The Probe step is probably the single most important step in the selling process and the one that’s done the poorest by many salespeople.

If the point of selling is to provide a solution to your prospect’s problems or to help him make an informed buying decision, how can you accomplish that if you don’t first make an attempt to understand his problem or uncover his needs and wants? That’s the primary purpose of the Probe step.

Too many salespeople are so anxious to tell the prospect all about what it is they are selling that they spend very little time, if any, probing to ascertain if the prospect has any real interest in what the salesperson is selling. They need to put their ears to work before exercising their mouths.

So then, the purpose of the Probe step is to:

• qualify your prospect, (turn suspects into prospects)
• start the rapport-building process
• establish credibility
• build and maintain trust

How can you use the Probe step to establish credibility and trust? After all, all you’re doing is asking questions. In fact, because all you’re doing is asking questions and not selling is the key to building trust with your prospect. You establish yourself as less a salesperson and more a resource person.

The quality of your questions establishes your credibility. The better and more meaningful your questions are, the higher your credibility. Of course, the reverse is also true. Ask dumb or irrelevant questions and your credibility goes down.

WHY Qualify?
If a prospect doesn’t have a need for your solution, or can’t afford it, or doesn’t have the authority to buy it, then you don’t have a pros­pect.

WHEN to Qualify?
Either before your approach or very early in the sale.

HOW to Qualify?
Ask questions! Find out what your prospect wants and why he wants it.

In order to have something to listen to, you have to get the prospect talking and you do that by asking questions. The right questions will help you assess your prospect’s needs, wants, challenges, budget, decision making authority, decision timing, competitive preferences, organizational structure and personal agenda/s. Come on now, who wouldn’t want to know all that? And it’s right there for the taking!
The question is: What questions should you ask?
In order to answer that question, you must first know the answer to these two questions:

1. What need or want does my solution fulfill?
2. Why should a prospect buy my solution?

Once you have the answers to these two questions, you’ll know what questions to ask to get the answers you want to hear. You see, it’s not good enough to just ask questions. You have to know what answers you’re looking for in order to have the right questions.

Authored by Mark Christie, owner 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 improve their performance, in front of the computer…and in front of the customer.

The problem with this scenario is that the client may see you as the main contact. They expect you to know everything. When you don’t, it makes the company look bad. When clients see you as the company, it makes you look bad, damaging your relationship with the client and robbing you of your professionalism. This will not help you make sales, especially if the client starts talking to other clients about this disconnect. Fix it. It’s possible. Put Sales and Support on Salesforce.com.

On Client Service Cloud Nine

When your service call center is plugged into SalesForce.com, sales reps can see all service notes and customer service reps can see sales notes.

For Customer Service: Take Service to New Heights

Salesforce.com offers tons of great features to replace traditional call center software with their Service Cloud solution. Your Customer Service team can open and manage cases that come in by phone, email, social media conversations or via live agent web chat, giving your clients a wider range of preferred channels by which to contact the business.

Service Cloud can be integrated to the phone system. This integration will pull the Account up on screen by the incoming phone number and automatically open up a Case. Agents can make notes, use Chatter to consult with other people in the organization, and quickly solve cases.

Do you have a special support process for clients in a selling cycle? You can if you’re using Service Cloud. Now, customer service reps will see which callers are in a sales cycle, with what rep, for which products, with full sales history and can adjust service levels accordingly. Here’s a 15-minute overview video that reviews the benefits of Service Cloud. Service Cloud Overview Video.

For Sales Teams: A Polished, Professional and Knowledgeable Image

Salesforce.com Service Cloud gives you access to all service case information from the Account or Contact records. As customer service reps open and close cases, you’ll be able to see issues, resolutions, number of cases, topics with a few short clicks. You can add comments to any case using Chatter to ask the customer service rep questions, or inform them of details that may not be stored in Salesforce.com.

You’ll have full information before you walk into every single account and service will know when they’re dealing with a client engaged in a selling cycle. Plus, you don’t have to worry about your deal data being accidentally change. You can specify which fields service can edit, have view only access to, or not see at all. Customer Service, you can also lock your fields from edits by Sales.

Service Cloud lets customers access Customer Service a variety of ways – phone, email, social media conversations, via Google Search and Live Chat. This multi-channel support gives you an advantage over competitors offering only traditional customer support and helps to further differentiate your offering.

