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The Secret Weapon for Sales Coaching ©

Written by: Bill Truax

Article Overview: Sales managers and sales coaches are missing out on a great potential. When it comes to increasing the top line, sales skills training is not the magic bullet, it is Prospecting. This is the skill that has to precede all others. So if you are involved in sales coaching of any kind, here are some things to think about.

The Secret Weapon for Sales Coaching ©

If you are in any way responsible for sales coaching field sales professionals, then here is probably the single best information you will ever get for growing your corporate sales. One word - Prospecting.

For over 30 years I have been training field sale people. I work initially with their sales managers, sales coaches, whatever the title. One thing I have learned is that everyone is very well trained in selling skills, but few, if any, are trained in Prospecting skills.

So what happens when sales begin to lag or volume isn’t growing? They conduct sales skills training once again!

A few weeks ago I lead a 4 hour discussion with a group of sales trainers on the East coast.

The focus of the discussion was the fact that most of their client company sales people aren’t using their selling skills training. What these folks do is continue to call on their existing client base. Which, of course, is a great way to maintain their customer base.

However, without adding new customers, the only sales growth they experience is based on the re-orders from their existing customers. Which doesn’t require selling skills.

The folks in the audience had done a study to see how their selling skills’ training was affecting sales growth. They found that the growth was a little over 10% but was due almost entirely to the growth in re-orders from existing customers. Virtually no new sales growth. No need for sales skills at all, the field sales force was actually functioning in a customer service role.

That was why I was asked to speak and lead the discussion.

My focus, as you know, is on that very small, but critical skill of Field Sales Prospecting. And Prospecting on a regular basis all the time.

My continuing motto goes like this.

“If you were to make 6 four minute Prospecting calls per week, that is, 240 Prospecting calls per year, how would that affect your sales life?”

That is why I developed my Prospecting System since it must fit seamlessly into the day of a Field Sales Professional.

This format provides a lot of benefits to the salesperson.
First of all, it makes Prospecting easy, since it is only 4 minutes in duration.

Second, you get a lot of Prospects at the right pace. Some companies use what they call a sales blitz once or twice a year. They get a lot of names, but seldom follow up on them. I have seen this happen dozens of times.

Third, considering the correct pace of getting Prospects again, people buy at different times. We in sales never know when someone will be ready to buy, so we need to have a lot of folks in our system. Some will buy soon, some a little later, some a little later still, some into the future, etc.

Fourth, some Prospects are really bad to work with, make life miserable and can cost more than they are worth. Unless you are a glutton for punishment leave these folks for your competitors. You will have so many Prospects that you can choose who to work with. What a great feeling that is.

So for you sales coaches out there, all this is due simply to Prospecting. The only skill that gets the sales professional into a position to actually use all those selling skills.

So now you know the secret weapon for sales coaching – Prospecting.

Sell Well and Often,

Bill Truax

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Article Tags: audience, critical skill, customer base, customer service, east coast, existing customers, field sales force, motto, sales managers, sales professionals, sales prospecting, sales skills training, selling skills



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