THE IMAGE TO WIN SERIES

I heard Tom Cruise on a talk show many years ago talking about the brand “Tom Cruise“.  He is the product and the brand and everything he says, does, wears or is involved in adds or detracts from the Tom Cruise brand.  This is the same for salespeople; just with a smaller audience in most cases.

Today’s installment of the Image to Win Series focuses on defining the brand of YOU.  Tom Cruise knows what he wants his brand to be.  What an important first step!  Thinking about celebrities, you can assume that Madonna’s brand is very different from Barack Obama’s brand.  Everything any of these public figures does sends a message and creates an image of their brand in the minds of the public.  They know how to act, what to write, what to say, what to wear and where to be seen based on the image they want the public to have.  They often have the advantage of publicists and managers who help guide them – let’s call them their VPs of Marketing.

Do you know the brand or image you want the world to see from you as a sales professional?  Take a moment and write a list of 10 adjectives you want customers to use to describe your image or brand.

1.   __________________________
2. ___________________________
3. ___________________________
4. ___________________________
5. ___________________________
6. ___________________________
7. ___________________________
8. ___________________________
9. ___________________________
10. ___________________________

Now, what actions would people have to see from you to create that image in their minds?  Also, think about what they would see from you to detract from that image.

Tom Cruise jumped around on Oprah’s couch and severely detracted from the brand and image he spent 20+ years developing.  I think I read he had also just fired his manager…   Don’t leave your image to chance.  Take the time to define your brand and what your brand stands for.  Then, carefully choose your words, images, virtual presence and appearance to fit your brand.

We’ll continue with this Image to Win Series and dig into specifics on developing your brand.  In the meantime, pay attention to brands you respect – Coke, Starbucks, Target, etc.  Look at every action they take, where they show up, what messages they share, how their employees dress and every other detail of their brand.  Should be a fun series!

Sales Managers, to take your team on an Image to Win journey, sign up for weekly sales team meeting agendas from Meeting to Win.  The Image to Win sales meeting series starts in October.

This week’s Meeting to Win agenda (sent to subscribers every Friday morning) is focused on “news you can use“.  To stay proactive and become more and more of a valuable resource to customers, it is important to understand the customers’ current events and how those current events impact the decisions they are making.  Those decisions ultimately determine how they will engage the salesperson and their products and services in their business.  Which, I don’t have to say it, impacts the success of the salesperson.

It is a powerful approach to understand the customers’ business and be able to suggest ways to help them address their current business needs before they ask – or worse yet, ask someone else.  Whether they use the salesperson’s ideas or not, it is a powerful position to be in and makes the salesperson a partner in success instead of just another vendor.

Salespeople would be wise to dig into the customers’ news and figure out how that news should impact their decisions and, especially, their decisions in regards to the salesperson’s business.  What should be suggested and expected in the next 30, 60 or 90 days?  How does that impact the salesperson’s business in the next 30, 60, 90 days?

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask each salesperson to bring news about their top client to the next sales meeting.
• Give a 2 minute overview of the current news.
• As a team, determine 3-5 decisions that customer may make because of this news.
• How might that impact your company’s business with that customer?
• What should you do about it?
• Continue this for each sales rep – 10 minutes per rep.
• Each rep should leave with one solid action item for an important customer.

Join Meeting to Win for weekly sales team meeting agenda topics like News You Can Use delivered directly to your inbox every Friday morning.

The pre-work for this week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda includes two articles by S. Anthony Iannarino of The Sales Blog.

•  11 Ways to Guarantee Your Spot in the Bottom 80% of Salespeople and
• 5 More Ways to Ensure Your Place in the Bottom 80% of Salespeople .

Mr. Iannarino writes an insightful blog and was kind enough to let us use his insights into the bottom 80% of sales performers.  Read the articles, add to the list and decide where you want to rank. 

To get a sales team meeting agenda that leads your team through this valuable exercise, subscribe before Friday!  The agenda goes out at 6am ET.  Hope you can join us in the TOP 20%.

