International Sales Training

Often sales people’s development needs are arrived at by looking at sales results, business needs, and logically or instinctively arriving at skill gaps in the sales process.  In some cases they just look at one of those elements and buy a course!  Results are short lived; consequently, some businesses see sales training as a waste of money – just like someone the other day who told me about the 1000’s of pounds spent on training their sales force to no sustainable advantage. Assuming the trainer was good enough, and the course covered some required competences, plus organisational support was in place - what’s missing?

 A Sales trainer should be able to say, hand on heart, that if I train sales people in these competences, for this role (all other factors being in place), then they will sell more - but perhaps that is being just a little too brave!?

Step one: what does success look like and what are the specific competences that make the difference; then build the right development interventions to grow our sales people and our sales. Lots of you already do that, and lots of HR/training consultancies will offer to help you do that, but still, if the sum total of what a sales force is left with is “more confidence in selling” it isn’t enough!

Is benchmarking the answer? Depends!

Benchmarking is not new, however there is ‘benchmarking’ and there is ‘benchmarking’. Some trainers & coaches use their own personal view of what makes a good sales person as a benchmark; others take a more scientific approach;  ie. take your top performers, dissect what they do/are, create a competence frame work, measure the rest of the team against the frame work, and train accordingly.

It works, but is restrictive.  Your average performers can only aspire to be as good as your own existing top performer.  It is a worthwhile exercise, but if benchmarking competencies is to be really valid, you must have the confidence that attaining the benchmark will deliver the highest possible performance, against the best performers in a specific sales role in any organisation, rather than simply against the best in your own company.   That way you are benchmarking against a global view of ‘best’, not just your view – which may or may not be truly ‘best’.  To be continued…..”

Our team of specialists work with Sales Directors & HR/Training to increase Sales revenue by improving the sales effectiveness of their sales operation contact: admin@salesassessment.com or call +441934843575

In my last blog I explored the need for sales people and account managers to develop numerical literacy. Customers want metrics but this is not the only reason this skill is important. 

Back when I first started in selling in the 80’s, there was a recognition that customers preferred doing business with people who understood their industry and a good sales person had to demonstrate that understanding. Nowadays, however, this need for understanding goes even further: understanding the sector is okay but understanding the specific business is better.  

Asking in-depth questions about the key financial drivers of the business is vital for demonstrating understanding of the business:  the clues are in the company’s accounts – a template to help guide your focus to the right financial information. For instance, even if their customer base is the same, different companies can be driven by completely different factors.

Is it a cash-rich company or a fast-growth business that burns up cash? Do they tie their money up in assets? What is the return on investment in people? You don’t need to know everything but you do need to know the right things in order to ask the right questions: these will lead you to those all- important drivers that will enable you to demonstrate your understanding of the business. This information may not impact directly on their need but will affect the factors that influence whether they buy from you or from a competitor.

Some sales people, with high numerical reasoning, will take a small amount of information and fly with it, challenging the customer and provoking deep discussions. For some of us, though, our numerical reasoning just won’t be up to it and so preparation is the only way to keep up.

But what if you don’t know that your sales people lack numerical reasoning? Well, then sales will continue to be lost and you may waste a lot of your development budget training the wrong things extremely well. Unfortunately, even though you may have a well-developed skill set, if these are the wrong skills, this simply isn’t going to help.

Shekhar Varma is a specialist in Sales effectiveness and, by using Fit-4 from Salesassessment.com, can help you identify who in your team is challenged by the numbers. He can also create tailored tools and training to help your sales people prepare. Contact me svarma@salesassessment.com +441934843575

“Post-recession selling is becoming more challenging. It is no longer enough for a sales person to have a good product, ask a few questions about the business, build rapport and make a good presentation in order to win the business.”

So said a recent prospect of mine, following this with, “Customers want a sound business proposition with financials.”

This was reinforced for me when working with a client who believed sales were being lost at the closing stage of their sales process. They changed their thinking when a Fit-4 assessment revealed how challenged their sales people were with numerical data. Since key financial data were not being understood, developing the proposition and evidencing the benefits weren’t effective. The strength of the brand disguised this issue and sales people were kept in the race to beat up the competition at the negotiation stage. Although it looked as if they were losing sales at the close, in reality they were out of the sales cycle much earlier. As sales people trained in consultative selling techniques, many lacked the knowledge to connect their product or service to the financials, thereby demonstrating the difference to a prospect’s business where it really matters – in the wallet!

