Tag: sales team training

Categories
Networking

3 Lessons on the Reciprocity of Referrals

Article Contributed by Sharpenz

Want to grow your business in a tough economy? Use the power of reciprocity when asking for referrals from existing customers to grow your sales.

Reciprocity is defined as a “mutual exchange” – the give and take of life. In a slow economy it can be your lifeline. Often, referrals can be one-sided which minimizes the benefits to everyone involved. Instead, when we focus on what we give as well as get, we are more successful.

Here are three lessons I’ve learned on the give, take and give of referrals:

Lesson 1. Give great value and your best referral sources will be loyal customers.

Who are your loyal customers? These are customers who will sing your praises given the opportunity. They know you provide great value to them and trust you. They stick by you in hard times because they know you will do the right thing for them.

To make the most of these relationships, GIVE your loyal customers the opportunity to share referrals. This looks/sounds very different depending on who you are asking.

For example: I did great work for a loyal customer and she valued our results and relationship. But this never led to referrals. In considering this person’s needs, I realized that she might be concerned that by giving me a referral I would be less available to her.

To help ease this concern, I approached it differently. First, I assured her how important our relationship was to me. Second, I identified that I had positioned my company for more growth through additional consultants and was looking to secure work for those consultants. And finally, I asked who she might know who would benefit from the work we do in strengthening customer loyalties.

She had two names for me within a week!

Lesson 2. Help them help YOU!

This is the ‘take’ part of the referral process.  Answering these two questions will help make TAKING referrals easy:
1. What type of person/company makes a good referral for you? Help your contact identify opportunities that will be good business for you. What companies are you best positioned to serve with your product/service?

2. What is the value you provide? Explain the value in a sentence or less so your referrer can articulate it for you.

When the economy slowed after 9/11, I contacted our loyal customers to review updates and talk about how we might serve them in the future. THEN I asked, “As we look to the future of our business, we are positioned to help more people like you. Who else is in a position such as yours that might benefit from increasing sales 5-25% this next year?”

Notice I didn’t give them the, “Who can you introduce me to?” Or, “I’d like the names of everyone in your address book.” I specified the value we could provide to make it easier for them to refer specific people/companies.

Over 80% of these loyal customers provided at least one referral, giving me the opportunity to build more loyal customers.

Lesson 3: Follow-up and reciprocate!

Closing the loop is extremely important in the give, take and give of referrals.

When someone provides you a referral, keep them updated on the status. A quick message telling them you have initiated contact or you have a meeting scheduled is always a welcome surprise and closes that loop. A side benefit is that they might help you even more. For example, I couldn’t get in touch with a referral for months. When I followed up with the person who gave me the referral, he said, “Hang on, I’ll conference us all together and get this done.” Wow, in a minute’s time I was on a call “meeting” with the referral and scheduling an appointment!

It’s also very important to reciprocate generosity and give back value. The value can be a referral, a note, information or a heart felt THANK YOU.

Relationships have always been the foundation to long-term successful business. The value in relationships is even higher during a slow economy. Focusing on the give, take and give of referrals will show how you VALUE your most loyal relationships and give you opportunities to build new ones.

About the Author:

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to motivate and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster programs help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz’ ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power.  To learn more, visit www.Sharpenz.com and sign up for your free sales training kit today!

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Getting the Back 9 to Count in Increasing Your Sales: It’s All About Process

Article Contributed by Sharpenz

What could golf possibly have to do with increasing your sales? Well, my golf game the other day gave me a wake up call to increasing sales that can apply to everyone in the field, golfer or not. It’s all about process.

After many lessons –and practice – over the past five years, I have my handicap down to a 13.  But today I started off poorly and had a 50 stroke score at the end of the front 9 holes.  This is 7 strokes higher than my average!  For the competitive person that I am, I felt as if I was failing, not living up to my potential and more concerned that I’d repeat that performance on the back 9.

I decided to assess the situation and my results.  For some reason, I felt uncomfortable over the ball and was having difficulty focusing. I knew I had to slow down, relax and think about as few things as possible. More importantly I had to think about the process that works for me – focus and basics.  Picking my target, the proper stance, shifting my weight, and following through.

I turned to my partner said, “I need to shoot a 40.”  And I did exactly that.

So how exactly does this relate to sales? In sales when we’ve lost our groove and too many clients are saying “no,” we can take ourselves down into a dangerous funk.  Each customer contact comes up in the loss column and we may feel like we can’t get out of our own way.  And slowly we see our sales tanking.

The best thing we can do for ourselves is stop and ask, When I was successful, what was I doing?  What was my process that worked?  What was making the difference for me to increase sales? Was it that I was taking 5 to 20 minutes before each call to prepare?  Did I write out the objective of the upcoming sales call?  Did I formulate the questions I needed to ask to accomplish the objective? It may be that simple:  slow down, take a breath and go back to the process that worked for you before.

As a manager, when you see any of your seller’s loosing their edge it’s a coaching opportunity.  Take the time to regroup, help them remember past successes and reflect on the process the followed for their successes and a focused plan.

What’s your process that gets your back 9 to count to increase your sales?

