Sales Management Mastery: How to Turn Your Sales Effort Into a Rocket Ship of Results

Apr 29
13:04

2007

Chet Holmes

Chet Holmes

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Most business leaders don't know how to structure their sales organizations or even themselves for maximum productivity. They don't know how to change, adapt and re-organize for new stages of growth. Whether you are a one-person army or a large-scale sales force, you can learn and leverage my golden secrets to super sales mastery.

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I first learned the secrets to building precision sales organizations while working for billionaire businessman,Sales Management Mastery: How to Turn Your Sales Effort Into a Rocket Ship of Results Articles Charlie Munger. I doubled the sales of the first company given to me in just 15 months. The second company I doubled in just 12 months. Several of the companies I took over, I doubled two and three years in a row.

Here’s how… How to Increase Productivity & Double Your Sales In most sales organizations, the sales are ad-hoc. Everyone’s running around doing what they think is best. Management sets very little standards of performance.  If you want to achieve maximum productivity and double your sales in less than 12 to 15 months, you must think like a scientist. You must plan of every aspect of your sales process down to the smallest detail.  Here Are My Top Ideas to Help You Create Your Step-By-Step Battle Plan for Sales Success:

1.  Prospecting Stage  Do you have minimum standards for the types of accounts your salespeople should go after?  Does every rep have some “dream clients” they chase constantly and relentlessly? What is the minimal size accounts should your reps be going after?  Did you establish the minimum number of accounts your team will go after (per rep)? How much time each day is going to be dedicated to this effort? Did you set a minimum amount of rejections your team will face per client? Make sure you include in your battle plan what your sales reps should do after each rejection and how this process is going to be monitored?  If you don’t set standards here, 52% of all salespeople will give up after a single rejection. Yet studies show it takes 8.4 rejections today to get the client to at least meet you.  What will be your sales reps first approach? The second? The Third? What do you say if you get the prospect on the phone right away? What are your procedures for getting around gatekeepers and assistants?  

2. The sales call.  What are your sales reps going to present?  What are the top five strategic objectives you want to achieve from every interaction with every buyer?  What and how many questions are they going to ask?  How will your reps own personal credibility?   The sales call is a terrific strategy 99.9% o companies never address on purpose. Have you seriously sat down and talked about the sales call and planned out each aspect? Did you practice it, role-play it and polish it to a fine luster? Are you leaving nothing to chance?  For every company I work with, I make them plan every inch of the sales call. I tell my clients to think of sales like a war. Marketing with direct mail, advertising, trade shows and Internet Marketing are like your long range bombing. They soften the market and make it more receptive.  Your salespeople are your foot soldiers. When they get into hand-do-hand combat, how well do you want them trained? How many scenarios do you want to address in advance? By perfecting every aspect of the sales phone call, my clients slaughtered companies four tines their size! 

3. The actual pitch for the product or service.  What’s your pre-emptive strategy to block competitors? What’s going to motivate your prospects to buy right now? Pretend you had to present to all your prospects all at once, what kind of experience would that be? Are you ready right now? If not, your sales process is sloppy.  Sorry, but it’s true. I plan out the sales opportunities to the letter. I know exactly what I’d say if you put all my prospects in a room all at once. Figure it out, then role-play it.  

4. The offer.  Creating a compelling offer is an art form. Can you offer something for free that gets you deep into your clients’ world? Can you offer a free audit related to your type of product or service?  Can you sweeten the inducement to buy with a bonus or free gift?  I have a client who recently added an MP3 Player to the offer and it increased his sales by 22% overnight. As a bonus, I give away spectacular additional training programs as an inducement to buy my primary offers.  Role-play your offer again and again until the reps do it with ease and complete comfort.  

5. The follow up.  Now it’s time to continue the bonding process. In this stage you must recognize and plan your objectives after a sales interaction? Do you want to get referrals? Do you want to keep the client coming back again and again? How are you going to build a bond? Did you get emails addresses? Can you open a relationship that is so worth having they can’t say no? What’s follow up step one, step two, step three and so on?  Train Your Sales Reps to Act More Like Top Producers That said, the procedures, role-playing, constant training and working on your sales process and not just in it, can help even regular salespeople perform like top producers. If you’re not leading, you can’t close. There’s a war in today’s business world. It’s called sales. Ad, if you want to win the war and get more market share you must get yourself some true warriors. You need top producers.

Top producers respond perfectly to rejection by becoming more effective. They become more aggressive when someone is brushing them off.

They’re more persuasive if someone isn't buying.  Top Performers know that the sales process is a science. They understand that they must operate like scientists, constantly moving toward the sale. So start drilling down like a scientist each and every aspect of your sales process.