Account Management – Bridging the Gap

Account Management – Bridging the Gap

Ask most sales managers what they require of their sales people when it comes to account management and you will get a variety of responses. Typical of these responses are the following:

‘I want my sales people to:-

Have a clearly defined strategy for each key account
Demonstrate that they have all angles covered with an account management plan
Identify and manage key decision-makers
Understand how buying decisions are made
Use a process to actively manage the account.

Ask customers what they look for in a good account manager and the responses take on a different emphasis. They express the skills in some or all of the following ways:

‘I want account managers to:-

Show that they are constantly thinking about us
Be active in bringing us new ideas
Be highly responsive to our needs and problems
Show sensitivity in working with our decision-making processes
Support us with state of the art technology, products and processes.

In summary, the supplier sees the account manager as someone whose job it is to PROTECT AND GROW the account. The customer sees the account manager’s primary role as someone whose job it is to CARE FOR AND CULTIVATE their account. The reality is that the account manager has to fulfil both roles, and bridge the gap between these two sets of requirements.

The tensions facing account managers surround the issue of how they should position themselves between these two requirements. If they are seen to be acting too much in the interests of their own organisation the trust between them and their customers may suffer. If, on the other hand, they are seen to be acting too much in the interests of their customers, they may be perceived as being disloyal, and the trust between them and their organisation may suffer.

Account management is about handling this unenviable task of pleasing two masters, each of whom will have a say in the account manager’s success.

Account management therefore is about BRIDGING THE GAP between the interests of suppliers and their customers.

As with most things it all starts with planning.

PLANNING
The only place to start when it comes to planning account management activities is with the customer’s business.

In today’s turbulent markets organisations have spent a great deal of time and energy defining their mission, vision and values. While they have done this essentially for internal communication purposes they undoubtedly expect their suppliers to understand and focus on them as well.

Where these statements exist, good account managers not only record them, but positively acknowledge them in their dealings with their customers.

Behind these statements of intent however lies the customer’s actual business. The history, the current objectives, the strategy, the resources, the structures, the systems, and the skills required of their managers and employees are all relevant pieces of information for the successful management of the account. All need to be understood by today’s account managers to enable them to place their products and services into the overall context of the customer’s business.

Increasingly, customers also expect account managers to understand how their business plans will impact their use of the account manager’s products. They expect account managers to be thinking about the issues of cost saving and quality. They take for granted that account managers will readily understand how their products and services may need to change in the light of expansion into new markets and territories.

From the customer’s point of view therefore good account managers show that they have a complete grasp of their business and their contribution as a supplier to its profitability and growth. They can show that they have a real empathy with the customer’s situation and needs.

When it comes to these issues, suppliers have the same interests but for different reasons. Their interest lies in their desire to constantly spot openings for more sales and to see opportunities for the introduction of different products, technologies, and applications. Their concern with these issues is more to do with the vulnerability of the account to competitor threat, and how the customer’s future plans will present either opportunities or risks for them. Empathy for them means staying close to customers, and close is the only place to be these days.

From the point of view of suppliers therefore it is vital that their account managers have a firm grasp of all the commercial issues surrounding the account, because only if they do can they hope to get closer to the account, act in a more strategic way, and so shut out the competition.
Planning account management activities also involves the people issues which play a part in the successful management of the account. Customers want their buying and decision-making processes respected, and require sensitivity from account managers to their internal politics, power-bases and personalities. They want a sales effort that is co-ordinated with the account manager involving specialists and other colleagues in a planned and structured way. They want to have a say about the frequency of visits and with whom they prefer to deal. In short, they want to be managed but with the involvement and agreement of their key people.

Suppliers likewise want their account managers to plan and manage the people issues. They know that internal roles, levels of authority and discretion, and the structures (formal or informal) within the customer all play a part in buying decisions. They know that these decisions are not always rational but can be based on perceptions, feelings and subjective judgements. They recognise the need for individuals within the customer to feel included and cared for. They understand that clumsy account management, involving many different people in an unstructured way, will annoy the customer and reflect poorly on them as a supplier. They recognise that insights into the people issues at the planning stage are key to their success.

It is the job of account managers therefore to know, understand, and to be able to use all available information to plan their account management activities. Planning is the first step to satisfy the needs of both parties.

Planning then translates into defining account management goals and strategies. Again there are two sets of requirements of the account manager when it comes to approaching the task of achieving the goals and strategy in the best way. The requirements involve a complete understanding of the buying cycle-as seen by the customer and as seen by the supplier.

MANAGING THE BUYING CYCLE
Approaching the task of managing accounts involves seeing the buying cycle from two perspectives-the customer’s and the supplier’s. Both perspectives are similar but are subtly different and it’s important for account managers to understand the differences if they are to play their dual role.

When it comes to the buying cycle from the customer’s perspective it follows a six step process. The process exists whether the customer is an existing account or a prospective account.

1. Need/problem identified
At this step the customer recognises that it has a need or a problem which it has to address. Having ascertained that it cannot supply the solution itself it embarks upon a search to identify the best provider of the solution.

To do this it may contact one or a number of potential suppliers and briefs them on its need or problem. The intention is to find the best solution.

