Teamwork

An important part of sales is creating a team. If you truly want to reach special heights in sales and business teamwork will be the key. The first part of teamwork you want to foster is with your assistants, your sales team, your back office or anyone else that would work with you. Even if you are the boss you can create a better environment when everyone believes they are part of a team as opposed to feeling like an employee. When people are brought in as a team member they buy in and are willing to do more. An employee feels like it is their job and will only do what is required while a team member wants to dive in, stay late without being asked or do whatever is necessary to finish the job and get more than the required result. “Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.”, Mattie Stepanek. When you create that unified front you create a team that will fight for and believe in one another and will pick up the pieces for each other this will create the teamwork you need to reach that pinnacle of success you are looking for.

This is the first part of the teamwork the second part is the teamwork you create with your prospects and clients. When you are prospecting whether it is a new client or an existing client you need to team up with them to help them solve their need. Everyone knows or has a salesman they don’t like because they never bring a solution but instead they bring a product to be bought and on occasion they buy but mostly they look for excuses to get rid of or not see them. However when you make a sales call and bring the features and benefits of how your products will fill their need you have now become a team member of your client and team members will never have a problem revisiting their client. “It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.”, Napoleon Hill. So help your clients succeed through teamwork and watch your business grow.

Coaching up your clients

As a sales person, you do far more for clients than sell them something: One of your most important skill sets is to serve as a developmental coach. It is your job to play a critical, value-producing role that relies on your knowledge of what they are buying and their history, their beliefs and behaviors.

You need to be knowledgeable, motivated and well-intentioned. When you take time to identify the goals of your prospects you are on your way to the start of a rewarding client relationship. You succeed by understanding your clients’ fears, weaknesses, and temptations and providing solutions.

"Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.", Margaret J. Wheatley.

If you want to edge out the competition you need to help clients plan for goals and stick with their long-term plans even when they have doubts. This kind of coaching is the biggest contributor in allowing you to cultivate the relationships you want instead of reacting to outside influences. Leaning to proactively coach your prospects and clients is a better solution than being reactionary. Stressing your role as coach in client appointments will promote you above your competition. Most of your client know what they should be doing but lack the time and discipline to get it done which is why they are looking for someone like you even though they don’t know it.

Time management

If you want to be a top sales person you must be very good at time management. In sales you may never know when that next sale is coming from but with good time management you can learn to predict it. Time management is about accomplishing more in a shorter period of time. In sales creating time for every aspect of what you need to get done needs to be prioritized.

If you follow these steps you will enhance your time management skills:

1. Create a to do list – every morning create a to do list it saves time when you know exactly what you want to accomplish for the day. It will help keep you organized.

2. Delegate your time – set aside time for certain things such as email, service issues, prospecting and appointments

3. Streamline – reduce outside distractions this will help keep you Focused – when you are working stay focused on work when you are playing stay focused on playing

4. Be efficient and prioritize – have a plan know what you want to complete first this will also make you proactive as opposed to reactive.

As Brian Moran the author of “The 12 Week Year” explains in his book most sales companies do well when everyone focuses on the “year-end-push” towards annual targets. However, you should decide to have that focus in mini time periods such as per day, per week or per month. When you utilize the time management skills above you will find more success coming your way.

Empathy

When you have an appointment and you are listening to your client do you tend to be sympathetic or empathetic? Do you understand the difference? Most unsuccessful sales people are sympathetic. They tend to feel bad for the client and are unable to process the information they received and therefore can’t create a plan that benefits the customer. Empathy is simply recognizing emotions in others, and being able to "put yourself in another person's shoes" – understanding the other person's perspective and reality. To be empathic, you have to think beyond yourself and your own concerns. In sales the best sales people are empathetic and use empathy to better understand the client’s needs. When you are empathetic you understand what the client is going through and it makes it easier to create a plan beneficial to them.

