3 Ways to Boost Your Confidence as a Salesperson

Aug 29, 2013

What will it take for you to not only feel confident, but also for others to view you with confidence — to trust that you genuinely are there to help them?

It doesn’t take long for us to discover that confidence plays a significant role in the world of sales.

Interestingly, the assumption is often made that if someone has chosen selling for their profession, they are “naturally” confident.

I meet salespeople all the time, though, who are not confident.  In fact, the ones who are the least confident are the people who didn’t actively choose sales as their career, but rather fell into it by default.

Regardless of how you got into sales, these truths still stand out: Confidence matters and you can learn confidence.

Here are three ways to boost your confidence:

1. Believe in your product and price.

If you don’t believe in what you sell and how it can benefit customers, your confidence will always be shaky.  If you aren’t sure how your product benefits customers, you need to ask them! Ask for feedback, and gather these testimonials so you can refer to them often.

Many people think testimonials are just used in the selling process to show prospects why they too should become customers.  But testimonials also can be a vivid reminder to you as the salesperson that what you sell does indeed positively impact lives.

In addition to believing in your product, you also must believe in your price.  If you feel you can’t make a sale without discounting, then you are lacking confidence in the price/value relationship.  In other words, you don’t think what you sell is worth full price.

Why is that?

I can’t answer this question for you, because every product and sales environment is unique.  However, you do need to dig into your particular answers, or your sales process will always be tarnished by insecurity. And the customer will not only see it, but also will capitalize on it.

Believe in your product and believe in your price.

2. Strengthen your communication skills.

If you as a salesperson do indeed believe in your product, but don’t know how to communicate that, I have some good news for you.  You can strengthen your communication skills.

Intentionally improve your listening skills and your questioning skills.  Ask a colleague to join you on a sales call and then give you honest feedback on your communication skills.

The more you can refine and strengthen your communication skills, the more comfortable you will feel in any selling situation.  This level of comfort will boost your confidence as well.

3. Reminder yourself that you don’t have to have all the answers.

Sometimes we begin to feel insecure when a customer or prospect asks us something for which we don’t have an immediate answer.

You need to reframe this scenario.  This isn’t about you not having information; it’s about you having an opportunity to better serve the customer by getting the information.

Give yourself permission to say, “That is a good question.  I don’t have the answer right now, but I am going to find it out for you.”

When you do this, you actually convey to the customer that you care enough to find the answer and you want to help them.   This in turn boosts their confidence in you!

Also, when you give yourself permission to “not know it all,” you relax and are better able to connect with your customer.  In fact, they see you as human, and that kind of realness lends itself well to authentic relationship.

Confidence is not an elusive trait that some people are born with and others don’t have.  No!

Confidence is a skill that you can develop.   In fact, it’s one of the most important skills worth developing to move you toward more success in the sales profession.

Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.

(from: http://thesaleshunter.com/three-ways-to-boost-your-confidence-as-a-salesperson/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SalesMotivationAndSalesTraining+%28Sales+Motivation+and+Sales+Training%29)

5 Steps to Close More Sales

AUGUST 29, 2013 BY MARK HUNTER

How are you doing in meeting your 2013 goal?

Here are 5 steps you can take right now to close more sales faster:

1. Follow-up.

The single biggest reason more sales aren’t closed is salespeople give up and fail to follow through.

You may have made two calls and think nothing is going to come of it.

Try again.  We’ve all seen studies that show the importance of following up, and yet so few people actually do it.

2. Sell to the customer’s outcome.

It’s not about your product features; it’s about the outcomes the customer wants. Make sure every comment you make and every question you ask are geared around the customer’s desired outcome.

3. Do a referral blitz to grab customers you can close quickly.

Make it a habit to stay in touch with every customer you’ve ever done business with and even those to whom you weren’t successful selling.  Tap into them for referrals. Leverage your personality, and while you’re at it, pass referrals along to them.

4. Follow up with every old lead, regardless of how old it might be.

Surprising to me is the number of salespeople who never do this.  If there was even the slightest bit of interest at one point, you never know when it might come back even stronger.    Reach out to them, stay in touch with them and nurture them to become great customers of yours.

5. Leverage your personality and your confidence.

Nothing is more effective than you and your own level of confidence and personality.  Let it come through and let people see you as being confident. Approach each opportunity with the expectation of success.  People don’t want to do business with losers. They want to associate with people they see as winners.

Opportunities are unlimited.

