Here’s my tip for this week and it’s from some reading that I’ve been doing over the weekend.
Sales team can be effective if…
How do you make your sales force more effective?
In the video blog I mention a couple and here they are in more detail.
Systems.
Everyone in sales and in a team must have a systematic approach to running their sales organisation.
Therefore, that involves skill sets, making sure you’re doing a lot of training, understanding the processes and measuring your output.
We are all in this.
The sales manager has a critical role to play in his or her team, and even though it can be complex at times, it’s important that you understand your role in the organisation.
I believe it doesn’t matter what sort of business you are, the business as a whole makes sales more successful, not just the salesperson.
That’s an important one to remember.
Keeping customers is not enough.
Keeping customers is a basic requirement for a sales team.
I think we know that, as a sales organisation, but finding and winning new customers is your lifeblood.
Continually upskilling and training is paramount.
When it comes to you as a salesperson you have to keep looking for where you are strong, naturally, but also where you need some more help and updating new skills, etc.
If you’re a sales manager or business owner and you have a sales operation it’s important to create the right climate in the team, between you and the team everyone has to be comfortable about that.
You want to think about sharing any success your team may have with the group, or other people who are selling, go on visits with the team, and so on.
This is the time to stay ahead of all the challenges facing us as business owners and salespeople.
Have a great week.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
In these days of trying to stand out, here is an idea that might just get your proposal directly onto the decision maker’s desk.
What’s the next best thing to face-to-face?
Here’s my tip for this week and it’s about standing out with your clients.
I talk to a lot of my clients and a lot of their salespeople see a client, draft a proposal, and then they send it out by email.
And guess what?
They don’t have the opportunity to present face-to-face.
However, the more important thing is they don’t have the opportunity to stand out in front of the client.
Now I accept that sometimes a client will need some sort of proposal sent to them after you’ve made all the agreements, which tends to be the way that I operate.
To make that proposal stand out a little, here is an idea.
Envelopes that sell
Why don’t you use one of these?
Envelopes that are specially printed to look just like a priority courier pack.
Here’s a couple of examples.
Imagine taking your finished proposal and placing it in the envelope, then addressing it directly to your client.
What do you think’s going to happen?
Do you think if that landed on your desk, you would open it?
You bet you would, and that’s the secret!
That’s the way to get in front of people more effectively.
Standing out with an envelope that sells, is a much better option than a plain, boring, old white envelope.
Even worse an email.
And, that’s my tip for this week.
Have a great week and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Over the last few days I’ve just been working on my sales mindset blueprint program, which I’m releasing shortly.
I was writing about what motivates people when you’re negotiating.
What are some of the things that you need to take into account?
I’ve come up with around eight of them, but what I thought I’d do in this week’s tip is talk about one of them, which is attractiveness.
Why should you attract?
How do you attract clients to you in a world of push and pull?
Build an attraction strategy.
In my past life, which was most of my life at NRS Media, we used to do a lot of trade shows.
Literally attended hundreds and hundreds of them.
One year, we asked ourselves what could we do differently at a trade show?
We came up with the idea that we would attach a small sachet of paracetamol (sometimes called Panadol) pain relief for headaches to a brochure.
The headline read!
‘Look everybody has their share of headaches when it comes to selling a XXX (Our product) if you wanted to hook up with us in suite 645 give us a call and we’ll make an appointment.’
Pain Relief delivered in the dead of night.
The trick was how we delivered it.
We actually walked around the hotel floors after midnight and we put the actual item, which included the paracetamol, underneath the door of the attendees who were staying at the conference venue.
So naturally when you get up in the morning, you’ve been to a trade show, you might’ve been out and about, you open up your door and here’s something lying on the floor that’s actually an paracetamol and a nice little brochure that says, ‘Hey look come and join us and learn about our product’
It worked a treat, and it goes to show that you can attract clients if you think it through and add some creative to it.
It is a really important element when you’re trying to motivate and attract clients.
So, that’s my tip for this week. Have a good one and I’ll talk to you again soon.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
Control the presentation and the client, not the other way round.
The message in my video this week is simple.
You have to create the right selling environment to be even more successful in sales.
Creating the right space will give you control.
There’s nothing worse than when you go and see a client, present your product or service, and then all of a sudden you’re in their environment, and its chaos.
They are distracted, they’re looking at things, they’re looking at their phone if it vibrates, and then the phone rings and then someone comes in and says,
“Oh, excuse me for a moment.”
You’ve lost the client right there.
