The Missing Sales Link:
Russ Sharer
, our Chief Sales Officer, shares six valuable resources that can I.M.P.A.C.T. your sales team and sales goals. Time is valuable, so let's get to it:?
- Insight: Selling is harder than usual right now. The economic outlook feels uncertain with a daily influx of news on inflation, product shortages, interest rate hikes, stock market swings, and global conflict. How do you keep sales teams motivated and productive (and hitting their targets) amid negative news and cautious customers? Register for our next free webinar here to learn how.
- Market Trends: We’ve seen increasing interest in storytelling skills in sales. In fact, we just delivered a 2-hour workshop for a client on the topic last week. In this article, the
Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management
suggests six tools to help you communicate complicated ideas to audiences – stories being one of them.??
- Podcast: My favorite business podcast is At the Table with Patrick Lencioni. He and his co-hosts address the issues facing companies today – culture, morale, and motivation. His ideas are very practical.
Patrick Lencioni
understands that performance is not dictated; it is driven by people who can focus all their energy on the work, and not protect themselves from politics, internal conflicts, or worrying about what their boss is looking to achieve.?
- Alignment: In last week’s Fly’s Friday Five, Gary Fly talks about how leaders can navigate a world where their values and culture may not align with their followers, and he shares five things leaders can work on to ensure they are providing good leadership to a wide spectrum of followers.??
- Crazy Sales Story: How do you handle a sales call that radically changes direction from the start? We are big believers in preparing for every sales call. One needs clear objectives, questions that lead the conversation towards those objectives, and a clear goal of where you expect the relationship to go. But what happens when a client throws that out? I remember one call early in my career (back when pre-call internet research was not possible) when my Sales Engineer and I walked into a company – an empty large room with three small offices populated by the three founders at the back. As we started the conversation, it was clear that this was a failing start-up. Our first clue was when the CEO opened his drawer to hand us a business card, and we saw a mirror with a few lines of what we assumed was cocaine! Our objective changed to wrapping up the meeting as soon as possible to avoid wasting time. When a sales meeting makes a dramatic turn, a salesperson needs to be able to adjust, change objectives on the fly, and still seek to deliver value out of the time together.?
- Thoughts From the Top: From Russ Sharer, Chief Sales Officer: I spoke with a client recently who compared the last three years to being stuck in the Wizard of Oz. Houses are falling near or on us, invisible poison poppies ready to kill, flying monkeys of craziness, California wants rain, the South is melting… Meanwhile, all we really want is to get back to Kansas (to normal).
