Posts Tagged sales coaching

How Do the Best Get Better? One Approach…

Posted by Doctapaul in Blog All, Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Mindfulness, Personal, Self Development, Self Help, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on October 11, 2015

Courtesy of Pink Floyd

About top performers: by definition, they are already at the ‘top of the totem pole’. They already set the benchmark, for what is acheivable through exemplary performance, in their respective organisations. They shape the belief systems about what’s acheivable. They thus have potentially far more influence than the management infrastructure who are trying to lead your company to greater success – through wisdom, carrot or stick.

(I’ll use B2B sales as an example, but I could be talking about executive officers, sports professionals, lawyers, managers, consultants, you-name-it.)

Top performers’ challenge to climbing greater heights is two fold…

Top performers may struggle to find assistance from people, more experienced or better than they, to teach or mentor them in their sales performance. And although I can mentor salespeople, that’s not the line I usually go down, apart from maybe suggesting the odd reframe. I don’t mentor so much; I coach.
Mentoring and coaching are completely different and require, by and large, different (but not mutually exclusive) mindsets: expert/directive/intellectual and non-expert/non-directive/emotional – respectively. Top people benefit more from the latter because….
A step change upwards in performance, for them, is not so much an intellectual challenge. It’s emotional. These people are smart. If their challenge was purely intellectual, they would have figured out what to do differently already – and be doing it. What they require, to step up, is someone to help them bypass the emotional blocks (the deepest of which they are unaware of) with which they allow to hold themselves back.

Change is a journey that’s two parts emotional to one part intellectual.

I’ve spent the best part of the last 18 years working with top performers, in global organisations, to help them express how to be 30%+ more effective. They figure the ‘what’ to do differently, to be 30%+ more effective, for themselves as part of the coaching process. What I do is equip them with the emotional framework to go do it – for that is what they require.
[That’s my guarantee, by the way. If you do the coaching, and do all the work assigned on time, you will become 30%+ more effective at whatever you are focusing on.]

Shine on…!

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Paul C Burr

Business/Personal Performance Coach, Author, Public Speaker, Visiting Lecturer, Singer, Film Extra and Model

Facebook: Beowulf (>15,000 followers)

#mindfulness, b2b, b2b sales, b2b selling, benchmark sales, boost sales, business, business change, business growth, business relationships, business strategy, CEO, corporate account management, corporate selling, improve sales, mentoring, mindfulness, sales, sales coaching, sales management, sales productivity

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How to Add Value to Your Products & Services, Maybe!

Posted by Doctapaul in Blog All, book, Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Mindfulness, Relationships, Self Development, Self Help, Selling, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Uncategorized on January 15, 2015

Customer Value Orientation Matrix

(An extract from my booklet, Quick Guide VII – A Top-notch, Sales-Relationships, Account Management Template)

The matrix implies that you may have the opportunity to add value to your sales propositions. The nature of this value may be intellectual and/or emotional. Furthermore, if your customer values ‘you’ both intellectually and emotionally, you meet the basic criteria to form a partnership with your customer. If your customer neither values your intellect nor you/your-organisation as people – then your products and services are probably viewed as not much more than commodities.

Let’s look some more into each of the four quadrants in the Customer Value Orientation Matrix.

Transactional: In this quadrant the individual client tends to place value for money upon the cost of the product and service quality they are buying and little or nothing more. In a commodity sale, given the minimum criteria of quality required, the client will make their decision typically on the lowest cost supplier. They attach neither emotional nor intellectual value on doing business with one vendor over another.
Intellectual: Over and above product and service quality some clients will value a vendor’s intellectual property, i.e. their expertise, wisdom, data and/or whom they know.

Case Study: Intellectual Value – IT Directors’ Network

I once sold worldwide best-practice research to IT Directors as part of a private club subscription. Over and above the value of accessing millions of pounds (£UK) of research, at a small fraction of the cost, many members joined to meet their peers face-to-face. They met informally on a regular basis to discuss ‘hot topics’ of their own choice. Members would share insights into major IT management issues. If nothing more, members shared solace amongst themselves that they all struggled with the same management issues.