All we have to do is approach each day with the expectation succeeding.   Let’s have fun making the last quarter of 2013 a huge success, and in so doing, we’ll propel ourselves forward for a huge 2014.

(from: http://topsalesworld.com/blog/resources/5-steps-to-close-more-sales/)

Can you Ask the Tough Questions in the Sales Process?

Published by Jonathan Farrington

Every sales process includes what would be considered the “tough questions”. You know them, the questions that make you sweat, shake in your shoes or simply make you uncomfortable to a point that you just don’t ask them.

Why? Because you are afraid you might offend the buyer. Or, perhaps you fear the buyer will not like you once you ask. Remember people buy from people and if you offend them or make them not like you, there is no chance of winning the sale.

What questions do this to you? Well here are a few I thought of:

• Do you have a budget?
• How much is your budget?
• Who makes the decision to buy products like ours in your company?
• Who can sign a contract?
• What is the process your company goes through to purchase something like our product?
• Can you draw me an organization chart?
• Will you introduce me to the president (or person who can sign our contract)

These questions and others like them are uncomfortable to ask during the sales process and they become more difficult to ask the longer you are engaged with the prospect. Which brings us to a major issue you face, if you don’t ask them up front during your initial discovery phase, you lose the opportunity ask them later. By the time you need to know the answers it may be too late to get them, without sounding amateurish, or begging.

So how do you overcome the fear of asking these or any question that is uncomfortable during the sales process?

First, you need to change your mindset from sales professional to person helping another person solve a problem they are experiencing. Remember, you are not selling this prospect, you are helping them with a big problem they have. You have the solution, and you need to better understand how to help your prospect resolve the issue.

Second, you need to realize you are not going to insult a buyer by asking these questions. In fact you might make it easier on them so they can explain to you how the buying process goes and who must be involved. They may also offer information on budgeting and the people in the organization with a budget.

Third, if you approach the discovery phase with a sales tool like an initial discovery document that you forward in an advance to the prospect so they are aware of the questions you want to cover before you meet with them, then you don’t have to “drop” these tough questions on them during the discussion. Using an initial discovery document and an organized series of questions, as opposed to a list on a yellow pad, you show you are professional, organized and educated as to how to gain a better understanding of the prospects issues, pains and goals. It just so happens that you also want to better understand the buying process and who the decision makers are.

Sometimes, we all have some challenges in asking the tough questions. I find that an Initial Discovery Questionnaire will help you get them answered. Be sending a list of questionnaires you would like to discuss with your prospect in advance, they are more apt to provide you with answers. Sometimes you don’t even have to ask, they just answer them from the questionnaire.

- See more at: http://www.thejfblogit.co.uk/2013/08/29/guest-post-can-you-ask-the-tough-questions-in-the-sales-process/#sthash.c3Rh7yf5.HLqqBQ3N.dpuf

The ROI of Sales Coaching [Infographic]

Aug 27 2013 By Kevin Micalizzi 

You've probably heard that coaching is important, but did you realize it explains a 17% performance difference between those coached and those not?  [Tweet this stat]

Coaching can be the difference between your sales reps making their goal or missing it. Learn more about the ROI of Sales Coaching in the below infographic. And don't miss the new 5 Steps to Better Sales Performance: How to Coach Your Team to Higher Performance ebook.

[Click for full size ROI of Sales Coaching infographic]

(from: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/08/roi-of-sales-coaching.html?d=70130000000tP4G&app_data=%7B%22pi%22%3A%2244645_1377621080_1730015114%22%2C%22pt%22%3A%22twitter%22%7D)

What to do when “No Decision” is not in the customer’s best interest

by Donal Daly

 

I have written before about the only two reasons that you lose a sale;

1. You should not have been there (chasing this particular opportunity), or
2. You were outsold.

I know I have fallen at both of those hurdles.  Sometimes being outsold means you lost to the dreaded No Decision.  In fact according a report I read from CSO Insights this is happening 26% of the time. Ouch!

Now in most cases when the customer is making No Decision they are in fact making the right decision. They will have objectively evaluated the project, and decided that this particular project did not reach the required threshold of return, or was not as important as another more pressing initiatives.

But in some cases they are just afraid, and No Decision is taking the easy way out.  This No Decision will often be accompanied by phrases like; “I don’t think we have the right team in place to implement this project now”, “We need to learn to walk before we can run”, “I’m not sure the team is ready to embrace this amount of change.” In truth they are just afraid.

They might be afraid of making an investment for which they will be held accountable. They might be afraid of something that is new. They might be afraid of change. They might be afraid of upsetting the status quo lest it might threaten their own status.

