Tag: business tips

6 Signs Your Sales Manager Is Failing As A Sales Coach

Posted on | by Sienna

Sales Coaching versus Sales Training - Adroit Insights

When you notice your sales team are struggling, it can be hard to pinpoint the source of the problem. Could it be that your sales manager is failing as a sales coach? If this is the case, it can lead to many problems in the business. How will you know if it is the sales manager or another factor affecting performance?

Here, we will tell you 6 signs that your sales manager could be failing as a sales coach.

6. They Are Not Motivational
Salespeople need inspiration and motivation to deliver exceptional results. There are countless ways a sales manager can motivate their team, they can offer incentives, create competitions or even verbal encouragement. If a sales manager is not motivating the team and getting them excited to sell, the team will quickly lose their drive and may even feel frustrated. 5. They Are Not Teaching Their Team About New Products A good sales manager will ensure they are setting aside time to teach their team about new products and services. If the team are not educated about a product, how will they sell it? Salespeople need to know not only what the product is, but also the benefits and features, in order to be able to sell it.
4. They Are Focusing On The Wrong Salespeople
Typically, sales managers will focus their attention on their highest and lowest performing team members, when in fact it is those in between that need the most time. Your best salespeople are already doing well and if your underperforming salespeople are consistently underperforming, this may not be the role for them. The salespeople in the middle of the spectrum can go either way. If the middle salespeople are not given the right tools and training, they will drop to the bottom. With the right coaching however, they will likely rise to the top.
3. They Are Results-Focused, Not People-Focused
If your sales manager’s only concern is successful sales and not helping the sales team, this is a problem. Sales coaching encompasses observations, uncovering strengths and weaknesses within the team and helping the team through them. A successful sales coach will focus on improving each salesperson’s performance, rather than just their mistakes.
2. They Are Not Coaching Regularly
Studies show that 65% of employees say the training and learning opportunities provided to them positively impacts their engagement in the workplace. When team members are engaged, they are more likely to take on more and ultimately become better at what they do. In order to improve skills and learn new techniques sales coaching needs to be used consistently, not just when a new salesperson joins the team.
1. Your Salespeople Do The Following:
  • Miss their KPI’s often
  • Business only comes from existing “friendly” customers or clients
  • Don’t prospect or generate enough fresh leads
  • They don’t do enough Quality Sales Activity
  • Are uncomfortable speaking with decision makers in Leadership or Senior Management positions
  • Are only comfortable talking about problems, price, and product specs
  • Miss opportunities in their Pipeline due to not chasing or revisiting leads consistently
  • Have a low Lead to Sale Conversion Ratio
  • Don’t generate enough repeat business from clients
  • Blame the market, products or services, customers, accounts, their managers, or the price of petrol when they miss target, as “It’s not my fault.”

Can you recognise any of these traits in your sales manager? If so, it may be time to consider investing in a sales coaching for your team to help them reach their full potential.

  click here to contact the KONA Group red button or call 1300 611 288  
Manifest success

“That Which You Manifest Is Before You.”

Posted on | by Sienna

This is one of the most profound statements I have ever heard.

It is in one of my favourite books – The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.

Such a simple concept, yet so true: “That which we manifest is before us”; we are the creators of our own destiny.

Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

I think this is wonderful … and yet scary at the same time.

So all my successes I created?  Fabulous!  But wait a minute – if I’m not as successful as I want to be, then I created that too?  Horrors!  And my absolute failures, I created those too?  That’s a worry.

But let’s look at the positive.  We can create our own future.  It’s like The Secret. “What you think about and thank about, you bring about.” And other smart sayings: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me.” And the classic Michael Jackson line “I’m starting with the man in the mirror…take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”

We all have that potential to be M.A.D. (to make a Difference).  It starts with deciding what you want, what will make you happy, what’s important to you – and then writing it down.

So that’s Step 1: Write it down, record it, post it, tell someone about your plans.  Commit your dreams to paper (or the world-wide web) and it will become reality.

Step 2: Create stepping stones to get you over the troubled waters and to the other side – break it down into bite-sized pieces, so that you can achieve (and celebrate) small goals along the way.  Measure the steps that you are taking.  I love To-Do lists where I can tick off the things that I have accomplished each day.

Step 3: Ensure that you make your dreams ARE achievable.  After all, you DO want to be able to applaud your effort and not finding that you are depressed by every little obstacle in the river of life that may come your way.

Step 4: Is it possible to be CEO of a company that you just started with within a year?  Probably not! (Although for some Gen Y and Gen Xs that’s exactly what they want … and expect.  But that’s another conversation altogether!) Be realistic about your wants and needs.

