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Bram Lagrou: Let's talk about an uncomfortable truth. Oftentimes I hear people complain about their sales team not having the right attitude. They're showing up to work and they're not necessarily performing really well because of their attitude. This is what certain learning and development managers or sales directors or sales managers think.
Here's what I would actually say now, from my perspective, having worked with sales teams in over 20 countries, attitude, yes, it helps, but how can we expect people to bring their best attitude when they're kind of thrown in the deep end and they're expected to perform when they're not been giving the right tools, the right words to say, and how to handle with certain challenging situations.
This is a recipe for disaster. It's predictable and it's preventable, and all you gotta do is to give people the tools to succeed, set 'em up for success [00:01:00] rather than failure in advance. And so this is where sales training can do miraculously. It is really giving people that structure the words, and it's giving them also the time to practice and rehearse.
What I call practice and drill. See sales training, if done well, will be able to help your salespeople, not just to understand themselves better, but to help them understand other people better. And let's just face it, when salespeople are going out, they're making the calls, they're going into the networking events, they're doing the one-on-one, meetings, they're doing presentations and demos and, quotes and proposals Steps in the process, especially the more it is a big ticket item and we're talking B2B chances are, there're going to be multiple steps along the way, multiple touch points, multiple meetings, multiple conversations over the phone, and so on and so forth. And all of these [00:02:00] steps basically come down to a potential to either work or not work.
So imagine now. Let's just keep it simple. Eight steps in the process, right? So one would be thinking ahead, planning your time well being, productive with time management and so on, and ensuring that time that we have, say, 40 hours a week or so times 45 weeks a year in a country like Australia.
Yes, we have a lot of holidays, which is great. And, we wanna make sure that we're productive. So we only have roughly about 1,600 hours a year. Then the question is, how is a sales professional or a business development manager going to effectively deploy or even better invest that time wisely?
Now, once again, in the absence of sales training, that helps people think strategically on how to invest their time, people are just going to do What comes to them by default. [00:03:00] Example, if you're very much of a people person, you will find reasons to have conversations with people all the time. So as a salesperson, you will pick up the phone or you'll go and see people.
That's in a nutshell what people related salespeople will do. If, however, if you are more like a transactional or more like a goal oriented salesperson, you're going to be very, very kind of almost surgical about your time. And be very protective of it, and make sure that you're invested for an optimal return.
So you're going to think transaction and therefore less relationship investment. And so you might try to make it a lot more compact than what it will require to do right by a customer. And so once again, time management, we all have our personal preferences that sneak into our weekly schedule. If we are not shown the right way on how to do it in the industry, we're in the company that we're working, [00:04:00] and the sort of big ticket items that we have an offer.
And so ideally speaking, do strategic planning in a way as a sales rep or A BDM, it's taught on how to do it. Example, when we work with organizations, we know that to make x amount of revenue a year, let's say a month or a week. We gotta bring it back to the sort of number of meetings required and a certain closing ratio and then an average dollar value.
And so we, we re-engineer basically with the end in mind, back to what an ideal work week will look like for a sales rep. This is a strategic decision and we train people on how to use that time right from the get go. This is step one or phase one, which is the planning side of things. Great sales training will then also help with the second phase, which is if you're now going to build relationships with great opportunities, we [00:05:00] know what our ideal client looks like, then we are going to find ways to get more time in front or speaking to people like that.
Call 'em strategic opportunities. And then now the question is, how are we going to. Reach out to those people, connect with those people, and have the right conversations with those people. And of course, that also includes the pitch, but now this is outreach prospecting. It's not easily done for many people because certain salespeople are very good at networking.
Other people are very good at one-on-one meetings. Other people thrive in a referral type environment. Where people are helping each other, either with, centers of influence or strategic referral partners or in environments like BNI and things like that, like referral networks. If you now know that we all have certain strengths to play for, it's great to play to them.
