Key Selling Tips From the Winner of 21 Sales Achievement Awards

• January 26^th, 2021
• Blog

 

              Key selling tips from a winner of 21 sales achievement awards

 

In the late 1990’s I joined a training development organization in an account executive role. Products and services offered included corporate training such as leadership development.  Shortly after joining the company, a mentoring program for new account executives became available, and I was fortunate that John Slater (a very successful senior account executive) agreed to mentor me.  John very patiently answered my questions and instilled a belief that I too would be successful.  (He was correct!)

John won awards for selling on 21 occasions over a 30 year career.  Including a record eight consecutive VIP (Very Impressive Performance awards). These awards enabled John and his wife to have many enjoyable trips to warm locations in USA ,Mexico and Caribbean.

The question of what characteristics and behaviours contribute to individuals’ success has always intrigued me.  I approached John and asked him if he would be willing to share what has contributed to his success.

John was eager to share his success. I suggested he select three sales competencies and provide concrete real-life examples from his experience.  Hopefully a few of these ideas will inspire you to move forward and increase your success!

The first competency John chose was:

Build Rapport

• Be a valued resource/advisor to your customer
• Foster Trust by adding value to each interaction
• Establishing a mutually beneficial relationship

In this situation John worked with a large North American School Bus Driver provider.  Initially John communicated with the VP HR and when he left the organization, later he developed a close relationship with the Senior VP HR and made a point of meeting at a minimum of every three months for breakfast to update progress with different divisions. John  developed a long term relationship across the organization by asking key questions and providing ideas and support in each interaction to the extent that the Senior VP HR said that “John knew the organization’s needs better than anyone”.  In fact, with this and other similar accounts, John ended up with the nick name of “Colombo”.

Columbo being curious.

The client invited John to present potential solutions at their annual conference in Norfolk, Virginia.  As a result, John expanded business to over $2,000,000 right across the organization by demonstrating the impact of initial divisional pilots.

I asked John what behaviors build rapport with a client.  He replied that he showed a genuine interest in his clients’ professional and personal lives. Such as praising the VP on project accomplishments and displaying empathy when the client shared challenges and temporary roadblocks.  John had a plan for every conversation including developing a list of key questions.

In summary to build rapport always add value with your clients. Do your research and practice your key interactions. Then make it happen!

The next competency John chose was –

Plan for Success

• Have a Vision and an End goal, and establish an effective plan to achieve this goal.

 

In this situation, John was interacting with a large Telecom organization.  He realized the potential to position his organization as a key outsourcing resource for the client’s wide range of training needs.

John identified key influencers and decision makers.  He researched key speeches delivered by the CEO and other organizational executives.  He then took the time to communicate how key training initiatives could contribute to potential solutions.  He used key points from the CEO’s speech to frame potential training solutions. As a result he obtained an outsourcing contract over five years’ worth over $15,000,000.

In summary visualize what you want to happen and it will be more likely to happen.https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/flourish/200912/seeing-is-believing-the-power-visualization

 

Learn how to set a goal that will increase the potency of your goal.

See this link for how to set goals that you are more likely to achieve https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_90.htm   

 

The third competency John chose was –

Prospecting

• Established knowledge by research into key industries.
• Lever that knowledge in search for new clients for your solutions, whether inside existing client organizations or brand new clients

John and I used to have this debate that he felt he never did any prospecting whereas I felt he did. We were actually both right. When John thought of prospecting, he thought of cold calling.  And he never engaged in cold calling!  However he did prospect and did lots of it. It was always with existing clients or from within his network. He didn’t think of this as prospecting.  He was being John.  And acting Colombo like always finding a reason to ask “one more question”. This activity was just part of his every day work.

In this example, John decided to focus on the Healthcare industry in Ontario.  Healthcare often sees itself as having special needs in the Learning and Development area.  Also, Healthcare in Ontario is Government funded and likes to share information on vendors.  Within healthcare, referrals are critical.

John had heard others say there is little money in healthcare to invest in external training. However John discovered when you get to the decision maker and has the solution, there is a budget!

John could help improve Patient communication

So how did John prospect? First he did his research and learned what specific business issues Health Care organizations in Ontario faced. Then worked with one account and earned an invitation to speak at an upcoming conference. With supporting allies in Healthcare, John developed conference topics and created an agenda related to their needs.

 

This was a great start but John did not stop there. He leveraged the relationship he had formed with a key Hospital CEO and asked him to invite other CEO’s and their executives to other upcoming conferences.

 

John’s collaborative style fit perfectly with the” all in it together attitude of health care”.  And, things snowballed… Ultimately John sold to nearly every hospital in the Greater Toronto area well over $1,000,000 per year.  And he further encouraged the sharing of internal trainers to train across hospitals.

In summary, the above are examples of  concrete behaviours and actions that contributed to John’s success.  Sometimes the hardest part is getting started.  If you’d like assistance on any part of sales coaching or sales training, please get in touch with me!  My telephone number is 905.875.6515, peterwebb@petersalescoaching.com.