About the Author:

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to motivate and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster programs help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz’ ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power.  To learn more, visit www.Sharpenz.com and sign up for your free sales training kit today!

Categories
Planning & Management

Sharpen Your Greatest Sales Tool: Bring MORE to Your Sales Meetings

Article Contributed by Sharpenz

When you hear the term “sales tool,” what comes to mind? CRM, Blackberry, laptop?  As you mentally list the tools provided for your sellers, do you include your sales meetings on the list?

Think about it: In an effective sales meeting, the time you give, the experience of the team and a focus on sharpening everyone for success can make the meeting one of the greatest sales tools of all!

A tool is something regarded as necessary to the carrying out of one’s occupation or profession (this definition brought to you by dictionary.com). Sound like any sales meetings you have been to? A necessary part of being more successful in sales?

Meetings don’t have to be an information dump. When you focus on using your sales meeting for more, your meeting does become a necessary tool to sharpen your team’s skills, sales results and attitudes.

An effective sales meeting helps you:
• Motivate your sellers.
• Retain them as employees.
• Help your team sell more.
• Beat the competition.
• Make your job easier.
• Strengthen the professionalism of your team.

Who wins with these benefits? Everyone! Your life will be easier and your career more successful. The sellers will have more confidence and competence to sell even more. And your boss will benefit from all your benefits!

So if sales meetings can be such a great tool, how do you “sharpen” it? With a focus on MORE! Most sales meetings I have observed or heard about use most of the meeting time to share information – sales numbers, product updates, operational updates and complaints, and on and on and on. These are all items that could be easily summarized in an email so the meeting can be put to better use.

Focus on MORE in your sales meeting by:’

• Giving more time for input from the sellers. Ask them to brainstorm topics of interest, ideas for solving a problem or how to tackle a difficult situation someone is working with.

• Equipping sellers to sell more. Building skill and ability is an ongoing process. Reinforce great book ideas, great articles, previous training seminars and more.

• Growing the team’s ability to capture more market share. Make time for competitive analysis. Ask sellers to research the different competitors and report in.

• Helping the team use their technology tools more effectively. Share best practices and additional tips on how to use the technology to full advantage.

• Leveraging more of the expertise within the team. Set your sellers up as the experts on certain topics. Someone great at prospecting? Proposals? Getting Referrals? Let them give a 15-20 minute lesson to the rest of the team.

• Reinforcing more of what they are doing well. Make the time to point out specific actions that have shown success. Praise for specifics goes much further than general “You all did a great job last week.”

For each sales meeting you have, decide on which MORE outcome you want. Then use your sales meeting as the great sales tool it can be by including relevant activities, discussion, information and interaction to sharpen your bottom line!

Did bringing MORE to your sales meeting change the energy, focus or outcome? Let us know in the Comments section.

About the Author:

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to energize, engage and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster meetings help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power. To learn more, visit www.sharpenz.com and sign up for your free ready-to-go sales training kit today!

Categories
People & Relationships Planning & Management

Motivate Your Sales Team by Making Your Meetings STICK!

Article Contributed by Sharpenz

If you really want to motivate your sales team, you need to hold regular, productive meetings. What does that look like? Sales meetings should equip your sellers to sell more and should be about more than operation and product updates. The key is to make your meetings STICK. Here’s what we mean by that:

S  – Sharpen their skills, behaviors or attitudes. Give your sellers opportunity to share experiences and best practices. Don’t make the meeting just about information. Use the time to BUILD your team for future success. Incorporate 20-30 minutes each meeting for this proactive activity.

T – Timely. Is the information and the discussion relevant to what is important today?  Don’t hold all information you have until the meeting. If you have a lot of “little” things to cover, prepare a short handout to distribute at the end of the meeting or send an email prior to the meeting. During your meeting do not READ the handout to them! Save your meeting time for the most meaningful topics and discussion.

I – Inclusive/Interactive. Put more ask instead of tell into your meeting. Engage and involve your sellers to give them a better sense of ownership and team. Most salespeople spend a lot of time alone, and realizing that their team has similarities helps them stay connected to the company, which leads to retained sellers.

C – Communicative. Sharing relevant information is important; asking for information even more so. Plan ahead and allow sellers to present information or lead discussions and activities. Let the information be two-way.

K – Kinetic. Adults need to DO – to take action and build information into their consciousness and habits. Help them make the information actionable. End every meeting with each seller committing to ONE action they will take to apply the information discussed.

By committing to a regular meeting and making it STICK, your sales team will happily participate in your meetings. They will skip down the hall on the way, bring YOU a cup of coffee, silence their BlackBerrys and have positive thoughts in their heads as they join the meeting. More importantly, the information will stick and result in higher sales after the meeting.

What are some of the things you do to make your meetings STICK?

About the Author:

Sharpenz is dedicated to providing sales managers the resources and tools they need to energize, engage and equip their sales team to sell each week. Our 30-minute power sales booster meetings help companies increase sales by providing the right tools and training – fast. Designed with the busy manager in mind, Sharpenz ready-to-go sales training kits will give your sales team the opportunity to grow and earn more – all in a half hour of power.  To learn more, visit www.sharpenz.com and sign up for your free ready-to-go sales training kit today!