Posts Tagged ‘cusotmer meeting success’
Sunday, April 18th, 2010
2011 Summer Sales Team Meeting Agenda Series = Summer of Experts.
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Summer is right around the corner and the time to start executing your summer selling plan is now. You may have just experienced this on a smaller scale during Spring Break season. Decision makers are out of the office on vacations or entertaining clients at golf tournaments. Spring and Summer can mark tough times for sales professionals who are still trying to move deals forward. The odds of getting all the decision makers involved at the necessary stage are not good during the summer. Each activity gets pushed off until “next week” when someone is “back in the office” and, before you know it, your sales cycles have stretched out. And, salespeople and their teammates are trying to schedule in much needed breaks, also.
It is in everyone’s best interest to keep deals moving through the summer. Customers need solutions, salespeople need sales. The season does not change those truths. So, how can sales professionals enjoy their summer and a few successes at the same time? Here are some actions to take now to close some summer deals.
- Look at your pipeline and determine which deals should be closing during the summer.
- At your next opportunity with your prospective customers, walk through all the steps they will most likely need to take to make a decision on your solution. Together, build a timeline for when these steps should occur based on when they need a solution in place. This will give you both a timeline to work toward heading into the summer.
- With your timeline in hand, acknowledge the challenges of meeting deadlines in the summer months with your customer. Build a calendar that includes everyone’s (salesperson’s team and customer’s team) planned vacations or absences. This way you can stay a few steps ahead on planning.
- Make sure that everyone who will be involved in the decision process understands the timeline and the steps in the process.
- Consider scheduling a regular update call with your key contacts. Think of yourself as a project manager keeping the team on track to make a decision. Each week should move the deal forward.
- Keep your momentum during the summer by working a business development plan. Salespeople have a tendency to take a little break during the summer months. Those that keep up the hard work will gain momentum throughout the summer and into the next selling season. Very often prospects are more receptive during holiday and summer seasons. Take advantage of the lighter mood and begin some great relationships.
- Set clear activity and performance goals for the summer months. It is too easy to go with the flow of traffic if you don’t have a better plan. If those around you have slowed down, it is easy to follow their lead. Build a plan to follow and avoid this slow down.
- Take your own vacation. You’ll enjoy it more if you’ve been proactive to continue adding to your pipeline and moving your deals throughout the summer. Now, go get that break!
Enjoy a summer filled with sales by building and executing your summer sales plan now.
Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win, LLC. Become a Meeting to Win subscriber to receive a new sales team meeting agenda every week. This week’s agenda is We Interrupt This Summer to Bring You…Solutions. As a team, you’ll leave this meeting with a solid plan to succeed throughout the summer. You’ll win and your customers will win. What a great summer this could be!
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, customer meetings, energize sales team, move deals, pre-call planning, prepare for sales call, sales team agenda., winning in sales
Posted in Account Management, CRM, Summer Selling Season, communication, customer meeting, efficient, performance | No Comments »
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
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.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, energize sales team, motivate sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams, sales teamwork, team work, work as a team
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agenda ideas, agendas, free sales team meeting topics, performance, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 31st, 2010
(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.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, customer meeting success, energize sales team, sales leadership, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in CRM, customer meeting, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, performance, sales activity, sales management, sales managers, sales meeting agenda, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, tips for meetings | No Comments »
Sunday, March 28th, 2010
I am getting ready to play my first tennis match in over a year and a half. As I look forward to the match, I am reminded of something my father said to me during one of our matches years ago. Something that I have thought about during every match since when I feel like I am on defense more than I’d like to be. He looked frustrated and said “You’re not playing to win. You’re playing to NOT lose.” He described exactly what I was doing. I was back running down shots, going right where he wanted me to go, just getting the ball in play to live for another point. He was in charge, setting the pace and … having more fun than me. During that match and countless others since then, I have had to change my mindset mid-match and play to win instead of play to NOT lose. For me that means, charge the net, put some shots away, get on the offense, control the pace of the game and, in many of those cases (still not against my Dad…), win. Even when I didn’t win, I walked away knowing I did everything I could and was proud of my game, effort and attitude. There was no risk I hadn’t taken and, therefore, no “what ifs”.
