You can’t teach people to sell by teaching them to sell!
By Guest Blogger, James Pereira
I’ve spent my entire career of 30 years in sales (and marketing).
When I joined a direct selling company selling encyclopedias in 1986, we were given a script to memorize and rattle off with all potential customers. We were not given any other selling skills. I think my closing rate was about 10% or maybe way less. That was because something was missing.
Eventually I joined a pharmaceutical company that had a boot camp lasting 5 weeks. We were grilled on anatomy, physiology, product knowledge of the top products and also selling skills. There was something missing though. Despite the grueling training, many of us struggled to achieve our targets.
Fast forward 8 years and the next company I was with, implemented a program to evaluate the performance of sales reps in the field. The sales managers were supposed to evaluate their respective reps every month in the field and fill in their observations on a form and provide the feedback to their reps. We gave this form the creativity-lacking name, Performance Development Form – PDF in short.
With the implementation of this PDF, we consistently saw an improvement in reps’ performance scores. These scores also correlated with their respective sales. So we knew we were on the right track.
And again after some time, I felt that something was missing. It was only 10 years later than I realized what was missing – coaching skills.
The magic bullet to success in any form of sales is coaching. I firmly also believe that coaching is the driver of success in all other functions in the business world.
When I began my own training business, the very first program I offered was coaching skills for managers. I felt there was a shortage of such skills among executives in all industries.
In all the previous companies I worked with, they all implemented some elements of sales success factors. They all rolled-out training for staff at varying intensities. Some evaluated their staff and left it to the bosses’ own resources to improve performance.
But none of them taught their managers how to coach their staff to improve!
Recently I came across statistics that claim that 85% of success in selling is rooted in feelings, attitudes, emotions and beliefs.
Selling With The Why
One thing is for sure, most sales people are familiar with the phrase, “People buy emotionally and justify logically.”
Some people say that the emotion is the “Why.” At DSWA, we teach direct selling people to uncover the “Emotional Why.” As long as you don’t do this, you’ll hardly make a sale. Even if you do make some sales, it won’t be sustained. The answer is selling with the why!
The DSWA training teaches how to use coaching techniques to uncover these Emotional Whys and hence support the direct seller or the customer to take action.
One of the top executive coaches in the world has shared his own data that indicates that most people follow Newton’s First Law of Motion – an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced force – consistent follow-up. So coaching is not an ad-hoc activity and should be planned and carried out persistently.
This same coach has indicated that most people don’t like to hear negative feedback and most people don’t like to give it.
Most sales training programs will employ the following generic process:
- Pre-call preparation
- Customer need identification
- Presenting the solution to the need
- Handling customer questions or objections
- Closing
- Follow-up
What I’ve come to realize is that this process is critical for B2B and B2C environments. For MLM and Networking businesses, this is not essential. All you need is to employ the concepts of coaching.
The DSWA Principle-Centred Coaching trains you to:
- uncover the Emotional Why that will drive a customer to join your business (this is need identification)
- support them to remove mental barriers in building their business (this is handling questions and objections as well as closing)
- give compassionate feedback, rather than constructive criticism.
James Pereira has invested 30 years in sales and marketing in B2B and Direct Selling organizations. He is a DSWA Certified Trainer and Coach for Asia. His expertise is in supporting organizations in boosting their revenues by building their people skills