Sales Team Building Exercise

Rapport in sales is a critical ingredient in developing client loyalty and paving the way for future sales.  A sales team that has a strong degree of rapport with one another will function more effectively than a team with a set of individual performers.  Together Everyone Achieves More, right?

Want a quick and fun exercise to build rapport within your sales team by helping them realize each others innate talents?  Try this during one of your sales meetings.

Get everyone the book Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath.  Have everyone read section 1, 30 pages, and then take the online StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment.   Ask them to skim the rest of the book, which has details on the 34 most common strengths based on 40 years of research by Gallup.  In the back of the book there is a code that they enter on the StrengthsFinder website which provides them with a detailed custom report on their strengths.  Have them print their report and bring the results to the meeting.

Put a flip chart on the wall for each person in the room.  Ask the participants to keep their assessment results private until you complete the exercise.

The exercise is for each person to write what they believe are the top 2 strengths of their teammates on each person's flip chart.  Participants should use the book to review details of each strength to determine if it fits the their teammate. If you have 5 people participating, each flip chart should have 8 strengths written on it.  The exercise should take about 5 minutes per person - so for 5 people allot 25 minutes.

Once each person's flip chart has everyone's input, have each person stand next to their flip chart.  Have the team provide input on why they feel the assigned strengths fit the person.  Then have the person reveal their top 5 strengths and describe why they agree/disagree with their assessment.

Not everyone is going to agree with their strengths,  but through the team feedback, they just might get a better understanding of how they're perceived, and everyone will learn a few things about their teammates in a fun and impactful exercise.

Probe Flow

Asking open and closed probes will typically occur several times throughout a sales conversation. When and what probes you ask depends on what you are looking to achieve. There are no rules on when to ask particular probes however there is typically a flow that leads to a more successful call. At the start of a conversation you begin to “know” the customer by probing to explore their circumstances. From their circumstances, you may realize opportunities to investigate. Then you move onto understanding their needs and confirming needs. Along the way customers respond to your probes and that’s where you’ll react by probing for effect and drilling down to get further information. A customer’s expression of need (I’m looking for XYZ) and a customer’s expression of pain (I worry about ABC) represent opportunities for us as salespeople. It may require more probing to find out the need behind the need or the source of the pain before providing solutions.

Potential Probe Flow

Probe for circumstances - Who are you currently doing business with?

Probe for a need - What are you hoping to achieve?/What are your goals?

Probe for the effect (to create an awareness of a latent need) How do you feel about your current situation?

Probe to peel back the onion - Why is that?/Tell me more about that.

Probe in response to expressions of pain - When you say you don't want to worry, what do you mean?

Probe to confirm a need - Do you want to change that situation?/So what you're saying is....

Hey Sales Managers, Inspect What You Expect

My 13 year old son has a saying that has become famous in our household. It goes like this: "I got it". It's a saying that is proclaimed in response to inquiries about homework completion and test readiness. For a while it was music to my ears. "Alright, the kid is finally starting to take ownership for his responsibilities", I thought.

Then, the results started to appear (aka "grades"), and the result didn't always jive with the "I got it" saying. That's when I decided to get into the weeds a bit and confirm his process and interpretation of "getting it". What I found was that his study habits weren't appropriate for what he was trying to achieve, and he really didn't understand the concept of being comfortable with the material before sitting for a test. It was something that I had to coach him through because no one had ever done it before.

Now, when he says "I got it", I know what he means and what he has had to measure against to make such a statement. As well, he knows that he can't make the statement if he doesn't match up against what we discussed. We're still in the early innings, but I am betting the results will follow.

It dawned on me that sales managers need to go through the same exercise in order to help sales people achieve their desired sales results. One of the things I preach to sales people and sales managers alike is, "if the behaviors don't change, results will stay the same".  It is critical for a sales manager to consistently pop the hood and see what is making a sales person go. Every sales person needs a tune up now and then, so don't take for granted that just because someone has a certain level of experience in sales that you can let them go.  By not "inspecting what you expect" (and by that I mean looking at their process, their style, application of sales skills,etc), you are likely leaving some better sales results on the table.

Some may say that this equates to micro-management.  I've seen micro-management, and a micro manager is based on "how" a manager manages/coaches, not the actual act of managing.  Be open, be collaborative, be consistent, be authentic, be genuine  - and no one will accuse you of micro managing.

Asking, Listening and Telling

Asking, Listening and Telling are the 3 primary elements of any sales interaction. Can you guess which element is most widely used by most sales people?

