Congratulations!  Salesforce is a powerful and all-encompassing tool, and your team will benefit when they understand how it works and they start to leverage it to their advantage.

What you might not know

Salesforce is not an out-of-the-box program and it is not an inherently easy program to understand. On the surface, sure, it is relatively straightforward to understand how Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities function and how they relate with one another. But beyond that, lies the real power of Salesforce. And unless you know what you are really doing, your organization is likely to miss out on the true advantages this program can deliver.

Take away the technology for a second. Ask yourself – what is our company’s sales process? Is it documented? Has it been validated? Does each sales rep and sales manager understand it, let alone follow it? One of the first questions we ask sales departments – if we put all of your sales reps and sales managers in separate rooms and gave them each a blank sheet of paper, and asked them to map out the existing sales process, what output would we get?  If the sales team isn’t able to provide a standardized, consistent process diagram, then we really need to start there.

Sales Process, Dashboards & Admin

While Salesforce.com is wonderful, it remains somewhat limited if you haven’t developed a sales process outside of this program. Because, one of the great things about Salesforce, is that it enables the sales team to stay on top of the process, and hence, allows for managers to better track where each rep is within each lead, opportunity and account.

Another question that we ask – are the executives and senior managers all clear on what they want to measure and can they tell us what they want to see in reports and dashboards?  Salesforce is tremendous at providing all of this information, in real time, but it can only be configured to do so, if it’s told what to produce. And the information it generates, of course, is only as good as the data being input.

And those are just two areas. Because frankly, there is just so much information around what Salesforce can, and should do, for your business. And each year, Salesforce makes three new upgrades, with continuous features and applications.

So, when you’re planning your budget for CRM upgrades, ensure that you also budget for initial implementation, training and ongoing admin support for this tool, otherwise you simply won’t be getting what you really need. A good rule of thumb is about a third of the annual licensing costs for initial implementation and training the sales team, and about a third for annual Salesforce admin costs.

Salesforce Training & Consulting is a professional sales training firm and Salesforce.com Consulting firm based in Toronto, with training labs in Boston and Chicago, providing sales coaching, sales management consulting, salesforce implementation, sales training and sales personnel assessments.

Sales Lead Bonanza

Trade shows draw anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 or more attendees and provide a valuable sales and marketing opportunity. Check the math. Let’s assume a show draws 20,000 visitors. If only 10 percent of the attendees express an interest in your product or service, that’s 2,000 leads you didn’t have before the show. Even if your closing ratio were only 10 percent, you’d have 200 new sales.

So why would anyone throw away an opportunity like that? Would it surprise you to know that many do?

Statistics indicate that 80 percent of trade show exhibitors don’t follow up on their show leads. In order to check this out, our founder, Brian Jeffrey, did his own survey. His methodology was simple. He printed up some phantom business cards and hired a person to distribute the cards to exhibitors at a major business show asking that a representative follow up after the show.

Surprising Results

Given these relatively tougher economic times,  we thought that companies would be anxious for good leads and so expected fairly good results from the survey.  What came next was a huge surprise!

Of the exhibitors visited, 85 percent obviously didn’t need new prospects because they never followed up in any form. Of the 15 percent who did follow up, some took over 50 days to do so. By that time, any interest a prospect might have had would be long dead.

Why Invest In Trade Shows

In our opinion, the number one reason for participating in trade shows is to get as many qualified leads as possible. It’s nice to meet other industry cronies and former customers, but you should want leads, because leads mean possible sales.

At SalesForce, we try to slot each lead into one of three categories — A, B, or C. “A” leads (hot) are contacted within five days after the show, first by phone, then e-mail, and a week later a second phone call. “B” leads (warm) get our standard after‑show mail-out and a follow-up call within two weeks. “C” leads (cool) get a mail-out with a follow-up as time permits, but no later than 30 days after the show. Potential Time-wasters are disposed of quickly.

