To download the event program click here.

The Head Of Sales Symposium, Australia’s exclusive gathering for B2B sales leaders and teams, is set to launch 20 August 2024 in Sydney. Sponsored by SugarCRM and organised by headofsales.com.au, the country’s foremost sales publication boasting over 25,000 annual visitors, the Symposium promises a powerhouse line-up of experienced business leaders, industry experts, bestselling authors, and international speakers.

In an era where economic volatility and fierce competition redefine success metrics, the Symposium emerges as a vital platform. Recent statistics reveal that more than half of sales professionals struggle to meet targets consistently, while a staggering 80% of sales leaders express doubts about having the right team to achieve success. These challenges not only strain bottom lines but also impact mental health and overall wellbeing.

Designed as a half-day intensive, the Symposium features four educational presentations and a panel discussion.The event, hosted at the prestigious five-star venue L’Aqua, promises a premium experience with gourmet meals, afternoon tea, canapés, and networking drinks against the backdrop of Darling Harbour’s stunning waterfront views.

The Head Of Sales Symposium is proud to feature a distinguished lineup of speakers, each bringing a wealth of expertise and insights to empower B2B sales leaders and professionals. Tony Hughes, renowned for his 35 years of corporate and sales leadership across the Asia-Pacific region, is Co-founder and Sales Innovation Director at Sales IQ Global. His accolades include being ranked a top global sales blogger and thought leader by LinkedIn, with a substantial following and multiple bestselling books under his belt, including “COMBO Prospecting” and “Tech-Powered Sales”.

Cian McLoughlin, CEO of Trinity Perspectives, brings a global perspective to sales transformation, specialising in Win Loss Analysis. Originally from Dublin and now based in Sydney, Cian’s ethical approach to sales has resonated with ASX and Fortune 500 clients, supported by his Amazon #1 bestseller “Rebirth of the Salesman” and consistent recognition in the Top 50 Sales Blogs and Books.

Charmaine Keegan, Director of Smarter Selling, is a prominent figure in sales training with certifications in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and a deep interest in human psychology. With over 30 years of experience and numerous authored eBooks, Charmaine empowers sales leaders to excel with integrity and authority, making her a sought-after speaker internationally.

Sue Barrett, Founder and CEO of Barrett and salesessentials.com, is a pioneer in human-centered sales strategies, advocating for ethical practices and emotional intelligence. A transformative figure in business and community activism, Sue’s leadership in the Selling Better Movement and commitment to ethical business cultures highlight her impact beyond sales training, including founding the March4Justice movement and promoting women’s empowerment through initiatives like Sell Like A Woman.

Together, these speakers represent the forefront of B2B sales innovation, offering Symposium attendees actionable strategies, ethical frameworks, and transformative insights to navigate today’s competitive sales landscape with integrity and success. Their collective expertise promises to inspire and equip sales professionals at every level to achieve sustainable growth and leadership in their fields.

Key takeaways for attendees include strategies to implement new sales tactics, insights into emerging market trends, techniques to enhance customer acquisition and retention, pathways for career advancement, and unparalleled networking opportunities with like-minded B2B sales professionals.

“We are thrilled to host the Head Of Sales Symposium, providing a critical forum for industry leaders to navigate the complexities of today’s sales landscape,” said Joseph Sing Publisher of headofsales.com.au. “This event is not just about knowledge-sharing but fostering connections and equipping our attendees with actionable strategies to thrive amidst adversity.”

Adam Frank, Vice President and General Manager, APAC at SugarCRM, expressed excitement about the upcoming symposium, highlighting its significance for B2B sales professionals in Australia. He stated, “The B2B sales professional in Australia has historically been starved of opportunities for professional development on this scale. Till now. Never before have so many industry powerhouses been gathered under one roof and it promises to be a fantastic experience for learning and networking alike. I for one am very excited in seeing this symposium going live, and am honoured that SugarCRM is a founding sponsor.”

First release pricing ends 31st July. For more information and registration details, visit https://www.headofsales.com.au/symposium/

About The Head Of Sales Symposium: Starting 12.00pm Tuesday 20th August at L’Aqua in Darling Harbour. Delegates attend a ‘half day‘ of four educational presentations, one panel and two networking sessions. There event is curated for sales leaders and for sales professionals. The event is fully catered at a five-star venue with a sit down lunch, afternoon tea, canapes and networking drinks at sunset.

About headofsales.com.au: Headquartered in Sydney, headofsales.com.au is Australia’s leading online publication dedicated to B2B sales insights, attracting a diverse audience of industry professionals seeking cutting-edge strategies and thought leadership.

About L’Aqua: Located in the heart of Darling Harbour, L’Aqua is renowned for its sophisticated event spaces, panoramic views, and exceptional service, making it the ideal venue for premier corporate gatherings.

The post Head Of Sales Symposium, A Game-Changer for B2B Sales Professionals. appeared first on Head Of Sales.

More and more purchasing decisions are happening inside the dark funnel—parts of the buyer’s journey that are invisible to sales and marketing teams. According to Gartner, marketers lack visibility into at least 50% of the buying journey, making growth opportunities harder to influence. And, when B2B buyers are considering a purchase, they spend less than a fifth (17%) of their time meeting with potential suppliers. 

The rise of the dark funnel means more sales processes are happening outside of a sales team’s control and that’s something many of us will balk at. Take software sales for example, more buyers than ever are conducting their research online before they even visit a provider’s website. Online reputation across review sites, social media platforms, discussion forums and events has become crucial in purchasing decisions. 

In this article, I explain more about the dark funnel and provide ideas on how you and your sales team can leverage this trend rather than succumb to its challenges.  

First, let’s talk more about the dark funnel

The dark funnel is a hidden space where prospects explore options, seek advice, and gather info through online research, reviews, social media, and more. Despite being hard to track and influence, the dark funnel is crucial in the rise of self-service culture and buyers wanting control. 

For sales teams, the challenge lies in identifying and understanding these invisible touchpoints, as well as finding ways to influence them positively. 

Now, we can dive deeper into how the sales landscape is changing

Self-service is transforming the way sales teams approach customer engagement. B2B buyers are taking matters into their own hands – research and shortlists are often compiled with little or no vendor interaction. 

Thanks to online retail, the B2C buying journey has evolved to the point where individuals shop around for the best prices,  meaning marketing and advertising channels need to work even harder for attention.  

For both groups, the dark funnel is appealing as buyers can avoid a hard sell and craft a buying journey on their terms. 

Traditional attribution metrics like email open rates and social media clicks are not as useful or significant as they once were. Customers are looking for products and services in places that sales teams often cannot influence – within the dark funnel. 

Using the dark funnel to support the sales cycle

For all its mystery, the dark funnel is not the enemy. Far from it. The propensity for buyers to self-serve means sales cycles can be shorter. This makes the dark funnel a positive support for the sales cycle. 

But that doesn’t mean that sales teams should sit back and let the dark funnel do the work. The onus is on businesses to get their content in front of their audience via the right channel. Podcasts, webinars and LinkedIn forums are all valuable tools of influence for today’s buyers and where content needs to be pushed. 

Companies must work hard to remain visible so sales teams can act when customers emerge from the dark funnel. 

The moment a customer emerges, sales reps can help buyers complete their purchase and feel confident in their decision. Sales teams stand out when they can provide additional insights and value that buyers can’t find on social media or in discussion forums.  

Tips for building influence inside the dark funnel

Sales teams may no longer make the first move but they need to make a good first impression. Since first impressions are made well before any interaction, sales leaders need to be prepared to build influence inside the dark funnel.  

