your selling requirements from your customers’ perspective is the first place to start.
• The best provider for your requirements may not either come up on the first few pages of a Google search, nor be listed in the increasingly popular training company lists that are being regularly published.
• Check at least ten references before you go forward with a sales training provider.

And here is my regular sales training column. It’s an update of my popular, “C’mon, Dave, who is the best sales trainer?”

By all means, subscribe to the print and digital versions of Sales and Marketing Management magazine here, and use the Priority Code: DSEN

Filed under: sales training | 4 Comments »

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know how important financial and business acumen is for effective B2B selling.  The reasons:

• It supports demand creation approaches and initiatives
• Enables reps to carry on business value-oriented conversations
• Enables product/service links to customer’s specific long-term business objectives
• Provides basis for gaining and maintaining access to senior executives
• Supports reduction or elimination of commodity pricing demands
• Removes selling focus on product specifications
• Can be a significant differentiator for salespeople
• Raises effectiveness of Consultative/Solution/Challenger approach Read more »

Filed under: Marketing, Sales Enablement, Technology | 3 Comments »

Donal Daly, CEO of The TAS Group, wrote a blog post two weeks ago entitled iPad on the Sales Road: 13 Best Practice Tips. That got me thinking…

Without fanfare, here are my favorite iPhone and iPad apps, in no particular order  and subject to change without notice:

iPhone

• Soundhound – Hold it up to music and Shazam! But with Soundhound you get Karaoke-style lyrics to sing along with.
• Camera! (SmugMug) – Best camera app, period.
• LogMeIn Ignition – When I have to log on to my PC. Read more »

Filed under: Technology | 1 Comment »

One of the many things I learned from years of flying my plane is the concept of “staying ahead of the plane.”

Picture this: It’s 11:00 at night, raining heavily, ceilings at 200 feet, wind gusting to 25 knots. You’re flying a single-engine Cessna into Martha’s Vineyard airport. You can’t see anything outside the airplane.  You have an instrument approach plate attached to your steering yoke (click on graphic for full-size view). That graphical representation of a procedure tells you precisely what you need to know to get the plane (gracefully) on the ground. You have your instruments to make certain you are in compliance with what the FAA has determined to be the safest route to the runway.

For a single pilot, there is a lot to do. An awful lot to do. Assuming you have the skills, the experience, the focus, and a plan so you know every step along the way, you are “ahead of the plane.” You can anticipate what might go wrong—however minor—and then be prepared if it happens. Read more »

Filed under: sales process, Sales Strategy | 2 Comments »

Note: This blog post was written by Al Case, ESR’s Principal Analyst and Research Fellow.

Selecting the best sales training provider for your company’s needs isn’t easy. In simple terms, it’s a matter of finding the provider at the intersection of a number of critical learning areas. Let’s examine just three of them them individually:

Target industry.  As recently as seven years ago, one of the largest groups of companies consuming sales training were in the high technology industries such as telecommunications, software, hardware and related services. Read more »

Filed under: Sales Training Companies | No Comments »

Too often sales executives find that newly hired sales professionals do not possess the particular traits needed for the jobs they were hired to do. ES Research Group estimates that this happens 25-33 percent of the time, depending on the industry. In all cases, those salespeople endured or even thrived throughout a rigorous interview process, and in most, they underwent specific skills training after they began at their jobs.

If under-performing salespeople went through interviews and completed specific job training and yet still lack traits need to achieve results, where is the gap?

ES Research Group knows that one missing link is to test the candidate using a scientifically rigorous psychometric instrument that is directly connected to the candidate’s specific job profile.　　 Read more »

Filed under: Hiring, Sales Training Companies | 7 Comments »