When the booth gets busy and we can’t chat with every visitor, we simply get a name or business card and consider it as a “B” lead until we contact and qualify the person.

Our post‑show activities are planned in advance so we don’t waste any time. The leads are entered into a database and the follow‑up process begins.

The Survey Results

Back to our survey. As you read the results, keep in mind that in most cases our phantom attendee spoke to the salesperson and requested a follow‑up.

The phantom attendee had been instructed to hand the business card / swipe her attendee badge to the salesperson in the booth stating that she couldn’t talk now and would like someone to call her after the show. By the end of the show, she had left her card at 90 percent of the exhibitors’ booths.

Only 15 percent of those exhibitors followed up with us. Of those 15 percent, 77 percent did so within three weeks. The rest dribbled in over the next seven weeks. During the first three weeks, most of the contact (76 percent) was by phone. The strategy changed during the last seven weeks with the majority (62 percent) using e-mail marketing or mail. Of the companies who followed up, 68 percent did so by phone. The remaining 32 percent used e-mail / regular mail with 3 percent following up the e-mail with a phone call.

The material we received by mail was interesting. It ranged from an expensive package containing glossy literature and a CD, to a letter written in French that we couldn’t read. Many of the companies didn’t know what we were interested in so they used the shotgun approach and sent us one of everything.

Interestingly enough, none of the companies who spent money sending us expensive literature (to say nothing of the CD) bothered to follow up with a phone call. We can only guess they expected their literature to do the selling. If only!

Speed is Critical

The fact that 62 percent of the firms who followed up did so within two weeks was heartening. These firms obviously recognize that a lead, even a hot one, can quickly get cold. Timely follow up is critical.

To illustrate: Following a recent trade show, a client of ours told his salespeople they were to do nothing else but follow up their hot leads and set up appointments. The result — one of his salespeople turned 20 of 21 show leads into appointments. In the past, this client’s salespeople would take three to four weeks to follow up their leads. By then, many of the prospects would have forgotten about them or simply lost interest. His salespeople would have been lucky to get eight to ten appointments after a two‑week delay.

Protect Your Investment

Here are 4 steps to help you avoid wasting your trade show investment.

1. Ensure that everyone manning the booth knows his/her primary purpose is to get qualified leads, not make sales. If they happen to make a sale, so much the better but taking too much time “selling” often results in losing potential leads that can be closed after the show.

2. Have a system in place to handle show leads quickly.

3. Mandate your salespeople to follow-up all show leads within 5 days.

4. Track the results to see if the show is worth investing in again.

And What About the Rest

And what about the 85 percent of companies who didn’t bother to follow up this lead? We can only assume they don’t need any new business (or perhaps they’ve gone out of business!).

Don’t let this happen to you. Stay on top of your show leads and stay ahead of your competition.

Authored by Brian Jeffrey, co-founder of SalesForce Training, and originally published in the Targets newsletter.

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

The truth of the matter is that if you are truly loved as a sales manager, you are probably being taken advantage of. When salespeople love you, in all likelihood it means that there are not many consequences for non-performance and that is almost certainly affecting sales effectiveness.

And, don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying that its better to be hated. That would be worse, far worse. Your reps would never do anything for you. But being loved is not the ultimate sign of a good leader either.

Hey, we all want to be loved. It’s a universal human condition. But it leads to a dangerous president when you are managing a sales force and your job is to hold sales representatives accountable.

Sending Messages

What message do we send our people when there is no consequence for non-performance? I’m not just referring to missing sales targets; I’m referring to things like not getting expense reports in on time (or just in, period!), showing up late for meetings, not completing sales reports, or simply not doing what they said they would do.

Apart from the fact that some of these things show a blatant disrespect for the sales manager and other members of the sales force, they help create an environment where this type of performance (or non-performance) is acceptable.

Like Children

Those of us who have, or have had, small children know that they’ll constantly test the limits set by their parents and if you give an inch, they’ll take a foot and go for the whole yard if they think they can get away with it.