Service Cloud isn’t free – and is only integrated with Salesforce.com Professional or higher, but it does offer cost savings with its web deployment – no servers are required. It will improve communications between your Sales and Customer Service departments, which would result in better service all around for your clients.

Authored by Yvette Montague, Director of Salesforce.com Training at 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 improve their performance, in front of the computer…and in front of the customer.

Here’s another question. Have you ever deliberately paid too much for something? Not too likely is it? You may have paid too much for something, but you didn’t do it deliberately.

The reason for these two questions is to emphasize the point that your prospects are no different than you. They’re going to buy things that they want and they’re going to avoid overpaying for something. In other words, they’re looking for good value for their money. That’s the first key in overcoming price objections.

Price objections arise for one of three basic reasons (and that’s it):

1. Your product or service IS overpriced.
This means that the prospect can get exactly the same product and exactly the same service for less money somewhere down the road. Now, if your product or service is overpriced then you do have a major problem. Unfortunately, it’s usually the company’s problem and, as salespeople, we can often do nothing about it. Frankly, the fact that your product or service might be overpriced is a rarity in the marketplace. It’s just too competitive a world out there for that to happen very often.

2. The prospect CAN’T AFFORD your product or service.
Now we should have found this out back in the Probe or qualifying stage of the sales process by asking the prospect whether or not he or she can afford your solution. If the prospect truly can’t afford what it is you’re selling, you probably shouldn’t be this far along in the sales process. If this happens to you a lot, take a look at your qualifying or probing process to see if you’re asking the right questions. While the prospect may not know how much your product or service is, you should know how much he or she is prepared to pay for it. That’s the purpose of the Probe step — to qualify your customers.

3. The prospect doesn’t want to afford it.
This is by far the biggest reason why the price objection ever comes up. Of course it’s your job as a salesperson to make sure the prospect wants to afford what it is you’re selling. That’s where your selling skills come in. Sell value, not price.

Where Does Price Fit In?
When overcoming price objections, remember, in any sale, price will always be a factor but it is rarely the deciding factor. In fact, only 10 to 15 percent of prospects put price first. Other key factors that prospects take into consideration are:

• Confidence. How confident am I in you, your company, and in what you’re offering?
• Quality. Is what is being offered good quality for the price? Is the value there?
• Selection. Is this a take-it-or-leave-it situation or do I have choices?
• Service. Will the after-sales service be there when I need it?

Remember, it’s important to sell value. If the prospect doesn’t perceive you as being better or unique, then the only difference you have to work with is price.

Authored by Mark Christie, owner 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 improve their performance, in front of the computer…and in front of the customer.

4 Tips for Better Time Management

All these activities can become overwhelming, if you don’t have a plan. Here are tips in 4 areas of Time Management for Salespeople to help your sales team manage their time more effectively.

Outlier sales calls

Sales calls can mess up your whole schedule quickly if they’re not managed. The biggest culprit is the outlier sales call. You know this call, it’s the one visit that is on the fringe of your territory. It’s a 3-4 hours to drive. And doesn’t seem like it’s always a small opportunity? Instead of seeing this call as a 6-8 hour travel investment to make a deal that had better be worth it, see it as an opportunity to visit others. Do you have other clients in the area? Why not stop in, but have a purpose to the visit. Bring a cheat sheet. Drop off info about a new offering. Meet the new owner. Discuss training options.

If you have no clients in the area, then turn it into a prospecting road trip. Check the route to see how many prospects are on the way. Contact them and map them out in advance of your trip. Salesforce.com offers various mapping tools to view your prospects and accounts visually on your Smartphone or iPhone. Even if you don’t secure a sales meeting, you can introduce yourself and set the stage for a future meeting. Now that sales call to one outlier account could multiple into opportunities with 4 of 5.

Scheduled prioritization

Most sales people can honestly say there are “dead days” or “dead times-of-day” when getting in front of a prospect is next to impossible. Use this time to get your other sales related tasks done and remember to assign time limits to these tasks. If your mornings are dead, use this time to cold call and set up appointments – from 6am to 11am. If no one gives you the time of day on Fridays, use it as your office day – check and submit your deals, go through emails, complete expense reports, return all those non-prospect phone calls. There will be exceptions, when you schedule a sales visit on an “office day”, but it’s far easier to manage exceptions than have everything working in disaccord, and taking far longer to complete than it should.