I took my Dad’s insightful observation into my sales life, too, and, man, did life get more fun. Instead of sitting back following the process, chasing the RFP, settling for meeting with non-decision makers, wondering what the competitors were doing, giving discounts and sounding like 80% of other reps out there, I made a clear effort to “charge the net”.
How do you know if you are playing to win or playing to not lose?
Are you:
- Following the buying process blindly without challenging steps that don’t help your cusotmers make good decisions?
- Meeting with people who can’t make decisions?
- More worried about your activity report volume than the quality of your activities?
- Spending time on RFPs that restrict your ability to sell by limiting your ability to diagnose and share solutions?
- Constantly running off to fetch the next thing your prospective customer needs with no commitments from them (”send me a proposal”, “do an assessment”, “send me a brochure”, “come do a demo”, etc)?
- Coming in second or third place?
- Getting surprised late in sales cycles?
Or are you:
- Creating opportunities by shining light on problems prospective customers didn’t know they had?
- Challenging dysfunctional buying processes that hinder your customer from getting the best possible solution?
- Sharing solutions your clients didn’t know existed to problems they didn’t know they had?
- Bringing new ideas, industry expertise and innovative solutions to the table?
- Getting full price for the value of service you provide?
- Getting creative on negotiations?
- Risking offending non-decision makers to get to the actual decision makers?
- Addressing sales cycle slow downs head-on and honestly?
- Not afraid to walk away?
- Not afraid to say and do the right thing no matter the outcome?
It is so much more exciting to play to win. It takes more energy and guts, but it is so worth it. Charge the net this week!
Sales team meeting idea:
- At your next sales team meeting, ask each team member to bring their current pipeline.
- Ask each person to examine their pipeline for opportunities to “charge the net”.
- Each rep should pick one deal and take a well-planned risk. Get to decision makers, challenge a bad decision, ask about the competition, exit an RFP opportunity, etc. As long as the risk will ultimately help you help your customer make a better decision (even if it’s not you), then take the risk.
- Each rep should walk away with one risk to take within the next week.
- Plan to report back on the outcomes of the team’s risk-taking. Not all will go well – that’s why we call it a “risk”. So be it…
Play to win. Charge the net. Have more fun.
(Post brought to you by Jill Myrick of Meeting to Win. Meeting to Win provides sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers who want to take their team to the next level. Play to Win, Not to NOT Lose is the April 2, 2010 Agenda Topic. To get a new sales team meeting topic each week, visit us at http://www.meetingtowin.com/ to subscribe.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, leadership, losing in sales, sales leadership, sales performance, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales teams, winning in sales
Posted in CRM, agenda ideas, agendas, customer meeting, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips, maximize tools, performance, sales activity, sales meeting agenda, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting | No Comments »
Sunday, March 21st, 2010
(This week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda is called 10 Things You Don’t Know. To join us and get new sales team meeting agendas weekly, visit us at Meeting to Win.)
Salespeople are wise to focus on their existing customer base to impact success during economic recovery. Competitors are getting creative and aggressive and existing relationships could be up for grabs … unless…you treat your existing clients like new customers. Think about how you treat new customers.
During economic recovery, treat your customers like new customers by trying the following things:
- Conduct a thorough needs-analysis with them to make sure your solutions still are solutions. Their business has likely changed like the rest of the world.
- Find out where they need help and deliver.
- Figure out how your company can better service them – clear billing, better response on customer service issues, etc.
- Bring senior leaders to face-to-face meetings to thank them for their business and show how valuable they are to your company.
- Sincerely thank them for their business.
- Share new ways to solve old and new problems.
- Share industry expertise. Help them be innovative.
- Help them help their customers succeed.
- Learn everything you can about their business – you’ll recognize ways to help them the more you know their business.
- Be attentive, present and part of the team.
- Commit to quarterly business reviews to hold yourself accountable to the results you promised.
- Make sure they know all that you can do for them. (Exercise: Think of 10 things your top customers may not know about your offering that may help them.) Figure out how to share all your services without giving a sales pitch. Your competitors are sharing this information. It’s best to share this information in response to a business need they have.
- Be someone they can’t live without.
Competitors are gunning for your clients. Treat your existing customers like the gold that they are.