We here in the northern hemisphere are experiencing the dog days of summer.  If you haven’t taken a vacation yet this summer, shame on you.  Immediately stop reading this and find a beach house - minimum stay 7 nights.  If you are back from vacation, then continue reading.  It really doesn’t take a lot of extra effort to gain the competitive edge.  It simply takes a few strategic moves to create momentum that will reward you when others are just getting back in the game.  Now, mid-July, is the time to take action.  You have a good 6-8 weeks to get a headstart that you will not regret.

Check out the Meeting to Win ideas for heading into the next selling season with a head of steam:

Click on this link to get a list of ideas:  Getting a Headstart

Sales Team Meeting Idea:

• Ask everyone to read this blog post before your next sales meeting.
• Ask everyone to come with their own ideas to add to the list.  During the meeting, create a comprehensive list of ideas.
• During the meeting, ask each person to commit to 1 or more activities that will make the biggest difference in their momentum.
• Ask someone to “own” the Summer Momentum Project (leadership opportunity).  It will be their job to monitor and report on the team’s progress until the end of August. 
• Then, once a month,  Sept – Dec, ask the team to share the results of the SMP.  I guarantee you will have RESULTS!

To get sales team meeting agendas that lead your team through exercises to gain momentum, close more pipeline opportunities and stay motivated during the dog – and any other – days, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas. 

Look forward to Monday mornings!

I am finally reading Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell.   I’ve only been carrying it around for 2 years and, yesterday, on a flight read the first half.  The concept of 10,000 hours is one of the many pages I’ve dog eared.  This is the concept with supporting examples that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert and a stand-out.  I’ve always been a believer that experience counts in sales.  Think about how much time you actually spend in front of a customer practicing your trade – 10 hours/week if you’re lucky?  How long would it take to gain 10,000 hours of practice?  19 years?  25 years? 

YIKES! 

So, if you want to be an expert, you have to find more practice time.  Here are some ideas:

• First of all, use your weekly sales meeting as a one-hour practice session. – 1 hour/week (Who saw that coming?)
• Role play your upcoming customer encounters with a team member or manager before the customer encounter. -  2 hours per week
• Spend time pre-call planning – opening statements, questions, objection responses, etc – 2 hours per week
• Take one sales training class per year. – 16 hours per year
• Spend 2 more hours per week with customers than you do now.  – 2 hours per week
• Regularly attend a customer meeting with a peer to observe them.  – 2 hours per month

So, adding all of this to your current 10 customer hours per week, you’ll be at 18 hours per week which would put you at expert status in half the time as your peers.  My math shows 10 years (which is how long it seems to take in any field – music, technology, sports). 

I love this concept because it means you have control over how you stack up against your peers in the marketplace.  Invest time in your trade and it pays off. 

Sales Team Meeting Idea: 

• As a team, ask each person to calculate their own individual sales practice hours.  Just use number of years of experience, add in training hours and ask each team member to come up with their number.
• Now, as a team, figure out how to get an additional 5-10 hours per week of sales practice. 
• Commit to getting more practice and then track your performance against other sales teams in your own company.  What results do you expect?

Enjoy working on your 10,000 hours.

We at Meeting to Win are on a mission to end boring sales team meetings.  Boring sales team meetings put sales teams to sleep right at the beginning of the selling week when they should be at their very best.  The last thing salespeople should have to do is recover from their sales team meeting so they can be productive each Monday.  As part of our mission, we want to share a sales team meeting idea for Sales Managers who share our passion. 

Sales Team Meeting Idea – Sales Performance Book Clubs

As a team,

Choose a business or sales book from Amazon.com (choose your own or subscribe to Meeting to Win and follow along with our quarterly Sales Performance Book Club – includes Discussion Guide and Chapter Exercises).  Cover one or two new chapters each week during your weekly sales team meeting.  Assign the chapters to the members of the team.  Each week give them 20 minutes of the agenda to lead the team on that chapter’s topic. 

