Category: how to grow sales

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Why Commissioned-Based Sales Plans Fail to Work with Justin Clark

Justin Clark Sales Babble

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Justin Clark Sales Babble Why Commissioned-Based Sales Plans Fail to Work with Justin Clark

Justin Clark is the Director of Sales for a janitorial and packaging products distributor. Over time, Justin’s company found sales reps spending more time auditing their paychecks than selling.  They also found the commission-based sales plans failed to motivate reps to do the best for their customers. To overcome this challenge they moved their sales staff to a pure performance review based salary plan.  In this interview, Justin shares the story of how they were able to make this extraordinary change in their compensation plan.

Challenges Faced

  • Money is emotional. 100% commissioned sales people would spend as much time making sure they’re paid what they earned vs selling.
  • Reps pushed products that brought the most money. There were SPIFs (Sales Performance Incentive Fund) for products that were not good for the customer.
  • Wanted to promote consultative sales and stop sellers pushing products and instead finding solutions.
  • Commission-based sales plans were holding the company back.

Transition Plan

Because of these challenges, Justin slowly created a transition plan to move the organization.

  • Did not move immediately to salary compensation.
  • Slowly moved from commission-based sales plans to salary and bonus plans
  • Still too much focus by reps understanding the bonus
  • Commission-based sales plan was slowly phased out

Final Plan

Once the final plan was finalized it was found to contain:

  • Paid full salaries on most recent best year.
  • Reps paid same as last best year.
  • Money is a manager. Without commission-based sales plans you need to manage. more hands-on and ensure accountability. The final plan requires more coaching and more investigating into reasons reps are not successful.
  • People do good work for many reasons, not just money.

Results

Since the plan has been in place, the results contain:

  • People felt like they needed to hit their goal because the company was ALREADY paying them.
  • Everyone is now on the same team with the exact same goals.
  • Raises are  based on performance review.
  • Some employees didn’t like the plan and found they are not a good fit for the company. Some reps have left the company, others asked to leave.
  • It’s been a 10 year process.

Transition Advice

Now that they’ve reached success, Justin has some clear advice for others interested in changing their compensation plan:

  • Management team needs to look at staff, consider how they will manage them and if they are OK if people leave.
  • Answer this: is it worth getting everyone surrounded around the same purpose. It probably is!

How To Connect With Justin Clark

Commission-based sales plans no longer exist in Justin Clark’s sales department.

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn and learn further details.

 

How to Manage Sales Teams

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The Only Sales Guide You Will Ever Need Anthony Iannarino #130

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"The Only Sales Guide You Will Ever Need" Anthony Iannarino The Only Sales Guide You Will Ever Need with Anthony Iannarino #130

In this episode we  talk about two subjects. First the foundation attributes professionals need to become highly successful sellers. Secondly the fundamental skills you must possess to make and close sales. We’re honored to have as our guest, Anthony Iannarino. Anthony is the author of a soon to be published book titled “The Only Sales Guide You Will Ever Need” 

Nine Attributes Successful Sellers

In our conversation Anthony shared the foundation of great sellers. He believes the attributes are:

  1. Self Discipline
  2. Optimism
  3. Caring
  4. Competitiveness
  5. Resourcefulness
  6. Initiative
  7. Persistence
  8. Communication
  9. Accountability

Eight Skills for Sales Success

Selling skills are critical for success. Anthony believes sellers need to possess 8 fundamental skills. He believes you must be strong on all these, not just work the skills that come natural.

  1. Closing
  2. Prospecting
  3. Storytelling (Presenting)
  4. Diagnosing
  5. Negotiating
  6. Business Acumen
  7. Change Management

To be a trusted adviser, you need trust and advice.

How To Find Anthony Iannarino

To find Anthony online go to ….

The Only Sales Guide You Will Ever Need Pre-Order

You can  pre-order his book today by going to  preorder.theonlysalesguide.com   The book will be published in October 2016.
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Understanding the Value of Testimonials #126

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Understanding the Value of Testimonials #126

Customer testimonials provide a powerful tool for marketing and sales. They can be featured on your website, brochures, anyplace prospective customers learn about your company. Most prospects don’t want to be the first ones to buy from a company. They want to learn what others think in order to make an informed decision.  Today’s episode is spent understanding the value of testimonials, the framework of a great testimonial, how to collect testimonials from your client and where to use them.

Testimonial Action Guide

To make it easy to implement this episode, we’ve created a Testimonial Action Guide.