Emotional: In the UK, themes such as ‘Buy British’ or ‘our Customer Support is based in the UK’ continue to carry favour with some clients.

I have sold millions of pounds (£UK) worth of contracts by asking the client if they would help me to make or overachieve my sales targets at year end. In each case, I had a very close and trusting relationship with the client. They were willing and happy to bring forward the business simply because I asked for it.

Case Study: Emotional Value – A Surprise and Wonderful Contract of Thanks

I led a sales and installation project of a huge network of Personal Computers (PCs) to facilitate a new customer service support system for a UK national corporate client. My organisation was awarded Phase 1 of a two phase project. I was told informally that Phase 2 would probably be awarded to a competitor whose product was some 40% cheaper.

The client valued my organisation’s technical know-how and I assembled a top support team to make sure that Phase 1 was commissioned on time and within budget. By the end of our contract, the customer was delighted.

I managed to persuade my management to keep the support team in place, even though our contract for Phase 1 had been fulfilled. I was determined to ensure the complete project was a success. Specifically, I did not attempt to negotiate anything in return for this ‘extra resource’ commitment.

Phase 2 got underway. About half way through and to my complete surprise, I was awarded a further £3M worth of unexpected business. The client-sponsor was “simply delighted” with my organisation’s commitment to the project overall regardless that a competitor was supposed to be supplying the hardware for Phase 2. This was the client-sponsor’s way of saying “thank you”.

Partnership: When a client values doing business with you from both an intellectual and emotional basis, you have the potential to forge a partnership.

A business partnership is to all intensive purposes a marriage between your organisation and your client. You’ll sit together at a common ‘planning table’. Collectively you’ll form ‘one team’. You and your client’s organisation will ideally have a matching hierarchy of values.

The partnership will sustain when it is built on pillars of passion, resonance, security and creativity. The pillars are cemented in trust and as long as their bedrock is sound, pillars can crumble and be rebuilt.

Case Study: No Partnership Value – A Mismatch in Values = Transactional

I once engaged with a global apparel manufacturer to ‘measure’ the value its major retailer clients placed on the various products and services it offered. It sold prime marque products at premium prices. It was very successful but had a mismatch of values with one giant retailer in particular.

The retailer placed little or no value on the various add-on services the manufacturer provided, such as: local marketing campaigns, TV advertising, electronic tagging, in-store merchandising and so on. The retailer’s mentality was ‘stack-em-high, sell-em-cheap’; a complete contrast to prime-product retailing. The retailer was more interested in selling the manufacturer’s ‘bin-ends’ and ‘seconds’. And so a deal was eventually cut but the prospect of a partnership never came to fruition. The retailer’s view of all suppliers was totally Transactional .

For more information on forging and sustaining business relationship I refer you to two booklets from my series of Quick Guides to Business…

Quick Guide III – How to Bridge the Pillars of Successful Business Relationships

Quick Guide V – How to Apply Mindfulness to Business Relationships

Good Selling & Shine on…!

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Paul C Burr

Business/Personal Performance Coach & Author Facebook: Beowulf (>16,000 followers) Follow @paulburr

account management, added value, b2b, b2b sales, b2b selling, boost sales, corporate account management, corporate selling, customer centric, customer driven, daily thought, increase sales, sales, sales coaching, sales management, sales mentoring, sales productivity, tip, tip for the day, value add, words of wisdom

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Quick Guides to Business – new page created

Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development on June 20, 2013

I’ve released a new page in this website devoted to the Quick Guides to Business I’m writing. It will contain links to extracts that you will hopefully find interesting and helpful.

Your feedback about Quick Guides to Business or any aspect of this site would be most welcome.

Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr

Business/Personal Performance Coach & Author
Follow @paulburr

b2b, b2b selling, benchmark, benchmark sales, boost sales, business, business change, business growth, business guides, business relationships, business transformation, CEO, consciousness, corporate account management, courage, customer centric, customer driven, cxo, increase sales, law of attraction, leadership, relationships, responsibility, sales, sales coaching, sales director, sales effectiveness, sales growth, sales management, sales productivity, self help, Truth, world class sales

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Successful Business Relationships: The Logic, Premium and Legacy

Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Visions and Dreams on May 30, 2013

My latest booklet, Quick Guide III – How to Bridge the Pillars of Successful Relationships (QG3), focuses on complex, inter- and intra- corporate, many-people-to-many-people, business relationships.
There are sound, logical, rewarding, tangible and emotional reasons for building healthy relationships. These very same reasons apply equally to personal relationships.

Here’s an extract from QG3…

Logic – less cost

Research shows that once you’ve established a customer relationship based on mutual trust and value, it takes five times the effort to build the same relationship with a new customer as it does to maintain it with your current customer.

When the cost of new prospect sales is five times that of existing satisfied customer sales, you don’t need a certificate in mathematics to appreciate the importance of satisfying, if not exceeding, the expectations of existing customers irrespective of the premium you earn from brand loyalty.

Premium – higher earnings

A reputable brand image makes selling a lot easier. I had no problem whatsoever getting to see new clients when I worked for IBM. Cold-calling for an organisation that isn’t a ‘household’ name, however, was a real ‘eye-opener’ for me after I made the switch.

The value of your reputation is the premium that customers will pay to do business with you over and above what they will pay your competitors, all else being equal, plus the cost reduction in sales your brand reputation affords you.

A simple example: ‘Household-name’, supplier A, renowned for its high quality products and services, sells a PC. ‘Relatively-unknown’ supplier, B, clones A’s PC with the exact same components, guarantees and terms of service. Intrinsically there’s no difference between PCs from either supplier. The cost of production and distribution of each product is the same.

Look at the buying/selling process from a customer perspective. All else being equal…

What price difference will a customer pay (for the increased: reassurance, sense of status or another emotional, differential source of value they feel) for a PC from supplier A over supplier B?

Reduction in sales cycle time and resourcing: how quicker and easier is it for a seller to convince a customer of the quality of a PC from supplier A compared with supplier B?

Brand value = [(what customers pay you) – (what customers pay for the exact same product/service from your competitors)] + (increase in productivity/cost-reduction in sales afforded by your brand)

Legacy – higher contribution

How do you want to look back on your time in sales and management at the end of your career? How do you want to be remembered? As a seller, buyer or leader: do you want to feel you’ve kept (or at least strived to keep) the agreements you made?

Maybe a business world forged with 100% truthful relationships is somewhat of a pipe dream, but as you look at the world’s economy and the ‘wars’ for limited resources right now, what choice do we have? And we have to imagine something before necessity will mother its invention – do we not?

‘You’ can either contribute to a world where wealth and power are shared through equitable negotiation – or not, truth or illusion/deception, abundance or scarcity, oneness or separateness, love or fear. ‘You’ choose! (But this is the topic contained in another book of mine, Defrag your Soul.)

Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr

Business/Personal Performance Coach & Author

Follow @paulburr

accountability, Ancient Wisdom, b2b, b2b sales, b2b selling, boost sales, business change, business growth, business relationships, business strategy, CEO, consciousness, corporate account management, corporate selling, courage, cxo, daily thought, improve sales, increase sales, karma, law of attraction, Law of Reversibility, legacy, life purpose, profit, program management, programme management, project management, reduce cost, relationships, responsibility, sales, sales coaching, sales management, sales productivity, self help, selling to ceos, selling to cxos, spiritual, tip, tip for the day, top salespeople, words of wisdom

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It’s Out! Quick Guide II – How to Spot, Mimic and Become a Top Salesperson.

Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Self Development, Selling, Training & Development on May 8, 2013

Available from Amazon in US, UK and Smashwords in Kindle, paperback and e-book versions.