Yes, sales people by nature like to talk, and research shows that telling is the predominant activity they like to engage in.

The 3 elements are loosely defined as follows:

Ask: When you probe for circumstances, needs, effects, and pain

Listen: Listen for needs, expressions of pain, possible opportunities so we can drill down and guide the conversation
Tell: Once you confirm a need you provide a solution

Great salespeople put energy into all three components and they do so while maintaining balance among all three. Too much of any one element can result in a very one-sided conversation.

Balance allows for a 2 way conversation that involves the customer. Too much asking and the customer may feel they are getting hammered with questions, too much listening when the discussion is not relevant means the customer is controlling the entire conversation, too much telling means the call is about your needs not your customer’s needs.

A fun and impactful sales experiment if you have access to recorded sales conversations is to listen to several calls. On a piece a paper create three columns labeled A, L, and T. Every time you hear a question by the sales person place a check in the A column, every 5 seconds or so of the customer explaining something uninterrupted gets a check for L, and every 5 seconds of the rep telling something gets a check for T.

If you're the salesperson, you have some objective data you can use to change some potentially unproductive habits. If you're a coach you have objective data that will help you determine if the sales person has a sales effectiveness issue.

Science or Art

What drives a greater degree of sales success? The science of sales where tracking activities versus results enables a salesperson to determine what activity levels are required to achieve their goals. Or the art of sales where a salesperson focuses on skills and competencies to effectively identify customer needs and provide value-added solutions. Of course both are important, but a salesperson can do themselves a favor if they focus on each in the most effective way. 

The science of sales is a concept that not enough sales people take seriously. It is an effective tool for understanding what activities are most important, how many activities need to be completed in order to move the sales process forward, and what size a salesperson's opportunity pipeline needs to be in order to reach their goals. The basis of the science of sales revolves around the pipeline and knowing how many opportunities you have and what stage of the sales process they're in. The science can go as deep as working to understand how many customer attempts and touches a salesperson needs to hit their sales goal in a given period. From that, a salesperson can build ratios that will drive their daily activities. For example, if I know that historically, I have 10 client meetings for every closed sale - and each of those meetings takes 5 telephone discussions and to reach someone it takes 10 phone attempts - it becomes clear exactly what needs to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.  

The ratios will change, and can morph over time as the level of effectiveness, aka the art, improves. But the ratios will always tell a salesperson what they need to action in order to reach success.  

So the moral is, you need to focus on the art and the science, and if you don't have the science figured out you're likely having a difficult time determining what you need to do to succeed in sales. A salesperson without an understanding of the science of their sales process is like spending the day in Disney World without a map. You know what rides and exhibits you want to see but you'll waste a lot of time wandering around trying to figure out exactly where you need to go.

Relieving Pain, Satisfying Needs

Pain is not a customer need.  It may lead to a need or may indicate the existence of a need (one that the customer may not know they have), but it is typically the most obvious cue that you will hear from a customer. 

When customers are in pain, they are:

Confused – Worried – Unsure – Anxious – Angry

The pain will manifest itself in what they say and how they say it.  By picking up the pain cues and asking probes to clarify the WHAT and WHY of their pain, you will typically find a need just below the surface.  By addressing the pain (providing relief), finding the need and providing a solution you will be able to close more business and build loyalty amongst your customers.

Will alleviating customer pain always lead to more business for a sales person?  No, not necessarily, but if you avoid a customer’s pain altogether your opportunities for future business will be diminished.  So address and provide relief for their pain, find out what needs are below the surface and you’ll close business as a result of it, build deeper customer relationships, and get more future referrals.

Sales Effectiveness - It's How You Say It

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Is your TONE impacting your sales effectiveness?  Sales success, especially when selling over the phone depends on not only what you say, but how you say it.

Consider the word “what”.  “WHAT!!??”  and  “What?” have two entirely different connotations using the exact same word altered by my tone. When selling by phone, tone of voice is crucial. A study done at UCLA found that, when selling by phone, 84 percent of the message is conveyed by the "music" in the voice—your vocal quality: pitch, tone and inflection.  Tone is the most important for conveying emotion and creating feelings of good will with your customers and prospects.

When opening a sales call, you are setting the stage for the entire call. This is sometimes the first interaction that you have with a customer or prospect.  The disadvantage of selling by telephone is the absence of face to face contact, therefore the tone of your communication greatly contributes to a successful or unsuccessful interaction.   How you say it, can be just as important as what you say, so being cognizant that your tone can cause the customer to listen more attentively and lead to greater opportunities for sales success.