Step 5: Put a date on your dreams.  Goals are dreams with a timeline.

Hmmm, seems like I’ve just written down S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting.  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.

Well then, let’s start to manifest our destiny!

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Sales Performance & Sales Training

Posted on | by Sienna

How to Boost More Revenue Through Strategic Sales Training

sales performance & sales training kona

Do you often perceive sales training as a cost-intensive event? Or that once-in-a-while opportunity where your organisation comes together to try and fix what’s broken?

Instead, what if you saw sales training as –

  • A strategic investment
  • And a proactive exercise that boosts faster and more sales?

Sales Training is a Revenue Generating Activity

If managers are able to make the connection between sales coaching and higher sales performance, then sales training becomes a revenue generating activity, not a ‘dreaded’ cost-intensive event.

Clearly, there is not one sales manager who wouldn’t then agree that sales training or coaching is crucial.

However, a recent survey carried out by Viddler revealed that 147 out of 150 sales executives agreed that “poor sales coaching” was a major weakness of most sales companies.

Another recent survey by Highspot reported that out of 79% of companies who engage in some form of strategic sales enablement process, 64% indicated ‘sales training must be improved.’

Engage in customised sales training to suit their business

Perhaps it’s time for sales managers to begin to reassess their sales enablement programs to ensure they are engaging in a more customised sales training suiting their unique business structure.

They need to take action, measure performance through good constructive feedback, and turn information into action.

Sales managers need to take action

Sales Managers should take inventory of the effectiveness and sales capability of their sales people so that the sales training can be customised to them, and not a generic ‘off the shelf’ course.

Measure performance through good constructive feedback

This can be done by assessing the gaps between where the business is right now and where you want it to be, or by benchmarking against competitors. A number of sales performance metrics can be used to measure as well as improve sales performance and grow revenue.

A few key performance metrics to focus on should include but not limited to:

  • Time spent selling, (to identify and eliminate possible sales blocks)
  • Lead response time (to ensure that your sales people are responding to leads quickly and efficiently).
  • In addition, standard size of a closed deal is also an important metric to help measure and eliminate deals that are not worth pursuing —sometimes sales people prefer to spend time pursuing small deals because they are easier to get.

Turn information into action

The ability to transform information into action that can add value to your business is the crux of business intelligence (BI). The secret to getting actions such as boosting sales, improving customer service skills, and making intelligent decisions, is having the right information.

All the information that you’ve amassed from constructive feedbacks, customer insights, sales training programs and more should be put into action.

This quote from biomedical informatics and biotechnology entrepreneur, Atul Butte, just about sums it: “Hiding within those mounds of data is knowledge that could change the life of a patient, [business] or change the world.”

KONA Group runs a series of different training programs:  sales training, sales management training; call centre training; customer service training and more — all customised to YOUR strategy, YOUR industry, YOUR people, YOUR customers, YOUR outcomes and results.

Contact KONA Group on 1300 611 288 or email info@kona.com.au to discuss how you can improve your business results.

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What are the Considerations When Hiring Sales People?

Posted on | by Sienna

Hiring the best sales professionals for your company is not a task that anyone can administer.

What most executives don’t know is that hiring salespeople can be expensive, considering that they have to be trained first before they can be deployed in the field.

Companies typically spend more on hiring in sales than they do anywhere else in their business.

So how do you improve the returns on this investment in hiring salespeople?

Developing criteria of what you are looking for, such as experience, industry contacts, and knowledge of your product and the market will help you dissect the eligibility of a prospect sales professional. Ideally, this person would be good at building a sales force, so they should be a player-coach as well.

If you are ready to hire a professional salesperson, you need to develop criteria and a list of questions to ask. In this post, we will give you different tips on how you can start hiring a sales professional. Here are a few considerations:

Visible Sales Professional Experience

One good way of knowing if one is legitimately appropriate at being a sales professional in your company is with their experience in this field.

Your recruitment team should develop a process wherein sales experience will be readily seen and evaluated during application; casual questions that uncover their level of sales expertise during the initial interview and written exams that have actual sales situations that can show how effective they are in making sales decisions are just ones of the techniques that you can integrate.

Clear Understanding of Sales Process

Once you’ve determined if their previous sales experiences is sufficient enough to match your company needs, it is now the time to know if they have proper knowledge about the intricacies sales process. You may ask during the interview the methods they go through when engaging a potential customer, such as:

  • Do they use a database of contacts and write to prospects and then follow up with a phone call?
  • How many calls do they believe it takes before they get a meeting, and how many sessions until they get a sale?

Another way to gauge the capability of a budding salesperson to close sales is to give them an object or concept and see if they can get you to buy.

