Lisa Spiller: Selling & Sales Management; Developing Skills for Success

The Foundations – ‘On the Ground’

Introducing ethical relationship selling

Selling is about solving people’s problems.

Personal selling is the interpersonal communication between sellers and buyers or prospective buyers in the exchange of products, services, or something of value, to the mutual benefit of both parties.

Don’t make a sale, create a customer.

Value is the relative worth, utility, or importance of something compared to its cost of acquisition.

There are four key fundamentals of trust:

• Capability
• Dependability
• Integrity
• Intimacy

Building trust begins with salespeople believing in their respective company and what it is offering.

Ethical selling is:

• Offering truthful information and fair competitive comparisons.
• Handling objections with honestly and sincerity.
• Following through on promise and commitments made.
• Being accountable for any problems that arise.
• Maintaining an ethical-selling based organizational culture.

Outside selling is where salespeople meet with prospects face to face.

Inside selling is where salespeople locate potential customers and guide them through the sales process remotely.

Team selling is a collaborative sales strategy where two or more members work together to achieve buying commitments.

The selling process progresses in tandem with the customer-buying journey.

Stages of selling process:

• Prospecting. The objective in this stage is qualifying leads and cultivating through the sales funnel.
• Approaching. This stage requires salespeople to master ‘soft skills’.
• Listening and determining willingness to buy. This stage is often called NDC (needs discovery conversation). Willingness to buy (WTB).
• Delivering the sale presentation.
• Managing conflict and negotiating. The best salespeople will welcome buyer questions and seek to explore potential areas of conflict.
• Overcoming objections and closing the sale.
• Following up. Activities that are performed after a sale is made.

Researching and preparing for successful selling

There is nothing more important in sales than researching and preparing each and every sales interaction regardless of the communications medium used.

Initial meeting can also be called the needs discovery conversation (NDC).

Salespeople must clearly understand consumer touchpoints, that is how, where and when, the customer or prospect has interacted with their company.

The customer journey is the set of experiences that a customer goes through, from the moment they become aware of your company and brand.

A channel is a passageway, a means of access for the transfer of a product, an idea, or a communication.

Developing customers profile is the first step. Part of profile are geographic, demographic, social, psychographic and behavioral factors.

Social factors are important to understand who has influence in customer environment. Thing about reference groups (peer groups) or reference individuals. When we look from a market perspective we can think about influencer theory, which is based on the idea that a small number of consumers are able to sway the mass market.

Psychographics is the study of lifestyles, habits, attitudes, beliefs, interests, and value systems of individuals.

The interests of most people stem from their personality type and basic human needs of what they want to gain, save, avoid, or become.

• People want to gain self-confidence, wealth, prestige, popularity, praise.
• People want to save time, money, memories.
• People want to avoid criticism, pain, trouble, discomfort, effort, emotional suffering.
• People want to become good citizens, creative, efficient, successful, respected.

B2B vs. B2C can also be called the difference between organizational consumers versus final consumers.  First purchase products for further production, use it on its operations, or for resale; second for personal consumption.

Power is described as the capacity to control or direct change. The active form of power is influence. Understanding the power and politics in play typically leads to better NDCs.

Web scraping is an essential hacking tactic to mine information on the Internet and to pull together an extensive, highly customized lists of leads.

Customer and buyer journey stages:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision
• Retention
• Advocacy

The buyer journey refers to the stages that a consumer goes through up to their decision to purchase a specific product or service from a specific organization.

A customer journey map is a visual depiction of every interaction and experience a customer has with a company or organization.

The offer is the value proposition to the prospect or customer, stating what you will give the customer in return for taking the action you are requesting. The offer encompasses both the manner of presentation and a request for a response. The offer is the element of the sales strategy that can be most quickly and easily revised for an improved result in the selling process.

The five components of the offer are product or service, pricing and payment terms, risk-reduction mechanisms, time limits or length of commitment, and incentives (which is optional). Offer should address four essential questions:

• What am I selling?
• Whom am I selling to?
• Why am I selling this now?
• What do I want my prospect or customer to do?