Use your resources

Top reps know they can’t do it all, especially for complex sales, and they lean heavily on their resources. If you have an account manager who takes care of the day-to-day tasks with your clients, then let them do it. If you have various product specialists, leverage their expertise in your sales calls. Bring them along, or join them in by webinar or by phone. Be sure to stay in the loop, so you don’t lose track of your prospect. Use your sales support team to answer any questions you have, instead of trying to find the answers yourself. Listen and take notes during team meetings or kickoff events. Presenters are usually informing you of tools that are out there that can help you in your job. Make note of which ones to use when, and where to find them – or at a minimum, of the person who can get you the tool.

Managers – survey your team

Sometimes a sales person needs outside time management help. Here are some benchmarks from a recent CSO Insights Sales Optimization Survey on time spent on various sales related activities. See how your team measures up. Create your own benchmarks. And don’t forget to share with the whole organization, not just sales as many other departments contribute to the sales process and sales productivity.

Sales Time Management today – where is time spent?

41% Selling by Phone or face-to-face

24% generating leads and researching accounts

19% meetings or administrative tasks

16% on other tasks – service calls, training, etc…

Consultative Selling – What Does it Mean?

So what does a consultant do? Well we know that companies typically bring in consultants when things aren’t working the way they should be. The consultant is hired, first to find the problems, then make recommendations to fix those business problems, and lastly (and ideally) be retained to come back and make improvements to business process.

And when the consultant arrives, do they make recommendations on how to fix these problems on the first day? Of course not. They take their time, and visit the various departments and start investigating. They ask a lot of questions, conduct interviews with people, both senior management, middle management and staff personnel, they observe people in action, and they take a lot of notes. And, oh yeah, they tend to make a lot of people very nervous! But only after days, weeks, and perhaps even months of observation, does the consultant leave, prepare a summary of their findings and recommended solutions, and then come back and deliver their report, with an eye towards also helping implement some of the solutions, which is where the consulting firm really makes their money.

Training on Consultative Selling

Our sales training workshops take this approach. The aim of consultative selling should be focused, first on taking the time, potentially an entire sales call or more, to really understand the nature of the prospect’s business, getting to know the prospect a little more with each question, and try to determine the underlying causes of some of the challenges/problems/issues that the prospect might be facing.

This is called the PROBE step of the sales process, and we recommend that the sales person needs to spend around 60-65% of their time in various phases of probing, in order to truly understand the nature of the prospect’s problems. Only then, can he or she be in a position to make a truly informed decision about how their products or services are uniquely positioned to help solve that prospect’s business problems. The recommendation phase, or what we call the PROVE step, should only have to last between 25-30% of the sales process.

It is said that the sales person that is perceived to best understand the nature of the prospect’s business problems, is also likely to be seen as the sales person that can make the best recommendation to solve those problems. What a wonderful advantage that provides a sales person, before they even begin to make their recommendations. Simply by demonstrating that they understand the prospect’s business problems, ideally better than the prospect themselves.

So this is the profile we’d like our participants to keep in mind throughout our workshops. For as soon as sales people learn to stop selling people “stuff” and start focusing on how to fix their client’s business problems, they’ll start to become consultants, and our bet is, have far more success.

Authored by Mark Christie, owner 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 get the most from their CRM program…and their prospect/client interactions.

A tablet PC provides a fluid and interactive way to share a variety of content with your prospects. The iPad and tablet PCs were built for people who need to do multiple tasks fast. Plus the touch screen technology removes the need to be a typing wizard.  You can use 1 – 2 fingers to do it all, you can quickly zoom content to a size preferred by your audience, and it’s fast and easy to skip from PDF to presentation to video to pictures.

Instead of your presentation tool separating you from your audience, a tablet makes it easy to maintain conversation. It’s not intrusive, obscuring view, the keyboard isn’t hidden, making it easier for prospects to trust what you’re doing and the customer can get involved as touch screens are very easy to use.

