Sales Skills Training

Training for and Playing to Our Strengths to Plow by the Competition

Do you try new skills, and if you aren't great from the start lose interest? Or, do you take it as a challenge to succeed by finding an alternative path? There is no wrong answer here, but you need to know which you do and why. VisionEdge Marketing's President, Laura Patterson gives us a great illustration as she talks about training for triathlons, despite being a weak swimmer.  Here how she applies this to our continuing conversation about changing patterns to break or prevent bad habits.
If you missed the first part of this conversation, you can listen here:
Changing patterns vs habits, and flipping the script because we can

Changing patterns vs habits, and flipping the script because we can

In this episode Susan and Laura cover four actionable items to change patterns, versus changing habits. What can you control? Here are four ideas to take control and gain an edge in business and life. This was taken from a recent blog post by today's guest, Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing. She and Susan drive through this hard truth list. You either embrace it and expand your effectiveness, or freeze in place with no desire to change your approach. If that's you, you can now choose to mix it up, or be left behind.

What You Don’t Teach in Sales Training That Guarantees Failure

When sales reps are hired, they are often tested for sales skills and personality traits. References are checked, previous employers called, they are trained on the products and considered ready to sell. Yet, the number one skill is overlooked: the ability to engage. There is seldom, if ever, engagement training.
Because they did well in the interview, the sales manager oddly enough assumes the new sales representative has the ability to engage with the most important tool they have, the telephone; that’s where the wheels come off the sales cart. It can take a company six to nine months before they realize the rep may know the product, but can’t get a conversation going with a prospect. 
In this program, host, Mari Anne Vanella, author and CEO of The Vanella Group tackles the little thought-out point of failure for most organizations: The Physiology of Engagement and how to train sales reps to succeed. Yes, she admits, its part art and a lot of process for reps to have a peer level conversation, but it can be done.  She covers:
Why calling skills are over-looked in sales training.
How to make a peer-level call
Why it’s easy to start call in an apologetic (bad manner)
Why reps have to be taught granular calling skills and adhere to a work structure to be a success
Why the art of conversation can be teachable
 Listen and learn.  
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Outstanding Outbound is hosted by MariAnne Vanella of The Vanella Group which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel. The Vanella Group is the sponsor of Outstanding Outbound

How New Salespeople Build a Repeatable, Daily Framework for Success

There is no secret sauce to being successful in sales. It all starts with building a consistent, repeatable, scalable daily activity framework that ensures you do what needs to be done.

The One Thing Needed for Sales Coaching

Every sales rep needs coaching, no one is ever too good not to improve and grow. But one-fits-all approaches to sales coaching is often a short-term method that is usually a long term failure. In this program, David Kreiger, president of Sales Roads reveals how he has solved the sales coaching challenge with great success by using the “One Thing” model.
About our Guest David Kreiger
David Kreiger is the Founder and President of SalesRoads, a business-to-business appointment setting, lead generation and sales outsourcing company. He has been named as one of The Most Influential Leaders in Sales & Lead Management by the SLMA the last four years in a row. 
SalesRoads Overview
SalesRoad’s focus is on developing and implementing high-quality, professional, business-to-business inside sales teams for its clients with its turn-key solutions.  These include recruiting, training and retaining highly skilled workforces, developing powerful call approaches, rebuttal strategies and leveraging the latest technologies to build pipeline, increase sales and lower its clients’ costs per sale.  For more information you can visit SalesRoads at www.SalesRoads.com or call them at 800-836-4033.
Also of interest:
For more valuable advice, access the Sales Road Blog here 

Failure of Salespeople is Self-Imposed by Companies

Andy Paul, author and founder of the Sales House says that the sales profession is in a self-imposed crisis. Companies spend freely to hire salespeople only to find them fail and then they simply fire them and hire more like them.

New Book on Sales Enablement from Co-Author Byron Matthews

Listen on iTunes while pretending to watch baseball 
Sales Enablement has the promise and research behind it to explain why this book is more than a new just a sales process. Book co-author Byron Matthews discusses why he and co-author Tamara Schenk set out to define the many facets of sales enablement into an understandable framework for success.  The host is jim Obermayer.   We discuss:
The many facets of Sales Enablement
Define the Sales Enablement Charter
Enablement Operations
Measuring Results
About the Author Byron Matthews
Byron Matthews, President and CEO, leads Miller Heiman Group’s commitment to championing customer-management excellence throughout the customer life cycle and across the enterprise from one source. Byron brings to bear in his role a firm grasp of providing organizations worldwide with an expanded, holistic approach for developing and managing, and sustaining, long-term customer relationships.Byron’s depth and breadth of prior experiences include serving as Senior Vice President of Sales at Aflac, where he led over 30,000 sales professionals across multiple channels, and over five years at Mercer as Global Sales Leader and Global Head of the Sales Performance Practice, where he grew revenue over 30 percent.
About Miller Heiman Group
Miller Heiman Group is the global leader in providing organizations the sales methodology plus technology to drive revenue. The organization consults with successful brands, both large and small, to implement training, technology and coaching that drastically changes business outcomes. Through a combination of system innovation, unique industry research and proven learning approaches, Miller Heiman Group is future-proofing clients through the next wave of sales disruption. For more information, visit www.millerheimangroup.com.
About CSO InsightsCSO Insights is the research division of Miller Heiman Group, dedicated to improving the performance and productivity of complex B2B sales. The CSO Insights team of respected analysts provides sales leaders with the research, data, expertise, and best practices required to build sustainable strategies for sales performance improvement. CSO Insights’ annual sales effectiveness studies, along with its benchmarking capabilities, are industry standards for sales leaders seeking operational and behavioral insights into how to improve their sales performance and to gain holistic assessments of their selling and sales management efficacy. Annual research studies address sales and service best practices, sales enablement and sales performance optimization. For more information, visit www.csoinsights.com.
 
Sponsor for this show:
SLMA Radio Sponsorship
 Whether you're producing a seminar series, user's conference, lunch and learn, or exhibiting at a tradeshow, Validar has a solution. Call 888 784 2929 or visit us at www.validar.com

When Corporate Arrogance Bulldozes Marketing’s Good Judgement

Listen on iTunes while hanging upside down!
A little bit of success, can breed arrogance and poor judgment in many fast growing

Author David Cook: How to Be A GREAT Salesperson…by Monday Morning

Listen on iTunes while you should be doing your sales forcast!
 
Sounds too good to be true, and yet it appears it isn’t as I have already tried some of David’s techniques and been rewarded.  In his book, How To Be A GREAT Salesperson…by Monday Morning!

How Jill Konrath Reframes Problems

Listen on iTunes while driving a race car 
In this 2 minute and 16 second segment from her interview on the Five Most Important Things She has Learned in Busienss and Life, Jill Konrath talks about how she redefines a problem by turning it into a challenge. This is number three of five extracted from her interview “The Most Important Things Jill Konrath has learned in business and life.”  Hear the full interview here. 
Konrath’s sincerity comes through in this heartfelt advice.
 
The full interview contains: