Archive for the ‘Sales Management’ Category

Why Salesforce Training is for the Dogs

04/07/13 by Mark Christie | Sales Management, Sales Training | No Comments »

Recently we got a puppy. He was a Christmas gift for the kids. He’s a cute golden lab, and they named him Jasper. As dogs go, he’s quite well behaved, especially for a 5 month old animal, and he’s loved by all of us, although I have noticed more and more often that I seem to be the only one taking him for his walks. So how does this all relate to Salesforce Training? (Yes, there’s a lesson in everything it seems, if you look for it).

Well, we decided that it would be a good idea to take him to puppy training, and so we signed up at one of those Pet Store group classes. Sort of the same idea as a public Salesforce training workshop – zero customization to your environment/dog, very general training, and lots of time spent watching others ask questions that aren’t necessarily relevant to your situation – still useful, but you need to take from it what is important to you and then apply it after. But that’s not the lesson of this post. (Although it reminds me exactly why we abandoned public workshops many years ago).

Lessons from the Pet Store

On the first day, the trainer stated – “How many of you think I’m here to train your dog?” Only a few hands went up, as even if you didn’t know the real answer, it was pretty clear from the way he addressed us, with his very regular hint of sarcasm, that he was indeed, not about to train our dogs. Of course, the right answer, as he reminded us more than once that day, was that he was really about to train us – the dog owners. The actual job of training the dog will be left up to us, but first we needed to learn how to do it.

And that’s where the analogy comes in. Many companies ask us in to speak to them about our training programs, and how we might go about providing Salesforce training to their sales people. And in most cases, the belief is that when we show up on training day, we will run an interactive training workshop, with lots of back and forth dialogue, break into workgroups to solve problems, and practice with some role playing. No question, our Salesforce training workshops are chock full of that stuff – whether it’s a skills training session on cold calling, questioning, sales meeting structure, or whether it’s a workshop directly focused on instruction on Salesforce.com.

But that’s not really the “training” part. In fact, we could argue, that our job is not really to train your sales people at all. Like our dog trainer, our job is really to train you to train your sales people. And by “you”, in the vast majority of cases, we mean your sales managers. The sales manager is truly the focal point of our programs. They need to learn and understand how training and coaching work, in order that they can continue to practice of training reinforcement on the workshop lessons, long after we’ve left your building.

Salesforce Training is Not an Event

You see, we are firm believers in the tenant – “Salesforce training is not an event – it’s a process”. No one, even your smart, university educated, social media savvy sales reps, can be trained in a day. Selling is sophisticated. Moreso than ever before. Successfully finding prospects, communicating value propositions, uncovering needs, handling objections, and closing deals – in this web crazed world with information floating around everywhere – is not easy.

Think about it. Would you want to fly in an airplane with a pilot had taken a one-day workshop on the dynamics of flight? Would you go visit a doctor for a problem knowing that he had exactly one day of training? Would you trust a lawyer that had only attended a one-day seminar on law? So why would you want to unleash your sales team on the world, with a one-day training program under their belt?

A Long-Range Plan for Salesforce Training

Our approach to Salesforce training is far more robust. Our aim is to develop a long-range training program for you – one that your company runs. We start with executive level discussions about your organization’s vision. Specifically we are out to discover the nature of the business problem. It might be as simple as “We need more sales.” But by diving further into that equation, we want to know more about the real meaning of “more sales”. More sales from what segment? From which reps? More deals or bigger deals? New sales or repeat or add-on sales? Then once the problem has been more clearly defined, we need to determine the desired actions that are likely to lead to those results, as well as how we’re going to measure our progress. Using a modern day CRM program like Salesforce.com is not a “nice to have”, it’s a “must have”.

From there, we venture out into the field, and into the cubicles, and we watch, we ask and we listen. And we learn. What are your reps doing? What are they not doing? How often are they doing it? And what are your customers telling you? We compare this “current” state of activity and behavior to the “desired” state of activity and behavior that we want to achieve, and only then, we can design a strategy and a subsequent Salesforce training program.

Then we zero in on the sales managers. And that’s where we spend much of our time. What we’re really doing is designing a Salesforce training program that belongs to them. Our job is to train them to train your sales force. Sure, we still run the actual workshops – our trainers are highly skilled in facilitating adult learning. But once we’ve left, the real work begins. Your sales managers will be trained and then tasked with ensuring that the workshop lessons are reinforced on a daily basis, with proper coaching techniques, and daily measurements to monitor individual progress and make adjustments when necessary. Now that’s real Salesforce training!