The following strategies can support sales leaders in their efforts: 

• Invest in content marketing and thought leadership to attract potential customers during their pre-purchase research phase. Content such as blogs, whitepapers, videos, and webinars can help build credibility and trust. 
• Optimise SEO and online visibility and create content that answers common queries customers have during the research phase
• Use social media and influencer marketing to engage with prospects on platforms where they are active. Sales leaders who don’t post regularly on LinkedIn are missing out on great opportunities. 
• Consider retargeting and remarketing tactics to reach out to prospects who have already visited your website or engaged with your content. 
• Deploy personalisation and account-based marketing to address the specific needs and pain points of individual prospects. 

With the right strategies, you can make a positive impact on potential customers during this hidden phase of the buyer’s journey. Leveraging the dark funnel correctly will help your organisation stand out and establish a strong foundation for future sales interactions. 

The post Shining a Light on the Dark Funnel: How It Can Empower Your Sales Strategy appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Consider these stats [i]:

• In the U.S., average turnover in sales is between 20% to 30% annually. This means that for many firms, the equivalent of the entire sales team must be hired, trained, and socialized every 3 – 5 years.
• Depending upon the position, it now takes 3-4 months to hire a salesperson and,  once hired, getting to full productivity takes more than 9 months. That is more than a year without a fully productive seller, and each hire becomes a sunk cost for a longer time while a bad hire is very costly.

Hiring in sales is often more expensive than many companies’ cap­ex decisions, but typically treated with less rigour than purchasing software. How can you get better at this core task?

First, recognize the challenges inherent in sales hiring:

Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified resource pool or educational priors for sales positions.

If you’re looking for an engineer, you can go to an engineering school and find people who have studied engineering. For an accountant, finance person or software developer, you can find majors in those subjects. But few colleges and universities have sales programs or even a sales course. Yet, it’s estimated that more than 50% of graduates (in U.S. colleges) will work in sales at some point in their careers, regardless of their major.

Hence, most salespeople start with little preparation and must learn by doing on the job. And selling jobs vary greatly depending on the product or service sold, the customers a salesperson is responsible for, and the relative importance of technical knowledge during sales calls.

In dealing with these hiring challenges, here are two common mistakes to avoid:

(1) Hunters versus Farmers

Sales roles are far more diverse than that cliched dichotomy. Consider the difference between reps who sell direct to customers versus those who sell thru channel partners, those who work in highly automated inside sales models focused on SMB prospects versus those who call on enterprise accounts, those who sell individual products versus a bundled package solution, or those who sell multi­year software license agreements versus monthly SAAS contracts.

The Hunter/Farmer dichotomy is of little use in setting hiring criteria between those roles. In fact, hunters and farmers are, in my experience, usually used by managers as after-the-fact rationalisations for their hiring choices, not ex­-ante hiring criteria. Make sure your managers have relevant criteria before they make an offer, not just when they try to justify the decision.

(2) Chasing Stars

Talent matters and differences in individual sales performance are typically very wide in most firms. The top 20% of salespeople often account for ­60% of company revenues.

If 20% of your salespeople are making 60% of revenue, that’s a 3X multiplier; and since the remaining 80% bring in only 40% of revenue, the top sellers are 6X more productive than their peers. Sales is like other creative occupations where the stardom phenomenon is well documented. In areas like software programming, the arts, sports and others, the best are typically a lot better than the average. Performance profiles in those areas are (in statistics jargon) a “power distribution curve,” not a normal­ distribution bell curve.

However, stardom is not easily portable because it typically depends upon firm-specific qualities and resources—e.g., brand, training, team chemistry, and other factors—as well as individual capabilities. [ii] This is especially true in sales where tasks are determined by a firm’s business strategy and choices about which customers to focus on.

In turn, selling behaviours are affected by your control systems, culture and how you hire. Those are all firm­-specific factors and, when you hire someone from another firm, they leave all of that behind. Talk to the corporation who hires the high performing star from a competitor and finds that she does not perform the same way she performed there. Or consider startups who bring in an experienced big­ company rep and he flounders in the early-stage firm. Those people didn’t suddenly get stupid or lose individual capabilities. In business, there’s no such thing as performance in the abstract. There is only performance in each context—here, not there—and much of selling depends upon the relationships, knowledge, and mutual trust that the rep establishes with others in his or her company.

Sales is a performance art and salespeople exhibit a wide range in performance outcomes. Those outcomes depend upon innate talent as well as the context in which that talent is nurtured and deployed. Further, the effects of talent management are cumulative as people learn from each other. Reps get better by watching how the best of their peers perform key tasks. They pick up lessons about how to pitch, answer objections, and other aspects of selling that product at that price in that market.

Here are 4 tips for screening and hiring high performing sales professionals:

(1) Hire for the Task

Effective hiring starts with knowing what you need. Sales tasks are determined by buying contexts which differ greatly by industry. In computers and electronics, channel management is a key capability, but not in metals and mining. In the former, the products are often part of a package that customers buy at one-stop-shop intermediaries; in the latter sectors, direct bulk buys are the norm. Account management skills are important in chemicals where managing a portfolio of specialty and commodity products is a key sales task, but not so much in electronics where channel partners often perform account management tasks.

Every sales job has implicit required behaviours. Take the time to clarify and make that explicit in your job postings. When companies focus on the tasks, not job titles, the relevant labour pool typically expands. Coding boot camps, for instance, are now an accepted source of software talent because after a few months of task focused work the participants have job relevant skills without (and often despite) previous formal degrees. The same is true in sales. Relevant talent comes in all shapes and sizes but is dependent upon the job to be done, not some abstract ideal of undifferentiated selling skills.

(2) Avoid Behaviourally Useless Cliches

Ask sales managers what they’re looking for in candidates and you typically get lists of cliches like Sense of Urgency, Passion, Motivated by Money, Work Ethic, Coachability, Emotional Resilience, Communication Skills, Listening, Integrity, Humility, Efficiency, Commitment to Succeed, and so on.

These traits are behaviourally useless for doing what a hiring process must do: say yes or no to an individual applicant for a given job. When you’re speaking with someone at an interview, how do you unearth whether they have a “sense of urgency”? One author says, “Look for answers around impatience and 4th quarter comebacks.” Really? Confusing this stuff with job skills and evaluations is a waste of time and resources. In a job interview, who would not want to come across as hardworking, resourceful, efficient, and so on?

You’re hiring the person and not the interview version of the person. But only about a third of companies monitor whether their hiring practices lead to good employees or track cost per hire. Another problem with these lists is the assumption that a salesperson needs all of those qualities to be effective. However, it’s often advisable to shrink the span of sales activities. This requires understanding where the salesperson (versus marketing, service, or a customer success team) has the most influence. In many inside sales models, activities like lead generation and qualification are the jobs of Sales Development Reps (SDRs) and renewals are given to service personnel. This allows the firm to focus more precisely on recruiting for Account Executive roles where product demonstrations, pricing, and closing the sale with a multifunctional buying unit are the key tasks.

(3) Complement Interviews with Behavioural Assessments

Decades of research consistently show that managers overrate their ability to predict someone’s performance and fit for job tasks on the basis of a few interviews. Correlations between interview ratings and job success vary from about 0.1 to 0.4 — less than the 50/50 odds of a coin toss. [iii] In fact, some studies show a negative correlation between interview assessments and subsequent job performance: the firm would have been better-off selecting at random!

Judging a person’s fit for a sales job is, in most circumstances, a complex task. It involves evaluating the relevance of past experience, personality, fit with the culture, and so on. But people are inconsistent in making summary judgments of complex information, so always get multiple opinions and perspectives in evaluating candidates. Doing multiple assessments also often motivates people in your firm to discuss and communicate the tasks you’re hiring for and the questions and activities likely to elicit relevant skills. Conversely, this approach provides the interviewee with a better basis to judge fit.