(To get sales team meeting agendas with exercises and role plays on topics like 10 Things You Don’t Know and other great selling topics, join the Meeting to Win community by subscribing today.)
Tags: CRM, cusotmer meeting success, customer meeting success, existing customer, new customers, recession, sales team agenda.
Posted in CRM, agenda ideas, agendas, best practice, communication, customer meeting, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, meetings, new managers, performance, recession, sales activity, sales meetings, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tough economy | No Comments »
Monday, March 15th, 2010
We are in the middle of our Maximizing Customer Meetings Sales Team Meeting Agenda series. To enhance the series, we’ve called on some top selling experts to share their strategies for maximizing customer meetings. This post is brought to us by Mary Donato, President at Applied Principles, a sales and marketing professional services firm that helps Fortune 1000 companies achieve sales and marketing excellence.
The Win-Win Sales Call by Mary Donato
How to get centered on your client so you both succeed.
As the Associate Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, I have had the opportunity to interact with many outstanding marketing and sales organizations. Recently, I observed one member’s top sales consultant prepare for an important initial call with a prospective customer. It was like listening to a well-orchestrated play: He knew what questions he wanted to ask at the beginning of the call and set an objective to get a complete list of the client’s issues before having any discussion about a solution to their problem. He even anticipated objections and how he would respond. By mentally going through the conversations in advance, the consultant was thoroughly prepared for the call before stepping into the client’s office. The goal of these efforts was to insure that he could find a solution that would meet the customer’s specific needs. I asked him what he would do if the solution wasn’t a good fit, and he replied that he would advise the prospect, stop the sales cycle, and move on to the next opportunity. Why am I highlighting this story? Far too many salespeople don’t attempt—or don’t know how—to truly understand client needs and what would be an effective solution for them. In the end, time, energy, and money are wasted, both on the seller’s and buyer’s part. So, what makes a great sales call? A good start is having a philosophy of caring deeply for what it takes to make the customer successful. The Sales Performance Group (SPG) at FranklinCovey, based in Salt Lake City, has a sales training and coaching curriculum called “Helping Clients Succeed,” which provides a practical framework and process for understanding the client’s exact needs and issues. The founder of SPG, Mahan Khalsa, author of Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play, offers several key principles for becoming “maniacally” client-focused:
SALES ISN’T ABOUT SELLING It’s about helping clients succeed. The job of a salesperson is to provide expanded awareness of possibilities and superior choices to facilitate a process for clients to make decisions in their own best interests.
INTENT COUNTS MORE THAN TECHNIQUE Get crystal clear about your intent before you pick up the phone or walk through the door, because it’s going to affect everything else that follows. Make sure it’s an intent that’s focused on the client’s best interests.
SOLUTIONS HAVE NO INHERENT VALUE Solutions derive value only from the problems they solve and the results they produce. To truly understand client needs, you need to move off the solution (a counterintuitive move, especially for salespeople).You must, instead, objectively explore issues, problems, and desired results, as well as what criteria the client will use to make a decision.
NO GUESSING Too often, a question you want to ask the client may come to mind, but for whatever reason you don’t ask it. For example, “From what you have described, you seem to be happy with your current solution.Why would you consider changing?” or “How much funding have you allocated for this project?”or “What criteria will you be using to make your decision?”To help clients succeed, you need to learn how to ask these hard questions in a soft way. If you don’t ask these questions, it leaves you to guess the answers. If there’s a fit, work together, make money, and have fun. If there is no fit, find out quickly, shake hands, and part friends. And if your solution doesn’t fit, or they have more pressing needs, maybe you can recommend where they can find another answer. By doing this, you could become a trusted advisor to the client.
Tags: cusotmer meeting success, sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in customer meeting, how to have productive sales team meetings, sales meetings, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
(We are continuing with our Meeting to Win 3-week sales team meeting agenda series, Maxmize Customer Meetings. We invited a friend of Meeting to Win, Kathleen Steffey, CEO and Founder of Naviga Business Services to share some great advice for the before the meeting in Don’t Wing It.)
Don’t Wing It
by Kathleen Steffey, CEO/Founder of Naviga Business Services
Quiz time: What are the five biggest challenges your prospects and clients are dealing with and how does your solution address them?
