Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 - (Page 24)

cover story the final decision is much easier. “You have given the client several easy steps to the decision rather than asking them to make one big leap,” Khalsa concludes. Doing fewer things better all ties together. “If we are skilled at questioning and listening, and if we only invest time where dialog is robust and not shut off, we better understand the clients’ beliefs,” he explains. “If we can demonstrate how we can meet those beliefs better than the alternatives—do nothing, do it themselves, do it with someone else—we have made it easy for the client to buy.” Say you followed the old model. By this time you’ve gone after 100 or more accounts … and closed two. By following Khalsa’s “do less, better” model, you should have only contacted five companies, but because they are your five best opportunities, you should have closed three or four of those deals. You then begin again with the next top five. One powerful advantage to Khalsa’s approach is that both buyers and sellers simply like it better. Salespeople have less rejection and more success. Customers interact with more-knowledgeable and better-prepared salespeople who were referred by someone they know. Sellers and buyers work on equal footing; neither is willing to waste time on things that do not make sense. Coaching: the “How Button” A logical question for Mahan is, “If the ‘How’ is so important, how do you develop it?” Training is certainly one option, and FranklinCovey is well recognized for its effectiveness in that field. But Khalsa offers a caveat: “One-time exposure—even to worldclass training—is often necessary, yet insufficient, to produce sustainable results for an organization. Training needs reinforcement, repetition and reward. “Combining training with ongoing coaching greatly magnifies and accelerates revenue growth today, and does it in a way that leads to even greater rewards in the future. The question is, who is going to coach?” An outside coach is certainly one option. Khalsa’s Sales Performance Group has tightly linked coaching to its sales training. Nonetheless, “Sales leaders are a great source of coaching, and yet are very underutilized in that role,” he says. “They don’t have the time, and while they are good as selling, they haven’t been trained as coaches.” Many of today’s sales leaders find themselves in management positions because they had a lot of success at selling. They are then burdened with reporting and administrative tasks that take them away from what they do best. Besides, having top-notch selling skills is not the same thing as having great teaching skills. “In most companies, sales leaders have never been trained to lead,” Khalsa says.“They are just expected to magically transfer their successful sales methods to their teams somehow, and that’s not a very effective approach. “How much sense does it make when a company takes a person out of the field, saddles them with administrative work, and dramatically changes their responsibilities without coaching and assistance? All the company has done is quickly changed an asset into a liability.” Khalsa suggests the role of coaching not be held hostage by the necessities of managing. The goal is to help salespeople make more sales today in a way that will generate even more sales in the future. Either engage outside coaches to meet this objective or give sales leaders the training necessary to be talented coaches. “Who coaches the coaches?” Khalsa asks. “Giving the sales leader a coach is extremely high leverage. Improve one sales leader and you impact many individuals— and huge amounts of profitable revenue.” s&mm www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com photo by Annika Khalsa http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Brian Tracy University Sales Marketing Management Cover Story: Lessons From the Master Maximum Mobility Training Technology Incentives/Motivation Travel/Meetings Book Excerpt - Value Merchants The Way I See It - End the Discounting Habit

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

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