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I just read a blog post on HBR that raises an interesting point (What Really Matters in B2B Selling). The author argues that prospect quality is more a product of prospect interest rather than fit.

Those of us in a solution-selling environment will likely be among the first to argue that fit is tremendously important, particularly if we intend to win revenue- and margin-maximizing solution sales with a client. In a purely transactional selling world, this may be less a concern.

And yes, there is a large degree of truth to the statement “you don’t have a strategy if you’ve never said ‘no’ to a customer.”

In reality, many ‘interested’ customers have self-opted as good fits, and naturally you’d expect interested customers to be decent prospects. But let’s put fit aside for a minute and focus purely on customer interest. Read More »

If you’re the crème de la crème of your sales organization, chances are you’d qualify for your company’s President’s Club (or Chairman’s Club, or Achiever’s Club).  Yes, it’s the one—and perhaps only—time when the rest of the organization wants to be in your shoes.

Want to know what perks other companies include?  Among other things, our recent benchmarking survey on President’s Clubs identified the top destinations and gifts companies select for President’s Club winners. 

Check them out: Read More »

(This is a guest blog from Joe Bisagna of the SEC Solutions team.  Solutions helps members generate customized insights, tools, and training programs to improve the overall performance of the sales force.)

The best cheeseburger in United States did something radical this year. It changed its bun, and it is amazing.

Bobcat Bite is located in a small historic building on Old Las Vegas Highway just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a time capsule preserved from the era of the Wild, Wild West and to this day it is not uncommon to walk past a horse tied to the hitching post to get inside, where you use the honor system and place your name on the chalk board in the order that you arrived.

Now, I am not a food writer so I’ll spare the details on why I went there straight from the airport when visiting my family last week, or why the locals order it with green chile, or how it’s perfectly cooked on a 50 year old cast iron gill, or how they always get your preferred cook time just right. The key here is that this little burger joint on the side of the road, this little hidden gem, used to stick by the old cowboy adage that “you don’t fix what ain’t broke”. And for years, I personally didn’t mind that the bun was picnic quality, that it was soggy and that it usually fell apart before I finished. I just wanted the burger – the bun was an unessential afterthought. Read More »

By Andrew Kent

A salesperson must not fear failure.  Neither should executives.  Too often we find ourselves living to “not fail” instead of to succeed. 

As an SEC member smartly commented on my last post, “Business (and media well before that) have evolved to the point where being incorrect is so abhorrent that we will do anything possible to avoid that position – after all, no one has ever been lambasted for being ‘not wrong’.”

If you ever find yourself focused on avoiding failure instead of pursuing success, I found this timeline of Abraham Lincoln’s history of failure inspiring: Read More »

No one ever said introducing and changing sales behaviors is easy work. For our latest study, we’ve been looking at better ways to get sales training to stick, and indeed, it’s tough business.

While the whole idea of grassroots change management is no secret, it’s tough to execute in a sales environment.  So it comes as no surprise when new sales training is rolled out, the top-down change management playbook is often used with heavy emphasis on the sales manager as the change agent.

Consider for a minute what needs to happen for a successful sales training rollout… It involves some degree of rep agreement with the new method, at least in principle. Next comes some degree of actually trying the new method. And finally, and at best, full adoption.

Now as you think about gaining buy-in at each of these steps, what are the greatest sources of influence you’ve seen in your organization? Sharing the results of a pilot, senior leadership visibly supporting the new method, manager coaching and reinforcement, best practice sharing sessions, right? We all know the usual change management paces.

But in thinking through how to actually change behaviors, our research has us considering other sources of influence.  One of the more intriguing ideas we’ve considered is the underbelly of the sales organization itself – rep to rep exchanges: the airport conversations, the emails, the general chatter.  These conversations are where your initiatives certainly make, or potentially break, themselves.

And yes, this should be thought of as a real channel that can be leveraged, even if it’s the same channel that’s responsible for spreading inappropriate jokes and YouTube videos around the office. Read More »

Because nothing gets a sales pro fired-up for a big Q4 close like a good mix-tape, I’ve pulled together a baker’s dozen of my favorite, sales-relevant eighties tunes. And here’s the kicker: you can listen to them all for free.

This year, we’re gonna sell like its 1982:

Read More »

By Andrew Kent

Another (American) football season is here, and for the second straight year, America’s NFL games will be without John Madden’s super-obvious color commentary.  But we don’t have to turn far to fill the void.  Based on the jargon often found in business strategy, I think Madden may have found a home writing memos for much of the Fortune 500.

