Interpersonal Development, LLC

04/26/2018

I recently had the privilege of offering a seminar in consultative selling in the Royal Kingdom of Brunei. (I had to consult Google Maps to find out

03/22/2018

Small business owners and entrepreneurs are usually the best sales persons for their business. Why? Because they have a deep and sustained passion for

03/13/2018

Brain research confirms that you can train your mind to be better prepared for anything the customer brings up, and to be completely open, flexible and adaptable.

An interview with Daniel Goleman So much of our time slips through our fingers because we can’t focus. Meditation and mindfulness might be the remedies for our stress-filled, multitasking world. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Altered States, tells Publisher Paul Feldman how m...

03/08/2018

Umit Kutuk is the owner of Trendie Home, a hand-woven rug manufacturer based in Turkey, with a warehouse in New Jersey. He got the sales appointment

02/07/2018

Seven Rules for Writing Winning Proposals

“If you want to win more business you must write better proposals – regardless of the size of the sales opportunity.” − John Brennan, Shipley Associates Consultant

Shipley Associates, the leading business development consulting firm helps improve client win rates 40-60 percent by using best practices in proposal writing. Improve your writing and your win rate by applying the following seven rules:

1. Use Customer-Centric not You-Centric Language.
Customers want to know that you have taken into account their business needs. They are looking to buy a solution to a problem or a roadmap for an opportunity. You will persuade them that your solution is best if you explain how it solves the problem or addresses the opportunity.
Don’t bury your benefits in the middle of the paragraph or at the end − put them up front where they are more likely to be seen by the customer. Start the first sentence of every paragraph with a benefit, followed by your solution. For example, “ABC Corporation will prevent down-time while saving on operating costs by using IPD Corporation’s software solution.”

2. No Use of a Feature Without a Benefit.
Customers buy benefits not features. They buy what your product or service will do for them, not its features. Make sure that when you are writing about features, you start first with a benefit. For example, “Efficiency and customer satisfaction are the twin benefits of our new seven step process.” Having established the benefit, you may then go on to write about the features of your product or service, and always include proof that it works.

3. No Product/Service Benefits without a Customer Need.
This means that you will write about your customer’s needs, not just your solution. Do not simply push a bunch of features at them, and brag about your company. A business need may be a problem or an opportunity. Your proposal should solve the problem or point the way to capitalize on the opportunity. Until it satisfies a need, a benefit is just an advantage of your product. A lid is just an advantage of a cup until its owner wants to walk down a crowded hall with it filled with hot coffee; then it’s a benefit.

4. No Picture Without a Caption.
A picture is an opportunity to effectively get your message across. Readers are more likely to read captions than the text that surrounds a picture. So, write captions that include benefits of your solution. Your caption should tell the reader what to look for in the picture, table or graph and what conclusion you want them to reach. For example, “Self -service machine location. Locating the self-service machine in high foot traffic areas in the store will increase sales 20 percent.”

5. Tell Your Customer What You Will Do for Them.
It is not enough to tell your customers that you understand, appreciate or know about their needs. You must tell them what you will do for them. “Understanding” implies little or no commitment, while promising action implies a strong commitment. Similarly, don’t tell them what you can do, or what you will strive to do for them but what you will do. “Will” is a stronger commitment than “can” or “strive.”
Strong: “To ensure ABC Corporation’s security, IPD Corporation will implement a three-point plan.”
Weak: “IPD Corporation understands the importance of security to ABC corporation.”

6. Substantiate All Claims.
Customers are skeptical of extravagant claims. They want to see proof − so give it to them without asking them to take it on faith. Be especially careful of claiming to be “world-class,” “cutting-edge” or “best-in-class” without providing proof. Remember adjectives do not sell, but the benefits of your solution do sell. Keep in mind these seven sources of proof:
• Research studies
• Past performance
• Case studies
• Expert’s endorsement
• Testimonials
• Publicity
• Logical argument

7. Avoid the Common Tendency to Editorialize.
Customers want to read about what you will do for them. They do not want to read about your understanding of their needs or background to the problem. Nor do they want to read about your heroic efforts to develop your new product or build your company. Omit the editorializing and cut to the chase. Tell them how your product features meet their needs, describing the specific benefits to them, and ask for their business.

08/01/2017

Evaluate your sales team's performance

Before you can evaluate the performance of your sales team, you must first analyze its components. Here is a simple formula you can use to analyze the performance of your team as a whole or of individual sales representatives:

Performance = Competence + Motivation + Opportunity

The components are independent of each other. In other words, a sales representative can be highly motivated but incompetent, poorly motivated but highly competent, poorly motivated and incompetent, or highly motivated and highly competent. Regardless of your sales team's level of motivation and competence, if the opportunity component is weak, sales performance suffers.
After you evaluate the components of performance, evaluate another key measure of performance: sales results. After you complete all of your evaluations, you can take action for each sales representative.

Evaluate competence
Competence includes knowledge of your products, your sales processes and policies, your company, and your industry. It also extends to knowledge of your customers, their problems and opportunities, and their industry. Additionally, it includes a basic understanding of how business operates.

Background knowledge
Depending on your industry, sales representatives might need to have a certain amount of knowledge in technology, finance, engineering, manufacturing, or human resources. They should be able to ask informed questions of their customers and to perceive gaps in their own knowledge so that they can call in a technical expert at the appropriate time.

