Advanced Sales & Sales Management Training for the Experienced Professional. Questions? You may contact Jim at: jim@pancero.

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1 Advanced Sales & Sales Management Training for the Experienced Professional Present Leading (and Tracking) Your Sales Team to Increased Sales Questions? You may contact Jim at: Name Program Date Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Dallas TX

2 Advanced Sales & Sales Management Training for the Experienced Professional BIOGRAPHY Jim Pancero has the most advanced, leading-edge "business-to-business" sales and sales management training available today. Everything he does is extensively researched and has one bottom line focus...to increase an organization's strategic competitive advantage and market uniqueness. Jim's work focuses on sales organizations with high priced, large, and/or competitively complex products and services. His information-intensive keynote speeches, training programs and in-depth consulting work detail his innovative selling processes and strategies for the new economy and global marketplace. Even during a sixty-minute keynote, Jim provides the most experienced members of his audience with proven, immediately usable advanced ideas to increase their competitive advantage and enhance their selling processes. His combination of humor and real-world examples evolved from his experience researching and training in over 80 different industries. Jim has been directly involved in "business-to-business" selling for over 40 years. Six of those years were spent successfully selling the largest computer systems for the Data Processing Division of the IBM Corporation. During Jim's prestigious IBM career he earned several awards including the coveted "Golden Circle" designation annually awarded to the top 5% of their international sales force. In 1982, Jim founded his advanced sales training and consulting company. Since then, Jim has conducted over 3,000 presentations or consulting days for 600 companies providing a career average of five events per client. Over 90% of Jim's clients utilize his services more than once. You can learn more about Jim at Pancero.com as well view video clips on YouTube Jim Pancero, Inc., Dallas TX Phone: Fax: Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 1

3 WHAT KIND OF SALES COACHING AND LEADERSHIP DO YOU HAVE NOW? - Reactive Transactional sales coaching and leadership. Focuses majority of time on their own assigned accounts (acting like a sales person), equipment ordering and management, special pricing, expediting, problem solving and customer thank you calls. Tends to focus majority of coaching discussions on history and today focused information ( What happened? and What do you plan to do about it? coaching questions). - Proactive Selling Process sales coaching and leadership. Focuses majority of time on helping each member of their assigned sales team increase their positioning and usage of defined selling processes. Tends to focus majority of coaching discussions on future focused information ( And now what else can you do? coaching questions). - Part- time Sales Managers. Do you have full-time or part-time sales managers and coaches? - Majority of sales managers are still carrying their own accounts (Where they are acting as the main sales person to this customer). Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 2

4 THE PROBLEM WITH BOTH OUTSIDE SALES REPS AND MANAGEMENT... - Assumption That "Experienced = Trained" - What is the job of a sales manager? - "The job of a sales manager is to help each and every one of your people achieve more than they would have achieved if left alone" - How to Achieve This New Definition and Focus of Sales Management 1) Manage, lead, and motivate your people 2) Manage and lead your selling process 3) Manage your information to be a more effective sales manager Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 3

5 SELLING SKILLS REQUIRED FOR SELLING SUCCESS Strategic Focus and Positioning - Communicating Your Philosophy and Market Position - Answering the Question "Why, based on all of the competitive alternatives available to me, do I want to buy from you?" Tactical Tools and Controls - Understanding and Controlling Your "ID to Close" Selling Process - How to Call "Higher and Wider" Within a Customer's Organization - How to Utilize the Rest of Your Team in Your Selling Process - Time and Territory Management Skills - Effective Negotiation Skills - Steps of a Sales Call Operational Skills and Abilities - Personality Awareness Skills ("Why people buy") - Persuasive Communication Skills - Product and Industry Knowledge Attitude & Energy Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 4

6 THE INFORMATION FLOWS OF A SUCCESSFUL SALES MANAGER Future - Forecasts and quotas - Strategic planning Today - Status reports - Call planning meetings - Customer sales calls - Problem resolution activities History - Call reports - Expense reports - "What happened?" meetings Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 5