What I remember most about John Madden is how his “analysis” of games was really just stating the obvious—something along the lines of “their strategy is to score points while keeping the other team out of the end zone.”  Here are some of his best quotes I dug up online:

• “If this team doesn’t put points on the board I don’t see how they can win.”
• “The best way to gain more yards is advance the ball down the field from the line of scrimmage.”
• “The Dallas Cowboys have two types of plays in their playbook: passing plays, and running plays.”

Football fans who recognize the obviousness of these statements may laugh, but when we think about it, our business strategies to “drive profitable growth” aren’t much more helpful than Madden’s strategy to “win football games by scoring more points than the other team.”

And specificity is particularly challenging in Sales, where often the objective is no more specific than “sell more stuff.”  For example, take this (slightly paraphrased) strategy statement from a sales organization I examined: Read More »

A job in Sales means spending a lot of time on the road. When traveling, even the littlest convenience (or inconvenience…) can make all the difference. In that spirit, we wanted to write a quick post on everyone’s favorite small-talk topic: travel.

We’ve all been there before – that sinking feeling as you’re boarding the plane when you realize that not only is the overhead bin space above your seat non-existent, but you were seated by the bathroom. With the pungent scent of toilet bowl cleaner wafting towards you, do you think, “There has to be a better way to choose my seat”?

Here are three of the best tips I’ve learned from frequent travelers to help make your flight more comfortable:

1) Not All Seats Are Created Equal. There can be substantial differences in airline seat size even on planes of the same model. Take, for example, the Boeing 777-200ER airplane: flying Delta Economy on a Boeing 777-200ER will give you an average of 31.5” of leg room and a seat width of 18” while the same airplane model outfitted by KLM will give you an average of 35” of leg room and a seat width of 17.5”. Doing a little research into airlines’ seat size variations can mean the difference between walking off the plane or being carried off to a chiropractor.   Read More »

Coaching seems to be an ever-green topic that is unlikely to generate any controversy.  At this point, we’d be hard-pressed to find organizations that underappreciate the value of coaching. After all, the Council’s five years worth of data prove that:

• Coaching is a trademark that differentiates a star manager from an average one.
• Coaching can improve sales performance by as much as 19%.
• Coaching drives salespeople to work harder and increases their intent to stay.

Yet, coaching continues to be one of the areas where managers consistently underperform.

• According to our most recent data, 66% of sales reps indicate that their manager does worse at coaching than other manager behaviors (e.g., planning, assessing risks, championing new initiatives, etc.).
• Additionally, an alarming 47% of reps report receiving under the magic 3-5 hours of coaching per month and 6% of reps report receiving no coaching at all.

While the first stat can be blamed on manager quality, the second data point is not entirely the manager’s fault.  Let’s do some simple math:  with the average span of control of 1:8, the expectation is that managers will spend up to 40 hours per month coaching. Desirable? Yes… Realistic? Not so sure…

If we want our managers to spend more time coaching, we desperately need to offload some responsibilities from their plates. Easier said than done.  Our traditional answer has been to relieve managers of some admin duties. 

An alternative answer could be to “outsource” some coaching responsibilities to a dedicated group of specialist coaches who are more passionate and, sometimes, better equipped to deliver high-quality feedback.  After all, why do we assume that direct managers are always best positioned to coach?   Read More »

In response to some recent member requests for tips on objection handling, I’ve compiled below four of the slickest techniques I’ve come across.

Let’s use the following customer objection as an example and look at how a rep could overcome it using each of the four techniques:

Customer Objection:  I see the value, but I don’t think everyone on my team will. And their buy-in is crucial, since ultimately they’re the ones who would be using this.

Technique #1: Feel, Felt, Found

Rep Response: I see you feel like you won’t be able to get your team bought-in, which is understandable. In fact, one of our top customers actually felt the same way initially. But the interesting thing they found is that it only took buy-in from a few early adopters to create momentum…

Why it works: Builds empathy by acknowledging what the customer is feeling, and reassuring them that others have felt this way before. Then, you indirectly confront the objection through someone else’s success story, rather than directly challenging it yourself.

Technique #2: Tipping the Bucket

Rep Response: Sounds like buy-in is a big concern. Got it. What else is on your mind? I want to make sure you have an opportunity to voice all of your concerns before I try to address them.

Why it works: Tipping the Bucket shows that you genuinely respect and want to hear the prospect’s viewpoint, but also works to your advantage when they “show all their cards at once,” prematurely revealing the areas they’ll pushback on. Plus it always catches the customer off guard when someone actually cares what they have to say!    Read More »