SalesFish Sales Training

Neat new tip for connecting LinkedIn profiles with your CRM system.

As regualar readers and attendees of my sales training will know I am a big fan of CRM systems and also LinkedIn as marketing and networking tools for sales people.

Now I have come up with a way to use both these tools together.

I have just added a connection to the public profiles of each contact we know in LinkedIn, directly into our CRM system. This way whenever I look up a contact in the CRM system I can directly link into their LinkedIn profile. In this manner whenever a contact updates their LinkedIn profile we have direct access to the updates from within our CRM system. Now how cool is that?

How did I do it. I simply added the URL of the public profile of the contact into a spare field in our CRM's contact details. Now when I want to link to a client's public profile I just click on the URL and it pops up a profile of the contact similar to the one shown on the right. Simple and easy!

Previous article on LinkedIn

Previous article on how to get sales people to use CRM systems.

For further discussion on this topic
visit the The B2B Sales Professional's Forum

by Liam Venter:  Author of the popular sales training manual
'The Consultative Sales Professional'
You can obtain a copy here

Does sales training really deliver bottom line results?

It's not a given.

It's an important question that deserves a considered response.

Wanting it to be true and saying it with enough force and conviction just doesn't make it so!

Logic says yes, and anecdotal evidence says yes and no.

I have seen sales actually drop after inappropriate sales training. Note I elected to use the phrase 'inappropriate' rather than 'bad' sales training.

Surprisingly there has been extremely little 'scientific' assessment of whether sales training works.

To do a successful study you would need to first define what is success.

• Is it happier more confident sales people?
• Is it lower staff turnover?
• Is it lower cost of staff management?
• Is it better sales reporting and forecasting?
• Is it an increase in sales?

You would also need to design how you are going to quantify and measure each of the above.

To do the experiment you would need at the minimum three large groups of sales people performing near identical sales roles in the same environment (preferably the same company). The hardest part of doing this study is that you would need to be able to keep all key environmental factors constant in each of the three groups for the duration of the trial. One group would be your 'control group' and the other group would be your group to be 'trained' and a further group would be a 'placebo' group.

• The control group would have no sales training intervention
• The placebo group would get the same amount of interventionist attention as the 'trained group' but would not receive sales training.
• And the Trained group would be subjected to the training to be tested/measured.

I would expect sales to increase slightly in the 'placebo' group and hope to see a marked increase in the 'trained' group.

Neil Rackham the father of 'SPIN selling' measured what works in a sales call/meeting - but he didn't measure if you can train people to do what works in sales meetings.

There is lots of anecdotal evidence by way of reports to suggest sales training works. But you need to examine who is preparing these reports with some skepticism.

As a sales trainer I would like to say it works. However my belief is that a lot of sales training simply does not deliver results for many reasons:

• Training inappropriate to sales mode required (hunter Vs farmer)
• Training in appropriate to environment (retail Vs B2B)
• Training inappropriate to required sales environment style (relationship Vs Feature Vs consultative)

Even when you acknowledge that you can train people to do the right things to achieve the desired results they can also be very quickly de-trained by their work place environments, support structures, bonus and commission schemes, etc.
For this reason it's important that the workplace environment is evaluated/adapted to support the sales processes/methodologies taught – this is a key reason why it is imperative that sales managers also attend the same sales training as their staff.

For further discussion on this topic visit the The B2B Sales Professional's Forum

by Liam Venter:  Author of the popular sales training manual
'The Consultative Sales Professional'
You can obtain a copy here

Creating a thirty second Elevator Pitch in just one minute!

I have always had a bad reaction whenever anyone mentions the 'elevator pitch'. Pitching is one of the least effective ways to sell anything. Like most people I don't like being pitched to and I don't like the supposition/assumption that someone can sell me something in the time it takes to ride an elevator. Have you ever noticed that elevator pitches often start as a 30 second pitch but have a bad habbit of ending up as a 5 minute sales monologue ......and have I mentioned yet, that I hate pitching because it is one of the least effective ways of selling anything.

And yet, I have seen more than one sales person rattle off a 15 minute monologue (while forestalling and fending off interruptions) ....and at the end the client is more confused about what it is exactly that they offer and what value their product or services could be to the client.

They not only confuse their potential clients but they also bore and annoy them by spending far too much time talking instead of taking an interest in the clients unique issues and requirements.

I recently asked the participants at a sales coaching workshop to deliver a 30 second elevator pitch. This exercise clearly demonstrated that:

1. Many sales people don't have a clear visualisation of the value proposition(s) that their products/services offer their clients.

2. There are a large number of sales people who can't provide a clear and concise description of their service or product.

3. That putting yourself into a posistion where you have to listen to elevator pitches is a horrifying experience more unpleasant that being hit over the head repeatedly with a mallet.
   
   
4. There is more value in the task of creating the pitch than delivering it. I think most of the real value lies in what you learn creating it.
   
   
5. While using any prepared pitch is definitely not be my preferred method of opening a sales call, it can be a very helpful as a response to the question “what is it that you do?”
   
   
6. The only place for a prepared pitch is when you are doing a presentation to a group.
   

Rather than try and justify the above comments I invite you to take the one minute challenge below to create an 'elevator value proposition'.

I ask that you observe the following three rules for this elevator pitch.

One: The 'elevator pitch' needs to be very concise. It must take no more than 30 seconds to deliver!

Two: Your elevator value proposition needs to be plain and simple enough to be instantly understood. No tech talk. No industry jargon. No clichés. As an acid test your mother should be able to 'get' your elevator pitch the first time she hears it.

Three: There must be a focus on the goal of your elevator value proposition. You're hardly likely to make a sale directly from your elevator proposition. Remember, you're only using it to create initial interest. Your goal might be to use it to book a meeting with the customer or introduce yourself to a business group.

Ok start your stop watch. Your one minute 'write a elevator value proposition' starts now....

Jot down the answers to the following five questions on the back of an envelope:

1. Write down a possible hook. A "hook" is a question or statement that piques the clients interest to want to hear more........................(e.g. The number one business limiting issue currently being lamented in the media is...)

2. Who you are.............................(e.g. company name or your name. No more!)

3. What it is that you specialise in.....................................

4. What your products/services do for your clients.....................

5. What is the Return on Investment for clients who adopt this product or service.......................

6. The goal is to .......................... (e.g. gain a sales meeting)

Now on the other side of the envelope plug the answers to your five questions into the following template.

Thank you for asking. (The hook is) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

(insert your company name) specialises in _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The typical results for our clients are $ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .

If these results would be of interest to you I would like to _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

OK stop the watch, your one minute 'write a elevator value proposition' stops now.

Review what you have just created: Read your elevator value proposition out loud to a colleague. Does it take you more than 30 seconds? If yes, shorten it!

Did your colleaue groan and hold their head in their hands?

Was I right that much of the value is in the creation of it?

Was I right that there is more value in the task of creating the pitch than delivering it? If so my suggestion is that you experiment with creating a written elevator response value proposition for each of your key products and services...and then never deliver it to a client.

Using the format above a 30 second elevator value proposition for SalesFish might read like this:

Thank you for asking.The most common business growth limitation we hear is "It's very hard to obtain and retain top sales achievers. If we could clone our top sales person we would be dramatically more profitable. SalesFish specialises in maximising the results of everyone in the sales team. Typical results for our clients are an initial increase of between 10 and 20 percent with understanderbly higher longer term gains as sales people become more proficient using our methodology. If these results would be of interest to you I would like to have an hour of your time to see if the same sales growth might be achievable for you.

by Liam Venter:  Author of the popular sales training manual
'The Consultative Sales Professional'
You can obtain a copy here