The “how-to” behind building a highly-effective, competition-dominating, sales machine is actually fairly simple. What isn’t simple is executing the steps and sticking to the plan. The dedication and resolve necessary to start and complete the process is where the majority of people fail. That said, if you’re ready to skyrocket sales in your organization, here are the steps that successful sales leaders take to get it done.
Step 1: Super-intense Sales Training
The most important tool a salesperson can have in their arsenal is great sales skills. The problem is that most companies spend their sales training time focusing on product training and technical skills as opposed to sales skills. Poor sales skills is the second biggest reason that salespeople fail. By the way, the first reason they fail is due to a lack of activity and hard work which I’ll discuss in Step 2.
When considering how to train your people, let’s start with the gold standard. In the best case your training would look like what my dad got from I.B.M. The first six months were spent at I.B.M.’s main office where new salespeople trained half the time on product and half the time on sales skills. Everyone was given a sales play book that included all scripts for what to say and how to handle all sales situations. That play book was memorized, practiced, and drilled until they had every single sales situation embedded in their brains. Roleplay was a huge part of the training. When my dad finally returned from training at the main office, he was with his manager and one of the top sales reps out in the field for another three months. They practiced, drilled, and rehearsed everything before, during, and after live calls. Finally, after nine months he was allowed to go on calls by himself.
If you’re like most people reading this, you don’t have the resources of an I.B.M. and you probably can’t invest nine months doing the training mentioned above. In that case, you want to do something similar to what I do when training brand new salespeople. I give them a play book, all the scripts, and everything else necessary to handle all sales situations and scenarios they’re going to encounter when they’re out prospecting and chasing new business. They memorize these and practice and roleplay them on weekly calls with me, daily with their manager and other sales reps, and at various other times such as when they’re driving. After a very short period of time, once they have the basics down, they start calling on live prospects. They learn most of what they learn by getting their nose bloodied out calling on small accounts.
After about a month of this, their sales skills are better than about 97% of the other salespeople they are competing against. As a result, because sales skills are the second most important tool, assuming they are making the necessary calls on the right people, they are doing a significant amount of business at this point.
Step 2: Activity
Although activity is actually more important than sales skills, it is second in chronological order. Before I send someone out to make calls, I want them to have a general idea of what they’re saying so we train on sales skills first.
Step 2 is all about massive activity and tracking that activity. Each sales rep has a quota for new prospects to contact every week. At the end of the week, they provide me with the number of new people they called on, the number they spoke to, the number of prospects the got, the number of appointments they set, the number of follow-up calls they made, and the number of sales, along with several other details.
While the most important tool a salesperson can have is great sales skills, the most important attributes a salesperson can have are: great people skills, hard-working, persistent, competitive, and an ability to persevere and face lots of rejection. This is all about making a ton of calls and staying after it no matter how badly they get beat up.
Step 3: Continuous practice and reinforcement of sales skills.
Your people have to constantly be reading the scripts, listening to sales audios in the car, roleplaying, and otherwise practicing, drilling, and rehearsing everything they’ve learned. As a leader you want to test them by giving them objections and different situations whenever you see them. It’s also important to work on sales skills in sales meetings. Finally, you should be going on live calls with them from time to time.
Step 4: Continue to improve and innovate.
Once you find what works in various sales situations, don’t rest on your laurels. Continue to look for ways to improve and get better. Look for better ways to compete, better answers to objections, better ways to communicate and build relationships, and in short, more effective and efficient ways to operate. A good way to do this is to find out who’s most effective with each part of the sales process and find out what they’re doing and saying. Finally, share this information with the whole team and make sure they are using the most effective methods.
Step 5: Remove obstacles from the sales process.
Obstacles come in several forms. It can be support people not doing their jobs, inefficient systems or processes, tedious, unnecessary, extra items that you ask your people to do or even having salespeople doing items that support people should be doing. Keep an eye out for anything that seems to be taking your salespeople away from “new business” activities.
Step 6: Remove negativity and slackers from the environment.
The key to all of the above is to develop and follow a proven system that trains and reinforces sales skills and ensures your people are doing tons of the right activities the right way in the right environment.
John Chapin is a motivational sales speaker, coach, and trainer. To have him speak at your next event, or train your people, go to www.completeselling.com. E-mail: johnchapin@completeselling.com. John has over 37 years of sales experience as a number one sales rep and is the author of the 2010 sales book of the year: Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards).
