Have you ever recorded a new voicemail greeting only to re-record it multiple times because the words were not right, your tonality was off, the flow was bad or you just didn’t like how you sounded?

When we call a business for customer support, virtually every major company has a “This call may be recorded for coaching” message. Many technology companies with inside sales organizations use call recording software, yet many don’t leverage these tools for coaching.  When I ask a group of salespeople how often they listen to their own sales calls  less than 10% typically say yes. When I ask about the frequency of calls they record the number is even lower.  If salespeople simply asked more and better questions and more relevant questions their success rate would rise, yet almost no one reviews and improves their single biggest asset - how they sound on the phone.

The reasons for not recording and listening include: 

• I don’t know how 
• It will take a lot of time
• I’m not sure what to coach people on
• People don’t like listening to themselves
• I don't think it will really help?

Salespeople frequently struggle with transitions because they spend too much time in some areas and not enough in others. If you break a call into simple parts; the introduction, rapport, expectations, questioning, summary and next steps you can identify the areas that need the most work. 

One of the biggest obstacles to being effective on the phone is expectations. Identifying a clear, appropriate, desired outcome and getting the prospect to agree to this upfront helps enormously. Pre-call strategy helps but what actually happens on the call is usually quite different from what was strategized and practiced. Without hearing the actual call, sales managers must coach to the outcome instead of what caused the outcome.

To have real impact on their salespeople, sales leaders must help their salespeople identify what they could have done differently and how this will improve their conversations and their outcomes.

Common opportunities for improvement are:

• Did the salesperson ask one question or three at a time?
• Did the prospect answer the question?
• Did the salesperson repeat the question if necessary?
• Are salespeople asking for clarification on the “labels” used, i.e. happy, fast or expensive?
• Do salespeople allow their prospects to finish?
• Are they interrupting?
• How often are they summarizing?
• Are they saying things to keep their prospects comfortable?
• What was said that your salespeople missed?

A simple way to get started is to have a salesperson pick a call they want to review. Using the questions above as a guide, listen to it and make notes on the challenges / opportunities for improvement. Then, listen to the call with the salesperson and stop at the point(s) where you heard something important. Ask them what they heard. Your goal is to get them to identify the areas for improvement. Ask them what may have caused the challenge identified and what would have happened if they had done something different.

You may have to tell people what you heard, but resist your desire to explain. When salespeople self-discover their challenges it sticks, when you tell them, it may not. 

As for those who don’t use audio coaching enough, the question you need to ask yourself is, am I going to continue to accept my own rationalization for not leveraging this powerful tool? Can you imagine elite athletes not watching game film? I can’t!

Image Copyright iStock Photos

Image Copyright iStock Photos 

I recently conducted several two-day sales intensives with dozens of successful veteran salespeople. We spent much of the time discussing how their thinking impacts what they do and don’t do on sales calls.

As with most of the salespeople with whom I have worked, their pre-call planning was woefully incomplete and focused on what the prospect wants to accomplish. Understanding the prospect's agenda is critical, but developing and confirming a meeting agenda will usually result in a positive step forward. That is consistent with a defined sales process and a required sales best practice.

Examples of desired outcomes are:

• The prospect is 100% committed to changing how they buy something
• If certain things happen the prospect will get the financial decision maker involved
• Agreement to fully discuss the cost of the current problems

Assuring that meeting outcomes are win-win requires salespeople to challenge or push back on their prospects. Early in the sales cycle, salespeople tend to accept the amount of meeting time a prospect offers instead of respectfully asking for the amount of time needed. Later in the sales cycle, instead of defining the parameters of a successful trial and what happens when it’s completed, salespeople are often OK with simply reaching the trial stage.

The actual lessons from the training, submitted by the salespeople below, illustrate why salespeople fall short.

• Always make sure key decision makers approve next steps.
• It is okay to say “No."
• Do not be afraid to ask the tough questions – you can always apologize.
• Stop wasting time - Reach higher in the organization.
• Bring a conversation to your level or terms to establish equality.
• Be skeptical of good news.
• I assume I’m further along in the sales process than my customer is.

