Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781601635044 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 08/22/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 60 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 5 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Nugget 1 The Practice of Sales
Time management ultimately proceeds from a mindset. If we are going to become effective managers of our time, we need to start by brushing up our beliefs — specifically our beliefs about the job that we do.
"Every profession expects the serious practitioner of that profession to continually seek out the best practices of that profession, and then to roll them into his or her routine with discipline." That statement comes out of my mouth in almost every seminar or keynote address that I present. Sometimes, I follow it up with the ironic observation that there is, apparently, one exception to that rule, and that is the profession of sales, where we don't expect anyone to improve.
That is, of course, nonsense. The truth is that better salespeople produce better results. The best salespeople produce the best results. And better salespeople continually imbed best practices into their habits. That's how they become better. They practice.
I just got off the phone with one of my clients. We were discussing the deplorable state of the market in his industry, which is down about 35 percent from two years ago. Yet, he observed that four of his 12 salespeople were having record years.
"It's easy to do well when the market is growing," he observed. "Most salespeople don't know what they did to gain business when the market was growing, and they don't know what to do when the market is shrinking. The good salespeople, though, know how to sell. And that brings them results."
Good salespeople sell more than mediocre salespeople. That is such a blatantly obvious truth that I'm embarrassed to even mention it. And how salespeople get good is just like how every other professional becomes good — they practice!
Good doctors practice their craft and continually improve. So do good social workers, teachers, accountants, and lawyers. Ditto for ministers, nurses, airline pilots, chefs, and executives. The list goes on and on. No reasonably mature person thinks that after just a year on the job they know it all. On the contrary, they expect to learn, grow, and improve for the balance of their careers.
According to the Encarta Dictionary, the word practice means "repetition in order to improve; process of carrying out an idea; work of a professional person; and usual pattern of action." All of these accurately describe the behavior that separates the good salesperson from the mediocre. Let's expand on each of these definitions:
1. Repetition in order to improve. A good salesperson studies the best practices of his profession, and repeats them in order to improve. This expresses itself in such activities as learning to ask a series of good questions, or implementing some time management disciplines. You work at it and repeat it until it becomes a habit, and you have improved. Or, you create a memorized 30-second introduction to your company. You repeat it until you have it down perfectly and it comes out of your mouth smoothly and persuasively. Another good idea is to practice a presentation for a key product or service. Repeat it until you are confident and competent. It's just like golf, tennis, or any area of human endeavor. If you are going to become good at it, you must practice.
2. Process of carrying out an idea. The good salesperson is continually on the lookout for good ideas. He collects them, sorts through them, prioritizes them, and then implements them. For example, he may come across the idea of prioritizing his accounts based on the potential for business in those accounts. That's a different idea than the typical sorting by the amount of business they did in the past. It is, for some, a new idea. The good salesperson takes that idea, works it out, applies it to his territory, and then focuses on the high-potential accounts. As a result, his production improves, and he becomes more effective. Then he looks for the next good idea. That's practice.
3. Work of a professional person. The best salespeople view their work as a profession. They understand that sales is a challenging, demanding job that is critical for the success of every business. They also understand that it typically takes years to become adept at it, and that it is so sophisticated and challenging, that they must learn and improve forever. They also understand that their work is crucial for the success of their employer and that at least four or five families are employed as a result of every salesperson's efforts. That's a profession. And those who are a part of a profession practice it.
4. Usual pattern of action. Sales is an action-based profession. In other words, it is our actions that cause reactions in the customer. They don't send us a purchase order, and then we go see them. We see them first, and it is what we do that causes them to react. If we act effectively, we gain the business. If we don't act effectively, we don't gain the business.
Our success is less about the product and service and company that we represent and more about the actions we take. And a pattern of action is a sequence of actions that are repeated. Through time, good salespeople understand the most effective actions they can take; they put them together into patterns and repeat them until they cause more effective customer reactions.
When a salesperson has turned an action into a pattern, and by repetition turned the pattern into a habit, and then by discipline and thoughtfulness continually exercises that habit, he or she has become an excellent salesperson. It's what you do that counts, and good salespeople practice until they get it right.
CHAPTER 2Nugget 2 The Hidden Path to Sales Success
In my 20-plus years of educating, I have encountered tens of thousands of salespeople. The vast majority of them want to do better. They want the benefits of greater success: increased income, greater respect from their peers and managers, and increased self-confidence.
