SALES - 2 MORE QUICK TIPS

THE NUMBERS GAME:

Rule of thumb, ten cold leads will get one prospect, ten prospects will get one customer. How many calls a week is that against the number of customers you expect from each salesperson. More importantly how many contacts are your salespeople really making a week? Selling is a numbers game, the more we talk to, the more we get. Make sure they are networking.

TESTIMONIAL TRICK:

Third party testimonials are very powerful but hard to get. The best way to do it is to ring up the customer (when you know things have gone well) and ask questions that you know will get positive responses. Then ask permission to write the customers experience down, ask permission to send it to him/her and then ask that he/she put it on the company letterhead and send it to you. If you ask customers to write testimonials they will always be too busy, this way you take the thinking out of the process and most will accede to your request.

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Sell yourself into a new organization...

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SALES - 3 QUICK TIPS

TURN ONE CALL INTO THREE:

Go next door, both sides, or at least visit two more potential or current customers in the same area. When I used to train bank managers to sell they would want to travel thirty miles for one call then return to the branch. Have fun tell your sales staff to (as I did with the bank managers) go to the building next door and visit every office, you might get a pleasant surprise!

CROSS-SELL:

Train sales staff to sell aligned products or a range rather than having only “one product expertise”. ‘But boss I sell left handed widgets I don’t know about right handed widgets… take a deep breath and say… well find out…! Hotels are good at this they have travel experts, meetings experts, corporate experts, incentive experts… come to think of it when I was a financier (before I grew up), we had dealer experts, mortgage experts, leasing experts, personal loan experts and of course bullshit experts. Sure specialist knowledge is great but no sales person should walk out without at least trying to sell a visit by their other product ‘experts’ and they should at least have a broad enough product knowledge to recognise a prospect for anything your organization sells.

THANK YOU NOTES:

Everyone likes to be thanked, a quick note saying thanks for seeing me, or thanks for the order, or thanks for the payment, or thanks for whatever can be a powerful relationship builder.

NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMEBODY SELLS SOMETHING

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MORE STEPS FOR SETTING UP A LEARNING ORGANIZATION - TWO

The only way to improve is to learn and as continuos learning is an imperative, what other steps do we need (according ‘mostly’ to Mitch McCrimmon) to create organizations that learn?

To continue…

5. Form learning partnerships with suppliers, distributors, and customers - set up feedback mechanisms such as focus groups, R&D joint ventures and customer survey mechanisms.

6. Have all positions applied for and include outsiders in our recruitment drive – only appoint the best in their field and avoid the all to familiar ‘best of a bad bunch’ in times of competence shortages.

7. Benchmark our culture against other entrepreneurial firms – seek ways to understand key success factors for the market leaders in our field and study the oppositions’ successes.

8. Set up a readily accessible knowledge bank and ‘experience’ network of mentors, gurus and experts in their field.

9. Celebrate and recognize attempts to learn by employees who take a market risk and publicise within our organization by initiating fast real world feedback mechanisms.

FROM A VERY GOOD BOOK – ALMOST A MUST BUY 

NB Adapted from - ‘Unleash the Entrepreneur Within’

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STEPS FOR SETTING UP A LEARNING ORGANIZATION - ONE

Remembering that the only way to improve is to learn and the only proof of learning is a change in behaviour, how can we create organizations that learn and more importantly change?

1. Budget, time, money and manpower to achieve both individual and organizational learning – ensure management and ALL employees see learning as a ‘real target’ and set up mechanisms to ensure accountability and to measure results.

2. Identify strategic learning areas for your business and where new products or product innovations are likely to yield the quickest and greatest payoff – invest most of you’re resources in these areas.

3. Empower your work force to take risks in the market by decentralising decision making – particularly encourage those in areas of key knowledge. 

Note: Many empowerment programmes in Asian operations of international organizations run in to problems because of cultural attitudes (and beliefs) related to power and responsibility, be careful in implementing this option!

4. Set up a system of on job training, job rotation, provide incentives and support for personal development – initiate a PD (personal development) discussion process.

THESE ARE EASY, THE HARD ONES NEXT ISSUE

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REINFORCEMENT THEORY – ‘THE CARROT & THE STICK’

Theorists who support this ‘motivation’ approach believe that we need not be concerned about follower’s internal mental states, prior knowledge, learning styles or current levels of an individual’s understanding (internal cognitive events). Rather they argue that ‘reinforces’, (consequences that immediately follow behavior) will, if they are ‘good’ lead to a repetition of the behavior and if they are ‘bad’ will lead to an avoidance of the behavior.

Although this theory is accepted in many circles, (because its easy and we don’t need to think too hard to apply it) experience shows that this philosophy ignores much that is known about human behavior. In addition it is likely (particularly if applied in isolation) to stimulate behavior designed to do as little as possible to avoid the ‘stick’ and as little as possible to gain acceptable levels of reward or the ‘carrot’.

If the object of creating motivated staff is to strive to create excellence and superior performance the danger of using this technique is that the leader/manager will only create a comfortable state of trouble free mediocrity.

Do you ever say to yourself... god this is a mediocre bunch...or that department is a poor performer... perhaps you should look at they're boss and ask him/her to stew his/her carrots over someone else's fiery sticks... 

YOU CAN LEAD A MULE TO WATER BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE IT REPRODUCE

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