2. Exploration of options
The next step in the buying cycle involves the exploration of options with various external suppliers. The customer will make comparisons, weigh up the pros and cons of different approaches put forward, and will make both objective and subjective judgements as to whom comes closest to its buying criteria. Those suppliers who come the closest are normally invited to present their solutions more formally.

3. Presentation of different solutions
By the time different potential suppliers are asked to present their solutions, the customer will have prioritised the requirements in their buying criteria and will have agreed the roles of different individuals in the buying decision. At this step the customer is looking for shortlisted suppliers to show a complete understanding of its needs and priorities, and is looking for a convincing presentation of the best solution.

4. Decision to buy
The decision to buy is largely dependent on the quality of the presentation of solutions and results from a number of factors. Ultimately they can be summarised by the ‘SPACER’ mnemonic as follows:

Security Is the organisation/product/service a safe bet and risk free?
Performance Will the solution proposed perform as promised?
Appearance Will those involved in the buying decision look good as a result; will the customer look good?
Convenience Will the solution be easy to implement?
Economic Does the solution provide a financial benefit?
Relationship Is there a relationship which can be developed into the future?

If, for the costs involved, all or many of the above benefits are supplied then the customer is likely to buy. If, on the other hand, the costs do not provide the benefits, and in addition involve risks, then the customer is unlikely to buy.

5. Implementation
Having decided to buy what is perceived to be the best option, the customer implements the solution and experiences the reality of its purchase. At this step the customer is usually anxious in the early stages and seeks all the support and reassurance the supplier can give.

Throughout the use of the product, process, or application it is the visibility and frequency of contact between supplier and customer that is all important to ensure total satisfaction with the solution bought.

6. Progress and evaluation
The customer’s future depends on its abilities to profitably satisfy the needs of its own customers, and its customers’ needs will certainly change in the light of market conditions. These days it is not long before progress and change are followed by evaluation and new needs or problems are identified of concern to the customer which impact the supplier’s product. At this point the buying cycle starts again and is repeated.

Seen from the supplier’s viewpoint the buying cycle is slightly different.

1. Need/problem identified
Either by proactively seeking out the business, simply working closely with the customer, or responding to an enquiry, the sales person identifies the customer’s needs or problems.

2. Investigation
Depending on the complexity of the need, the sales person, alone or with others, carries out a thorough investigation of the needs or problems, and prepares a formal proposal, or simply presents solutions (if the customer is well known and a good relationship exists).

3. Presentation of solution
The sales person presents his/her product/service/technology as a solution to the need or problem and answers questions/objections relating to the solution. Other suppliers may be asked to do this as well if they have been involved at steps 1 and 2.

4. Buying of solution
The customer buys the solution, with or without a negotiation, and formalises the agreement to buy in a contract or agreed terms of trading.

5. Implementation of solution
The solution is implemented and the customer has the ultimate ‘show proof’ in the product/service/technology provided by the supplier. After sales support is the key requirement of the sales person at this step.
6. Progress and evaluation
As the customer’s business moves on the requirements change. They grow, they differ, they evolve, and as a result of the customer’s demands and market-place trends, needs are re-assessed, problems identified and the opportunity for selling arises again for the supplier, and the process is repeated.

While the buying cycle is always obvious at the time of securing a new customer, it is very often neglected when it comes to account management. And yet it is this process that is constantly going on and which produces the opportunities to protect and grow the account as well as care for and cultivate the customer. It is the process through which all successful account management takes place.

The successful account managers constantly monitor and evaluate their customers’ progress, needs, and problems and actively use the buying cycle to spot and manage new sales opportunities.

Successful account managers also know how to manage individuals involved in the buying process, the next key ingredient to their success.

MANAGING DECISION-MAKERS
The decision-making processes within an account vary significantly. Rarely do they involve just one individual, and rarely are they discernible simply by looking at the customer’s organisation chart.

Buyers, line mangers, specialists, accountants, senior influencers, directors and even entire boards can be involved in all or part of the decision-making process.

Successful account managers are able to understand the concerns, the role, and the personality type of each influencer involved in a sales opportunity, and are able to respond convincingly to each one.

Each influencer will have a perception of the progress the organisation is making, and the needs or problems it has. Account managers need to understand these and the reasons behind them. To do this, they need to enlist the help of a ‘champion’ who wants the sale to succeed. Good account managers have ‘champions’ in every account and know how to work with them to manage the decision-making process in the best possible way.

From the customer’s point of view, account managers are doing a good job in managing their decision-making processes when they can relate to a wide population of people within the account and can talk their ‘language’. The issue ultimately is one of trust born out of an account manager’s credibility with a wide variety of people

From the standpoint of suppliers, the more people their account managers know both up and across their customer accounts, and the more aware they are of the decision-making process and influencers within them, the greater the likelihood of ongoing success in servicing and growing their key accounts.

Account managers can only do so much to achieve success in these areas on their own. The help of internal colleagues can make all the difference. Their final skill is that of being able to manage and motivate account management teams, usually made of individuals over whom they may have no direct control.

