Creating Your Own Sales & Marketing Guide
Creating Your Own Sales & Marketing Guide
An example of this would be if you taught your sales team how to prospect but did not teach them what types of prospects are most likely to purchase your product or service. Another example would be if you taught them how to qualify a prospect by asking the right kind of questions, but not specify exactly what questions should be asked for your type of customers and business. Finding out these company-specific bits of information is not an easy task, however. Many companies don’t track their successes and failures to identify what works and what doesn’t work. Without capturing the best-practices of your successful sales people, it’s difficult if not impossible to determine how and why each sale was won or lost. Without this important information, you cannot duplicate your successes nor eliminate your failures.
In this sort of environment, your sales team becomes fragmented, with each sales rep doing things different from the others. You’ll have a few top performers, but the rest will be marginal or poor. The result – 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your sales reps. Sound familiar? It should since this is a typical scenario in most businesses today. Left unattended, the non-performing sales people will quit out of frustration, or from poverty, or maybe even get fired for missing their revenue goals before they have a chance to quit. Management will spend countless hours recruiting replacements, re-training them on their products, pricing, markets, competitors, and the like. Perhaps even provide some basic selling skills. Then six to 12 months later have to let them go due to poor performance. And the cycle repeats itself over and over.
Since successful selling requires collaboration between people and departments, one of the first things to do is develop a sales process. The process will define who does what, what information to collect and record, who to hand the next step to and when, and other details that help define the flow of events that help the entire sales cycle. Additionally, the sales process teaches the sales team what steps they need to follow in the sales cycle to move a lead from a cold suspect to a loyal customer. On top of this, the sales reps should learn the selling skills needed to perform these steps properly. Where the process defines “when” to perform each step in the sales cycle, the selling skills teach “how” to do them. However, there is one more step that needs to be taken, as mentioned earlier.
Let’s say the sales process says it is time in the sales cycle for the rep to present the solution to the prospect, since he already executed the prior steps such as qualifying the prospect and learning what their needs and problems are. At this point, the sales rep and prospect will enter into the negotiation phase. While the sales process defines when to begin this stage, the selling skills teach the best ways to negotiate, which is also valuable knowledge. The one additional step that is needed is to teach how to negotiate for your company. In other words, what latitude does your sales team have when negotiating? At what point can they make decisions on the company’s behalf, such as pricing concessions, delivery options or additional freebies? When do they need to check with their management before committing to anything outside the normal, pre-approved product package and published pricing? Where can they go to find more information to help during the negotiation phase?
This is what needs to be defined to complete the process. Yet this is what is missing in many companies. While this is just one simple example in the sales process, there are dozens more that need to be defined in order to help your sales team know exactly what you’re selling, where to sell it, how to sell it, who else is selling it, how to compete with them, when to sell it, how to close it, and lots more. If your company offers multiple product lines, then these missing pieces are multiplied by the number of lines you have, hence compounding your challenges.
A tool that helps bring this all together is the Sales & Marketing Guide. This Guide includes valuable information for the sales team that can be studied and referred to throughout the sales process. It includes items such as market data, your target prospects, cold calling scripts/outlines, qualification questions, product features, benefit statements, pricing information, competitor information, marketing material (e.g., brochures, corporate and product presentations), common objections (with sample responses), negotiating rules, and more. All of this information will be unique to your company and its products being sold. The Guide will also be sprinkled with selling skills throughout each section to help teach how to perform these functions and steps along the way. Sales & Marketing Guides work because they are a single repository of all the information needed during the sales process and are available to everyone involved in the sales cycle, not just the sales team.
Imagine a new sales person starting for your company. It may take up to six months for him to be fully productive and achieve 100% of his quota. If you can get him to 100% in, say, just four months, imagine how much more revenue your company will be recognizing by reducing the learning curve by two months, not to mention the increased commission for the new sales rep. And more money means happier sales reps and fewer turnovers, although money is not the sole motivator of sales people. They also need to feel appreciated and valued. By handing them a Sales & Marketing Guide, along with training on your sales process and on selling skills, your sales people will feel more appreciated and therefore motivated to perform better. They’ll feel like your company actually cares about them and their success. If you spend the time developing a Sales & Marketing Guide, then you will indeed care about your sales people and their success. When they succeed, so will your business.
