How salespeople can become less tired and stressed
Fred Copestake
Sales Trainer | Author | Coach | Working with engineering and manufacturing teams | Selling has changed – have you?
Check out the new 'Spotlight' series focusing on modern sales challenges!
Welcome to the?November Edition?of Sales?Today?newsletter for B2B sales professionals, the eighth edition... especially the 2160 subscribers
It's monthly so I want to give you plenty to consider
The 'Harry and Larry Saga' is over now but new subscribers can check out the story in previous editions (they are happily selling now and set for dealing with the new types of conversations customers are demanding)
In its place is a three part series considering the challenges of modern selling and what we can do to address these
So what to expect
The focus is all about enabling more good (sales)people doing good things in a good way
Thanks for taking a look
FRED
How salespeople can become less tired and stressed
I categorise the challenges modern salespeople have into three broad categories:
- Busy, Busy, Busy
- Olde Worlde
- Muddled mindset
In this article we will explore ‘Busy Busy Busy’
This is just another way of saying salespeople being ineffective.
What we're doing is, when we're becoming ineffective, is that we're throwing more things, more resource, more time, more effort at something to achieve result, but it's the things which aren't working.
It is good resource after bad.
And what that happens is we end up wasting a bunch of opportunities that's not getting those results we are after.
We become more tired, more stressed, and it's not place we want to be
It’s all because the activity is unfocused. It creates a horrible, vicious circle we can find ourselves going into it and maybe not even noticing it because we're in panic and we're trying to chase after the stuff and make it work for us.
Now we can remedy it. To counter ‘Busy, busy, busy’ we need to be more effective. It involves three main things
This about preparing better to make the most of the opportunities. We need to just stop and think sometimes, and I know that often salespeople feel as though we're wasting time thinking. But we're not, it's crucial to how we can add value today.
We can plan how we're going to balance work, and just doing that will help reduce stress.
When we're busy, everything becomes a priority and we lose track of what is really important. We don't want be in this manic mode, and we do want be in a very controlled mode of doing the things that we know are going make a difference.
Using process is going to help us do this. Some salespeople feel that this is tying them in, this is boxing them in, but it's not. It's about doing the things that work time and time again, there's plenty of room for flex within a process, but this is all about, having a game plan.
Broadly that's what is going to make a difference.
Along with this I would also encourage salespeople to adopt a ‘partnering mindset’. It's a huge part of Collaborative Selling is based on.
This is how we can develop the ways of working, which are going to be most effective today.
I've seen so many salespeople entering sales conversations the wrong way. They're going in to try to make a sale. Now that probably sounds a little bit weird. Of course, a salesperson is going to go into a sale to try to make a sale.
However, it can come across as a bit want a bit needy. (There's an expression that some American colleagues use, which is that people can smell ‘commission breath’. That sounds horrible, doesn't it?)
So that's why I encourage people to think like a partner and that basically is the core of my book Selling Through Partnering Skills.
A little while ago I came across, this concept of PQ. This is your 'partnering intelligence'. It is based on research of Steve Dent who was looking at the big organizations that were coming together, forming alliances.
Long story short, he shows that ‘Organizations don't partner, people do’
So, these are people skills. They are things that if we get better at and we use them them with other people and we can then form these better alliances.
But I looked at these six elements and I thought, this is for every single salesperson. This could inform every single person who is in any kind of commercial role, and you will do it better because they're people skills.
1. Trust – the foundation of relationships. It's such a key area. The mistake I see people make is that they hear this expression ‘meet, like, know trust’. Networking organizations love this and it's not wrong per se, but people try to do trust. They do the things which build up trust, like being credible, being reliable being, being careful with people's information.
But whenever you are doing this with your own best interests at heart, that leaks and it doesn't build as much trust as when you genuinely do it with the other party's best interest. I hear some people talk about sell to serve, and I absolutely love this. I love that thinking. For me, it fits very closely with the idea of using partnering skills.
2. Win-win focus - we've talked about this in sales for a long time. Mutual benefit, understanding how to work with another party so we can resolve problems, solve conflicts. A little mistake that a lot of salespeople make is that they get really good at understanding the other party's needs.
Now I'm not going to say stop that, but equally what we need to do is to share our own, Don't expect the customer to be a mind reader. It's got to be mutual. So we need to be sharing the stuff that makes the deal good for us. It's about having grown up discussions.
