Author: Sienna Anderson

Poor Accountability — The Poison for a Sales Team

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
Try to think about the five most prominent, most successful names in your industry today. With their standing with your industry’s market nowadays, it’s easy to assume that they’re already doing everything right and they have the luxury of keeping their place no matter what they do. However, before they all got there, it’s inevitable that they also faced numerous challenges and problems during their growth. This is especially true for their sales department. As one of the most dynamic teams of any organisation, the sales team are always on the move to close deals and convert leads into customers. This exact nature, however, is what also makes them one of the likeliest to face problems over time. While some problems can be relatively small and harmless, others do need additional time, effort, and expertise from your team. In either instance, however, they should still have a strong sense of responsibility and accountability to accept these problems and work on them efficiently.

The Effects of the Lack of Accountability

One of the most tell-tale signs of lack of accountability in your sales department is when the staff within it starts blaming each other, the market, the products or services, or the customers for the problems they’re facing. Instead of looking internally, they begin deflecting the blame to external factors. Over the years, numerous companies have faced this issue — it’s quite a common occurrence no matter how undesirable the situation is within the owner’s expectations. Conflicts are natural in every workplace, but these unresolved conflicts can become a deadly poison for the rest of your department, too. A lack of accountability in a sales team disrupts the compatibility within the entire group. The immediate effect of this in your sales department staff is that they won’t be able to perform as well as they did before the conflict arose. This, in turn, affects your sales figures, as it stands to be the biggest risk for decline. Over time, the conflict spreads across the entire department. If your organisation is small and tight-knitted, it may even spread across the whole workforce. This affects the overall efficiency of the company, which results in deteriorated quality. Customers you’ve retained over the years eventually stop coming back due to these failures on your part and the organisation is left with the inability to acquire more customers.

Solving the Issue

Poor accountability in an organisation can occur for various reasons. It can be due to poor company culture and staff structure, which makes salespeople more likely to blame each other or someone else when they face setbacks. It can also develop due to poor management. Without positive and motivation management, conflicts arise, and the employees will become embittered when under this kind of management. Luckily, building a sense of accountability doesn’t require business owners and their salespeople a degree in rocket science. Here are some tips you and your team can get started with:

  • Clear up job roles and responsibilities

People can blame others if their roles and responsibilities are not clear enough. Remove confusion about job roles by explicitly defining them. If there are gaps or new roles and processes, identify them and account for them as well.

  • Develop a sense of ownership

When employees feel they are closer to the company, they become more accountable for their professional actions. Conduct team building exercises and programs to bring your sales team closer to your company. Coaching programs can not only help develop the skills and responsibilities of your sales team but also help them understand their company better. When proper structures, cultures, and management have been set, the more your people grow and take ownership of their actions and mistakes. To learn more about KONA’s Sales Training, Call Centre Training, Customer Service Training and Sales Management training in Sydney and around Australia, telephone us at 1300 611 288 or email us at info@kona.com.au.

Stop Hunting Unicorns! (Are They the Customers You Want?)

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson

When it comes to proper strategy-making, one of the factors that you need to determine to effectively conceptualise the entirety of your campaign is the market you’re targeting.

In other words, what kind of customers you’re aiming to sell your products or services to.

This will significantly dictate what tone you should go for with your sales pitches, what kind of behaviour you should expect, and what improvements you must implement based on their problems.

When you manage to pinpoint the correct niche or attract the right customers, you can expect that your business will experience exponential growth in many aspects. This is a scenario that most entrepreneurs dream of achieving because it solidifies their chances of success and keeps their company afloat.

However, knowing if you’re targeting the right people can be a hit or miss — often because you’re trying instead to reach for the unicorns.

What are unicorns?

Generally speaking, unicorns are mythical beasts that are majestic in appearance yet hard to catch or even catch a glimpse of.

They are often attributed to having mystical abilities that make them valuable for anyone who manages to find or befriend one. Their roots trace back to the ancient seals of the Indus Valley Civilisation, accounts of natural history from the ancient Greeks, and even in the Catholic Bible.

In more modern and business-related contexts, a “unicorn” is a descriptive term for an individual that is not unlike the term’s origin. It refers to someone who exceeds expectations and is almost a perfect choice, yet is difficult to catch or keep, often due to a mismatch between the business and the individual.

It is a term most commonly used in human resources, which Divestopedia describes as “when those who are responsible for hiring candidates have impossible expectations […] In other words, human resources is looking for a mythical candidate (i.e. a unicorn), rather than facing reality.”

But what does this have to do with your customers?

Based from the connotation of the term “unicorn” in human resources, we can define “unicorn” customers as those who seem to be the perfect match for your business, the ones that you should be targeting with maximum effort because they’re the ones that fit your ideal customer profile.