Yet, the vast majority of them remain at a level best described as "ordinary." They never make the transition to being a true master of their craft. In spite of their desire to excel, few do. The reason, for the overwhelming majority of salespeople, is that they take the wrong path to sales success.
Let me illustrate: I have had these kinds of conversations in almost every training session I have done: A salesperson is concerned about an issue in one of his accounts. It could be that he can't unseat the competition, that he's at risk of losing the business, that he can't gain an audience with the right people, or that he's constantly asked to reduce his price. However, although the specifics vary, they almost always revolve around the same themes.
There is a problem in an account. Someone won't do what the salesperson wants. The question, in one form or another, is always, "How do I get them to do what I want them to do?" The focus is always on the account, the other people, and the things outside of the salesperson that he or she wants to influence.
In these encounters, I don't think I have ever had a salesperson ask me, "How can I change myself in such a way as to impact this situation?" And therein lies the problem.
As salespeople, we almost exclusively focus on those things that exist outside of ourselves: the prospects, the customers, the politics, the products, the price, and so on. We focus on the externals. As long as we do that, we will be forever stymied in our desire to become exceptional performers.
We will never reach our potential until we begin to focus on changing and improving ourselves. The hidden path to sales success is the "path less traveled," the path that traverses the bumpy geography of self-growth and self-improvement — the inward path. When we focus on self-growth and self-improvement, those changes that we make in ourselves naturally ooze out of us and impact the people and the world around us. To improve your results, improve yourself.
Here's an example: A salesperson has been trying to penetrate an account in which he had some business, but was a minor player. One or two other competitors dominated the account. He had difficulty even getting an opportunity to present his solutions. He saw his problem as external (the politics, processes, and personalities in this account).
I talked with him about his ability to nurture professional business relationships, to uncover hidden concerns and obstacles via effective questioning, and to empathize with the key decision-makers. In other words, my conversation was about his competencies (internal) instead of the account's specifics (externals). If he could improve himself to the point where he was more competent at these sales fundamentals, he would be more effective in that account and the problems he expressed would gradually decrease.
He saw the problem as existing outside of himself (external). I saw the solution coming as a result of improving himself (internal).
As I reflect on the thousands of these kinds of conversations that I have had with salespeople and sales leaders, I have concluded that the conversations almost always follow that pattern. They present an external problem, and I reply with an internal solution.
The obvious question pops to the surface: Kahle, is it you? Am I so far outside of the mainstream of reality that I am misleading the people I'm supposed to be helping?
Honestly, I don't think so. The concept of reaching your fullest potential, of making your greatest mark on this world, by focusing internally instead of externally, is a position that all of the world's greatest thinkers, from King Solomon thousands of years ago, to Mahatma Gandhi in more modern times, have espoused. That concept lies at the heart of the world's greatest religions, a key part of the worldview of Jesus Christ and Buddha.
I'll often share this quote from James Allen in my seminars: "Men are often interested in improving their circumstance, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound." Clearly, unequivocally, the path to achievement and fulfillment is an internal, not an external one. What is true for our lives, is true for our professions, and is true for our jobs as salespeople. Yet so few salespeople understand that. I've often shared this observation: In any randomly selected group of 25 salespeople, only one has spent $25 on his own improvement in the last 12 months. Not coincidentally, the same ratio is used to define the superstars of the profession. Five percent (one of 20) of the sales force produce approximately 50 percent of the sales.
In a world of externally focused colleagues and competitors, it is the 1 in 20 salespeople who chooses the hidden path to excellence. These are the people who understand this principle, and who consistently and willfully act on it. They are the ones who buy the books, go to the seminars, listen to the audios, and watch the videos — all in a relentless quest to improve themselves, understanding that the only lasting path to excellence is the hidden path of internally focused self-improvement. And these are the people who inevitably rise to the top of the profession.
The same can be said of organizations. Very few sales organizations understand that. They expect their salespeople to learn on the job, and look at investing in their development and improvement as a discretionary cost, rather than as a fundamental strategic initiative.
Study the leading companies in any industry and you'll find that those who lead the industry are always those who most consistently invest in developing the skills and competencies of their people. Let the rest of the world charge head first, intent on wreaking their will on people and circumstances, oblivious to the real path to success. The savvy professionals — both companies as well as individuals — focus on changing themselves. It's the hidden path to sales success.
