Shortening Your Sales Cycle

Two good things happen in a formal presentation. The salesman learns what is wanted, and the prospect learns what is available.

Especially with services, we can provide more of what the prospect wants, if only we knew what they wanted. The trick is to not get too attached to our model of what we are offering. That model is not what we offer, it is a simplified interpretation of what we have provided in the past.

If breakthroughs usually start with a customer explaining what they want, getting that information is the most important part of the meeting.

Before the meeting, you can help the prospect define what they want by publishing up-to-date information of what you are providing, and the benefits where it is working. This helps the buyers, gets you more meetings, and results in more informed discussion.

Non sellers may be worried about their intellectual property or staying ahead of the competition, but if you were leading the league, everyone would be trying to reverse engineer what you were doing. Your only safety is maintaining your pace of innovation, and the customers are a key resource for that.

Go Intensely Public – Shorten Your Sales Cycle.

Your Thoughts?

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Talk Your Business – How to make more and better sales right away!

Tuesday, December 7th, 7:30am to 9:00, Intelligent Office, Alexandria

http://holidaytalkyourbusiness.eventbrite.com , and

How to Scale Your Organization – When to Build, Borrow, or Buy

Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.bit.ly/ScaleBBB

Wrestling with Sales Staleness:

A co-worker left the sales group I work with yesterday. It was time. She had no energy, commitment or eagerness for her work. Maybe she was always this way, maybe not. It did bring to my mind what most successful salespeople do every morning, they get up for the day, re-motivate and energize themselves, work toward the positives of what their day will be like.

The motivation, excitement or energy of salespeople cycles up and down over time. To a company it’s just a matter of putting that person out when they can no longer cycle back up.

This has left me to wonder… doesn’t it cost more to train and replace a once successful salesperson than to reboot or refresh that person?

Isn’t the person coming in an unknown quantity?

Is there a way to keep salespeople fresh over time?

Not every salesperson goes stale, but I have seen it time and again.

So I wonder if there are companies that recognize and have any programs that combat this negative sales occurrence. Is there such a thing as a corporate cheerleader/therapist/philosopher?

Would such a person make a company better or more profitable?

Could it work?

Anyone have any thoughts or experience?

Presentations you might find useful:

Talk Your Business – How to make more and better sales right away!
Tuesday, December 7th, 7:30am to 9:00, Intelligent Office, Alexandria
http://holidaytalkyourbusiness.eventbrite.com
How to Scale Your Organization - Build, Borrow, Buy
Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.bit.ly/ScaleBBB
Subscribe for RSS Notification for Upcoming Sales Lab Events http://bit.ly/Sales_Lab_Events

The When of Leadership

This post began as “Is Everyone a Leader?.” I quickly realized that this is truly determined though the crashing together of needed skills, desire or duty, the situation, and timing.

John Wayne typically played characters that are leaders – people follow him over the hill or turn to him for “The Plan.”

To the contrary, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Jack Dawson in Titanic rose to the occasion during the cruise. If he had taken the boat before or after the Titanic, would Dawson have made it to the First Class Deck and had a life changing effect on a rich girl?

Does the situation create the leader – even for those 'natural' or 'born' leaders? Being in the right place at the right time certainly has some weight.

I can recall a recently graduated MBA – top school, great student, head of the class – who joined my organization and spent several frustrating years casting about trying to be a leader with no success. He certainly had the training and abilities for the task, but was unsuccessful in bringing it off – during this period there was just no compelling situation which required a new leader to step forward.

On the other hand, during an early game in the 2004 ACC Basketball Tournament when the team was trailing, John Gilchrist slapped the floor and took leadership of the team – it was electric! Through his playing, encouragement of his team-mates, and creating a shared vision that the trophy was theirs, the University of Maryland basketball team won the 2004 ACC Basketball Championship. Gilchrist rose to the occasion and was clearly the leader at the tournament, but did not serve that role either before or after. Timing...the right circumstances...each member of the team playing above their best effort...all brought together under his leadership.

Leadership in an organization is 'assigned' to certain positions or titles – a team captain and  a company CEO are expected to be leaders. Often, situations develop which require a leader to address the situation or circumstance – either immediate or ongoing – and a person steps up to take the role. There is no magic pill here – the individual needs to have the traits & skills necessary to pull this off, but like Dawson (mentioned above), it just doesn't work too well if you missed the boat or took an earlier one.

The WHEN of leadership is an interesting issue – and there are many, many stories and examples of ordinary people rising to the situation at hand to become leaders.

