Actually, credibility deserves a little more attention. There are critical moments when your credibility is being assessed and you need to be aware when this is happening. It’s an essential ‘check’ for every sales professional regardless of competence and before every call. Credibility is vital if you’re going to successfully win a new customer or continue an existing relationship. But did you know there are various types of credibility?

When you join a new team or a new company, you and your customers might be polite to each other. But if you want people to buy from you, you’re asking them to take a leap of faith to believe in you. If you have no track record in your new environment and they don’t know you, all the credibility you have is established by the company name on your card and by those around you in the meeting. Some people call this ‘established’ or ‘brand’ credibility. Of course your past reputation might count but what evidence do you have that you can do equally well in your new role? This is a critical moment and you need to be prepared.

Similarly, if you bring people with you to a meeting or ask a colleague to do something for one of your customers, their actions on yourbehalf will affect not just their own credibility but also yours. This is called ‘transferred’ credibility. This is another critical moment. Did your colleagues send the information your client requested? Was it received in good time? Were there any initial reactions? What are you walking into? Will the meeting go as planned? Read more

What’s your reaction? Do you walk away and waste all the hard work you put into this deal? Or do you accept your customer’s terms and lose in the process? You know you can’t negotiate with someone if they take a position and won’t budge. So what’s the answer? In my experience, you need to explore your customer’s interests and avoid haggling.

Negotiations are easier when people trust each other. However, these ideal situations don’t come along often. Throughout your selling career, you’re more likely to encounter prospects that won’t budge in their position, because they’re fixed on a single option “It’s my way or no way.” So if your customer doesn’t like your proposal, start discussing some alternatives. Let the decision making process become more collaborative. When customers feel rushed into a deal they can become obstinate. The sales process has to be a natural progression and an equal discussion.

“It costs £X.” “I’ll only pay £Y”

If you feel you’re heading towards what looks like an irrevocable breakdown of your relationship, take a deep breath, park the subject of price on the side and just talk. Your customer may be afraid to go back to his boss and ask for more budget because the company is behind on sales targets. This fear will hinder his ability to negotiate, so your job is to make it easy for him. Use tools to help things along. I’ve found a blank flip chart is invaluable. Make a list of all the issues you need to agree including price. If there are say, 9 other issues you can agree on except price, you know you’re 90% there. What’s more, will the customer really walk away from a negotiation where 90% is already agreed and start again? What will that cost them in terms of time and perhaps lost business?

At what point do you walk away?

Despite your best efforts, not every deal will be Win-Win. The best sales professionals know in advance the moment to walk away. Look out for early signals that it may not be a good fit for either of you and define a point at which you’ll stop investing in this sales opportunity in order to focus on one with more potential.

Be creative

You cannot negotiate from a position. Fact. Of course it’s tough out there and no one wants to spend. So be creative. Start talking and make your option the most favourable opportunity. Top salespeople know you gain credibility by listening really well. Ask precise questions and address your clients’ concerns throughout the meeting. Let them know you want them to win in this deal as much as you do. Explore how both of you can win and address every concern.

For more information about how to negotiate your way through a stalemate, talk to Stephen Newman, on: Telephone: +44 (0)1923 818 967 email: info@critical-moments.com or visit: www.critical-moments.com

I don’t mean the lucky ones. I mean the leaders who’ve shown their mettle through lean business periods. These are the sales directors who’ve known when it’s tough out there and applied 100% focus to improving their game. Precise, skilled and fearless.

Think about it. If you’re going for an operation, you don’t want a nervous surgeon with shaky hands. You want a firm decision maker who doesn’t waver when there are tough decisions to be made. Because it’s always better to deliver tough messages sooner, rather than later.

Looking back, I can see that the top leaders over the last ten years, are the ones who made the decision to concentrate on the areas they could control.

They looked reality in the eye and helped everyone around them face the facts too. When the going got rough, they were ready to flex and action their plan B.

So what does staying flexible really mean? Is it having a contingency plan? Plan B,C,D,E or contingency strategies – whatever you like to call it, is having a game plan that’s tailored to different economic climates.

