Five Mistakes Made By Salespeople

Like most of us, sales people are no different in the fact that they make mistakes too. When mistakes are made in the selling environment, rarely do they get a second opportunity. These common mistakes made by sales people can be avoided and sales success can be achieved.

Here are some of the mistakes often made by ineffective sales people:

Mistake #1 - Pre-call Preparation

Does little or no research prior to the contact.

Sales people should use all available resources (Internet, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, etc) to research information on the company or specific contact. People appreciate other people who show an interest in their well-being and not just themselves. Don’t fail to educate yourself on your perspective client or contact.

Mistake #2 - Presentation Skills

Uses an inflexible sales process that is robotic in nature.

Sounding like a recording is a real turnoff to prospects. It does not demonstrate an interest in the person and makes them feel like they are treated like everyone else. Customize your presentation and allow for specific questions based on your research to make the customer feel like they and they alone are special and you took extra time and effort to talk to them.

Mistake #3 - The Closer

Lacks an effective close.
Listening throughout the sales presentation is the key factor in enabling the sales person to close the sale. Establishing the need must be completed before a trial close can even be made. Needs satisfaction is the best principle to use when determining the need to close and what close to use. A close can only occur when the need of the customer has been satisfied by the features and benefits of your product.

Mistake #4 - Relationship Building

Does not establish trust.
Trust is the common dominator to establishing a sale. Gaining favorable attention and establishing rapport are the two key ingredients to the start of a presentation. Both enable you to get the customer to elaborate on the specific need for which your solution is appropriate. Rapport building is also a component of understanding the behavioral style of the buyer to insure a better relationship.

Mistake #5 - Post call activity

Does not follow-up with client hn a timely manner.
Most sales people fail to follow-up in a timely manner. Focus your follow-up correspondence (Letter, e-Mail, Text, or Fax) on the benefits that will be demonstrated once the solution is in place. Your product or service is just that solution. Even if the customer doesn’t buy today, make sure you use a CRM system to follow-up periodically. Testimonials and product or service success stories make a great follow-up.

Executive Summary: Sales people must understand their own selling styles and preferences and also recognize and understand Customer Buying Styles. Sales is all about building relationships. Relationship Selling allows you to adapt to your customer’s Buying Style so that a better connection between sales person and customer can be achieved. People who connect better to customers in a shorter period of time close more sales.

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Innovative Leadership helps companies grow, one employee at a time! Can you imagine your customer asking you permission to buy something from you? This program teaches you how behavioral understanding, trust, and emotions can be integrated to produce the desired results. Click to learn more: http://www.innovativeleadershipdv.com/workshops.asp#sales or call 609.390.2830 to see how this series can help your business grow, one employee at a time.

Ten Steps To Goal Getting

1. Make the commitment to reach your goal. "One person with a commitment is worth a hundred who only have an interest." - Mary Crowley.

2. Commit yourself to detailed accountability. Record your progress toward your goals every night, and list the six most important things you need to do the next day. Daily discipline is the key to reaching your goals. Remember, it is right to eat the elephant in small bites.

3. Build your life on a sold foundation of honesty, character, integrity, trust, love, and loyalty. This foundation will give you an honest shot at reaching any goal you have set properly.

4. Break your intermediate and long-range goals into increments. Make small strides to great success.

5. Be prepared to change. You can't control the weather, inflation, interest rates, Wall Street, etc. Change your decision to move toward a goal carefully--but be willing to change your direction to get there as conditions and circumstances demand.

6. Share your "give-up" goals (i.e., give up smoking, being rude, procrastinating, being late, eating too much, etc.) with many people. Chances are excellent they're going to encourage you.

7. Become a team player. Remember: You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

8. Visualize the achievement or outcome. In your imagination see yourself receiving that diploma, getting that job or promotion, making that speech, moving into the home of your dreams, achieving that weight-loss goal, etc.

9. Each time you reach a goal your confidence will grow so that you can do bigger and better things. After accomplishing any goal, record it in your journal, Weekly Planner, Phone, Blackberry, or iPad.