It’s often the same with salespeople. They’ll constantly test the limits and guidelines you set for them until they learn, like kids, that they can’t get away with what they are trying to get away with.

Consequences

One of the consequences of allowing poor performance is that the good performers often start to slack off. That’s when Val, your star performer tells herself that if Peter, the slug is still here after consistently under-performing, why should he bust his butt. Someone’s also going to figure out that no one seems to hold old Jim’s feet to the fire because he hasn’t learned to input his call information into salesforce.com, so they’ll back off awhile to see what happens. If nothing happens, they’ve just saved themselves the aggravation of inputting call reports. They win and you lose. Sure, they might love you for it…you’ve just made it easy…for them. But not for you. In fact, by not confronting this behaviour early, you’ve just made your job very hard for yourself.

Consistency Counts

Another bad habit some sales managers have is that they’ll cut their top performers some slack while still holding others accountable for performance. All they are doing is sending a message to the sales team that if you perform well you don’t have to be as accountable. Not a good message.

If you’re going to set rules for the team, they should apply to the whole team, not just selected members. I’m not saying you shouldn’t reward performers. I’m suggesting that you reward them in a way that sends the proper message to the rest of the team.

Why No Consequences?

What do you do if people don’t enter their call information into Salesforce? What do you do if they don’t complete their expense reports on time? What are the consequences for constantly missing a sales target? Do you fire people? Maybe, maybe not.

One of the main reasons that sales managers lead without setting consequences is the fact that they want to be loved, and instead of managing, they try to be a friend to their people. Remember though, you’re not hired to make friends, you’re hired to manage.

Meeting Sales Targets

If you’ve set reasonable sales targets and some of your people aren’t meeting them, then you first try to correct the problem through coaching and/or training. If that doesn’t work, then you have to consider replacing them. This is always a difficult decision. Salvage first, replace second. Do everything you can to make it work but, in the end, you have to do what is right for both the person and the company and assist them in getting a new career.

The truth is, that to do anything less, is the wrong consequence. This is not a popularity contest, its business.

Authored by Brian Jeffrey, co-founder of SalesForce Training, and originally published in the Targets newsletter.

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams…without having your salespeople LOVE you.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

We’re not talking about sales calls that went bad; that can happen to anyone. We’re talking about bad sales calls, the ones that shouldn’t have been made in the first place or calls that should have been terminated before they got as bad as they got.

Some of those calls are probably being made by people who shouldn’t be in sales in first place. If this is your problem, you have our sympathy because a serious housecleaning may be in order. As a sales manager, that’s never a nice predicament to find yourself in.

Causes of bad calls

Here are the four major reasons for bad sales calls. We’re sure that there are others, but these are the ones we see most often.

1. Calling on bad prospects

These salespeople waste time and make bad calls to and on people who have no intention of buying. They seem to operate under the philosophy that a bad prospect is better than no prospect and it’s better to be trying to sell a bad prospect than get off their a*s (the lower part of the anatomy) and find a good prospect.

Compounding this problem is the fact that some salespeople have no idea of what a real prospect looks like. In their mind, if the person is breathing, he’s fair game for a pitch. They figure that if they pitch enough balls, one is likely to hit the target, whatever it may be.

As a sales manager, you need to help these salespeople recognize who is – and equally as important, who isn’t – a good prospect. Then you need to be sure that they take the time to qualify before they start selling, not when they’re trying to close the deal.

2. Talking too much

Some people get into sales because they like people. They like meeting people and they like talking to people. In fact, they like talking period. These are the reps who wouldn’t listen at all if they didn’t think it was their turn to talk next. And once they get talking, it’s hard to get them to stop. It’s as though they don’t even pause to inhale; they just keep on going and going like the Energizer Bunny.

These overly social salespeople are really nice people as a rule. It’s just that they seem to think that they have two mouths and one ear instead of the other way around. They will talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, about anything, and the anything rarely includes getting the sale.