I’ve looked at the constant change organisations have experienced over the past 10 years and watched the changes accelerate fast. Curved balls have hammered down the business lane thick and fast.

No one could have thought through every change of strategy. Yet some won and some lost. I put this down to not thinking about the future and I don’t mean feeling your way blindly ahead, I mean changing your “What if?” thinking to “What now?”

It’s more than likely that you’ll meet more adverse change and surprises in the future that could throw your carefully considered plan completely out of kilter.

It makes sense to be prepared with your contingency plan now. A fully thought out plan B that anticipates any weaknesses in your strategy, is sure to win through.

So much for the last ten years. Just make sure you’re one of the winners of the next ten. I want to see you top of my list in 2021. Now I’m interested in helping you find out how you’re going to do it.

Leadership was described by Martin Chemers, a Social Psychologist as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”. Yet true leadership is a quality that only a few people have. Often people can force others to accept their leadership through weakness, bullying or imposing change but that is not effective or good leadership.

Good leadership is the ability to inspire people to follow you through your ability to observe and encourage. One thing I’ve seen over the years is that not everyone is lucky enough to be born with the skills that go with effective leadership. Sometimes these attributes need to be learned.

Then, just as there are different ways of learning effective leadership skills, there are various ways of evaluating leadership qualities. Subjective measurements such as self-assessment, reaction, perception and satisfaction, simply cannot reliably measure learning. Don’t take my word for it – A Danish Consultancy I work with, recently ran  a survey to prove that if we use subjective criteria to measure learning, in 87% of the cases we will be wrong!

I believe in this ever changing world there are some new and smart  ways to be an effective leader. First build up processes to secure and improve learning outcome of learning activities. Secondly create a high impact learning sales organisation. That means ongoing training – because when you get to the top, you need to encourage others to do the same.

A ‘good’ leader exhibits all of the competencies and characteristics of leadership, while an ‘effective’ leader is someone who also gets results. Generally, good leaders deliver good results, yet the whirlwind of current market pressures is forcing good leaders who cannot always deliver the results to think again. When it comes to training and forming new leaders, it’s vital that you think about mapping your business needs and competence development. Your learning objectives, your development programmes and your questions should be true mirrors of each other.

Miller Heiman is, in my estimation, the most well known name in effective leadership sales training programmes. Research is conducted annually, continuously, and serves as the basis for all its updated solutions content and programmes. Unique in its approach to sales performance improvement,,  Miller Heiman gives us one of the longest ongoing studies of sales behaviour to reveal new trends. With this research we can understand the past a little better and get some idea of what the future may hold in store. We can use this knowledge in our workshops and consultancy to tackle ongoing climatic forces and lead organisations effectively to success.

Find out more about what sets an effective leader apart from a successful one, talk to Stephen Newman on: Telephone: +44 (0)1923 818 967 email: info@critical-moments.com or visit: www.critical-moments.com

In previous years’ studies of most organisations, it’s clear to see a shift away from following established best practices in selling and sales management effectiveness. Companies reacted to a challenging economy in panic. There was a return to several activities that usually fail to produce the desired results:

• cold calling
• more discounting
• pursuing customers in non-traditional target markets

In this year’s data, there’s a clear return to best practice sales activities. Some of the most significant year-on-year improvement across all responses was seen in customer focused initiatives including:

• formalising a compelling value proposition to prospects
• jointly setting long-term objectives with strategic accounts
• collaborating across departments to pursue large opportunities and manage strategic accounts

“We get caught in the psychological doldrums from 2009 and not realize what 2011 will bring. The good news is, there are opportunities; customers are looking for providers to help them grow.” 2011 Survey Participant —

But before you start thinking it’s going to be easy now, reflect on how much you’ve learned from the last few years:

• How to listen
• How to get creative with solutions
• How to really help customers get value
• How to get through obstacles day by day

“Even the top performers are getting a little sloppy.”

Listen to what Sam Reese, CEO of Miller Heiman has to say about the recent Miller Heiman Sales Study 2011 -

Customer Satisfaction – last year 71% of the World-Class sales forces (think of them as the top 6% in the survey) had a formal process for measuring customer satisfaction, as opposed to only 32% for all of the others.

