From Sales Executives to Professional Account Manager

If you’re a sales executive and are keen to work your way up the corporate ladder and become a professional account manager, you should consider sales executive training to help you achieve your dream.

If you are knowledgeable in your chosen profession, you respond promptly to all enquiries and you’re ethical in all your dealings with customers, you have acted professionally and this is a good base for developing managerial skills.

Some of the skills you would revise during sales training include:

Consultative Selling

In consultative selling, all sales calls revolve around the customer and their needs, rather than the usual ‘product push’ cold call. During a consultative selling call, the salesperson would discover the needs of the customer through mutual conversation and then try to meet those needs by offering a product. The language used during the call should be more benefit-orientated than a standard sales call, to reflect this.

Offering Creative Solutions

Another aspect of this type of selling is that the salesperson should be able to choose products or services from a broad range and pick one or more that are most suited to the customer to provide them with a truly tailored service. This is called offering creative solutions or multi-selling.

Focusing on Value

Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Rather than being loyal to one company, customers are shopping around to get the best deal – possibly because of austerity measures and the economic downturn. Whatever the reason, they are looking for high quality products at competitive prices. Part of your sales call should therefore focus on the good value and affordability of your product.

This value product can be offered as a solution to the customer’s problem that will bring them a return on their investment.

Gain the Trust of Your Client Base

Gaining the trust of the customer, having in depth industry knowledge and advanced sales skills will give you a strong professional relationship with your clients. Those who provide advice can become a trusted advisor and give themselves the edge on their competition.

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How Can a Sales Team Handle The "Lack Of Budget" Objection?

"I'd love to, but it's just not in the budget for this quarter," says a potential buyer, and most salespeople will take this as a firm "no" and move on to the next on their list. It's surprising how many salespeople do exactly that, and even more surprising that your average sales force training programme doesn't cover what to do in these situations. The truth is, there's a much bigger potential for a sale than most people realise.

Why? Because when a buyer says it's not in the budget, most of the time what they're really saying is, there's no room in the budget for something that doesn't wow me. But does that mean you should give up? Absolutely not: it means you need to figure out what will wow that buyer. They may not be interested in this product, but they might be interested in something else.

When it comes to budgets, most have some built-in wiggle room. And that “wiggle money” is more likely to be spent on a want item rather than a need item. The question is, what does the buyer want?

A fundamental part of sales training is about learning how to determine what a buyer wants, and also about figuring out how to make a buyer want what you're selling. These best-practice strategies still apply here; as always it's just a matter of asking the right questions. Remember, it's all about asking open-ended questions that get the buyer talking; for example:

• If cost weren't an issue, what would you be looking for in a [product]?

• Apart from the cost, what's stopping you from considering [product]?

• What [product] features are most important to you?

This isn't necessarily about trying to sell the product the buyer already turned down; the more important aspect is the fact that you're getting the buyer talking. That helps you figure out what it is they want, and it may be that you have another product that fits neatly into that category. Not only that: it's also a way of ramping up the buyer's enthusiasm for the original product, and sometimes, that's all it takes to override any budgetary concerns and make the sale.

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The Pitfalls of Promoting Good Salespeople To Sales Management Roles

When a company promotes a top-selling sales rep to a managerial role, it's often done on the principle of “disciple selling,” or the hope that the new manager will pass on their sales skills to their new team. Unfortunately, what often happens is the complete opposite of what the company is expecting. On paper it sounds like a great idea, but there are definitely a few potential pitfalls to watch out for.

Sales Figures May Take a Hit

A good salesperson is hard to replace, but to replace an exceptional one is all but impossible. If you promote your top seller, are you going to find that your sales figures take a significant hit? And what happens if your figures drop month after month? Whatever you're hoping to gain by promoting your top seller might be entirely negated if their replacement isn't up to scratch.

Changing the Team Dynamic

Strong sales teams aren't strong solely because they're made up of high-performing individuals. Team dynamics, or the way team members interact with one another, also plays an important role. Changing up the dynamics by promoting one team member can be a positive thing, but it's not guaranteed. Promoting a great salesperson who isn't well integrated within the team, for example, may result in a great deal of disruption. Team leadership training can help address these types of problems, but in the short-term the team's sales figures are likely to suffer.

A Good Salesperson isn't Necessarily a Good Manager

When you promote a good salesperson you don't just risk losing sales; you also risk the possibility that your excellent salesperson just isn't a good manager. The fact is, some of the qualities that make someone great in sales don't necessarily translate into good managerial skills.