Business Usage of tablets*

73% use tablet for browsing

69% use tables for email

67% use tablets to work remotely

46% use tablets for sales support

45% use tablets for customer presentations

*Source – Venture Beat tablet adoption infographic 10/2011

Benefits:

• Lightweight – you can stick them in a portfolio or purse
• Fast – access files and folders while in the field
• Easier to use than a Smartphone – for accessing your Salesforce.com Touch in early 2012 or other CRM software
• The WOW! factor – a sleek, modern image of your company and your solutions
• Adaptable – can be used in various presentations modes – lying flat, hand held or on a kickstand
• Easily involve the prospect in the presentation – easy-to-understand touch navigation
• They’re GPS enabled, making it easier to find local prospects
• Easy to flip though and search product inventories

If your company isn’t distributing tablet PCs on their tab, you could still invest in one to increase your personal productivity, but unless it’s formally adopted, your company may not provide technical assistance. The increase in output may be worth the investment.  Here’s some recent research around deployment timelines for corporate tablets in the U.S.

Image Source: Dimensional Research

The big question is whether a tablet can replace a PC. At the lower price point, deploying tablets to your Salesforce could save your company significant costs, provided all functionality you need is available on a tablet.

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.

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.

Creating reports and dashboards that reflect opportunity information may help. Sales people are driven by numbers and they want to be on top! Creating a dashboard that shows the “leaders” based on opportunity numbers may drive them to update their records so they can be on top.

We’ve always been an advocate with getting connected with your team if you can. Send out a quick survey to your users and ask if there is anything they think you can do to make their life easier. Maybe a simple workflow rule to automatically update a field will help! Making them feel like they have a say in the process, and knowing that you care about their opinion may encourage them to make accurate updates.

Finally, it is very helpful when the CEO and/or department VP is on board. If they use the information in Salesforce to do performance reviews it will surely encourage the team to make the proper updates. “If it’s not in Salesforce, it didn’t happen!”

This is common with new implementations and we’ve experienced the same adoption issues with many clients. To solve the problem, we encourage them to implement two things. First, you need to create a value proposition for the user — what motivates the user to update information in your SFDC – show them the “What’s In It For Me”. And secondly and closely tied to the first, leadership buy-in – does the VP of Sales require input for incentive tracking or other reporting. If you have both of these areas covered, you may have a training issue. In any case, we would recommend a meeting with the users, or at least a survey, to better understand what’s impeding adoption.

Another thing we’ve done is to review the information we are asking our sales people to capture and narrow down to what we really need for our reporting purposes. Let’s face it, sales people don’t want to do data entry, so the easier you make it for them the more adoption you will have.

We also strongly encourage you to have all the commission data in sfdc. It should only be available in sfdc and the data framed in an sfdc window.

Putting everything that they need in sfdc really generally works very well. Quotes, contracts, contract cover sheets. If they cannot quote the job or close the job then they have to use sfdc.

Attack the problem on different and multiple levels:

1. Who is delinquent? Make the CRM tell you.
Make sure that you are checking this vital metric…everyday. If your reps aren’t using Salesforce, you’ll know pretty fast.

2. Make it easy and take away excuses
Reducing the number of fields, and especially MANDATORY fields. Don’t make it a PITA (pain-in-the-…) to enter information. Sales managers don’t require a thesis. They want to know the critical pillars of a deal: i.e. Close date? Probability? Amount? and Sales Stage? Each sales organization has a set of stages that becomes part of their “language” especially in sales meetings. Placing each deal within these stages is critical. Only make mandatory the 4 critical fields that build the forecast in the CRM. The rest is gravy.

3. Have the Manager shift the one-on-one sales meeting from “info gathering” to “next steps” strategy.
This is key reason we implement SFA. Managers can’t help reps if they are constantly asking where things are in deals. If they can see everything in a reps pipeline BEFORE THE MEETING, then the meeting changes to “here is what we can do next to help you hit that quota”. If the pipeline is empty then that is a very different meeting isn’t it? If I can tell you now that you are going to miss July wouldn’t you want to know that? I’m your manager and together we now have 60 days to make a difference – together! Make sure the reps understand this. The CRM can help me help you. If you leave it empty, then we both are blind to our future.