But again, what is the [00:06:00] right mix to reach the right people? Because the chances are that some of the best opportunities will need cold calling. And I can tell you very few people are good at cold calling. And so the question then is for the product or services that this organization now sells, what sort of prospecting methods will be a very important one to consider?
Or what prospecting mix will be important? Once again, a salesperson might be good at one thing outta three, but it still needs two to be taught. Equally in other salesperson on the same team, may be good at one other thing, but not good at the previous two. And so again, it's about providing sales training that cuts through that builds capability and that gives people not just the confidence, but to confidence to reach out in those very [00:07:00] prospecting, avenues that you know is of high value to your business.
Right, so this is prospecting phase two, but phase two now is yes, you're going to go to the networking events. Yes, you're going to potentially use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and the likes to reach out to people, or you just might pick up the phone and make strategic calls to potential high value targets.
And there's a lot of other things you can do in prospecting as well. But let's just say that these are the ones, We haven't been born in the world knowing how to do this really well, and even if we might have had previous sales and experience, it doesn't mean that we have learned over there how to do these things very well.
So prospecting, is a golden opportunity for organizations to build capability, to build skill, to build knowledge, to build, know-how, and build also cellular muscle. Cellular muscle means is that people have had the [00:08:00] chance to practice, rehearse, and drill in a safe environment where they cannot make big mistakes.
Because once you go out to multimillion dollar opportunities, you wanna make sure that they're set up for success and that they have a high likelihood of converting the deal and bringing the dollars to the bank. And so prospecting is yet another way for sales, training to really add a lot of value.
Third now is first impressions. First impressions. We all know that people judge other people like a book on the cover, and whether you like it or not, whether you think it's fair or not, it doesn't matter really because people just do. So we might as well work with that and incorporate it into our method of selling, the way we approach and develop relationships with clients and prospects and the likes.
And so here's now with the first impressions, is now a [00:09:00] golden skill whereby we learn how to read people before we even meet 'em. Ideally speaking, we do it beforehand. So this is where part of the planning. Is on profiling our key stakeholders, not just the client, the key stakeholders. 'cause the stakeholders might be a mix of multiple influencers and decision makers and users of the product or service that you are offering for people to buy.
And so if you now have certain, let's say the CFO, who needs to sign off on it, ultimately at the top. The CCEO, who needs to be the first champion to say, yes, let's go and do this. But then at a lower level, you'll have a manager, which is either a project manager or an operations manager, or the branch manager or something like that.
Guess what? There's multiple stakeholders and chances are that they won't be all of the same type, which is where profiling [00:10:00] and client psychology is essential. So now the question is, how are your people in your sales teams and your BDM teams, equipped to read people's mind to understand where they're coming from, understand what the key drivers will be for those people to either support or veto an opportunity with your business.
This is where, again, understanding where people are coming from, the needs, the wants, the buying desires. They easily will oppose, what will sound risky to them, what will potentially backfire. If you understand all that, you can beg that in into your sales process and make sure that it's effective.
Because, yes, to some extent sales is a numbers game. Most people would agree on that. I also understand that sales is a high qualitated game as well, and the higher [00:11:00] the quality is, the higher the quantity will be in terms of conversions. It's because I know what other organizations are doing with their sales training and what sort of conversions they get.
I also know what our clients are doing with our training because we teach psychology as a crash course in a practical way that moves the dial on the scoreboard. If you understand how to profile people, assess them, read them, and then treat them accordingly the way that they want to be treated, rather than how I as a salesperson would like to be treated.
Yeah, then it's obviously a lot easier for those people to feel comfortable to wanna work with us, to, support us if they're not the senior decision maker, if they're just one of the ones that will have their opinion, but it's ultimately somebody else who will decide, well, guess what? If we have three, four different stakeholders, if we read 'em all and we tread 'em all in their way, not [00:12:00] our own way.
Then the chances are that Stakeholder one, stakeholder two, stakeholder three, and stakeholder four will all say, you know what? I like how he or she handled that, how the information that they presented us and how they dealt with our questions and the challenges that we threw their way. I like it.
