Don’t wait until the holidays or retirement offers you the occasion, take the time to recognize your employees’ diligent work ethic today! Whether you’re a corporate CEO or a small business entrepreneur with a staff of three, showing day to day employee appreciation will be worth your time and effort: such recognition serves to reinforce employee accountability as well as enhance work-place motivation overall. Here are some surefire methods for both showing your employees that you appreciate their hard work and improving work-place motivation:
1) Recognize your Employees with Fruit or Wine Baskets
Giving industrious employees gift baskets sends them the message that you recognize and appreciate their hard work. Due to the great variety of gift baskets available online, gift baskets are also a very convenient and time-efficient way of showing your appreciation. Some generous employers arrange for the regular delivery of fresh fruit baskets to the work place or their employees’ homes. In addition, a wine and cheese basket is a wonderful way to say to your staff, “job well done!”
2) Offer Health Club Memberships to Your Employees
A productive work place is dependent upon happy, healthy employees. Daily exercise not only provides great stress release, but also boosts the immune system. In providing your employees with health club memberships, you will not only be increasing their on the job satisfaction and productivity, but also reducing the number of employee sick days your business must pay for each month.
3) Create an “Employee of the Month” Program
The best way to develop an Employee of the Month program is to ask all levels of staff to work together to choose the monthly awardee. This important measure will prevent the Employee of the Month Club from becoming a way of selecting “favorites” and will keep it from becoming a point of ridicule by employees. In fact, Employee of the Month selection can be a valuable collaborative exercise for your employees as they work together to select the most worthy recipient; it will also add an element of social pressure for high work performance. Employees are often eager to recognize colleagues who are sincerely doing their part to make the work place run efficiently and productively, and such recognition will be a source of reinforcement and motivation for the recipient and others. You might produce a certificate to present to the awardee and also display the employee’s name, photo, and a brief bio in a prominent place in the workplace.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Reaching Star Status in Sales
Being number one on your sales team just isn’t that difficult. Salesmanship is a learned skill. You can perfect that skill. Yes, it does help to have an outgoing personality, high self-esteem and an ego. But, these attributes alone won’t make you successful. Confidence in yourself, confidence in your products and confidence in your company is a key ingredient. The only way to gain this kind of ultimate confidence is by attaining knowledge. Study your products, understand your value propositions and understand what your competitive advantage is.
Value Propositions
Don’t blow this concept off as some sales training jargon. Value propositions are extremely important. You have one, your company has one and your products have them. What is it about you that creates value for your customer? What is it about your company that creates value for your customer? What is it about your product that creates value for your customer? It’s not features and benefits.
“Perceived Value drives customer expectations” “Performance value drives customer satisfaction”
Understanding is the Key
Understand yourself first. Determine your strengths. Recognize your weaknesses. Make a vow to work on improving those areas where you are weak. To excel at anything you must have confidence and confidence comes from experience and knowledge. Recognizing your weakness puts you in a position of strength because you become familiar with your limitations and what you need to do to overcome them. Personal understanding is critical to understanding your customers. And, if you don’t understand your customers it is extremely difficult to discover their pain.
Be Honest with Yourself
The road to success in sales requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is capable of exercising. That specifically is why we all can’t be superstars. Part of becoming a superstar in sales is understanding people so well that building relationship equity is almost automatic. A skill that becomes inherent to your personification. This can’t happen unless you understand yourself first. People grow and change, you grow and change so this concept of knowing yourself and really knowing your customers is a living changing thing that you must always be conscious of. The more your customers change, the more you must change and adjust. This requires a certain amount of intuitive judgment and a perspective on helping the customer solve their problems to such an extent that you can see the forest in spite of the trees.
You Can Change Yourself but You Can’t Change Your Customer
Selling is all about understanding your customers. Accepting your customers as they are while understanding their specific wants, needs and desires for what they are and not what you would like them to be. This puts you in a position of strength in building a personal relationship with the customer. Don’t succumb to the common trait called impatience if your customer has trouble identifying his real pain. Often times it is up to you to help him discover that pain and in turn recognize the value you and your company provide by eliminating that pain.
Sales is a Profession to be Proud Of
Learning your product, making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon. You must become a total solution provider regardless of the circumstance or situation. Sometimes solving a customer’s problem will have nothing to do with your product or your company. That doesn’t matter. Solving the problem builds relationship equity and relationships are still extremely important even in this century when a relationship is required to even get into the game. Selling occurs all around us all day long. Our mere existence is predicated upon selling something all the time. That something can be anything from a product to an idea, a concept or even a philosophy.