Like our puppy Jasper, he was not a well-trained dog after one Saturday session at the pet store. But with our constant reinforcement of the lessons we learned in those sessions – along with lots of bags of liver flavored doggy treats, we’re getting there. It’s definitely a process, certainly not an event.

SalesForce Training & Consulting is a professional coaching and training firm that specializes in helping companies navigate their way in a Salesforce.com environment. SalesForce Training is based in Toronto, with trainers in Boston and Chicago, providing sales coaching, sales management consulting, Salesforce.com training and Salesforce.com Admin support, sales training and sales personnel assessments.

A Salesforce Training Guide to Selecting the Right Reports and Dashboards

03/23/13 by Mark Christie | Sales Help, Salesforce.com Training | No Comments »

Almost any Salesforce training implementation will be replacing some other system, no matter how crude. We’ve seen Salesforce replace an equally sophisticated CRM program like Sieble, it could be replacing a more antiquated program like ACT or Sugar, or it could be replacing something as basic as Outlook and Excel, or even more basic like a stack of index cards (don’t laugh…we’ve seen that more than once!) In any event, Salesforce will be replacing what you do today.

You need to start the Salesforce training process by first identifying what information is currently being reported on and visible across all levels of the organization. What you’ll find, more than likely, is that there will be some manner in which the sales team reports and views information on

Prospects (called Leads in Salesforce)
Customers (Accounts)
Activities of reps (Tasks)
Sales pipelines and forecasts (Opportunities)
Booked revenue (Closed Opportunities)

When determining what the reporting will look like in Salesforce.com, the best place in the company to start is by going to the top ranking individual that utilizes this data – either of the entire organization when the company is small to mid-sized (i.e. the CEO or owner), or just the top of the sales division when the company is larger (i.e. the VP Sales). What we want to know is what is the one, critical report he or she needs to do their job, and the four, five or six critical pieces of data that individual needs (whether or not they are already part of the existing system) to make key decisions. Here are some examples of the things we want to learn;

How often do you look at the information?
Why do you look there, and what are you trying to measure or control?
Which decisions do you make on the basis of the data – what actions do you take?
How do these data affect the things that you are measured on?
Which incentives are in place for the people below you to “do well” according to the data?
If you question the data, how would you validate that information? What would you compare it to?

After completing these findings with the head of sales, repeat the procedure with their counterparts who also have access to, and a vested interest in, Salesforce.com data – the head of marketing, client service, the CFO, and perhaps the CEO (depending again on the size of the firm).

Finally, we want to identify the 5 to 10 system users who will be looking at and interacting with Salesforce.com data most intently on a daily basis. These people may be near the bottom of the organizational ladder, but they are definitely front and center when it comes to lead generation, customer capture and transactional truth.

From these surveys, the Salesforce training team should have enough data to determine a list of the various reports, dashboards and views that will ultimately be needed.

Measuring the Health of Your Business with Salesforce.com KPIs

03/18/13 by David Taber, from Salesforce.com: Secrets of Success | Sales Help, Using Salesforce.com | No Comments »

In a system with as much data and reporting as Salesforce.com, its easy to ask for things and get nice looking dashboards. Unfortunately, you could ask for lots of meaningless data on this dashboard, and your sales team aren’t likely to say no to your requests (demands?), right?

For instance, its easy to ask for the number of leads each week. But leads are like Web site traffic — they are better indicators of visibility and vague interest than they are of a solid pipeline. Further, activity management indicators (such as “number of dials” or “customer support call volume”) are very easy to fudge and the numbers won’t really mean much.

Here are the best indicators of business health, particularly when compared over time:

Marketing

Number of fully qualified or converted leads
Number of converted leads accepted by sales
Percentage of leads converted
Percentage of free trials that converted
Percentage of non-responsive or stale leads

Sales

Percentage of reps logging in on a weekly basis
Number of sales cycles started
Number of quotes issued
Average time in stage (or, alternatively, number of stalled deals)
Percentage of wins, losses and no-decisions
Number of new customers
Average deal size, for new customers vs repeat customers
Percentage of repeat business
Percentage renewals/retained customers