3. Comfort with interdependence - not independence. We still see some salespeople out there using that lone wolf behaviour. My account, my stuff, I'm not going to get anyone else involved. I'm going do it my way. That's not clever. More and more we need to bring our team, we need to think about the whole DMU (decision making unit) and the people involved on all sides, and get as many people working together with a mindset of ‘my success is your success’
?4. Transparency - we need to be transparent. This is about sharing information, and I alluded to it already. We make a mistake of expecting the customer to be a mind reader. That's one thing. The other is that salespeople might not give feedback to the customer about them.
This can be seen when we've decided this is how we're going to work together, and they're not doing their side of the deal, they're not pulling their weight. We need to call that out. We need to say “Hey look, come on, you've gotta do your part here for us to be able to get those results you are looking for”.
5. Comfort with change – as sales people, we are selling change. We should become change agents. One of the things that we know sales people don't do so well, because the stats are showing this, is that they're not considering status quo. More deals are lost to status quo to no decision than ever before. So that's one thing that we can get better at.
Another is that we see mismatched communication. And by that what I mean is that change is tough. Change is hard. And when you think about a change curve, it looks like a grief curve. People go through surprise, anger, denial, rejection, bargaining, acceptance. As a salesperson, we are probably excited about this stuff. We know the good we could do, we're full of beans. However, we're communicating with a customer who might not be ready for this, and we get this kind of jarring that they're not ready for it.
We need to recognize where they are, how they're responding to change, what's their natural response to change and temper our communication so that we're messaging more effectively.
6. Future orientation – all about sharing common goals. It's having a vision, having a mission, something that we are moving towards together. So mistake here is that people make a lot of decisions based on the past and what's gone on before.
Now, nothing wrong with looking at that. We want to get information from there. But really if we can create a vision we can drive towards it, and it's going to make our decision making what we're trying to achieve together way more effective.
Taken from a recent ‘How to modernise your sales without losing the human touch’ workshop
To attend the next FREE session exploring all three challenge REGISTER HERE
Sales Day of Service 2022
It was an honour to be invited to be part of the 2022 Sales Day of Service organised by?Duplessy Foundation ?a nonprofit dedicated to sales coaching for women, immigrant, and minority entrepreneurs
100 trainers and coaches volunteered their time to offer support to this year’s initiative designed to support the ambitious goal of helping 1000 business hit $1m by 2040
I worked with?Akosua Awusi ?the Founder at African Conversations & Connections Tours
She shared her answers to the sales strategy questions
- Describe your business in 10 words or less
- Who is your ideal customer? (be specific)
- What is your best offer? (X product/package for Y $)
- How will you consistently find new customers?
- How will you consistently turn interested customers into buyers?
We then discussed ideas that she could apply… and did a cheeky little role play
It was a pleasure to met her and hear about the fantastic business she is building to help tell the African story by providing safe, world class, and inclusive guided tours of Africa. By allowing her customers to experience Africa below the surface she can really help them make a connection with their heritage
A lovely lady and a fun conversation
Thanks?Derrick Duplessy ?and team for the opportunity to be involved. I admire you patience dealing with the issues thrown at yesterday... but I think this proves you will hit your worthy goal
Working locally
Madrid, Medellin, Moscow, Miami
Even Manchester
Never Mansfield
Over the last 22 years as a sales trainer I've worked all over the world (36 countries so far)
But not in my hometown
This changed on Friday
I was asked by?Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University ?to deliver a session for the Help to Grow programme
The 3 parts we covered were all about becoming
- More effective
- More up to date
- More aligned
Part 1 - Profiling accounts
Using criteria to map opportunities onto a matrix and decide on approach activity
What makes a customer form a good impression OF you?
What makes a customer attractive TO you?
Are you approaching sales with a partnering mindset to adopt a more collaborative approach?
How will customers respond?
Part 2 - Managing meetings
Using structure to keep control in meeting and help customers to think
What is the objective?
Have you sent agenda?
How will you build rapport?
领英推荐
What is you attention grabber?
What questions will you ask?
When will you introduce insights?
How will you present your ideas?
Howl will you agree on next steps?
Part 3 - Defining activity
Using the VALUE Framework to drive best practice
Validate - How do you check best fit for doing business?
Align - How do you prepare to work together
Leverage - How do you make a sales approach and have a valuable conversation?
Underpin - How do you present, prove and agree?