Thorough Personality Assessment

It might be complicated to assess the personality of an individual at the first interview. But, if your company keeps up with the ever-growing profiling of professional salespeople in the business industry, assessing will be an easy task for you.

Research based upon thousands of exit interviews shows that a primary cause of poor performance and turnover is poor job fit. People, especially salespeople with a variable pay component, become frustrated when they hire for tasks that are a poor fit with their skills and preferences. That is why nowadays, assessing first the personality of an individual plays a huge part in how they are capable of handling the position as a part of your sales team.

Search for Growth Potential

If your goal in recruiting sales staff is to build a high calibre sales team, you need individuals who are equipped to scale the career ladder. These individuals will fill leadership roles on your sales team and eventually work their way to positions in sales management and beyond.

The sales industry is continuously adapting with different techniques that most consumers prefer when closing a deal, so it is only wise to hire an individual that is willing to grow with you as a company that provides great service and experience to its customers.

Contact KONA Customised Training and Consulting today and let us help you assemble of professional salespeople that deliver results for your company through our Sales and Management Training. Contact us today to learn more about our services. 

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Asking Questions Shows You Care. But Why?

Posted on | by Sienna

Most companies aspire to build a brand that potential buyers will support for the long haul. But, as salespeople look at the potential needs of their customers, they will realise that building customer relationship is imperative for their customers to trust and support their brand.

Building relationships is vital to understanding and addressing your customers behaviour, needs, complaints, etc.

Business to customer relationships are the reason why specific products are made, and why some services are integrated. In such more precise definition, sustaining a good relationship with your existing customers and potential ones require a lot of communication.

One way of communicating effectively with your customers is by asking probing and useful sales questions to them when presenting your products and services.

Read on as we discuss in this post how formulating different sales questions can help you build a healthy relationship with your clients.

1. It Helps Build Trust 

Trust can be a difficult thing to achieve, especially if you have clients that are sensitive and have high expectations with your brand. Trust is the foundation of a great client, to gain this kind of relationship, salespeople should focus on what your company promotes rather than pleasing clients with false information about your company as well as being complicated.

A clear and genuine motive behind every probing question you will ask can help you better understand your customer’s situation, and thus allowing you to provide a more tailored solution for their needs.

In order to build trust, you must show respect and assurance when asking a question to your clients. This includes being polite when asking if they are comfortable for some changes with the service they want, or if they are satisfied with the service that your company had given, etc.

2. It Shows That You’re Proactive

Asking the right questions can also help you respond to your customer’s concerns as quickly as possible, helping you build the reputation for speed of response and a reliable source of information in the process as well.

By asking questions, you will be able to address any concerns and objections from customers that may arise during product presentations. An effective method to know the concerns of your customers is to ask them about their perception of your products or service.

3. It Can Help You Exceed Expectations

Sales questions will not only provide you with the information you need to offer the right solution but valuable insights on how you can provide them with a service delivery experience that exceeds their expectation as well.

At times, some of our clients might have a variety of comments about our business. Looking through these different comments and understanding what they all imply can allow you to adjust service level with each type of client, ensuring that each one of them receives a service that matches their preference and needs.

4. It Keeps Your Customer Engaged with Your Brand

With technology, there are more ways to begin conversations with your customers than ever before. There are many online tools and social media outlets you can use to reach customers. Use your resources wisely; this predicts how well you manage your priorities in creating a good relationship with your clients.

Questioning is essential to building a good and healthy relationship with your clients; this enables you to provide the right product and service, establish a good reputation among your prospective clients, and ultimately retain more loyal customers in the long run.

Contact us today to learn more about how our Custom Sales Training program can help you build a good relationship with your clients.

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Do Your Team’s Presentations Turn Off Your Customers?

Posted on | by Sienna
In business, some problems are more peculiar than others, and often the cause of such issues is easily fixed, but not always easy to detect. At least this was what one of our sales training specialists found with a client we worked with last year A leading national consumer goods distributor was able to open-up an unfocused problem that a company suffers from their sales team. Their sales team seemed to have success with small clients but were unable to win many big accounts. As a result, most of their sales were from small clients, and their cost of sales was rising. The senior management had completed a cause and effect analysis, but the root cause still eluded them. Based on this they asked our sales training specialists for an ‘outsider’s eye’ to review their whole sales process to get to the root of the problem. This assessment made things crystal clear, and we found that apart from inferior questioning skills, they had missed something elementary: poor presentation skills. As was the norm of this industry, big clients were given a presentation as part of the initial sales pitch. A good impression meant an opportunity to take the bid further; a poor presentation prematurely ended the chance.    With this experience of having dilemmas acquiring sales, we have come up with the prominent outcomes that a company can suffer from.