However, like in human resources, they are the type of people that you’re most likely wasting your time finding, because of impossible expectations that may not be grounded on the reality of your business or the niche they belong to.

While it seems ideal to hunt for them as they’re the people that you believe need your products or services the most, again, you may be targeting the wrong ones. Simply because, like the unicorn of legends, they don’t exist. Businesses that hunt for customers that are unicorns are akin to companies looking to hire unicorns — they often have these expectations merely because they “are rushed, lazy, or actually have no idea” about what they want.

When you hunt for unicorns, you’re essentially wasting your time, as:

(1) They don’t even exist, and

(2) Even if they do, they aren’t the customers you would want despite thinking that they are.

Already, you’re setting yourself up for failure by forming your whole strategy around the idea of attracting the customers that your business doesn’t need.

How to avoid targeting unicorns and start hunting customers that you want and need

The answer to this dilemma is simple: define your target market realistically by making an in-depth analysis of the different factors that go into forming this profile. Base your ideal customer profile around your reality and facts backed by research, not on expectations. You can start creating a good image of what your customer should be like by employing these steps:

  • Look at your current customer base

If your business has been operating for some time, your best resource for customer profiling is your existing customer base. What kind of people are they? Why do they buy from you? Which ones bring in the most business? People like them are likely to buy from you, too.

  • Check out your competition

Whether you’re old or new to the market, you can always benefit from observing what your competition is doing and whom they are targeting. By analysing what they’re up to and what kind of customer base you have, you can find an opportunity to find a niche they haven’t touched on before and base your customer base off that.

  • Analyse what you can offer, and who’d be interested in it

When you have a product or service, it means that you already have a solution to an existing problem. It’s just a matter of matching it to the right customers that need what you can give to them. To do this, make an objective analysis of what you have, and then make a list of people that most likely need the benefits that your solution gives them. This is an excellent base to start from when building a more specific customer profile.

  • Define your demographics and psychographics

Think about the following factors to give you a more concrete idea on what kind of customers you need to target: age, location, gender, income level, education level, marital or family status, occupation, and ethnic background. Psychographics also help build a better profile for you. Consider the following personal characteristics: personality, attitudes, values, interests/hobbies, lifestyles, and behaviour. These aspects can help you develop a clearer image of the kind of people you’re looking for.

  • Evaluate your decision

Once you’ve defined your target market, ask yourself these questions to see if you’ve managed to reach a set of reasonable expectations:

  • Are there enough people who fit into the criteria?
  • Will they see a need and be able to reap benefits from what I can offer?
  • Do I understand who they are and what drives their purchasing behaviour?
  • Can they afford my prices?
  • Can I easily access and contact them from my communication platforms?

Remember: It’s time to stop hunting for unicorns because that’s detrimental to your business’ success. Instead, start looking for the ones that do exist by establishing your expectations on reality.

To learn more about KONA’s Sales Training, Call Centre Training, Customer Service Training and Sales Management training in Sydney and around Australia, telephone us at 1300 611 288 or email us at info@kona.com.au.

Contact Us

Are They Suspects or Prospects? (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
As a salesperson, it can be frustrating to realise that the person you’re pitching to in a demo or sales call isn’t serious about the transaction. Worse, you just wasted all that time and effort to someone who wasn’t going to close the deal when you could’ve pursued someone else entirely and made a successful lead. When you are selling a product or service to a new client, they can fall into a specific type depending on their likelihood of buying from you. While marketers do vary on how many categories a new client can be classified under, two types are consistent with every list: suspect and prospect. Defining these two categories and knowing how to differentiate between the two can immensely help you and your sales team label leads in your sales funnel quickly and save precious time. Are They Suspects or Prospects - Infographic

Don’t Waste Time On Sales Training If Your Managers Won’t Coach!

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
The KONA Group is recognised as Australia’s leading Sales Training, Call Centre Training and Sales Management Training organisation so obviously they will say that Sales Training and Call Centre Training is crucial for your salespeople and sales managers to grow your business in 2018. However, possibly surprisingly, they will also say that training doesn’t work if your managers aren’t going to get out of the office and follow up the training with on-the-job coaching No matter how great sales training courses are, it’s entirely different when your people are out there in the field trying to influence your customers to make a decision about your products or services. The truth is, when they’re face to face with the real scenario, they will remember 20% of what they were trained on. However, through ongoing Sales Management Coaching, they will remember and action up to 80%, which generates a huge ROI from your training investment So, how do you make sure that what your sales team has learned is adopted in their day-to-day selling operations? How do you get them to make your company’s sales training stick?