Then, complement interviews with role plays, task assignments and, whenever possible, internship type hiring scenarios. Selling is about behaviour. Job performance from one time period to the next correlates at a much higher rate than interviews. So probationary periods are better predictors of actual performance. Meanwhile, technology is increasing options for behavioural assessments via game-like activities, video, and online media.

(4) Assume Mistakes Will Happen

Sales hiring requires judging people’s future performance in a changing market environment. Mistakes are inevitable, but the sunk cost fallacy—continuing to throw good money after bad—is not.

Consider Amazon’s policy of offering a voluntary severance package called “The Offer.” Annually, each service and warehouse employee are offered up to $5,000 to quit. The policy helps to deal with inevitable mistakes—by the hirer or the person hired—and with the reality that people change and their relationship to their work can change with marriage, divorce, sickness, the need to take care of an aging parent, or any of the other natural shocks that flesh is heir to. Amazon believes “The Offer” helps it shed less-committed employees while improving retention among others. [iv]

Sales reps represent your company to customers and prospects. A poor hire is not only costly but can also do collateral damage to your brand. It’s worth your time and effort to improve your sales hiring criteria and process.

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School and is the author of six books. This article is adapted from Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing. Published by Harvard Business Review Press.

[i] See Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton University Press).

[ii] For a review of this research, see Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes, and Nathaniel Peterson, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 5: 512-520. 

[iii] For a review of this research, see Jason Dana, Robyn Dawes, and Nathaniel Peterson, “Belief in the Unstructured Interview: The Persistence of an Illusion,” Judgment and Decision Making 8, no. 5: 512-520. 

[iv] Alana Samuels, “Why Amazon Pays Some of Its Workers to Quit,” The Atlantic:  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/amazon-offer-pay-quit/553202/.

The post Valuable Tips for Improving Sales Hiring appeared first on Head Of Sales.

I remember hearing someone say once ‘Bernadette, the answer is always no, unless you ask’ and I have always remembered that.

Whether I am lost in the car and can’t get the directions right, I will stop and ask someone for help, whereas my husband would rather keep driving until he finds the right road – and dare I say, wastes time and gets frustrated in the meantime and it has nothing to do with women not being able to read road maps!

If I am seated at a restaurant that is near the door and it’s a wet and windy night, I will ask to move whereas a friend won’t want to be an inconvenienced, won’t ask and is prepared to be miserable all night.

If I feel that something is wrong in a conversation, I will ask what the matter is or call the elephant in the room, whereas another salesperson won’t want to put someone on the spot and so puts incorrect meanings onto comments and ends up with pipeline bloat.

Most of us feel uncomfortable when we ask someone for a favor or for help.

The story of Amanda Palmer, a living statue whose job was to sell her art and connect with people by standing on a milk crate, dressed as a bride, handing daisies to those passer-by’s who tipped money into her hat struck a chord with me.

Some of us may see these street artists and immediately jump to the conclusion that they are beggars, or bludgers or lazy (get a real job) as they stand in the popular tourist spots attracting passer- bys.

But whose story is that – theirs or yours? And if it is your perception, then how does that belief serve you when it is your turn to sell your product or service.

You see, their story is that they are allowing people to choose to buy their art. And we, as salespeople are also artists. We are not managers, we are not all entrepreneurs risking our capital for the cause, we are wanting people to buy what we believe will make a difference in their worlds.

And the street artist’s story is that they are selling connection with the people whose eyes they look into as they stand statue like still. They’re selling trust as they reach out and they are also selling themselves on vulnerability by placing themselves in a position of potential rejection.

And isn’t that the same as us? Are we not asking the question of our buyers that they tip money into our hat? That we are artists selling a product, a service or an idea that will make a difference in the world of our buyers? That our buyers also buy our connection, our trust and our vulnerability as we ask them to buy increased profitability, improved productivity and proximity?

I read an article by Jeb Blount, from Sales Gravy, this afternoon on ‘The ONLY Closing Technique that Really Works’ and I, too, can share this biggest secret with you on how the top salespeople ask for the order, even though I haven’t sworn on Jeffrey Gitomer’s Bible and I am in total agreement with Jeb.

The biggest secret to winning business is to ask for the business and the biggest choke-hold to asking, running in parallel, is fear.

Let me share a ‘close’ with you that will work EVERY SINGLE TIME and you won’t have to swear on anything for me to share it with you – ‘How can I help you?’

Simple. Straightforward. Sincere.

And it doesn’t just start and stop with a close for business. I had a coffee this morning with a corporate sales manager turned start up entrepreneur and we aligned a lack of collaboration and marketing ideas, products and services to fear, as well.

Before coffee, I was on a Google Hangout and the interviewer Jenny Munn from Business Marketing Association, Atlanta GA, who asked me why people don’t publish their content to position themselves as experts when the platforms are right there, free and convenient. My answer was, ‘the same as what prevents them asking for the next logical step in a sale – fear!’

‘The Art of the Ask’ is not about closing or trapping or conning your buyer

Asking for the business is about learning to say ‘no’ and learning to say ‘yes’ and knowing the magic lies somewhere in between, but only after you are ready to say ‘Bring It On’ to uncertainty when your buyer asks you to go a little deeper with your request.

So, it’s over to you now…

And so ask all of us!!

The post The Answer Is Always No, Unless You Ask. appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Natasha David worked for me a number of years ago as Marketing Manager in a technology company where I was Managing Director. One morning I received a call… her husband had died and was in his late twenties. “I’m so, so sorry Tash… what happened?” an awkward silence followed. How do you talk about a loved one who commits suicide? How do you cope with the feelings of guilt about failing to save them or not being close enough to recognise what was about to happen? I felt paralysed but we did our best to give her all the space and time she needed to be able to manage.

Many questions and emotions swam around in my head in the months following this experience. Two years earlier in the same company where Natasha lost her husband, our Professional Services Manager lost his 20 year old son to Leukemia. There was a dramatic relapse just days from the twelve month anniversary of cancer treatment when he would be officially pronounced as being in remission. It was heart wrenching to witness let alone live through. We also supported him by removing all work pressure and providing complete flexibility on full pay for as long as he needed. Without any fuss, his team rallied and covered all work demands. He slowly re-joined work and we were able to tentatively talk about his son with him. There would be stilted conversations and tears but it was okay… all part of the process of creating a meaningful life without his beloved son as well as honoring his son’s memory.

For friends and colleagues, what is the boundary between showing care and prying into someone’s personal life when they suffer loss or are seeking to deal with their own demons of depression or other mental illness? Is the workplace somewhere the grieving person goes to escape or can it be a place of healing? Is the workplace where those with invisible disabilities come to hide and deny or can they be accepted and respected?

Suicide seems to be different… a social taboo with stigma attached to the death of a loved one. I never did manage to have a conversation with Natasha; just a few hugs and as much workplace support as I could provide. She withdrew and coped in her own way… I did the same when I lost my mother at 25 – it was at times a bleak lonely place. After losing her husband to suicide Natasha was pulled into a dark void and checked herself into hospital where she had a profound realisation that can save lives …

The Life Saving Truth: “Suicide only transfers the pain to everyone else.”

This is something we should all share with anyone we think is in a bad place with depression or other mental health issues. Natasha is one of the most courageous people I have met and she is about to publish her book, Marrying Bipolar. It provides amazing insight for anyone wanting to understand mental illness. Winston Churchill described depression as the black dog but it is far more complex than applying labels.

Natasha decided that if she was to push on, she would make it the best life she could live. She has done exactly that and her book will make a difference in many lives.