The appeal of an offer can be described as its message content that addresses the consumer’s needs, wants, or interests, and entices action. The rational appeal targets a consumer’s logical buying motives. The emotional appeal focuses on a consumer’s desires and feelings. It targets wants.

Benefits may be the physical attributes of a product, translated into terms that meet customer needs. There is normally one key benefit for which the brand or company is known. This is referred to as unique selling proposition (USP) or what it can do that is distinctively better and different than all other competitors vying for the same customers.

People do business with people they like and trust.

Selling success is more of an issue of who you are than what you know.

Values are the beliefs and standards by which you choose to live your life. Interests are the activities you select to do because you enjoy them. Personality traits are distinguishing qualities or characteristics that belong to you. Skills are abilities that you can do that you’ve acquired through training or experience.

Ron Willingham categorizes people into the following behavior styles:

• Talkers
• Doers
• Controllers
• Supporters

Emotional intelligence refers to your ability to identify, assess, and manage your emotions.

Professional business etiquette includes good personal grooming, effective time management, good interpersonal behavior, and good communication skills, including speaking, writing and listening.

Active listening is when you make a concentrated, conscious effort to hear and understand the words and sounds that surround you; then, respond to and remember the conversation. Paying attention and interpreting the meaning of what is being said is required for active listening.

Planning strategically for successful selling

RAP as successful sales person – resilient, assertive, and passionate.

Today, what salespeople really need is solid insight or intelligence that is procured from the data to use in actionable ways to strategically plan for successful selling.

Business intelligence is gathering, evaluating, and distributing descriptive information to help make decisions for an organization.

Business analytics is predictive and prescriptive, business intelligence is descriptive.

BI includes:

• Customer intelligence.
• Financial intelligence.
• Competitive intelligence.
• Strategic intelligence.
• Data intelligence.

There are five criteria that salespeople may use for judging the usefulness of information. These criteria are:

• Accuracy
• Availability
• Sufficiency
• Currency
• Relevancy

Goals specify the desired outcomes to be achieved. Objectives are sub-goals that are smaller and more easily attained. A strategy is a course of action or an action plan that details what activity needs to occur in order to achieve an objective. In implementing strategies, salespeople need resources or tools, which are referred to as tactics.

It is important to differentiate between results that salespeople may not be able to directly control versus those that they can directly control.

An account plan is the output or document that is created on the basis of the account planning process.

Account planning originated in the UK in 1965 and spread to the US and beyond in the early 1980s.

Mark Donnolo talks about four different account plans, based on size and types of customers:

• Strategic – large accounts.
• Tactical – mid- size.
• Aspirational – growth aspiration.
• Pursuit – new customers.

Account plans typically include the following seven components:

• Profile and position.
• Needs mapping and alignment.
• Goals and objectives.
• Action plan.
• Team support.
• Performance dashboard.
• Organizational structure/title search and assessment.

Business development encompasses the tasks of generating new business opportunities for salespeople. The main differentiator between salespeople and business development representatives is whether or not they close deals.

It costs (on average) about 8-10 times more money to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current one.

We have up-sell, cross-sell, but also continuity selling, which has also been referred to as ‘club offer’ or ‘subscription-offers’.

A RFP (request for proposal) is a formal announcement issued by companies or organizations specifying a particular project for which they are outsourcing and seeking potential bids for a contract to be awarded for its completion.

A proposal should be merely a documented record of what has already been agreed to in the meeting with the prospect. Too often, salespeople use the proposal phase too early because they use it as a talking document to fine-tune their solution, rather than as a summary of their conclusions after interacting with the prospect.

KPIs help to quantify goals and objectives and enable progress to be measured.

The Selling Process – Out in the Field

Networking and prospecting with effectiveness

“Profit for a company is like oxygen for a person. If you don’t have enough of it, you’re out of the game. But if you think your life is about breathing, you’re really missing something.” Peter Drucker

Networking is defined as using a supportive system for sharing information and services among individuals and groups that have a common interest.