What happens when this is the case?

  •    Full potentialities cannot be realised – Even if they are 100% loyal to your business, small clients can provide you with only so much activity. If your portfolio doesn’t include a mix of large and small clients, your costs of sales and supply will continue to escalate, and profits diminish.
  •    Poor presentation skills lead to poor conversion rates – Hard as your sales team tries, if they fail to break into big accounts, slowly but surely their confidence starts to erode. So much so that they lose hope of converting a more significant opportunity and continue to spend their time with smaller accounts. This, in turn, becomes a decreasing spiral of missed sales opportunities and declining margins.   
  •    Fewer opportunities to grow – Employees fail to move ahead professionally as career opportunities in a stagnant or slow-growing company become few and far between.
In doing this in-depth study about how sales team acquires sales, detecting the problem is not only the remedy that we can get but also, how to avoid and solve sales problems when they arise.

How to solve this issue?

A turnaround is possible, mainly if you use professional and experienced sales training specialists to guide you. In this case, solving the issue was more comfortable than finding it. We introduced a customised sales training course in Sydney and Melbourne, tailored to their business, customers and products, (not an off the shelf, by the standard course’). These ‘In-house’ professional sales training courses helped their team to learn and master the necessary presentation skills to improve sales, which, while not difficult to determine and master, their importance had been taken far too lightly. Excellent presentation skills not only position your team professionally but also show your customers what you can do for them, relative to their specific needs Contact KONA today on 1300 611 288 or Glenn@KONA.com.au to discuss how Hearts and Minds™ Selling will help your sales team achieve their KPIs.

Is “Always Be Closing” Strategy Still Relevant for Your Business?

Posted on | by Sienna

Some industry experts believe that the mantra of using ‘Always Be Closing’ concept is becoming unfit to use for sales strategy. ‘Always Be Closing’, or ‘ABC’ is a familiar phrase to salespeople, made iconic by Alec Baldwin in the 1992 film, Glengarry.

Its since become the go-to line for two camps: Those who firmly believe in its power to drive action, and those who feel that it takes sales back to the dark ages.

Today, as fast as how technology can get different consumers, it is genuinely a norm that different unique sales techniques are being made and some old techniques come to old.

Is “ABC” strategy still relevant for your business today?

A study by CSO Insights indicates successful salespeople spend at most, 35% of their time selling or “closing.” In this article, we will review certain points on how relevant “Always Be Closing” can be for different businesses:

  • Confirms Buyer Commitment – Regardless of which stage you are currently in the sales process, continually and respectfully confirming your prospect’s commitment is smart and proactive. The “ABC” strategy starts from setting your first meeting with prospective buyers that gives an interest with your products and services. Even though it is just the first meeting, confirming their interest and willingness to know more about your products and services early on will allow you to determine whether they are actually serious in making business with you. If they show otherwise, then you will be able to move on to your next prospect and start selling again.
  • Mobility to Adapt – Always be closing may seem to deteriorate and become old for some salespeople, but, the idea of “ABC” can take on a new meaning in today’s hyper-connected mobile world. Work is no longer a place, and salespeople no longer have to physically be in their prospect’s office to build, nurture and develop relationships. Mobility for sales is bringing new meaning to “Always Be Closing,” where you can further the sales on any device.
  • Influences Social Selling – With the active use of consumers with different social media platforms in their everyday activity, it seems that “ABC” has its way of bringing a new flair for acquiring more sales. Social media enables sales professionals to build and execute their own variation of ABC but in a more engaging and meaningful way. As such, one salesperson may still consider using “ABC” as a linearised step in creating a new sales strategy for their campaigns.
  • Creates an Interactive Mode of Communication – As mentioned earlier, it is no doubt that modern technology is gradually taking its course to change the view of most salespeople with their strategies. Still, “ABC” serves as the foundation of the new age of interactive sales in which both the customer and salesperson can engage more efficiently and easily. ‘Always Be Closing’ comes to a new way of the collaborative and modern view of what it promotes from the later years; leaving no physical, emotional, and technological barriers to closing deals.

It is truly alarming that change seems to act fast and change the views of every consumer that is loyal to your service; but, always remember that sales are not a flash card game that everyone can efficiently perform. It is still about how you close a deal with assurance and effectiveness of your sales strategy.

‘Always Be Closing’ may seem to wash all down its great skin, but today, salespeople still rely on the effective and sharp usage of this strategy. This strategy did not fade, nor come to the grave of use; rather “ABC” adapts to the modernized needs of today’s consumers.