I'm in favor. Guess what? The more people are in favor of your product or service. The chances are that you will convert, and this is why others might be doing and might be content with 18, 19, 20, 20 5% strike rate. Whilst our clients can get it as high as 95% notice now, same amount of time, same amount of effort, one organization needs four clients or opportunities.
To get the same outcome as one of our clients might get with one, we can do three to four times more output, more [00:13:00] productivity, more sales, more revenue, more margin, more profit, with the same amount of time. Now that is working wisely, not just working harder. This was now the first impressions idea. So whether people, you know, wanna reach out over the phone.
Are about to meet up in a boardroom to do a demo, or whether they will have a one-on-one coffee meeting. I always say, plan for success. Do your due diligence. Work out who these people are rather than going in straight with a pitch. Because if you go straight with a pitch, you are a salesperson and that's how you've been seen.
If however you go in. While you tune in with the person, which is now the next stage where you actually meet up, Or you speak to them over the phone where you are building now a connection on a human level before you talk shop, your [00:14:00] opportunities will gradually increase. The doors will open more widely.
Because all people to some extent, have a certain need that if it's met, it's great. And I can tell you one thing, it's not just coming in with a straight pitch. That pitch isn't necessarily gonna meet their needs. So I think it's wisely to come prepared into a meeting and seek for a way to connect, but prepare for how you connect.
Because too often I see people that are just relying, or what I call winging it in the moment. They rock up and they just try to figure something out while they're there. But guess what? While they're there, it's prime time. It has cost of business marketing. You know, the call center and so on and so forth, it's cost the business a lot of time and [00:15:00] money to generate an opportunity to have a chat to a potential client.
And so if a salesperson or a BDM then just shows up unprepared, trying to build rapport and goodwill while ringing it. It's too late for many. Some people, as in terms of clients, have an attention span that is like this. And if you finally caught an audience with them, please don't waste their time.
Make sure that you instantly connect because you've done your due diligence right from the get go. Due diligence. I see too often organizations that do product knowledge training with their sales reps and give a little bit of an idea what the sales process looks like. But then once that's done, go and do it.
And then there's no further sales training for a very long time, apart from maybe once when they do have a sales conference or something, [00:16:00] or maybe they finally thought of, oh, let's just do a quick one day training session or something like that. Guess what? It doesn't cut it. Sales training, the best organizations, they do sales training all the time.
They do short snippets every week, almost like a quick 20 minutes, 30 minute zoom call, something like that. And then they would have regularly in-person events as well, whether it's for half day drills or bootcamps. And then also, your monthly. for longer sales meetings, your quarterly ones, and then of course also your sales conference, which should at least be annual, if not bi-annually or, sorry, half annually.
that's a better way to look at it. But notice now sales training is something that becomes part. The daily operating system, and I believe that, and I've seen Tom and Tom again that the best organizations have an operating system for sales training. They have weekly, monthly, [00:17:00] quarterly, half yearly and full yearly scheduled events in advance with specific content and exercises that are being drilled.
So there's training and there's coaching. There's practice, rehears, and drill. It's part of the process. It's part of the success recipe. And so again, if we are continuing on with our idea of the phases that we want to take our clients to, and let's just say that there's eight. After we've had planning, we've had prospecting, and we had the first impressions, now it's time for us to actually go in and qualify.
Qualify means that we're not gonna straight go in with a pitch for someone whose needs we don't even know yet. So we gotta be very well trained to know what questions will move the dial qualifying done well meets three objectives. It builds deeper [00:18:00] connection humanly speaking with our prospect two.
We understand what is important to him or her as we ask the questions. And three, it also allows us to demonstrate skills like paraphrasing and in a kind of recapping and get the right information on paper or on our iPads to then later on reproduce in our proposal, quote or offer. This is where qualifying is a golden opportunity for most organizations, because most people are not taught how to ask better probing questions that extract a lot more information that is of high value, but also creates an experience in the head and in the heart of the prospect that says, Hmm, he or she just asked me really interesting [00:19:00] questions.