Anybody can sell to some degree and we all do it without exception. However, to be a professional sales person that reaches star status, accepting these concepts as truths is the starting point. Accepting the concepts described in this article will enable you to understand that salesmanship is not a born trait. Agreed, there are some personality traits that may help you create success quicker but true professional sales skills are learned.
An old sales buddy of mine once said;
“You can send a gorilla out on the road and if he calls on enough people, if he doesn’t give up, sooner or later someone will pin an order to his chest and send him home.” --------Brian Williamson
Maybe you know some sales people like that. If you do rest assured they aren’t the professionals we are talking about. Sales is a profession that requires professionals. It’s a profession to be proud of. It requires persistence, tenacity, confidence and understanding. Study yourself, study people, do your homework and never forget the basics. Targeting, goal setting, action planning and follow-up never go out of fashion no matter how much of a star you become. Never forget where you came from and how you created the success you create.
Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to be done to excel in sales; keeping records, updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and all the while increasing your own knowledge – all this definitely requires personal motivation, discipline, and energy. Being a professional sales person is not easy. It demands creativity and innovative thinking.
So when you become a superstar in sales, use this list of basic reminders to help coach and mentor some of your peers so you can create the most dynamic sales team in your industry.
Sales Basics
• Meet and qualify all the accounts in your territory before you begin to focus on a few.
• Do your homework. Know your company first; the strong points, the weak points. Know who and what your internal resources are. What is your company’s sweet spot?
• Do your homework. Know your customers. What do they buy? How do they buy? Who are their five largest customers? Research your customer and their industry on the web. Become an industry expert for your customer. Meet people and cultivate relationships beyond your customers purchasing department.
• Create a call plan prior to every call. The objective can be as simple as getting an appointment with someone higher up in management to meet with your management on a subject as complex as a full-blown PowerPoint presentation designed to secure a contract.
• Keep a data record on every buyer at your major accounts. Get to know him as well as his family knows him.
• Create an itinerary for each week. Know what you are going to do. Set at least two base appointments in the morning and afternoon with major accounts. Fill in around these appointments as appropriate.
• Know your customers’ personality. People buy from people so develop a relationship with each of your customers. PIMS (Personal Information Managers) or sales programs such as TeleMagic and Goldmine have a place for this information. Use it, or put it in your spiral binder. Nothing is more important to Jennifer than her daughter’s ballet or to Bill than his golf or his son’s little league, BUT do not waste your time or theirs. Some people will reject you as a time waster if you talk about this, others will keep you on the phone for hours with trivia. Know your customer and control the conversation. Your job is to sell and move on but do it in the most productive and effective manner and only you know what that is for your customer.
• Create a territory plan. Establish goals, identify milestones, create a time line and engage all your resources including upper management.
• Create an action plan for every major account. Know your customers’ “Rules of Engagement.” What keeps them up at night? Create a strategy that involves your entire team including the President of your company if appropriate.
• Set specific goals and objectives. Write them down.
• Maintain a positive attitude. Don’t procrastinate on anything.
• Keep your promises. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
• Sell yourself first. Develop a trusted relationship, and then sell your company.
• Know your competitive advantages and your company’s core competencies.
• Think creatively. Think outside the box.
• If voicemail is blocking your contact, call someone else’s extension as if by mistake and ask them to transfer you. Voicemail has become the “gate keeper.” Call early before business hours or later after business hours.
• Listen more – speak less. Get your customer to talk about himself/herself. If your customer spends most of the time in a sales call talking about them, they can’t help but like you. Apply the 80/20 rule – listen 80% of the time.
Value Propositions
Don’t blow this concept off as some sales training jargon. Value propositions are extremely important. You have one, your company has one and your products have them. What is it about you that creates value for your customer? What is it about your company that creates value for your customer? What is it about your product that creates value for your customer? It’s not features and benefits.
“Perceived Value drives customer expectations” “Performance value drives customer satisfaction”
Understanding is the Key
Understand yourself first. Determine your strengths. Recognize your weaknesses. Make a vow to work on improving those areas where you are weak. To excel at anything you must have confidence and confidence comes from experience and knowledge. Recognizing your weakness puts you in a position of strength because you become familiar with your limitations and what you need to do to overcome them. Personal understanding is critical to understanding your customers. And, if you don’t understand your customers it is extremely difficult to discover their pain.
Be Honest with Yourself
The road to success in sales requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is capable of exercising. That specifically is why we all can’t be superstars. Part of becoming a superstar in sales is understanding people so well that building relationship equity is almost automatic. A skill that becomes inherent to your personification. This can’t happen unless you understand yourself first. People grow and change, you grow and change so this concept of knowing yourself and really knowing your customers is a living changing thing that you must always be conscious of. The more your customers change, the more you must change and adjust. This requires a certain amount of intuitive judgment and a perspective on helping the customer solve their problems to such an extent that you can see the forest in spite of the trees.