4. COMPARE and Measure.
Sales is a competitive field. Reps want to be #1. They want to be ranked. If they don’t – you have mis-hired. Use the CRM to rank and compare reps in real time. Publish daily ranking on the activities your value, like closed deals, cold calls made, meetings booked, service up-sold etc. Even better, connect the data to digital signage and hang the monitor on the sales bullpen and publish the rankings in real time. Watch how reps enter data instantly to make the results change on-screen (especially the ones near the bottom). (bad reps avoid their dashboards because they don’t like what they see) make the results unavoidable. Does your services department know who the best rep is? They should.

5. Find a champion.
CRM, especially Salesforce is the lazy (or the more politically correct “busy”) rep’s friend. It makes their life easier, allows them do to more, faster with less effort. Show a rep how he can email contacts faster.., build quotes quicker, assemble presentations faster using your CRM. Find a successful rep that is using the system and have them discuss a recent win and how using the CRM helped. This helps make usage contagious.

6. Embrace Non-Opportunity usage! (and get out of email!!!)
Force (OK, strongly encourage) your other departments (usually more tolerant then those pesky reps) - HR, Marketing, Admin into using the CRM to do their jobs. STOP SENDING EMAIL FOR EVERYTHING. Use CHATTER to talk about to collaborate and update. Make HR forms available in the CRM, in a workspace, or an HR application. Make expense submission happen in the CRM, etc. If most of what I need to do on a daily basis is in the CRM, and therefore I have to be in the CRM for other reasons, clicking over to an Opportunity and entering an update is simple because I’m already there. If I have to log on, navigate to the Opportunity, then enter it, then maybe I won’t.

7. Engage Salesforce MOBILE.
Reps love their devices. Salesforce mobile is free. Sound like a match? Show your reps how to log on from their iPhone, Androids or Blackberries to update that Opportunity from the customer lobby, the car, the dock, etc. (OK, maybe not the dock!)

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.

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.

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.

(i) As a summary in a nightly email; or

(ii) In an instant chat, SMS-type format.

Chatter is available on your PC and your mobile phone (yes, there’s an app). It’s free and can be pretty handy for busy sales teams. Here are 5 ways Chatter helps to improve sales productivity:

1. Build a Connection with Key Players in the Business

Have you ever found that internal employees are more likely to help you out after you’ve met face to face? Chatter is a way to keep your face in front of co-workers you don’t see on a regular basis. You won’t be confused for other people since your picture is tied to the profile. You’re also tied to the account in Salesforce, so any Salesforce user can click on your profile to post a message on your profile page.

2. Have Team Specific Conversations.

You can setup specific groups for sales conversations. Don’t worry; you can keep the contents private by restricting group membership to a chosen few. A team group would be a great spot to post team agendas, to-do’s, best practices, regional testimonials and more.

3. It Can Cut Down the Email You Receive.

Company updates, hiring and promotion changes and other administrative communications could be posted in a Corporate group. Instead of getting tons of emails each week, users could simply check in with the group for the latest corporate updates. Instead of an email about the latest product update, sales staff could check the latest updates of the specific product group.

4. It’s Fast and Easy to Use On Your Cell Phone.

Chatter has an easy-to-use mobile app, making it easy to Chat, browse groups and read the latest updates. The mobile format means you don’t have to zoom in on tiny text and that buttons are easily accessed without having to click all over the entire screen trying to get at them.

5. Competitive intelligence, account information and more.

Chatter gives you the ability to subscribe to any content on Salesforce.com, including accounts, and documents. You’ll get an alert when a document is updated and posted into the Salesforce, so that you always have the latest and greatest document. You can subscribe to Account alerts. Waiting for internal approval? Once the account is updated, you’ll get an alert. At a closing meeting and receive a question about the competition? No problem, simply browse the competition group for the answer, or put out a post for a quick answer by any Salesforce user with access to the group. Subscribe to the product pricing group and get an alert with every new post. Have an industry updates group for the latest and greatest industry trends, changes, facts and news, so that you stay up-to-date on what’s affecting your prospects and clients.

Did we mention that basic access to Chatter is free? It’s even available to businesses that are not using Salesforce.com. It’s a great tool to increase your team’s productivity. For more information, check out http://www.chatter.com/.

Authored by Yvette Montague, Director of at Salesforce.com Training at SFTC.

SalesForce Training & Consulting is a Salesforce.com training and Salesforce Management consulting firm based in Toronto, with training centers in Boston and Chicago, helping sales teams get the most out of Salesforce.com.