If your team sells solutions, or are operating in key account management roles, or sell at a strategic level and you don’t seem to win enough closes, the answer may lie in how your sales people follow up on variations of “Tell me about your business.” Yet another client using Fit-4 found that numerically challenged sales people would avoid number-based questions without realising it, possibly because of an underlying fear of not understanding the answers. How comfortable a sales person is with financial information and how quickly and effectively they can respond to numerical data can only get more critical in today’s sales world.

Can you really afford not to know?

SDV Training are specialists in assessing and developing world class sales forces, to learn how we may be able to help you achieve better sales contact admin@sdvtraining.com or phone Shekhar on 01934843575

 It takes around 2 ½ hours to complete an online assessment – and both sales people and sales managers alike have told me that this is too long. However, the alternatives can be even more time consuming or render a result that is more ‘horoscope and hope’ than objective assessment. Gaining insight by observing sales meetings or listening in on sales calls is not enough. Even coupled with measuring KPIs, the picture you get may not be enough to make good recruitment or training decisions.

Time consuming but accurate is assessment based on observation. First, you need to define the selling role and develop the list of skills that you want to observe. These should be weighted by importance since not all skills contribute equally to the success of the role. Next, train your observers to avoid falling into the trap of only looking for evidence that supports a view they already have of the sales person. Schedule sales meetings or role-plays where you observe. Try to screen out the effect on the assessment of the subject knowing they are being observed. Finally, decide on a benchmark that defines what good looks like. This approach means spending a lot of time upfront in preparation and is costly for the sales manager who has to observe the sales person at meetings. The result can be robust and objective but does not yield much better information than using the right online assessment and takes hours in the making and hours in the doing. Two and a half hours seems quite short in comparison.

What if you want to test for a future role? Consider a sales person who wanted advancement to a sales manager role. He was very good in his sales role and if his employer hadn’t been willing to promote him he would probably have gone elsewhere. (Of course, if he had been put in the wrong role they would have lost him anyway.) An assessment centre would have helped, but for a single individual it was inappropriate. However, using an online assessment he was tested in the sales manager role and also in a new senior selling role. The tests revealed that he had potential as a sales manager and would probably be adequate in the role, but in the senior selling role he could excel. The boss didn’t have to persuade him to make the right choice – he himself elected to step up to the senior sales role. The boss was able to provide a focused development plan built around behaviours and competence that enabled the individual to fulfil their promise of excellent results and the whole process took 4 hours including feedback time.

So it seems in trying to improve your sales results you can either trust to a horoscope and hope approach, develop a full assessment centre or spend 2 ½ hours online with an assessment that is robust, objective, immediate and above all accessible by the sales person and the sales manager.

Shekhar Varma is a specialist in helping businesses improve their revenue by helping sales directors and HR professionals to assess a sales person or sales managers fit for a role and develop training, coaching or mentoring to fill the gap. For a free consultation call +441934843575 or email shekhar@sdvtraining.com

Over my years as a sales trainer I have worked with many companies trying to make the transition from selling products to selling solutions. However the truth is that training on its own is seldomn the key and recently I have been placeing an emphasis on assessment and diagnostics before proceeding to any kind of development work. Many sales people will simply not make the transition from product selling to solution selling and a good assessment tool will save a great deal of heart ache and frustration both for them and the company.

The tool you use should be role specific and it should measure behaviour and comfort with the new role. It should measure competence levels for the role which should be all benchmarked externally and objectively. Another key indicator to be assessed is how the individual is motivated. This is important to know because what motivates a product sales person is different from what motivates a solution seller. If a sales person is not motivated by personal growth how likely is it they will they respond to training and coaching? Finally you need to assess intellect or what I call headroom to change because if they don’t have the intellect then no amount of development is going to work.

One of my clients somewhat reluctantly agreed not to train but to do this assessment first. With a sales force of nine these were the results 

•  Three were ready to go into a solution selling role the next day but would need individual mentoring to polish specific competences
• Two were just not going to make it and were redeployed and replaced
• Four had potential and a development plan was created for them.