In these cases they are not in fact making No Decision, they are making a decision not to fix a problem that is broken. They are taking cover in the status quo where they are less likely to be seen as the instigator of something that went wrong. Sometimes that is a consequence of organizational culture – and in other cases it is  individual responsibility being abbrogated, denied, or ignored. But, is it your job to tell them?

I’ve written before that ‘A bad buying decision usually has a greater impact on the customer than a lost sale has on the salesperson’.  I believe that to be true, and I further believe that it is the sales person’s responsibility to tell the customer if they think the customer is making a bad buying decision. It is part of delivering on the trust that you’ve tried to earn.

In all of this post I have assumed that there was a real problem that the customer wanted to fix, the issues were identified, you were speaking the people who had the power to make the decision, and you had developed a joint vision of the desired end-state.  Then the customer got cold feet.

But how do you tell the No Decision customer that they have made the wrong decision – without it appearing as mere sour grapes, or that all you care about is selling them your solution?

• First, be honest to yourself and about yourself. Acknowledge that you have failed to provide enough evidence to the customer to make them comfortable to make a positive decision.
• Second, restate the problem you think the customer was trying to solve and the impact of No Decision
• Third, withdraw from the sale, pointing out that this maybe the impetus for the customer to act (and maybe buy from your competitor.)   This is in the best interests of the customer. Maybe you’ve nothing to lose anyway, but that’s not the point. The point is that you must maintain your integrity.Your initial contract with the customerprospect was to help them solve their business problem.  That’s where you started and that’s where you should finish.

You have two other alternatives to this approach. (1) You can do nothing except walk away and lick your wounds. That serves neither party well, or (2) You can seek other (perhaps more senior) people in the organization who will reverse the No Decision made by your contact – but that’s the subject of another post.

(FROM: http://sales20network.com/blog/?p=1989&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheSales20Network+%28Dealmaker365%29)

Caution! 3 Types of Sales Pipeline Risk

Aug 27 2013 By Thomas Oriol

The sales pipeline is your future revenue. It is also a major source of uncertainty, with lots of time and resources invested in monitoring. This creates risk, but what exactly is pipeline risk? Understanding its nature is a prerequisite for achieving sales success and revenue.

There are three main types of sales pipeline risk. 

1. Bad Data

Poor data quality is the first source of unpleasant sales surprises. "Data quality" for sales reps and managers is data that gives an accurate view of where their prospects are in their buying process. This has a number of notable implications:

• IT departments love data cleaning campaigns. However, they are usually focused on administrative vs. economic data quality. Unless your CRM database is an absolute mess, these campaigns will be esthetically satisfying but practically meaningless for sales - a waste of both time and resources. 
• Be wary of requiring lots of administrative information from your sales reps. Of course reporting is part of their job, but you don't want to drive them away from your CRM software altogether. Timely opportunity updates are more important than comprehensive contact details. 
• A well-understood sales process is key. It doesn't need to be super-sophisticated at first (you can always fine tune it later). Classifying your pending opportunities in 3-4 stages will considerably improve economic data quality and reduce pipeline risk. 

2. Dicey Opportunities

Unless your company's sales process is extremely tight and mercilessly enforced, there will always be a few dicey opportunities in your sales pipeline. 

• The first reason for this is the traditional reluctance of sales reps to qualify opportunities out. Experience may prove time and again that recycling dicey opportunities actually increases sales, but they are only human. Optimism is one of the "animal spirits" famously discussed by J.M. Keynes.
• The second reason is the frequent lack of clear rules for advancing an opportunity in the pipeline. I am not necessarily talking mandatory workflows here, but simple criteria that reflect true progress on the buyer’s side. For example at SalesClic, an opportunity moves from “Exploring needs” to “Building momentum” when our first contact has introduced SalesClic to other members of her team.
• The third reason is that identifying black sheep can be really hard, especially when you have tens of open opportunities in your pipeline. Despite the paramount importance of sales velocity for assessing an opportunity’s health, CRM software (let alone Excel spreadsheets) is still weak at taking the time factor into account.

Measuring sales velocity and leveraging the historical data in your CRM database changes your life. From touchy discussion topics, stagnation, optimism and an opportunity’s quality become measurable facts. Here is what, at a minimum, you should monitor:

• The time each open opportunity has already spent in your pipeline compared to your historical sales cycle length.
• The time you are expecting each open opportunity to spend in your pipeline (i.e. the difference between the closing date and today) compared to your historical sales cycle length.
• The historical conversion rate from one pipeline stage to the next.