Publication Date: May 6, 2013 | Series: Quick Guides to Business

Over and above exemplary sales achievements how do ‘you’ (by ‘you’ I mean: you, me, us, we) spot a top salesperson when you meet one? Top salespeople come across differently. There’s a resonance to their mannerisms. If you want to sell as well as they do, how would you go about it? If you were to ask the same questions and give the same answers as they do, would that be enough? No, because you bring your own personality and mannerisms into the equation. It requires the wisdom and will to nurture 7 key traits by which top salespeople outsell ‘moderates’.
This series of ‘Quick Guides to Business’ is borne of research, direct selling experiences and coaching in some of the world’s largest companies including: IBM, Xerox, Cisco, BP, American Express, Standard Chartered and Reckitt Benckiser.

From the Author

I chatted to two advisers about a business book that “I have inside me”. I had original research and experience inside my head. I had data. It delves into people’s effectiveness at strategic and personal levels. I’d developed simple but powerful business frameworks and a scorecard that take people’s feelings, motivations and fears into account.

They reveal what happens below the surface of successful business relationships at their outset – and what needs to happen for those relationships to thrive. I had a lot to tell but would the busy-business people, it’s aimed at, read it? So I tested my ideas and scope for ‘the book’ with two wise confidants.

The first simply said, “At last, I’ve been waiting for you to write ‘your business book’. When are you going to write it? I want a copy!”. The second: “People want ‘quick guides’ these days. They want ‘manageable chunks’ of wisdom, practical tools and ‘cheat sheets’. Something you can read in minutes and do something with straight away.”

Subsequently, I gave a series of briefings to business audiences and post-graduates. The talks were very highly received. The University of London asked me back to talk to a wider range of postgraduates in business-related studies. I am due to go back a third time.

March 2013: I set about writing a series of Quick Guides. Each would have about 10-15 (A4 size) pages of findings, tips, self-help tools and insights into specific topics.

The majority of my work focuses on what top performers do differently from ‘moderates’. I’ve started in sales and sales management, an area in which I’ve coached hundreds of individuals/teams and conducted research – across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The first two guides reveal ‘the what, how and why’ top salespeople outsell ‘moderates’. They sequence activities differently. They come across differently. They attune their approach to the most senior of clients resonantly; ‘moderates’ do not.

My next and third Quick Guide… will reveal what needs to happen for business relationships to thrive over the long term.

Summary Bullet Points

This 17-page article (A4 size, excluding appendices) bears from my research, consulting, direct selling and coaching within global corporations over a twenty year period.

Within you will discover how and why top salespeople succeed through:

Effectiveness = motivation x confidence x competence x curiosity (or E=MC³)

Migrating from selling at D-Level (middle management) to C-Level (senior management) involves a journey, from a tangible and known environment to one of uncertainty and the unknown

Engaging a customer effectively and willingly, to co-explore uncertainty and the unknown, requires a salesperson to demonstrate 7 key traits, characteristics and competencies

Faith-in-self
Curiosity
Composure
Sensibility
Co-opting
Inspirational
Passion

Top salespeople demonstrate that:

The aforementioned 7 key traits are what really differentiate top performers from ‘moderates’, more so than behaviours in that they predict whether the salesperson will be successful selling directly to C-level clients.
You can spot a top-performer or high-potential individual by noticing how much they demonstrate these 7 key traits.
These key traits are nurtured not ‘trained in the classroom’; the nurturing process can be accelerated by equipping yourself with ‘non-expert’ coaching tools, such as in Appendix 2 – Prepare to Be at your Peak in Every Meeting.