Drive the Sales Coach in Your Sales Managers

Sales Coaching Is the Key. Developing your sales managers to become effective sales coaches will go a long way towards ensuring your salespeople use and profit from the training programs your company has invested in. Developing your sales managers into effective sales coaches needs more than just applying the training-the-trainer concept. Customers are buying differently to the way they did 2 years ago, definitely 5 years ago, and absolutely 10 years ago, yet so many managers and salespeople are still managing and selling the same way they always have done You’ve got to introduce your sales managers to new attitudes, new ways to get the results they’re looking for, new ways of planning and structuring their weeks and months so that their focus is on developing their people and not writing reports or handling problems. Your Sales Managers need to master the coaching techniques and approaches that will enable them to help their sales teams consistently demonstrate the skills and sales processes learned during the Australian sales training workshops. Then if they may meet initial resistance or reluctance to change old behaviours, don’t let this intimidate you. Show your sales managers ‘Why’ this is the best way for them to make a significant impact on their sales team and on their sales growth.

Sales Coaching Develops Effective Sales Teams

To ensure your salespeople apply the learnings from Australian call centre training and sales training, and put them to good use in the field, your sales managers-turned-coaches must reinforce the specific skills, key approaches and techniques embodied in the training sessions. To do this, your sales managers must:
  1. Have clear plans and actions that are expected of each of their salespeople
  2. Communicate performance expectations that their salespeople will be assessed against
  3. Provide constructive one-on-one feedback, done on an on-going basis.
  4. Provide specific feedback on how the salesperson demonstrated the essential sales techniques in real-life sales situations when in front of customers.
  5. Master themselves, the skills and approaches and use them to get the teams to rally behind major sales initiatives.

Making the Learnings from Sales Training Stick Increases Success.

Typically, your company will invest in call centre training and sales training in Australia because you need to help your sales teams sell more effectively to grow the business. To drive this as a leader, you need to lead them not just with ‘carrots and sticks’ but with an effective sales management coaching system that improves the capability of your sales managers and salespeople. That way both will continue to learn beyond the classroom and adopt the skills and techniques from the sales training workshops into the real world of selling.

KONA Group

1300 611 288

info@hbbausgroup.com.au | www.hbbausgroup.com.au

to discuss how we can help you to improve your organisation’s results.

Get Your Sales Team To Use Only Selling Techniques That Work! (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
Sales training courses are a dime a dozen. For the most part, they’re good…conceptually. Its execution though, generally sucks. It’s at this stage that the kinks and the glitches almost inevitably appear due to either, the implementing guidelines are too complex and not too specific, or the sales reps aren’t motivated enough, or in some cases, simply don’t care. You can’t have a situation like this and stay in business for long. It’ll cost your company too much.  It’ll also cost you your job. What follows are 5 tried and tested selling techniques. They work. They work because they make sense and are easy to adopt. These are no-fuss, straight-to-the-point selling approaches every salesperson should have as an integral part of his selling arsenal. Get Your Sales Team To Use Only Selling Techniques That Work! (Infographic)

Old School Sales In A Digital World

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson

Old school sales vs. new school sales. Traditional selling tactics vs. modern selling techniques. These are the highly-debated arguments that are currently circulating in the field of sales.

It cannot be denied that over the years, sales as a profession and as a business function have dramatically evolved, thanks to advancement in technology, and subsequent development of new sales tools.

However, despite the advances in selling techniques and cries of the post-salesperson age, old-school sales are still driving the energy and soul of the sales industry.

The belief among many sales leaders is that the only way for a sales rep to be successful is to get fully on board with all things new. But in truth, the best things about the new school of sales are truly pages right out of the old-school sales playbook. How so?

What is Old School Sales?

Old fashioned sales are all about meeting with your customers, getting to know and understand them, identifying their pain points and providing solutions to make those pain points go away.

It is about building trust and rapport and getting to the position where you are seen as a valuable partner and not just a vendor from whom a customer occasionally buys from.

This is the very core where all new school sales techniques are founded on, isn’t it?

The lines are separating the old and new school of sales, therefore, are no more than just illusions made by people trying to make money by telling sales reps they need to join the new school of sales.

But we can’t ignore that the world of old-school sales is shrinking, as sales technology grows. We may only be able to see our clients in person a few times a year.  

The majority of the relationships are forged via email, a once-a-year meeting, or small talk at a party. So how do we form the real trust necessary to justify a client being willing to take a risk to work with you? How does old-school sales fit in a digital world?

Old School Sales in Digital World

While there’s no absolute way to ensure the success of old-school sales, it has always been proven that time and effort go a long way. Here are some tips bring that old school sales approach in the age of social media and smartphones:

  1. Respond Quickly


    The digital world is extremely time-sensitive. Get an instant messaging account and give it out. Even if you can’t deal with all requests immediately, just acknowledging you’ve received them and that you’re on top of it goes a long way. Of course, when time gets tight, you need to prioritize, but do your best to avoid letting a client request get buried in your inbox.


  2. Be Proactive


    Own up to problems as soon as you notice them. Never will avoiding a complex client situation pay off. There’s a solution to every problem, and proactively addressing it only puts you in the driver’s seat.