Pipeline

Forecast sales vs quarterly goal
Actual bookings vs weekly expected achievement
Percentage of opportunities “moving backward” (decreasing in size or probability, or moving out in time)
Number and dollar value of disappearing (deals dropping out of the quarter, plus losses)
Forecast accuracy
Number and value of unforecasted deals

Customer Support

Number of new problems identified
Number of problems solved
Customer perceived “time to resolve”
percentage of satisfied customers
Number of highly dissatisfied customers

Customer Base

Cost of customer acquisition
Percentage of revenue coming from repeat business
Percentage of customer base that’s still active/current
Customer lifetime revenue
Customer lifetime profitability
Customer loyalty

Before you ask the reps to enter any more data into Salesforce (which they’ll view as an intrusion), figure out what you would do differently if you already had the report in front of you. Which decisions would you actually make differently? If you’re just curious or not sure what you’d do differently, don’t ask the reps to enter anything new.

Remember, don’t get too fancy with the Salesforce.com analytics too early. They scare the employees, and besides, half the time the data aren’t any good early during the system implementation process. Gradually add a new report, dashboard or analytic every six weeks or so.

Salesforce Training Alone is Not Enough

03/15/13 by Mark Christie | Sales Help, Salesforce.com Training | No Comments »

Salesforce Training – Like Building a Deck

Salesforce is a tool. A very useful and effective tool at that, but still, it is just an instrument. For Salesforce training to be truly effective, it must be designed in conjunction with an overall sales management process. So what does that mean exactly?

Let’s take an analogy. We all know what a hammer does. It’s a pretty basic tool, one that we’re all familiar with. And for a carpenter, an essential component of his or her tool belt. But, just because someone was trained on the effective use of a hammer that would not mean that they would then automatically know how to build a deck for instance. No, in order to build a proper deck they would need an understanding of basic deck structure, how to put all of the boards together in a formal step-by step process, as well as being familiar with other tools required for the job, for instance a compound saw, a box of nails, a drill, bits and appropriate sized bolts, a tape measure and a carpenter’s square. So, as you can see, while a hammer is a critical tool in the overall construction of a deck, on its own it is not nearly good enough.

Sales Team Structure

Let’s broaden the analogy to see how the different elements of deck building can be applied to how a sales team operates. The understanding of basic deck structure would be akin to understanding the basics of how a properly organized sales and marketing department should work, and how sales management, inside sales reps, field reps, major account reps, and customer service reps should be positioned.

Sales Process

The formal step-by-step process of building a deck is akin to the step-by-step process of your sales process – attracting new prospects with a defined marketing message and then maximizing deal flow through a sales pipeline and ensure each and every interaction with prospects and clients is designed to add value and bring them closer to a completed sale. The steps will entail an initial approach and attempt to generate a discovery call (by phone or in person depending on how your company sells), a meeting with the prospect to uncover their needs, eventually a presentation and a proposal, and perhaps after overcoming the prospect’s objections, a formalized close.

Salesforce Training Tools

The tools that a carpenter would use – a hammer, compound saw, drill, etc. would be analogous to the sales tools that a properly trained and equipped sales person would use every day. The hammer, as we decided, is our Salesforce.com tool. But just like the carpenter, the sales rep needs more than that. The well prepared sales person uses a combination of tools to maximize sales effectiveness. They would ideally be equipped and prepared to use their UVP (Unique Value Proposition), PAINDOC (a meeting structure and planning tool), COWMAN (a prospect/client discovery tool to uncover needs), IMRSN (a tool to help sales reps with more effective listening) and PEPC (an Objection Handling process to counter the most commonly encountered objections and put-offs).

At SalesForce Training, we work with sales teams to ensure that they have all the tools they need for the job, not just Salesforce.com. A robust Salesforce training program incorporates all of the elements of successful selling. Our aim is to ensure that your sales team knows how to build a great looking deck, not just swing a mean hammer.

Calculating the Cost of a Sales Call

03/05/13 by Mark Christie | Sales Management | No Comments »

Do you know the cost of a typical sales call in terms of real dollars and cents? More importantly, do your salespeople know the cost of a sales call?

I suspect that if salespeople realized the real cost of making a sales call they might be more careful about how they spend their time and who they spend it with. I mean it just doesn’t make sense to make a $250 sales call to sell a $100 item does it? Yet, that’s the kind of thing that’s going on day after day. In fact a lot of people are making $250 sales calls and not selling a thing!

Is It Happening to You?

It’s fairly easy to figure out what a typical sales call is costing you if you keep reasonable sales records.