Shine on…!
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Paul C Burr
Author of Quick Guide: How Top Salespeople Sell, Learn to Love and Be Loved in Return, 2012: a twist in the tail and Defrag your Soul
Follow @paulburr

accountability, b2b sales, b2b selling, boost sales, increase sales, law of attraction, responsibility, sales, sales coaching, sales director, sales effectiveness, sales growth, sales management, sales productivity, selling to c level, selling to ceos, selling to cxos, tip, top salespeople, Truth

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Top Salespeople in the Future will Forge Truth…

Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Current Affairs & The Economy, Leadership, Marketing, Self Development, Selling, Tip for the Day, Training & Development, Visions and Dreams on May 2, 2013

Extract from Quick Guide – How Top Salespeople Sell

Picture courtesy of Electronic Payments Coalition

The higher up a corporate customer’s management hierarchy you call, the more uncertainty there is to deal with. At operational levels, you deal with business unit managers who, by and large, are all measured against the same tangible yardsticks of performance.

Once above that level you deal with leaders of change who, by definition, are looking to do things that haven’t been done before. They focus on defining and creating new realities. They are the ‘harbingers’ of tomorrow’s world.

The ‘harbingers’ delve into the unknown. Their task is becoming increasingly difficult because the unknown, aided and abetted by ever increasing changes in technology, is getting larger and darker. There’s much more data about what’s going on but can it be extrapolated with confidence into the future?

There is very little data that accurately measures what the world or business may look like in anything beyond six weeks hence.

I went to series of banking seminars in and around mid 2008. Were there ‘green shoots’ appearing in the economy? Were we in an elongated dip? Were we starting a ‘double dip’? Nobody could predict accurately. Any form of optimism was mooted very cautiously. More data was called for. More analyses were completed. Did they make any of the forecasts more believable? No. Bankers and politician’s couldn’t predict the future with any sense of accuracy. They/we still can’t.

We live with more data, more unknowns and more uncertainty than we ever have because the future happens a lot more quickly than it used to.

The more uncertainty faced, the more we need to put trust in our advisors and ourselves. But trust is not truth.

Trust is the gap between what we know and what we put our faith in.

Here lies the role for, dare I say, a ‘newish’ generation of salespeople. There was a biggish fad a few years ago to develop salespeople to become ‘trusted expert advisors’. My personal experience is that you can count on one hand the number of ‘broad-based industry experts’ in, for example, a global IT sales organisation who know as much about, say, banking as the bankers themselves. And even then you might find you have three or more of your fingers missing.

The new sales role is more than mentoring and different. The relationship with the customer still requires a huge amount of trust but the ‘new salesperson’ doesn’t need to be an industry expert. Instead, they develop the expertise to help explore uncertainty and find answers in the hidden nooks and crannies of the psyche of their customers’ organisation.

By psyche, I mean the intellectual and emotional capabilities of its leaders and workforce. These salespeople don’t have magical answers. Instead, they have magical questions that spark the customers imagination into collaboratively putting together a believable ‘image-in-ions’.

This is about making the sales/customer relationship equation: 1 + 1=3. The sum of the parts is more than each party can bring to the table on their own. But this is a relationship that transcends trust, it’s rooted in truth. There are no hidden agendas.

When you exchange truth with another wholly, you no longer need to trust them. What remains is your trust in yourself.

This is more than being an ‘honest broker’. The salesperson of the future will still bring skills and know-how of their own industry to the table. BUT, the top salesperson will be an intrepid explorer too; capable of guiding clients into the unknown and back again safely. They achieve this by knowing how to find and help release that which holds the client back, namely fear.

Only four things hold us back in life: shame, anger, sadness and fear. When you look inside these negative emotions, you discover they’re all fear. The opposite of truth is falsity. Behind all falsity lies fear.

The top salesperson earns the customer’s trust because they deal in truth, and only truth. Truth drives out falsity which ultimately releases fear. More than trust, truth forges a relationship that can connect to the ‘greater good’ for all involved.