The company not only got a sales force that made the transition and who produced revenue faster but also saved a fortune in unfocused “solution selling training”.

A robust and rigorous assessment followed by a tailored development solution backed by systems and sales management is the only way to make this a successful transition.

Shekhar Varma is a specialist in helping companies improve their sales revenue through improved sales effectiveness. He works with some of the worlds leading companies and can be contacted at shekhar@sdvtraining.com or svarma@salesassessment.com

“If my sales people need training or coaching then they shouldn’t be working for me.” “All I need to know is the results my people produce they get it or they get out!”A short lived relationship with a newly appointed Sales Director for me and later for him and his top performers. It is certainly true that sales people need to be judged by the sales they make and many a sales person can talk a good shop without delivering the goods but to believe that their sales results tells you all you need to know about them is to miss opportunities to improve sales effectiveness and sales revenue. After all sales results are past and you cannot manage the past but you can expend a lot of energy trying.

When I have worked with newly appointed sales managers I have tried to get them to look at future potential and focus on some key elements that can help them invest in the right people and do the right things for them. There is quite a debate going on on Linked In at the moment asking “Where have all the great sales people gone?” the simple truth is that many of them are probably working for you already it just a question of knowing who and how to enable them to reach their potential.

The key elements that I get Sales mangers to focus on can be summed up as questions: Is the sales person comfortable with their sales role? Does the sales person have the skills to perform the role? are they motivated by the right things especially personal growth and finally often missed do they have the headroom to benefit from personal development?

It is easy to bluff your way through your comfort levels, listening for instance is a skill but first it is an attitude and therefore observable as a behaviour. Many a sales person will tell you how good they are at listening, how they like listening but their behaviour ie talk talk talk is a contrary indicator. You can develop the skill but you will get so much more sales gravy by tackling the attitude first. Skills should be bench-marked either against a stretched internal benchmark or preferable against an objective standard. Skill gaps can be trained or coached out but cannot always be plugged because if they lack the motivation for growth then you may be wasting your budget and if that is compounded by no headroom for growth you definitely are.

You do need to know your sales peoples sales results that is what pays for everything but if you want better and longer lasting sales results look deeper.

Shekhar Varma is a specialist in helping companies improve their sales revenue through improved sales effectiveness he works with some of the worlds leading companies and can be contacted at shekhar@sdvtraining.com or svarma@salesassessment.com

I once met the best sales person in the world, I knew this because he told me so as he exited the training course I was running. In fact he was responsible for bringing in the biggest single deal in his companies history and so I think he had some good reason for his belief. Importantly he did have a technique and methodology that he could repeat that would bring him success most times, occasionally he would drop the ball and lose a sale, it happens. The important thing was that he had a method. Any one that knows me or works with me will know that I have a passion for a robust sales process that delivers a consistent result time and again. The best sales person in the world had a robust sales process supported by an exceptional skill set and the right behaviours, lose or win he was able to ask two questions that kept him on top of his game - When did I win/lose the sale and what did I do to win/lose the sale? These questions can only really be answered if you have a robust sales process that is more than a list of steps. It needs to reflect how customers think and mirror the buying process, it needs to detail the skill, behaviour and knowledge required for successfull execution of each stage.

The best sales person in the world was best in his class or role if you took him out of selling software to large corporates he wasn’t so good until he was able to determine the sales process for that particular sector. So how you sell in one sector may be different for another sector (well that’s obvious isn’t it?) Yes and yet sales people, sales managers and sales trainers conspire to apply the same model with a tweak here or there to vastly different sectors. The company that the best sales person in the world worked for had used a competence based selection tool to test his skills before he joined which demonstrated that he would fit very well into thier sales process.

If you want to be the best sales person in the world consider the following:

1. Do you have a recent, validated sales process that works.

2. Have you tested your sales skills using an objective tool to measure your strengths and areas for improvement?

3. If you have been tested and have a list of real development needs val.idated against your results do you actively seek ways to develop your skills & behaviour?

There is one drawback to becoming the best sales person in the world and this is knowing what to develop and how but without going through a cycle of trial and error.