  3. Keep in Touch


    While a monthly update or meeting doesn’t make sense, always try to grab lunch/coffee with your clients every so often. Keep it light, fun, genuine. Customer loyalty rapidly changes every day, and from a prospective employer’s perspective, your network is your true value, so don’t let it slip.


Overall, in the age of the internet, it’s the old school salesperson, with his or her simple techniques and ingrained relationships, that catches the client’s interest and warms their heart, and will make it possible for your business to dive deep into the great digital unknown.

If you need help in strengthening your sales techniques or want to expand your knowledge by undergoing our Corporate Sales and Management Training program, email us today at info@kona.com.au or call us at 1300 611 288.

Contact Us

Should Business Owners Get a Degree in Sales? (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
One common question that many aspiring entrepreneurs ask is if they should have a degree in sales in order to run a successful business. The truth is there is no definitive answer for that since it really depends on what stage of your career as an entrepreneur you are at. If you are just starting out in your business, and you are still quite young to have enough time to balance school and business, then a degree in sales can help you equip with the different methodologies which one cannot just immediately pick-up and implement through the day-to-day operations of the business. However, having a degree in sales is not a requirement and does not guarantee that you will be able to run a successful business. Many business owners still fail in their venture despite having multiple degrees in sales, management, and marketing. On the other hand, many notable entrepreneurs that never even earned a college degree have been able to establish successful global brands – just look at Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Should Business Owners Get a Degree in Sales? ( Infographic)

Focus on Who’s Important: Ways to Identify a Prospect from a Suspect

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
It is true that when you have a high quantity of prospects, you will never run out of people to share your opportunity and your products. However, in today’s increasingly competitive sales landscape, quality beats quantity, and so having a handful of high-quality prospects is preferred than having a bunch of low-quality leads that, at any chance, will never convert into a customer. Read on as we detail in this post what makes a quality prospect, and how to easily identify them from the haystack of low-quality “suspects” that exist in the market. Definition of Prospect: A lead which has a high probability of turning into a customer. A prospect can be an acquisition officer who is genuinely looking for an enterprise platform, or a man looking to buy a gift for his wife. They have real motivation to purchase and want to hear about your offer to make an actual purchase decision. Regardless of their motivation to buy, they still need to be convinced that your product is worth their investment. Definition of Suspect: Any person who shows the same interest as the prospect but does not have any means or intention to buy the products/services you are selling. A suspect can be an office employee who wants to impress their boss by presenting information about your solution, even if their boss does not need the solution in the first place. They can also be a website visitor who only wanted your premium content and are just sticking around to see what else you have for them.

Ways to Differentiate Prospects from Suspects

  1. Prospects Share Critical Information

On the other hand, a suspect is not looking to buy from you, which means they do not have to give you proprietary or personal information about them. If someone is genuinely looking for a solution, he or she will be willing to provide you with the details.

  1. Prospects Tell What They Need

Prospects have the genuine need for your help and will waste no time to get more information about the product/service you are selling just to address the issue at hand. Depending on the immediate nature of their need, they may even clear the schedule to set a sales demo.

  1. Prospects Have a Specific Acquisition Timeline

Another significant differentiator between a prospect and a suspect is their timeline. Prospects generally look to buy sooner rather than later. A suspect cannot tell when they will be ready to buy, and as such spending time working on that suspect can be a very expensive mistake. It is important to ask for your prospects early on and move them back to marketing if they need more time deciding.

  1. Prospects Know When to Make a Decision

Prospects know exactly what their need is all about, and the features to look for to satisfy that need. By asking the question “Have you made a purchase decision like this in the past and how did you go about it?”, you will be able to uncover better insights about them that will allow you to create a more effective sales proposal.

  1. Prospects Are the Decision Maker

If your contact keeps on referring to other people when talking about their company’s past purchase decisions, then there is a good chance that you are just talking to a suspect. As such, it is wise not to structure a good deal for a person if they are not in the position to make the final decision. If your potential customer ticks all of these boxes, then chances are they are a prospect. Now that you know how to differentiate prospects from suspects, you will now be able to increase your sales team’s productivity and improve your sales performance. If you need help in honing your salesforce’s prospecting skills or want to expand your knowledge by undergoing our Corporate Sales and Management Training program, email us today at info@kona.com.au or call us at 1300 611 288.

The What, Why and How of Sales Performance Analysis (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna Anderson
Analysing sales data is one of the most important yet often undervalued sales functions. By continually monitoring your sales performance in terms of what you are achieving vs what you are intended to realise, you will be able to keep your business stay on its financial track. If you are not measuring your sales performance yet, then you are missing the opportunity to identify where your strengths lie within your product, and which sales activities require more support, and which ones provides the greatest potential for future profitable growth. The What, Why and How of Sales Performance Analysis