Sales skills
The second element of competence is sales skills. These skills include:
Knowing how to prospect for business
Knowing how to prepare for a sales call
Knowing how to build rapport and trust with customers
Knowing how to qualify prospects and assess their needs
Knowing how to write a proposal and deliver a sales presentation
Knowing how to overcome objections and close the sale
When you evaluate representatives who manage key accounts, look at their skills in building relationships at multiple levels of the customer organization, managing change, communicating back into your company, influencing, negotiating, and thinking strategically.

Assessment tools
You have several tools to assist you in this evaluation. There are sales competency assessments that you can perform on your representatives. The best assessments list generic sales skills and knowledge and use behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS). BARS help you rate objectively, fairly, consistently, and precisely.
Some companies create competencies from benchmarking studies, focus groups, and customer surveys. However, you may find that you can customize off-the-shelf assessments to meet your particular situation. Here is a sample of an assessment of product knowledge used by an electronic publisher of political and economic reports:

Level 1 (Novice) Knows the names of all the products and can review features with customers from the product catalog or sales collateral.
Level 2 (Competent) Knows the names of all the products and can review features with customers from the product catalog or sales collateral. Can list current world economic and political events. Can demonstrate online products at a customer's desk. Answers customers' general questions about the product.
Level 3 (Proficient) Knows the names of all the products and can review features with customers without the assistance of the product catalog or sales collateral, if necessary. Is aware of current world economic and political events and can link them to a customer's business. Can demonstrate online products at a customer's desktop. Answers customers' general and specific questions about the products.
Level 4 (Expert) Knows the names of all the products and can review features with customers without the assistance of the product catalog or sales collateral, if necessary. Is aware of current world economic and political events and can discuss them in depth on a collegial level with customers. Can demonstrate online products at a customer's desktop. Answers customers' general and specific questions about the products.

Skills tests
There are also online selling-skills tests that measure various sales traits or aptitude. Many tests claim to measure competencies, and they might even produce a report that reads like a competency assessment. But, in fact, they measure only aptitude — useful for the selection of sales representatives, but less useful for evaluating performance.

Observations in the field
The most effective method of evaluating your sales team's competencies is to accompany them into the field and observe them in action. Use a competency assessment as a guide, and record what you see. Your representatives will appreciate the time you spend with them, and they will be much more likely to accept your assessment.

Evaluate motivation
Motivation is the desire to succeed. It can come from within or from incentives.
Assessing your representatives' motivation is much more subjective than assessing their competencies. Observe them in the field and around the office, and note the following:
Are they giving 100 percent effort?
Do they have a positive attitude?
Do they enjoy seeing their customers?
Do they celebrate their sales successes?
Do they closely track their sales results and commissions earned?
Also look at past performance. A decline in performance might indicate a motivation issue rather than a competency issue.

Evaluate opportunity
Opportunity is the availability of goals, territory, tools, products, and support.
Performance evaluation starts with you. To evaluate the opportunity component of performance, ask yourself the following questions:
Have you set the right sales strategy and goals?
Does your team understand and accept the goals?
Are territories clearly defined?
Do you have the right salespeople in the right territories?
Does your team understand and accept the territory assignments?
Does your sales team have sales collateral, product samples, portable computers, and electronic communication devices?
Does your sales team have marketable products?
Are the products positioned, promoted, and priced effectively?
Is adequate product training available?
Do you support your representatives in the field?
Do you coach your representatives, team up with them on joint calls, empower them, and provide a winning sales culture for them?
Do you create effective sales incentive programs, partner with marketing to generate leads, and partner with production to coordinate delivery?
A negative response to any one of these questions might affect the performance of your sales team.

Evaluate sales results
At this point, you have evaluated the competencies and motivation of your representatives. You have also considered the role that opportunity might have played in your representatives' performance. Now it is time to look at the most important measure of performance: sales results.

Evaluate performance against sales goals
The fairest way to evaluate sales results is to measure them against goals. Keep track of whether your representatives achieve or exceed the goals that you set for them.
Be sure to set goals that support your sales strategy. If your growth strategy is to get more revenue from existing customers, it's a good idea that your sales representatives' individual goals state the source of the revenue. Your evaluation measures might include a percentage of total revenues from existing customers, and an increase in revenues from existing customers compared with last year. You would not give much weight to any decline in the total number of accounts.

Measure sales results rather than sales activities
Be careful of the activity measures trap. If you measure sales activities (for example, number of calls or number of proposals), you get activity from your representatives, but it might be at the expense of results. Instead, measure results such as revenue, profit margins, number of new accounts opened, and increases over last year.

Evaluate teamwork in complex sales
High-value, complex sales with lengthy sales cycles present a different challenge. Consider measuring the financial value of opportunities uncovered during the needs assessment, the cost of proposed solutions, the amount of profit protected during price negotiations, and the value of additional business created during follow-up after the sale.
Remember that complex sales require team efforts. Consider and measure the contribution each team member makes to these sales. A writer revises a proposal. A sales assistant sells, schedules, and coordinates sales meetings with key people inside the customer organization.

Sound evaluations deliver results
A fair and accurate evaluation of your sales team's performance helps you get the best from your team. By evaluating performance against goals, measuring results rather than activity, and choosing the optimal development strategy for each sales representative, you can ensure that your team is always ready to deliver maximum performance and results.

About the author Dr. John N. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, a professional services company focusing on sales and business development coaching.