Shekhar Varma is a specialist in designing sales training and coaching that is specific to your needs. he can be contacted at shekhar@sdvtraining.com or svarma@salesassessment.com

I have been away for a while so unable to keep this blog up to date. I attended a briefing on what customers are not looking for when they go to a sales meeting and the clear favourite is not to have a canned sales pitch instead sales people need to frame their product around the customers business. This sounds like good advice until you you ask your self what does that mean and how do I do it and is it always the right thing to do? Lets tackle the last one first: if you are selling a commodity product in a transactional way then you need to minimise the amount of research you are going to do on a customer transactional selling of a low cost high volume product means you need to know what the customers business is and spend time qualifying the prospect. How much are they prepared to pay, what specific features will they need? 

If we  move up the ladder to a bigger slightly more complex sale then we need information that gives us a better understanding of our customers business. For instance yesterday I got a phone call from a woman selling a stand at a B2B conference where there would be lots of potential buyers. Lots of potential buyers was her main selling point however with a little bit of thought and research she would have known the kind of buyers that I want to meet, she would know that getting in front of customers is more difficult now than ever in other words she could have personalised her pitch and hence be more persuasive. Next week I have a high level sales meeting and I will prepare in the following way:

1. Check out company web site - see what it tells me about what they sell, read statements about the company and look for clues about their future plans, look for things that explain how they do business. Now look at the information that you have does it tell you what issues or problems they face that will prevent them reaching their goals, could these be needs or just problems they live with? Is there any kind of company language that comes across. Are there clues to a compelling event that is about to create change in the customers business? The purpose of all this is to ask better questions for instance another sales person phoned me who had looked at my website and had picked up that I travel overseas alot so her questions were about making my life easier with business travel products that her company sold. If you can understand what specific things are important to this customer in this industry you already have a head start.  Another source of information of this type is the annual report that nowadays is often available on line. I ran a course for sales people who had to sell to a senior decision maker and were getting appointments but were unable to advance the sale beyond an initial meeting largely due to talking too much and talking too much about their product but in fairness to them even a traditional listening approach wasn’t going to help at this level of sale they needed to talk about the customers business at the level of customer they were meeting. I pulled a couple of Annual accounts and was ble to show them the information that was hidden that would enable them to have better and meaningful conversations with senior executives.

2. Google the person that I am going to see and find out about them, possible likes, dislikes general background see if you have any contacts in common or interests or hobbies that could help establish rapport. Be careful you are trying to create rapport not make a friend for life, they may become your friend later but for now it is enough to establish some common ground.

3. Spend some time also looking at the market space they occuppy and consider what external compelling events are happening that could effect your customer. Turn these into probing questions that enable you to see how this customers business fits into the bigger picture whilst thinking about what questions or statements you can tailor around the customer that powerfully demonstrates your expertise in the application of your product/service to their business and their needs.

At some point you are going to have to make your pitch make sure that it is clear use short words that are easy to understand, use reference to existing clients(if confidentiality permits) talk benefits not features and weave in any specific elements that show you did your preparation.

I am going to start preparing now for a couple of big meetings next week I am going to blog in again soon and this time I am gpoign to write about how to construct a customer focused sales process. If you want to learn more about how I can help improve your companies sales performance please email me direct at shekhar@sdvtraining.com or for a faster response phone +44(0)1934843575

 I had been working with the medium sized sales force. I had been working with them for about 2 months and had mixed feelings about their abilities. I had originally been brought in to hone their skills as consultative sellers and develop them as account managers. The sales people responded well to the training which is not suprising as many of them far from being consultative sellers or account managers were transactional sellers without much clue how to sell a service/product that could be of strategic importance to the companies that might buy it. Amongst the sales people there was a feeling that it was the fault of marketing that sales were so low and the offer wasn’t that good and..and.. some of this might have been true but it got to be a catalogue of excuses I am not saying this to make anyone feel bad it is what happened. The company had appointed a new Sales Director very experienced, very intelligent he asked me to meet with him. I was expecting to give a report on the training but instead the Sales Director opened up to me and said that the sales peole were not what he had been told to expect, instead of the brilliant startegic sellers he had expected he had inherited a bunch of largely transactional sellers in hats too big for them. He felt handicapped and I guess a little vulnerable. He wanted to know my assessment & recommendations.  I am never comfortable giving an assessment from watching people on a training course because how people act in the field may be quite different good or bad. Training courses are not assessment centres I could though give a report back on attitude and behaviour. The Sales Director was very concerned about reaching targets for the rest of the year but had no real way of knowing who was good at what nor could he replace anyone easily or even be sure they were the right person to change. If you have ever been in this situation then you will understand the dilemma. 3 months later after much frustration there was whole sale slaughter in the Sales department. The sales director did this as fairly as he could but all the time thinking “I didn’t sign on to be a hatchet man.”

