Sales

Was every penny you ever spent on Training a waste of money?

In Sales Training we are often challenged to explain the expected return on investment on the training we’re invited to deliver. It’s a fair question, but an incredibly difficult one to answer.

We could, of course, use the simplest of measures.

A simple division of the upfront investment into the results returned as an outcome of the training.

For example: taking the incremental revenue growth over an agreed period and divide that by the training investment. The hope being that a bigger number than the investment presents itself.

R: £100,000 incremental revenue shift / I: £10,000 training = 10X ROI

That’s risky though. There are no ‘silver bullets’. Instant gratification does not exist and if it did, it would be incredibly expensive to buy.

Did you know the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day?

Let’s say you enjoy 7 blissfully decision-free hours of sleep a day, that still means you are making 2,000 decisions per hour, that’s a decision every 2 seconds.

Many of those rapid-fire decisions are based on your beliefs.

10 Skills that Make the Best Sales Leaders Stand Out

Many sales leaders attempt to manage their team simply by looking at the team’s numbers.

They constantly look at how many opportunities are in the pipeline.

They track the number of appointments, proposals and, of course, the number of sales made for the month.

Then, the manager will attempt to hold their team accountable for maintaining some pre-determined level of results.

The problem is you can track numbers, but you can’t manage them.

You can observe your team’s results but, by that point, there is nothing you can do about them. Worse still, numbers can be a very poor indicator of actual growth and progress.

DISC assessments were developed based on psychologist William Moulton Marston’s theory about behavioural traits.

Since Marston’s original findings were published in 1928, they have been further developed by Walter Vernon Clarke, an industrial psychologist, and a DISC behavioural assessment tool for the workplace was created by John Geier.

This tool can help you and learn more about personality styles, paving the way toward improved communication.

Read on to learn more about the different DISC assessment styles and communication practices that work with each.

Have you ever missed a signal that there was really never a "deal"? A silent, unspoken or politely dressed up "No."

Traditional sales training taught us, of course, "never to take 'No' for an answer."

When we hear "No', we immediately begin to flick through our mental tome of "overcoming stalls and objections". We ready ourselves to deliver the knock-out blow of a 'tired and testing' response that is 'guaranteed' to flip that 'No' into a 'Yes'.

Of course, the prospect has developed their own tome of "salesperson loses" responses designed to counter-act the effects of the traditional salespersons 'closing' technique.

The debate then rages on, both parties 'objection' wrestling furiously, until the other is exhausted.

Landing clients is the 'petrol in the engine' of business.

It is the 'bread and butter' issue that makes the difference between a successful Firm and a struggling one.

Here's 5 more practical things you can do to build your Firm's business. These timeless principles can be applied again and again, day after day, year after year, decade after decade.

They are proven to generate new revenue, new client accounts, new opportunities, when done right.

So, you've spent years building the skills you need for your business to be successful.

Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, Years, Decades of study, discipline, experience, continuous education, technical training.

Over time, you start to bring people in around you, to build out your team.

Each member of your growing team has, are, and will invest hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades of study, discipline, experience, continuous education, technical training.

Over time, 10's of years, becomes 100's of years of skill and experience.

What is missing, I often find, are the skills to generate business. Sales, if you will.

Ironically, the single, most, important skill every business owner needs, and every team member should have.

Generating New Business opportunities one of the essential growth ingredients in any successful business.

Here's a Mystery.  

Most departments in an organisation have a common language and a common process.

Everyone in Accounting talks the same language.

In Marketing, there's a very analytical process by which everyone agrees to measure results.

In Operations or Engineering, or any other part of the organisation you care to name, everyone agrees on the process by which things get done, and everyone agrees on the key terms that connect to the process.

As organizations grow, they realise that there are numerous different ways to define success.
A new business, for example, will be immensely satisfied the first year the operation returns a profit.

On the other hand, a more established company may expect to see a specified rate of growth year over year.

Defining what success means to you and establishing goals based upon these criteria can be an important step in monitoring your business’s development and making productive decisions based on the criteria that matter the most to you. Here are a few different ways that you can consider defining your success.

Sales success depends on building a solid, growing client base. The first impression you make while prospecting for new clients can make or break your ability to secure new business. You only have seven seconds to make your first impression with a client. Here's how to make those seven seconds count!

Make a Positive First Impression Within Seconds

Why don't we spend more time considering the consequences of making a bad hire?

The cost of a bad sales hire is phenomenal. Let's take a look.

To calculate the true cost of a bad sales hire you are going to want to know:

1 > The cost to recruit, on-board and train a salesperson.

2 > The average sales of your A players (top 20%), B players (average) and C Players (bottom 20%).

Small business owners in the South East opting for apprentices over grads Small business owners in the South East would rather recruit an apprentice for an entry-level role than a graduate, according to a survey of 200 small business owners in the South East. 53% of respondents said that they would rather opt for an apprentice for an entry-level role.