Business to Business Sales Advice (Part 2)

Because at the end of the day, it's the individual (Or the team) with the best overall stats that wins.

#3
You should be able to apply "Timely Training" and "Powerful Routines" around each core competency.

We all know what sales training is. But do we understand why sales training fails?

And to understand this...it becomes important to understand what I mean when I use the term..."Timely Training."

Timely Training means you have in place appropriate structures for learning and application. You have to be able to define useful short-term goals, long term objectives and performance benchmarks, but also measure each participant's progress. Have participants work closely with qualified trainers for proper follow-up and support.
But most importantly..."Timely Training" should be focused on only one key sales competency at a time.

That means you never move on to your next training objective (In-line sales competency) until your intended 'benchmark' performance metric is realized.

"Powerful Routines" are Best Practices internal to each Core Competency that result in the highest ratio of success. It's a technique or communication process that through experience has proven to get the best result parallel to a particular sales scenario.

As an example, when a prospect says "Just send me some information" we identify that communication as an objection. 95% of the time it's a polite way of getting rid of us. Deep down inside we know what happens to the information. It goes in the 'circular file'. Bottom line, it keeps both the Post Office and the office Janitor busy. One delivers these 'information requests' and the other one throws them out.

What's your current 'Powerful Routine' to effectively communicate to a third solution, because none of us want to be in the 'Postal' Business.

Key Learning Point:
There are only so many scenarios in any sales process. If you isolate them, train to each one of them with Powerful Routines and then measure the outcome, you are on your way to success.

Take for example setting 'Top-down' business appointments. We've already decided it would be a benefit to our sales success if we could reduce the time it took to achieve the necessary number of 'Top-down' appointments.
In building an effective learning system to improve your Conversation-to-appointment ratio from the national average of 4-18%, you must first understand why that competency ratio is only 4-18%.

With that in mind, here's what I know to be true:

1. We don't seek to first (Before we pick up the telephone) understand the Prospect's internal business objectives parallel to our solutions offering, then model our appointment approach around it
2. We settle for a business level of contact that has no direct fiscal authority
3. We sell our 'product/service' instead of selling the diagnostic steps in our 'Evaluation' Process
4. We fail to develop an effective Call to Action; strategic words and phrases that create a positive 'visual' reference to the Prospect of what happens during the initial appointment and how long it takes
5. We don't support our 'Call to Action' with 3rd party valuators parallel to the Prospects business objectives; valuators like business statistics, appointment performance ratios, ROI figures and relevant success stories
6. We fail to visually 'take the risk out' in case they find that we are wasting their time once we're in the door

These (6) 'Here's What I Know to be True' factors are where you should begin your sales prospecting and sales performance improvement journey, because the definition of insanity is doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

In Part 3 of 'How to Double Your Sales Appointments in Half the Time', we will take an in depth look at these 6 failure factors and flip them 180% into individual powerful routines to effectively set more 'Top-down' business appointments in less time.

Read about alfalfa leaf and blueberry leaf at the Types Of Leaves website.