You simply calculate the salesperson’s costs by totaling his or her compensation, benefits, and travel-and-entertainment expenses and divide that amount by the number of sales calls he or she made over the past month, quarter, or year. While the costs are usually easy to find out, the one piece of information that may be missing is the actual number of calls your salespeople are making. You may need to have your people turn in their numbers every day or week until you’ve got enough to work with. You’re looking for the total number of face-to-face calls your people made, not just “sales calls.” If all else fails, you may have to make an educated guess at this number.

What Should the Numbers Be?

The numbers will depend on the type of selling your people do. Basically, the four types of selling are:

transactional/commodity selling
basic feature/benefit selling
solution selling
value-based selling

On average, a typical sales call is costing around $225-$250.

If you’re primarily doing transactional (commodity) selling where simply completing the paperwork is the major part of the transaction, then your cost of sales should probably be about $80-$85. This is a type of “selling” where there is usually more buying going on then there is selling.

If you’re doing feature/benefit selling where price and features are equally important–the type of selling that involves matching your product/service’s benefits to the prospect’s needs–then your cost of selling will most likely be around $155-$160 per sales call. That’s a sizeable jump over the cost of a commodity sale.

Then we have what is called solution selling. While it could be argued that all selling is solution selling, what we mean here is the type of selling where the product is tailored to the customer and price is secondary. Costs here are about $225-$250 per sales call.

The last category is value-based/team selling. While similar to solution selling, value-based selling is where the solution is the key factor and price is much less important. Here your costs are likely to run between $275-$300 per sales call.

If your numbers are in the ballpark, don’t worry too much, but if your numbers are out of whack, it might be wise to take some corrective measures, especially if your costs are too high.

What Are You Paying For?

You certainly don’t want to be paying $230 for someone to go around making social calls, comfort calls, or delivering literature. You want to be sure your people are making calls with a purpose and hopefully that purpose is to start, advance, or close a sales opportunity. That’s what they’re getting paid to do.

Of course, all the calls in the world aren’t worth dust unless sales are being made. You need to balance the cost of a sales call against sales results. If sales are roaring in, you can be less concerned about your cost of a sales call but don’t get complacent. Keep your financial finger on the pulse of your sales team.

Tell the Troops

Once you’ve gone through this exercise, I recommend that you let your salespeople know what it’s costing you to have them make calls. I’m not suggesting you do this to intimidate them. Don’t use the information as a club, use it as a tool. The primary purpose for telling them is to create awareness among the team that their time and effort has a dollar value associated with it.

The average salesperson might find the numbers interesting but won’t know what to do about it. Those at the bottom of the sales food chain won’t give a damn. But the smart ones will think twice before making a call without setting a call objective.

The smart ones will make every call count and that’s what you’re looking for.

Now your challenge is to hire and/or develop a bunch of smart ones!

Hiring a Salesforce Training Consultant vs Hiring an SFDC Administrator

03/04/13 by Mark Christie | Sales Help, Salesforce.com Training | No Comments »

As a Salesforce Training & Consulting firm, we believe that the right answer lies with a bit of both – ensure that you have someone on the inside as well as a consultant. Part of the goal is to get your consultant to transfer knowledge to your own person. Now, this person may not necessarily have to be a full time administrator, depending on the number of users you have working with you. The general rule of thumb seems to be that for every 50 licences you have, you should have one full time Admin. So, if you extrapolate, a team of 20, say, only needs an Admin 40% of the time. Your in-house person should be able to do basic set-ups, customize fields, and create and run dashboards and reports for managers as needed.

One of the major benefits is that a consultant has done an implementation many times over and knows what they’re doing. In the end, this saves you time (and therefore, should save you money). An in-house administrator would have to learn how to implement Salesforce and will likely make some mistakes along the way.

Salesforce Training Consultants should have a broader experience of organizations, implementations, apps, SalesForce versions, and neat tricks used elsewhere. But before you decide to hire one, they should be 100% focussed on your project and work quickly because of their experience and knowledge. They should also consider the future when designing for today.

Your internal people know your processes and nuances but usually don’t have the exposure to SalesForce that might be beneficial. Internal people also usually have more pulls on their time and might not be 100% focussed and dedicated on the project. Selecting the internal candidate(s) is crucial – the wrong person without the overview of your processes and operations may inadequately brief your consultant. Keep management abreast of the entire project.

