Becoming an effective sales manager: Joe’s success story

On Tuesday in my “Sales Tip of the Week” I talked about traits and qualities that makeup successful and productive sales manager. I talked about what sales manager can and cannot manage. I have a real life example of a sales manager, who had a most challenging journey to success.

I first met Joe at a networking event. When he found out that I was a sales and business adviser for emerging businesses, he shared with me the following story.

Throughout Joe’s career he was a designer for trade shows exhibits. He told me that he had recently been hired as a sales manager for a 20-year-old trade show manufacture. He soon became a leader for five sales associates. Never being directly involved in sales in the past, he soon begun to understand how demanding it is to manage and create the sort of activity to ensure business success.

When I first started to work with Joe, our main priority was to develop a successful sales management role. One of the positive things was that Joe had not developed any negative habits, so I did not have to retrain him.  When it came to developing a well-structured game plan, Joe’s optimistic attitude made up for the lack of formal training.

Working with him during the first few months, we were faced with creating doable game plan as well as working on sales concepts and strategies for his sales team. One of our key focuses was to figure out the way to differentiate their firm in a saturated market place. In a reasonable period of time, Joe was able to develop proper DNA to be an exceptional sales manager.

When issues would arise, we would go through the debriefing process, look at ways we could solve various problems, and make good decisions. He was literally learning while working on the job.

Within a relatively short period of time, he learned how to lead his team and, most importantly, how to generate more business. It took him some time to learn all the concepts, but he became a very competent sales manager. He understood what it really took to generate a profitable business.

Next week we will break down what Joe learned in the process of becoming a really effective sales manager. Stay tuned!

Interview Selling: Sales with Care

As I mentioned in my “Sales Tip of the Week” this Tuesday, you always want to apply 70-30 rule in the beginning of your selling process. This refers to the fact that you need to listen to your prospect 70 percent of the time as well as verbalizing and asking thoughtful, well-planned questions 30 percent of the time.

The simplicity of this is that until we discover a prospect’s needs, there is very little reason to present your product or service. Interview selling is all about exploring and  gathering information to fully determine if indeed the product or service that you represent is potentially a good fit for solving your prospect’s problem or issues.

It is either a good fit or it is not. If not, it is perfectly fine to move on. Always remember that people don’t want to be sold, they want to buy for their own reasons. If the need for you product or service does exist, your job is to create a comfortable environment of buying.

As I am sure you have already noticed, our consumers are becoming  a lot busier. They all have important things to take care of every day. If we show them that we appreciate their time and value the relationship of mutual respect, we will begin to see an interest in their eyes. And interested client can easily be converted into buying client.  

Always remember, interview selling is about discovering and determining, if a potential match is on the horizon. If not, try to help them to get their needs met from other sources. I bet they will never forget that you were a trusted consultant and worked in their best interest.

Take care and see you next time!

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Marketing and Sales - What is the difference?

I’ve always been somewhat surprised at the confusion that seems to exist between the marketing and the sales process. Hopefully the following blog will eliminate some of the discrepancies.

I am not a marketing person, but I’ve had the opportunity to work with a number of marketing professionals over the years while initiating sales concepts that compliment a well-conceived marketing effort.

Both marketing and sales are critical to ensure the growth of a business, but they are not the same. Let’s discuss the differences.

In simple terms, marketing is a game plan, which creates visibility and awareness of an aspiring enterprise, its products, and services. It also creates a “call to action” for your target market if they perceive that your product alleviates a need or problem. Marketing can consist of everything from collateral material, a promotional website, email correspondence, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Marketing is all about creating a presence and creating a favorable perception about the product or service. If this perception is favorable, it creates a response that helps to initiate the sales process.

Although the term “sales” sometimes evokes negative feelings in a person’s mind, it is the major key to generating business. Sales is the engine that moves a company. It creates a cash-flow and operating capitol. Without sales, there is no way to develop new growth and expansion in a company.

The sales concept is primarily direct contact with perspective clients. It is a follow up to the marketing effort. Sales concepts can take several forms: response to an email inquiry, responding to contact from a website, a telephone conversation, or a face-to-face meeting.

Simply put, sales is all about responding to a perspective client’s need or problem with direct contact, which leads to a sales transaction. It is about creating a win-win situation for everyone involved. The transaction will not take place until the perceived value of a product or service exceeds the cost. Without this, there is no cash-flow or momentum in the company. Because at the end of the  day, there’s not much for anyone to do, until a transaction takes place.

As you can begin to see, sales and marketing are very complimentary but certainly differ in relationship to their intended purpose. The fine line between the two is often blurred to most people, who group sales and marketing together without understanding their differences.

“The way it is”, Mike Levi’s weekly blog

09.06.2012

To blog or not to blog – that is the question. I have not totally figured out how this thing, called social media, works. Why do we sometimes give away our intellectual knowledge failing to see clear ROI? I guess, I will continue asking myself, how this social media concept works. How much is too much or too little? How will I know if I am doing something wrong or right?  I am also wondering, with so many people doing it, if there is anybody out there really listening?  

Social media is something that I am going to work on very diligently for the next three or four months. Then I will be able to say to myself: “I honestly did it”. I will either see fruits of my labor or not. If not, why?

I am very intrigued by this medium. The cost, other than time, seems to be pretty affordable. I am most interested in discovering if the potential is as real as it appears? Is a payoff something that we can all enjoy and benefit from?

I am always open to suggestions on ways to address this communication tool that we refer to as social media in a proactive manner that is acceptable. Thanks in advance for helping an ancient human being to begin to better understand this communication phenomenon.