 

 

Action

 

 

Download the Testimonial Sales Guide Here 

Yep, I’m going to collect your email and put you on my email list. Trust I’ll only send you updates on each podcast and a few others sales handouts too.  I believe in honest sales and full disclosure. Join me!

 

 

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What is Sales 3.0 with Shawn Karol Sandy #83

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Shawn Karol SandyWhat is Sales 3.0 with Shawn Karol Sandy

In this episode we meet Shawn Karol Sandy,  Chief Revenue Officer of the Selling Agency. Shawn and I chat about how the landscape of selling has changed. Furthermore,  what used to work in sales, what doesn’t and what it takes to be a successful  seller today.

Shawn shares the 5 trends  that will shape sales in the next few years. She calls this Sales 3.0

Five Future Trends in Sales

  1.  Transition from Lone Rangers to Team Captains.  Team Captains bring together assets and resources from their company as well as prospective buyers organizations.
  2. Cold calling is dead. You must build relationships, before calling.  Future sellers will widen their Monkey’s  Sphere i.e.  the number of people they  have in their  immediate network.
  3. There will be no more Heavy Handed closers, They will be replaced by  collaborators where closing is no longer an arm wrestle, it’s an orchestra.
  4. Social selling, is just selling. It’s about becoming an evangelist about something bigger.
  5. Slick people pleaser types will go away. They are not authentic nor transparent. Empathetic sellers will replace these types.

What You Can Do To Embrace Sales 3.o

Understand the world around you and how the buying process is 57-75% complete before you meet prospects.  Be….

  • Visible
  • Vocal
  • Valuable

Biography Shawn Karol Sandy

“Shawn has conquered, redefined and re-engineered Sales and Marketing roles in multiple organizations and in multiple industries. In her business, The Selling Agency, she uses these experiences to create strong sales programs and strategies that focus on the goal of every business – revenue growth.

 Straightforward, practical and perhaps slightly cheeky, her innate gifts are helping people find new ways to solve old problems, unique ways to approach new problems and helping small businesses sell more.”

Links Mentioned In This Episode

Download the FREE  Ebook Sales Leadership Tips

 

Sales Training, Sales Coaching, Sales Consulting

Selling With Confidence  is  the online self-paced sales course that teaches you  how to ….

  • Be Yourself
  • Add Value
  • Make Sales

Go here and see  how you can start  selling with confidence today.

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How to Sell Solopreneurs, an End-of-Year Survey with Larry Keltto #43

Larry Keltto

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Larry KelttoLarry Keltto is the founder and publisher of TheSolopreneurLife.com, an online resource for solopreneurs. Larry specializes in providing coaching and consulting to solopreneurs. He also provides marketing-communications services to businesses and organizations through his first company, Straight River Media.

Click Here To Download This Episode

Solopreneur Life 2014 Survey

Every year Larry surveyed Solopreneurs on their demographics and the past year’s business experience. This is the first time I’ve seen this study and I found it extremely interesting, really solid work and very  useful to anyone who is looking to sell or market this niche. Larry and I walked through the results of the Solopreneur Life 2014 End-of-Year Survey.  We picked out fun facts that each of us found of interest.

Resources

As we mentioned you can get download a copy of the survey by going to

Sales Training

Learn Sales in 10 days and grow your business. Check out the Selling With Confidence  training for both new and experienced sellers.

You have this tremendous secret that nobody knows. It’s frustrating to see people buy from the competition, yet you KNOW it’s inferior to what you provide. You’ve devoted your whole life into your business. It’s time to let world in, on this secret. And how do you do this?

This is an opportunity for  you to

  • Hone your sales skills,
  • Beef up your persuasion,
  • Grow your influence and
  • build relationships with clients for life.

This is not a time to be shy. Share the secret that your business provides the VERY best.

Learn Sales in 10 days and grow your business.

 

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How To Sell Like Hell with David Rubinstein #42

David Rubinstein

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David Rubinstein WebDavid Rubinstein the creator of the  Sell Like Hell Sales System. David began his selling career in baseball by knocking on 10K doors hawking season tickets.   Over time David became the  top sales guy, then  sales manager and now trains companies world-wide on the importance of having a sales process. When David works with a client his promise is  to “quickly get prospects to I’m not interested”  faster than ever  before. In this episode we’re going to learn what that means.

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Sales Training

David believes in the power of Technique and Process, this is his sales sequence:

  • Sellers determine questions
  • Questions determine Need’ms
  • Need’ms determine Got’ms

Questions – Problems – Solutions is the correct process yet most sellers are tellers. Sales is a race to need. Even if a prospect isn’t  interested,  it’s a great sales call because at the very least you’ve learned that your time will be better served on another buyer.