Getting Started with Salesforce Training

Make sure you brief your consultants well and get regular status reports. If they are poorly briefed, you might not get what you need and want. Also, make sure you get very detailed documentation from the consultant. And finally the end of your technical project is NOT the end – it’s the beginning. These things develop and evolve. Make sure a consultant will be there for you in the future, to support the internal resource that you have appointed.

We have worked with a number of clients, in which we have been the second firm that they have used. Our experience has been that Salesforce Training consultants usually do an OK job at implementing what you say you need or want. When you don’t have in-house expertise on the software, you’ll most benefit from a consultant who will not just take your order, but also guide you and sometimes challenge you in implementing a solution that not only meets your requirements but also sets you up for success down the road. The other thing to keep in mind, is that when Salesforce Training consultants roll off, it’ll be you and your team owning the product, so if it is at all possible, you’ll want some overlap between your system admin / developer and the consulting group.

Fixing Mistakes

The challenge comes when the Salesforce Training consultant doesn’t take the time to either fully understand the company’s business processes, or doesn’t ask the right questions up front to help you explain your processes well.
When we arrive on the scene after an initial outsourced Salesforce implementation does not go as well as planned, we often see holes in the implementation that stemmed from the client’s lack of knowledge and experience with Salesforce and the consultant’s lack of knowledge of their company. As a result, we do spend a significant amount time (and some $) reconfiguring the system.

I would make sure that whatever you do, plan for overlap. If you hire an admin or developer, make sure they spend sufficient time learning the company before the Salesforce implementation. If you hire a consultant, make sure they supply sufficient time after the implementation for the tweaks (big and little) that are necessary once you figure out what you really need.

What to Look for when Hiring

Regardless of whether or not you hire outside Salesforce Training help on contract basis, or go with your own internal admin, ensure that they have considerable sales (or marketing) experience. We have worked with many clients that have used external resources, only to have their sales people complain that they were too IT focused, and didn’t really ‘get’ the traditional role of the sales people. The best consultants are ones that have actually managed sales teams before, and hence, truly understand what it is that the sales people do all day long, as well as understand what a proper CRM system needs to do to support sales managers.

Commission Only Salespeople – Winners or Losers?

10/18/12 by Brian Jeffrey | Sales Help, Sales Management | No Comments »

The question of whether or not to hire commission only salespeople is one that often comes up for many sales managers and it’s a good question.

Mind you, some sales managers feel that some of their full-time salespeople should already be on commission only, but that’s a problem and a blog for another time!

Commission Only is an Attractive Proposition

The lure of hiring 100% commissioned salespeople is strong. After all, as commission only salespeople, they’re mostly out of your hair (if, as a sales manager, you have any hair left). And being on commission means they won’t cost you anything if they don’t make any sales.

But wait. The idea of having salespeople, part-time or otherwise, is to get sales isn’t it? It’s not to hire a bunch of sales gypsies who wander from place to place trying to find the occasional sale. Of course these people get a sale now and then but, remember, even a blind squirrel will find the occasional nut! Selling shouldn’t be more chance or luck than skill.

What you want are people out in the field beating the bushes for opportunities that they can turn into closed sales. Can part-timers / commission only reps do that? They can, but they rarely do. Why? Because they work part-time. Let me explain.

Three Reasons Commission Only Reps May Not Work Out

First off, while there are many reasons for taking a commission only sales job, not needing the income from a full-time one is high on the list. Another reason is not really needing a job but wanting to be semi-employed. Put another way, these are people who want to be employed but who don’t want to work. You may already have a few of those people now!

Of course, there are those people who take commission only work to augment their income from their main job. While I admire their intentions, I also realize that holding two jobs can be physically and emotionally tiring and tired people don’t sell well. Basically, they’re often too pooped to sell.

You’ll probably agree that selling isn’t particularly easy. It’s more than just going around and talking to people all day long. If you’re in retail sales where more customers make a buy than are sold to, you’ve got it relatively easy. (There are those who would consider the term “retail sales” an oxymoron.) Outbound salespeople have to go out and find people who want their products and services. That’s a completely different and much more difficult situation for many salespeople and especially for part-timers.

Just trying to find folks who want or need what you’re selling can be a real challenge. Then, when you do find them, you need to get them to listen to your story. If you get that far without getting rejected, you have to overcome their objections in your attempt to help them make an informed buying decision. If you survive all that, you’re exhausted! I know that selling shouldn’t be this problematic but it is for those fully commissioned reps who are untrained and don’t know how to take control of the selling/buying process.