While the also-ran companies stayed at that same 32 %, only 57%of the World Class sales teams now have a tight focus on measuring customer satisfaction. A troubling trend that will have larger ramifications if the economic growth remains flat.

1. Chasing No-Hope Opportunities – in 2010, 57 % of the World-Class sales forces had an established procedure for stopping investment on deals that were not progressing.
   Other firms only did this 17 % of the time.
   In 2011, once again the other firms remained at the same 17 % (no wonder many companies seem to lose consistently) while the World-Class ones went down to 47 %.  Not a huge drop but another signal that the same discipline is not being applied.
2. Performance Reviews – last year 94% of World Class selling teams believed that their performance review process was constructive and helped them improve at their job.
   This is in comparison to only 24 percent of the other respondents.  Once again the needle did not move for the others but the World-Class firms now report that only three-quarters of them still believe in their performance management system.
   This is a pretty dramatic decline and another indicator that the top sales forces are fading and coming back to the pack.
3. Coaching – 70% of the World-Class companies believed that their sales managers spent an adequate amount of time coaching each individual on their sales team, compared to only 18 %for the other companies.
   There is no change from the mediocre companies in 2011, but now only 53 % of the World-Class companies believe it.  It seems that leadership and coaching were key tools that helped sales forces get through lean times but now they are losing focus as the economy gets back on track.

The bottom line according to Sam Reese is that truly great sales managers and top individual contributors learn to stick with disciplines and continue a game plan that worked for them when times were tough.

What we all have to do now is apply these same principles during challenging economic cycles. Then the opportunity for break through results is right in front of you – just don’t get complacent. Carry on thinking of the economic landscape as uncertain, so you can be certain about the best practices for Strategic Selling that you bring to your selling job every single day.

To receive your copy of the Miller Heiman 2011 Global Sales Best Practices Executive Summary, please email us at: info@critical-moments.com If you’d like to benchmark your company’s performance against the study, contact Stephen Newman at snewman@critical-moments.com or phone +44(0)1923 818967

Over the years, Sam Reese has talked to hundreds of clients about how they make sure their sales force keep doing the things that work.  It sounds like something obvious, but the fact is that most sales forces have a really tough time maintaining the disciplines, training and best practices that propelled them to success.  It usually starts when top management tries to drive results via short-term tactics that are not consistent with the success formula the company had grown accustomed to. Then this new tactic becomes the operating rhythm for the sales force, and it turns into a downward spiral.  World-class sales organizations know how to keep doing the things that work and maintain their winning culture.

When you get a chance, go to check out the new offering we are bringing to the market: Advanced Concepts^℠ for Strategic Selling^® is designed to help our clients continue to build upon effective processes and winning practices.  The technology is fantastic, but the real value is in how Miller-Heiman turbo-charge the front-line sales manager so that he or she can be an even more capable leader.  The best lad plans and strategies never endure unless the front-line sales leader is committed to the direction and understand his role in driving execution.  Whether the initiative is sales training, CRM software rollout, compensation strategy, or reorganization plans, these will all fail unless there is a clear role outlined for the sales manager so he or she knows exactly what to do to build upon the initiative and reinforce its importance.  I truly believe the new Miller Heiman offering is a major innovation and one that will help salespeople and sales managers consistently achieve their performance targets.

The best sales managers understand that people all learn differently.  Some learn by doing, others learn by watching, and others may learn best by listening.  World-class sales managers adapt their coaching so they can transfer knowledge and provide direction to each team member in a way that communicates a clear direction to the team but also tailors the application of the message to each individual.  So instead of barking out orders and then continue to become frustrated that the team just did not “get it,” make sure everyone on your team understands exactly what they are supposed to do. Your comments please…

How do prolific goal scorers fail to hit the back of the net when it really counts? How does a goalkeeper fail to hold the simplest of shots that he has saved every time before? Our English team needs to get to grips with why they lost, if they dare to believe they can be world-class. This is not about emotion and blame. It’s about crystal clear, laser-like thinking.