This topic will become very rich and insightful through the sharing of such stories – PLEASE add a comment below with your favorite example of a 'made leader.'  By doing so, we may better understand the common elements and can apply this knowledge to develop potential leaders.

Presentations you might find useful:

Talk Your Business – How to make more and better sales right away!
Tuesday, December 7th, 7:30am to 9:00, Intelligent Office, Alexandria
http://holidaytalkyourbusiness.eventbrite.com
How to Scale Your Organization - Build, Borrow, Buy
Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.bit.ly/ScaleBBB
Subscribe for RSS Notification for Upcoming Sales Lab Events http://bit.ly/Sales_Lab_Events

Good Stories

Good stories are a basic unit of communication. Gets to the point in a minute or less. Good stories go beyond words to form a lasting mental picture in the listeners’ mind.

In Talk Your  Business – How to make more and better sales right away! everyone gets to develop a story that interests them, attracts the listener.

A good story sings to you, sings to to your audience.

The next Talk Your  Business – How to make more and better sales right away! is December 7^th, 7:30 – 9 am, in Alexandria. RSVP to http://holidaytalkyourbusiness.eventbrite.com 

Comments? 

Gibbs Rules – Leadership by the Numbers?

Leroy Jethro Gibbs heads up the high performance field team of misfits for NCIS. How does he get extraordinary results week after week? Rules, feedback, and required growth for his staff.

Gibbs, a former Marine sniper demonstrates his personal competence and skill through results – not the least of which was shifting from a loner to a leader. His band of 'unique individuals' include: a vain DiNozzo adverse to scutt-work; McGee – a tentative agent & computer geek; Ziva - a Mossad trained assassin; Ducky with his constant stream of inane facts; and Abby - a goth gal with a big heart. That aside, each of these folks is brilliantly competent and extremely dedicated to the success of the team in getting results – catching the bad guys. And, they would do anything for Gibbs.

WHY?

Gibbs focuses on the talents and skills of the people on his team and expects the best from them at all times, regardless of personal foibles.

Gibbs has rules – he follows them and he teaches them to his staff. Short...Practical...Memorable...they are reinforced by Gibbs and by staff to each other. These rules are NOT written and posted on some wall or in a manual. They are shared as needed verbally. Gibbs says there are 51 rules and it is his job to teach them. In doing so he does not do their job for the staff nor tell them the one right way – to the contrary he presses for their view of the issue and how the team will solve it.

Gibbs puts each of his staff into challenging spots for growth and development – uncomfortable for them but shows they can do it. However, like a father running behind a child riding a two-wheel bike for the first time, Gibbs will appear and help out IF needed.

What keeps the rules alive is feedback – a slap on the back of the head as a wake up call and his acknowledgment of a job well done – WHEN IT IS – emphasize the validity of a rule.

Are the rules some kind of magic? Some secret of a world order? You decide – here's some of them:

Rule #1 Never let suspects stay together.

Rule #1 (yes there are two #1s) Never screw over your partner.

Rule #7 Always be specific when you lie.

Rule #9 Never go anywhere without a knife.

Rule #15 Always work as a team.

Rule #38 Your case, your lead.

Rule #45 Clean up the mess you make.

Rule #51 Sometimes – You're wrong.

And the unwritten rule is Family ALWAYS comes first!

Short – Sweet – To the Point... Applicable to the work they do.

Is this just a fictional account of a TV series or the chronicle of a true leader?

Do you know of a leader in an organization who is like Gibbs?

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the many contributors to the collections of Gibbs Rules; here are several links for more details:

Comprehensive footnoted list - http://ncis.wikia.com/wiki/Leroy_Jethro_Gibbs/Rules
Annotated list - http://www.ncisfanwiki.com/page/NCIS%3A+Gibbs+Rules
List with explanatory notes - http://www.ncisfanatic.com/2010/06/gibbs-rules-ncis-the-complete-list-of-gibbs-rules.html

Other presentations you might enjoy:

Talk Your Business – How to make more and better sales right away!
Tuesday, December 7th, 7:30am to 9:00, Intelligent Office, Alexandria
http://holidaytalkyourbusiness.eventbrite.com
How to Scale Your Organization - Build, Borrow, Buy
Thursday, December 9th, 7:15am to 8:30, Intelligent Office, Rockville
http://www.bit.ly/ScaleBBB
Subscribe for RSS Notification for Upcoming Sales Lab Events http://bit.ly/Sales_Lab_Events