If you’ve got one or more of these salespeople on your team, we’ve got some bad news for you. They rarely change. Their ability to gab is built in. It’s inherent. You’re stuck with them or at least until they move along or you move them along, usually for non-performance.

3. Not listening

A close cousin to the overly social salespeople are the ones that don’t listen. It’s as though they didn’t have any ears at all. It doesn’t seem to matter what the prospect tells them, these salespeople carry on trying to sell whatever it is they sell without much regard to what the prospect wants.

For whatever reason, you’ll find a lot of these people making telephone solicitations. We still try to be polite when these people call and interrupt our meal, our tranquillity, or whatever, so when we say, “Thank you, but I’m not interested,” we expect them to hear what we said and terminate the call, equally as politely. There is a big difference between being persistent and being a pest and after the third, “I’m not interested,” we have been known to resort to asking, “Which part of I’m not interested didn’t you understand?” before terminating the call.

Companies who employ this type of salesperson and use these sales techniques stand a strong chance of alienating and annoying their prospects. Here’s a gem of wisdom for these companies — annoyed prospects don’t buy from you, not ever. In fact, many will go out of their way to buy elsewhere.

4. Turning off the prospect

Some salespeople just don’t get it. They don’t grasp the concept that people buy from people they know, people they like, and people they trust. Consequently, they make no effort to build rapport with the prospect before trying to extricate money from the prospect’s wallet. These are the sales reps who have commission breath and the prospect can smell it a mile away. Everything these salespeople do smacks of trying to make a sale. They seem to think that selling involves verbally arm-wrestling with the prospect until the other person cries “uncle” and gives in and buys.

Like the salespeople who won’t listen, these people can perform but at what cost to you and your company’s reputation?

If you’ve got one of these people on your team, take heart; they can often be moulded into a professional with the proper care and feeding. Your best bet, however, is to avoid hiring them in the first place.

What can you do?

Get out of your office from time to time and make calls with your salespeople or sit with them when they are making telephone calls. Simply observe and resist the temptation to play a major part in the call. If it’s a bad call, let it go. Talk with your salesperson after the call is over and use the event as a learning experience.

Help your people learn and grow because every sale these salespeople don’t make because of their bad calls impacts directly on your bottom line.

The bottom line is — you need to protect your bottom line.

Authored by Brian Jeffrey, co-founder of SalesForce Training, and originally published in the Targets newsletter.

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

Then, after the coordinator realizes that salesforce is a wee bit more complex than everyone realized, they are tasked with learning the system and showing everyone how to use it. A few YouTube instructional vidoes later, and yikes, reality sets in. We need help.

But here’s where companies still go wrong. It’s not just about training, folks. If all you do is to hire an organization like us, and tell us you want us to show your sales and marketing people how to use the various functions of sfdc, you’re completely missing the bigger picture.

What we want to know exactly is, what do you want salesforce to “DO” for your sales/marketing/customer service team? How do you want it to track data, and which data do you want it to track? What triggers do you want to set? Who needs to see what? And most importantly, what
process/es need to be followed that saleforce will automate?

No Process

We had a meeting with a prospect the other day to discuss helping them implement salesforce across their sales team. We asked them about their sales process, specifically, how outbound calls were made, what they did when they got voicemail, what they should say on the first message, how and when they should follow-up after the message (email, another call, etc)…stuff like that.

The answer came back, “oh, our salespeople are mostly lone wolves, they each have their own way of doing it”, and “we really don’t like to micromanage our sales people.”

Micromanage??!!

People – that’s not micromanaging. That’s managing!