3. Inaccurate Forecasts

Forecast inaccuracy is the inevitable consequence of bad data and dicey opportunities. It is also a question of methodology and algorithmic proficiency.

• Methodology: Most B2B companies use judgmental forecasting methodologies, which they mistakenly believe are the only ones available. But alternative, data-based methodologies are available, and simple behavioral tricks can also help. So don’t feel condemned to weighted pipelines and forecast categories.
• Algorithmic proficiency: Leveraging the historical data in your CRM database can be tricky. Luckily, depending on your in-house computer programming capabilities, Salesforce gives you the option of creating your own advanced forecasting module, or searching the AppExchange for the relevant application. In both cases the deeper understanding of your pipeline’s health and increased visibility on future revenues will likely pay for the investment.

When you think about it, a sales pipeline is a collection of assets with uncertain returns, just like a financial portfolio. There is really not reason you couldn’t adjust the risk/return profile of your sales pipeline as if you were an asset manager. It starts with a proper understanding and assessment of pipeline risk!

(FROM: http://blogs.salesforce.com/company/2013/08/sales-pipeline-risk.html?d=70130000000tP4G&app_data=%7B%22pi%22%3A%2244645_1377627066_1492920312%22%2C%22pt%22%3A%22twitter%22%7D)

Inside Sales Power Tip 129 – Get More Leads

by LORI RICHARDSON on AUGUST 26, 2013

Do you want more and better leads when reaching out to potential buyers? This is definitely one of the top requests I hear when meeting with those prospecting for net-new business. It seems that no matter what data services your company subscribes to, it is still difficult to find those leads you know could become more probable prospective customers.

Last week at Inbound 2013 I had the pleasure to meet up with Kyle Porter, CEO and Founder of SalesLoft. We talked about a number of things which you’ll see in future posts – but the idea of better leads is top of mind for Kyle, whose company was created to help sellers gain more and better data.

I’m always looking for that one tip or strategy that can help you right away – now, today. What I love about SalesLoft is that they are solely focused on helping those of us on the front line of sales prospecting. I think you’ll like what Kyle says in the video.

One-two Punch – LinkedIn plus SalesLoft = Easy Leads System

Both LinkedIn and SalesLoft have free versions, that’s why I am mentioning this strategy.  The Email Discovery feature is additional. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have always had an upgraded LinkedIn account – as a seller, it always has made sense to. SalesLoft is also free with an upgrade path. Try these out and see what you think. Feedback on tools (as a comment on the blog) is extremely helpful to others.

Transcript of the Video

As a sales professional, we are huge fans of LinkedIn. I’d go ahead and say LinkedInis the #1 source of leads and information in the entire world for salespeople. But there are some restrictions on Linkedin. One of the biggest ones is if you’re building lists from contacts, if you are going through and making a lot of calls – you have to do a lot of copying and pasting.

We (at SalesLoft) have solved that effort with one of our tools called the Prospecting plug-in – it is a Chrome extension – you can download and get started for free. The point is that it lets you build lists of leads using Linkedin but it gives you a simple way to do it.

Then, on top of that, we have just released our Email Discovery feature. What this does is that it takes any public profiles on LinkedIn and automatically tries to find their email address. it is finding a large percentage of these emails and making it super simple for any sales or prospecting teams in the world to build lists of targeted, segmented people they want to go after – get their contact information, and then launch their campaigns.

There you have it – have you used this combination, and what do you think?

(from: http://scoremoresales.com/b2b/inside-sales-power-tip-129-get-more-leads/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ScoreMoreSales+%28Score+More+Sales%29_

The Psychology of the Modern Sales Rep

August 26, 2013 9:00 AM by Lisa Fugere

As the sales landscape shifts to accommodate new technologies and trends, organizations are rewriting the definition of top performers. Where gregarious charm and mastery of persuasion once swayed revenue attainment, a new crop of sales reps has risen to the top of their trade, and they don’t act as their forebears did.

To accommodate an increasingly digital profession, modern sales reps have learned to use technology to their advantage–lest technology oust them from their jobs. They’ve learned that empathy will get them past gatekeepers much faster than smooth talk and a shower of compliments. They know that they compete with not just the top dog at another large company–but literally thousands of sales reps just like them–to reach decision makers that are increasingly weary of sales calls and marketing emails.