Selling is Difficult (Duh!)

After hearing a litany of, “I’m not interested”, “I don’t need any”, “Your price is too high”, “Not today”, “Call back another time”, etc., a person can get downright depressed and start having extended coffee breaks at Starbucks with all the other depressed commission only (and full time, salaried) salespeople.

It’s not that these people are slackers, although some might be. It’s that selling is difficult and requires a commitment of time and energy – ingredients that part-timers may not have a lot of.

So while they’re doing little or nothing, you’re pulling out what’s left of your hair managing them. Actually, you’re not really managing them. You’re spending time trying to find out what they are and are not doing. This is time that you could be spending on more profitable activities like coaching the salesperson who wants or needs your assistance and has made the commitment.

Commission Only Isn’t the Answer

I’m sure there’s someone out there who is thinking, “No sweat. I just put them on commission-only, turn them loose, and let them sink or swim so I’m not losing any time or money on non-performers.” Not necessarily true.

Sure you didn’t pay them for the sales they didn’t get, but how much business did you not get because of them?

You hire salespeople, full or commission only / part-time, to get sales. If someone can’t or won’t get sales for you, help the person move on to a job that’s better suited for his or her talents or lack thereof.

Are all 100% commission only sales reps losers? Not by any means. But, as a general rule, they don’t usually work out for some of the reasons I’ve mentioned above and several more that I haven’t covered.

Hire with Caution

If you’re going to use commission only, hire with caution. Make sure you know why they want part-time work. Make sure they know that selling is a challenging profession that needs a commitment on their part if they are to succeed. Set performance standards such as the number of calls or sales they are expected to make in a day, week, or month. Monitor their performance. Help them be successful.

Commission only can work out well and can be winners if you hire smart and manage creatively.

Good luck.

A Ten-Step Checklist for a Successful Salesforce Training Program

07/18/12 by Mark Christie | Sales Help, Salesforce.com Training | No Comments »

Does your Salesforce Training implementation plan include these ten critical steps? If it doesn’t you may want to take a step back and re-evaluate how your execution of this organization changing event can help or hinder your chances for success.

Build Your Salesforce Training Team. These are the people who can tell you what a successful implementation will look like. You need to understand the key goals of implementing Salesforce and determine what the organization wants to be able to do. Coordinate with external partners. Help your colleagues with the system.
Choose a database hero! Selecting the right system administrator for your organization’s Salesforce training program is critical because the administrator will play the most important role in making your CRM implementation successful.
Obtain and maintain executive support for the Salesforce Training project. This step cannot be overstated enough. The executive sponsor should lend his or her influence to the project. Having that person’s full support and participation—from the planning stage until the go-live date and beyond—is absolutely critical!
Determine who you are going to outsource help from. Particularly for smaller to mid-sized organizations, looking outside for support and guidance with implementing Salesforce training is an important step to consider. To expedite the process of finding your ideal technology partner and to receive an accurate proposal, you should create a request for proposal (RFP).
Take baby steps. Don’t try to do too much all at once. As we like to say, Salesforce training is like eating an elephant…you need to do it one small bite at time. It is easy to get carried away in the midst of the excitement of building a new system. However, remember that complex projects should be broken down into manageable and measurable phases. Slowly, slowly. Rome was not built in a day.
The technology should be adjusted to meet your needs and not vice versa. The biggest problem that arises from an unplanned Salesforce implementation is that the sales/marketing/service teams start working for Salesforce, not the other way around. You need to ensure that the Salesforce training includes a full business process review and that this workflow is incorporated into the way Salesforce operates. Sales people who are told to use Salesforce without any real structure to it, quickly resent the extra work, thereby leading to exactly the opposite situation that you hoped to achieve. If the database cannot support your business processes, search for a different solution.
Remember that most people are resistant to change. No matter how well designed you Salesforce Training, bear in mind, it may take some time before people willing switch over to a new system-without complaints and with a smile. Be prepared and patient.
Don’t be scared to make changes during the implementation phase. New things will inevitably creep in during the initial launch…and usually for the better. People will start to realize the power of the program, and make new requests for bigger and better process and applications. This is OK, as these changes will help foster better adoption rates, and more interest in the overall system. Certainly better than 12 months into the systems use.
Before embarking on a “big bang” switchover approach, make sure that you have fully run the new system using sample real data from your existing system. Have different employees or members of your organization serve as “test dummies.”
Provide fast results. Don’t build a Salesforce training program that might not be relevant by the time you go live. Concentrate on getting the correct basic functionality and data, and then go ahead.