Effective networking focuses on three tactical areas:

• How potential networking contacts are identified.
• How to engage with people when you first meet them.
• How you choose to follow up after you meet someone.

Lead generation is a method of getting inquiries from potential customers. A sales lead is an individual or a business that is suspected to have an interest in the products or services you are selling. A sales lead is commonly referred to as a suspect, in having the potential to become a prospect.

Prospecting is engaging in activities or conversations with suspects to inquire, assess, discover, educate, and determine whether there’s a fit and a relationship that’s worth pursuing.

Will a given sales lead become a buying customer? Most salespeople use the following two criteria:

• Do the sales leads have a need or want for the product or service?
• Can the sales leads afford the product or service?

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a sales lead whose engagement levels suggest that he is likely to become a customer, and a sales qualified lead (SQL) is defined as a sales lead that indicates immediate interest in a company’s products or services. The main difference between MQL and SQL is the urgency of the lead.

The following five-step lead-generation process:

• Identify your target audience.
• Pick your promotional methods wisely.
• Create a sales funnel.
• Follow up to build relationship.
• Leverage social media to connect and engage.

Using customer profile, salespeople improve their accuracy in identifying and targeting prospective customers.

Customer retention is typically a very productive and profitable strategy to increase sales revenue. The most effective way to generate leads from current customers is to obtain referrals. Endless chain is a technique where salespeople ask current customer to identify other potential buyers.

Bird dogs, also called spotters, are people hired to provide leads to salespeople.

Research shows that sales leads should receive an email sequence with multiple following-up emails, each containing an appropriate call-to-action (CTA) to move them through the sales funnel.

Web scraping is a technique used to extract structured data from websites. One of the most common uses of web scraping is conducting research on prospects or leads and downloading information for sales analysis.

Research shows that the average conversion rate on a LinkedIn Lead Gen Form is 13 percent, which is very high considering a typical website conversion rate is 2.35 %.

Cold calling also referred to as cold canvassing, is defined as making an unsolicited call to a potential sales lead or prospect. The purpose of the cold call is not to sell.

10 steps to successful Cold calling:

• Define the company’s USP.
• Use and ice breaker to introduce yourself and define how long the call will take.
• Take the USP and solve the problem.
• Use a focus question to connect prospects to the need.
• Use an attention question to pose the solution to a challenge the prospect has.
• Use a decision-maker question to reveal the decision maker.
• Use a trial close.
• Use a closing question to schedule a follow-up meeting.
• Provide a meeting confirmation information.
• The sales meeting is where you NOW have the prospect’s attention to present and sell.

Salespeople must grab the attention of their prospects in only 2-5 seconds to make a great first impression.

Essential metrics to assess in lead generation and prospecting include cost per lead and close rates. Cost per lead (CPL) is the most important metrics to understand in lead generation. A close rate or ratio is the number of sales a salesperson close compared to the number they tried to close.

Close rates pers industry:

• Biotechnology: 15%
• Business & industrial: 27%
• Computer software: 22%
• Computers & electrics: 23%
• Finance: 19%

Approaching and communicating with success

In selling, approaching entails salespeople making the initial contact with prospective customers.

Rapport is defined as a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are “in sync” with each other, understand each other’s feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly.

Strategies that help to build rapport:

• Be enthusiastic.
• Be totally transparent.
• Be empathetic.
• Take the high ground. Be open, honest, and have the strength of moral character.
• Ask perceptive questions.
• Use the prospective customer’s name.
• Offer a sincere compliment.
• Identify a personal connection.
• Tell a short personal story.
• Mirror the buyer.
• Exercise pacing.

First impressions are critical because they form very quickly, last a very long time, and directly affect both perception and buying decision.

Salespeople should emphasize (during introduction) only those aspects of their profile that relate to the interests and values of their prospective customers. Talking points should present evidence of their expertise and value.

Colleen Stanley believes that there are three emotional intelligence skills that may be taught to avoid having salespeople buckle under pressure from a tough prospect or customer

• Emotional self-awareness.
• Assertiveness.
• Empathy.