Craig Rosenberg, Founder of Funnelholic Media and Topo, identified six traits that define today’s most successful sales reps based on fifteen year’s worth of observations from within the industry:

1. They are incredibly efficient. Sales people want every possible minute they have to be spent on selling. Paperwork, lookups and other processes that prevent sales from selling are not welcome.
2. They crave independence. Salespeople ask for things all the time but they would rather not have to ask. Actually, salespeople would prefer if the organization would give them the tools they need so they can be like entrepreneurs and run their territories like individual businesses.
3. They love to fish where the fish are biting. Sales people need prospects. When they find that “fishing spot,” or a list or batch of prospects that seem to work better than another, they will fish till there are no fish left.
4. They thrive on motivation (and they perform poorly when frustrated). A frustrated salesperson will not perform. This is a fact.
5. They need to constantly fill their pipelines. You might also say: “They always need prospects.” Filling one’s pipeline is a never-ending battle for sales people.
6. They are numbers driven. The job of salespeople is to hit their numbers. The job of the people assigned to help them is to help them hit their numbers. You would be surprised how many organizations add tasks to salespeople’s plates that aren’t revenue driving.

What do the sales reps that display those traits expect from a modern sales world equipped with endless technologies to enable them, inundated with competitors, and driven by complex data?

Today’s sales reps grew up taking notes on their laptops–not in their composition notebooks. As teenagers, they ordered Christmas presents online so they didn’t have to stand in line at the mall. They pay for cabs on their smart phones to avoid the hassle of pulling their credit cards out of their wallets. They put a lot of value on efficiency, and will only adopt a new technology or task if it makes their lives easier.

Everything is accessible online. Sales reps have a wealth of knowledge about their industry and their prospects literally at their fingertips, and they know how to use it. The sense of drive that sends a sales rep to crowdsource online prospect research or write a blog about his or her profession has always been apparent in top reps. Years ago, the best sales reps read the Wall Street Journal before coming into the office to find any snippets of information that might help them win deals. The best sales reps today spend a lot of time on social media. They’re the first to request premium LinkedIn accounts, and will pay out of pocket if the company won’t provide them. They don’t think Twitter is a waste of time; it’s a new resource for prospect insights. They don’t wait for their organizations to implement social selling strategies before they start using them.

I recently met a sales rep who scans Craigslist job boards to find out which organizations are growing. I’ve talked to another who used to build prospect lists entirely with Facebook search (before Graph Search even existed) because she realized that companies on Facebook were more likely to buy. Whenever her computer accidentally got turned off, she’d lose her entire list and have to rebuild it the next day. In neither of these cases did the reps have access to a CRM export feature so they could log their lead lists. Those two reps found their fishing spots: hiring and presence of a Facebook page. Their companies didn’t deliver leads that listed those criteria, so they spent hours finding their own leads just so they could fish in their spots. They won’t settle for what they consider mediocre. The best reps use whatever tools are available to help them find leads. They’ll take advantage of anything that helps them find leads, but won’t bother trying to adopt a tool to earn approval from management or align with company policy.

Because they know they lose their jobs when they can’t earn their quotas, anything that stands in the way of sales’ ability to achieve their quotas will send them packing. This includes unfavorable compensation overhaul, consistently poor lead quality, and misaligned management. Sales reps continuously leave sought-after positions at well-known companies with the most respected sales organizations for reasons their managers can’t fathom. At the same time, plenty of sales reps from defunct startups clamor to earn a spot within those same organizations. Frustrated sales reps don’t stick around because of organizational loyalty or guilt. If an organization doesn’t provide them with the tools, compensation, and management structure to succeed, they will move somewhere that does.

Sales is like a never-ending roller coaster. The most successful quarter is followed directly by a descent back to zero; the worst quarter followed by a clean slate. Pipeline management requires months of foresight. Sales reps always need more leads. The best reps don’t complain to marketing about a lamentably dry pipeline; they have subscriptions to big data tools that constantly stream leads to them. These are the reps that build prospect lists on Facebook and used Craigslist to find leads.

As the profession of sales evolves, perhaps its not the psychology of top sales reps that has shifted, but only the tools available to them. We can look to the behaviors of top performers to determine the most effective and efficient sales practices. Are your top performers the ones stuck calling closed businesses on outdated data lists, or are they ones using Facebook and Twitter find leads? How can your sales organization adapt to make their lives easier?

(from: http://radius.com/2013/08/26/the-psychology-of-the-modern-sales-rep/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-psychology-of-the-modern-sales-rep)