First of all, CRM aside, what kind of way is that for your sales team to sell? Whenever I hear that response, I always think about a plant that manufactures airplane wings. I don’t know why I think of airplane wings exactly, but I feel that if anything needs to be built with key precission, an airplane wing would certainly fall into that category. Now, can you imagine after asking, so how exactly do your engineers build the wings, that the response was, “well, our engineers are mostly lone wolves, they each have their own way of doing it”, or “we really don’t like to micromanage our engineers”. Well, I can you who’s airplanes I won’t be flying on.

And secondly, if this is your approach to sales, then what exactly do you want CRM to do for you? Why have a CRM at all then? Outlook will do the job you need it to just fine…and for way less. (Or even those old daytimers with the replaceable three hole sheets).

CRM ‘training’ is far more than just showing your team the functions of salesforce. It’s about designing a process that everyone understands and follows, and knows how to execute at each step of the way (which likely involves its own set of skills training) and then embedding that process into the CRM tool and showing the team how to utilize the program to help them manage the process.

It’s not all that complicated, and their some surprisingly simple sales processes that your team can build and follow that are incredibly effective, and made even more effective when automated with CRM. But without it, just training your team, heck, using CRM, is a costly (in terms of time, and aggravation to the sales team) proposition.

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 leaders properly implement CRM with sound sales process first.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

Mind you, some types of selling, and with it some types of salespeople, have died. The backslapping, joke-telling, low-content salesperson that roamed the North American continent early in the last century with his carpetbag has become, like the dinosaurs, extinct. There is a different type of salesperson out there today. More professional and more attuned to his prospect’s needs.

Times Have Changed

Times have certainly changed, and so has selling. The information explosion has created a more knowledgeable customer with an increased awareness about you, your company and your products/services than ever before. If you don’t know your product or service extremely well, or you can’t add value to the transaction, you’re on the way to extinction.

When I say you must know your product or service, I don’t mean what it is, but what it does and what it means to your prospect. While some people downplay fact and benefit selling, too many salespeople are still rattling off facts and features and expecting the prospect to uncover the benefit. If the prospect can say, “So what?” to your sales presentation, you’re not doing your job.

Product Knowledge Isn’t Enough

Most salespeople are knowledgeable in their product/service, if only because it’s the only form of “sales training” they receive. This training usually consists of reading a catalogue, product brochures, or data sheets. Frankly, based on our experience with a large number of people who call themselves salespeople, I’m not sure they even read the stuff!

The professional salespeople who survive and thrive in the 21st century will be those who bring something more to the sale than a glib tongue and product knowledge. They will provide a value-add of some kind.

Standing Out

The value-add may be a service that goes above and beyond the expected. Simply taking the time to properly qualify a prospect by asking intelligent questions is a value-added service that most salespeople don’t or won’t offer. Too many seem intent on selling before they qualify a prospect. Selling without qualifying is like a doctor who writes a prescription without first making a proper diagnosis. Not that any good doctor would ever do that.

I remember being subjected to a 15-minute sales pitch by someone who should have known better. Without knowing anything about my company, or me, the salesperson dove right into telling me ALL about his company and what they offered. My mind was wandering and I was just about to say, “Let me tell you a bit about what we do here,” in the hopes of getting him on track when he finally ran out of things to tell me and started asking questions. This 25-year sales veteran had never had any formal sales training and was still operating under the old “telling-is-selling” philosophy. I only wish that this was a rare occurence. Unfortunately, this type of “selling” still goes on today.

It’s up to the salesperson to add value.  Ask yourself, “What can I do to bring additional value to the situation?” “What can I do to make a difference?” Another way is to try putting yourself in your prospect’s shoes. If you were the prospect, what might you want and why would you want it?

If salespeople develop the skill to add value and truly make a difference, the reports of our death will indeed be premature and we will continue to live on for a long, long time.

Authored by Brian Jeffrey, co-founder of SalesForce Training, and originally published in the Targets newsletter.

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

Sales Manager: So what did you think of the call?
Sales Person: It was O.K., there are a few things I could have done differently.
Sales Manager: Agreed. One of the things I spotted, for example,remember when the prospect said “X”, you probably should have replied with “Y”.