You Can Change Yourself but You Can’t Change Your Customer
Selling is all about understanding your customers. Accepting your customers as they are while understanding their specific wants, needs and desires for what they are and not what you would like them to be. This puts you in a position of strength in building a personal relationship with the customer. Don’t succumb to the common trait called impatience if your customer has trouble identifying his real pain. Often times it is up to you to help him discover that pain and in turn recognize the value you and your company provide by eliminating that pain.
Sales is a Profession to be Proud Of
Learning your product, making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon. You must become a total solution provider regardless of the circumstance or situation. Sometimes solving a customer’s problem will have nothing to do with your product or your company. That doesn’t matter. Solving the problem builds relationship equity and relationships are still extremely important even in this century when a relationship is required to even get into the game. Selling occurs all around us all day long. Our mere existence is predicated upon selling something all the time. That something can be anything from a product to an idea, a concept or even a philosophy.
Anybody can sell to some degree and we all do it without exception. However, to be a professional sales person that reaches star status, accepting these concepts as truths is the starting point. Accepting the concepts described in this article will enable you to understand that salesmanship is not a born trait. Agreed, there are some personality traits that may help you create success quicker but true professional sales skills are learned.
An old sales buddy of mine once said;
“You can send a gorilla out on the road and if he calls on enough people, if he doesn’t give up, sooner or later someone will pin an order to his chest and send him home.” --------Brian Williamson
Maybe you know some sales people like that. If you do rest assured they aren’t the professionals we are talking about. Sales is a profession that requires professionals. It’s a profession to be proud of. It requires persistence, tenacity, confidence and understanding. Study yourself, study people, do your homework and never forget the basics. Targeting, goal setting, action planning and follow-up never go out of fashion no matter how much of a star you become. Never forget where you came from and how you created the success you create.
Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to be done to excel in sales; keeping records, updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and all the while increasing your own knowledge – all this definitely requires personal motivation, discipline, and energy. Being a professional sales person is not easy. It demands creativity and innovative thinking.
So when you become a superstar in sales, use this list of basic reminders to help coach and mentor some of your peers so you can create the most dynamic sales team in your industry.
Sales Basics
• Meet and qualify all the accounts in your territory before you begin to focus on a few.
• Do your homework. Know your company first; the strong points, the weak points. Know who and what your internal resources are. What is your company’s sweet spot?
• Do your homework. Know your customers. What do they buy? How do they buy? Who are their five largest customers? Research your customer and their industry on the web. Become an industry expert for your customer. Meet people and cultivate relationships beyond your customers purchasing department.
• Create a call plan prior to every call. The objective can be as simple as getting an appointment with someone higher up in management to meet with your management on a subject as complex as a full-blown PowerPoint presentation designed to secure a contract.
• Keep a data record on every buyer at your major accounts. Get to know him as well as his family knows him.
• Create an itinerary for each week. Know what you are going to do. Set at least two base appointments in the morning and afternoon with major accounts. Fill in around these appointments as appropriate.
• Know your customers’ personality. People buy from people so develop a relationship with each of your customers. PIMS (Personal Information Managers) or sales programs such as TeleMagic and Goldmine have a place for this information. Use it, or put it in your spiral binder. Nothing is more important to Jennifer than her daughter’s ballet or to Bill than his golf or his son’s little league, BUT do not waste your time or theirs. Some people will reject you as a time waster if you talk about this, others will keep you on the phone for hours with trivia. Know your customer and control the conversation. Your job is to sell and move on but do it in the most productive and effective manner and only you know what that is for your customer.
• Create a territory plan. Establish goals, identify milestones, create a time line and engage all your resources including upper management.
• Create an action plan for every major account. Know your customers’ “Rules of Engagement.” What keeps them up at night? Create a strategy that involves your entire team including the President of your company if appropriate.
• Set specific goals and objectives. Write them down.
• Maintain a positive attitude. Don’t procrastinate on anything.
• Keep your promises. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
• Sell yourself first. Develop a trusted relationship, and then sell your company.
• Know your competitive advantages and your company’s core competencies.
• Think creatively. Think outside the box.
• If voicemail is blocking your contact, call someone else’s extension as if by mistake and ask them to transfer you. Voicemail has become the “gate keeper.” Call early before business hours or later after business hours.
• Listen more – speak less. Get your customer to talk about himself/herself. If your customer spends most of the time in a sales call talking about them, they can’t help but like you. Apply the 80/20 rule – listen 80% of the time.