The same goes for sales – Why do you sometimes get it wrong when you are sure you are doing everything right? To really understand your customers’ business and challenges, you need to take a step back and think. If you start making too many assumptions, you may find yourself drifting from feeling comfortable to anger or desperation. It’s easy to lose any influence you felt you had in the first place. Worse still, is the belief that if you forget the problem it will simply go away. “I’ll focus on the next deal”. Very good! But you are in real danger of scoring an own goal and repeating the problem if you do not learn from your mistake.

Ever heard of Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross? She wrote a book called ‘On death and dying’ and in it, she describes an emotional cycle experienced by terminally ill patients.

First people go into denial “This cannot be happening to me”. Then they feel anger “Why me? Why not someone else?” and slump into a depression. In the next stage, they start making irrational bargains with themselves – like ‘maybe if I get fitter, I won’t die’. Then they tend to go into an acceptance stage. That’s when they start to face facts and prepare to move forward again. They might not feel too happy but they know it’s time to move on.

All these stages – Denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance are normal. If you’ve ever lost a big pitch that meant a lot to you, you’ll recognise these feelings too.

“There must be a mistake. There is no way they could give this sale to another supplier”

“How dare they do that? Why didn’t they reject the other proposals rather than mine which was much better?”

‘Maybe if I go to my next sales meeting and keep a high profile and cover my tracks by volunteering to do other stuff, the sales director won’t raise the subject of my lost deal.”

Some people experience all these sensations fleetingly and move on. Other people remain worried, letting their negative feelings overwhelm them for much longer. This can impact future performance. We need to learn how to recover and win again. The best way to move on to the next successful sale is to get support and coaching to develop strategies that help you understand where the last deal went wrong. Some reasons might lie on the surface but the real truth may well be concealed within you and need to be discovered.

A recent study on LinkedIn showed that 80% of respondents say that after a loss, they move straight on to look for the next deal. I’d say probably 100% of those sales guys run the risk of making the same mistake again.

Yes, you need to look on the positive side and apply your talent to finding more business . But if you walked off losing the last sale, you’ve got to be careful you don’t walk on to lose the next one.

It’s all about technique and attitude.

But it’s not about blame. Blame just muddies the waters and holds you back. Many people are damning Fabio Capello right now for England’s heaviest World Cup defeat. But change also needs to come from within the team, if they are ever going to rise up as an invincible force again.

There’s no point beating up anyone including yourself about a lost deal. You can’t avoid thinking about it or try getting away with it either. That sets up a fail culture. The only way forward for England’s football professionals and sales professionals is careful coaching to learn how to be the most competent, incisive, ambitious and powerful players on the pitch. What do you think the England football team will do next? And what will you do on your pitch? Have your say here…

I suggest the answer to these questions is ‘Very few’.

On one hand, people say, “Nothing happens until a sale is made” but on the other hand, investment in sales performance improvement is often sporadic or ill conceived. I’ve even heard people say, “Can we call it Business Development or Marketing? Sales is a dirty word round here”. Now you might expect this point of view in the public sector or from people who work in not-for-profit organisations. But I’ve heard comments like these from law firms, consulting firms, health care, engineering as well as science and technology businesses. I know companies whose leaders depend on sales for their success, yet they refuse to put a sales executive on the board. Yes, everyone wants the revenues and profits that sales generate, but some companies are less keen to invest or change their view of the people who sell. These people regard selling as an unfortunate but necessary feature of modern business.

For a profession such as sales – yes, I do see it as a profession – there are very few professional qualifications available.  Of course, there are thousands of sales training firms but only a few programmes are recognised by professional bodies.

Fortunately, Critical Moments’ sales coaching programmes are accredited.

Why does it have to be like this? Let’s think about it. If your sales people have secured enough profitable business to keep your organisation ticking over in the past two years, that means:

• they have ploughed through a banking crisis
• faced up to a downturn which knocked business confidence
• battled to meet deadlines and business objectives with packed transport networks and volcanic ash!