Why?
Because you do not have any control over the sales process.
How do you change that?
If you’re presenting a product or service that you want to have control of, you’ve got to create your own environment.
No distractions, just us, and the clients.
I’ll give you an example. My old company, NRS Media, sold millions and millions of advertising revenue using a seminar-based process.
Our clients would be invited to a seminar at a hotel.
At that hotel, everything was set up for the event where we presented our advertising product using our unique “One too many sales system”
It was in three parts:
Education
Offer
Close
Our numbers were an amazing 30-60 % closing rate.
All because we were in control of the process.
All decided by us, when and what was said, and paced to bring the client along to a natural “Yes” or “No” option.
So, as you think about your own products, how can you control the environment?
I’d love to hear some of your comments or some things that you do.
That’s my tip for this week, and I look forward to catching up with you again soon.
Have a great week.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
As the year unfolds it might be useful to think about creating some new habits and rituals for your salespeople.
I find that most of us like rules, that being, rules that support us to get the job done.
I know from experience that sales meetings can be some of the most time consuming, and boring aspects to sales.
Rant And Rave
Every week all over the world salespeople are subjected to a rant and rave from a sales manager who runs a meeting with no direction, a meeting with no agenda, no concept of time and usually run by members of the “we know it all brigade.
I think one of the weaknesses of a lot of sales meeting besides agenda and strict time limits are agreements
Agreements Work
Everywhere I go and present I like to set up some agreement, some guidelines on how I run my event, team talk or presentation.
If it is with a bunch of salespeople I usually use this process and do it at the beginning of every meeting.
Some groups Agreements
Participate 100%
Be on time
No such thing as a stupid question
Have fun!
No missiles / no mobile phones!
Try them out for your next meeting.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
This week on LinkedIn one of my popular posts was about what I thought was the DNA or traits of a salesperson.
I covered three:
Must have a stable personality
Must have goal-setting ability
Must have independence
In this blog, I wanted to reach out to the rookies that are just starting and give them some heads up on a few ways to build success in your sales career.
Building Success Habits.
Everyone knows that when you begin a career in sales, you will probably be required to do a few things to be effective.
My advice first week:
Learn the product (90%)
Develop relationships with your key managers
Working with others that have BEARING on your success. IT, tech guys etc
Understanding your market and the needs of your customer
I read recently only 1% of salespeople who start in the profession self-learn. They rely on the company to provide that service. That’s not good.
Commitment to Growth.
Any salesperson I hire for my clients usually go through a sales assessment programme. We measure lots of things and then we report back to them in a 15 page report, tips on how to help them succeed.
Here are some tips that you can use right now:
Make a personal commitment to be successful
Set yourself high standards and create activity
Set daily and weekly goals for yourself
Plan- If you do not have a plan, stay in the car
Sit with your mentor or team manager weekly and review your results.
Outwork the competition
Learn to Listen.
Listen to hear, not to reply. Listening is one of the hardest things that you can master in the sales process.
If you learn to listen, you can deal with any client, even the more challenging ones.
If you listen to a client without even thinking about selling your product, the relationship with that person will develop faster.
Salespeople who listen become very effective, very quickly, for the simple reason that the client knows that they are being listened to.
Call Reluctance.
Prospecting and rejection are part of selling. Just know that every call is a chance to learn.
Look at your calling and prospecting as a chance to try out approaches, let people know that you are the new guy.
People like that, especially if you are introducing yourself to your existing customers.
Study your product at every opportunity. Product knowledge is the key to overcoming call reluctance.
These tips are just a few things to get you started.
Being new to this profession is fun, embrace it.
One final tip – you won’t have picked up the bad habits of the older veterans that you may be sitting beside right now, watch out and look for positive members of the team that can help you, not hinder you.
Check out my LinkedIn page and Youtube for heaps of free stuff.
Whatever career you decide to take in sales, it’s always good to get some help.
Mike Brunel started mikebrunel.com after being a successful entrepreneur and founder of NRS Media. He co-founded NRS Media in Wellington, New Zealand, expanded it into a global powerhouse in media sales and training, and was eventually responsible for opening offices in London, Atlanta, Toronto, Sydney, Capetown, and Bogota. He has hired hundreds of salespeople around the world.
He made a lot of mistakes when it came to hiring his superstars. Check out his How to Hire A Super Salesperson Each and Every time – It’s packed with tips and ideas on how to hire great salespeople. Don’t ever Hire Bad Salespeople Ever Again. Promise!