Sound familiar anyone?

Sales Managers or leaders must learn the fine art of questioning.

Here are some ways to be more effective at sales coaching and debriefing after the sales call.

Sales Manager: So what did you think of the call?
Sales Person: It was O.K., there are a few things I could have done differently.
Sales Manager: That’s great that you are aware. What exactly do you feel you could have done differently?
Sales Person: Well, that one time when the prospect said “X”, I could have probably probed for a bit more information.
Sales Manager: (do NOT go into – oh yeah, and you should/might/could also have said “Y”)
Sales Manager: That’s a good observation. So, how could you have probed the buyer for more information?

See how it works? This way the sales person will think for themselves and they own the responsibility for the results of the call. Sales people (just like prospects) like to be asked, not told. As sales mangers, we must be tactful in our approach. Long gone are the days of bossing people around (if they ever did exist). We need to lead people – inspire them – coach them – for maximum performance and bring the best out of them.

Sales Managers – stop talking … and start coaching!

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

The same principle applies with any sort of training. In order to provide the right instruction, the trainer needs to understand what the current behavior looks like. Then, they can start to formulate what the right training solution should look like.

In sales training, our aim is to do the very same thing. We want to get out in the field with your sales people and watch them on actual calls. Or sit in a cubicle and use a Y-jack to listen in on your Inside sales rep’s or customer service rep’s calls. Our consultants need to see for themselves what the nature of the problems are. It’s not enough for us to be told by management that sales are just not at the level that they need to be, for us to make a proper training recommendation. I mean, we already know that sales are not where they should be – that’s why we’re here meeting with you in the first place. That’s akin to the golf instructor providing direction after hearing you say that you keep slicing your drives into the woods.

One of the things that we often find interesting, is the reluctance of some firms to send us out on calls. Their premise is that they can just tell us what they’re sales people are doing wrong. But frequently, these same firms cannot, with clarity, tell us exactly what mistakes are going on in the sales calls. And that’s why we need to see for ourselves. Like the golf pro who needs to study your stance, your grip, the way you address the ball, your back swing, etc, we need to see all of the elements of the sales call, including things like the preparation prior to the call, the notes that your sales person has collected in advance, the time they get there, the way they dress, the way they introduce themselves, etc.

A tremendous amount can be gleaned by watching sales people attend sales calls. What we typically find is that its not an array of things going wrong, but rather, two or three fundamental flaws in the approach. This should be good news for sales managers, as correcting a couple of major items is much simpler than trying to correct lots of things. Of course, there are always reps where there is a ton of things that need to be fixed, but most training isn’t designed for this, nor should be. These people will likely not last throughout the course of the performance improvement program.

So before you engage in expensive sales training, find a firm that insists on spending time with your team…and give them every opportunity to do so.

SalesForce Training & Consulting is a professional services firm and Salesforce.com training firm based in Toronto, with training centers in Boston and Chicago, that insists on observing your sales people before making our full recommendations for training.

Discover why traditional sales training doesn’t work.

Don’t get us wrong. Salesforce is a fantastic CRM and can dramatically improve your organization’s results, if implemented properly. But it does require a fair amount of knowledge and background when it comes to setting it up properly and showing your users how to get the most from it.

The realization that many acquirers of sfdc are expecting things to be pretty straightforward, stems from the multitude of calls we take weekly from people who want to be trained on Salesforce. They are primarily in some sort of administrative position, as a sales coordinator, executive assistant, assistant to marketing, etc, and they’ve been tasked with managing the company’s sftc platform, yet they know relatively little to nothing about it.

Salesforce.com training is certainly one of our solutions, and I’m sure that’s why we receive these calls. However, most callers seem to be under some sort of impression that within a few short hours, we can have them up to speed and ready to run and support Salesforce for their entire operation. Sorry folks, it just doesn’t work this way.