7 HOW TO HELP YOUR SALES TEAM BECOME MORE PROACTIVE IN THEIR STRATEGIC SELLING EFFORTS 1) Stronger message and market positioning of your distributorship and suppliers - All team members consistently deliver your message of competitive uniqueness and value (as a Single Enterprise ). 2) More proactive selling. - Definition of Strategic Selling (One of the most proactive ways to sell). - Sales professionals exerting more control and positioning of their defined multi-stepped selling processes. - Stronger communication of your uniqueness and value as a dealership to your customers from all members of your Single Enterprise sales team. - Sales team members proactively initiate customer discussions and problem solving (instead of just waiting for the customer to call or ask). 3) More involved sales management coaching and leading. - Sales managers/coaches focus more on future focused discussions (What do we now need to do? ) instead of only focusing on today and history focused discussions ( What happened and what do you think will fix it? ). - Sales team (coached by sales management) thinks, plans and implements a consistent multiple-stepped selling process. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 6

8 HOW A MANAGER CAN MEASURE INCREMENTAL CHANGE 1 ST - Look For A Change In ATTITUDE 2 ND - Look For A Change In EFFORT 3 RD - Look For A Change In PROGRESS 4 TH - You Can Finally Look For A Change In RESULTS Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 7

9 SALES TOOLS NEEDED TO LEAD A SALES TEAM 1 Steps of A Sales Call Operational selling structures to help each sales professional increase their sales consistency and selling professionalism. 2 Personality Flexibility Skills Operational selling structure to help each sales professional increase their persuasive communications skills with a wider range of customers. 3 New Business Selling Plan Multiple-stepped plan to proactively strategize and implement when selling to a new prospect or selling a new business opportunity to an existing customer. ID Close 4 Maintain and Grow An Existing Customer Plan Multiple-stepped plan to proactively maintain and grow an existing customer. January 1 st December 31 st 5 Political Strategy Having a plan for each important account of how your sales team can get Higher, Wider and Deeper within the political structures of your largest customers. 6 Message of Uniqueness Having a brief message of strategic competitive uniqueness and value being consistently delivered by all members of your sales team. Why, based on all the competitive alternatives available to me do I want to buy from you? 7 Information Tools and Reports Having timely and accurate information to support your sales coaching efforts and leadership decisions concerning: - Sales professional s actions (Call reports, account briefings) - Preferably history focused as well as future focused - Customer information, account history, and future selling plans - Performance metrics for each sales professional - Prospect lists (to direct and focus new business selling efforts) 8 Ongoing proactive coaching and training of your sales team Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 8

10 You Can Always Sell More, By Becoming More of a Selling Process Sales Manager by Jim Pancero How many sales reps directly report to you? I have been asking this simple question a lot lately and the answers I am hearing are not that positive. I have been noticing a trend the last few years; it seems the average number of outside sales reps reporting to a business-to-business sales manager is slowly but surely increasing. I recently met a sales manager with 26 direct sales reports and another who had 20. Can you imagine what their daily life as a sales manager must be like? A sales manager with 26 direct reports has no time to coach and lead but instead only functions as a 911 dispatch operator spending all their time fighting fires and solving problems. Where do you spend your time as a sales manager? The second question I have been asking sales managers is Where do you spend your time as a sales manager? This answer also, is not that positive. Because of the increasing number of salespeople reporting to one manager, the average sales manager spends the majority of their time acting as the administrative leader with no time, or awareness to lead their team s planning or selling process. Are you a Transactional or Selling Process Sales Manager? The job of a sales manager can be divided into two distinct areas or efforts. Do you spend more time functioning as a transactional or as a selling process sales manager? The vast majority of business-to-business sales managers are only functioning as reactive transactional sales managers investing all their energies into special pricing requests, order expediting, problem solving and customer glad-handing. Transactional sales managers spend almost no time actually coaching and leading their teams selling efforts. Transactional managers are always available to help solve a problem or to remove a roadblock, they just do little to actually direct or lead any members of their sales team. The alternative to transactional sales coaching is to be more of a selling process sales manager investing the majority of your time helping each team member improve their selling skills, sales tools, and selling processes. Transactional managers only tend to work on today or history-focused problems asking, What happened? and So what are you going to do about it? Selling process sales managers invest their energy coaching and guiding their teams future focused selling efforts asking What are your next three steps with this account? and How can you better position your value and uniqueness? Transactional sales managers are good at maintaining a sales team, their territory, and sales volumes while process sales managers excel at building and growing a teams selling skills, sales processes, and strategic competitive advantage. What can you do to become more of a growth focused process sales leader and less of a maintaining transactional problem solver in your job as a sale manager? How it got this way. Transactional sales managers did not go to college to learn how to shuffle paper and only solve administrative problems; they evolved into a transactional focus due to their lack of leadership training and awareness, their personal bias, pressure from upper management and the immediate demands of their sales team. The more reactive you are as a sales leader waiting for others to tell you what to do the more likely you will focus all your attention on transactional coaching and problem solving. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 9