Natasha’s story shows the devastating impact for those around someone suffering from mental illness but what if you are directly managing or working with someone who has a mental illness? I’ve managed sales people for many years and I am sensitive to the tell-tale signs. I have a personal experience with mental illness as the son and then the business partner of a bi-polar father. Others in my family also suffer from mental illness but I thank God not my wife, children or me.

Professional selling is brutal… it is not for the faint-hearted. High levels of emotional intelligence (EQ), business acumen, strong work ethic and resilience are all essential. I’ve seen sales people battle through massive highs and devastating lows, damaging the very relationships they need to succeed, going troppo on drugs and alcohol, going missing for days until they emerge from their dark fog.

All this raises two important questions for sales leadership:

1. Does selling attract those who are inadequately equipped to cope with the demands of the role?
2. What can sales leaders do to help and manage those in their teams that suffer from a mental illness?

1. Does selling attract people who are poorly equipped psychologically?

The research has evidenced that mental illness does not discriminate by ethnicity, age, gender or career choice (Meadows, Farhall, Fossey, Grigg, McDermott & Singh, 2012). Throughout my professional career, the most common mental condition I have encountered in sales people is bi-polar. This term used to be identified as manic-depression and both are apt descriptions for the huge mood swings that can damage relationships with clients, staff and partners. On top of this they require persistent, consistent management therefore consuming disproportionate amounts of a manager’s time and energy. Although anyone with a disability – physical or mental – can be a productive and valued member of a team, they need to find the right job position, have a supportive manager and work environment.

The biggest mistake a manager can make is to hire the wrong person and the second biggest mistake they make is holding onto staff that need to be moved on.

This sounds very harsh but it’s a truth all managers must face. The best way to do so is with empathy and compassion in seeking to help people work in roles that best suit them. A lack of compassion combined with relentless pressure and judgment exacerbates the risks and highlights a sales manger’s poor values or interpersonal skills.

Selling is one of the toughest jobs; for anyone to sustain success they need the following attributes:

• Resilience: The ability to cope with rejection and disappointment amidst relentless pressure to perform and deliver results
• Emotional Intelligence (EQ): The ability to truly understand your personal strengths and weaknesses while being able to read people and politics
• Good work ethic: The discipline and ethos of doing what it takes rather than your best by committing the required time and energy in paying attention to every detail
• Curiosity and intelligence: Beyond being smart, this is also being obsessed about the customer’s world, how results can be delivered and how risks can be managed
• Insight and domain knowledge: Specialisation in an area that matters to the customer with you being able to provide genuine insight to the people who make decisions.

Track record, qualifications and work history are easy to validate. Every hiring manager needs to go beyond these and be clear about what defines a ‘cultural fit’ for sales people by evaluating candidates against the above criteria.

2. What can we do to fulfil our duty of care for those who are struggling?

Make no mistake; leadership carries a burden both morally and legally. We have a duty of care to those we employ and to those with whom we share our lives. We need to create person-centered cultures rather than toxic performance-based furnaces. I’ve written previously about two contrasting corporate cultures (love vs greed) and we need to create environments where work has purpose, value and respect for those around us.

A healthy workplace is a community where employees are valued members of a team rather than mere units of production. Where relationships are real and the corporate values play out in the positive behavior of the leaders.

We need to ask people if they are okay and really mean it. The best way to create a high performance culture is to be authentic about delivering value for clients and building relationships of trust and respect. Executing this requires leaders who are the real deal and able to rally people to their cause; yet becoming a great leader in an inside job rather than projecting a persona.

Capitalism without compassion is commerce without a soul. We all want to make a positive different in the lives of others but not everyone can be a winner who stands on the podium in first place. Great leaders embrace diversity and leverage individual strengths within teams. As a leader, seek balance and value individuals as people who have their own fears and shortcomings as they pursue their aspirations. Have the courage to talk with an employee or colleague about how they are really going with genuine empathy.

Ask ‘how are you going… really?’ Then listen like you’ve never listened before. Everyone needs to be heard. Everyone needs someone who cares and believes in them.

For more on this important topic, please read The Darker Side of Selling by my good friend Bernadette McClelland. She provides three examples of the unhealthy pressure and destructive behaviours that plague many sales environments.

Reference: Meadows, G., Farrell, J., Fossey, E., Grigg, M., McDermott, F., & Singh, B. (2012). Mental Health in Australia: Collaborative community practice (3rd ed.). South Melbourne, Australia: Oxford University Press.

The post Mental Health Truths Sales People Should Know appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Rapport is the deepest level of relationship between two individuals that involves sharing common ground, and is established when harmony and accord have been reached between both parties. This does not mean the individuals involved agree on every issue. Instead, it means they have attained a mutual respect for each other’s opinions. Developing rapport with others lowers stress within our relationships, thereby creating greater productivity.

We have established rapport with people know, like and trust

Establishing Rapport

Rapport is developed as we understand, recognize, appreciate, and adapt to the behavior and communication styles of others. Regardless of background, everyone wants to be valued, appreciated and unconditionally accepted for who they are. As a result, we tend to trust and have an affinity for the people we believe really understand us and accept us.

Unfortunately, we struggle with this as human beings. Some folks just ʻrub us the wrong wayʼ, or worse still, they ʻpush our buttonsʼ. And often, the ones that irritate us the most are the ones closest to us, such as family, friends, and coworkers.
To begin connecting with others, we must cultivate a genuine desire to understand the people around us.

Mastering Rapport

Mastering rapport is reached when an individual develops the skills and the genuine desire to develop relationships of mutual trust and emotional affinity.
Rapport Mastery works best when adopted as a lifestyle to better communicate with people and do business, not merely to manipulate others with surface techniques or to be saved until there is a glaring problem. Rapport Mastery involves personal transparency as well as enthusiasm for the success of others.

The Road to Rapport

There is no instant path to building rapport with those around us. This level of respect and trust will take time to develop. Attempting to rush this process will actually be counterproductive as it breaks that trust. Although each of us will have the ability to connect more quickly with certain individuals, there is no way to create this level of trust and regard for another person outside of the test of time. Creating rapport is a step by step process.

Do I Have Rapport?

Individuals with whom you have established rapport will come to you for advice or information on a wide variety of subjects. Rapport is developed as we understand, recognise, appreciate, and adapt to the behaviour and communication styles of others.

How do you begin to establish rapport?’

The Power of Perception

Rapport starts with understanding the behavioural and communication style of another, discovering how our personal actions are being perceived by others, and learning to control our own behaviours to better meet their needs.Connecting with others begins with recognising and understanding the perception of those with whom we interact.

Humans are uniquely different from one another. Our ideas about the world around us have been influenced by our parents, values, education, and culture. In addition to these factors, the way we perceive, interpret and share this information is based largely upon our behavioural and communication style.

Imagine that two individuals walk into a room. Both are wearing glasses, however one pair has red lenses and one has blue. Neither of them realise they have glasses of different colours. Both individuals are asked to look at a white wall and announce to the other what colour they believe the wall to be. The individual wearing the red glasses will be sure the wall is red, while the individual with the blue lenses will be sure it’s blue. They both would KNOW they were correct and sure the other person was wrong.

Now imagine these individuals try on each other’s glasses. Would they have a better idea of what the other person was seeing? This change of perception would help reduce conflict because each of them would now be able to understand the otherʼs perception.

In order to understand and connect, we need to understand how the other person is perceiving the world around them. By putting on someone else’s glasses, so to speak, we will have the ability to appreciate and understand them better.

Perception is based on an individual’s communication and behavioural style

Pace, Perception and Adaption

To understand human behaviour and communication we need to begin by looking at two basic elements pace and priority.

Pace is the speed at which individuals move and speak. Some individuals tends to be more faster or slower than others. There is not right or wrong pace as we all have elements of both.