In short, don't promote a salesperson purely on the basis of their sales figures. Make sure they also have the qualities you'd be looking for in a manager you would be hiring from outside the company. It is also key that the salesperson fully understands the difference between managerial skills and sales skills to be decide whether the position is for them, which is something that is often overlooked by companies in a rush to fill the position.

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How You Can Improve Your Sales Team’s Motivation

Increasing employee productivity is something that's always of interest to team leaders, especially in sales, where productivity and effectiveness translate directly into customers, orders, and profit. Successful sales reps tend to be people who are naturally highly motivated and productive, but there's almost always room for improvement. If you're looking for new ways to improve the productivity of your sales team, investigating the self-determination theory may be highly beneficial.

Self-Determination Theory and Motivation

Self-determination theory is a model of motivation, which states that people are more productive when their motivation comes from within, rather than when they are pressured by external forces.

In terms of sales it might, for example, be the difference between a sales rep being pressured to perform by their supervisor, and a rep being intrinsically motivated to perform because they genuinely enjoy the job and want to succeed. The latter situation is obviously more effective, and in terms of sales performance, tapping into this kind of motivation can be a game-changer.

Applying Self-Determination Concepts to Sales Coaching

There are three psychological needs that must be met for an employee to have strong internal motivation.

• Autonomy: the employee must feel that their work and work performance is something they choose for themselves.

• Competence: the employee must feel competent and valued in their working environment.

• Relatedness: the employee must feel that they have supportive and meaningful relationships with colleagues.

Sales training can't teach or inspire internal motivation, but a supervisor or coach can support an employee's drive to develop and maintain it. For example, a sales leader can facilitate relatedness by building supportive relationships with each member of the team, and by creating an environment that encourages team members to form supportive relationships with one another.

The needs for autonomy and competence are partially met when an employee chooses, enjoys, and is suited to a career in sales. It's also something that the working environment must support, particularly in terms of feedback given by coaches and supervisors. For example, it's important for team leaders to provide reps with opportunities to make choices, and to give them all the information they need to make choices that allow them to perform to a high level of competency.

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Secrets Of High-Performing Sales Coaches

Coaching in general is a hot topic, but when it comes to sales, it's important to realise that the coaching that sales reps need is very different from the kind of general coaching that's appropriate in other areas of business. Learning how to effectively coach sales reps is an integral part of sales management training, and while some general coaching skills are good to have, there are specific skills that are much more important for effective sales coaching.

Defining and Achieving Goals

Good coaches help their sales people define their own goals; great coaches help their reps create and execute action plans that will allow them to achieve those goals. That includes helping trainees develop habits and behaviours that contribute to and increase their sales success.

Know When to Give Advice, and When to Back Off

In some training circles, the prevailing school of thought is that coaches should avoid giving direct advice, because it's more important that the “coachee” receives general advice and coaching that will enable them to figure things out on their own. But in sales, situations often arise where giving direct advice enables a trainee to make a sale they would have lost otherwise, and in the sales industry there's no room for lost opportunities. A good coach has to know when direct advice is needed and warranted, and when it's better to step back and let their trainee use their own judgement to solve a problem.

Essentially, this is about understanding that sales coaches have two different jobs: one is to provide general support and advice that helps a trainee improve over time, and the second is to provide specific, direct advice when it's needed to help a trainee take advantage of an opportunity. So, sales coaches need to be able to give both immediate and long-term advice, and know when each kind of advice is appropriate.

Inspiration and Motivation

Good sales coaches understand that motivation isn't the same for everyone; people are motivated in different ways by different things, and a great coach is someone who can help each and every rep tap into their own personal source of internal motivation.

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How to Become a Successful Sales Representative

The nature of sales is such that personal qualities like attitude and personality are hugely important determinants of success, and all the sales rep training in the world can't make up the lack. But for reps who just need a nudge or two in the right direction, it can be useful to understand just what those essential qualities are.

Develop a Keen Sense of Empathy

Empathy is the quality of identifying with people and understanding what they're feeling; it's an enormously useful trait for salespeople because it enables them to understand a customer's motivations and concerns, and tailor their sales pitch accordingly. A rep with a strong sense of empathy finds it easy to establish trust and help others feel at ease, and is good at reading body language and other non-verbal cues.