Salespeople must be engaging speakers. Congruence is of critical importance in effective oral communication. Congruence means that your body language, words, and tonality of voice are all aligned and in sync with one another.

Vocal skills relate to the rate, pitch, tone, and articulation of speech.

Some common writing techniques are:

• Keep your readers in mind.
• Be yourself.
• Use the active voice.
• Follow writing formula. A-I-D-A. Attract Attention, Arouse Interest, Stimulate Desire, Call for Action. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.
• Write concisely.
• Consider different attitudes and point of view.
• Be accurate.
• Use correct spelling and good grammar.

The practice of adaptive selling refers to salespeople recognizing and changing their selling message and behavior based on the unique characteristic of each customer or prospect and the selling situation.

According to psychologists David Merrill and Roger Reid, the four social styles are: Analyticals, Driver, Expressives and Amiables.

Ron Willingham. His model states that people can be categorized into the following four behavior styles: Talkers, Doers, Controllers, and Supporters.  Four social styles reflect combinations of two different dimensions: the need for recognition versus the need for security, and the tendency to be process oriented versus results oriented.

Dr. William Marston, outlined the four communication styles as: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. This DISC Personal Profile System developed by Carlson Learning Company as a guide to salespeople in understanding their clients better.

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a technique for enhancing one’s ability to detect personality types through an increased awareness of verbal and physical cues. NLP was initially developed by researchers John Grinder and Richard Bandler in 1975. NLP has three essential elements:

• Neuro – related to the brain.
• Linguistic – pertaining to language, general body language.
• Programming – conditioning the brain.

NLP details the connections among our thoughts, our speech, and our behavior.

Most people have three dominant sensory modes in terms how they communicate – visual (V), auditory (a), and kinesthetic (K). V-A-K comprise the three modalities of NLP.

• Visual people think in terms of pictures, recalling and remembering information in terms of mental images.
• Auditory people think in sounds.
• Kinesthetic people think in terms of feelings, remembering people from their touch or feel.

Listening and determining willingness to buy

There are only two reasons to interact with a client: to get information or to get commitment.

After salespeople effectively gain rapport with their prospective buyer, how do they transition from the approach stage to the interview stage?

Interviewing is the single most important step of the selling process and it is in the heart of customer needs selling.  Requesting prospective buyer’s permission to ask them questions at the beginning of this stage is a good technique to use.

Five categories of questions to explore:

• Indirect questions: open ended questions for free flow of customers thoughts.
• Direct questions: ask for an expansion or evaluation of a specific area.
• Empowering questions: are solution-oriented and focus on what positive actions can be taken.
• Disempowering questions: are problem-focused and are concerned with barriers to making progress.
• Possibility questions: useful in generating ideas or options.

Question must vary based on the behavior style.

Proactive listening, also known as intentional listening, is transformational in that you are present, focused, and engaged with your audience so deeply that you are no longer listening to someone but you are listening for select information.

People remember only about 25 percent of what they hear when they passively listen, as opposed to about 85 percent when they actively listen.

Use questions to obtain greater clarity and unput from your prospective buyers. It is called probing, whereby a question is asked to uncover a more detailed response. Listening for key phrases and responding with relevant probing questions are techniques successful salespeople should regularly practice.

The primary objective of salespeople during the interview stage or needs discovery conversation is to help prospective buyers make need-satisfying decisions that will solve their problems.

The buyer journey refers to the stages that a consumer goes through up to their decision to purchase specific product or service from a specific organization.

Awareness stage, consideration stage and decision stage.

During the buyer journey, consumers are not yet customers, they become customers after they make a purchase. When prospects are in the awareness phase, salespeople should conduct an ‘impact’ and ‘urgency’ review.

Consumers todays are educated and empowered. They have taken control of the buyer journey process. The buyer journey is less linear and predictable than it once was. Gartner research reveals that when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend only 17 percent of that time meeting with potential suppliers.