CHAPTER 3Nugget 3 Avoid the Biggest Time-Wasters for Salespeople
Good time management for salespeople has been an obsession of mine for more than 30 years. In the last decade, I've been involved in helping tens of thousands of salespeople improve their results through more effective use of their time. Through the years, I've seen some regularly occurring patterns develop — tendencies on the part of salespeople to do things that detract from their effective use of time.
Here are the four most common time-wasters I've observed. See if any apply to you or your salespeople.
1. Allure of the urgent/trivial. Salespeople love to be busy and active. We have visions of ourselves as people who can get things done. No idle dreamers, we're out there making things happen! A big portion of our sense of worth and our personal identity is dependent on being busy. At some level in our self-image, being busy means that we are really important. One of the worst things that can happen to us is to have nothing to do, nowhere to go, and nothing going on. So, we latch on to every task that comes our way, regardless of the importance.
For example, one of our customers calls with a back order problem. "Oh good!" we think, "Something to do! We are needed! We can fix it!" So, we drop everything and spend two hours expediting the back order. In retrospect, couldn't someone in purchasing or customer service have done that? And couldn't they have done it better than you? And didn't you just allow something that was a little urgent but trivial prevent you from making some sales calls? And wouldn't those potential sales calls be a whole lot better use of your time?
Or, one of our customers hands us a very involved "Request for Quote." "Better schedule a half day at the office," we think. "Need to look up specifications, calculate prices, and compile literature." We become immediately involved with this task, working on this project for our customer. In retrospect, couldn't we have given the project to an inside salesperson or customer service rep to do the legwork? Couldn't we have just communicated the guidelines to someone and then reviewed the finished proposal?
Once again, we succumbed to the lure of the present task, which prevented us from making sales calls and siphoned our energy away from the important to the seemingly urgent.
I could go on for pages with examples, but you get the idea. We are so enamored with being busy and feeling needed that we often grab at any task that comes our way, regardless of how unimportant. And each time we do that, we compromise our ability to invest our sales times more effectively.
2. The comfort of the status quo. A lot of salespeople have evolved to the point where they have a comfortable routine. They make enough money and they have established habits that are comfortable. They really don't want to expend the energy it takes to do things in a better way or to become more successful or effective.
This can be good. Some of the habits and routines that we follow work well for us. However, our rapidly changing world constantly demands new methods, techniques, habits, and routines. Just because something has been effective for a few years doesn't mean that it continues to be so. This problem develops when salespeople are so content with the way things are that they have not changed anything in years.
If you haven't changed or challenged some habit or routine in the last few years, chances are, you are not as effective as you could be. For example, you could still be writing phone messages down on little slips of paper, when entering them into your contact manager would be more effective. This is a simple example of a principle that can extend toward the most important things that we do. Are we using the same routines for organizing our workweek, for determining who to call on, for understanding our customers, for collecting information, and so on? There is no practical end to the list.
Contentment with the status quo almost always means salespeople who are not as effective as they could be. My book, Eleven Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople, discusses the use of the "more" mindset as an alternative to the status quo.
3. Lack of trust in other people in the organization. Salespeople have a natural tendency to work alone. After all, we spend most of the day by ourselves. We decide where to go by ourselves, we decide what to do by ourselves, and we are pretty much on our own all-day long. It's no wonder that we just naturally want to do everything by ourselves.
That's generally a positive personality trait for a salesperson. Unfortunately, when it extends to those tasks that could be done better by other people in our organization, it turns into a real negative. Instead of soliciting aid from others in the organization, and thereby making much better use of our time, many salespeople insist on doing it themselves, no matter how redundant and time-consuming the task is. The world is full of salespeople who don't trust their own colleagues to write an order, to source a product, to enter an order in the system, to follow up on a back order, to deliver some sample or literature, to research a quote, to deliver a proposal, and so on.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Time Management"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Dave Kahle.
Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Disclaimer,
Introduction: The Need for Sales Time Management,
Nugget 1: The Practice of Sales,
Nugget 2: The Hidden Path to Sales Success,
Nugget 3: Avoid the Biggest Time-Wasters for Salespeople,
Nugget 4: Creating Long-Term Goals,
Nugget 5: Fundamentals of Key Account Selling,
Nugget 6: Developing Account Strategies,
Nugget 7: On Preparation and Presentations,
Nugget 8: Learning from Failure,
Nugget 9: The Power Is In the Process,
Nugget 10: A Compendium of Best Practices,
Index,
About the Author,
Other Resources,