MANAGING ACCOUNT TEAMS
Account management teams can exist for a particular sale, for the duration of the relationship with the customer, or at a point in time during the relationship with the customer. They can vary in size and membership and the individual members usually play different roles in the management of the account.

There are many good reasons for having more than one person involved in the management of an account.

Greater depth and breadth of expertise brought to the customer
Like level people dealing with one another
Avoidance of exposure to just one individual
The gaining of different access points to the customer
Coverage of split sites, different locations, and different decision-makers

Account teams however need to be managed, and this is not always easy given that account managers may not have direct control or authority over other team members. Accountabilities of team members can often be very blurred.

Successful account managers are able to influence others from within their organisation to assist them; they can co-ordinate the efforts of colleagues to bring an impressive team together for the customer’s benefit.

The skills of consultation, persuasiveness, negotiation, and relationship-building all play an important part in this aspect of the account manager’s role. Without these skills and the active support and involvement of colleagues the account manager can be severely disadvantaged.

SUMMARY
Account management is a balancing act. It requires great sensitivity to the needs of both the customer and the supplier. Both parties rely on the skill of the account manager for the success of the ongoing relationship.

The account manager needs to be constantly in touch with what is going on within the account and how this translates into the buying cycle. The buying cycle continually produces opportunities for the account manager at the progress and evaluation stage. At this point, being able to consult, manage, and influence decision-makers is critical to the account manager’s success.

The whole account management process can be helped significantly through the use of account management teams who need to be properly led and co-ordinated.

Account management is a difficult and demanding skill requiring planning, insight and a high degree of sensitivity. As an extension of both the customer and the supplier the ultimate challenge for account managers is quite simply TO BRIDGE THE GAP.

I love Skype!


Image by Esthr

Linkedin Discussion For Sales Managers – What Do You Do When Hr Can’t Find The Hunters You Need?

I recently posted this question on LinkedIn:

Sales Managers:  What do you do when your HR group isn’t able to identify the hunters you need?

With the incredible costs due to unfilled positions (customers going with the competition, RFPs not completed and generally missed sales opportunities), what do you (the sales manager) do to help HR see the need to use an outside source? I have 2 managers right now with open jobs, no real candidates in the pipeline and HR says that they want to fill the job internally.

I got some really great answers from sales managers, business owners, recruiters, and HR people from around the country, and I thought the gist of the discussion was worth posting here for you.

The general consensus seems to be that HR departments are difficult to work with on a candidate search because (1) there are often corporate politics coming into play, (2) HR doesn’t have the expertise to handle finding specialized sales professionals, and (3) HR doesn’t understand the true cost of a vacant position (and might not be all that interested).   Especially if HR is working with a limited budget, they’re not going to be interested in using an outside recruiting source–because they don’t grasp the true cost of a vacant position to the company as a whole.  So, they should stick to the onboarding portion of bringing in a new candidate.

More than a few say that sales managers should just bypass HR entirely–because sales and marketing departments are much more equipped to recruit than HR departments, much more versed in what it is that they need in a new sales rep, and should already have an extensive network of sales reps to mine for their needs.  (In some cases, these were also their arguments for not using a third-party recruiter.)  Most importantly, if the sales manager is going to be held responsible for making the numbers, he or she shouldn’t have to rely on another department to that extent for their team’s success.

My position is, of course, that sales managers make much more productive use of their time by working with the team they have in place to make the sales, and leaving the candidate search to a recruiter.  The more money a manager generates in a normal cycle, the more it costs to use that time finding a new sales rep.  And if recruiting isn’t your business, you’re almost never going to have access to the kind of candidate pool a recruiter has, no matter how extensive your professional network is–which means you’ll be missing out on some very high-caliber talent.  If the sales manager (or the HR department) has to run ads to find talent, that becomes a costly gamble which can easily bring you no results from your efforts.  A good recruiting team saves time and money, while increasing productivity and sales force effectiveness.

Hospitality Sales & Management International


Image by LunaWeb

SMM 1 | The #1 Factor To Achieving Sales Management Success

Hello and welcome to Sales Management Mastery on line at salesmanagementmastery.com. We are here to help you and your sales managers build a team of highly motivated, elite sales people, using easy to use, real world leadership, motivational, and coaching tactics that will unleash a flood of new sales for your sales organization.

On this episode of sales management mastery we are going to get into a little bit about what we what to accomplish on this show. As well as, introduce one of our core foundational concepts that is absolutely essential to becoming a top sales manager.

I’d like to remind you that if you would like to get a jumpstart on starting your own team of supercharged sales people, using our proven system , you can claim your free test drive of the Sales Management Academy by going to salestraininggift.com

On today’s episode we are going to talk about some things that we will be discussing on the show. And this is the difference between the unconventional and the conventional sales managers. Conventional sales managers are the ones who are typically the average sales managers. And if you’re a sales manager, you don’t want to be average. Chances are maybe you’ve been beaten by your competition or maybe sales are down and you are looking for other ways in which to supercharge your sales reps in order to get the sales results that you are looking for.

