What piece of advice would you give to a newly promoted sales manager in his/her first role leading a team?
Meet with each salesperson individually. Learn about them personally – what makes them tick, what do they want from their manager? Also, tell them what makes you tick. People behave and think differently because people are different. It’s important to get to know each person and to have them get to know you.
Thinking back over your career, what would you rank as the biggest/most important innovation in sales and/or sales training?
Great question! Without a doubt, I would say the Internet and email. There was a time when you could only communicate with prospects by phone, mail or fax. The Internet changes all that. With the Internet, you have information at your fingertips. You can be much smarter about your prospects and your approach to selling to each one. I used to send away for annual reports and I had a file-cabinet drawer full of them. Imagine that!
With any advancement, you also get unintended consequences. Buyers are busier than ever and they have more people placing demands on their time and more salespeople wanting to reach them. The Internet made email possible and with email came a deluge of daily interruptions. So the Internet is important because it has made things easier and harder in different ways.
There’s so much information available it’s difficult to find the right information (quickly) and it’s difficult to remember information. So sales tools designed with that in mind become extremely important.
What’s the biggest/most common sales challenge your clients/colleagues are facing this year, and how are you helping them address it?
The biggest challenge for our clients is that it’s difficult to get an “at-bat.” You can’t hit a home run if you never get a chance to swing. I hear over and over that, “If I can just get in front of the prospect, I can get a sale.” Meaning, that they have such faith in the value of their solution that they know they’ll get a deal if they can just get the prospect to hear them out.
There are two issues here. Certainly, one issue is getting the chance to meet with the prospect. However, selling is never as easy as just getting the appointment. So the second issue is what happens after the appointment. No matter how excited your prospect got, that excitement is easily forgotten when other priorities and distractions come into focus. Salespeople have to be clever and persistent in keeping their prospects attention long enough to facilitate a decision. And because there are so many players involved in any typical B2B sale, salespeople have to be politicians. That means they have to know how to lobby and bring people together under a common objective.
What’s the one thing you wish all your clients/colleagues were doing (that they aren’t today) and why?
I wish they were making it easier to differentiate themselves in the market. If they put themselves in their prospects shoes, they would see how difficult it is to make sense of the all the options. Everything sounds the same because everything is described the same.
Differentiation requires that you say, act, or be different and that’s scary for Marketers. Marketers want to paint as broad of a brush as they can because they want to speak to as large of a market as possible, but a large market is a homogeneous market. It’s extremely difficult (and costly) to dominate a homogeneous market. You have to have a bigger megaphone and you must use it relentlessly—in other words, you have to spend your way to market domination.
Many of the companies we work with are VC funded which adds to the problem. VCs want to know that there is a large market potential. However, the smart ones know that doesn’t mean you target the large market from day one. The best approach to dominating a large market is by first dominating individual markets. You eat an elephant one bite at a time (as the saying goes).
What’s the toughest question you received from a client/colleague this year?
“What’s the best way to get market traction?”
The reason that’s a tough question is because there isn’t a magic answer. The truth is, it takes a lot of work and a lot of different activities. The closest thing to a magic answer is, “Hire the best Marketers and Salespeople you can find.” They know what it takes and how long it takes. Make sure you have your messaging down and know what to say to different audiences or personas. Keep your messaging and your call to actions clear, simple, and consistent. On the sales side, do your research. Build a list of the best prospects based on who will be the most motivated to buy your solution. Then, figure out your plan of attack. What content do you need? What’s your outreach strategy? What are your objectives for the number of prospects you’ll meet with and how quickly. Then measure and adjust strategy as needed.
Have you had a professional mentor who was especially influential in your career? If yes, what lessons or advice have proven to be most impactful for you?
I can’t really say I had a mentor. My advice would be to look for possible mentors and when you find good candidates, ask for their help. I was always a lone wolf. I think a lot of salespeople are. That’s why you have to decide for yourself that a mentor is important and see to it that you’re open and actively seeking the right people to help you. It’s your responsibility as a seller or marketer to get mentoring.
Are there sales/training leaders you feel are doing an exceptional job in their organization/market? Why and what can their peers, specifically, learn from them?
Never before have there been so many great (talented, smart, genuinely caring and proven) training professionals. One particularly great place to look is www.womensalespros.com.
What social media platforms do you use regularly, and, of these, which one do you find to be the most useful in your professional life?
LinkedIn and Twitter. They are the only two that matter for B2B sellers as far as I’m concerned.
If your sales philosophy were a movie, what would the title be?
Bound for Glory. That’s a lofty title I know. However, it’s my firm belief that that’s the attitude you have to have and truly feel, down to your soul. It’s a must that you have a real passion for the profession. It needs to be your true purpose to seek knowledge and skills and to be constantly learning. If you’re to succeed in sales (like any profession), you have to have the belief, the commitment, and the desire to truly make a difference.
What’s the best sales or business book that you read this year?
I would say that’s “Pitch Anything” by Oren Klaff. Oren talks about things that are often left out of sales books like, how to determine subtle shifts in power during meetings. His pitch framework is the STRONG method:
Sounds basic (which good advice should be) but the details are what distinguishes his advice from others. For instance, what’s the best way to tell the story? How will your story capture the prospect’s imagination compared to your competitor’s story? What does it really take to stand out from the crowd?
There were many times when I viewed the book’s content, and the author, as a bit arrogant and the techniques as deceptive. The techniques are presumably based on neuro-science. However, if you have the right intentions you can glean inspiration and ideas that will work for you in an honorable way. I try to read different kinds of books with various philosophies on selling, taking what will be useful to me and my style and leaving the rest behind.
Nancy Nardin is a nationally recognized thought leader on sales and marketing productivity tools, and a pioneer in sales prospecting technology – first as a service provider and now as an evangelist and expert. She is also frequent speaker and writer on using technology to drive revenue throughout the sales pipeline. Before launching Smart Selling Tools in 2006, Nancy also served in sales leadership roles at leading analyst firms such as Gartner and IDC.
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