A business world forged by relationships rooted in truth might be a pipe dream. But we have to imagine it before we can create it. As we look back over history and specifically the world economy over last few years, it begs the question, “What sustainable alternative do we have?”

b2b selling, future, increase sales, sales, sales coaching, sales effectiveness, sales management, self help, selling, spiritual, top selling, trusted advisor

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To Sell to CEOs: Find What They Value and Fear Most

Posted by Doctapaul in book, Business, Coaching, Leadership, Marketing, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Tip for the Day, Training & Development on April 17, 2013

Combined extracts from two business articles:

Quick Guide – How Top Salespeople Sell (available from Amazon in US and UK)
Quick Guide II – Learn How to Spot, Mimic and Become a Top Salesperson (coming soon)

“When you’re selling at board level it’s about taking the customer on a journey that’s both fantastic and believable. That is, no matter how complex that journey is…, it’s about breaking it down into manageable chunks. You create a pathway into the future that is as clearly marked out as possible. There will be uncharted territory. So it’s about discerning all the parts of the map that are known from those unknown.

It’s then about pinpointing all the ‘dots on the chart of the unknown’. That is, answering all the ‘what if this happens’ questions.

In effect, you join the dots of the unknown with customer as best you can.”

Top UK salesperson for a global top 10 IT company

Images courtesy of http://misswhit-tany.blogspot.co.uk/

What CEOs value:

The ‘science’ to determine value discovers what’s important to the CEO. And once you understand the customer’s priorities – how do you stack up (against your competitors) to deliver against them?

Here are sources of value (business drivers and problems to fix) that CEOs look for:

• Cash – Will your proposal improve our cash position?

• Cost Down – Will we reduce costs?

• Revenue/Market Share Up – Will we make competitive gains?

• Agility/Speed – Can we move, reshape, transcend quickly?

• Security – Will we be better protected?

• Governance – Am I compliant with Company Law?

• Product/Service/Cost Leadership – Will our own customers notice and value the changes in our organisation that your proposal offers?

• Innovation (e.g. Technology, New Business Models) – Do I want (to be seen) to be first in the marketplace, to do something differently? Does your proposal accelerate the process?

• Personal Credibility – Can I use your proposal to advance my own prospects and standing?

• People – Will your proposal raise the effectiveness and job satisfaction of people?

• Something else? – If you don’t know, ask “What else do you feel is important for me to know?” Even if you feel you know, ask anyway.

Put concisely, you need to understand profoundly what’s important in the heart and mind of your CEO client and convey the value you bring to the table in their language, not yours.

At this stage you may have provided sufficient verifiable value for the CEO to progress the sale. And there’s often a temptation to press on. In doing so, you may miss another, often unspoken, factor that weighs heavily in the CEO’s mind (as well as most of us) – fear.

The more you earn a customer’s trust, the more fears they share with you. They give you more power deliberately to help them.

My thanks go to Professor Colin-Coulson Thomas who shared with me the bounty of a minute fraction of his wisdom, and made a significant contribution to the following list.

What CEOs fear:

• Bad earnings news: the most likely and quickest sign of departure.

• Corporate programs don’t deliver: mergers and acquisitions “achieve 70% of their potential” at best.

• Failure to turnaround ailing sales quick enough.

• Change takes too long: ‘corporate firewalls’ prevent people from getting it done.

• Investors don’t understand: a CEO spends 40% of their time articulating strategy and some argue that’s not enough.

• Personal wealth at risk: e.g. missed deadlines can lead to private investors swallowing up the shareholding of a company

• Lack of innovation: playing it safe is no longer an option these days. Competitors and customers are moving too quickly.

• Talent gaps in performance: e.g. 20% of the sales-force bring in 80% of the revenue.

• Conflict in the boardroom: too much time spent looking inwards leaves too little time to focus on the customer.

• Personal credibility at risk: any of the above means less likelihood of stepping up the ladder of success and/or lack of a legacy of note. These in turn can lead to…

• Personal health at risk: where the stressed mind-body connection can have serious consequences. I know of one CEO who, after missing targets set by investors, developed terrible eye problems because he didn’t like what he saw. Another developed disabling back pain through a lack of self-esteem. Another who was deemed too rigid and inflexible developed problems with their joints.

Your task is to earn the right to zig-zag; to take the CEO on a journey whereby they see your solution working in their organisation and have allayed any fears they once had.