10. Remember, what you get by reaching your destination isn't nearly as important as what you become by reaching your goals--what you will become is the winner you were born to be!

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Innovative Leadership helps companies grow, one employee at a time! They integrate business consultation, training and development, and coaching with Leadership and Strategic/Forward Thinking to enhance organizational effectiveness, employee engagement and people development. InnovativeLeadershipDV.com

How to Make Choices as a Team

On a trip to a specific destination, a driver can look for certain landmarks to be sure of taking the correct road. A team also has “landmarks” to evaluate whether or not it is on the path to excellence. Several components determine the success of a winning team. These elements include decision making, creative problem solving, collaboration, and facilitative leadership.

Making choices

• Standards for making decisions - Decisions are always made with reference to certain standards or values. The organizational counterpart to a leader’s strong self-image is a well-defined organizational plan of action that serves as a blueprint for decisions. Identification of priorities among the various organizational goals provides an index to their relative importance to the organization.
  
  Do all you can to help team members make wise decisions. The more competent they become in making decisions, the bigger contribution they make to the achievement of organizational goals.
  
  
• Responsibility - Determining who will make a particular decision is another important consideration. Even the most effective leaders must repeatedly judge whether to make a decision themselves, refer it to someone else, or delegate it. As a general rule, decisions should be made at the lowest organizational level consistent with quality. Appropriate delegation of decision making to team members strengthens them, enhances the quality of decisions, prevents morale problems, and maximizes your time effectiveness.
  
  
• Personal accountability - Although you delegate authority and assign responsibility for a decision, you are still personally accountable to the organization for the outcome.
  
  Good judgment in the type of decisions you delegate makes it unlikely that such action will be necessary very often. In the event that you are ever forced to reverse or modify a decision, be sure to explain fully to everyone involved. Do all you can to help team members make wise decisions. The more competent they become in making decisions, the bigger contribution they make to the achievement of organizational goals.

Next Month: How to Solve Problems as a Team. Sign up here to get Monthly Coaching Emails.

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Innovative Leadership helps companies grow, one employee at a time! They integrate business consultation, training and development, and coaching with Leadership and Strategic/Forward Thinking to enhance organizational effectiveness, employee engagement and people development. InnovativeLeadershipDV.com

The Value of Coaching

I just celebrated my tenth year of Coaching. When I was asked by an executive over ten years ago the following question, “Are you a Coach?” My first response was “in what sport”? I coached almost every sport known to man since I had three very active children so I immediately told him that baseball was my favorite and softball was a close second. He then said that Coaching was now one of the growing professions in business and I should look into it.

I researched the profession and found that there was formal training for Coaching. I ended up choosing an online program called Coach U because the focus of the program was on business application, rather than a life coach, which complimented my business consulting firm. I spent the next 18 months learning the competencies, skill-sets, and practices that would make me a great executive coach and officially became a Certified Business Coach. Later on in my career, I took certification programs in Performance and Small Business Owner Coaching since I was dealing with small business owners and top producers in industries that required immediate results.

I find that Coaching is much more well known today than it was ten years ago, but the term continues to be applied more frequently as a verb and not a noun. Coaching is not the same as mentoring, counseling, or managing. Business Coaching appears to have replaced the term business consulting but I still find the two totally separate. Business Consultation focuses on the effectiveness of the organization and Business Coaching focuses on the individual, whether it be an executive, manager or future leader.

Read: How to Make Choices as a Team

Top Ten Must Do's to Increase Employee Engagement

1. Create Career Pathing – people development
2. Establish Performance Management Benchmarks
3. Create an enthusiastic energetic work environment
4. Demonstrate the value of the role to the overall success of the organization
5. Focus on people’s strengths and not their shortcomings
6. Communicate this point in time and forward think
7. Promote recognition and the use of public praise
8. Achievement is results-orientation
9. Manage and build relationships
10. Integrate the beliefs of your people with the vision of your organization

Innovative Leadership helps companies grow, one employee at a time! They integrate business consultation, training and development, and coaching with Leadership and Strategic/Forward Thinking to enhance organizational effectiveness, employee engagement and people development. InnovativeLeadershipDV.com

How to Use Employee Engagement to Your Business' Advantage

Between the winter and the continued economic struggles, many employers are being lulled into thinking that all is well in the workplace. Turnover is down or non-existent, revenue generation is coming back ever so slowly, and costs have been brought in line. All of this can certainly give companies and organizations the impression that everything is on the upswing and “Life is Good”.