Or maybe you’re a business owner and you are looking for specifically how to supercharge your sales manager so that learn more concepts and your sales go in the right direction. And that’s what we are really going to be talking about here. So we are going to talk about easy to use, real world tactics. There’s a lot of management books and management theory books that are out there, and courses that you can take that talk about theory but this show is really all about easy to apply, real world, meaty concepts that you can listen in a very short period of time, and then take out and start using on a daily basis in order to move sales in the right direction by motivating, leading, coaching, managing and hiring brand new sales people, in a certain mold that will get you the results that you are looking for. So in the subject of conventional sales management, we will certainly be touching on that quite a bit in the show, but conventional sales management is something that we rail against quite a bit and that’s because the leadership results that get the best results from a sales standpoint are typically unconventional. And I think a lot of the sales trainers and sales experts that are out there talk about the more traditional ways in which to go about leading, motivating, coaching and hiring.

We take a slightly different tactic.-
Fortunately I’ve had a fair amount of experience, about 20 years of sales and sales management experience with a consistently very good track record of being able to bring out the best in sales people, and turn out high performing, low maintenance sales people. And the low maintenance part of it is probably the best part of it because when you have high performance and low maintenance you have sales nirvana because you as the sales manager can devote your time to strategies and tactics to make the sales people even better, thinking about even better ways to beat the competition and drive more sales revenues for the company. That’s really what we are going to talk about in the sales management mastery show.

So our first foundational concept is what we call the “trust account”. And the trust account is an underlying current or theme which we’ll refer back to many times throughout all of these episodes. It’s a very important foundation concept. I am not sure where it came from, I first heard about it when I was a sales rep and then a sales manager and I got some pretty good training when I was first a sales manager. And that first sales manager that I had was my mentor talked about getting deposit or placing deposits in the “trust” account.

The trust account is a fictitious account that you have with your sales people. And each one of your sales people has a different balance at any given point in time. And your job as a sales manager, if you really want to lead and motivate them, and get them to really tune you in and having you tuning into the right frequency so that you message resonates with them, you have to establish trust first. And if you haven’t established trust, then we are going to teach you a lot of ways to reestablish trust, and get that trust going so that a lot of the other things that we’ll be talking about in the show will resonate with you and stick a lot better.

So the thing is that you really need to make daily attempts to get your sales people to trust you. And sales managers need to start doing this as soon as possible. And the analogy that we say is that it is a bank account that you taking withdrawals and making deposits to it; because you are going to be taking withdrawals out if it at a later time. But in the early stages of your relationship that you have with your sales people, you want to make sure that you are making hefty deposits at all times. So at every turn, at every possible moment, you need to be looking for ways to strengthen your sales managers trust in you. Once the sales manager gets that trust, then they can start optimally leading and motivating them, but really not a second earlier. Without that foundation of trust, you are both probably going to end up being in the cellar. And you are probably going to end of in the bottom of the sales rankings, and this is something that you don’t want. Don’t think like this, because if all managers led their troops it would be far more difficult for you to surpass them as your competition.

So when it comes to becoming a sales manager, sometimes it means doing things a little differently and doing things in an unconventional way, in a very unconventional manner. So doing things unconventionally means that you are doing things that 99.9% of all average sales managers don’t do.
But here’s the real news flash for you: Averages sales managers don’t bother with trust at all. And that’s great for you. They don’t worry about establishing that level of trust, then your sales people just tune you out.

To optimally lead your reps and to unleash those explosive sales that you are really looking for, a sales manager needs to be on the same page with their sales reps at all times. And they need to speak their own language and the only way that they’ll listen is if they implicitly trust you. So you can not put the cart before the horse and start leading, motivating and coaching if they don’t believe in what you’re saying-.

Right now I coach my son’s baseball as well as his lacrosse team and they really are not all that different than sales people in the fact that they don’t trust anybody unless they see that you know what you are talking about and that you are going to lead them in the right direction and help them.

So that’s what you are really trying to do here. Not that a bunch of 7, 8, or 9 year old are the same as sales people, but a lot of times it is the same thing. Because what we are talking about is using the basic principals in human psychology in order to get the best out of your sales people. And when you use those basic principals, it doesn’t matter whether they are 40 years old or they are 4 years old, they are all the same. You motivate and lead and coach people almost the exact same way that you would in any type of situation. In this way you’re motivating, leading, and coaching sort of a difficult type of employee, which is the sales rep. They are typically a different bread, which you may have guessed and if you are listening to this show, maybe you have become a sales manager or maybe you are a general manager and you have a bunch of sales managers that report to you. And you notice that sales people, by and large, don’t really like to follow the rules typically, they are kind of mavericks . And they like to think that they are rugged individualists. And they are highly suspect of people telling them what to do.
So because of that, it’s important for a sales manager, and for managers in general, to first establish trust with their employees. So make those regular deposits in the trust account.

Here’s our example here.

In your bank account you have an ATM card, and only you have a PIN # to it, unless you’ve given it to your spouse or whoever, to access that account funds. So every week you make these regular deposits into that account. The base salary deposits go in regularly through automatic deposit, your bonuses, your commissions checks go in as well.

Sometimes you make cash withdrawals, you make debit card purchases, you write checks, and you make other kind of payments. And unless you really enjoy bouncing checks and incurring overdraft fees you are probably pretty careful to monitor those balances so that you don’t bounce checks and rack up those nasty overdraft fees because if you do, you are probably going to end up paying the16.75% interest so be careful to make more deposits than you do withdrawals.