Fast paced individuals tend to move, speak, respond and decide quickly, whereas sower paced individuals prefer to spend time in reflection and act carefully.

If you are fast paced person, a slower paced individual may see you as impatient, irresponsible, reckless, rude, manipulative, overbearing, angry and inconsiderate.

If you are a slow paced person, a fast paced individual may see you as unmotivated, lazy, sad, uncaring, disrespectful, disengaged, untruthful and distracted.

All relationships being by connecting with each other’s PACE. If there is missed connection at his level, you will be unable to move forward to build rapport.

This is where adaption comes into play. Connecting in a non-confrontational, non-irritating way requires adapting my own pace to match the pace of the other person. I may be fast paced, however, the only way to show the slow paced person that I am not impatient or reckless, I must control my actions and slow down. In the same way, if I am slow paced, I may need to speed up my interactions so I am not perceived as unmotivated and lazy.

Priority characteristics

As with pace, individuals have different priorities , which refer to what they prioritise as they view their world. Individuals tend to be either:

Task-Orientated – they are more focused on accomplishing tasks. Think in terms of plans, procedures, organisation, function, projects and programs. They like to create lists and check off items as they ate completed.

People-Orientated – they are more focused on establishing relationships. They are energized by being around people. They tend to focus on more on relationships, feelings, friendships, helping others and making people happy.

If you are a task-orientated person, a people-orientated person may perceive you as cold, workaholic, greedy, disconnected, inflexible, unmerciful, unfriendly and not family oriented.

If you are a people-oriented person, a task-oriented individual may perceive you as distracted, weak, overly emotional, unproductive, naive, gullible, foolish and not serious.

90% of conflict is caused by a clash of priorities or false perceptions

Now that we understand what rapport is and how we unknowingly can break it by failing to control our behaviour, we can now develop a process that will help us to better adapt and build relationships.

Know, Like, & Trust

Remember, rapport is established with all types of individuals when they know, like, and trust you. Matching pace provides the foundation for rapport by allowing other’s to get to know us.
However, the other two aspects, trust and like, are developed differently depending upon an individual’s priority style.

We get to know each other by matching pace. We develop rapport by respecting priorities.

Task-oriented individuals must trust you before they will like you. Here’s the progression of establishing rapport with the task-oriented individual: They will do business with you only if they have come to trust you. Once trust is established they will gradually begin to like you.

People-oriented individuals must like you before they will trust you. Here’s the progression of establishing rapport with the people-oriented individual: They must first like you. (One of the best ways to begin to establish affinity with this type is to smile.) Once they like you
they will begin to trust and develop rapport with you.

2 ROADS TO RAPPORT

Practical Application

To build rapport with a task-oriented individual, consider what is most important to this behaviour style. Because this behaviour style views the world from a task perspective, task completion is imperative for constructing trust.

To build rapport with a people-oriented individual, consider what is most important to this behaviour style. Because this behaviour style views the world from a people perspective, they will observe how you interact with others and desire friendship.

They are the basics of building more meaningful, peaceful, and productive relationships with those around you.

The post A Practical Guide On Building Rapport In Sales appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Ordinary is something you are taught. You may have been infected with the idea that you are not to make waves, not to stand out, and not to draw attention to yourself. The people around you likely shared a set of common goals and beliefs like: go to school, get an education, get a good job, and work towards retirement. Even the people who love you will want to keep you safe, perhaps even telling you that using your gift is too dangerous, that you may get hurt.

what to do with under performing sales people When salespeople are not producing results?

#1 Not Enough Activity

The first reason you aren’t producing the results you want right now is because you aren’t taking enough action to produce them. There is no harvest in Autumn if you do not plant in the Spring.

Activity is what produces results, not desire, not intentions, and not luck. If you really desire a certain result, you’ll do the work necessary to produce it. Otherwise, it’s just talk. Intentions are important, but only when coupled with action. You can grow old waiting for luck to find you; she only looks for hustlers.

If you aren’t where you want to be right now, it’s very likely that you aren’t doing what is necessary to get there. If you were, you would already have what you want.

#2 Not The right Activity

Maybe you are taking massive action and still aren’t where you want to be, even though that’s less likely to be true.

You may believe that the activity you are taking isn’t the right activity. Before you decide that this is the case, you have to honestly determine whether or not you’ve done enough of that activity to get the results you want. Have you gone all in? Would some impartial party know exactly what you were trying to accomplish by looking at the actions you are taking, believing it to be an extraordinary effort?

You also have to decide whether you’ve done enough activity for long enough to get the results you want. Some outcomes you want require persistence, and that’s why so few produce those outcomes. It rarely makes sense to switch strategies and tactics without first executing against what you believe to be right.

All that said, if what you are doing isn’t working, treat each failure as feedback, and then change your approach. Find a model, someone who is already producing the result you want, and look for clues as to what they are doing differently. Repeat this until you find something that works, and then go all in.

The obstacles to success are almost exclusively internal. Even when they are not, with enough energy and effort applied consistently over time, the obstacle will yield.

6 Steps in the Right Direction

Step 1: Compare Yourself to Others

I don’t compare myself to anyone else. I just want to be better than the person I was yesterday.” This is one of those statements that sounds good on the surface, but is harmful when it comes to success (whatever that means to you). Comparing yourself to other people is necessary if you want to be more, do more, have more, and contribute more.

Lacking Knowledge

Without a point of comparison, you have no idea how you’re doing. Do you do excellent work? How do you know? How can you know without a point of comparison?

Do you have impeccable character, the kind of values that make you someone people want to work with, want to know, and want in their life? Do you know what impeccable character is without knowing what it is not?

How is your family and your health? How are you doing financially? To define how you are doing, you need some way to measure where you are.

The risk in trying only to be better than you were yesterday is that maybe you aren’t doing well enough for that to be a useful measurement.

Lacking Vision

When you compare yourself, you get an idea as to where you fall on some scale of measurement. Without that comparison, you would not know what’s possible. Without making observations as to how other people are doing, you don’t have an informed idea of what is possible for you.

Have you ever met someone and thought, “If that person can do that, so can I?” Exactly. You just needed to see it done, recognizing that the person succeeding in some area is really no different than you. Or at least the version of you who is willing to strive.

Comparing what you are doing to what other people are doing can help you develop a bigger vision of yourself.

Step 2: Spend Time with People More Successful Than You

You can’t see your potential from where you are now. It isn’t visible to you.

First, success is personal.

It isn’t measured on a curve. Your definition of success and my definition of success might be vastly different. They may even be at odds. In fact, you living my definition of success might make you miserable, while me living your definition of success might not make me the least bit happy.

There is a reason that you should spend time and develop relationships with people who are more successful than you are now. But before we get into all the reasons this is true, we need to cover a few important issues.

Second, success can get a bad rap, and some people make the very pursuit of success a divisive issue.

Success shouldn’t be divisive, and the idea that you need to surround yourself with people who have a greater level of success is not a judgment of the people you love and care about that aren’t experiencing the same level of success as the people you will need to spend time with.

The reason you need to spend time with people who are more successful than you is because you can’t see your real potential from where you are now.

Your potential is far greater than anything You can imagine. The only limit on your real potential is the limit of your awareness of what is possible for you. Your potential isn’t visible to you.

Think about where you were years ago, when you weren’t as successful as you are right now in some area of your life.

Your beliefs and behaviours were different than they are now. And even though you weren’t conscious of how they were limiting you, they acted as a governor on your success. At some point, you gained an awareness of these beliefs and behaviours and changed them.