Now roll backwards wouldn’t it have been great if that sales director had an objective profile of the sales people that show’d their behaviour, attitude and motivation plus how skilled they were and then instead of measuring that against internal benchmarks you did that against world class top performers you would know before you got into post who should stay who should go and who should be  developed. You would of course want to validate that against actual figures but instead of being told by someone who knows little or nothing about sales people or selling that you have a fantastic team you know what they are warts and all. Imagine if you did you could really hit the ground running knowing that the decisions you make about sales people are the right decisions.

Let us take the ideas of testing a stage further many sales people could also gain by having an annual MOT benchmarked against world class performers so they can have real input into their own development and be able to answer performance questions like ” I get the meeting why can’t I quite get the sale?” imagine being able to go to another employer equipped with a robust report that has rigorously tested your abilities. Imagine a transactional seller being able to identify the skills and attitude shortfalls they have should they wish to progress to Consultative selling and then seek ways to fill the gap and grow their career.

Enough imagining the tool is here right now and it is called Fit-4 and I am an unashamed advocate for it: robust, rigorous,online easy to use and the results packed with practical, easy to understand information. This is the link to yesterdays true story Fit-4 is also a great tool for helping you to selct the right person for the right sales role and saving money time and heartache on the way.

SDV Training Ltd are specialists in helping companies improve their B2B sales. We do this by helping you select the right sales people for the right role, assessing existing sales people benchmarked against world class top performers and we design and deliver sales trainiing and coaching.

Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty!

So I am sitting at a network lunch and telling my table that I help companies improve their sales performance assisting you to select the right person in the first place to helping you assess the talent that you have and designing focused reveue generating training &/or coaching. The guy to my left immediately said that’s interesting because my company is now at a point where I am wanting to employ a full time sales person. We converse and he tells me he is going to use a recruitment agency that have previously supplied him with engineers. I ask him what is the cost of getting your recruitment wrong and he says over a 3 month trial period including the agency fee around £8000 but that is acceptable. Now here’s the thing he hadn’t calculated his time in making the decision nor the sales opportunities lost or the possible negative impact on existing customers. He had plans for growth and the wrong sales person could contribute enourmously to that growth or knock them back a few years. Selection is difficult but in sales it is crucial. There are 3 areas that you need to focus on: first does this person have the right attitude and motivation for my customers, do they have the experience that I need in this position and finally do they have the right skills at the right level for this post? The one that is probably easiest to gauge is experience but be careful to differentiate between 1 years experience repeated 15 times and 15 years experience growing & developing as a sales person.

The others: attitude, motivation and skills need objective measures linked to the type of sales and offer that you sell. With many small firms the owner managers have had no sales training and have little understanding of selling and even less of sales people. Selection often comes down to - do I like this person can I work with them - and this could be an expensive mistake.

Bigger firms often have a Sales Director &/or an HR person who can usually assess experience and attitude often with the help of a psychometric like MBTI however the fundamental flaw is that many pyschometrics are generic in nature or focus on an aspect of managing people, life skills or a personality profile that requires adaption & intepretation to be applied to a sales person, very few focus on selling and even fewer on selling skills specific to the selling role that needs filling. A trial period may show up gaps in skill but should you really practice on your customers?

Now back to my networking lunch and my neighbour who is not sure he wants to recruit a sales person now except that I tell him there is a way of making it easier, cheaper and more certain okay says he lets talk! After story 2 I tell you what we talked about.

Tomorrow comes the second story which is about a newly appointed sales director who inherited a top sales team or did he?

SDV Training are specialists in helping companies improve their B2B sales if you are faced with the need to select new sales people or make a robust assessment of your existing sales people then please call +44(0)1934843575 or email info@sdvtraining.com to arrange a free diagnostic meeting.