Gartner research has identified six B2B buying ‘jobs’ that consumers must complete to their satisfaction before they finalize their purchase decision. They are: problem identification, solution exploration, requirement building, supplier selection, validation, and consensus creation.

Today, salespeople have become consultants in the consumer buying journey as opposed to being the primary leader. The new role of salespeople is referred to as sales enablement.

Willing to buy framework (WTB) uses a minimally intrusive process that puts potential customers at ease while, together with salespeople, self-diagnosing whether they are ready and able to make a buying decision at this time. The most successful salespeople are able to determine which sales opportunities are not likely to close in a timely fashion. WTB is used to determine the ‘whys, whos, and hows’ of making a decision.

A system is a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done, an organized scheme or method. A sales system would provide us with a set of step-by-step procedures that, if followed precisely, would lead to increased sales effectiveness. But there really is no step-by-steep system for sale success.

A framework is a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.

Willing to buy (WTB) concept is best defined as a framework, a tool to help both sales professional and the sales manager discover and face reality. The four pillars of the WTC framework are:

• Is the prospect Willing to buy? (WTB)
• Is the justification evident? (JE)
• Is the money available? (MA)
• Is the decision cycle clear? (DCC)

WTB is personal motivator. JE is organizational motivator. MA can it be done. DCC how will be done (decision).

Asking for a budget is a respect of both a prospect and a salesperson time.

Presenting with impact and communicating via storytelling

All salespeople must be able to create and deliver sales presentations that are informing, intriguing, and engaging in order to stimulate desire, persuade their prospects to move forward in the sales cycle, and sell.

There are four stages of a typical sales presentation:

• Opening. The opening is where salespeople build or strengthen their relationship and continue the needs discovery conversation with their prospect.
• Body. The body is typically the most important and the longest portion of a sales presentation. This part is about product or services they are offering.
• Summation. Short and specific overview or summary of the main selling benefits.
• Request. Wrap up of the presentation, potential use of a trial close.

The three most common approaches or types of sales presentation:

• Prepared – script based and non-customized.
• Selling formula – also outlined approach since it follows a rehearsed structured outline.
• Consultative – customized, need-satisfying approach.

The human brain processes visuals 60.000 times faster than text.

A sales deck is a slider presentation summary of the selling company and its offer. Typically, slide deck content includes the following elements:

• Title slide
• Definition of the prospect’s problem or need.
• Explanation of problem solution that the selling company can provide.
• Salesperson introduction.
• Elaboration of why this solution is optimal.
• Proof to support this solution’s claim.
• Closing with a call-to-action.

Pitching with passion implies that you believe in what you’re selling.

We have four different zones of proximity:

• Intimate – (45 cm).
• Casual/friend – (45 cm to 1.2 m).
• Social – (1.2 m to 3.6 m).
• Public – (3.6. m to 7.6m).

Selling is the ultimate goal when delivering a sales presentation. Salespeople should identify the three main points they want their prospect to take away and build their presentation around those.

A longline is a single compelling sentence that explains the content of the presentation in a manner that hooks the prospective customer. Rule is that you spend 40 % asking questions, 40 % listening and 20 percent presenting.

Stories used in selling must be factual, real, and authentic. Seven-step process to create persuasive stories:

• Do your research.
• Set goals and objectives.
• Outline story content.
• Draft story and revise.
• Add photos and images.
• Polish your story.
• Share your story.

Stories are told by a series of beats, where a beat is the smallest part of a story that still retains the essence of the story itself.

STAR is one method of story structure:

• Situation
• Task
• Activity
• Results

Managing conflict and negotiating with finesse

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Thomas Edison

Value is the relative worth, utility, or importance of something compared to its cost of acquisition.

Conflict has been defined as the behaviors or feelings that one or both parties have when the other party has the potential to or actually obstructs, interferes with, or makes less effective a party’s behaviors associated with reaching their goals in a relationship.

In selling, conflict should be seen as a moment of opportunity.