Someone standing higher up on a mountain can see further than you can. They can also more easily see the path that is available to you, even if it isn’t yet clear to you. They have a greater view of your potential. By spending time with people who are more successful, you start to become conscious of what you believe and how it limits you. You also gain the advantage of transforming faster by finding people whose beliefs and behaviours you can model.

Develop relationships with people who are more successful than you. Find mentors. Develop a mastermind group of people who have something you want, whatever that is, be it financial success or being a great parent, or whatever you call success.

If you are going to listen to
advice, first determine whose
advice is worth taking.

STEP 3: Avoid bad advice.

A lot of people will offer you advice. Most of it, you should avoid.

Avoid people who:

Part 2 will be published next month or you can download the e-book today.

The post What To Do With Under Performing Sales People Who Are Not Producing Results?(part 1) appeared first on Head Of Sales.

When it comes to the world of sales, GenAI is making a pronounced impact. Research by SugarCRM reveals 80% of sales and marketing leaders will use AI, including GenAI, to maximise the value of their CRM in the next five years. Complementing this, McKinsey research shows companies that do invest in AI are seeing a revenue uplift of 3 to 15% and a sales ROI uplift of 10 to 20% so far. 

The bottom line is, GenAI is here to stay and sales teams are poised to benefit from increased adoption. Used effectively, GenAI enables sales teams to do more of what they are meant to do – sell. 

Using GenAI can reduce administrative load, increase personalised selling, create optimised pricing, address customer concerns and lengthen lifecycles. 

Those that don’t work to integrate AI into their business operations will see themselves at a competitive disadvantage with reduced efficiencies and missed opportunities.  

So, how can you start integrating GenAI into your sales function?

Steps can be as simple as using GenAI to help write emails, input data and create proposals. More sophisticated use involves using GenAI alongside other systems like CRMs to pull and analyse data for tailored recommendations. 

Here are 5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling. 

5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling 

1. Take over administrative tasks

Your best sales reps usually have specific skills they hone in on whether it be amazing presentations, perfectly written emails, or an excellent phone manner. 

GenAI can help your entire sales team lift their game by helping create emails, proposals and pitch decks to the same high standard, every time. 

When it comes to phone calls, GenAI can help write scripts and create guidelines to discuss specific customer objections. 

Not sure where to start? Start small, use a tool like ChatGPT to finesse an email, or write the perfect opening for a proposal. 

More than this, GenAI integrated into your CRM can automate busywork like inputting customer data, creating manual tasks for other reps and organising meetings. 

Reducing administrative tasks will give your sellers more time to actively sell, a dream scenario for every sales leader. 

2. Deliver more personalised experiences  

GenAI can help deliver the personalisation needed to elevate customer service, and nurture leads to build the depth of relationship required to close deals. 

Reps can use data to create personalised and original content that resonates with each lead or segment. For example, you may have a segment of customers who prefer to short emails with specific information about one product use case.

A targeted approach boosts engagement and conversion rates. Conversation transcripts can also be analysed to identify opportunities the sales team may not have thought of or had time to consider.

3. Addressing customer queries

GenAI can help address customer queries in a number of ways. First, GenAI powered chatbots can interact with prospects right at the early stage of their journey. 

Reps can use GenAI-powered search functions from their CRM to offer fast responses to customer concerns from finding the perfect case study to send to answering a technical question. 

Once a customer converts, GenAI-powered helpdesks can help customers troubleshoot issues, sometimes proactively, to help reduce churn. 

4. Optimise competitive pricing

Price optimisation can be difficult for sales teams to get right. Many reps operate solely on instinct without the time or resources to back decisions with data. 

GenAI can help ensure prices are designed to drive sales and revenue. It can perform data analysis to identify customer patterns that affect the price point for a product or service. 

Fast competitor research that assesses market share, pricing strategy, and product positioning can also be conducted.

GenAI can pull data from around your business to create predictive analytics that forecast the effect of different pricing strategies on sales and revenues. Analysis of data from various sources can be used to adjust prices in real time based on market conditions and customer behaviors. 

5. Lengthening customer lifecycles

Across the funnel, GenAI is poised to help sales teams optimise their processes to drive productivity. It can identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks and suggest ways to address them. 

Beyond the initial sale, GenAI can help with ongoing relationships with customers. Customer data can be assessed to determine when and how to communicate with existing customers and which customers to approach regarding upsell opportunities. This is important since it tends to be easier to sell to existing customers than to bring in new ones. 

When it comes to closing, GenAI can identify the best negotiation strategies and approaches to improve the likelihood of a conversion. 

AI-driven sales strategies  

Technology-backed sales processes can help sellers be more proactive and less reactive. Using AI correctly can help sales teams reduce administrative load and use data to send more effective recommendations about products and services leading to higher ROI. 

If you’re interested in learning more about sales transformation download our whitepaper, CRO Update: AI and Digital Sales Transformation. 

The post What Does ChatGPT Mean For The World Of Sales? appeared first on Head Of Sales.

If you believe there is an easy button for success in sales, the joke’s on you! While there’s tremendous value in a vast array of digital tools, all emerging technologies have a dark side.

Take the internet itself and its use for nefarious purposes: I wish the majority of its usage were for knowledge. How many people are studying the rich tradition of human history, MOOC learning, culture and fostering communal collaboration to break down cultural barriers, cure cancer and end the common cold?

It’s overwhelming to fathom that the internet has become a TV substitute. The Social Networks are laughing all the way to the bank monetizing your time. But you can be laughing all the way to the bank, too, if you realize this.

One of the most powerful things in the world that you can personally do to improve your life and business career, sales or otherwise is to turn off TV and social media. Understand where the new school tools fit in and acknowledge their place in the cosmos. Modernized sellers who are deadly serious about being elite performers in their field use them differently, I assure you. A cautionary tale privately emailed to me:

“Tony, Building our sales team and I just had to fire a sales rep who was only emailing and messaging on LinkedIn and logging fake sales on our CRM. He tanked our company and I’m back to square one building from the ground up. Your post resonated with me and reinforces my belief that HUMAN not ‘social’ connections are the best. Picking up the phone, sitting down for a coffee, flying in for a meeting…are irreplaceable experiences.” – Anonymous

I’ve polled thousands of you from every continent and walk of life, from transactional to enterprise flights, to massively matrixed, complex government procurement cycles that can take 36 months. The jury is in that the phone is still absolutely essential to develop business at every stage of the funnel.

To make the most money possible, the top reps in your company and industry have figured out how to manage their time, leverage old and new tools to position themselves as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert. They’ve figured out which opportunities to prioritise in a pipeline and what they need to close to hit their number.

The simplest way to get there is to build ultra-targeted prospect lists, dial on them yourself with a razor sharp value proposition and set the appointment, don’t try to sell the product. Social is a phenomenal tool for locating which prospects to go after and getting foreknowledge of what they’ll care about but paradoxically, super personalized communication can be a repellent.

Sales Managers who work for ambitious CFOs often prognosticate fantastical growth rates. 30% is not an industry standard, it’s a mass delusion. This is why there’s blowtorch management going on where 10 lemmings get hired so they can systematically fire 7. I can’t help you if you are inside a blowtorch culture. If you have a fair management system, quality product market fit, and you are on a global team in which 20-40% of your peers are hitting their number or exceeding it, so can you!

There’s no secret to sales. You need to hustle and work harder than anyone else to make it pay off for you. “It’s no longer a numbers game,” is a band-aid for the lazy modern seller. I want to contort that statement the other way: it’s harder than it’s ever been. If you truly knew how hard you’d have to work to be successful in this game, you’d probably quit.