So think about the trust
The amount of trust that they have in you is like your beginning balance. And maybe you are trying to re-establish or build trust because you are brand new

But before you can do anything else, you need to establish a level of trust. We are going to give you techniques to do that. So but here’s the thing, both of you keep a running tally of the balance at all times and this fluctuates over time. So similar to how you might manager your bank accounts, each of your sales people has a trust account that only you have the PIN for. So at the same time you make these daily or weekly deposits in your regular bank account and you make daily and weekly trust accounts too. So it goes both ways. And what you ultimately want is to make more deposits in, especially in the early stages, because you are going to be making withdrawals later and those will be the subjects of future shows; which is really the heart and sole of leading, motivating and coaching and getting superior sales results.

So to keep your sales reps highly motivated and really productive your goal is to make as many deposits in the trust accounts as you can. Avoid making any withdrawals, at least in the early stages, because the more you can build up that bank account, they better off you both are going to be. Another thing is that you’ve got to do this consistently and consistently. Like I said, for the average sales manager establishing trust with their sales people is not really something that they think about. We have members of our Sales Management Academy that have emailed me and that I’ve spoken with on consulting that say, “you know I never really even thought of this I just always thought that when I became a sales manager I would start dictating, and they would do what I say”. And they found out that most sales people would just tune them out. So although this is something that you have to do on a consistent basis, it’s like brushing your teeth everyday. You don’t just brush your teeth once and say “oh my teeth are clean for the rest of my life”. You have to make these deposits every single day as best as you can. And we’ll teach you to do that.

So we are just getting to the point now that you understand that this is very, very important to become a top performing sales manager.

So the truth is that trust is the most important element to any relationship, whether the relationship is personal or business. And by establishing trust, you can really distinguish yourself from all of the other sales managers that out there, all these average sales managers. What we are trying to avoid is having your sales managers be “average”, we don’t want average results. The average sales managers are probably not listening to this show. And the average companies and CEO’s probably aren’t listening to this show either because they don’t care about being average. They are probably getting whooped by the competition, and they know that their sales managers are in this crucible of their sales organization. They are the ones who influence the sales team the absolute most. To make maximum impact on your sales, your sales managers are the ones who are the most cost effective and highly leveraged individuals within your organization to train to get best results and drive new sales growth, and establishing trust is the first step to it.

The beauty of all this is that by making daily deposits in the trust account, it works in any industry. It doesn’t matter if you are selling cardboard boxes or you are selling biologicals, these are all the same concepts.

It is a simple formula here. Think about it this way, when your sales manager/sales people trust their sales manager they produce for that sales manager, they go above and beyond the call of duty, they do the things that typically sales people don’t do, they don’t just put in the bare minimum because the level of trust turns into this other law called the law of reciprocity which we’ll get into in another show which is extremely important to be sure that you are giving before you actually receive, so eventually you will take, you will receive back. I don’t think that it’s better to give than receive necessarily, I think that you have to do it in both parts. But as the first step to top sales management, your sales managers have to establish a level of trust and credibility with their sales people upfront.

Once you start making small deposits in the trust account and your sales managers will start to see their leadership affecting this increase significantly. A funny thing will start to happen; you’ll notice that your sales management performance starts to increase with it. It seem a little bit corny, I’m not going to kid you on this one, it seems like a corny concept, but getting people to trust you in the tough world of business and sales seems like a silly thing to do when all you want to do is make more money, and drive more revenue for the organization, and maybe for a sales manager its to get promoted, and work less than 60 or 70 hours a week. The whole concept behind Sales Management Mastery is high performing, low maintenance sales people so that you aren’t working 90 hours a week, you’re doing what you need to do in order to get those top sales results, but you want your sales people to be really leading themselves. And we will talk about that more in future shows. In the current economic times that we have, there is very little talk on these “soft” skills. There is a lot of talk about the “what have you done for me lately” sort of thing. The recession is probably killing you, and maybe you’re coming out of it as we record this show, but if you start doing this every single day, then it will start to bare fruit just after a few weeks. You’ll see a tremendous turn around in your sales

Establishing trust is a critical building block to enabling you as a sales leader to unleash the hidden potential of your sales force. And in order for them to produce big time results, to achieve goals that you have as an ambitious sales organization don’t fall for that crap. Because when it comes to sales management, conventional thinking and doing things they way you’ve always done them leads to conventional results. And in sales conventional results is just “quota hitting results”. That’s really sort of average results, that’s basically just doing your job and you want to drive new sales revenues that catapult your sales organization to the next level of performance.

So when you start making these deposits in the trust account, you have taken the first steps towards unconventional sales management. And you are going to start taking the very first steps to “unconventional”, exploding results.

Okay so when do you start making these trust deposits anyway? We talk about this core concept, and its easy thing to answer, if you haven’t done it already, you’ve probably waited to long. Now that you’re listening, start thinking of ways that you can establish trust and start building trust for your sales people. We are going to give you a couple of tips in the next show. But if you haven’t started already, you should start now.