The most widely recognized conflict handling style model in human resource management today is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, which is based on the conflict management approaches originally developed by Kenneth Thomas. Thomas proposed a taxonomy of five conflict management approaches: avoidance, accommodation, confrontation, compromise, and collaboration; which are arrayed along the two dimensions of level of assertiveness and cooperation. Assertiveness indicates the level of concern for one’s own outcomes, while cooperation indicates the level of concern for the other party’s outcomes.

• Avoidance – low assertiveness and low cooperation.
• Accommodation – low assertiveness and high cooperation.
• Confrontation – high assertiveness and low cooperation.
• Compromise – medium assertiveness and medium cooperation.
• Collaboration – high assertiveness and high cooperation.

In a compromise, neither the buyers, nor the salespeople get what they truly want. This form of conflict style is considered wasteful because it does not maximize the potential of the negotiation.

Negotiation is defined as a process whereby two parties seek to find a mutually acceptable solution or outcome to a complex conflict.

Being a good negotiator means being a good communicator, as well as being an ethical and empathetic leader.

Negotiation in selling can be a challenging process when salespeople don’t know the true needs and wants of their prospective customers.

The keys to successful negotiation are preparation, experience, and confidence.

Try to start the negotiation by articulating your perception of the other’s interest and verifying with them that you are correct.

Here are 10 common mistakes to avoid when negotiating in selling:

• Lacking preparation.
• Lacking confidence.
• Thinking something is non-negotiable.
• Not building relationship first.
• Not employing fair, objective criteria.
• Not asking for what you want.
• Thinking too much.
• Not controlling the agenda.
• Not documenting things.
• Signing without reading.

The negotiation process:

• Validating buyer motives and interests.
• Generating options in search of a solution.
• Applying objective standards when bargaining.
• Obtaining commitment and establishing implementation procedures.
• Understanding when you need to walk away.

Bargaining refers to back-ad-forth communication to arrive at the terms of a purchase, agreement, or contract.

There are typically four prices that represent the points of analysis in distributive bargaining situations: target point, resistance point, asking price, and initial offer.

• Target point. The optimal goal or the point at which a negotiator would like to conclude negotiations.
• Resistance point. A negotiator’s bottom line.
• Asking price. The initial price set by the seller.
• Initial offer. The first price figure the buyer will offer to the seller.

Overcoming objections and closing the sale with satisfaction

The focus of today’s modern selling is relationship building.

Salespeople must overcome buyer hesitation, understand buying signals, use various closing techniques, obtain buyer commitment, utilize up-selling cross-selling, and continuity selling strategies, effectively ask for the sale, and build relationship after the buying decision.

A buyer objection is any hesitation or reluctance that may block successful selling.

Common sales objections:

• Lack of budget
• Lack of trust
• Lack of need
• Lack of urgency
• Other

Each buyer’s behavior style will likely affect the types of concerns or hesitations they will raise during the selling process.

Following are some of the most commonly used methods to address hesitation:

Agree and counter. ‘Yes, but’ method.

Boomerang. Turn the objection around so it actually becomes a reason to agree to buy the product.

Interrogation. As a series of well-framed questions to your prospective buyer to show that the objection is not completely valid and accurate.

Direct denial. Tactfully point out that the objection is incorrect.

The 4 C’s of objection handling:

• Clarify
• Categorize
• Capitalize
• Connect

Overcoming buyer objections is a form of problem solving.

Closing is the act of obtaining commitments. In selling, obtaining commitment refers to a strategy to continually move your prospect closer to buying, which is typically achieved in progressive steps throughout the sales cycle.

The potential influence of behavior style on buyer decision making by revisiting each of the four behavior styles:

• Driver (Doer/Dominant). They make decisions easily and will be most influenced by the benefits associated with the product/service that enable them to achieve results.
• Analytical (Controller/Conscientious). Analytical buyers may interrupt you to question the accuracy of your statements as they will need proof and documentation that what you are offering will solve their problems and achieve the results that you are claiming.
• Expressive (Talker/Influence). Talkers are more concerned about what other people think of them, so they are reluctant to make buying decisions without reassurance that others will approve of their decisions.
• Amiable (Supporter/Steadiness). Amiable buyers avoid risk: thus, they are typically slow decision makers.