Maintain a good sense of humour. See things more clearly, don’t buy into things being more different than the same. Observe the actual day-to-day behaviour of top reps on your team and in your industry. Study the old school and fuse it with the new school. Look at your PHONE as the ultimate social device: “the social phone.” Invest in the best tools money can buy and read your company the Riot Act if they don’t invest in you. They spent 15-25K to recruit you, they can spend the price of a cell phone getting you the best tech for prospecting due diligence.

20% of any system will drive 80% of the results. 20% of any given day’s work will engender 80% of output. That means shockingly 80% of every day is waste, friends! The Pareto Principle is alive and well in all human systems. So in order to optimise the levers that will get you to your financial goal, it’s critical to focus on the most constructive revenue producing daily activities. That’s “tripling” a targeted list – call, text – LinkedIn invite. That’s methodically attacking the same 50 targets for an entire quarter top down, bottom up, middle out, lateral, by bee swarm, referrals, and teamlinks.

After decades years of looking at this stuff, I would say that chasing the wrong people to sell them things they’ll never need is the biggest error. You need to get crystal clear about your target list.

Step one: Go after the competitors of your existing clients. Go after the companies your own direct competitor is working with and are listed on their website.

Step two: You are only as strong as your own intel, just like in war. If you can get an edge, it’s massive. If you can read any LinkedIn Profile, even one that’s hidden to you, it’s pivotal. If you can get a direct phone number to add the power of your tone, intention, and warmth to the sales cycle, it’s imperative.

Elite athletes spend 10,000 hours honing their craft and know every stat down to the wire. They will spend any amount of money getting their driver in golf to weigh one less ounce or having one more component on their racing bike, be made of carbon fibre seeking aerodynamics to crest the hill faster in the Tour de France.

Per Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” You can’t do what hundreds of millions of people are doing and get an elite, unusual, uncommon result. You can’t just social sell or just pound phones, or just use one method of sales.

You’ll get noticed by swimming upstream against the current. You’ll stand out like a sore thumb by doing anachronistic things like writing handwritten notes. You’ll make waves by blending multiple channels in combinations. You’ll jut out by exhibiting business acumen and understanding the fundamentals of how your prospect makes money and SWOTTING where they’re weak.

You’ll get VIP status if you have a confident, sardonic and knowing chuckle because, like them, you are laughing all the way to the bank. You can bank on my methods in these posts, field tested by thousands, and influenced by thousands.

I wish I could tell you, cold calls are dead and it’s all just social selling. The savviest sellers are using both. Top reps are interrupting their “dream prospects” and landing meetings which are converting into rich opportunity pipeline and closing millions in new business. You’ve gotta spark people to realise and react the “pain of same is greater than the pain of change.”

There are too many paradoxes in sales to simplify something that is really an art form. E.g., reconcile these two quotes for me:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Abraham Lincoln

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Bruce Lee

I’d look at these two quotes like this to master the art of sales. Abe Lincoln is the strategy piece and Bruce Lee is the tactical piece. There is no Strategy without effective tactics and effective tactics fall down without a stellar strategy.

The post What The Best Sales People Do! appeared first on Head Of Sales.

Online meetings are rapidly becoming the new de facto standard.

Savvy sellers have discovered that the ability to quickly move a phone conversation online yields a richer, deeper interaction with prospects. It enables them to discuss, demo or present using a variety of resources. As a result, prospect engagement goes up, new opportunities emerge, and deals close faster.

That’s a competitive edge worth paying attention to—especially since only 58% of salespeople met or exceeded their quota last year. But right now, most sellers are barely tapping into online meetings because they don’t know how or when to best use them.

Salespeople need to be nimble and ready to pivot. In conversations, they must be able to quickly spot and capitalise on emerging opportunities. It’s even better if they can create these moments on their own.

That’s exactly what savvy sellers do with online meetings. During a phone call, when they spot a need or when inspiration strikes, they immediately suggest:

“Do you have a few minutes? How about we jump onto a quick online meeting?”

That’s sales agility at its best. The key to success with these impromptu online meetings is strategic spontaneity. Savvy sellers are prepared. They know the best times to suggest this option and they know how to do it, seamlessly. They know what they’ll ask, point out, suggest or clarify.

In short, they nail it! These savvy sellers create an “aha” moment that crystallises value and drives differentiation. When the conversation is over, they’ve established credibility, deepened the relationship and moved closer to a signed contract.

1. FOCUS ON PURPOSE

What outcome do you want to achieve from jumping online with your prospect? Always start with this question, then craft a meeting plan that supports it. The best “purposes” are typically aligned with the various stages of a prospect’s buying cycle. These are the three main ones.

Pique Curiosity. If you’re prospecting, know that more than 90% of the people you contact are reasonably satisfied with their status quo— whatever that might be. When you connect, your objective is to get the prospect so interested that they want to learn more—either now or in very short order.

Drive a Commitment to Change. Once you’ve piqued your prospect’s curiosity, their next step is to determine if it makes sense to change. This is your opportunity to help them determine their business case. It’s also a chance to explore the factors they need to consider if they do go ahead.

Close the Deal. When your prospect has decided that changing is worth it, your purpose shifts to that of showcasing why working with your company makes the most sense, provides the best value and is the least risky.

For lead follow-up, try to gauge where the prospect might be in their buying process by reviewing what they’ve downloaded from your website and the pages they’ve visited.

When you know your purpose, it’s time to identify when a “quick” online meeting can help you achieve it.

2. PINPOINT THE OPPORTUNITIES

When does it make sense to have an impromptu online meeting? Start by mentally identifying when it could be beneficial to jump online. Often visual elements are involved and referencing them while you’re talking enriches the conversation.

You might want to consider an impromptu online meeting to:

Spark a new idea. If your offering enables prospects to do something they hadn’t conceived of, pull up a graphic to trigger their thinking. You could also highlight relevant research or data that supports a change from the status quo.

Expand on concepts. Once prospects are ready to change, they want to discuss factors such as configuring the right solution and implementation issues.

Do a demo. Give your prospect a quick tour of your solution. Whether it’s an actual demo, screen shots, or animated, you can gauge their reactions.

Review in real-time. Any time there are questions or concerns re: proposals, pricing, layouts, design and more, the quickest way to resolve them is to jump online. When people post a need or comment regarding an issue you can solve, invite them to a virtual meeting. Again, they’re already online. They just need to be online talking to you!

Research shows that people remember 80% of what they see and do. Online meetings, much more than phone conversations, make you and your message more memorable and engaging.

3. ZERO IN ON VALUE

How can you get prospects to invest the time and energy needed to change from the status quo? It’s your toughest sales challenge. According to SBI, over 60% of forecast deals do nothing. That means you lose to “no decision” more than all other competitors combined.

If this happens to you, it’s likely you’ve been doing too much pitching, trying to differentiate your product/service from competitors. Forrester Research reports that only 13% of executive buyers believe that a salesperson can clearly show they understand customer business issues and articulate a way to solve them.

During your online meetings, focus in on what matters most to your prospects. Be very specific. Increasing sales and decreasing costs is far too generic. Pepper your conversations with value propositions like these:

• Increased sales productivity, enabling 30% more calls/day.
• Reduced customer churn by 2.9% in just six months.
• Stabilised workflow, eliminating 47% of overtime pay.

This is what prospects care about. This is why they’d change from the status quo. Use your online meeting to tailor the value to your buyer’s position.

Don’t get sucked into a “tell me about your [product/service]” conversation. Knowing about your leading-edge capabilities, unique methodologies and unbeatable service will not make people change from the status quo.

Instead, cut to the chase; make it abundantly clear about the value you can deliver to their organisation. That’s what gets people to buy.

4. LEAD CONVERSATIONS

How can you create a meaningful dialogue in a quick online meeting? Huthwaite’s research on 10,000+ reps in 30,000 sales calls revealed that the kind and quality of questions asked during a meeting had more impact on sales success than any other behaviour.