11 You Can Always Sell More, By Becoming More of a Selling Process Sales Manager (continued) The most common reason the majority of sales managers only function as transactional managers is because no one is speaking up to identify a better way to increase sales. Most sales managers reactively look to their boss for guidance on how they should be managing and leading their sales team instead of proactively speaking up to offer ideas that could improve their sales team s performance and results. What ideas do you have that can allow you to invest more time coaching and leading, and less time focusing on administrative issues? Selling continues to become more complex and harder. The majority of customers have become buyers that are more effective and negotiators demanding more from selling organizations. Markets have become hyper-competitive with little differentiation or uniqueness between vendors, profit margins have become tighter, and most sales organizations are demanding greater sales volumes from all members of their sales team. If your manager has never been trained on effective sales leadership and has spent his or her career functioning as a transactional sales manager then your manager will likely assume that is the only way the job is supposed to be completed and will expect similar efforts and focus from you as a sales manager. Another reason for so much focus on this reactive transactional leadership style is the reality of today s cost cutting focus and mentality. Sales managers and schoolteachers share much in common. Both directly experience the results of their leadership s cost cutting measures by being given more students or sales reps to teach and manage. The cost cutting pressures of the last several years have meant, Consolidating our sales team which really means, Give more sales reps to each sales manager. What you can do about it Are any of these concerns or reasons for reactive transactional sales leadership happening within your company s sales management team? Even if you are now functioning as a predominatelytransactional sales manager, it does not have to stay that way. You can change the way you manage and lead your sales team by becoming more involved in future- focused sales coaching, and account leadership that can help your sales reps achieve more than they would achieve if just left alone. There are six ideas or suggestions that can help you achieve success as a selling process sales leader: First, Get some accurate data on where you are really spending your time and energy. The easiest way to do this is to start a daily time log of what you do. Take a few minutes at the end of each day to identify how many minutes and hours you invested in each of the major areas of reactive transactional sales management and proactive selling process leadership. Do you think you could rebuild your time at the end of each day to calculate accurately where you really spent your time? The major job efforts of a sales manager include: At the Transactional Managing level, skills include Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 10

12 You Can Always Sell More, By Becoming More of a Selling Process Sales Manager (continued) Direct selling (Where your customer sees you as the main sales person). Internal company stuff - s, internal reports, administrative activities, non-selling or non-sales leadership projects or assignments and meetings that are not directly sales related. Working on special price quoting, order expediting or inventory re-prioritization. Problem solving and Customer thank you communications. At the Selling Process leadership level, skills include Future focused next possible selling steps individual account planning and coaching. Coaching and training to improve your teams selling efforts or territory coverage. Increasing your team s new business prospecting efforts. Helping your reps get Higher, wider and deeper within their customer contacts. Where are you spending your time and what can you be doing with this new information to reassess and refocus your efforts as a sales manager and leader? Second, Becoming more of a selling process sales leader is to evaluate if there is anything you can dump, delegate, downplay, or ignore to free up more Selling process coaching time. Third, Look around to see if you can identify any sales managers within your company or community who are doing a better job at leadership than you are. If there are other sales managers at your level, compare notes and see how others are spending their time. Learn from those doing it better agreeing as a team to go to upper management to share your sales coaching opportunities and ideas. Fourth, Start investing time to coach your reps on their individual account selling plans and overall territory coverage - Start to prove you can make a difference! Fifth, Talk to your manager to explain the payoffs and benefits of you being able to invest more time as a selling process coach. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 11