What we are really doing here is introducing this concept, and making sure that you understand that this is a core concept that you must establish right from the get go in order to lay that foundation for superior sales performance.

What you really need to do is start early and implement often. If you are re-establishing trust or establishing for the first time, then start making deposits in the trust account as soon as you can. In fact you can start a precedence of trust, right from the get go, even before they start working for you which is even better. And we’ll talk about some of those tips and techniques in our next show.

 

 

 

 

 

Hospitality Sales & Management International


Image by LunaWeb

SMM 2 | 3 Proven Sales Management Techniques To Establish Trust With Your Salespeople

On this week’s episode of Sales Management Mastery we’re going to talk about what’s in it for you to placing deposits in the trust account, plus three proven methods to establish trust with your salespeople so that you can drive your company’s sales revenues. Today we’re going to talk to you about the shear importance of why this is such a critical part of your overall sales management strategy. Whether or not you are a new sales manager, a tenured sales manager, a business owner listening to this, who has a bunch of sales managers that report to you, VP of Sales, CEO, establishing trust with your front line salespeople is important with your front line sales people is a part of good sales leadership but also great sales motivation, and everything sort of flows from it. And it’s the first thing that you need to do is establish that trust or re-establish it. On this show we are going to give you three proven techniques that will allow you not only to re-establish or establish trust so that you can drive your company’s sales revenue.

And our real goal here is to give you some honest, straight forward techniques and strategies that really do work. Everything that we’re really going to be talking about on this show really comes back to this basic foundation of trust. And think about it as you are building a house. Trust is the foundation. You can’t really build the house, and start putting up walls, or doing any other work on the house, unless you have a strong foundation first. So you have to dig it out, pour the foundation, and that’s really what the trust account is all about.

Today we’re going to give you 3 tactics to use in order to establishing that trust.
Whether you’re an old sales manager or a new sales manager or any other person involved in a sales organization, it’s extremely critical for you to establish that trust so that they don’t tune you out, and tune into your sales message.

You’ve probably been asking yourself, “What are these trust accounts going to do for me?” at least for right now. And that’s quite alright because when I first learned this concept, and then refined it through years of being a sales manager is that it was a relatively new concept because I had I thought that as soon as I became a Sales Manager that all I’d need to do start dictating and telling people would do. And I failed miserably, and it was the worst six months of my life because I realized that people don’t listen to because of what you tell them, they listen to you because of how it resonates with them.

That message that you’re given to your sales reps whether it is a leadership message, a motivational message, a management message; only resonates with them if they trust you enough to tune into you.

And we’re going to talk about tuning into the right frequency with your sales people and those sorts of things in later shows. But it turns out that producing great sales results has everything to do with trust.

What stands out to you most when you mention “trust account”? It’s that first word: trust. And trust is that one sole element that just can’t be absent in a relationship between anyone, whether in your personal or professional life.

But especially between a sales manager and a sales rep because sales reps, if you’ve been a sales rep, and have worked your way through the ranks, you know that you wanted to do things on your own, in your own way. And you always felt like you had the best answers to most of the questions. The best sales reps are open to suggestions, but in order to be open to those suggestions, they have to come from a credible and trustworthy source and that’s what we’re trying to establish.

As the saying goes: trust is the glue that binds people together in groups because it’s that thing that holds us together. If you ever had friends, or business associates that you couldn’t trust or they breached your trust you either didn’t want to do business with them, or you started to tune them out.

So it’s sort of a fragile balance as a sales manager, and as a management professional to make sure that you are always putting deposits in the trust account.

Because trust is hard to earn, it’s easy to lose, and when it’s lost it’s nearly impossible to regain. And that’s the reality of human interaction. So we have to be careful not to make large withdrawals from that trust account, and constantly make steady deposits instead.

Forming a relationship built on trust allows your sales reps to act so that the rules of the game aren’t constantly changing.

Then they know that your message is going to be consistent and that they trust what you’re saying then they know that there’s some stability in what you’re saying and what you’re doing. They know that your actions are consistent and congruent to what your words are. And if those to things are off, if your actions are different from what you’re saying, then you end up losing trust.

And when you have consistent actions with consistent words that you are dictating to your sales people, it encourages peace of mind. And when your sales reps have peace of mind, they become willing to exert extra effort and place themselves on the line for you, and the team, and the organization in general. Peace of mind is very, very important and that’s why establishing trust is so critical.

First establish trust then reinforce that trust by looking for the smallest opportunities to make deposits into those trust accounts. There are lots of ways to do it such as praising them for job well done is one way to do it. But there are many, many ways that you can do this.
And the beauty of it is that when you are making deposits in the trust account you are also motivating. We are going to talk a lot about motivating in this pod cast, but specifically trust has a foundation of motivation. If your sales reps don’t trust you, and you are constantly taking withdrawals from the trust account, then your motivational powers are significantly reduced.

If you are consistently enhancing that trust, then your motivational powers as a leader are greatly enhanced. So it really is a parallel concept in motivation.