The problem is that when we come out of this economic recession, many people will start looking for other opportunities and in most cases; the good opportunities will be made available to your good people. People are not usually changing jobs for financial differences, but relationship differences. The relationship between the manager and employee is the key to retention of good/great employees.

The main reason for leaving a company is the fact that the manager is either doing something wrong or is just not providing the feedback needed for personal development and advancement. Managers must exhibit an interest in their people; learn to understand what motivates their staff, provide a realistic career path for advancement, and to maximize the talents of their key employees. Leadership and Management Development Programs are designed to teach people the skill sets and competencies that are needed to develop high performing employees in the workplace. Read about these programs here, but let’s get back to engagement….

High performing employees are not always the highly engaged employee. Managers must make sure that all employees are engaged and the key employees must be well aware of how their value contributes to the overall success of the Business Strategy of the company or organization.

Keep in mind, low turnover does not reflect high employee engagement. It doesn’t, but it can! You still need engagement driven by management.


How To Take Action

Most of us don't realize that our behavioral patterns are predictable and how much our personal behavior impacts the people around us. We highly recommend the use of an assessment instrument to guide you in boosting employee engagement.

This assessment enhances the understanding that managers and employees have of each other and helps you learn how to improve your effectiveness and productivity in the workplace. This can help people be truly engaged in the workplace but understanding themselves and how they can relate to the business strategy of the organization. Our DiSC© Workplace Profile/Workshop can help facilitate engagement in your work environment.

Ellen and Richard Hohmann - Contributors in South Jersey Biz Article

Ellen and Richard Hohmann asked to be contributors to an article titled, “No Problems to Report” by Jennifer Nelson (South Jersey Biz, Volume 2, Issue 1).

The article focused on the difficulty facing supervisors and managers today in terms of having to deal with a wide range of personality traits and behavior. Some of the contributors felt that over 30% of an employee’s performance in the workplace is tied to their individual behaviors. In the article, Elizabeth Faircloth, Vice President of Augur, Inc. stated that, “I don’t think many companies realize how important an employee’s personal actually is. Both Ellen and Richard know for a fact that they don’t.

Ellen and Richard Hohmann have specialized in teaching companies and their people to better understand both the differences in personalities and the resulting behavioral tendencies that they will exhibit in the workplace. Individual performance and the productivity of the organization can certainly be linked to this. It is also important that managers or supervisors understand the cultural and generational differences present in the workplace today. After all, the effectiveness of any organization is a direct reflection of people being engaged with the company’s business strategy. This engagement cannot occur without a better understanding of these “people” traits.

Engagement is certainly one barometer that can be used to measure if the personality of the workers is understood. After all, a more engaged workforce is more productive making the company more profitable. Sure makes sense to us. Richard also uses Behavioral Assessment Instruments with every Executive Coaching client. It is important that excellent communication be achieved and assessment help with that immensely.

The uniqueness about the Leadership Courses offered by Innovative Leadership is that they don’t focus on content, they focus on the expected behavioral change needed by the participant to be more productive. Adults learn differently than children and content driven programs have been shown to deliver little of no change. Behavioral-oriented programs do make a change…in the employee and the company. As our slogan says, “We change companies, one employee at a time”.

Read the Full South Jersey Biz Article Here

There's No "ME" in Training, But There is "ROI"

Many people believe that our economic vitality depends on having a skilled and experienced workforce. It is being reported that too many young people are unprepared to succeed in a knowledge-driven global economy. A broad skills gap that already exists in our nation is contributing in one new report calls the “great divide” between what a worker has to offer and what employers expect and demand. The substandard consequences are real and are growing worse.

The real problem is that many of us are asking, “How do we improve the skills of future workers while developing our own talent pipelines?”

