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Leslie Groene Website Homepage October 2017, Vol. 148
 

How do You Spend Your Time?!

Looking at the pie chart, you can see 6 portions that are representative of activities that most sales people spend time on every day and/or week.
How many of these are necessary? Can you delegate any of these administrative tasks to sales support staff. Are you wasting crucial selling time because it’s a good excuse to NOT have to make calls or prospect?
Spending prime selling time on R & D, paper work and project management can limit your time for ‘revenue generating activities ’. We all only have a fixed amount of hours each day to actual SELL and we need to use this precious time in the most productive way. Try to keep track of how you use your time for a week with some sort of time log and you will be amazed at how much of your time is wasted with non-selling action times.
It is best to make a list of sales activities each week to make sure that you are targeting (and delivering) your necessary selling strategies and executing these initiatives.
Maximize your ‘Revenue Generating Activities’ to ensure that you are reaching your highest revenue goals!

Webinar: Discover Your Selling Power

The cold call is dead, and for salespeople to be successful, they must be great prospectors, planners, and researchers--with the end-goal to become great at consultative selling. This sales process is all about spending time with customers, listening and learning about their business processes, and how they can be supported with new solutions. Today's successful sales reps know and understand their client's business needs, are geared for longer sales cycles, and is ready to help solve a customer's problem. It is this approach that strengthens the relationship which is critical in this business climate.
Thursday, October 12, 2017 - 10:00am to 11:00am
Register here

SESSION 1: HIRING ON-BOARDING AND MANAGING SALES PEOPLE
For owners, sales managers and HR professionals.
We will discuss how to hire new reps and what to look for while making an effective assessment. You know who you want to hire and what your criteria is...and we must make sure their goals are in line with yours!

When we onboard new reps it’s important to establish benchmarks and common goals. Creating a training/support system for a new hire is imperative as well as providing them with a designated mentor.

SESSION 2: MASTERING THE CONSULTATIVE SALE
For owners, sales managers, sales representatives and CSRs.
Are you ahead or behind the trend? We are now firmly in the solution selling paradigm. Old school transactional selling is fading by the wayside being replaced by comprehensive solution selling strategies. We need to understand HOW to help our clients and prospects meet their objectives.

We will discuss how you and your sales team can execute a client needs assessment to determine how we can fit into their business needs; ask better questions; use the right marketing tools; develop new sales cycles and more!

Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Session 1: 9:30am – 11:00am
Session 2: 11:30am – 1:00pm
Maggiano's Restaurant 3055 Olin Ave., San Jose
Register

Thursday, October 26, 2017
Session 1: 9:30am – 11:00am
Session 2: 11:30am – 1:00pm
Blue Prynt Restaurant 815 11th St., Sacramento
Register

Focus Point

76. Always seek feedback on how well you are doing with your clients.

This is one of the most difficult things to do -- and one of the most necessary. From time to time, we all have less than- perfect experiences with clients. The communication process can become flawed or the client's expectations can be just a little bit unrealistic.

No matter what goes wrong with a client, we still need to have the fortitude to offer to fix it. However, if the primary problem is with the client, you might need to move on to other prospects. That depends on the contributions of the client to your firm's bottom line. Most of us have dealt with someone who can be characterized as "the client from hell," whom nothing will ever satisfy.

Unless a client like that is the one keeping your firm's doors open and lights burning, you might want to graciously remove yourself from further humiliation and frustration. Life is too short to go through hell for a difficult, demanding client who just doesn't get it. I would rather lose that client than half my sales staff in the process!

Fortunately, most clients are not like that. They simply need to know that we want their constant feedback on how we're doing for them. You might learn something about your style or personality that you're not even aware of, and it might help you in the long run. Also, it is much better for your clients to know they can talk to you about a problem area and that you will respond to their concerns.

It does take a pretty competent and confident individual to adopt this policy with clients, though. Sometimes we might not want to hear what they say. However, if your firm's policy is not to assign blame but to focus on fixing what is amiss, everyone will benefit.

To incorporate such a policy, a firm can appoint an independent third party to elicit comments from clients. They could be reluctant to open up to their normal liaison if something about that person is part of the problem. But again, when everyone buys in to the concept of providing exceptional service to the firm's clients, and when the process is a positive one and not an internal blame game, then everyone will benefit.