Behind each of these lessons is a belief which strongly influences behavior. Because these beliefs occur without us being fully aware of them we “think” ourselves into the wrong action.

If you don’t recognize that spending time with non-decision makers is a waste of time you won’t reach higher in an organization. When you are not OK saying No, you will work only on the prospects agenda. Getting excited when you hear what sounds like good news prevents you from verifying that it is actually good news.

Identifying and becoming aware of non-supportive selling beliefs is the only way to change behavior. Take a few minutes right now and evaluate your beliefs and how they impact you as a salesperson or sales leader and read Dave Kurlan's terrific article for his slant on sales beliefs.

Recently, I was at a conference and the terrific keynote speaker shared a story about a one million dollar account, the no-brainer annual renewal, and how the salesperson completely blew the deal with one ill-conceived sentence. In this scenario, the salesperson completely failed to understand and appreciate some of the sensitivities of his corporate audience. It is important to recognize that Management is responsible for recognizing these challenges while providing skills coaching to a salesperson's Ambassadorial temperament.  

Have you have ever conducted a customer feedback survey? If so, you have likely heard things that made you cringe. Customer-facing people will create, reinforce and often taint client and prospect perceptions of your company. Problems with messaging, tone and clarity usually have quite a lasting impact. 

In this video, I discuss this and offer some important insights.

Do you want to know more about what motivates and holds your salespeople back? Take a few minutes to complete the checklist below.

Have you ever been in a scenario where you had to sell value, but your prospect was interested in nothing other than how low you could go? That might be an exciting proposition if you were trying to win a Limbo contest, but if you are trying to win the business and protect margin, you may have quite the challenge on your hands. In order to sell value to price shoppers, salespeople must be very highly skilled along with having supportive sales DNA and beliefs. Additionally, it will take lots of practice. Salespeople who tend to become emotional could lose objectivity and if they identify with buying based on price, they won't push back. If salespeople aren't comfortable having a financial discussion, they won't be effective at discussing the very issues that create value.

In this short video, I explore this challenge and sales management's response.

Is it important for you and your team to be more effective at handing price shoppers? Are you losing too many deals and wasting too much time? Get some quick feedback on your sales force and the other things that might be causing this.

Do you sell consultatively? Salespeople and sales leaders frequently think that they are, when in reality, they are either selling transactionally or applying solution selling. Does that statement bother you? Does it raise any questions? According to Objective Management Group and its data from evaluating and assessing close to a million salespeople, salespeople possess an average of only 48% of the attributes of a consultative seller. 

My video post today discusses this in some detail. Watch it and then go ask your saleseople to define consultative selling. You likely be frustrated by the answers.  

If you need to hire salespeople who have great consultative selling ability, read our whitepaper on sales selection.

It shouldn't be a surprise that employees apply more of what they learn when training is supplemented with coaching. But how frequently does that happen and how effective is the coaching when it does happen?  You might be surprised...

Dave Kurlan shared some mind blowing statistics from Objective Management Group (OMG) in this 2009 article about sales leaders. Please take a moment to read that and then return here.  

Many sales leaders are not having appreciable impact on the sales force. Since the majority of Presidents and CEO's rise to their positions from technical, operations and finance roles, they may not see how important it is for sales managers to be coached.  Sales VPs and Directors may have come from similar backgrounds where sales management coaching did not take place and as a result, may not know the importance of providing high impact coaching like this..

In this short video I discuss this challenge and offer a recent client experience.

If you want to be a better coach, why not attend our Sales Leadership Intensive later this month. Click on this link for more information. 

When a salesperson needs help, but appears to be untrainable or uncoachable, it's like they are a fish out of water. We know that selling has changed dramtically since 2009. The pressure on companies to adapt to these changes are greater than ever. Unfortunately, a measurable percentage of salespeople lack the personal incentive to change. All too frequently this includes top performers. Building a great sales force requires a core of people who are fundamentally sound and committed to improving their skills and effectiveness. In the video below I discuss what it sounds like when salespeople aren't Coachable and/or Trainable.         

If you want to learn more about your salesforce and how much better it can be click on the link below.