Another thing to keep in mind when you’re talking about establishing trust is to always treat your sales rep as the end unto themselves. And what this is separates the men from the boys. Never treat them as a means to an end. They are not just a tool for you to get what you want. They are the journey; they are not the end point or the destination. So treat them as an end unto themselves. When you start to use your sales reps, then the sales reps will start tuning those sales managers out. So creating trust is very important, it encourages peace of mind, and it is a very critical way to motivate and lead your team to where you need them to be.

Let’s get into 3 proven methods to establishing trust with your sales team.

The first is to evoke the law of reciprocity. The law of reciprocity is a rule that states this:

If you do something nice for someone, then human nature dictates that the recipient will feel compelled to do something nice for you in return. It is in essence, you reap what you sow. And this is an irrefutable law that you should teach your sales people as a sales technique. It’s particularly effective because human nature dictates that at the precise moment that you do something nice for someone, the other person feels compelled to return the favor. This is just a law of human nature,

If you do something for them, then they do something nice for you in return.
I had a neighbor the other day take in my trash barrels because I was late getting home. And you know what I am going to do next week? I am going to take in his trash barrels. That’s the law of reciprocity. We are using this principal in order to establish trust, with the goal of driving sales.

So, we aren’t manipulating this rule, we are just using it to our advantage. And that’s really what this whole show is about, it’s talking about the laws of human psychology and how we can use them to get what we want which is success for your organization.

So be careful on this one, however, not to call this out as soon as you do it. There’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. You can’t say, now that I’ve done this for you, what are you going to do for me! I know people that do that, unfortunately, and it’s really annoying. And it makes you not want to do anything for them again because it isn’t a win-win situation, you just keep giving.

You will eventually get more in return. Don’t keep tabs, don’t keep score because its really important not to do that because when the time is right they will repay you, you don’t have to ask for it or keep score, this is what the law of reciprocity is all about.

So the idea is to do something that allows them to feel that they must do something for you in return, so be subtle and don’t dictate. You can do this all the time with your sales people. The most important part of this law is to remember that reciprocity is implicit, meaning that it is implied, it’s not something you should call out on.

If my neighbor said, “Gee, I brought in your barrels they other day, what are you going to do for me?”, then that’s not reciprocity, that is negotiation. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about doing things for people that will help them, because usually it comes back to you and usually it comes back even more than what you’ve given.

If you’ve ever read the book the “The Go Giver”, I highly recommend you picking it up, by Bob Berg and John David Mann, it is a tremendous book about the Law of Reciprocity in essence. In this particular case we are using this law to get the best out of our sales people or for your sales managers to use this law to get the best out of their sales reps.

So number 2 in our proven methods to establishing trust is:

Let the Sales Rep take all of the credit for all of the good stuff.

Harry Truman said, “People always perform well if you don’t worry about who takes the credit”. You as a sales manager, have to make sure your sales managers understand this, if a sales rep goes out and makes a sale and the sales manager is out on the call, and comes back to the office and tells everyone how HE made the sale, how great do you think the initiative and motivation will be for that sales rep to go out and do the same? If he’s a very good sales person he’ll continue to go out and do the same.

But, is he really motivated to start telling people and makes himself feel good about what he’s done when he knows that the sales manager is trying to take the credit?

So don’t worry about who takes the credit. Your sales managers get paid for how well the sales people do. In most organizations there is a tie in to bonuses and incentive compensation.

Never take the credit for the good work of the sales people. Remember, one time in your career, you were probably a pretty good sales person, maybe you’re an entrepreneur and your built your business, you got promoted into management, you brought in new business, maybe you won a bunch of awards, and you had lots of individual glory. But they way to get the best out of as a sales manager, is not to put yourself in the spotlight. It is to put the sales person in the spotlight, and even give them undue credit for things. We will talk about how to lead and coach.

The time for individual glory really has passed. Your role is to look good by helping others get results for themselves.

Your job, getting results through others, is not getting direct results on your own. Unless your structure is completely different, but in 99% of the cases, and the members to our Academy Program, the sales managers lead, and the pay and compensation and bonus is tied into how effective the sales person is.

The glory for you comes as the proud manager or the proud business owner, who watches from the sidelines when sales people go out and do it on their own. Sales people need a lot of ego gratification, because there’s a lot of crap that they are dealing with out there, so give them the credit for the good stuff, it will just help establish more trust in that trust account, and it also motivates them at the same time. Motivating and trust account depositing are very much intertwined.

The better your sales people perform, and the more they do it own their own, the better you and your company look. If you’re a new sales manager this is probably really hard to change. I really do think that sales is an ego driven vocation, without question. Have confidence in your own competence to perform as a great sales manager on your own, don’t feel insecure or threatened by the work of your people, because the better they look, you are going to look more and more brilliant because they are bringing in more business under your tutelage.

Let them take all the glory, and when you do you’re putting more deposits in the trust account. In the end your trust account balance will be overflowing. The biggest balance at the end of the day wins because that’s the sales manager with the biggest balance has the most motivated sales people.

Number 3 in our proven methods to establish trust with your sales people:

No one likes to be told what to do, but suggest instead.

I’ve never known anyone, and personally for myself I hate to be told what to do, that’s why I started my own business, and became an entrepreneur is because I couldn’t take direction very well. I was a sales person for many years and didn’t like to be told what to do. My wife is in sales too and she doesn’t like to be told what to do, especially by me. People love to thing that they are in control, they love to think that are in control at all times.