If you want to learn the modern application of “Always Be Closing” strategy in sales, you may contact KONA Customised Training and Consulting to let your sales team be trained and exposed to different effective plan to close the sale.

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Reasons Why Your Sales Team is Not Hitting Their Target (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna

Setting a sales target is one of the most important steps for measuring the sales performance of a business.

In establishing an efficient sales team, being crystal clear about your goals keeps you growing through the years, which keeps your company on track, and drives your future success.

Hitting your Sales Target

Setting a realistic sales target is one thing, but actually hitting them is another.

Increasing competition, changing customers preferences, advancing technology, along with the strategies and tactics you implement – can all affect whether your salespeople achieve the sales goals you’ve set, or not.

Reasons Why Sales Team is Not Hitting Target - Infographic

If your sales team is having a rough time hitting their targets lately – contact KONA to discuss sales training.

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7 Reasons Why Your Sales Are Dropping

Posted on | by Sienna
Is your business experiencing a drop in sales?

Sales promotions are one of the reasons why businesses operate and acquire more leads.

But while the term sounds easy on the ears, sales promotions actually involve a high level of strategy and psychology that even the most prominent brands sometimes get wrong.

Salespeople are always creating a better plan comparing different statistics with the previous results of operations, but at times, this amount of data is not enough to situate an appropriate sales plan for a specific target.

Every salesperson fears to drop their sales because of factors that make their plans and strategy lack.

In the specific occurrence of events, we cannot control everything, let alone change itself. However, learning how to develop and adapt backup plans is effective when things go wrong with your sales.

There are a lot of factors that affect sales dropping in your business; this varies from hiring employees that have no proper training, missed competitor campaigns, the unclear input of internal and external sales, etc. But, the real question is, why does your business experience a sales drop?

Ineffective Sales Pipeline Management

Managing your sales pipeline starts with estimating incoming cash flow by looking at the analytics for existing leads and sales opportunities.

Yet, some brands fail to use useful analytics to track key metrics on how successful deals take place and how the overall pipeline growth takes place. I

Ineffective sales pipeline management can lead you to miss leads that are nearly closing to a sale, or pursue suspects that neither need your solution nor fit for your business.

Unclear Communication

Some people only listen with the intention to hear, but not with the purpose of understanding.

It is essential to have a productive relationship between different teams that handle sales to make a strategic plan to maximise sales performance.

But at times, some teams cannot show cohesiveness, resulting to a loss of sales, and being unprepared for advertising campaigns.

Lack of Sales Follow-up

Every lead that you will get during sales campaigns should be followed-up as they move through the sales pipeline.

Some companies forget to check with their leads because of the different considerations when campaigns started, but this is not a reason why you should not check yours.

According to a research, lack of sales follow-up can be costly – upwards of 10% more in revenue lost per year.

Ineffective Forecasting

Some sales representatives are too pressured with the sales drop that their campaign had experienced, and this results in changing and guessing the real data between your wins and losses.

It is best to use historical data and the right metrics to extrapolate the results of your quarterly outputs; being truthful with every detail that is enclosed with your report will give your company more accurate insight on how to adjust and create more strategic plans.

Overlooking Competition

When it comes to handling sales properly, no one is ever entitled to be comfortable, just because their leads are increasing.

Being competitive with your sales shows how dedicated and advanced your company is when it comes to performing the right strategy and plan for your consumers.

Competing brands are also stepping up their game by doing thorough research about their consumers and how they can market their brand while adapting to different trends.

If you’re not aware of what your major competitors are doing, you’re flying blind.

Look to see whether your competitors have seen an increase in sales, while you’re experiencing a decrease.

Insufficient Sales Training

The salespeople that are aware of their clients’ strategies will better focus their sales efforts; this includes DNA-ing the client.

Companies who intend to survive for the long haul should invest in sales coaching that will further improve their competency in attracting new customers and closing more leads.

Lack of Motivation

Incentives and rewards are effective motivational tools that many companies still do not use to boost their sales performance.

Motivation creates a healthy environment which then creates good outcomes resulting in the sales increase. Do not take for granted the hardships of your salespeople; it is best to practice fair treatment in every win that every person acquires for the company.

KONA Group

1300 611 288

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

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How to Sell Value Instead of Price (Infographic)

Posted on | by Sienna
Customers are willing to pay more for products and services that guarantees them significant value. Most companies, at times, are presenting their products right away without even knowing if they are really engaging with their customers. One might say that every product is just the same as the other, and it only differs with its price range; but, have you thought about how buyers also have different needs and point of view towards products? How to Sell Value Instead of Price - Infographic