SOS - Save Our Sales rep

Do we, as women, need to take responsibility for the fact that we earn on average 80 cents for every dollar that men earn?

An article at MSNBC today talks about the pay gap and very interesting research about women professionals, in this case veterinarians.  It seems women are more likely to make accomodations based on ability to pay, and desire to create or strengthen relationships.  Men in the same study offered the same fee no matter what the circumstances.  One thing the article didn’t report on was whether this was a successful strategy for the women professionals - did they have longer relationships, greater client retention than their male peers? 

This article struck a strong chord because women sales reps are frequently making the same decision, based on our experience.  Like the women in the study, are you leaving 15-20% more money on the table than your male counterparts?

Bottom Line Question:  Are you giving away margin to secure or enhance a relationship that doesn’t exist?  Are you lowering your fees and prices in an effort to be liked or to help out a client in trouble?  How is that working for sustained business growth? 

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/ConsumerActionGuide/WomenCreatingPayGap.aspx?vv=400&GT1=8473

Truth:  Selling is exhilarating, challenging, complex and a never ending puzzle even if you have all the infrastructure, leads and client support you could imagine.  But an effortless road to riches it definitely is not.

Choose big ticket complex sales as a career only if you:

• Are creative
• Have a strong drive to succeed
• Are blessed with endless stamina
• Don’t necessarily need or want a personal life at this stage
• Have very strong boundaries to go with your excellent management skills 
• Enjoy excellent diplomatic skills
• A manager or business owner with decent communication and management skills

There is very good money to be made as a sales professional, but you will earn every penny with long days, travel, frustration and infrastructure or growth challenges.  You will also rarely be bored.

When you think about selling is it a career or is it just a job? Are you putting in your time, treading water? Or are you continually improving yourself, getting training, hanging out with the seasoned professionals?

If this is just a job, the odds are that you find doing sales, especially solution sales, long term, big ticket or diagnostic selling to be a tough course at best, or a nightmare at worst. If you are not in this profession for the long haul, get out early and save yourself a ton of grief. If you’re here for the duration, get training from a number of different mentors and advisors. Industry experts say top performers in sales consistently:

• Read books or listen to audio programs regularly on sales, leadership or related business topics
• Attend sales, team building or leadership training at least once or twice per year
• Have a mentor and/or sales coach to guide them through the rough waters

The top performers have invested as much time and money into their professional development as an accountant or an attorney. If you’re not investing in your professional growth, if you’re waiting for your manager or your company to invest in you, you may find this a long wait. If you need new skills and cash flow is tight, many sales training organizations have payment plans available, though they may not advertise it.

Bottom Line: Invest in yourself and your career. You’re worth it!

 

 

When working with prospects/clients, you have the right to ask the tough questions:

• What criteria will drive your decision?
• How is this kind of decision typically made in your organization?
• What budget have you set aside for this project?
• Who is typically involved in decisions like this?
• What are the bottom-line consequences of not making this decision?

Failure to ask these questions graciously is one of the reasons so many sales professionals are in trouble. And it’s one of the big reasons sales forecasts are so far off. As a sales executive, ask yourself which questions your team are failing to ask.

Bottom Line: Start asking the tough questions, graciously, and see the difference.

 

 

One of the great myths of professional selling, especially relationship selling, is that we have to get the client to like us in order to get the sale. So if we don’t get the sale, they hate us? We have no value as their friend, companion? We’re chopped liver!

Prospects don’t have to like us to do business with us. They do have to respect us. They can do so without being our bosom buddy. The friendship can come after the respect. The land we bought for our future location in New Mexico is a perfect example. The team there earned our respect. We’re a long way from being blood brothers. The sales person we worked with was a true professional. She did a great job on:

• Diagnostics
• Open ended questions
• Discovering our budget
• Getting clear on our time line
• Understanding our decision criteria and process

She also had good boundaries on what she was or was not willing to do to secure the sale. Her professionalism made me feel comfortable moving forward on a decision of this magnitude.

Bottom Line: if you’re extending your sale cycle, convincing yourself you can’t ask for the big order until the client likes you, you may be just fooling yourself.  Securing the core information listed above is one of the best ways to begin to secure client respect.  From this palce you begin to ask for the order.

 

 

Welcome to SOS, a blog designed to help save your sales representatives.  My name is Pat Schuler and I’m a Business Development Coach and Consultant, as well as a Sales Trainer with The Gemini Resources Group.  I’m going to be talking about traditional sales training and sales coaching and I’m going to be covering some topics you might find non-traditional or even controversial.  I’ll try to moderate the pet peeve and snark factors, but I’m going to play with topics that may surprise you.  This blog will be heavy on the how-to and specific models. 

The posts will be oriented toward sales managers, sales executives, and sales professionals.  One key focus will be on the critical inner game of selling or what I call Mental Stance.  What kind of mind are you bringing to your sales duties and behaviors?  Our experience has been that managing your emotions or your emotional state is the key factor that gets in the way for most sales professionals and business owners.

Posts will rarely be more than 250-300 words, and should take you less than two minutes to read.

I intend to have fun and I hope you will, too.