Some types of closing:

• Assumptive close.
• Alternative option close.
• Balance sheet or T-account close. Pros and con.
• Compliment close.
• Urgency ‘time limit’ close.
• Summary of benefits close.
• Continuous ‘yes’ close.
• Probability close.
• Soft close.
• Premium or bonus close. Offering something for nothing.
• Secondary close.
• Direct close.

Research shows that the average sales include three rejections and objections. 64 percent of salespeople don’t ask for the order. How the salesperson asks the buyer for commitments is just as important as the actual act of asking.

Up-selling is the suggestion for more expensive products/services over the product/service originally discussed or purchased.

Cross-selling refers to offering new products/services that may be related or unrelated to those the customers are already buying.

Continually selling describes offers that are continued on a regular basis, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Fulfillment is the act of carrying out a customer’s expectations.

Following up to cultivate and manage customer relationship

“There is never a good sale unless it-s a good buy for the customer’.” Herbert Marcus

Post-sales activities are defined as the collection of sales, marketing, and operations processes that occur after closing a sale with a customer. Common elements of the post-sales process:

• Order fulfillment.
• Billing and collections.
• Cancellation and order revisions.
• Returns.
• Complaints.
• Additional support.
• Incident management.
• Relationship management.
• Feedback.
• Upselling and cross-selling.
• Customer referrals.
• Maintenance and supplies.
• End-of-support services.

Two post-sales activities that should be carried out immediately after the sale is closed, include thanking the customer and delivering on any promises made to the customer during the selling process.

The transition period between the sales cycle and the becoming a customer’ portion of the client relationship is referred to as the sales hand-off.

Handling customer complaints includes the following strategies:

• Listen
• Empathize
• Apologize
• Solve

Excellent customer service can deflect complaints before they have a chance to be formed.

Account management is a post-sales role that focuses on nurturing client relationship.

A sales territory is the regional, industry, or account type assigned to a specific salesperson or sales team. Sales managers are responsible for sales territory management which is the process of creating, managing, and optimizing sales territories and the salespeople that are responsible for them. Central to successful sales territory management is proper cadence management which is the process of prioritizing, structuring, timing, and conducting account interactions.

K.A.R.E. framework for organizing clients from Mason Minor:

• Keep existing accounts with which you have solid relationship.
• Attain target accounts that match the profile.
• Recapture previous accounts that have been lost.
• Expand on existing accounts.

Prospect are ‘hand-raiser’ who have identified themselves as having an interest in your company or organization. Customer have placed an order with your company. Clients are multi-buyers. At the top of customer hierarchy are advocates.

Key account management is the process of building long-term relationship with your company’s most valuable client accounts.

Customer engagement is a measure of a company’s interaction with its customers across all touchpoints throughout its lifecycle.

Two methods for calculating customer value are: RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) and customer value equation.

The real benefit of calculating customer value is that it can be calculated on a segment or cluster basis, or on an individual basis.

Customer engagement value, which is the set of metrics that describe customers who value the brand and contribute to the firm through purchase activities, referrals, positive influence on other customers, and feedback to the company, may be tracked and measured.

Evaluation and Sales Management – ‘Back in the Office’

Recruiting, training, and leading salespeople

“Don’t watch the clock, do what it does. Keep going.” Sam Levenson

The sales management role is that it actually encompasses four functions: supervising, training, coaching, and mentoring.

Attracting sales talent:

• Determine the personal skills/attributes of the ideal sales candidate.
• Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that a candidate must or should have.
• Create a list of recruiting website/social media entities.
• Assign responsibility to a member of your company’s management team.

SEARCH – skills, experience, attitude, results, cognitive, habits.

Onboarding is also called ‘organizational socialization’.

It takes new hires 8-12 moths to gain proficiency comparable to that of their established sales team members, with lost productivity incurring costs ranging from 1 to 2.5 %of total business revenues.

