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The Get Dangerous Quickly Approach to Product/Service Training
In 2000 a computer distributor hired me to help them build a software specialist sales team. The distributor had more than 100 "generalist" salespeople, but these salespeople were doing a poor job of selling software. The distributor's management felt a team of specialists could help jump-start growth in software sales. This was a very interesting project for several reasons. First, the distributor had sixteen software products in its portfolio. Second, they could not afford to hire experienced software salespeople. Instead, we needed to hire good consultative salespeople and train them to sell all sixteen software products. We also needed to write a business plan, get a budget approved, hire six salespeople, train them to sell sixteen software products, and have them working in the field?within 90 days. Sound impossible? It sure seemed that way at first glance; but, when I talked to the various software manufacturers, I came to an important realization. All of the software manufacturers were almost desperately eager for incremental opportunities. If the new software salespeople could identify qualified opportunities, the software manufacturers would be delighted to provide product experts to help turn the opportunities into sales. So, all the new software salespeople really needed to learn was how to find and qualify opportunities. I knew there was no way we could make our new salespeople experts in sixteen software products in any reasonable time frame. But, we could make them experts in the business problems that the software products addressed. And, we could provide them with tools they could use as "cheat sheets" in the field to determine whether prospects had those specific business problems, and if they did, to quantify the impact of the business problems. There was just one challenge. The software manufacturers' marketing departments were all accustomed to delivering very detailed, technical training. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get them to understand the kind of abbreviated, targeted training that I wanted my salespeople to receive. I even roughed out a sample training tool (the very first "get dangerous quickly" document) and sent it to each software manufacturer. Despite repeated conversations and lots of good-faith efforts, they just never "got it". So, I developed my team's training tools and conducted most of the training myself. What were the results? The six software salespeople helped the distributor's existing 100 salespeople double software sales during their first six months on the job! Unfortunately, the "dot com bust" hit shortly thereafter, and the software specialist team fell victim to deep headcount cuts. This project taught me a very important lesson: salespeople don't need to be experts in specific products or services to sell them successfully. They do need to be experts in the business problems that the products or services can solve, as well as how to find and qualify opportunities, and how to leverage expert resources. If you want to produce rapid sales results, redesign your product/service training curriculums to help your salespeople "get dangerous quickly". You'll be glad you did! Copyright 2005 -- Alan Rigg Sales performance expert Alan Rigg is the author of How to Beat the 80/20 Rule in Selling: Why Most Salespeople Don't Perform and What to Do About It. To learn more about his book and sign up for more FREE sales and sales management tips, visit http://www.8020performance.com.
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Careers and Employment Five Steps to Maximize Success in Targeting For Growth Targeting is the process of selecting high potential customer accounts to receive intense sales focus. Goal setting translates that high potential into achievable numeric objectives, i.e. revenue and margin growth. The ACCOUNTABILITY Challenge for Today's Business Management In today's 24/7 driven business word, accountability is becoming a more critical issue for every business owner, manager, executive and salesperson. The challenge is to realize that accountability is just not a single issue, but an issue with many supporting elements. To maintain and thrive as an accountable individual first requires overcoming the fear to embrace these elements and then a plan of Action to ensure that YOU are an accountable individual. 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You know the type-on a human relations continuum or scale of zero to ten, with the ten representing a candidate who is totally gregarious and outgoing and the zero, someone who is introverted with few people skills, I'd always recruit the ten. As an advisor to businesses and professional service firms on how to build an effective sales team, I would also council my clients to hire "tens." Big mistake! Determining Sales Fit; the Key Growth Process for Your Business Help your organization grow by assessing the right indicators in individuals slated for revenue-generating positions within your company. "Growth Talent", such as sales, account executive, consultant, sales engineer, or other individuals responsible for top-line revenue growth. The SalesFit processes addresses the individual uniqueness of your organization and the candidate. The power of the methodology is its ability to ensure an objective understanding of where the candidate is a good fit within your company. A Real CRM Strategy or Just Tracking Customers? Exactly what is CRM 3 Ways to Increase Your Sales Last week I got a call from Jose, who was looking for help improving his ads. He'd been running the same ad in four local papers for two months and only gotten one response. He was understandably frustrated. With more than a dozen very satisfied clients, he knows that the residential property management services he and his brother provide should interest more people, but he wasn't having any success getting attention or generating leads. How Exhibitors Can Move More Attendees Closer to Buying Q. What's the single, biggest change exhibitors can make to move more prospects closer to a buying? Why Performance-Based Recruiting Produces Top Sales Performers Many recruiting ads and job descriptions include "knockout factors" that can actually screen out qualified sales candidates. One example is a requirement that candidates have an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, or a degree in a specialized field of study such as Engineering. Another example is a requirement that candidates have a minimum number of years of sales experience. Commodity Sales Prospecting - How to Stand Out From Your Competitors I have received a number of requests for advice from salespeople and sales managers that sell "commodity" products and services. When I refer to commodities, I don't just mean pork bellies or frozen concentrated orange juice. A commodity is any product or service where the target prospect is likely to be thinking: 6 Steps to Avoid Losing Summer Sales It's a fact - the online world dies down in the summer time. Kids are out of school, families are on vacation, there's fairs to attend to, and many are just spending too much time outside to be online. For those that market mostly online, the summer months could be eating your profit. The good news is, it's easy to take your product to where your market is - offline. The Hardest Job Of A Trade Show You've heard this before: There were four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. The Differences Between A Commercial Collections Agency & Lawyer If your letter writing and phone calls have all failed to resolve a debt issue, it is time to call in a professional - a commercial collection agency or a lawyer specializing in commercial debt collection. Energize Your Organization No matter what you do, it seems, your employees do only what's absolutely necessary to get along. You've handed out raises across the board year after year. You've been as generous as you can be with various incentives. Now you are at wits end. You ask in frustration, "What will it take to motivate my employees?" Disclosure Laws Favor International Terrorists The Federal Trade Commission has rule that are supposedly in place to protect franchise buyers from fraud from franchisors who might attempt to mislead them into purchasing a franchise. Part of the franchise rules are addressing required disclosure paperwork. In this disclosure document, which is required to be given to franchisees 10 days before any purchase is made are the names, addresses, phone numbers of all franchisees in the system. For smaller home based franchises this means home numbers, addresses and personal information. The Four ?D?s of Sales Management Recently I stumbled across some notes that I had kept from a project I had been involved in which involved looking at manager behaviours. The aim of this project was to identify "preferred behaviours" in sales managers when they were working closely with their sales representatives. The outputs were interesting and helped my colleagues identify four main types of sales managers and the differences between effective and ineffective behaviours. Baditude! As a group of sales trainees took a break from our workshop on selling, the distress they were feeling, was clearly manifest in their intense discussions. It was obvious from their unrestrained conversations that the software being installed to track their sales performance was the reason for their anxiety. It was also evident from their negative comments, that many of these trainees had already given up on selling their company's services and that no amount of sales training could help them sell their firm's services. Our client, a large midwestern service firm, was willing to pay generous incentives for their customer service staff to up sell additional services. Yet, most participants in this training session felt, for a variety of reasons, that obtaining additional sales was impossible. Drop Discounts and Earn Top Dollar Every dollar you discount is a dollar of pure profit you are giving away. Therefore, your efforts to remove discounts will be richly rewarded.
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