Stay Focused, Stay Optimistic

People who are focused are driven from within; they don't require external motivation to want to succeed. They're self-motivated, self-starters, and they're willing to do what it takes to achieve their goals.

A related trait is optimism: the ability to persist and stay focused in the face of failure. It's a crucial trait, because in sales, failure is inevitable—so it's not a lack of failure that's important, it's the ability to stay focused and confident when failure happens.

Accept Responsibility

People who are prepared to accept responsibility for their own actions don't shift the blame onto others when problems arise. Instead, they accept whatever responsibility is theirs, they work to find out what went wrong, and they make the effort to make improvements where they're needed.

Feed the Desire for Success

Sales training can help new reps understand how to succeed, but it can't make them want to succeed. That desire to succeed just for the sake of being successful is something that can't be taught. Someone who genuinely enjoys competing and being the best they can, who enjoys the profession for the opportunities it provides in terms of winning, and who gains personal gratification from a successful sale, has the makings of a great rep.

It's important, however, that the desire for success is tempered by those other essential qualities—like empathy and a willingness to accept personal responsibility—to ensure that success doesn't come at another's expense, whether its a customer or a colleague.

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The 5 Biggest Sales Management Coaching Pitfalls

There are three ways in which managers try to encourage hard work in their employees. These are threats of punishment for poor performance (for instance, disciplinary action or loss of employment), bonuses and increases in wages and promotions. Unfortunately many things you've been taught as a manager may be counterproductive:

Giving Rewards Doesn't Work – Studies looking at human motivation found that giving external rewards actually damages long-term motivation and performance, making the person less likely to achieve what they are capable of. It also dampens down creativity and problem solving skills and can reduce enthusiasm for the job if they are given for tasks the employee already enjoys. This is because external rewards heighten anxiety and make them feel controlled. Once they have achieved the short-term goal and ‘won’ the prize, their overall investment in the job declines.

Threatening Punishment Doesn't Work – Using the threat of punishment doesn't work because once that threat is removed, the employee becomes demotivated. It is also counterproductive to the three basic psychological needs of workers, which are:

• The need to feel competent and a valued member of the team
• The need for connection and cooperation with colleagues during team work
• The need for autonomy or self-direction within the workplace

When these needs are satisfied, staff are internally motivated just because they enjoy what they do.

Bonuses Don’t Develop Long-Term Motivation – While employees are motivated by pay, it isn't long lasting. The only way to encourage internal motivation is to have a supportive workplace that recognises talent in others, gives need-based feedback and offers recognition for a job well done.

Negative Communication Doesn't Work – If you as a manager offer information in a negative or judgmental way you block communication. If you offer choices within your information, you can encourage a sense of autonomy in your staff that increases work satisfaction.

Choose External Rewards Carefully – Used in moderation and in the context of a supportive workplace, rewards can be motivating. Avoid competitions (they never feel good to the loser). Only offer rewards after they have done the work instead of as an incentive, express appreciation and highlight the positive impact they have had on others.

If you would like to get more information on sales management, you can visit www.achieveglobal.co.uk

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5 Effective Ways to Increase Managers' Productivity

What's the difference between a good manager and a great one? There's no one single difference; rather, it's often the case that there's a whole host of things—both big and small—that truly excellent managers do differently. It's important to keep this in mind for team leadership training, because often, would-be and new managers are eager to find the one single key that will boost their performance, but there rarely is just one. There are, however, five different areas where managers can make changes that boost their performance and productivity to great effect.

Reflect on your Limitations

People make poor decisions for all sorts of reasons. Some focus on the details and fail to see the big picture, while others do exactly the opposite. Some people are unwilling to give credence to alternative views and opinions, while others are so busy trying to please everyone that they're unable to make decisions at all. For managers, these types of limitations can lead to serious problems, so it's crucial to have a high level of self-awareness, and understanding of what your limitations are and how they might affect you professionally.

Give—and Earn—Trust and Respect

It's increasingly expected of managers that they model ethical and socially responsible behaviour in the workplace. For example, it might mean challenging decisions and actions that are unethical, insensitive, or discriminatory, and making fair decisions even when they themselves are negatively affected.

Respect Difference and Diversity

People empathise and interact most effectively with others who are like themselves, but a great manager can interact effectively with people of different cultures and backgrounds. A great manager can lead teams made up of diverse types of people, collaborate effectively with others, and meet the needs of customers and clients of different backgrounds.