Sell Like Hell Return On Investment?

When David is asked by prospects “What kind of ROI can I get if I hire you?” he  doesn’t make promises about growing their business.  Instead he responds  with a promise  that if their people use his  techniques,  they will get to “I’m not interested” faster than ever  before. Meaning, they will be more efficient in qualifying prospects, and focusing on  clients that have problems their company can solve.

David is an advocate of measuring the Reach Touch Ratio

  • Reach is an attempt to contact a client: face-to-face, telephone, written word experiences.
  • Touch is an actual contact,  conversation or   interaction (live or virtual).

The key is to maximize reaches. This ratio  is where you should focus  your metric collection.

Resources

David’s website, Sell Like Hell, can be found here

David’s FREE Sales Morsels can be found here 

Reach out to him!  He’d love to help you out.

 

Learn Sales Today

To learn more about this Sales Podcast and things I can do to help your Sales Training  program click on these links to grow your confidence is sales.

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How to Make $1 Million Dollars in Sales an Interview with Mike Schmidtmann #39

Mike Schmidtmann

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2-Mike_Schmidtmann-1-RT-300dpiHow to Make a $1 Million Dollars in Sales  an Interview with Mike Schmidtmann #39

Would you like to earn $1 Million dollars in 2015? Our guest today Mike Schmidtman, tells us how. Mike talks about his passion for hiring, training and developing people through sales coaching and sales training. Further more he explains how success is a statistical event and what it takes for a sales professional to earn $1 Million in sales a year, not sell a $1 million, but earn a million. Mike works with Solution Providers all over the country on management practices to improve sales, margins and profitability. He has some great stories that illustrate his take on sales.

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How to Make a $1 Million Dollars in Sales – Success is a Statistical Event

Mike starts with how to make a $1 Million dollars in sales  from a high profile sales professional point of view.

Mike says that top earners simply work backwards to understand what course to embark for making a large number of sales.

  • what you earn is factor of what you sell
  • what you sell is a factor what you propose
  • what you propose is a factor of what you uncover and identify

Mike thinks of this as a Success Formula.  He uses this example from his sales training.

Sales Success Formula

  1. Let’s say you want to earn $1M earn…
  2. For $4M in gross profit you will need $15M in sales
  3. Answer these questions:
    • how many customers would you need?
    • how much do they buy?
    • and how fast can you close/ they make a decision?

By working the number backwards you can understand where and what effort is needed to meet your goals.

Know Your Ideal Client

If you can truly understand your industry, you can calculate what’s needed for success. This is not just working harder, this is using your creative abilities. Find a way of generating a deep desire for your products and services. And do this by knowing your customers better than they know themselves.

Sales Training Resources

Mike  kindly offered to share a copy of his Behavioral Guide to Sales Interviews. If you’re looking to hire a sales person, or if you’re looking for a new position, you’ll find a lot of value in the guides.

Invest in Yourself and Your Own Sales Training

With the New Year almost here, start improving your sales skills by Learning the 20 Secrets of Sales Success. 

 

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SB031 – How Sales Are Lost in the Beginning an Interview with Mark Whitehead

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Today’s guest is Mark Whitehead, owner of A Head 4 Saa head 4 salesles, a sales and leadership training company covering the Midlands and the South East  UK. They specialize in delivering open and bespoke training in the areas of sales, leadership, influence and discipline. Mark has worked in a number of industries from B2B telesales, field sales, area management, account management and finally man management.

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In This Episode the Sales Process

Mark walked through the sales process and

  • Rapport Building – build know like and trust, it’s all People to People
  • Understanding Needs – look for weaknesses, but they must trust you before they share
  • Solution – pose solutions that they may accept, but again only if you have rapport
  • Present  – share your solution and show how it addresses their needs, item by item
  • Close – ask for the sale

The sale is never lost in the end, it’s lost in the beginning.

It’s not your job to get somebody to choose you, it’s your job to allow and empower them to choose. You can’t bully them, but if you allow them to make the best decision for their business, they are more likely to pick you.

Lastly, make sure you have a plan to keep in touch with your goals and dreams. When things get tough, get back in touch with their original goals.

Resources

Mark  Whitehead can be found   at www.increasesalesnow.co.uk/ahead4sales/

His free eBook The Small Business Growth Guide is available here.www.increasesalesnow.co.uk/salesbabble

Mark can be found on LinkedIn at  http://www.linkedin.com/in/ahead4sales

Selling With Confidence Webinar

Sign up for the free webinar Selling With Confidence to be held at 12PM CST November 5th, 2014

Consider the following:
Do you lack confidence in your selling skills?
Are you fumbling cold calls, unsure what to say?
Do you lack a formal sales process and forget to follow up?
Do clients keep stalling and never agreeing to buy?
Lastly are you running out of time?