I really like that. And they make me realize a few things about our organization, our products, our services, our people that I didn't see until now. Notice now this is creating buying desire. When a prospect, a potential client, starts to experience something that is of wow and realize in their head that this is interesting.
I'm getting some really interesting thoughts as I'm answering these questions that this sales rep or this BDM is asking me when this starts to happen. Buying desire is building gradually, which means higher desire to spend more money without even knowing yet what the investment will look like later on.
So qualifying phase four golden opportunity for sales training. Then five is once we've done our due diligence in terms of profiling clients before we [00:20:00] reached out, ideally, and we've assessed their needs and wants and their particular situation during the qualifying meeting, now it's time for us to show and prove value for them.
This is where we then come in as the best BDMs and sales professionals where we demonstrate that not only did we listen. Not only did we fully understand what the situation looks like, but we came back with solutions to their biggest problems It's not just one solution, as I already kind of alluded to, it's multiple.
Because if we give people an opportunity to meet different budgets and different price points and show how we can add value in either one of them. The chances are that we are going to meet also a deep, psychological rooted, need of people, which is to have multiple quotes and we can provide it to them all from the same place, right?
Multiple [00:21:00] quotes, allows people to make a decision and compare apples to apples. What do I get for budget X? What do I get for budget y and why would it make sense for me to go for something more premium above that? That is at a higher price point. Now, at least I have something to compare it because this might be my very first time that I'm making a decision on this sort of proposal, right?
So give your clients, the right tools to succeed. And again, the quoting process should show value. It should prove that you understand their situation better than anyone else out there. And that you also come with solutions that really would move the dial for them, but also meet different price points.
Next. Then this was number five. Now we go to six. Six is where we are. Obviously trying our hardest when it's right. To make a decision on the short term, and then provided the right things [00:22:00] are in place, and this is what our sales training teaches also, to assess whether we can make an offer there and then and try to close it, or whether we strategically hold off and do something different.
Again, these are all playbooks because they're based on best practice. And then the question is. Do your salespeople have these playbooks? Do they know what to do, who with and when, what not to do? Because there's certain things that will work for one prospect and other things that predictably will backfire.
And again, if you've never been taught how to think like that and being given the tools to deploy at the right time. We keep winging it. We just keep doing, we play it by ear. We are doing it based on what we did in the past, not knowing necessarily what worked, but it's going to be basically hit and miss.
Maybe today will work, tomorrow it won't, and I don't know. This is how most salespeople and [00:23:00] BDMs operate in the absence of good sales training that sets them up for success. Next one then is the influencing bit influencing in a part of a sales process means there is a time when we walk out of the door and we've left people with an offer and a proposal, and now we basically have no further influence unless we practice influence in a ethical professional way afterwards.
This is influencing. So it is how we stay in touch with our prospects in a way that is friendly to them, not pushy. Because we all know people that we felt pushed by as a customer or a potential prospect. And so our sales team will also come across in certain ways if they fail to read people and treat 'em the way that they wanna be treated in the follow-up.
And let's be [00:24:00] honest, follow up is another golden opportunity because most organizations sit on dozens, if not hundreds of quotes, proposals, tenders, and the likes that haven't gone anywhere. Now the question is why would you invest all of your time spend so much money on generating the inquiries, the interest, the goodwill, the branding, and so on?
for proposals and offers just to gather dust in a CRN system or elsewhere, that is not a great idea, is it? So follow up. We know that a lot of businesses either won or lost in follow up, but most salespeople feel. That follow up is pushing people and pressuring them so they feel already uncomfortable about it.
The process in the first place, which isn't then strange that many of them will shy away from following up, or they'll just have one attempt at [00:25:00] it and then just forget about it all together. Guess what? This is where follow up and follow through make a key distinction. Follow up is like, you might do it once or twice, but you're not really.
Getting people to the finish line. Follow through then is where people have been given the tools, the script, the knowhow, the words, the confidence, the capability to follow up multiple times over all the way to getting people reach the finish line. And the finish line means that they are finally have made up their mind, hopefully in favor of your product or service.