Does Anyone Really Manage Sales
In my humble opinion, the term sales manager is extremely misleading yet most companies continue to use this description for one of their most important positions. Let's think for a moment how sales are actually made. Do we as sales people create the sale through our dynamic personalities and outgoing demeanor. Hardly; we make the sale through our continued activity with the client. I will go out on a limb and boldly say we never manager sales, rather we manage activity. Should you disagree with this please read on.
Nothing happens until a sale is made! The truth in this age old comment sometimes amazes those new to the filed of sales. In a prior life I would always begin a sales meeting with this statement and always begin my interviews with potential employees with the same comment.
So, if we have to manage activity and nothing happens until a sale is made, how do we accomplish both tasks in order to be successful at the science of sales? The answer is rather simple. As the "Sales Manager" one must put into place some very simple but effective methods of managing activity. Some very successful and seasoned professionals will disagree with my suggestions and that is OK. If you are satisfied with the performance of your sales team and are making as much money as you want to make then stop reading now. Otherwise read on for some proven tactics.
The plan is very simple as one activity leads to another and eventually to a sale. Regardless of the amount of money being spent on the sale, the steps to making the sale are always the same and must be orchestrated if you are to be successful. We will discuss sales training another day so let's concentrate on the activity required and how to track it properly.
As elementary as it may seem, you must require each salesperson to make a predetermined number of sales calls per day or week but this number must be specific and rigid.
Second you should set a goal each week for number of demonstrations or proposals or both. Naturally the product will determine if you need demonstrations or presentations prior to the actual proposal. A good rule of thumb is to expect 5 personal contacts before a presentation can be expected and possibly more for the proposal. This varies from industry to industry.
Third, you should determine a closing ratio for each member of the sales team. Naturally you can use one of your successful salespeople as a benchmark but each salesperson has to have their own closing ratio. This an excellent method for forecasting sales and for modifying commission plans.
Fourth, each sales person has to keep a list of their top prospects and the sales dollars forecasted for the account.
Fifth, where is the account in the process? i.e. are they ready to make a decision or are they still kicking tires?
And sixth, every salesperson should keep a record, either electronically or written regarding personal information of every person involved in the process from maintenance person to executive Vice President.
There are always more steps that may be added or perhaps you might reduce some step but the key is to keep sales people from wasting time on non-productive accounts or individuals.
We all spend money on countless items each day and in my case I like to purchase costly items from someone I know. The individual who has sold me over 100K in automobiles during the last two years realizes the value of everything listed above especially step six. He knows a lot about my and my wife because he took time to ask the questions and was rewarded with us purchasing another vehicle from him recently.
Nothing happens until a sale is made! The truth in this age old comment sometimes amazes those new to the filed of sales. In a prior life I would always begin a sales meeting with this statement and always begin my interviews with potential employees with the same comment.
So, if we have to manage activity and nothing happens until a sale is made, how do we accomplish both tasks in order to be successful at the science of sales? The answer is rather simple. As the "Sales Manager" one must put into place some very simple but effective methods of managing activity. Some very successful and seasoned professionals will disagree with my suggestions and that is OK. If you are satisfied with the performance of your sales team and are making as much money as you want to make then stop reading now. Otherwise read on for some proven tactics.
The plan is very simple as one activity leads to another and eventually to a sale. Regardless of the amount of money being spent on the sale, the steps to making the sale are always the same and must be orchestrated if you are to be successful. We will discuss sales training another day so let's concentrate on the activity required and how to track it properly.
As elementary as it may seem, you must require each salesperson to make a predetermined number of sales calls per day or week but this number must be specific and rigid.
Second you should set a goal each week for number of demonstrations or proposals or both. Naturally the product will determine if you need demonstrations or presentations prior to the actual proposal. A good rule of thumb is to expect 5 personal contacts before a presentation can be expected and possibly more for the proposal. This varies from industry to industry.
Third, you should determine a closing ratio for each member of the sales team. Naturally you can use one of your successful salespeople as a benchmark but each salesperson has to have their own closing ratio. This an excellent method for forecasting sales and for modifying commission plans.
Fourth, each sales person has to keep a list of their top prospects and the sales dollars forecasted for the account.
Fifth, where is the account in the process? i.e. are they ready to make a decision or are they still kicking tires?
And sixth, every salesperson should keep a record, either electronically or written regarding personal information of every person involved in the process from maintenance person to executive Vice President.
There are always more steps that may be added or perhaps you might reduce some step but the key is to keep sales people from wasting time on non-productive accounts or individuals.
We all spend money on countless items each day and in my case I like to purchase costly items from someone I know. The individual who has sold me over 100K in automobiles during the last two years realizes the value of everything listed above especially step six. He knows a lot about my and my wife because he took time to ask the questions and was rewarded with us purchasing another vehicle from him recently.
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