If you can’t answer that question, you need to hit the books. How can you possibly position your solution as a way to relieve your prospect’s pain if you don’t understand the source of their discomfort?
A solid working knowledge of industry issues lets you anticipate the most common objections and develop standard responses that overcome them. It lets you develop a standard list of leading questions that shift the focus from the prospect’s concern about spending money to the return they will realize from their investment into your solution.
It keeps you in control of the sales process and helps you establish a rapport and build a foundation of trust.
Is your client’s industry faced with a talent shortage? If so, how does your solution help the prospect function effectively with fewer people, or raise their profile so they can better-compete for top professionals?
Is the economic downturn causing belt-tightening? If so, how does your solution help lower production costs, reduce overhead or improve productivity?
Top sales professionals make time to keep up on the industries they serve. They read the top trade journals, find the blogs and online sites that cover their business and industry. They listen to what their clients are saying.
Follow their lead. Use the information you glean from these sources to develop a library of standard responses and questions. Practice them until you know them cold.
Now you’re ready to respond to whatever objection your prospects throw at you so you can lead them down the path to a value-based sale.
(Meeting to Win thanks Kathleen for her insights in Don’t Wing It. To get weekly sales team meeting agendas on Maxmizing Customer Meetings and many other sales performance topics, subscribe to Meeting to Win weekly sales team meeting agendas today. We look forward to working with you.)
Tags: cusotmer meeting success, pre-call planning, prepare for sales call, sales team meeting idea, sales teams
Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, communication, customer meeting, free sales team meeting topics, management tips, performance, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda. | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
(To get a 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda on Objection Strategy with Role Plays, visit our STORE.)
As salespeople, we hear objections, pushbacks and questions during a sales cycle. Our goal must always be to provide our customers with the best possible solutions to get them the results they desire. With that in mind, it is our responsibility to effectively address objections and pushbacks. By “effectively address”, I mean that we need to be prepared for our most common questions or objections and make sure we understand what is driving the concern. We must get to the real need or issue that the objection is raising. Only when we thoroughly address issues can the customer make the best possible decision about what is best for their company.
To do this, a salesperson must first identify all the objections they hear. It is helpful to list these by stage of the sales cycle. For example, create a chart that lists the steps in your sales cycle from suspect to negotiation and then list the objections you typically hear at each stage of the sales cycle.
Then, based on the stage of the sales cycle, determine why they may have that objection, concern or question. What might be driving that concern or objection (they are afraid the solution costs too much, they work with your competitor already, they really don’t have authority to take it any further, etc).
Then, determine the best way to learn the reason behind the objection. What questions will you ask? How will you communicate in a way that does not cause the customer to become defensive? How can you open them up to share their thoughts behind the concern?
Now, that you have gone through this exercise for each objection you hear, you are prepared for the next time those objections arise – and you know they will. You’ll actually look forward to addressing these objections as an important part of helping your customer make great decisions for them and their company. In many cases, you’ll be able to address the objection before they even raise it.
Being prepared to help our customers is our responsibility as sales professionals. So, we know we get objections and pushbacks. There is no excuse for not being prepared for them.
Look forward to objections this week!
(To download the Objection Strategy & Role Plays Sales Team Meeting Agenda, visit our STORE here. This 60-Minute Sales Team Meeting Agenda will leave your sales team with a strategy for handling your most common objections leaving them more equipped to win that very day.)
Tags: cusotmer meeting success, energize sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agendas, sales team meeting idea
Posted in handling objections, how to have productive sales team meetings, objection strategy | No Comments »
Monday, March 8th, 2010
We at Meeting to Win are big fans of Paul Castain and his work. During our 3-week Sales Team Meeting Agenda series on Maximizing Customer Meetings we thought you may enjoy Paul’s thougths on starting your meetings with impact.
Starting Your Meetings with Impact
by Paul Castain of Sales Playbook
OK, pop quiz. How long does it take to make an impression on someone? 30 seconds? 10? Less? …
Here’s something that you can do in your very next client/prospect meeting …
Read the rest here.
Tags: cusotmer meeting success, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agendas, sales teams
Posted in free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, management tips, maximize tools, meetings, sales activity, sales manager tips, sales meetings, sales tips, tips for meetings | No Comments »