But sometimes they won't. And sometimes you will even say as a good BDM, A trusted advisor, that your business might not be the best to serve their needs based on the qualifying you've done, the research you've done, and the proposal you put together, and knowing what else is on the market.[00:26:00]
Like occasionally you will also have that conversation. Obviously you don't wanna have that too often, but there will be, 2% of the time where there is potentially an opportunity like that, and I personally would then say, go in and tell people exactly that because that investment of maybe 2% of opportunities where you actually openly admit that you're not the right position will just solidify what a trusted advisor your business is compared to all of the other vendors and sellers.
I personally always like to position my own business and my client's businesses as the go-to, the trusted advisor, the expert in their field, who is an expert, not a seller. Notice now this little subtle word play. It's not just me using the words myself or our clients using these words, it is [00:27:00] how the clients talk about us because if we are seen by them as trusted advisors, we have earned their trust.
We have solidified our position as an expert, and whatever rec we recommend will very easily be adopted regardless of the budget. This is something that we earn, and once again, good sales training builds the capability of the team so that they can earn their stripes in each step of the process. So this is the influencing bit.
How do we now follow up and follow through in a way that suits the buyer and helps them to make up their minds, make informed decisions where they actually feel comfortable? And yes, we as a sales rep, or BDM or trusted advisor, we also feel comfortable because we've done the right thing by our customers and we know how to do it.
Last but not least [00:28:00] then, or actually is one more then is then obviously closing. Like how do we now deal with all the reasons under the sun, why people will either delay or defer their decision making? The reasons, you know what we say to things like, well now we don't have the budget right now, or, we haven't really made up our mind yet, or, we've gotta think about it a little bit more.
Or we might need to talk to a few other people and get a few more quotes to do our due diligence, or we've gotta assess our finances right now. All of these things, which might be very valid, we gotta be ready for, we gotta have answers to. We gotta have subtle, elegant. Ways to deal with it in a way that builds momentum rather than where people feel pushed and rushed.
And again, that balance is not easily created with sales teams because once again, unless you've been taught how to do it, oftentimes you just fall back on whatever you [00:29:00] have in your toolbox. And that toolbox might be quite empty. There might be just a hammer in it or a screwdriver.
That's not how you're going to fix something or build a beautiful house really. So we need to set up our sales teams with proper sales training. And of course then coaching as part of that. 'cause you've gotta practice rehears and drill. Last one, as part of the sales process is where we actually are once we have earned people's business, is that we actually do our best.
To keep adding more value and grow our opportunities with the clients in their best interests so that it's a win-win. We help our clients win and we win. We started off with one project at X level, and suddenly we've been able to grow the pie, grow the revenue, and the profit margins and the opportunities, as well.
Good for them. Good for us because we've helped to fix their problems. In any sales methodology, you gotta have clarity of steps. And most of [00:30:00] the time salespeople, when we assess them, which we've done plenty times over the last, 16 years, we notice that most salespeople score high on one, two, maybe three or four things out of the eight.
Which means that there's gaps that need to be addressed and the best people to address or assess these gaps are salespeople or people that are trained to help sales teams perform at a higher level. It won't be hr. With all respect, you guys might be doing great in many other areas. But unless you understand what sales looks like, you gotta have an other person that understands the field and has done it and has gotten the results to see exactly where opportunities lie.
For sales team and business development team development, we've seen time and time again that small investments in sales training. It can lead to big outcomes on the scoreboard. There is commercial value and I'm [00:31:00] very happy to also walk people through that should ever, you would have questions around that.
I'm going to wrap up this, session for today, but I look forward to hearing more from you as well. Any thoughts or questions, please post them below the video. We're always here to help and anytime when you'd like to speak to us, just reach out and we'll very happily have a discovery call with you.
so sales training, it does make a difference. However, it's gotta be the right one for your organization. My name is Bram. Thank you for joining me today.
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