How To Manage Your Salespeople More Effectively

04/19/12 by Mark Christie | Sales Management | No Comments »

Most sales managers I know are responsible for bringing sales revenue to their companies and they do this by remote control through salespeople. I say remote control because most sales managers don’t have much direct control over their salespeople (don’t we wish!).

The problems start when the sales and revenue aren’t coming in. There are a number of potential reasons for this drop in sales. One reason might be general market conditions. Certainly in the past couple of years, as we slowly recover from 2009, many industries have seen a downturn in sales that has nothing to do with their products, services, or the selling abilities of their salespeople.

If there are no real market reasons for your let-up in sales, the next thing to do is to look inside the company at your people. If selling in a tight market is a challenge for them, you may have a skills problem and perhaps they need some advanced sales training. Or maybe they’ve gotten complacent and need a refresher to bring them back up to speed. If training is the issue, it’s a good idea to conduct a pre-training readiness test to assess whether or not your environment will support a training program.

If, on the other hand, they already do know how to sell but aren’t doing it, you may have an attitude or management problem and you need to spend more time providing hands-on management to the team. Attitude problems can often be helped with team building and other motivational events. The old adage that the beatings will continue until the morale improves rarely works, unless you’ve hired a group of masochists.

This leaves managing them more effectively. Managing salespeople is a bit like pushing a string, difficult but not impossible to do. It’s sort of like herding cats. If you don’t keep an eye on them, they get into trouble.

Start by determining if your people are making enough sales calls, either by telephone or face-to-face. If a salesperson is making enough calls but the sales just aren’t there, then it’s time to see and hear what’s actually going on during the calls.

This may be the time to get out from behind your desk and start riding with your people (if you’re not already doing it). See what they’re doing right and uncover those areas where they might need help or a bit of fine-tuning.

If your people are making the required number of calls to make the sales but no sales are coming, check to see that they are calling on the right people. Some salespeople like to make what are called comfort calls. They will call on people they like and who like them. This can be particularly prevalent when they have their sales manager tagging along. They’re trying to impress you with what a great rapport they have with their customers. I’m all for a great rapport but it’s sales that we’re really looking for. People don’t have to like someone in order to buy from him or her, although being liked can really help, particularly in a tough competitive situation.

As soon as you catch on that you’re being taken to selected accounts, put a stop to it. Ask in advance what the salesperson wants to accomplish on the next call. Who is being called on and why? What’s the purpose of the call? What does the salesperson want to happen, or what does the salesperson want the prospect to do as a result of the call? If you’re not getting good answers, you’ve got a problem and just asking these questions will help you solve it by getting the salesperson to put his mind in gear before he opens the door. You’ll also want to consider introducing a formal call planner to your team. We have one called PAIN DOC and its bullet proof. You can ensure that your reps are prepared for each call they make by asking to see a copy of this planner before you head into the call.

Address any problems as soon as possible. I suggest you do it in the quiet of your vehicle just as soon as you’re finished the call and before you turn on the ignition. Review the situation pointing out any positive aspects of the call and then focus on those things that need attention. If possible, use the very next call as an opportunity to see if your correction has taken hold. Now you’re managing your people.

You’re the seasoned pro, the coach, the person responsible for helping the people who work with you get the sales you need to keep the others off your back. This is one of the keys that separates leaders from managers.

Authored by Brian Jeffrey, co-founder of SalesForce Training.

SalesForce Training & Consulting is a professional services firm and Salesforce.com training firm based in Toronto, with training centers in Boston and Chicago, helping sales teams develop and use the right tools for the job at hand.

Are You Hiring REAL Salespeople?

04/17/12 by Mark Christie | Sales Management | No Comments »

Have you ever hired someone who looked good, smelled good, and sounded good, only to later find that the only thing the person could sell was themselves? You’re not alone. Join the club.

As a sales manager, one of your responsibilities is to hire people who will get the job done properly. That means finding the right person for the job — hiring REAL salespeople! And therein lies the challenge. Finding competent salespeople is easier said than done.

What is a competent salesperson? It’s someone who knows what he/she must do, how to do it, and has the drive and desire to do it.