Asking questions allows you to showcase expertise, demonstrate concern, establish trust and build stronger relationships. Additionally, questions enable you to gauge a prospect’s level of interest, expand the possibilities, determine your strategy and find the right solution.

To take advantage of your limited time together during an online sales meeting, consider these suggestions:

Plan questions ahead of time. Brain research shows that it’s impossible to do two things at once. That’s why it’s imperative to figure out the best questions to ask and the right sequence before you initiate contact. Keep them in front of you, but feel free to go with the flow too—if it makes sense.

After asking a question, be quiet – especially if your intention is to make people think. The average salesperson feels compelled to jump in after 2-3 seconds, totally high-jacking the opportunity to learn critical information.

Wrap your questions in your expertise. Lead into them with phrases such as, “In working with other VPs of Sales, we find that …. Is this something you’re struggling with too? Or “In talking to other manufacturers, their three biggest priorities are … How do those priorities compare to yours?”

It’s your responsibility to lead the conversation—and the best way to do it is with thoughtful, provocative questions.

5. CREATE ENGAGEMENT

How can you be more collaborative? Online meetings give you a chance to interact in real time. They can be just as effective as actually sitting in your client’s office, getting a deeper understanding of their needs, and discussing their business challenges.

Here are some ideas to make impromptu online meeting more engaging:

Rather than you doing a demo, try highlighting how easy it is and pass control to your prospects. Let them do it themselves. Sampling simplicity makes them more likely to change.

Use different content. Don’t just show a presentation; change the info you share. Jump from a presentation, to a report, to a website. This on-thefly access to a variety of resources increases interest and involvement.

Bring your recommendations up on the screen and get your prospects’ input. Find out what they like/don’t like. Ask if the solution meets their needs or not— then make appropriate changes. This increases buy-in and the commitment to move forward.

Revise critical documents together. Invariably prospects want to make changes to your proposals, SOWs or contracts. It’s much simpler to actually work on the “same page” as your prospects instead of trying to talk about it. With today’s online contracts, it’s pretty easy to move from conversation to proposal to contracting.

This real-time collaboration capability is also highly useful for internal usage—especially when multiple people from your company are involved in the sales process. It’ll help you get things right before you suggest your prospect jump online for that quick meeting.

6. PICK THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY

What’s the right tool for you to use? Today, 30.3% of sales professionals believe that the online meeting tools they’re using get in the way of sales, rather than helping. That’s not good because it reflects on your competence. The solution you choose can be critical to moving the conversation forward or closing the sale.

To select the right technology, ask yourself these questions:

How easy is it to initiate an online meeting? This is crucial. You need it to be seamless. There’s nothing worse than having to stop the conversation, figure out how to launch a meeting, send an invite, wait while your prospect downloads some software—and then runs into problems. You lose momentum, and your prospect loses interest. Plus, you get frazzled and all your best thinking evaporates into thin air.

Does it have the capabilities you need? When you start out, screen sharing might be all you need. But as you get more proficient you’ll want video capabilities. This makes you more real” to prospects, increases engagement, deepens relationships and drives more sales.

Be sure to check how easy it is to switch between the key documents, demos, or presentations that you want prospects to remember. Also, advanced users may want to highlight certain areas, swap presenters, record meetings and create presentations “on the fly” via new online whiteboarding.

What’s most important is that you select the right online meeting tool for your needs—and that it’s a no-brainer for both you and your prospect.

7. GET REALLY GOOD AT IT

Whether scheduled or impromptu, running a flawless meeting is a skill that needs to be learned. While it may be simple to do, when you’re talking to an interested prospect on the phone it’s easy to flub things up. That’s the last thing you want to happen.

Instead, you want to come across as the true professional you are.

Here’s how you can prep for the maximum impact:

Set the stage. Sloppy desktops make you look disorganized, so get yours cleaned up. Shut down any pop-up messaging too. Or, if your tool allows, select the window-sharing option in addition to full screen sharing.

Know what’s in your virtual briefcase. Being able to quickly locate the exact document, image, PowerPoint slide or resource reflects on your professionalism.

For video meetings, it’s crucial to have appropriate surroundings, de-cluttered workspaces and good lighting. Make sure your webcam mic is clear enough; otherwise, get a headset. Put your computer at eye level so you’re looking directly at the camera. Maintaining eye contact is essential for relationship building.

Do mock meetings with your colleagues. Practice logging on, sending an invite, doing a demo, passing the presenter role and re-taking control. Once you’re proficient, have a colleague role-play someone who’s new to online meetings—like a potential customer. That way you’ll be prepared for that scenario too.

Remember, your prospects judge your competence in every interaction. This is one more opportunity to prove you’re an invaluable resource.

8. FINALISE NEXT STEPS

So now you have zeroed in on business value. You’ve asked great questions. Your prospect is highly engaged. In fact, they’re oohing and aahing about what you’ve covered. It feels like you’ve nailed it.

But have you? It’s easy to get seduced at this point—especially if prospects start asking you all sorts of detailed questions. Sometimes it’s good to put the brakes on to find out what’s really happening.

Try asking, “It sounds like you’re really interested in changing. Help me understand the business case from your perspective.”

If they can clearly articulate it, find out what the next steps are to move the decision forward. Who else needs to be involved? What criteria needs to be considered? How will it be implemented? Or, suggest what you see typically happening: “Based on my experience

working with other companies, the next step is …”

If your prospect can’t articulate the business value, you’ll need to spend more time here. Again, suggest a logical next step: “Usually, at this point, we need to (engage other individuals, do more research, etc.) to determine if it makes sense to move ahead. Let’s get that on the calendar.”

Don’t leave an online meeting without a clear action step. Know what you’re doing next and get commitment from your prospect regarding their responsibilities.

9. TAKE IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL

How can you get even better leveraging impromptu online meetings? It’s great to be able to quickly jump online with a prospect, but it’s even better when you move from proficiency into mastery. Many service providers today offer the ability to record your meetings—and it’s definitely something you’ll want to take advantage of.

Initially, when you replay your meeting, you’ll find all sorts of personal flaws that will drive you nuts. You’ll hate your voice. You’ll notice every mistake. You’ll realize you weren’t looking at the camera. Note all these and work on getting better.

But then, go deeper. Ask yourself questions like:

• If you were a prospect, how would you feel?
• How was the overall flow? Did it make sense?
• Did you focus on value or get lost in the details?
• Were you able to advance the sales process? If not, what happened?
• Did you miss any important points?
• How else could you have created a better experience?

It’s a good idea to review the recording by yourself first. But that’s not sufficient if you want to really master this tool. If possible, get feedback from your colleagues or boss. Peer coaching is one of the best ways to make giant leaps in performance. Mastery is possible, especially when you get input from others.

THE KNACK OF NAILING IT

There’s great triumph in nailing an online meeting. Striking while the iron is hot enables you to quickly capitalise on an opportunity and moves you one step closer to closing the deal. It sets you apart from competitors, deepens credibility, crystallises value and builds relationships. It can even create new opportunities that didn’t exist before you said:

“Do you have a few minutes? How about we jump onto a quick online meeting?”

As we’ve shown, the key to successful impromptu online meetings is being planful and prepared— strategic spontaneity. That’s what sales agility is all about.

Start by picking just one scenario where an online meeting could add value to your sales process. Then, review the suggestions in this article, and get going. You’ll get better as you experiment with this tool. You’ll have richer interactions, greater connections and even more opportunities. Before long, you’ll be nailing it all the time too.

The post 9 Strategies To Improve Online Sales Meetings And Close More Deals appeared first on Head Of Sales.