When you put yourself in your prospects or client’s shoes you can relate to their needs. An example of an empathetic sales idea is the feel, felt, found technique made famous by Tom Hopkins. “I understand how you feel.” This wording lets a customer know that you heard him or her and can relate. “Initially, other people felt that way.” You are letting him or her know that this initial thought is common, meaning that the situation can change. “What they found, however, was that after doing this then that happened. How do you become empathetic? You listen better. You might have seen that on this blog (http://vincentferrara.blogspot.com/2015/09/listen.html) already. Cover your mouth, don’t speak, listen and learn. Learn everything about your client or prospect, when did they meet, when did they get married, who their children are, what do they like to do when they aren’t working, all of these little things will make you a more empathetic sales person. When you have an issue with a prospect or a client being empathetic and understanding their needs, wants and a little about them makes it is easier to resolve their issue. Your empathy can’t be fake it must be genuine. So learn how to be an empathetic sales person and watch your sales grow.

Monitor

Are you always wondering why your results aren’t where you want them to be? I mean you monitor your appointments and you just aren’t getting the results you think you should. Most people monitor their results but miss the point they should be monitoring their activity. You generally don’t get the results you expect or want unless you monitor your daily, weekly and monthly activity. In sales and business, activity is what drives sales. Yes you might get lucky occasionally with a sale or two without the activity but to be successful in the long run you must have constant activity and that activity must be monitored.

Here are some examples of activities for a successful salesperson:

• Postcards – make sure you create a list so you can follow up with phone calls

• Birthday calls or birthday cards

• Quarterly, semiannual or annual reviews

• X amount of new contacts per day through all of your activities

• Referrals from outside sources

• Texting and emails to new and old prospects

These are some good examples of the activities every successful salespeople use but the key is the successful sales person is monitoring these activities to make sure they are productive and that they are working. When you monitor these types of activities you will create more qualified appointments, more qualified appointments mean more sales and at the end of the day more sales is what we all want.

Duplicate

Successful sales people and business owners understand that to create a winning sales system it needs to be duplicatable and repeatable. Whether it is for the sales person or a team of people a system of duplicatable and repeatable processes guarantee yours and others success. When you create a system you can duplicate you are designing a success system. So what does it mean to be duplicatable and repeatable? It means someone can watch you for a day or two and easily learn what you do to be successful. An example might be what your daily activity is or how many contacts per day you plan on making. Basically a duplicatable and repeatable system is nothing more than a plan that can be repeated day after day to obtain the results you want. If you want to create a successful team your duplicatable process doesn’t need to be a cookie cutter as you will hire individuals but it must be repeatable so that everyone can follow it and at the same time put it in their words and actions.

The definition of duplicate is to make or be an exact copy of something. If you are an individual sales person it isn’t about making a copy of yourself for others however it is about making a duplicatable plan for you to follow. Every day needs to be an exact replica of the day before or your weekly plan needs to repeatable. If your plan is consistent then staffs you work with, prospects and clients will notice and they will see a commitment they never saw before. Being duplicatable and repeatable is a strong commitment that you must make. When you create a plan that is consistent and repeatable and you commit to it you success will start to come your way.

Inspire

Who do you inspire? Inspiration is the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. You need to have inspiration to inspire others. Every day you inspire someone without even realizing it, it may be the fact you always seem to smile, it might be a kind word or gesture or it might be the way you work. Inspiration is enlightening and stress relieving. Why is it important to inspire? It is important to inspire others because you never know who is paying attention to you, it could be a potential client, an existing customer or a colleague looking to be inspired. When you inspire others you feel better about yourself in turn it helps you feel good about what you do. Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.” What he never said was without that inspiration you would never perspire to accomplish anything.

How do you get inspired? Do you listen to motivational speakers such as Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins? Do you recite incantations every morning? Being inspired can come from simple things such as being a role model for your children, motivating staff or living a life of inspiration. How inspired do I need to be? You need to be so inspired as to inspire yourself to take action, to dream more, to learn more and do more. Being inspired will make you a better leader, being inspired will increase your sales and being inspired will change your life.