If they are being told what to do all the time;

They’ll be plenty of times that you’ll have to tell your sales people, no question about it in not uncertain terms, what they need to do in a give situation. There will be times for it. How you say it, is the most important part, and it’s not the fact that you have to tell them what to do, because you are going to have to tell them sometimes, but How are you going to do it? That’s how you can put more in the trust account and motivate them at the same time.

Ben Franklin once said, he’s one of the greatest statesmen of the modern era, and proven sales man, having built many business and retired a very wealthy man, would advocate, “When at all possible, avoid giving direct orders.”

If you’re a new sales manager, this is going to be tough to do, because you going to want to tell everybody what to do, but avoid giving direct orders when at all possible.
Never dictate, or decree, instead imply or make suggestions. This is a great way to put more deposits in trust account, and motivate and empower your sales people too. Remember, one of the things that we want to do is create a high performance, low maintenance sales team.

You want to be off doing other things; planning strategy, helping yourself get promoted, you want to be looking at the thirty thousand foot view; you don’t want to have to do the job of your sales people especially if you’re running a big company and all of those sales people report to you.

Instead of telling them what to do, request, imply or make suggestions.

Instead of saying, I want you to go to the O’Neil account and tell them x,y, z.”

Change that slightly and say, “It might be a good idea if you went to the O’Neil account and…”

Or maybe say something like this, “If I were you I would do this at the O’Neil account…”

Or another one, “You may want to consider talking to the O’Neil account and saying this…”

The sales rep listens to that and says, okay, he’s not dictating to me what to do, but he’s giving me a suggestion and I’m going to decide whether it is the right thing to do.

You want to empower these people, and motivate them and lead them, and coach them and establish trust with them by doing little things like this. It’s not in what you say; it’s in how you say it.

Here’s another great suggestion, if circumstances call for you to absolutely make a suggestion instead of telling them what to do, or correcting them immediately, replace your normal response with just an answer to, “okay, can I make a suggestion?” or “May I make a suggestion”, this just softens them up the dictating part of telling them what to do part of your job.

This method is far more effective, and less dictatorial than saying, “No no no…what you need to do is this…”

Now if the sales rep is brand new, and they don’t know what they don’t know, they just came out of training, yes, you have to tell them what to do. But gradually over time, you’re going to wean them off of that, your not going to tell them as much. Remember high performance, low maintenance sales people is what you want to have. Then you as a sales manager, you as a GM, sales become more and more on auto pilot because your sales people are doing things automatically.

Once you actually make a suggestion, then if they don’t do it, then you could always come back to that after and say, “hey I thought we agreed that you would do this”. So the key word in the sentence is “we” decision instead of a “you” did this decision, the sales person memory is refreshed with that interaction that you have come to this point together, not just you as their boss. So they feel far more empowered, and they’ve taken ownership of the decision. Taking ownership is a very, very powerful technique in producing high performance low maintenance sales people.

So just as a review.

1. Evoke the law of reciprocity
2. Let the sales rep take all the credit for the good stuff
3. No one likes to be told what to do, suggest instead

 

Hospitality Sales & Management International


Image by LunaWeb

Hire Someone With Product Knowledge – a Sales Management Myth:

Hiring a candidate for your sales position who has “product knowledge” seems at first thought to be a smart move. Obviously you can save money on training if your new hire knows your industry. Right? Don’t believe it!

Product knowledge is highly overrated by most sales managers and has little to do with a representative’s ability to close sales. Even though most of the sales training conducted today centers on learning the nuances of an organization’s products or services, the emphasis on product knowledge is nothing more than a waste of training time. If you want to hire “order takers” and not sales professionals,place a major emphasis on finding candidates with industry experience and product knowledge.

Some years ago, I was sitting in a meeting with a bank president and several vice presidents attempting to sell a sales training package for their customer service representatives (CSRs). In an answer to one of my questions, the training manager said that the bank would not even consider my training unless I had some way of measuring its effectiveness with their staff. The day before this meeting, The $elling Edge, Inc. had been awarded the distributorship for a unique bank sales tracking software package, that would effectively measure CSR crosssales ratios. I knew what the software was supposed to do, but had no way to demonstrates benefits, because all of the sales literature and demo disks were in the mail. Nevertheless, before leaving the bank that day, the controller cut a cashiers check for 95 for the tracking software and the bank committed to one year’s training for their CSRs and tellers. Knowing how to sell gave my firm our first software package sale and a long term contract. Knowledge about the new software’s features and benefits played no role in the selling process at all.

Even the most complex products or services can be easily learned. Being able to consistently sell them, is the hard part. Look for and hire candidates that can sell you on their ability to sell anything and don’t worry about their industry experience or product knowledge. The time and money you save in not having to train a new representative on your industry and your products,or services, could be the most expensive “cost savings” you’ll ever produce, if your new hire can’t sell. Hire people who can sell!

“Hire the best. Pay them fairly. Communicate frequently.Provide challenges and rewards. Believe in them. Get out of their way and they’ll knock your socks off.”

-Mary Ann Allison -

author