Don’t begrudge your sales team’s success. I’ve seen too many companies restrict their sales team’s income by putting a cap on their commissions (very bad move), assume their sales people already have the selling skills they need (there are new skills needed, or they forgot, or they never learned many of them to begin with, or they are new to sales in general), and basically treat their sales people like second rate citizens. It’s ironic that the one revenue generating organization in a business is frequently treated like they are outsiders, strangers or, even worse, the enemy. I’ve heard sales managers refer to their own people as stupid, lazy and useless, yet they do nothing about it. I’ve seen CEO’s and Presidents refer to their sales teams as a waste of valuable company resources, but don’t fund the tools they need to be more effective and successful. This is the revenue generating arm of the company. They need support, training and resources to be effective and to help the company grow.
Give them the tools they need to succeed. Develop a sales process for them to follow. Offer training to improve their selling skills. Invest in the creation of a Sales & Marketing Guide so they know the who, what, where, when, why and how of selling your products and services. With their success comes your company’s success. Give them more than just the “how to” of selling. Give them Information Training.
Good luck and good selling!
Russ Lombardo
Creating Your Own Sales Marketing Guide - To learn more about this author, visit Russ Lombardo's Website.
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Sales training is important for teaching the basic selling skills, from cold calling to closing. New sales people need this training as well as seasoned veterans who forgot more than they remembered and also need to keep up with the latest selling skills since things have changed over the years. However, it is one thing to say this is how you do cold calling, for instance, and yet another to say whom you should be making those cold calls with. Sales training can’t stop at the basics. You need to expand that into “information training”, or training that also provides the vital, company-specific information your sales team needs to become more successful. This is the difference between generic sales training and customized training for your company.
An example of this would be if you taught your sales team how to prospect but did not teach them what types of prospects are most likely to purchase your product or service. Another example would be if you taught them how to qualify a prospect by asking the right kind of questions, but not specify exactly what questions should be asked for your type of customers and business. Finding out these company-specific bits of information is not an easy task, however. Many companies don’t track their successes and failures to identify what works and what doesn’t work. Without capturing the best-practices of your successful sales people, it’s difficult if not impossible to determine how and why each sale was won or lost. Without this important information, you cannot duplicate your successes nor eliminate your failures.
In this sort of environment, your sales team becomes fragmented, with each sales rep doing things different from the others. You’ll have a few top performers, but the rest will be marginal or poor. The result – 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your sales reps. Sound familiar? It should since this is a typical scenario in most businesses today. Left unattended, the non-performing sales people will quit out of frustration, or from poverty, or maybe even get fired for missing their revenue goals before they have a chance to quit. Management will spend countless hours recruiting replacements, re-training them on their products, pricing, markets, competitors, and the like. Perhaps even provide some basic selling skills. Then six to 12 months later have to let them go due to poor performance. And the cycle repeats itself over and over.
Since successful selling requires collaboration between people and departments, one of the first things to do is develop a sales process. The process will define who does what, what information to collect and record, who to hand the next step to and when, and other details that help define the flow of events that help the entire sales cycle. Additionally, the sales process teaches the sales team what steps they need to follow in the sales cycle to move a lead from a cold suspect to a loyal customer. On top of this, the sales reps should learn the selling skills needed to perform these steps properly. Where the process defines “when” to perform each step in the sales cycle, the selling skills teach “how” to do them. However, there is one more step that needs to be taken, as mentioned earlier.