13 You Can Always Sell More, By Becoming More of a Selling Process Sales Manager (continued) Sixth and final reason, Realize that even if you cannot reorganize your position or change your responsibilities you can still start offering proactive sales coaching suggestions in five-minute increments as you do your normal reactive transactional conversations. Markets continue to become tougher, competitors are becoming stronger, and all sales professionals are wrestling with how to increase their sales volumes and selling efficiencies. You, as a sales coach and leader, can affect the focus and effectiveness of your teams' selling efforts and direction, if and when, you increase your proactive selling process coaching and leadership. As the manager and leader of your sales team, we know you re good, now the question is, are you good enough and proactive enough to increase the amount of time and energy you invest leading your teams' selling efforts? Jim Pancero Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 12

14 You Can Always Sell More, By Using Formal Account Planning With Your Team s Most Important Accounts by Jim Pancero How much account planning do you lead your team through at this time of year? For the majority of sales teams the last month of a business year and the first month of a new year traditionally involve some type of territory planning and quota assignments for the year. Account and territory planning are always good things to do, but for too many companies these end of last year/beginning of next year planning efforts turn out to be a waste of time. Effective account planning needs to be an ongoing process and not just a once a year event where the entire team conducts extensive planning and quota identification for the coming year, and then completely ignores any plans identified for the rest of the selling year. Account planning rarely works as a one time event. Ongoing account planning provides benefits for you, the sales manager, and your entire sales team. Ongoing account planning is not just meant to benefit you the sales manager but instead provides benefits to everyone when successfully implemented. For the sales professional ongoing account planning helps them organize (and prioritize) their territory, identify goals for their top accounts, and identify specific account strategies they want to follow. Effective account and territory planning also helps them focus their efforts on the best and most achievable opportunities that exist within their entire assigned territory as well as helping them communicate to other team members what they want them to help accomplish with this account. For you the sales leader, ongoing account planning helps you quickly gain an understanding of a rep s goals, strategies, and tactical plans for their top accounts. Written plans also help you as the coach to look for gaps or unfulfilled opportunities within their account plans so you can provide coaching advice and assistance to the members of your team. As the leader of your sales team, you have the opportunity to coach and lead all the members of your team as they develop, and then follow, identified and written selling plans for their most important accounts. How much ongoing account planning have you been leading your team to complete and follow? Account planning can increase your competitive advantage. Successful and ongoing account planning can increase your team s competitive advantage and selling effectiveness by helping them identify, organize, and develop written stepped plans of what they want to do to win an account s business. Once developed, these written plans can then be used for ongoing coaching by you their sales manager and can be used to communicate the need for additional help from other departments and executives within your company. After a sale is won or lost these account plans can then also be used to coach the sales rep on what they might adjust and try different next time they go after similar business. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 13