They can:

• Lead a discussion on the information in the chapter.
• Ask the team to apply the lessons to their own business.
• Practice skills or ideas from the chapter.
• Pull one or two key lessons from the chapter.
• Set one action item based on the work done during this meeting.
• Get creative – give them the chance to do whatever they want with the chapter.  You’ll see a new side of some team members.

Meeting to Win provides Sales Performance Book Club discussions each quarter as part of our Sales Meeting Agenda Subscription.  We cover one new book each quarter.  Next one, Mind of the Customer, starts in April 2010.  Join us by subscribing today.

Join the MISSION TO END BAD SALES TEAM MEETINGS by having motivating sales team meetings that inspire your team to perform.  Everyone wins!

Post brought to you by Jill Myrick, Owner of Meeting to Win.  Meeting to Win provides Sales Team Meeting Agendas PLUS for Sales Managers who want to lead great sales team meetings.

Who is on your “team”?  By team I mean everyone that helps take care of the customer from suspect stage to account management stage.  This could be your proposal people, your billing dept, your sales engineers, your operations team, your customer service representatives and the list goes on.  It typically takes many people working together to win, keep and grow customer accounts.  How well your team works together is being observed and judged by customers and is a big factor in their decision to work with you or not.

There are many challenges facing your extended team.  Everyone has different bosses, people are spread all over the country, they leave the company and have conflicting priorities.  How do you pull the team together for the good of the customer?

Start by identifying the team.  Make a list of everyone who touches every stage of the sales cycle.  List these people or functions by sales cycle stage.  Include the role they play in that stage. 

Now that you have this chart, figure out how to improve your team work.  To get started, list 5 areas of breakdown in your team work.  Are proposals often late, do customers have billing issues, is Customer Service unresponsive, are orders delivered late?  Take each breakdown one by one and figure out how to address it so customers have a better experience. 

Some solutions may include:

• Involving an extended team member earlier in the sales cycle.
• Making an effort to get to know each other outside a sales cycle.
• Including the extended team on sales team meetings occasionally.
• Making sure everyone is clear on their role in the customer account.
• Creating a customer-focused culture where everyone sells.
• Encouraging team leaders to focus on working together.
• Creating a communication system across departments.

Work together as a team to win as a team.  You’ll enjoy these internal relationships and your customers will be the big winners.

(Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting agendas every week for Sales Managers who subscribe to the sales meeting agenda service.  This Friday, the sales team meeting agenda Work as a Team to Win as a Team will be delivered to our subscribers.  Join us and start having better sales team meetings this week.)

It seems that when some make the transition from revenue-producing sales rep to sales leader, they forget some very important realities.  They no longer want to hear about the realities of the field.  They want to call those “excuses”.  I admit, I like to look at everything and determine the worst case scenario.  This does not bum me out, it actually makes me feel better to have a game plan should the worst case scenario play out.  It never does and it still feels good to be prepared.

The reality is that things happen that are disruptive.  Some of these things the reps’ own companies do to them, some are economy driven, some are customer driven.  Yet, leadership still expects the reps to turn in 8% revenue growth.  If you kick a marathon runner in the knee at mile 13, that runner may not beat his previous finishing time.  That’s a reality.  I don’t believe that sales reps like to “make excuses”.  I believe they really want to explain their performance, good or bad.  Being able to explain why something happens is a key ingredient in duplicating the good results and avoiding the poor results.

So, I challenge sales leaders to face reality. Among other things, the following is a list of things that ARE disruptive:

• Moving territory lines.
• Adding or taking away accounts.
• Pulling them out of the field for training.
• Asking them to complete a whole new set of reports.
• Introducing a new CRM.
• Giving them a new product to sell.
• Reorganizing your sales team.
• Changing compensation.

And the list goes on.  I challenge sales leaders to face the reality of disruptions instead of pretending like they won’t be disruptions.  It’s delusional to think the sales team won’t be distracted.  They are human beings, not machines. 