Employers must invest in a process that allows them to grow their future leaders organically. Most companies concentrate their efforts on the basic workforce readiness skills of their entry–level, lower skilled employees and, in some cases, prospective employees hoping to secure full time positions. To do such requires considerable time and expense. A recent report titled, “Why Companies Invest in ‘Grow Your Own’ Talent" demonstrably shows employers that embrace workforce-readiness training are finding promising results and an impressive and measurable ROI.

Most of the benefits noted in the report revolve around employee retention, increased workforce diversity, and greater community engagement. The real success lies in the fact that companies are successfully cultivating new generations of talent with new career opportunities, who positively impact organizational effectiveness, better known as corporate profitability.

It is time that we understand, an applicant arrives at a company because they are interested in the roles and responsibilities associated with the position and if they find the compensation package adequate, they take the position, BUT they only stick around if two other things are satisfied; what are they? 1) That their new company demonstrates an interest in them 2) There is a future opportunity for growth. Now, who doesn’t feel that training and development of your people is valuable?

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Article written by Richard J. Hohmann Jr., Senior Business and Management Consultant for Innovative Leadership, a strategic partner with Fitzpatrick, Bongiovanni, & Kelly, PC, and also a member of the Collaboration Team for Leadership Management International. Richard can also speak at your next organization’s meeting, to invite him to speak call 609-390-2830, For your business solutions click here: InnovativeLeadershipDV.com

Management reSOLUTIONS for 2012

Managers - Have you set your reSOLUTIONS for 2012 yet? It's not too late. Here are 15 suggestions for a more productive workplace and higher employee engagement!

1. Be a More Effective Listener and a Better Story Teller
2. Provide Feedback in a Timely Manner
3. Get to Know Your People as More Than Employees
4. Learn to Delegate and Begin to Cross Train
5. Focus on Diversity and Inclusion for Productivity
6. Be More Goal-Oriented
7. Tie Your Corporate Business Strategy in with People's Values
8. Be Consistent with Your Performance Management Process
9. Realize Your Primary Role is to Develop People
10. Prioritize Your Roles and Responsibilities Daily
11. Manage Your Email and Turn Off Message Alerts
12. Be Positive - Learn to have a "Positude"
13. Find Opportunities to "Stretch" Your Skill Set
14. Schedule Time with Yourself, Don't Multi-Task
15. Establish Trust as the Foundation for All You Do!
    

Business Owner reSOLUTIONS for 2012

It's not too late to start your reSOLUTIONS; Here are 15 suggestions for Business Owners.

1. Get employees to Think like Owners
2. Create a Build a Great Workplace
3. Understand that You Can't Do it All
4. Utilize Your Professional Team of Advisors
5. Create an Advisory Board
6. Don't Accept Status Quo
7. Participate in Community Activities
8. Learn to Work "On" Your Business NOT "In" Your Business
9. Open your Mind to Innovation and Creativity
10. Be a Forward Thinker - Focus on the Design of the Outcome
11. When Defining Your Vision of the Future, Set Clear Goals
12. Measure Your Results
13. Set a Budget and Stick to it!
14. Link Your Goals to Your Financial Outcome
15. Practice Continuous Improvement
    

HR reSOLUTIONS for 2012

It's not too late to start implementing reSOLUTIONS into your daily activities as a Human Resources professional. Here are 15 suggestions to get you started on a new and exciting path:

1. Increase Employee Engagement
2. Reduce Stress in the Workplace
3. Get a Grasp on Social Networking
4. Increase the Use of Temporary and Part-Time Employees
5. Be the Point Person for Succession Planning (Be prepared for Those in Retirement Age)
6. Integrate Strategy with People Value
7. Make HR a Strategic Partner
8. Manage Change in Culture and Growth
9. Focus on Employee Relations
10. Provide Legal Updates to Managers and CEO's
    
11. Develop a Performance Management Process
12. Establish Coaching and Mentoring Programs for Employee Retention
13. Develop a Leadership Program
14. Create an Onboarding Process vs. Orientation
15. Tie in Your Recruitment Practices with Strategy, Culture, Mission and Vision