What's New

As people get more and more refined with their sales process they begin to execute on the individual steps of the sale with more confidence.

There’s something we all know to be an important aspect of the sales process but it’s rarely talked about: Being Congruent
 
Congruent - the quality or state of agreeing, coinciding, or being congruent. 

Presentation Overload

Consider this ... your personal success has far more to do with you than with market conditions. In good times and bad, top performers remain top performers. Why? There has been an enormous amount of study into what accounts for the huge variances in sales success from one individual to another. We have heard Brian Tracy and others talk about the concept of Winning Edge as "small differences in ability translating into enormous differences in results."

We often find ourselves coaching managers and helping them clarify what their true role is in sales management. Sometimes they look puzzled when we say: "Your job is not really managing sales or even growing sales." The sales manager's highest value comes from developing people.

Do you feel like you’re working as hard as you possibly can to make more sales but somehow you never seem to “close" enough? Chances are you may have developed a few bad habits that you might not even be aware of.

Here are seven bad sales habits that you should drop now:

1. Guessing at what you think the customer wants.

There were a few eye-opening gems in a recent CIBC Survey (link) that checked-in with Canadians on their financial priorities, their opinion on how they were progressing on their goals and what kind of shape they felt they were in for retirement. The data points of particular note for me were:

Whenever we ask participants for course objectives in our training sessions inevitably someone asks if we are going to cover how you respond to a rate driven client. It’s a very common challenge that many struggle with. What do you do with the client that starts their conversation with you by focusing on rate?

It's RSP season again and for some reason, this is when sales people start to get lazy. They know they should be getting a client to acknowledge a problem first before they present a solution (i.e. a product) but for some reason, when it comes to selling RSP's at this time of year they resort back to a money grab by just asking if they have contributed yet. Oh, I know that is not their intention, but by just asking someone if they have contributed yet, that's essentially what they are doing.

There is a simple rule we advocate to help people avoid coming across as being pushy sales people: Don't present a solution (product) to a problem (need) that is not been acknowledged by the client. Generally speaking most people dislike having someone try to sell them a product that they don't need. By asking good questions you can get a client to acknowledge that they have a need which clears the path for you to comfortably present a solution.

Problem questions