15 You Can Always Sell More, By Using Formal Account Planning With Your Team s Most Important Accounts (continued) But too many account planning sessions cover the wrong stuff. Most account and territory planning ignores the proactive future focused selling efforts that can actually increase your team s competitive advantage but instead only focus on planning to identify for an account the number of calls they plan to make on that account and to identify any scheduled special events or time lines planned for these accounts. Leading your sales team through ongoing account planning. Interested in increasing your team s account planning efforts? Effective account planning is best implemented when the following six key ideas are initiated and maintained: Idea #1 - Develop and utilize a standard account planning form. The first idea to you leading effective account planning is to develop and utilize a standard account planning form. An important component of effective account planning is standardization and consistency. Though each final account plan could be different in the goals or implementation plans identified, the planning tools and processes you follow need to be consistent. By everyone following and using the same planning form and process, you, as their coach and leader can now apply consistent solutions and suggestions. But if each rep wants to develop and utilize their own planning form then your entire team will revert back to becoming independent selling painters as discussed earlier losing any consistent team selling structures and processes. A sample standard four-page account planning form is included at the end of this article. This is a form I have developed and implemented for a number of my clients. I am happy to have you adjust and/or adapt my form to fit your selling environment and culture. You just want all members of your team using and following your standard form once it s finalized. Page one of the planning form listed at the end of this article focuses on identifying and discussing Where we are now while page two details Where we want to go with this account. Page three offers space to organize How we plan to win this business and the final page four includes a one page planning form to help you identify and plan how you want to maintain and grow this account s business over the next twelve months. Idea #2 - For now only focus on each sales professional s top five accounts. The second idea to effective account planning is to initially only focus on each sales rep s top five accounts. Effective account planning needs to be built and grown into a sales organization. An account planning effort will fail if you announce to your reps the need to finalize written plans for all their assigned accounts as their first attempt at account planning. The greater the number of initial account plans you ask your team to develop, especially if account planning is new to your company, the lower your success rate will be with these planning efforts. The best way to start a team s planning efforts is to begin with them building detailed plans for their top or most important five accounts only. Focusing on their top five accounts allows everyone time to learn how to conduct effective account planning and to give you time to strengthen your account planning coaching skills. You can always increase the number of accounts that need to have a written account plan as your team becomes more comfortable with both your account planning process and how to successfully follow their plans. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 14

16 You Can Always Sell More, By Using Formal Account Planning With Your Team s Most Important Accounts (continued) Idea #3 - Develop a proactive coaching plan to lead your sales team s account planning implementation efforts. A third idea for effective account planning is to develop a proactive coaching plan you can follow when meeting with your team during these account planning implementation efforts. Ongoing account planning will only stay in place as long as you, their sales manager and leader, push the issue. As soon as you stop asking about your rep s account plans, they ll stop developing or following any written plans. Start off now by coaching and leading your team in the development of their account plans for their most important accounts. You might consider conducting a team meeting with multiple sales reps present as you show them how to develop an account plan for a single identified account. Walking your entire team through the development of a plan for a single account can help your team members better understand what you re expecting from any developed plan and how you want them to use and follow this plan in their selling efforts. Once you ve shown them what you expect you can then assign each to complete this same process for their five largest or most important accounts. Next meet one-on-one either in person or by telephone with each sales rep discussing and reviewing their five account plans. This will provide you with a lot of quality private discussion time to help you coach and lead your rep to thinking and planning more moves ahead with their selling efforts. Once these plans are developed and finalized in writing the next thing to do is to always have access to these critical account plans. You ll send a profound message to your team members if every time they mention an important account you immediate pull out your copy of their written plan for that account and use that as a discussion guide. Also, bring up any of these plans whenever you ride with, or spend significant time with, any of your sales reps. If your reps see you referencing and utilizing their written plans every time you discuss that account then you ll quickly send the message to all team members that these account planning forms are an expected component of their job and receiving your help. Finally, you want to reference and discuss any developed account plan when there is closure to that account due to either a win or loss. Once an account has made a buying decision you then want to go back and review the written account plan to see if you or your rep can identify areas or ways their account plan might have been improved or have been more complete. This will help to increase their odds of winning next time, or at least making their planned selling process more efficient and/or effective for any future selling efforts. Idea #4 - Keep your account planning discussions positive and future focused. The fourth suggestion to help you successfully strengthen your team s account planning process is to keep your account planning discussions positive and future focused. Successful account planning has to be conducted in a positive and open environment. Your reps will stop participating and will avoid any planning if they sense this is a negative inquisition or is not seen as being of help and value to them as the rep. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 15