Let’s say the sales process says it is time in the sales cycle for the rep to present the solution to the prospect, since he already executed the prior steps such as qualifying the prospect and learning what their needs and problems are. At this point, the sales rep and prospect will enter into the negotiation phase. While the sales process defines when to begin this stage, the selling skills teach the best ways to negotiate, which is also valuable knowledge. The one additional step that is needed is to teach how to negotiate for your company. In other words, what latitude does your sales team have when negotiating? At what point can they make decisions on the company’s behalf, such as pricing concessions, delivery options or additional freebies? When do they need to check with their management before committing to anything outside the normal, pre-approved product package and published pricing? Where can they go to find more information to help during the negotiation phase?
This is what needs to be defined to complete the process. Yet this is what is missing in many companies. While this is just one simple example in the sales process, there are dozens more that need to be defined in order to help your sales team know exactly what you’re selling, where to sell it, how to sell it, who else is selling it, how to compete with them, when to sell it, how to close it, and lots more. If your company offers multiple product lines, then these missing pieces are multiplied by the number of lines you have, hence compounding your challenges.
A tool that helps bring this all together is the Sales & Marketing Guide. This Guide includes valuable information for the sales team that can be studied and referred to throughout the sales process. It includes items such as market data, your target prospects, cold calling scripts/outlines, qualification questions, product features, benefit statements, pricing information, competitor information, marketing material (e.g., brochures, corporate and product presentations), common objections (with sample responses), negotiating rules, and more. All of this information will be unique to your company and its products being sold. The Guide will also be sprinkled with selling skills throughout each section to help teach how to perform these functions and steps along the way. Sales & Marketing Guides work because they are a single repository of all the information needed during the sales process and are available to everyone involved in the sales cycle, not just the sales team.
Imagine a new sales person starting for your company. It may take up to six months for him to be fully productive and achieve 100% of his quota. If you can get him to 100% in, say, just four months, imagine how much more revenue your company will be recognizing by reducing the learning curve by two months, not to mention the increased commission for the new sales rep. And more money means happier sales reps and fewer turnovers, although money is not the sole motivator of sales people. They also need to feel appreciated and valued. By handing them a Sales & Marketing Guide, along with training on your sales process and on selling skills, your sales people will feel more appreciated and therefore motivated to perform better. They’ll feel like your company actually cares about them and their success. If you spend the time developing a Sales & Marketing Guide, then you will indeed care about your sales people and their success. When they succeed, so will your business.
Don’t begrudge your sales team’s success. I’ve seen too many companies restrict their sales team’s income by putting a cap on their commissions (very bad move), assume their sales people already have the selling skills they need (there are new skills needed, or they forgot, or they never learned many of them to begin with, or they are new to sales in general), and basically treat their sales people like second rate citizens. It’s ironic that the one revenue generating organization in a business is frequently treated like they are outsiders, strangers or, even worse, the enemy. I’ve heard sales managers refer to their own people as stupid, lazy and useless, yet they do nothing about it. I’ve seen CEO’s and Presidents refer to their sales teams as a waste of valuable company resources, but don’t fund the tools they need to be more effective and successful. This is the revenue generating arm of the company. They need support, training and resources to be effective and to help the company grow.
Give them the tools they need to succeed. Develop a sales process for them to follow. Offer training to improve their selling skills. Invest in the creation of a Sales & Marketing Guide so they know the who, what, where, when, why and how of selling your products and services. With their success comes your company’s success. Give them more than just the “how to” of selling. Give them Information Training.
Good luck and good selling!
Russ Lombardo
Creating Your Own Sales Marketing Guide - To learn more about this author, visit Russ Lombardo's Website.
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Staging DivaDebra Gould, aka The Staging Diva®, is President of Six Elements Inc., an internationally recognized home staging company. Inspired by many requests from aspiring home stagers wanting to start similar businesses, Gould created the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. Gould has trained over 1000 Staging Diva Graduates worldwide to start staging businesses. Buying decorating and selling six of her own homes in four years lead to an interest in real estate staging which she turned into a career with the launch of sixelements.com in 2002. Since then she has staged hundreds of homes in addition to teaching home staging training. Gould is the author of several home staging resources including a series of popular ebooks made up of a Design Guide, Color Guide and Portfolio Guide. For more information about Debra Gould visit stagingdiva.com. - Visit Staging Diva's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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