I liken it to the President of the company asking his assistant to find a short course on accounting so that she can now manage the books and prepare the tax filings. Or, in a similar way (which happens all the time) asking the top sales person who has no management experience to now lead the sales team.

The reality is that to understand Salesforce to the degree that a qualified Salesforce administrator does, takes many hours of course work, and also a few years of on-the-job application. The certified consultants and administrators that we use have spent most of their working days, literally for years, playing around with Salesforce. After seeing repeated instances of different user instances, staying current with the latest editions, participating in discussion forums and groups, and attendance at seminars, our consultants are experts in understanding how Salesforce can be leveraged to maximize a company’s sales team’s performance.

Like the accountant who needs years of hands-on experience in addition to their substantial classroom training in order to prescribe the correct solutions to an organization’s accounting issues, so to does the proper Salesforce.com support person require significant time understanding this program to be of any real value to the organization’s sales/service team. We are more than happy to provide anyone with a base line education in Salesforce. But we are also quite clear with people, in order to set proper expectations, that this introduction will hardly equip you to properly administer this program.

Salesforce Training & Consulting is a professional sales training firm and Salesforce.com consulting firm based in Toronto, with offices in Boston and Chicago, providing sales coaching, sales management consulting, salesforce implementation, sales training and sales personnel assessments.

While it’s true, most sales teams will benefit from some additional soft skills training, what we typically find is that there always a few individuals on the team (hopefully only one or two, but sometimes, unfortunately, it’s many more than that) for which training alone (or at all) is the answer. These individuals are just simply don’t have “IT”. So what is “IT”? And can they ever get it?  Well, let’s answer the second question first. ”IT” can’t be taught, and “IT” is not likely to come to those that didn’t come to the job with it to begin with (although, on rare exceptions, “IT” can be found by some).

So what is “IT”. Well, “IT” is really six different things. First, a little perspective.

Unlike most professions such as medicine, law, and engineering, selling may never become a “profession” because it doesn’t have a self-appointed or governmental body to oversee, regulate, or monitor its activities. In addition, salespeople have no formal or informal educational requirements and no code of ethics to believe in or adhere to.

The fact that we may not be formally a profession doesn’t mean that we can’t conduct ourselves and our business in a profess­ional manner. So, if we can’t be a profession, let’s at least be professional.

Here are some of the qualities that are important in a sales professional, or better put, this is what “IT” is:

Positive Attitude

Sales professionals are up, positive people. They’re the kind of people others like to be around. When they enter a room, the mood is lifted. They recognize the old adage that life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you react to it, and they react to life in a positive manner.

Enthusiasm

Like attitude, enthusiasm is something we have complete control over, unless we choose other­wise. Enthusiasm isn’t the rah-rah, in-your-face hype that can turn off some people. It’s a positive expression of your belief in your product and yourself and being prepared to let that belief show to others.

Persistence

Many salespeople are quick to drop a potential opportunity. They expect instant results and if a sale doesn’t close quickly, they move on to the next one. They forget that most sales are made after the fifth contact and that most prospects will voice five or more objections before making a buying decision. Salespeople have to learn to hang in there until the prospect either buys or dies.

Drive

To be successful in sales you must have an inner drive that pushes you towards your personal goals. No goals combined with no drive makes for no success.

Desire & Discipline

Many “wannabe” salespeople simply don’t have these two qualities and don’t understand why they aren’t successful. You must have the desire (and drive) to succeed and the discipline to do what is required to be a success.

Integrity

This one really has three parts:

1. Maintain honesty and integrity in all relationships with customers, prospective customers, and colleagues, and continually work to earn their trust and respect.
2. Accurately represent my products or services to the best of my ability in a manner that places my customer or prospective customer and my company in a position that benefits both.
3. Respect my competitors and their products and services by representing them in a manner which is honest, truthful and based on accurate information that has been substantiated.

So there you have IT!

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 leaders achieve truly lasting behavior change amongst their sales teams.

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