Instead, look 30-90 days out and figure out what is coming down the line that could possibly cause distraction for your sales team.  Figure out the worst case scenario in terms of how this disruption may impact your sales results.  You can’t see everything coming so at least get out in front of what you can see.  Get your team together and face reality together.  Expect to be distracted and proactively figure out how to sell through it.  You’ll reduce distraction and your team will have fewer “excuses”.

Face reality and your reality will be much brighter.

So, now I am getting inspiration from beer ads!  The ad says that fortune favors the bold and it supports the Meeting to Win message this week about Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose. 

Top performers take risks.  They risk losing deals or entire accounts by speaking up when clients are making bad decisions.  They hold their ground during negotiations.  They challenge a competitor’s offering.  They demonstrate their value and then demand the right price.  They walk away from bad deals.  They get to decision makers.  They risk offending gatekeepers.  They ask their referral network to make introductions.  They challenge strategy.  They point out problems.  They share solutions.  They say no to non-selling activities.  They care more about results than padded activity reports and inflated pipelines.  They call higher in organizations. 

Fortune favors the bold.  Take a risk today – and tomorrow – and the next day.  Play with passion. 

Just Sell quote from Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), 26th president of the United States on being bold.

(Meeting to Win provides weekly sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers who want to lead inspiring sales team meetings.  Join us by subscribing today. Upcoming agendas include Playing to Win or Playing to NOT Lose, Work as a Team to Win as a Team, Lost in Translation, System Based Selling and Create Better Buying Experiences.)

(This week’s Meeting to Win focus is on Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose.   Meeting to Win provides a new, fresh sales team meeting agenda every week for our Subscribers.  Start having productive sales team meetings that result in superior sales performance with Meeting to Win.)

For some reason, there is often a sense of comfort when a prospective client asks us to do or provide something – see a demo, send me information, etc.  We believe we have a solution that may meet their needs and we take their request as a sign that they may also believe that.  As sales reps, happy to stay engaged with this prospect, we march off to provide the requested information.  This prospective client may very well want this information and have a real plan to evaluate our solution and actually make a go/no-go decision on purchasing from us or not. 

On the other hand, they may be making this request for any number of other reasons – and we may be playing along for any number of reasons.  Those reasons can include:

• They are too nice to tell you that have no intention of spending a dime with you.
• They are busy and the fastest way to get rid of you is to send you on an errand.
• They are really good at kicking the tires, but have no history of actually buying. 
• They stay in the eternal sales cycle never actually moving forward on anything.  Professional window shoppers exist in every company.
• They are afraid if they tell you “no” that you will keep trying to sell them.  No one enjoys being on the receiving end of this tactic.
• Your pursuit makes them feel important (ugly truth alert!).
• They think they have some power to make this decision.  Meanwhile, someone else is actually making the decision at some other level.
• We feel “safe” to simply stay engaged in the sales cycle.  We have something to report on our activity tracker, in our pipelines and during our team meeting updates.  We’ve bought another week of activity.
• You look so happy when they ask you for something.

Those just a few of the reasons sales reps are asked to run these errands.  How do sales reps stop being gophers?  One way is to lay out the next few steps or commitments on both sides.  Next time you are asked to run an errand, ask what decision they plan to make once you provide the requested information and by when.  For example, if they ask to see a demo of your software.  Find out what they hope to gain from the demo (the demo may not be what they even need) and what decision they plan to make upon seeing the demo (no-go, take the next step, involve other decision makers, etc) and by when they plan to make the decision (is there even a timeline?). 

It feels “safe” to stay engaged and really….it’s a collosal waste of time.  Stop playing it “safe” and start helping your clients make decisions that will ultimately help their businesses succeed.  Get commitments before you run the errand – everyone wins when you have an efficient process. 

(This week’s Meeting to Win focus is on Playing to Win instead of Playing to NOT Lose.   Meeting to Win provides a new, fresh sales team meeting agenda every week for our Subscribers.  Start having productive sales team meetings that result in superior sales performance with Meeting to Win.)