If only there was a simple way of assessing this. Auto mechanics, for instance, must go through a four-year apprenticeship to join their trade with a certificate of competency. Unfortunately, when it comes to selling, there is no universally accepted process in place to certify that a person is capable of performing as a salesperson. Anyone can claim to be a salesperson whether or not they know how to sell, and in fact, too many do just that.

Most salespeople get into sales by accident. How a person gets into sales, however, isn’t as important as what they do after they’re in it. If they are serious about the profession, they will either get some sales training or do a lot of reading about the nuts and bolts of selling.

While there is no single secret to finding competent salespeople, here is an idea that will help you separate the wheat from the chaff during the hiring process and come up with potential winners.

If I was hiring an auto mechanic, I’d want to be sure that he knew what the timing chain was for, the firing order of the engine, how to adjust the brakes, etc. In other words, the extent to which he knows the basics of his trade. The same applies when hiring a salesperson. I want to be sure that he or she knows the basics of selling.

Here are 10 questions you can ask to determine if you have someone who knows something about selling. Some salespeople will claim to know the answers to these questions but when push comes to shove, they don’t. That’s why they often screw up more sales opportunities than they close.

I’ve listed the questions in order of difficulty. If you don’t get reasonable answers to the first four easy questions, I wouldn’t bother to ask the rest. Why prolong the pain and agony?

Here is my Mini-competency Test for Salespeople.

1. What three things do you HAVE to know to qualify a prospect?

The three things a salesperson absolutely needs to know in order to qualify a prospect are need (or want), ability to pay, and the authority to buy.

Note: I find that people either haven’t a clue and give some very creative answers, or get two out of the three. Of the three factors, most people will usually miss “authority.”

2. Give an example of two popular closing techniques.

The four most popular closes are the Assumptive close, Alternate Choice close, Minor Point close and the Direct Question close.

Note: Don’t worry if the person can’t give the actual names. They get points for describing how a particular close is executed and even more points if they describe a favorite closing technique that they use. If they can’t, they may not be attempting to close very often. If a person doesn’t know what or how to do something, chances are they aren’t doing it.

3. Define a trial close.

A trial close is an opinion‑asking question, the answer to which indicates where you are in the sale or how responsive the prospect is to your proposal.

4. What is the fastest way to get a prospect’s favorable attention?

Talk about something that is of interest to the prospect. The best way to do this is to ask questions pertaining to the prospect’s wants, needs, or interests. Ask about the prospect.

Note: The real sales pro will get this one. Others will say that the best way to get the prospect’s attention is to tell the prospect about the product/service. These are the people who think telling is selling.

5. When you are describing your product or service to a prospect, what is the prospect listening for?

Benefits! More specifically, benefits to the prospect, a reason to buy.

6. What is a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or “elevator pitch?”

The USP is a short statement that clearly and simply expresses an obvious reason for the prospect to do business with you. It often answers the question. “Why should I buy from you?” A good USP differentiates you from your competition.

7. What is the main reason for the price objection?

The prospect doesn’t see the value. There are three reasons why the price objection usually comes up. They are:

1 ‑ Your price is too high.

2 ‑ The prospect can’t afford it.

3 ‑ The prospect doesn’t want to afford it.

8. What is the first thing you should do when you get an objection?

Acknowledge it. Too many salespeople start to answer the objection without first cushioning it with an empathetic statement. A simple, “I understand how you feel,” or, “That’s a good point,” will go a long way towards smoothing out the objection‑answering process.

Note: This is a simple question so look for a simple answer. Many people turn this question into a disaster just like they turn simple objections into a disaster.

9. When are the four times you can handle an objection?

• Now – when the objection arises if the objection is a potential sales-stopper.

• Later in the sale if it’s trivial or a put-off.

• Never for trivial objections. (Acknowledge but don’t answer.)

• Before it even arises for those objections that you know are going to come up.

10. When is an objection NOT an objection?

Objections are often confused with rejection or requests for more information. If an “objection” appears very early in the sale, it might be rejection on the part of the prospect. An “I’m not interested” at the early stages usually indicates a failure to get the prospect’s favorable attention and is rejection, not an objection.

If the prospect says, “I don’t see how this would fit into my operation,” he might be requesting more information, not raising an objection. In this case the prospect is requesting clarification, not confrontation.

If a sales candidate can’t answer at least half of these questions to your satisfaction, beware! You may be hiring a problem, not a solution — a wannabe salesperson, not a REAL salesperson.