17 You Can Always Sell More, By Using Formal Account Planning With Your Team s Most Important Accounts (continued) Remind all in attendance for any coaching session that this is a positive coaching session meant to help your reps to be more successful and for others to better understand how they can support the selling efforts of the rep. The more negative the comments are to your sales reps then the less effective, and helpful the coaching session will be perceived. Any issues or overall sales performance negatives need to be handled at another meeting and time. This is not a meeting for you to be a "Drill Sergeant" or to hammer them! You also want to work to keep your account planning meetings "tactical" and "strategic" focused vs. being bogged down in "operational" details. You re more interested in helping them develop multiple stepped selling processes and account plans than to discuss in detail how a specific invoice or meeting will evolve. Those types of detailed meetings are handled later, away from this planning session. For this planning session to be effective you need to keep more to the bigger picture of where your rep plans to go with an account and how they plan to get there. The details of what needs to be said and how it needs to be delivered can be handled later as the individual steps are being planned and implemented. You also want these types of bigger picture planning sessions to stay more "future focused" instead of only centering on past history issues or current territory problems. A simple way to insure these meetings stay positive and of value to your sales team members is to always ask, Is this helping? at the end of any account planning or coaching session. Your rep s positive affirmations that these planning sessions are helping can confirm you re providing coaching value to your team. But if they see these planning sessions as negative efforts or a waste of time then nothing will be followed or implemented anyway. Idea #5 - Prior to any account planning discussion confirm in advance with your sales rep the agenda and overall goals of this coaching session. A fifth suggestion to help you successfully strengthen your team s account planning process is to keep identifying the planned meeting agenda you expect to follow. Reducing surprises to your sales team is a great way to lower their resistance to your account planning efforts and a great way to keep them happy and involved in your planning processes. You want to identify in advance of any meeting what accounts you want to discuss in detail, what accounts they d also like to discuss, and the expected planning session starting and ending times, and then stick to that time commitment. Be sure and make any agenda planning as well as any account planning meetings a discussion and not a lecture. You ll increase your coaching effectiveness if your sales rep does the majority of talking and you only control and guide the meeting through the questions you ask of your rep. Remember, any rep completing an account plan needs to feel it s their plan and that they own it or there ll be little plan implementation. Idea #6 - Conduct ongoing reviews and discussions of their defined account plans every time you ride with a sales rep or have any quiet time with a rep. My sixth and final suggestion to help you successfully strengthen your team s account planning process is to continue to conduct ongoing reviews and discussions of any defined account plans every time you meet or ride with one of your reps. Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 16

18 You Can Always Sell More, By Using Formal Account Planning With Your Team s Most Important Accounts (continued) The goal is to get your sales team members to understand how much weight you re placing on these written plans and to see how often you review or ask about anything listed. The more they see you referencing and asking about an account s written plan then the more likely they ll be to support your account planning efforts and to invest the necessary planning and organizational time. Effective account planning processes will only stay effective as long as you coach and lead your team through these planning processes. Effective account planning will only stay effective as long as you coach and lead your team through these selected planning processes and structures. Your job as a sales manager and leader of your team is to help them achieve more because of your help than they d ever be able to achieve on their own. Coaching and leading your team s ongoing account planning efforts can be a significant contributor to both their competitive advantage and overall selling success but that success will only be achieved if account planning stays a central and ongoing component of your leadership style and their expected account efforts. Account planning, like any other sales discipline, demands ongoing sales leadership involvement if it s to continue to be an effective component of your team s selling efforts. Only a hand full of sales professionals maintains ongoing account planning efforts on their own. It s your job as their coach and leader to maintain and continue this effective discipline within your sales team. As the manager and leader of your sales team, we know you re good, now the question is, are you good enough and disciplined enough to implement and continue to maintain an effective account planning process within your sales team. Jim Pancero Copyright 3/2012 Jim Pancero, Inc. Page 17