Encourage Innovation

Great managers foster a workplace atmosphere that encourages innovation and forward thinking by adapting to change, sharing their vision of a positive future, engaging with people to develop and execute new ideas, and improving their own capabilities as well as those of their team.

Connect with the Team on a Personal Level

A truly great manager can connect with people to inspire and motivate them. Forging personal connections is a vital part of this, because motivation is something that has to engage the heart as well as the mind. For sales managers training in particular this is important, because the ability to engage is a key aspect of sales as well as management.

Sales Force Training: The New Motivational Strategies

Keeping a team motivated and happy can be incredibly challenging for most current day managers. Tough economic times mean that teams are smaller, budgets for external rewards for employees are tighter, and employees can feel overworked or disinterested in the ultimate goal of their company. Managers, too, can be overworked and have less time to dedicate to individual staff members to keep them motivated. Yet, as AchieveGlobal notes, none of these obstacles are insurmountable, if we begin to view motivation in a different way. Research indicates that rather than aiming to motivate employees through external motivation (i.e. the reward or penalty system), they need to focus on what really makes employees tick: internal motivation.

Current-day internal motivation theory can be traced back to the findings of Abraham Maslow et al, who (in the 1960s), espoused that while external rewards could improve performance in the short-term, for long-term success, people reacted far more strongly to internal motivation. Currently, the leading authors in internal motivation are Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. These authors devised the Self-Determination Theory, which they define as “a theory of motivation… concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways.” Deci and Ryan argue that external rewards wrest an employee’s creativity and ability to solve complex problems and aim to reward a worker for something he/she already enjoys doing.

Internal motivation results when a person is performing a job they find inherently satisfying, or when they perform their job to satisfy another inherent need (there are three basic needs employees possess: the need to show their competence, the need to relate to others in a team and the need to exercise autonomy in their job).

Good leaders need to create the right environment in which employees can fulfil these needs for themselves. This can be done by communicating efficiently with employees, adopting their point of view, creating opportunities for them to make wise choices and providing sales force training to those selling the company’s products or services. In the case of sales staff, receiving cutting edge sales training is particularly important, since these employees need to remain highly motivated, even in the face of rejection.

Leaders should give feedback to employees in a non-judgemental manner, clarifying any procedures or roles the employee may not understand and relying on the employee to find a solution to a current problem or issue. Leaders also need to recognise talent in employees, matching workers’ interests needs to the company’s needs and creating a plan to help the employee shine in their chosen area. Finally, positive contributions made by staff should be acknowledged, by showing how their actions have had a positive impact on the team.

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Want A Thriving Business? Try The New Sales Coaching Approach

When it comes to motivating your work force and keeping them fully engaged, there have always been plenty of different choices for managers and trainers. But none of these are truly effective in the long-run, often leading to short-term boosts and nothing more. To really achieve a thriving business, you may need to revisit your approach to sales coaching – and we’d like to discuss that very thing in this article.

External motivation isn’t always the answer

Let's assume that at some point you've had experience of incentives. Many companies use them for lots of different reasons, and the assumption they make is that an external motivator (like money or a prize) will lead to long-term improvements in productivity. But this unfortunately is not the case. Rather these can stifle workers’ creativity and can cause more problems than they solve. The answer is simple: focus instead on internal motivation. This occurs when an employee finds something they really enjoy doing, or they perform a task and satisfy another need within them – such as contributing to a team. In both cases, it's all about satisfying internal needs, and the results are much longer lasting.

The psychological needs of staff

It's clear that the best workers will be those who feel comfortable, happy and valued in their positions. But to nurture this, there are a number of psychological needs that must be fulfilled. Studies have shown that these needs are: competence, relatedness and autonomy. The first, competence, refers to feeling like they have the ability to do their job to the best of their ability. The next, relatedness, refers to staff feeling like they are part of a team. The third, autonomy, ensures staff feel like they can do their job without external motivation.

Need-based leadership

The core of the new sales coaching approach is one that focuses on the three needs we mentioned above. By leading in a way that enables team members to feel competent, related to others, and autonomous in their role, helps staff to maintain peace of mind and confidence. This confidence will lead to increased job satisfaction and, by extension, productivity.

If you’re part of a business that’s striving to thrive, why not try out the new thought-based leadership approach? It might just change the fortunes of your company.