I’m not saying sales people deserve medals. But they are entitled to support in the form of anything which can make their job easier. Because anything which can help sales people work more effectively must be a good investment.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. Do your sales people have the support systems and infrastructure they need to do better?
2. Could sales training and sales coaching improve results?
3. Are your sales staff well rewarded or could they be tempted to a more lucrative job in a competitor company?

I want to hear from you if you who share my view or disagree. Why do some firms fail to recognise the contribution good selling makes to the bottom line?  Have your say here

We feel good about sales forecasts when they look achievable but we worry if they look challenging. Quite often we ‘play safe’ and forecast low to avoid disappointment. That might sound prudent but it can also be the cause of problems. Other operational decisions might be based on our estimates. There is no substitute for accurate forecasting.

While running some sales coaching programmes recently, I noticed some people have real concerns about the sales numbers they have been given. There is special worry among those who are selling into the public sector, because they fear heavy cuts in public spending later this year. In the private sector, many feel costs have already been trimmed to the bone and leaders expect a strong drive to increase sales and raise performance. This is certainly supported by findings in the new 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study.

Sales people are under pressure to perform both from their customers and from within. It has never been more important to qualify the sales you want to pursue.

• Identify the real opportunities
• Qualify them properly
• Cover the bases in more detail
• Fully understand your customers’ buying process.
• Use Valid Business Reasons to differentiate your sales approach and to convince decision makers to see you.

The Miller Heiman 2010 study suggests accurate sales targeting is essential to create accurate sales forecasts. Because sales forecasts that are too high or too low, often lead to the misuse of resources and poor investment.

It’s not just about how you forecast sales. It’s about sales strategy. That’s why in our sales training programmes, we work with the participants to make sure they understand their customers’ business first. Whether you’re forecasting on profit, volume, billable hours etc – it’s accuracy that counts. Get it right and help leaders make critical decisions. Get it wrong and it affects everyone.

Now I would like to hear your thoughts about your approach to sales forecasts.

Are you given a number from elsewhere in your organisation?

Do your customers have a better a view of how much business they are likely to do with you?

What makes a sales forecast accurate?

Please add your comments here.

Stephen Newman

I’ve just come back from the Miller Heiman global conference in Las Vegas. It was a huge success.  People often ask me “How many of the World-Class sales performance organisations are Miller Heiman clients?” Simple – Miller Heiman was quoted by 34% of all participants as their key methodology and grew to 49% of the World-Class group. No other methodology is reported by a significant portion of the overall or World-Class groups. So Miller Heiman practitioners do seem to improve their odds of being World Class.

It’s astounding to see how well Miller Heiman has done, considering what this early glimpse of the 2010 Global Sales Best Practices Study reveals.

Get sight of the ‘first cut results’ here and now.

This global study of sales best practice is in its eighth year. But in 2009 the love affair with growth stopped. Economies went into recession. People found it really difficult to sell and grow. OK, no surprise here. But the survey shows that sales professionals did not help themselves. Remember, this study compares the practices of world class sales organisations to the rest. It is clear that the gap between average performance and fundamental sales best practice significantly widened at the expense of the organisations that did not remain focused.

In most organisations sales and marketing teams ‘disconnected’. They were less aligned in trying to find customers than world class organisations, who stayed calm and continued to partner their colleagues in marketing.

In many sales organisations people collaborated less in their search for business. Many reported more lost deals but couldn’t explain why. Meanwhile world class sales organisations took the trouble to find out and learn. There is much more in the study and a full executive summary will be available soon. But in my opinion 2009 will go down as a year of not just economic stress but one of ‘sloppy selling’.

My advice. Take aim. Keep steady

The big guns that stayed focused on their selling process and kept their target in site experienced better fortunes. Sales strategy is an effective weapon when you concentrate the mind. So it’s worth remembering a few traditional sales practices.

To register for a future copy of the executive summary of the Miller Heiman Global Sales Best Practices Study,  email info@critical-moments.com

If you would like to benchmark your company against the study participants contact Stephen Newman on +44 (0)1923 818967 or email: snewman@critical-moments.com