If so, this webinar is for you.
Click here to learn all about it. Selling With Confidence

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20 Minutes To A Performance Seller and  interview with  Rick Day #12

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1b71d06How To Be A Performance Seller

In this episode we talk about performance selling with Rick Day, an entrepreneur with over 25 years of starting, growing, and selling businesses.  From meager beginnings, Rick spent 5 years in the Navy, put himself through college, and became an entrepreneur.  Now at age 50, he’s a semi-retired investor, coach, blogger, and podcaster with practical business advice that works!

Right-click here to download the MP3

In This Episode

Rick defines the four ways performance sellers can grow revenue:

  • Keep selling existing products to existing customers (1x cost)
  • Sell new products to existing customers (3x cost)
  • Sell existing products to new customers (7x cost)
  • Sell new products to new customers (12x cost)

Set your expectations when growing your business and leverage your existing clients as best as possible.

Items of Interest

I highly recommend following Rick:

Rick also mentioned a number of tools:

  • Aweber email tool  (so do I and this is an affiliate link)
  • Hootsuite (so do I and this is free)

Lastly he recommended a book I’ve not read:

Robert Shook – Hardball Selling: How to Turn the Pressure on, without Turning Your Customer Off

Breakthrough

Take a moment and reflect on his advice:

  • Keep adding  to your tool belt and learn how to address different types of clients
  • Read voraciously and copy the habits of the best authors
  • Develop your own personal sales process, measure that process and continually improve it
  • Make sure to carve out time for  prospecting.

We also had a great moment where Rick shared an example where a sales candidate. I mentioned a similar tactic in the blog post All Job Hunters Are Sellers

Announcing the Selling Secrets for Non-Sellers Workshop!

We’re  offering a live workshop to teach selling secrets to non-sellers on on Thursday,  June 26 at the IIT Rice Campus in Wheaton IL… Just west of Chicago.  It’s all about learning  a selling style that fits your personality and works.

The Sales Babble Workshop  is  a terrific  opportunity for sales professionals  to learn strategic selling styles in an interactive forum. Thid in-person  workshop  promises to provide actionable scripts, processes and practice that can be applied  the very next day –   or your money back!

Your resistance to selling  will be directly addressed. You will learn that sales is not about pushing customers to buy,  but instead a process of discovering and serving the customer’s needs and desires.

Click here to register  on Eventbrite

Did you enjoy this episode?  If you’re on this page I’m assuming yes!

Please help me  get as many people introduced to this great content as possible.   I  would really appreciate  it if you  could help  me with a review on iTunes. It takes just a few minutes  and it  would really help get the word out.

Click here for directions to provide a review in iTunes.

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Four Ways To Stay Ahead of the Competition

Football SoccerIt’s easy to slack off when your business has been successful.  For some sales professionals, new business becomes a process of order taking: What color would you like? How many would you prefer this week? Would you like us to include a set of steak knives with that order?

Yet this stage of your business might be the beginning of the end.  In a world of constant evolution and increased competition, it’s imperative to stay awake to the marketplace.  To quote Heraclitus “The only thing that remains the same is change”.    The easy flow of leads you have now, could dry up quickly.  It’s best to have a “heads up” before that happens.

To stay awake to the marketplace, here are four things sellers should consider to stay ahead:

  1. Consistently assess the competition. Never underestimate their abilities, acknowledge their weaknesses, yet focus on their strengths.
  2. Plug into social media and be on the look-out for emerging new players.  Subscribe to industry blogs, competitive websites,  thought leaders on Twitter.
  3. Listen deeply to your existing clients to listen for needs, desires and gossip. They have a network that you can leverage vicariously.
  4. Look for opportunities and gaps not being filled. Again your existing clients are a fountain of ideas. Many may be hair-brained, but a survey of many clients can extract a few superb ideas.

With the right mindset, you stay awake to reality.  Thinking of the competition as evil  or wrong,  goes nowhere.  Business is a constant game of competition , and any team can win on any day. But by being awake to the winds of the marketplace and  impending threats,  can be addressed before it’s too late.

Next month I’m offering a live workshop on sales.  Click here to read the description and see if you or someone in your network might find value.  The workshop is called Selling Secrets for Non-Sellers: Learn a selling style that fits your personality and works.