Evolve - How do you develop the business?
Loads of things to consider!
It was great to work with local businesses and see the action points being taken away
Jeff Riseley - How mental health affects sales performance
Sales people are stressed.?Too many of them.
Indeed in the latest Mental Health in Sales report a staggering 63% of salespeople said they were 'struggling' with mental health. An increase on the year before.
Jeff Riseley explains that mental health is the the most important growth metric every sales team on the planet is ignoring or under prioritising.
Consider the things that frustrate sales leaders like missed targets, lack of motivation, asking bad questions, low confidence, low energy, mistakes.
Is it any surprise if salespeople are not able to think properly?
He offers some tools individuals can consider including the HALT check (Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired) but leaves us with the question of how sales leaders can do more to address this.
Can you stress less and sell more?
Free resources available: https://saleshealthalliance.com
Listen to the episode?HERE
Charlotte Lloyd - Why do salespeople need a personal brand?
Sales is changing and Charlotte Lloyd embraces this by amongst other things focusing on her personal personal brand.
She explains that as well as positioning yourself as the person best suited to work with customers, developing a personal brand also helps improve skills now necessary to be successful in sales including copy writing and becoming comfortable with video.
We discuss just how 'personal' we should be as well as the social media platforms that can be employed to build presence.
In an age where the salesperson could be the biggest differentiator in winning a deal are you doing enough to stand out?
Listen to the episode?HERE
James Church - Lessons from selling to VC's
How is raising funds like selling?
James Church explains that this is because that is exactly what it is.
As a result selling is a crucial part of the founder's mindset when looking to raise capital.
We discuss how not thinking in terms of a 'campaign' and therefore not being properly prepared is a mistake often made when fundraising - just like in sales.
He shares how targeting the tight kind of investor an reaching out effectively are key to a successful campaign - again just like selling.
In another similarity to B2B sales pitching too soon is also a common fault.
The choreography of closing is a fascinating insight into understanding the audience and creating just the right amount of tension.
Are you giving yourself enough time to succeed?
Link to James's book HERE
Listen to the episode?HERE
Martin John - How to sell a price increase
What happens when you make a price increase request?
Martin John talks us through the process a procurement professional will go through together with ways salespeople can deal with responses they might expect to get.
Unsurprisingly as with most negotiations this comes down to good preparation as well as an ability to remain calm and keep emotions in check.
An understanding of power dynamics and avoiding irritants becoming a major issue will also contribute to likely success.
How confident are you in pushing your price increase through?
Listen to the episode?HERE
The Future is Hybrid Selling and Selling Through Partnering Skills | Real Life Gamechangers
Are you ready to change the game?
Real Life Game Changers with Mark Harvey is THE podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs both aspiring and experienced.
Listen to the episode?YOUTUBE
How to modernise your sales approach without losing the human touch
?In this new LIVE and completely FREE to attend event I will share practical insights into an approach for B2B salespeople to ensure they stay relevant and valuable.
This workshop is brand new and addresses the top three challenges that many salespeople have based on what I have identified from working with clients all over the world.
Many salespeople struggle to adapt their approach to one that is effective today. As a result, they are running a risk of becoming irrelevant to their customers.
I will answer the questions:
- Why are so many salespeople tired and stressed?
- Why are so many sales backwards and boring for customers?
- Why do organisations confuse salespeople badly?
You should attend if:
- You are involved in B2B sales and find your approach isn’t working as well as used to
- You feel like you are wasting opportunities that should be won
- You use a highly technical approach to selling that doesn’t always wow customers
- You are frustrated that you can’t keep customers engaged through the process
- You are fed up with always having to discount to win business
- You want peace of mind that your sales plan will work
- You are frightened that the pace of change in the world of sales is too fast
- You are concerned your competitors are doing something different but don't know what
Every participant will be given access to a tool that provides a report on the state of your sales compared to an effective modern approach?
Places are limited by the platform we use so please make sure you're quick to secure your spot.
Thursday 15th December (1.00pm GMT)
Register?HERE
Collaborative Selling Scorecard
Are you ready to increase your sales?
Career & Leadership Coach | Coaching leaders & founders to build fulfilling & successful careers with purpose | Executive Coaching | Mentor
1 年I remember managing sales teams at this time of the year in the fitness industry. They would be exhausted and about to face the quietest month of the year, December. I agree, it can be very challenging for their mental health Fred.