Onboarding should include:

• A manual of critical information.
• An outline of all the topics to be covered in onboarding.
• A list of the criteria management will use to assess the readiness.
• A mentor who will act as a guide.
• An overall coach responsible for reinforcing or correcting skills/behaviors.
• Basic sales training.

Sales leadership is defined as activities undertaken by those in a sales organization that motivate others to pursue common goals for the collective good of the organization. Sales managers are primarily responsible for creating and managing organizational culture, which is the shared set of assumptions, values, and beliefs that employees hold.

Three basic leadership styles that focus on followers: considerate, transformational, and servant leadership.

Servant leadership is not a strategy or management technique. It is an attitude.

Effective coaching can improve salesperson retention rate by 40 percent, increase win rates of forecasted deals by 8.2 percent, and augment overall revenue attainment by 5.2 percent.

Mentoring is defined as an interpersonal exchange between a senior level or experienced person and a less experienced persons in which the mentor provides support, direction, and feedback regarding career plans and personal development.

A sales compensation plan is the strategy that businesses use to pay salespeople and drive their performance in a way that will help the business become more profitable. There are different compensation plans that may be implemented to serve different sales management and company goals. They include:

• Salary only.
• Commission only.
• Base salary plus commission.
• Base salary plus bonus.
• Absolute commission.
• Relative commission.

The three main reasons why employees leave a company are: compensation, conflict and people skills (in management).

70 percent of sales representatives who left their organization due to the lack of promotion opportunities, were top performers.

KPI. Performance measures may be categorized as:

• Behavior metrics
• Pipeline metrics
• Results metric

Budgeting and Forecasting Future Sales

Knowing where money is coming from and where it’s going it key to operating a successful business.

The main difference between a sales budget and a sales forecast is that the sale budget is a quantified expectation of the total sales revenues that will be achieved during a given period of time, whereas the sales forecast specifies estimated future sales along with specific details about what products/services are to be sold during a specific time period. Another difference is that the sales forecast is normally determined after the sales budget has been set.

A budget is defined as a formal written plan used to allocate scarce resources and to measure and evaluate success against performance goals. We have financial and operating budget.

A step-by-step process to preparing a sales budget:

• Select a time period for the budget.
• Collect sales prices.
• Gather historical sales data.
• Review industry information.
• Determine market trends.
• Consider business model changes.
• Obtain input.
• Create the budget.

The data and information to use as the foundation for sales forecasting include:

• Sales goals.
• Sales process.
• Standardized definitions of leads, opportunities, and closes.
• Benchmark sales metrics.
• Information on product costs, expenses, and price fluctuations.

In order for sales forecasting to be effective, it must be perceived as reliable, accurate, and producing valuable benefits.

Sales planning and accurate forecasting help to develop objectives into realistic actions for salespeople to follow. Factors affecting accuracy could be internal or external. Historical data is typically a good predictor of the future.

There are a number of methods that may be used when forecasting sales:

• Surveys of salespeople opinions.
• Historical data.
• Deal stage.
• Length of sales cycle.
• Lead value.
• Multivariable statistical analysis.

Example of multivariable analysis include sales cycle length, probability of closing based on deal type, and salesperson performance.

Two common approaches for forecasting sales using statistical methods are time-series models and regression models.

Performing sales analytics and tracking productivity

Sales has always been a numbers-driven field.

Sales analytics is formally defined as identifying, modeling, understanding, and predicting sales trends and outcomes, while aiding sale management in understanding where salespeople can improve.

The only thing worse than not having enough data is having plenty of data that you cannot trust.

Sales Metrics Categories:

• Pipeline
• Sales outreach
• Activity
• Primary conversion
• Hiring & onboarding
• Sales process and training
• Sales productivity
• Channel
• Lead generation

We can also categorize metrics in: salespeople metrics, deal metrics, business metrics.

Most analysts break down sales data into four distinct types:

• Descriptive
• Diagnostic
• Predictive
• Prescriptive

Well-established marketing metrics reveal that, on average, a happy customer tells five to seven people; while an unhappy customer complaint to seven to 15 people.